"Dimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brave array did court the favoring gale. Cheerily sung the marinere as he climbed the high, high mast, The mast that was made of the Norway pine, that scorned the mountain-blast. But brave Mark Edward dashed a tear in secret from his eye, As he saw green Trimount dimmer grow against the distant sky, And fast before the gathering breeze his noble vessel fly. Oh, youth will cherish many a hope, and many a fond desire, And nurse in secret in the heart the hidden altar-fire! And though young Mark Edward trode his deck with footstep light and free, Yet a shadow was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... through a thick greenery where the lights were dimmer and no one was near, she allowed his arm for a moment to encircle her yielding form, and she knew by his quick breath that the words were moulded in his thoughts, and were on the point to rush forth in a torrent of speech. Still they came not, and Bigot ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sunlight lay Tawny on thick ferns and gray On dark waters: dimmer, Lone and deep, the cypress grove Bowered mystery and wove Braided lights, like those that love On the pearl plumes of a dove Faint to gleam ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... said she, in quick and eager words, "the lamps are burning dimmer. They will go out soon. It is a trick. You will not be able to see and the leopard will ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... dreams, do not interest the reader. Why stir up more of them? I am content to have brought this fact into prominence: the first glimmers of light penetrating into the dark chambers of the mind leave an indelible impression, which the years make fresher instead of dimmer. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... on this evening, the house was built in the self-same spot as projected; and the family life went on, under the shadow of Judge Evan's elms, much as if I had not spoken. Emmy became mother of two fine, lovely boys, and waxed dimmer and fainter; while with her physical decay came increasing need of the rule in the household of mamma and sisters, who took her up energetically on eagles' wings, and kept her house, and managed her children: for what can be done when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... rose and rejoined her. She was sitting just as they had left her—but whether it was through the light being dimmer, or through a certain thoughtfulness in her face, Agatha thought she did not ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... will have attained so perfect a spotlessness as to justify its issuing forth to attack the private dust of other people. And if it ever did, lo, it would find the necessity no longer there. Its bright untiringness would unconsciously have done its work, and every dimmer soul within sight of that cheerful shining been strengthened and inspired ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... him then, when the influence of the wilderness and its immensity and desolation were so strong, that he might have lived in some such time himself, ages and ages ago. It might have been the stories of Paul or it might have been some dim heritage from a dimmer past that made him, as he lay there under the soaking bushes, call up visions of the great beasts that once stalked the earth, the mammoth and the mastodon, the cave bear, the saber-toothed tiger, gigantic leopards and hyenas, and back of them the terrific ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... He smiled at her through eyes dimmer still, then rose, waggling the bent forefinger. "But not one day over ten ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... coming of Pantagruel, accompanied with the senatorian members of that worshipful judicatory, arose, went to the bar, had his indictment read, and for all his reasons, defences, and excuses, answered nothing else but that he was become old, and that his sight of late was very much failed, and become dimmer than it was wont to be; instancing therewithal many miseries and calamities which old age bringeth along with it, and are concomitant to wrinkled elders; which not. per Archid. d. lxxxvi. c. tanta. By ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... as these passed through Madden's mind as he pursued his reckoning through trigonometric tables. The light fell redder and dimmer through the ports and he hurried to finish his work before darkness required a lamp in the steamy cabin. A furnace-like breath, laden with malodorous ship smells, drifted in upon him. Madden's thin undershirt clung sweatily to the muscular ridges down his back and moulded the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... sight, the gray grew luminous. Katahdin's mighty presence seemed to absorb such dreamy glimmers as float in limpid night-airs: a faint glory, a twilight of its own, clothed it. King of the daylit-world, it became queen of the dimmer realms of night, and like a woman-queen it did not disdain to stoop and study its loveliness in the polished lake, and stooping thus it overhung the earth, a shadowy creature of gleam ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... might also have been the man who was engaged to Arthur's first wife; and I have a third idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man in England who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful points. His hair is not black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like the nameless medical student of my young days—very like him. And, sometimes, when I come home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... yacht's boat jumped on board the destroyer and hauled hers up. The other was backed to the ladder and they came on board. A silent salute passed between Oscarovitch and the lieutenant, and a few minutes later the yacht's boat was hoisted to the davits, and the white shape was growing smaller and dimmer amidst the light haze that lay on the water shimmering under the slanting ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... looked out the window, so close was he on the heel of his work. "It shall be my master-bit," he kept saying to himself. The light got poorer and dimmer and there was a shorter lasting of it. Less light meant longer work; so it was thirty days and thirty nights before he got it anywhere near finished. No, it wasn't fully done. How could it be? The Summer Fellows never finished anything complete, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... groups were struggling down the hill and along the road, their lanterns making a bright spot on the snow; the little childish voices talking, laughing, and little bands running backward and forward, some disappearing at a turn of the road, the lantern getting dimmer, and finally vanishing behind the trees. We went very slowly, as the roads were dreadfully slippery, and had a running escort all the way to the Mill of Bourneville, with an accompaniment of drums and trumpets. The melancholy plains of the Valois were transformed tonight. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... sigh the old man was going forward consciously to meet death. Every morning when the dawn awoke him he felt weaker as he rose from his bed; every day his sight was dimmer and his hand less steady; every night the steep flight of stairs seemed steeper, and he ascended them feebly by his hands as well as feet. He could not bring himself to write upon his slate or to spell out upon ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... it is true. Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken: even your loved words Float in the larger meaning of your voice As something dimmer." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... last long: But when the Air grows thick by Degrees, and the Sun, Moon, and Stars shine dimmer and dimmer, then it is like to ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... width of the waters, the hush Of the grey expanse where he floats, Freshening its current and spotted with foam As it draws to the Ocean, may strike Peace to the soul of the man on its breast— As the pale waste widens around him, As the banks fade dimmer away, As the stars come out, and the night-wind Brings up the stream Murmurs and scents of ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... fleece, seemed to take shape in the kitchen (the time had been when Oleron would have said that a cloud had passed over the unseen moon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer (the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplighter going his rounds had turned low the flame of the lamp). The fire settled, letting down the black and charred papers; a flower fell from a bowl, and lay indistinct upon the floor; all was still; and then a stray ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... by this success, I hastened to apply the same plan of magnifying segment by segment to my photograph of Jupiter. But, alas, although something suggestive did appear, or so I fancied, the image grew dimmer with each analysis, until, under the higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... towards the house across that great lawn, hearing the noise of the fountain, now dimmer, now nearer; sometimes it seemed miles away and sometimes right in my ears. Whether it was their conversation or my familiarity with them or my fatigue, at any rate, as I crossed the moat I could no ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... desire to be something to her—to secure her, somehow, before this great, dark future swept her away from him. And yet the latter rains came and went, the green faded from the ground, the mountains grew dimmer and duller, and at last disappeared in the summer murk, before he took in his own mind the next step—from lover to suitor, as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... in the moonlight, with the stars shining peacefully down upon him. His heart at the moment was a divided one—one half being given to Leoline, and the other to the Midnight Queen and her mysterious court. The farther he went away from Leoline, the dimmer her star became in the horizon of his thoughts; and the nearer he came to Miranda, the brighter and more eagerly she loomed up, until he spurred his horse to a most furious gallop, lest he should find the castle ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... about seven in the evening, still daylight, though in the darkened house dimmer than without. Olive drew the blind aside, took one long gaze into the cheerful sunset landscape to strengthen and calm her mind, and then walked with a firm step to the chamber-door. It was not locked this time, but closed ajar. The child looked in a little ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... haunt the coral. The garden sang of fame when the golden shimmer Of sun glowed on the proud leaves of the laurel,— But time and love fought out their ancient quarrel; The songs are fainter now; the lights are dimmer. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... field resistance, to register 110 plus 11 volts, or 121 volts at the switchboard to make up for the loss at half-load. At full load, his voltage at the end of the line would be 121 minus 18, or 103 volts; his motor would run a shade slower, at this voltage, and his lights would be slightly dimmer. He would probably not notice the difference. If he did, he could walk over to his generating station, and raise the voltage a further 7 volts by turning ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... blew hard, and the Moon grew dim. "With my sledge and my wedge I have knocked off her edge. If only I blow right fierce and grim, The creature will soon be dimmer than dim." ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... strange that we find the moral sense blunted, the conscience unenlightened? The moral climate with which we surround the child is so hazy that the spiritual vision grows dimmer and dimmer,—and small wonder! Upon this solid mass of ignorance and stupidity it is difficult to make any impression; yet I suppose there is greater joy in heaven over a cordial "thwack" at it than over most ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... iiwi birds, and the scarlet apapani. Ah, what sweet joys in the banana groves of Waiakeakua, where the lovers saw naught so beautiful as themselves! But the "misty eyes" were soon to be made dim by weeping, and dimmer, till the drowning brine should close ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... the winter afternoon had deepened into the evening twilight, made dimmer still by the aromatic clouds that came, with dignified deliberation, from the baron's lips, and curled and floated up to the carved ceiling of the turret, where they spread themselves into a dim canopy, which every successive ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... seldom interferes with kindly intention in the lives of men, had cut what had become a strangling knot, and Kitty, from a dreadful, never-forgotten burden, had become a rather touching, piteous memory, growing ever dimmer as first the months, and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... passed Miss Sperry—passed her with a smile and a friendly word—and is speaking to me, singling me out, offering me his arm! He is smiling, too, not as he smiled on Miss Sperry, but more warmly, with more that is personal in it. I took his arm in a daze. The lights were dimmer than I thought; nothing was really bright except his smile. It seemed to change the world for me. I forgot that I was plain, forgot that I was small, with nothing to recommend me to the eye or heart, and let myself be ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... grew calmer, we talked of the past, of the early days in Iowa, of the dimmer, yet still more beautiful valleys of Wisconsin, till mother sighed, and said, "I'd like to see the folks and the old coulee once more, but I ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... with lighter feet than those which carried him. His eyes were wide with fright. His heart beat so hard in his throat he thought he would surely die before he could reach the cabin. At every step the light seemed to be growing dimmer and the thicket denser, although he thought he certainly must have been running long enough to have reached the clearing. Still he ran on, and on, and on. The recollection of one of Mammy's stories ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... long silence Jesus said: the dawn begins; look, Joseph, the stars are not shining as brightly over the Jericho hills as they were. But Joseph could not see that the stars were dimmer. Are they not with-drawing? Jesus asked, and then, forgetful of the stars, his thoughts went to the puppies: see how they crouch and tremble under the wall of the garth, he said. There must be a wolf about, he said, and after he had thrown a stone to hasten the animal's departure he ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... shouted, for they were in the mood for anything. There stood Colonel Clark in the dimmer light of the background. "We must keep 'em screwed up, Davy," he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... how much did he know? What special benefit did he hope to gain from conferring with Naida Gillis? Hampton decided to have a face-to-face interview with the man himself; he was accustomed to fight his battles in the open, and to a finish. A faint hope, which had been growing dimmer and dimmer with every passing year, began to flicker once again within his heart. He desired to see this man Murphy, and to learn exactly ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... from those hills that shine with day, And fields that bloom in the heavenly gales, The Land of Dreams goes stretching away To dimmer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the chintz rocker, his crutch on the floor, his thin, idle hands clasped in his lap. He wore his uniform, poor fellow! It gave him a sense of dignity. His eyes, accustomed to the dimmer light, took in the situation first; he ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... and left, paddling slowly; on all sides he saw the slimy columns stretching regularly into the darkness. The light of the open day grew dimmer as he advanced, the air became colder. He looked eagerly around him, paddling slowly. Already he half repented the attempt. The boat went along easily, and the black and heavy water hardly splashed as he drew his ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... pressure, and that her real inclination was towards the old religion. They trusted in Philip's influence, in an Austrian marriage, in the Queen's dread of a breach with the Papacy, in the pressure of Mary Stuart. And meanwhile the years went by, and as the memories of the past became dimmer, and custom laid a heavier and heavier hand on the mass of men, and a new generation grew up that had never known the spell of Catholicism, the nation drifted from its older tradition and became Protestant in ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... the mountain mist, and never to be holden With the weary sophistries that dimmer eyes embolden, — O the dark Dunedin town, shot ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... parts, only through the crimson glory of the departing light. And now the sun has disappeared—is gone—but still how beautiful is the fading splendor that sleeps for a little on the mountain tops, then becomes dimmer and dimmer—then a faint streak which gradually melts away until it is finally lost in the soft shadows of that thoughtful hour. And even thus passeth away all human glory! The ruin which we have mentioned stood ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and in studying her closely, after three months' absence, I perceived unwelcome change. She was not as alert mentally or physically as when I went away. A mysterious veil had fallen between her wistful spirit and the outer world. Her vision was dimmer and her spirit at times withdrawn, remote. She laughed in response to my jesting, but there was an absent-minded sweetness in her smile, a tremulous quality in ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... spirit to another. The crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness, was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reeled and pealed Through the vast and sombre trees, Where a rosy light revealed Dimmer, sweeter mysteries; And, like petals of the rose, Fairy fans in beauty beat, Light in light—ah, what were those Rhymes we ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... side that I had seen before; only it was increasing most threateningly now. Yes, it was assuming the same umbrella shape and detaching itself a little from the eastern edge of the Earth. There was still a narrow rim of bright white light on the Earth, and this dimmer umbrella shape was faintly separated from its edge. Its outlines were marked by flashes of rainbow colours, as had been the case on the other side. I sprang to the wheel and gave it several frantic turns ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... lay there, motionless, her head resting on his thigh, a man came out of the dimmer woods into the white sunshine that flooded the verge of the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... school, philosophy after philosophy, each one showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the other aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in which we are passes on from century to century, from millennium to millennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer, those who repeat far out-number those who know; and those who speak with clear vision of the spiritual verity are lost amidst the crowds, who only hold traditions whose origin they ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... javelins, Malay kreeses, Chinese opium pipes, and such other trifles as old travellers gather round them. By the side of the fire rested the campaigner's straight regulation sword in its dim sheath—all the dimmer because the companions occasionally used it as a poker when that ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... large logs were placed about it, each with one end in the flame, so that they looked like the spokes of a great wheel radiating from a center of fire. As the ends of the logs burned away, the fiery ring at the center grew wider and dimmer. When a hotter fire was wanted, the logs were pushed toward the center till the glowing ends came together once ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent, While dimming day grew dimmer ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... the little chapel, and found in it about a dozen peasants on their knees, while a priest was chaunting the vespers from a small side altar, built in a niche in the wall. It was now late, and the light, which even abroad was growing dimmer every moment, was still less strong within the building. They could not, therefore, see the face of the priest as he knelt at the side of the altar, but the voice seemed familiar to both ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... in such a scene! Yon rosy mists on high careering,— The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering,— The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,— How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... prisoner which she had not seen before; nay, the pretty little domestic attentions had the usual reflex effect upon the heart which administered them, and all that the recurring image of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising predilections was so far unavailing, that that very image waxed dimmer and dimmer, while the present object was always working through the magic of sensation. Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her protege, until at length she got, as the saying goes, "over head and ears." Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... did not long remain in doubt. Dimmer and dimmer grew the vision of the distant sailor face, clearer and clearer the image of the vast palace, of the queenly power, of the diamonds, the gold, the ambitious future. It all lay at her feet, waiting to be ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the long physical strain were now telling upon Harry. He leaned his head against the corner of the seat and the wall, drew his overcoat as a blanket about his body and shoulders, and let his eyelids droop. The dim train grew dimmer, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with definiteness and grace. But the genius of Germany is, like her landscape, homely and sentimental, with the funny goodness and dearness of a good child; and we must learn to know it while we ourselves are children. And therefore it is from our governesses that we learn (with dimmer knowledge of mysterious persons or things "Ulfilas"—"Tacitus's Germania," supposed by me to have been a lady, his daughter perhaps, and the "seven stars" of German literature) a certain natural affinity with the ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... was what I had expected, for I thought that there had been below this grave a vault, the roof of which had given way and let the earth fall in. But as soon as my eyes were used to the dimmer light, I saw that it was no such thing, but that the hole into which I had crept was only the mouth of a passage, which sloped gently down in the direction of the church. My heart fell to thumping with eagerness and surprise, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... red and green lights of the Mary Thomas grow dimmer and dimmer. Then a faint hallo came over the water from the Russian prize crew. Still nobody heard. The smoke continued to pour out of the cruiser's funnels, and her propellers throbbed ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... dell a woodsman's house Has sunk in wild dilapidation; There buried under vines and boughs I often sit in contemplation. So dense the tangle that the day Through heavy lashes can but glimmer; The rocky cleft is rendered dimmer By ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... ever brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse—and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. "Your papers, travellers!" "See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Sinking down into the plain; Slowly through the level land Glides the river to the main. What is that before me, white, Gleaming through the dusky air? Dimmer in the gathering night; Still beheld, I ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... the dull red spark of Sirius become increasingly dimmer. Then, quite suddenly, a pale violet disc in front of them ballooned out of nowhere and slid ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... in the barn grew dimmer, and they could see to work no longer. When Tess had reached home that evening, and had entered into the privacy of her little white-washed chamber, she began impetuously writing a letter to Clare. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... into the scene: a soft, undulating light leads it on, from bank to bank, from shrub to shrub; now leaping and sparkling over pebbly brooks and sunny sands; now fainter and fainter, dying away down shady slopes, then seemingly quenched in some secluded dell; yet only for a moment,—for a dimmer ray again carries it onward, gently winding among the boles of trees and rambling vines, that, skirting the ascent, seem to hem in the twilight; then emerging into day, it flashes in sheets over towers and towns, and woods and streams, when it finally dips into an ocean, so far off, so ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... the human heart, that which is inflicted by the loss of those who were the pulses of our hearts, is soothed (if never wholly healed) by time. One agency of time would avail for this effect were there no other. The features of the individual whom we mourn grow dimmer and dimmer as time advances; and, pari passu, the features of places and collateral objects and associated persons from whom reverberated these afflicting reminiscences of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... sleepy eyes. He saw it sink lower and lower. He saw the seven figures sitting around it become dim and then dimmer, until they seemed to merge ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... leaders, and the American authorities particularly, for preventing them from crossing the line. This fiasco was a mortifying blow to General O'Mahony and his supporters, and the cohorts of Roberts and Sweeny gained more confidence and support as the star of the Stephens faction grew dimmer. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... and there was silence for a space while the light grew dimmer, until the sound of voices rose from without, and she felt her heart beat a trifle faster than usual, when ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... tried to read. Mercury was ever a blithe and sportive god, and his gambols on Mount Olympus were noted in days of yore; but the modern namesake—or else my present position—had soporific tendencies; and fear of the target shooters growing dimmer and dimmer, I lost ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... saint-inquisitor watching with spotless conscience the victim on the rack. They choked me—I gasped for breath, stretched out my arms, rolled shrieking on the floor—the narrow chequered glimpse of free blue sky, seen through the window, seemed to fade dimmer and dimmer, farther and farther off. I sprang up, as if to follow it—rushed to the bars, shook and wrenched at them with my thin, puny arms—and stood spell-bound, as I caught sight of the cathedral towers, standing out in grand repose against the horizontal fiery ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Still, though he walked cautiously, there was no sign of any life in the ravine. He was horribly weary, and now and then he set his lips as he stumbled noisily among the stones, but he pushed on beside the water while the deep hollow grew dimmer and more shadowy. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of laughter close by, and staring breathless down the track I saw the tail-light of the train grow dimmer across the prairie until it stopped and came ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... her nose; nor were her eyes large and liquid like those of an antelope. Further, she lacked the informing mystery of Mameena's face, that at times was broken and lit up by flashes of alluring light and quick, sympathetic perception, as a heavy evening sky, that seems to join the dim earth to the dimmer heavens, is illuminated by pulsings of fire, soft and many-hued, suggesting, but not revealing, the strength and splendour that it veils. Nandie had none of these attractions, which, after all, anywhere upon the earth belong only to a ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... in the house became dimmer, and the sound of the music and the tread of the dance ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Miss Quincey and her pile of marble-backed exercise-books in the dim and dingy first-floor drawing-room (Mrs. Moon and the bandy-legged cabinet would have had something to say to that). All this terrific intellectual travail went on in a dimmer and ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... except that the lights shone dimmer through the cigar-smoke, that there was much noise from popping corks, and occasionally a breakage of glass, and I think I made another speech. Next morning I awoke with a very robust and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... from the loss of blood, and from hunger which the scant supply of beech-nuts, and the bitter rowanberries, only in small measure allayed; so it was very plain that his capture was only a question of time. But the labyrinth of forest-aisles now began to grow dimmer, and a throb of hope came into his heart as he thought of the coming darkness. Yet in this wilderness the dogs would know their game; and there was no escape by clambering a tree! Meanwhile he redoubled his exertions, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... he stared down at the depths below, transparent here almost to the sea bed. His eyes were wide with reverie. He seemed another boy, not the gay singer of five minutes ago. But then he had been in the blaze of the sun. Now he was in the shade. And swiftly he had caught the influence of the dimmer light, the lack of motion, the delicate hush at the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... passes not through,[4] there needs must be a limit, beyond which its contrary allows it not to pass further; and thence the ray from another body is poured back, just as color returns through a glass which hides lead behind itself. Now thou wilt say that the ray shows itself dimmer there than in the other parts, by being there reflected from further back. From this objection experiment, which is wont to be the fountain to the streams of your arts, may deliver thee, if ever thou try it. Thou shalt take ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... a silent evening. Every one waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all. Miss Bronte retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess, Miss Truelock. The room looked very dark, the lamp began to smoke a little, the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all. Mrs. Brookfield, who was in the doorway by the study, near the corner ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... desert. He watched it sink, while the golden-red flood of light grew darker and darker. Thought seemed remote from him then; he watched, and watched, until he saw the last spark of fire die from the snow-slopes of Coconina. The desert became dimmer and dimmer; the oasis lost its outline in a bottomless purple pit, except for a faint ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... The light was dimmer by the time they reached the great capital city—or what was left of it. They had left the sun pyre far to the south. The ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... stop a moment," said one of the men, "and let us top this glim a bit before you begin, for it seemed to get dimmer the moment ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... himself. Finding himself then in the sixth section, still hovering about the places and persons with which he was most closely connected while on earth, the average man, as time passes on, finds the earthly surroundings gradually growing dimmer and becoming of less and less importance to him, and he tends more and more to mould his entourage into agreement with the more persistent of his thoughts. By the time that he reaches the third level he finds that this characteristic has entirely ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... When within the dimmer and broken light of the court, Jacopo paused, evidently to scan the persons of those it contained. It is to be presumed he saw no reason to delay, for with a secret sign to his companion to follow, he crossed the area, and mounted the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... moments in the operation to listen for a suspicious sound. It was very cold. He noticed, after a little, that the weird sound of the lights over the Pole had become only a ghostly whisper. The stars were growing dimmer, and he watched them as they seemed slowly to recede farther and farther away from the world of which he was a part. This dying out of the stars always interested him. It was one of the miracles of the northern world that lay just under the long Arctic night which, a few hundred ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... than we were, we could not but have felt the earnestness of the appeal made to us—the importance of the subject—the awful truths uttered by our companion. Darker grew the night—the sea-birds screamed above us—the distant cliffs grew dimmer, their outline less distinct—the rushing tide earned us rapidly onwards—the cold wind pierced through our wet clothes, and sent the spray dashing over us. Shivering, benumbed, hungry and faint, I felt as if I could no longer retain my hold. Death—death, I thought, was truly approaching. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... dim, and dimmer still; Now up, now down, the Rover wends, With all the sail that he can carry, Till brought to a deserted quarry—[27] And ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... she was silent. Some new emotion seemed to move her. Her face was softer than he had ever seen it, her beautiful eyes dimmer. His mind was filled with new ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is the one purpose, wisely aimed at or unwisely, of all man's struggles, toilings, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... emphasis blew, as her eyes showed, on the girl's dimmer fire. "It's as if it were suddenly in the air that you've brought us some light or some help—that you may do ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... roaring and rattling, uncanny sounds of machinery, the rush of subterranean streams, sickening clouds of ore-dust continually rising, water dripping on all sides, and the miner's lamp gradually growing dimmer and dimmer. The effect was really benumbing, I breathed with difficulty, and had trouble in holding to the slippery rounds. It was not fright which overpowered me, but, oddly enough, down there in the depths, I remembered that a year before, about the same time, I had been in a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... brother John. By and by he heard the convent bell ringing, and knew that there must be visitors at the gate, for loud voices sounded through his dream. Presently he knew that he was coming awake, but though the sunny monastery garden grew dimmer and dimmer to his sleeping sight, the clanging of the bell and the sound of shouts grew louder and louder. Then he opened his eyes. Flaming red lights from torches, carried hither and thither by people in the court-yard ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... brightness of chivalry in Chaucer's time, even then growing dimmer and more fitful, and soon to "pale its ineffectual fire" in the light of a growing civilization. Its better principles, which were those of truth, virtue, and holiness, were to remain; but its forms, ceremonies, and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... eye to the telescope, and saw the glowing surface of the disc resolved into a marvellous web of shining patches on a dimmer background, and in the midst a large blotch which reminded me of a quarry hole as delineated on the ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... Jack Fyfe, God only knew what long-drawn agony of mind and body circumstances and Charlie Benton's subordination of her to his own ends might have inflicted upon her. That was the reverse of her shield, but one that grew dimmer as time passed. Mostly, she took life as she found it, concentrating upon Jack Junior, a sturdy boy with blue eyes like his father, and who grew ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... coaxed two other boys to go with me, an' a grown man he got the boat an' we slipped off to the beach an' put out to sea. Yes'm, we sho' was after adventure. But, we did'n get very far out from sho', an' I saw the lan' get dimmer an' dimmer, when I got skeered, an' then I got seasick, an' we was havin' more kinds of adventure than we wanted, an' then we saw some ships. There was two of 'em, an' they took ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... Dimmer. An adjustable choking coil used for regulating the intensity of electric incandescent lights. Some operate by the introduction and withdrawal of an iron core as described for the choking coil (see Coil, Choking), others by a damper ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... told him to take the Baby and hurry to the land of Egypt, for the wicked King wanted to do it harm, and so these three—the father, mother and Baby—went by night to the far country of Egypt. And the star grew dimmer and dimmer and passed away forever from the skies over Bethlehem, but little Ruth grew straight and strong and beautiful as the almond trees in the orchard, and all the people who saw her were amazed, for Ruth was once ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... he could not win; but he had also seen that Carlin was there—there to stay! . . . Something in her—that no fever or poison or death could take away—something for him! The thing was vivid to him for moments afterward; it lingered in dimmer outlines for hours; but as the days passed, he could only hold the vital essence of what he had ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... that dripped from their words and glances flooded her heart with an ocean of pain and shame. She wanted to cry out: "Mercy, people! I am innocent," but her head bent ever lower on her breast and she had an ever dimmer consciousness of where she was and what was happening to her. Janina's soul had already been weakened too much by misery to resist this blow. An immense wave of fear began to shake her, for it seemed to her that the hand of the old ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... features; the whole effect is somewhat spoilt by the want of perspective and the perpetual sparkle and glitter; yet when we fix our attention upon any special part, it attracts us by its undeniable vivacity and vitality. To a third, again, the individual figures become dimmer, but he sees a slow and majestic procession of shapes imperceptibly developing into some harmonious whole. Men profess to reach their philosophical conclusions by some process of logic; but the imagination is the faculty which furnishes the raw material upon which the logic is employed, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... time he stretched his great head out between his fore-paws, and slowly the starlight grew dimmer, and the snow less ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... after politely kissing my hand, had settled down behind his master's chair. Willy Woolly was seeing things. No pretense about it. His mournful eyes yearned hither and thither, following some entity that moved in the room, dimmer than darkness, more ethereal than shadow. His ears quivered. A muffled, measured thumping sounded, dull and indeterminate like spirit rapping; it took me an appreciable time to identify it as the noise of the poodle's tail, beating the floor. Once he whined, a quick, quivering, eager note. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the sight of battle. He no longer felt his wounds, or his great sorrow; even Frank's last angel's look grew dimmer every moment as he bustled about the deck; and ere a quarter of an hour had passed, his voice cried firmly and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... standing by the side of Captain Miles on the poop, alternately looking at the men jumping about the rigging like monkeys and at the fast-receding shore, which, as soon as the sun set, became dimmer and dimmer in the distance, until it was at length finally shut out from my gaze ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... waves and wind helped somewhat, the raft being lighter than the water-sogged Seminole, so that gradually the distance widened, until there extended a considerable waste of water between the two. Exhausted by his exertion, and breathing hard, West glanced back over his shoulder at the dimmer shadow of the yacht, now barely revealed against the clouded sky. The bulk of it seemed scarcely visible in any defined form above the level of the sea—the end must ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... hurriedly, with little time to bestow on farewells, he called to bid them good-bye one dark and threatening night. Some tears of emotion were shed, and the sad farewell was spoken. When he passed down the walk, both the cousins stood without the door and watched his figure as it grew dimmer and disappeared in the dusk of the distant street. When they returned to the cheerfulness of the lighted room, the younger ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... over her. Her sight, which was her living, was going. She saw nothing before her but the workhouse. Death she would have welcomed, but this was shame. For months she had fought it out, as her eyes grew dimmer, letting no one know of the anxiety that gnawed at her heart. No one suspected anything wrong. She was always neatly dressed at church, she always had her small contribution ready for collectors, her house shone with rubbing, and as she did not seem ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... studied the elements of the diviner art, was right as an artist in his dislike to the over-cultivation of the aesthetical. The domain of the Ideal is the heart, and through the heart it operates on the soul. It grows feebler and dimmer in proportion as it seeks to rise above human emotion.... Longinus does not err, when he asserts that Passion (often erroneously translated Pathos) is the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... "river of time" may pass through various landscapes, but it is the same river, and, at the last, it brings to us, as "the banks fade dimmer away" and "the stars come out" "murmurs and scents" of the same infinite Sea. Yes, there is only one Philosophy, as Disraeli said, jesting; and Matthew Arnold, among the moderns, is the one who has been allowed to put it into his poetry. For ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... along Death's road to the Garden of Paradise!' said the Prince, but the Eastwind never answered a word, he only pointed before them where a beautiful blue light was shining. The blocks of stone above them grew dimmer and dimmer, and at last they became as transparent as a white cloud in the moonshine. The air was also deliciously soft, as fresh as on the mountain-tops and as scented as down among ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Sammy's many scandalous transgressions. And he will have a piece of granite beaten down into fine gold for the old man who repented before it was too late. And I reckon he will be sitting somewhere upon the dimmer outskirts of Paradise most of the time, with grandly-folded wings, holding the thing in his hands instead of wearing it on his head; and he will be recalling those for whom the stones stand, with a tender homesickness for them. For even in Heaven he will ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... shut up. Most of the men stayed on deck, but that is dangerous after sunset on this African coast, on account of the heavy dew and fever. They tell me that the open sea is quite different; certainly, nothing can look duller and dimmer than this specimen of the tropics. The few days of trade wind were beautiful and cold, with sparkling sea, and fresh air and bright sun; ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... advancing, A dragging has come on your hosts. And Paris grows dim now, and dimmer, Through the blur of your ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... "Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh ... warte nur ... balde ... ruhest ... du ..." she began to murmur, and stopped, awed by the immensity of the hush about her. She closed her eyes, pillowed her head on her upthrown arms, and sank into a wide, bright reverie, which grew dimmer and vaguer as the slow changeless ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... broken bow in their conceits of God. Either they would have Him all justice and no mercy, or else all mercy and no justice: and the looser they hold by the revelation God has made of Himself, the dimmer and the more out of proportion be their thoughts of God. The most men frame a God unto themselves, and be assured that he shall be like themselves—that the sins which he holds in abhorrence shall be the sins whereto they are ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... fatigue, and the children under Roy's care played snowballs, he sat and watched the sky. At first there was only a cloud or two in the west; then a sudden wind sprang up and drove the fine, powdery snow in drifts. But still the sun shone, though it seemed to grow a little dimmer, a little paler; finally, about two hours after the others had left, Foster-father felt uncertain whether it was all drift that seemed to fill the air with a fine white film, or ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel |
