"Gossamer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his intoxication. One of the great flies now came flying past Count Hamilcar with softly buzzing wings. He went "brrr" with his lips and smiled a really cheerful smile as he watched how this queer bundle of gauzy wings and golden gossamer floated deliriously through the sunshine. "Mad with life," he thought, "if all this only has some object. At any rate there is more chance for meaning than for the lack of it, although—if I am a digit in the great calculation, then to be sure I have a meaning, but that is no reason at all why the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a proper setting for this winged gem,—the body of it composed of a white, felt-like substance, probably the down of some plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the branch on which it sits by minute tree-lichens, woven together by threads as fine and grail as gossamer. From Robin's good looks and musical turn, we might reasonably predict a domicile of him as clean and handsome a nest as the king-bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute. I love his note and ways better even ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... unheeded by less observant eyes; not forgetting, as they thus reclined, their hands clasped together, to couple each remark with some allusion to his love or some deduction which heightened compliment into poetry. He bade her mark the light gossamer as it floated on the air; now soaring high—high into the translucent atmosphere; now suddenly stooping, and sailing away beneath the boughs, which ever and anon it hung with a silken web, that by the next ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eating a couple of mutton-chops? Do not respectable gentlemen fall asleep in their arm-chairs? Are they fit for mental labor? Far from it. But look at the difference here: after dinner here one is as light as a gossamer. One walks with pleasure, reads with pleasure, writes with pleasure—nay, there is the supper-bell going at ten o'clock, and plenty of eaters, too. Let lord mayors and aldermen look to it, this fact of the extraordinary increase of appetite in Belgium, and, instead ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it up to be nearer the unseen stars, he revelled through kingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye that dwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he felt as he galloped? He felt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana; for lightness like those gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds 'twixt heaven and sea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some bird racing up from the morning to sing in some city's spires before daylight comes. He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a song; ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... broods of small spiders are sometimes very numerous, and cover everything: they are especially noticeable in hedges, and are one of the causes of what is called in the country 'Gossamer.' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... gossamer-barred arch of light, a black figure was projected, and swelled as it neared in silent approach. It came through the last portiere, on into the circle of light, and stood, a turbaned negro, bowing ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal like wax before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors, cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... far up that river, cutting its glassy bosom in the direction of the rays of the rising Sun; the overpowering lustre of which is diminished by a soft and precious Claude-like haze that hangs like a gauze of gossamer on the borders of their way, a bridal veil just being lifted by the Sun; tempering while it enriches the gilding of the shores, the waters, the far-off spire, the contented farmer's house and barns, the unfrequent trees, the cattle gazing at the approaching object, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Bobby leaned over to watch the sunlight twinkle on the wheel-spokes. The narrow tires sunk slightly in the yielding shingle fragments. Brittle! Brittle! Brittle! the sound said to Bobby. Above all things he loved to watch the gossamer-like wheels, apparently too light and delicate to bear the weight they must carry, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... A pang of aimless, unlocalised homesickness passed through her; she realised that she was alone in the world. She rose to escape the pang, and went to the window of the parlour which looked toward the street, where she saw the figure of a young man draped in a long indiarubber gossamer coat fluttering in the wind that pushed him along as he tacked on a southerly course; he bowed and twisted his head to escape the lash of the rain. She watched him till he turned into the lane leading to the house, and then, at a discreeter distance, she watched ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... this gesticulating, screaming grey object that struggled up and down, there came a clatter of hoofs, and the little man, in act of mounting, swordless, balanced on his belly athwart the white horse, and clutching its mane, whirled past. And again a clinging thread of grey gossamer swept across the master's face. All about him, and over him, it seemed this drifting, noiseless cobweb circled and ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... fancy, as they walked, the little space between them was hung with brilliant strands, like gossamer chains of gold, already linking them together; every second fixing another slender, precious fetter, binding them closer, drawing her nearer. He waited until they passed into the shadows of the deserted Carewe Street before ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... earth and heaven, when a slight noise brought us down for a moment to our proper sphere; yet hardly,—for on looking up we beheld, standing in the wake of a coloured sun-beam, from which, on wing of gossamer, she seemed to have just descended, an unexpected apparition of surpassing grace and beauty. Titania's self, just stepped upon the moonlit earth, could scarcely have stood poised on an unbroken flower-stalk, in form more airy, in attitude more graceful, with countenance more radiant ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... quick. But when you've got just about ten thousand dollars that's telling you you're all sorts of a fool, and you're yearning for 'em to believe you're a twin brother to Pierpont Morgan, why, you don't feel your hide's made of gossamer, and don't care a cuss if folks start right in to hammer tacks into it ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... to search the past, to get a sense of what befell me ere my own perception formed; to feel back for the lines of childhood, as a trace of gossamer, then I only know that nought lives longer than God wills it. So may after sin go by, for we are children always, as the Counsellor has told me; so may we, beyond the clouds, seek this infancy of life, and never ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... way out on the sunny, stone-flagged terrace. Below us was a wide parterre whose flower-beds, laid out by a celebrated landscape-gardener in the days of the Stuarts, were filled with vegetables. The day was like our New England Indian summerthough the trees were still heavy with leaves—and a gossamer-blue veil of haze stained the hills between which the shining river ran. If the social revolution, or evolution, takes place, one wonders what will become of this ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... too, he explains to the kindergartner what he is inventing, and for what purpose; he weaves gossamer threads of fancy about the objects constructed, or describes the forms of beauty and knowledge he ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... you, that you may be enabled to see the flitting shadows of the hour as they pass across it, grave or gay, portentous or hopeful, draped in solid political vesture, the toga of the statesman, or robed in the blue gossamer of metaphysics, in the drapery of sorrow or light hues of joy, in the tried armor of the Divine, or the dubious motley of the progressive, in the soft, floating, lustrous, aerial texture of the woman, or the monotonous Shanghai of the man—while we will forever strive to point you to the Cross ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... well go my way," remarked Mr. Carlyon, and Elizabeth nodded; and then Dinah fetched her a light gossamer scarf, which ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the hawthorn, the first spike of meadow grass, the first song of the nightingale, the green ear of wheat. I spoke it with the ear of wheat as the sun tinted it golden; with the whitening barley; again with the red gold spots of autumn on the beech, the buff oak leaves, and the gossamer dew-weighted. All the larks over the green corn sang it for me, all the dear swallows; the green leaves rustled it; the green brookflags waved it; the swallows took it with them to repeat it for me in distant lands. By the running brook I meditated it; a flash of sunlight here in ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... were still further opened one day when a large and fashionable crowd had gathered at Lady Dalton's garden-party. Philippa was, as heretofore, the belle, looking more than usually lovely in a light gossamer dress of white and pink. She was surrounded by admirers. Lord Arleigh stood with a group of gentlemen under ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... he declared, "you are the lode-stones which would draw one even through these gossamer walls of lace and chiffons, of draperies as light as the sunshine and perfumes as ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... are made of the gossamer, the cobwebs which may be seen in large quantities on the furze bushes; and so of King Oberon we ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... sincere to play with ideas for their own sake. He takes no pleasure in the mere spinning of gossamer webs for display. All his beliefs are practical. They are geared into his life. By them he lives or dies, stands or falls for this world and for all time to come. From the ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to—the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung—are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... we get no sense of Titanic power such as we feel when "Wagner" is being played; no world problems vex us. The delicate, plaintive, spiritual seductions of Chopin, who swept the keys with an insinuating gossamer touch, are not there. The brilliant extravaganzas of Liszt—passages illumined by living lightning—are wholly wanting. But in it all you feel the deep, measured pulse of a religious conviction that never halts nor doubts. There are grace, ease, beauty, sweetness and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Her white brow sparkled. She had applied an imperceptible tinge of rouge to her cheeks, upon the faded whiteness of a skin revived by bran and water. A scarf so delicate in texture that it made one doubt if human fingers could have fabricated such gossamer, was wound about her throat to diminish its length, and partly conceal it; leaving imperfectly visible the treasures of the bust which were cleverly enclosed in a corset. Her figure was indeed a masterpiece ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... snorting, sniffing very audibly—as loud as a big dog often does—grunting softly in an undertone, as if talking to himself, he departed, rustling through the grass, leaving an irregular winding track behind in the dew and the gossamer, as he searched, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber—no! In delirium—no! In a swoon—no! In death—no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... behind me over the woods, and the lazy air glances with every gauzy wing and flashing insect form that skims the sleepy meadow. But there is an unusual play of light over the grass, a glinting of threads that enmesh the air as if the slow-swinging wind were weaving gossamer of blown silk from the steeple-bush spindles through the ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... picturesque. Then at a point just below the spot I was standing on, the water plunged down a nearly precipitous descent, from which it apparently (for the spray prevented one seeing exactly) fell perpendicularly into the pool below, sending up as it did so gossamer veils of spray full of fleeting, faint, and ever varying iris hues. This pool is flanked, and probably about 100 yards below the foot of the previously mentioned fall, on the northern side by a precipice about 250 feet high, down which, in four separate cascades, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... part of our voyage we had most beautiful weather; the deep blue sea upon which the foam-crested waves chased each other as if at play, and the bright heavens where thin and transparent clouds were floating like veils of gossamer, filled the heart with gladness and disposed it to profitable musings. Light winds filled the sails that swelled beautifully on their masts and drove the ship, that under a cloud of white canvass looked like a stately queen, onward. Sometimes she would lie motionless ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... continuous. The hymenophore and the gills are continuous. The gills are attached to the stem, frequently notched, membranaceous, persistent, changing color, dry, powdery, with rusty-yellow spores which drop slowly. The veil and gills are the chief marks of distinction. The former is gossamer-like and separate from the cuticle, and the latter are always powdered. It is always essential to note the color of the gills in the young plant, since color is variable and sometimes shows only the slightest trace on the stem, colored from the ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... chatter and vapid preaching, the unreturning days of our youth! "Carry, O Youths and Maidens," he seems to say. "Carry with infinite devotion that vase of many odours which is your Life on Earth. Spill as little as may be of its unvalued wine; let no rain-drops or bryony-dew, or floating gossamer-seed, fall into it and spoil its taste. For it is all you have, and it ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... time. How like herself she looked, handsome and stately, in characteristic elegance of attire and manner both. Her white morning dress floated off in soft edges of lace from her white arms; a shawl of precious texture was gathered loosely about them; on her head a gossamer web of some fancy manufacture fell off on either side, a mock covering for it. She came up to Daisy and kissed her, and then examined into her various arrangements, to see that she was in all respects well and properly cared for. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... breathed, the hours Wove, like a robe of gossamer, All grace about her, while the flowers Their tints and perfumes gave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Henry James will take the airy levities of his aristocratic youths and the little provocative ejaculations of his well-bred maidens, and out of these weave a filmy, evasive, delicate essence, light as a gossamer-seed and bitter as coloquintida, which, mingled with his own graver and mellower tones, becomes an absolutely new medium in the history of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... anxious, watchful days Omega and Thalma went often to the Mirror and gazed into it in search of vapor clouds. And more than once those gossamer-like formations appeared over different parts of the world to gladden their hearts only to fade away before their vision. The reflections of those embryo clouds became less frequent as the days wore on. Omega and Thalma knew that they had no right to hope for ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... closed book to me. I tried the poets, who added to my sufferings, by translating them into their passionate language. Thus, reason is baffled by the graceful apparition of a lovely blonde, who glided across my existence like a gossamer over a clear sky, and banished repose for ever from my heart! My eyes had scarcely rested upon the angle of my dreams ere she took flight, leaving on my brow the shadow of her wings! She was only a child, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... words the better, praps. You may, for instans, call a coronet a coronal (an "ancestral coronal," p. 74) if you like, as you might call a hat a "swart sombrero," "a glossy four-and-nine," "a silken helm, to storm impermeable, and lightsome as the breezy gossamer;" but, in the long run, it's as well to call it a hat. It IS a hat; and that name is quite as poetticle as another. I think it's Playto, or els Harrystottle, who observes that what we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fifty-seven feet; the entire length of the bridge is two thousand two hundred and fifty-two feet; and it is hung one hundred feet above low-water mark by two cables of wire. Seen from below and at a little distance, it looks like gossamer work, and as though the wind could blow it away, and waft its filmy fragments out of sight. But the tread of a drove of elephants would not bend nor jar it. The Rock of Gibraltar does not feel firmer under foot than this spider's web of a bridge, over which trains of cars pass one another, as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... shake off the bonds of custom and get down to primitive needs. At last we made a judicious selection. Everything old or worn was left; everything merely ornamental, except good lace, which was light. Gossamer evening dresses were all left. I calculated on taking two or three books that would bear the most reading if we were again shut up where none could be had, and so, of course, took Shakspere first. Here I was interrupted to go and pay a farewell visit, and when we ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Neuhaus, shut off by peaceful fields, was hidden from the passer-by, and here began the great intrigue, as it was called then. Of a truth the plot, as it was conceived, was no mighty thing; it was designed, as many another gossamer web of court gallantry and petty pecuniary gain, for obscure individuals; but great it became through the potent will ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... of the earth-life! On pearly wings of gossamer-down we float down from our shining speers to bring you messages of the higher life. Let your earth-soul be lifted to meet our sperrut-soul; let your earth-heart blend in sweet accordion with our heaven-heart; that the beautiful and the true ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... air is fragrant and free, And the first pure breathings of morning come In a gush of melody. When day steals away, with a young bride's blush, To the soft green couch of night, And the moon throws o'er, with a holy hush, Her curtain of gossamer light." ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... like a part of the music to which they kept time. They saw a multitude of people, and exchanged the compliments of the evening, yet these people made no more impression upon their thoughts than gossamer would have made upon ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... misleto, and never on the ground; the seeds are furnished with many long threads on their crowns; which, as they are driven forwards by the winds, wrap round the arms of trees, and thus hold them fast till they vegetate. This it very analogous to the migration of Spiders on the gossamer, who are said to attach themselves to the end of a long thread, and rise thus to the tops of trees or buildings, as the accidental ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... me! far more naturally than any spider. You know how they capture the creatures on which they live; (7) by weaving webs of gossamer, is it not? and woe betide the fly that tumbles into their toils! They ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace; The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... spools of gossamer, To dangle and to dry, And scurried home to the hollow fir Where the white ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... beauty struck him as never before. Something had been added to it. H lne seemed to him a girl, a frail girl. How could he ever have thought this Woman worldly! Her fragrance reached him. It was a fragrance that had no weight, but it bound him—bound him hand and foot in its gossamer web. He felt that he ought to struggle, but that he did not wish to. He waited for H ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... wooing, does all he can to overcome; but here the coyness is in the suitor himself. He has to overcome it by himself, and he cannot. He hardly knows the sort of enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... chestnuts, but sweeter, more joyous, more full of the promise of perfect things than ever a violin touched by human fingers. Then the thrushes had hopped out on to my dew-spangled lawn, where before the hot sun the grey, gossamer-like mist was vanishing like breath from a mirror; my roses raised their heads, and the breeze from the west—a lazy, fluttering breeze—borrowed their sweetness; my peaches cracked through their full skins upon the wall, and the bees commenced ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was over—the green drop-curtain fell. La Sylphine had smiled and dipped and kissed hands to thundering bravos for the last time that night, and now, behind the scenes, was rapidly exchanging the spangles and gossamer of fairydom for the shabby and faded merino shawl and dingy straw hat of ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... barely escaped assuming the proportions of absolute creation. Her passion for self-adornment expressed itself in ingenious combination and quite startling uniqueness of line now and then. Her slim fairness and ash-gold gossamer hair carried airily strange tilts and curves of little or large hats or daring tints other women could not sustain but invariably strove to imitate however disastrous the results. Beneath soft drooping or oddly ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a band of figures were dancing in gay procession, every line of the limbs and of the light draperies suggesting motion and glee. How did he know that some of these were men, and some were women? He had never seen such dresses as they wore, which seemed to be composed of tunics and gossamer veils of blue and red. Yet he did know quite distinctly which were men and which were women, and he knew that it was a marriage scene. The bride wore a wreath of flowers; the bridegroom carried a sheaf or garland of fruit or grain, which seemed to be a part ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... asserted passionately that she truly loved me; she implored me to overlook the past, and promised, with solemn appeal to Heaven, that she would renounce the drink from that hour, and give me no more uneasiness. Ay, she promised; a drunkard's promise! Lighter than the lightest gossamer; brittle as the ice of an April morning. I believed her: did she believe herself? I fear not. But the worst was to come, the shadows were deepening, the storm was gathering. A year had passed over our wedded life, when a little girl was given to us. ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... Semitic visage, upturned in the lamplight, was smeared with ambassadorial signs in yellow paint. On his head he wore a bonnet of marabout feathers that floated like a tiara of gossamer; his arms and legs were armored with copper bangles. In his voice there throbbed a tenderness and pathos, as if he were making vocal the very essence of the king's desire. His eyes even swam in moisture, as he repeated ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... very beautiful, and his affection for her had fought with and triumphed over the cruel opposition of father, mother, and relations, who had other designs. He had made enemies of them all; but he won his wife, and, casting her in the scale, father, mother, and friends were as gossamer. She died two years after the wedding—to the very day. Rich in her love, he had never taken a thought to propitiate anybody, nor to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, and when she suddenly departed, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... with an armful of hemlock bark and the slivers of a pine-stump, he found her sitting bolt upright on a log, her feet tucked under her. Before the fire he shortly hung the two webs of gossamer and the two dear little ridiculous little high-heeled shoes, with their silver buckles. Then in a most business-like fashion he pitched a diminutive shelter-tent. With equal expedition he built a second fire between two butternut-logs, produced a ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... more innocent and virtuous the victim, the keener and more careful was he in pursuit. To entrap unsuspecting game without exciting alarm he considered the most exquisite art of gallantry. What sport it was to entangle this superb creature in a web of invisible gossamer threads! ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... thick and stony, in order that the people may be cool in this roasting climate. And they are cool, and stay so. And while I think of it—the men wear hats and have very dark complexions, but the women wear no headgear but a flimsy veil like a gossamer's web, and yet are exceedingly fair as a general ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... vanish, at some wave of an enchanter's wand, as it must have arisen also. The library is by far the finest room I ever saw. Its windows and arches and doorways are all of a fine carved Gothic open work as light as gossamer. One door which he lately added cost a thousand pounds, the door alone, not the doorway, so you can judge of the exquisite workmanship. Here Lady Breadalbane joined us, whom I had never before met. . . . During dinner the piper in full costume was playing the pibroch in a ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... thrilling to the senses. To-day she was dressed in an exquisite blue gown, devoid of all decoration save a little chinchilla fur, which only added to its softness and richness. She wore no jewelry whatever except a sapphire brooch, and her hair shone and waved like gossamer ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... like a cherry, though somewhat elongated and having in its upper end a small umbilicus. But mark with what ingenuity the package has been constructed! The outer wrapping is a thin, gossamer-like skin which encloses a soft pulp, sweetish to the taste, but of a mucilaginous consistency. This pulp in turn is wrapped about the inner-seal—called the parchment, because of its tough texture. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... inches. They give a very dextrous turn of the hand and the finest of these threads are used in some of the fabrics which they weave. I often wondered how they could prepare these delicate, strong, linen-like threads that are as fine as gossamer. ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it—he would venture it upon an editor. For he had his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... individual operation demanding little force for its own performance is to be multiplied in almost endless repetition, commensurate power is required. It is the same 'giant arm' which twists 'the largest cable', that spins from the cotton plant an 'almost gossamer thread'. Obedient to the hand which called into action its resistless powers, it contends with the ocean and the storm, and rides triumphant through dangers and difficulties unattempted by the older modes of navigation. ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... paint more exquisitely than here. Her bosom is the prettiest in Florence; the lining of her robe over her right arm has such green and blue and gold as never were seen elsewhere; her golden sandals are delicate as gossamer. Over her head a little cupid hovers, directing his arrow at Mercury, on the extreme left, beside ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... nonchalantly elevated on a railing, and our eyes drinking in the magnificent prospect of the vast city, as brilliant in variegated colors as a flower garden, while a soft breeze, that gently swayed the gigantic gossamer, soothed ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... into making distinctions without a difference and preferring an impalpable relation of idea to a plain derivative affinity, is of great advantage to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... man either despairing or fatigued. On the contrary, it is light and elastic; while his countenance shows bright and joyous as the beams of the ascending sun. His very shadow seems to flit over the frosted foliage of the artemisias as lightly as the figure of a gossamer-robed belle gliding across the waxed floor ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... and storms that they ride. And there with the huntsmen of mound-builder days Through jungle and meadow I stride. And the Tiger Tree leaf is falling around As it fell when the world began: Like a monstrous tiger-skin, stretched on the ground, Or the cloak of a medicine man. A deep-crumpled gossamer web, Fringed with the fangs of a snake. The wind swirls it down from the leperous boughs. It shimmers on clay-hill and lake, With the gleam of great bubbles of blood, Or coiled like a rainbow shell.... I feast on the stem of the Leaf as I march. ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... like a sylph or a dainty shepherdess of Dresden china, and should have been arrayed in gossamer robes, rather than in the deep mourning she affected. Indeed, Lucian considered that such weeds were rather premature, as Mrs. Vrain could not yet be certain that the murdered man was her husband; but she looked so charming and childlike a creature that ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... narrowing, coarctation^, angustation^, tapering; contraction &c 195. V. be narrow &c adj.; narrow, taper, contract &c 195; render narrow &c adj.; waste away. Adj. narrow, close; slender, thin, fine; thread-like &c (filament) 205; finespun^, gossamer; paper-thin; taper, slim, slight-made; scant, scanty; spare, delicate, incapacious^; contracted &c 195; unexpanded &c (expand) &c 194 [Obs.]; slender as a thread. [in reference to people or animals] emaciated, lean, meager, gaunt, macilent^; lank, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... prove, alas! unstable; And we are all too prone to clutch them fast, Though false, aye, falser than the veriest fable, To which a "thread of gossamer is cable—" They ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... (Bettina's daughter), and Joachim the violinist, and Hermann Grimm the scholar, her friends. Neither has E.,—wandering in Europe with hope of meeting you,—yet met. This contumacy of mine I shall regret as long as I live. How palsy creeps over us, with gossamer first, and ropes afterwards! and the witch has the prisoner when once she has put her eye on him, as securely as after the bolts are drawn.—Yet I and all my little company watch every token from you, and coax Mrs. H. to read us letters. I learned with satisfaction that you ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... With jewels wrought in golden filigree, An opal from some elfin treasury Burning with fire and flashing every shade; While round the dim horizon, wide displayed The clouds pile up their largess tenderly As if to clothe the beauty of the sea In filmy gossamer and soft brocade. ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along on his fairy errand like the light and glittering gossamer before the breeze. He is, indeed, a most Epicurean little gentleman, dealing in quaint devices, and faring in dainty delights. Prospero and his world of spirits are a set of moralists: but with Oberon and his fairies we are launched ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... not August now; the summer was past, yet the weather was fit for the height of summer. Warm, spicy, dry air, showing misty in the distance like a gossamer veil, and near by a still glow over everything. The two young people wandered over the bridge and slowly mounted the bank among the oaks and beeches, keeping in the shade as much as might be. There was a glorious play of shadow and sunlight all over the woodland; and the two ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... its cup of experience to my lips. The great world of which I was once part disappeared out of memory like a mist that recedes into a faint cloud and lies faint and far on the boundaries of the day; my own personal life, to which I had been bound by such a multitude of gossamer threads that when I tried to unloose one I seemed to weave a hundred in its place, seemed to sink below the surface of consciousness. I ceased to think, to feel; I was conscious only of the vast and glorious world of tree and sky which surrounded me. I felt a thrill of ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of the two ships voted it very dull, and began to believe that they should meet with none of the wonderful adventures which they had anticipated. Mr Mildmay confessed that he had been dreadfully disappointed; he had expected everywhere to see bevies of graceful nymphs, dressed in gossamer robes, their glossy hair decked with wreaths of bright flowers, and their necks and arms adorned with coral and precious stones; instead of which, he declared that he had seen only a set of dowdy women with brown skins and without a particle of ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... you are! I suppose you were dying to read it, and wouldn't because it was Sunday. Well!" Mrs. Erwin put her hand under her pillow, and pulled out a gossamer handkerchief, with which she delicately touched her complexion here and there, and repaired with an instinctive rearrangement of powder the envious ravages of a slight rash about her nose. "I respect your high principles beyond anything, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... any duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly nonchalante than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the sensation of wonder. Most of her other faculties seemed to be in the same flimsy condition: her liking and disliking, her love and hate, were mere cobweb and gossamer; but she had one thing about her that seemed strong and durable enough, and that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... excited my more than commiseration; attenuated in form, sallow-visaged, and fragile as the aspen, they appeared to shrink from the very breeze, to seek whose freshness they had journeyed so far. Two of them possessed the remains of positive beauty; their dark hair was of gossamer fineness, and their handsome eyes sparkled with that unnatural light which shines as it were from the tomb. No man could have looked upon them without pity; so attractive, so young, yet so evidently ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... each I got two "Dumb-Belles." For Aunt Eunice and Aunt Clara, maiden sisters of my wife, who lived with us after Winchester fell the fourth time, I got the "Scotch Harebell," two of each. For my own mother I got one "Belle of the Prairies" and one "Invisible Combination Gossamer." I did not forget good old Mamma Chloe and Mamma Jane. For them I got substantial cages, without names. With these, tied in the shapes of figure eights in the bottom of my trunk, as I said, I put in an assorted cargo of dry-goods ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... The big balloon gossamer came rattling down the long stay and the jaws of the booms ratched, fore and main, as they swung over. From astern came the voices of the men in boat and dory, warning each other to hang on when they felt her jibing. Some of them must have come near to being jerked overboard. ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... their seats, staring in stupid awe at two heads clearly visible in the moonlight that lay like silver gossamer on the dark green sea—two heads where they had expected to find but one. The boatswain, frozen in the forward movement of his swing, glared open-mouthed, speechless; he felt his stiff hair stirring strangely under his hat, a pronounced uneasiness ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the breath of a maiden's Yes: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Observe her in a ballroom that is overheated in the corners and draughty near the windows, as all ballrooms are. Her neck and her throat, her bosom and arms are bare. Her frock is of the filmiest gossamer stuff; her slippers are paper thin, her stockings the sheerest of textures, yet she doesn't sniff and her nose doesn't turn red and the skin upon her exposed shoulders refuses to goose-flesh. She is the marvel of the ages. She is neither too warm nor too cold; she is just right. Consider now ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and Arachne. The divine orbs of the goddess turned haughtily upon me, but did not see me,—looked through and beyond me, as if I had been nothing but gossamer, feathers, air; and the little black, bead-like eyes of the insect pierced me maliciously an instant, as the barouche dashed past, and disappeared in the Rue de Rivoli. I was humiliated; I felt that I was recognized,—known ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... to London signed by Dowie and the models and patterns had been sent to the village and brought to the castle by Jock Macaur. Later there had come rolls of fine flannel and lawn, with gossamer thread and fairy needles and embroidery floss. Then ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gossamer fabrics, the silks and velvets, the jewels, the elegant things from barbaric Russia, the wonders of the Orient, the plainer exhibit of our own land rich in mechanical wonders, the natural products, the sewing-machine that now could do the finest of work, the miniature looms weaving, the queer ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... language of every-day life; but as he warmed to his work, they awakened in his memory like forgotten melodies, valse tunes, fragments of poems, elder-blossoms, and swallows, sunsets on a mirror-like sea. All his memories of the springtime of life came dancing along in clouds of gossamer and enveloped her. He drew a cross at the bottom of the page, as lovers do, and by the side of it he ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Kargynda turns at bay. Close, Children of the Starlight! close, for the Emerald Throne! Close round the life that closeth your life within the zone! Rests the Golden Circle's glory, rests the silver gleam on her Who shall rein Kargynda's fury with a thread of gossamer. He metes not mortal measure, He pays not human price, Who crowns that life's devotion with the death of sacrifice! Woe worth the moment's panic; woe worth the victory won! But the Night is near the breaking when ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... love to scan The rules that point Dame Nature's plan, We mark the track of bear and deer, And long to see them reft of fear.— Though well they shun our changeful moods, Taught by our rifle in the woods. Yet we may tell of mercy shown, Power unabused, the birdling flown,— When caught by thistly gossamer— Set free to wing the ambient air. Cautious we watch the gliding snake, 'Neath sheltering stone, or tangled brake, And list the chipmunk's merry trill Proclaim his wondrous climbing skill. The bird; the beast; the insect; all In turn our various tastes enthrall; The fish; the rock; the tree; ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... began to dissolve into a shadowy, unsatisfactory pageant. The solid barriers which were to imprison the vast threatening elements of religious animosity and dynastic hatreds, and to secure a peaceful future for Christendom, melted into films of gossamer, and the great war of demons, no longer to be quelled by the commonplaces of diplomatic exorcism, revealed its close approach. The prospects of Europe ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rising young man, and could, if the Spirit moved him, make handsome subscriptions to good purposes. So, in their zeal, they soon regarded each other with jealous eyes, and reduced their respective creeds to gossamer thinness. They agreed about grace being free, and Joe accepted that much promptly, as he did anything which could be had without price. But Joe was a practical man, and though he found fault with none of the doctrines ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... midst of life, eager, imperious life, the deaf-blind child, fettered to the bare rock of circumstance, spider-like, sends out gossamer threads of thought into the measureless void that surrounds him. Patiently he explores the dark, until he builds up a knowledge of the world he lives in, and his soul meets the beauty of the world, where the sun shines always, and the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... eyes were on the surrounding forest, and the white gossamer of the hoar-frost clinging to the dark foliage. He dared ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... and the peerless Chaoukeun, seated in a massive car of gossamer richly studded with the eyes of live humming-birds, drawn by twelve beautiful blue load-stars, presented by the heavenly bodies to the brother of the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... of The Fairy Queen is not, to my mind, so richly odorous, so charged with the mystery and colour of pure nature, as that of The Tempest; but Purcell has certainly caught the patter of fairy footsteps and woven gossamer textures of melody. The score was lost for a couple of centuries, and turned up in the library of the Royal Academy of Music. In spite of being old-fashioned, it was not sufficiently out of date to remain there; so Mr. Shedlock ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... Jake firmly, "it's not a matter of knowledge; she appeals to your imagination. You feel that airy fabric must travel like the wind." Then he turned to Dick, who was steering. "There's a boat ahead with a freight of senoritas in white and orange gossamer; they know something about grace of line in this country. Are you going to rush past them, like a dull barbarian, in ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... indivisible; that it might be transferred, but could not be participated. 'If I ever love,' said she, 'I shall do so without limit or restriction. I shall hold all difficulties light, all sacrifices cheap, all obstacles gossamer. But for love so total, I shall claim a return as absolute. I will have no rival: whether more or less favoured will be of little moment. I will be neither first nor second—I will be alone. The heart which I shall possess I will ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... hung with woods and dreams, Soft gleams of gossamer and dew; From cockcrow to the rising moon The rainbowed road for me ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... gazed at the scene before him. Far down in the valley lay a still blue lake with a great white peak shining ethereally at its northern end. Dark pines rolled about it, growing smaller and smaller up the hillside until they dwindled with spires clean cut against the azure into a gossamer filigree. Between them and the water stupendous forest shrouded all the valley, save where an oblong of pale verdure ran back from the fringe of boulders and was traversed by the frothing streak of a ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... his little men he sent, Up and down and in and out unceasingly they went; Here they stole a blossom, there they pulled a leaf, And bound them up with gossamer into a glowing sheaf. Petals of the pansy for little velvet shoon, Silk of the poppy for a dance beneath the moon, Lawn of the jessamine, damask of the rose, To make their pretty kirtles and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... must be the hat of Sir Runan! Who else but the tigerish aristocrat that disdained the homely four-wheeler and preferred to walk five miles to his victim on this night of dread—who else would wear the gay gossamer ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere!— By dusky fingers brought this morning here? And shown with boastful smiles,— I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... his eyelashes stormed the keen-edged blade: the whiteness of his brow resembled the moon shining bright, and the blackness of his locks was as the murky night; and his waist was more slender than the gossamer[FN231] and his back parts than two sand heaps bulkier, making a Babel of the heart with their softness; but his waist complained of the weight of his hips and loins; and his charms ravished all mankind, even as one of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... beeches, as I lay a-dreaming, I tried so hard to read this riddle through, To catch some golden cord that I saw gleaming Like gossamer ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... she would have thrilled with joy at the thought that Arthur was waiting for her; but in those two years since her engagement she had grown to look upon her first love as the gossamer, fairylike romance of a child. For months she had known that the engagement must be broken sooner or later; and she knew now, while she listened to Marthy's shuffling feet hastening to deliver her message, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... sigh—applause of so suspicious a character, that no one seems desirous of owning it—a feeble forgery of satisfaction which people think it disgraceful to be caught uttering. The clapping was not the plaudits of high-bred hands, whose sound is like the fluttering of small wings, just enough to stir gossamer—but not the heart. No; such was not the applause which followed Edward's song; he had the outburst of heart-warm and unsophisticated satisfaction unfettered by chilling convention. Most of his hearers did not know that it was disgraceful ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... complete comfort in her five sons, but Lady Susan was sure that if she had had as many boys, instead of one son and four daughters, she should have been worn out. Lorimer was a dear, affectionate fellow. Those he loved could guide him with a leash of gossamer, but young men in his position were exposed to so many temptations! There ensued a little sighing over the evils of wealth; and to see and hear the two ladies, no one would have thought that Julia ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to hinder their putting the lights out; and of these the most intolerable was the abovementioned flying-bug. Saucy crickets, too, swarm, and spring up at one's face, whilst mosquitos maintain a constant guerilla warfare, trying to the patience no less than to the nerves. Thick webs of the gossamer spider float across the river during the heat of the day, as coarse as fine thread, and being inhaled keep tickling ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... with a fairy play acted by the juniors. They looked very pretty in their gauzy garments, and little Desiree, in a gossamer robe of elfin green, made an attractive queen, so dainty and ethereal that the audience almost expected to see through her. "What a sweet child!" was the general comment, as she tripped back in response to a storm of clapping, to give an encore to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Lessing went straight at the foundations of Bob's make up, and began to look over boxes of little gossamer shirts and tiny union suits of a fabric so delicately fine that Burns handled a fold of ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... decorations worthy of what was at once a public rejoicing and a solemn mystery. Higher up on the altar, a flower had opened here and there with a careless grace, holding so unconcernedly, like a final, almost vaporous bedizening, its bunch of stamens, slender as gossamer, which clouded the flower itself in a white mist, that in following these with my eyes, in trying to imitate, somewhere inside myself, the action of their blossoming, I imagined it as a swift and thoughtless movement of the head with an enticing glance from ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... beauty—though that was of a rare kind—as by the air that characterised her. I should feel a difficulty in describing this, which consisted in a certain braverie that bespoke courage and self-possession. There was no coarseness of manner—only the levity of a heart gay as summer, and light as gossamer, but capable, when occasion required, of exhibiting a wonderful boldness and strength. She was a woman that would be termed beautiful in any country; but with her beauty there was combined elegance, both in dress and ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... walled in with darkness and worn with the tread of numberless women's feet, showed silver-grey in the light of a moon nearing the full; and above it, in a square patch of sky, stars sparkled with a veiled radiance like diamonds caught in a film of gossamer. As Elsie emerged from the shadow of the verandah, she had a sense of stepping into an unreal world, and the Palace walls, shutting out the familiar contours of earth, strengthened the illusion. The night seemed the accomplice of her mood, in league with her own exquisite sensibility; a night ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... opened his eyes and saw a face bending over him, which seemed as if it were of gossamer, so vague and shadowy it looked beside the images of his delirium. An excited and eager humming was in his ears, but he could not tell whether it was the voices of human beings or the loud music of the bees in the meadow. From his waist down he could ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... his heroic exploits, certainly. You ladies cannot imagine what tyranny you practice upon the masculine gender when you constrain them to this terrible servitude. To wear chains is a mere jest, but when you bind a man with a skein of thread, a mere gossamer, in fact, and then tell him he must not break it asunder, that is cruelty indeed! Why don't the English invent a machine for this sort of hard labour? They rack their brains about steamboats, about woman's rights, and ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... which, as I sit by the open window, comes in and brushes softly across my hand! The first snowflake tells of winter not more plainly than this driving down heralds the approach of fall. Come here, my fairy, and tell me whence you come and whither you go? What brings you to port here, you gossamer ship sailing the great sea? How exquisitely frail and delicate! One of the lightest things in nature; so light that in the closed room here it will hardly rest in my open palm. A feather is a clod beside it. Only a spider's web will hold it; coarser objects have no power over ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... plainly foreshadowed in them. Trained by years of experience in a Court where intrigue imbrued the very atmosphere, ordinarily he was equal to any emergency. But all his schemes of the past were as gossamer to the conspiracy in which he was now entangled, and since the previous evening—when the unexpected arrival of Gloucester had hung their whole plot upon his shoulders until he got the King to London—the strain on his nerves ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott |
