"Iridescence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weeds, cleave the clear water with easy swiftness, and hide beneath the opposite bank. Here a graceful Annelid describes Hogarth's line of beauty upon the sandy bottom. There another glides over the surface with sinuous course, rowed by more oars than a Venetian galley, more brilliant in its iridescence than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... then with Mrs. Hattie and her daughter. These two ladies, also, were pictures of radiant loveliness—especially were they radiant, for every beam of light found an answering flash in the shimmering iridescence of their beads and jewels ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... wrongfully, and nothing could excuse him unless there had been other signs that a girl would recognize, too. That would excuse him, it would justify him, and she tried to see the affair with another woman's eyes. She tried to see it with Charmian's eves, but she knew they were filled with a romantic iridescence that danced before them and wrapt it in a rainbow mist. Then she tried Mrs. Westley's eyes, which she knew were friendly to both Ludlow and herself, and she told her everything in her impassioned revery: all about that little wretch; all about the first portrait of Charmian and the likeness ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... interior of the pearl oyster shell. Whether this sheen is produced by polarization of the light in some manner, or whether it is at all analogous to fluorescence, is yet to be decided. The impression of the surface with fine microscopic lines might produce an iridescence, but not separate and clearly defined hues. The ware was intended for ornamental purposes, not for household use; and it was suspended against the rich, dark tapestries of the period with which walls were covered, thus aiding, as it were, in ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... papers, they possess all the resources of conversation. Animation, pleasure, salutation, cheerfulness and joy was everywhere, the perfume of flowers filled the air, the shafts of sunlight broken into the most enticing iridescence filled the great noble rooms with lovely colors, and the clear white tables, beautifully spread with fruit, seemed to chasten appetite ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... inconstancy, instability, vacillation, convertibility, transmutability, mobility, impermanence; volatility, irresolution, fickleness, capriciousness; iridescence; chatoyment. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... neck, his throat and upper breast, were a shining blue-black, while his back was a rich, shining brassy-green. His wings and tail were much like his head and neck. As Peter watched it seemed as if the colors were constantly changing. This changing of colors is called iridescence. One other thing Peter noticed and this was that Creaker's eyes were yellow. Just at the moment Peter couldn't remember any other bird ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... there is in brilliancy of colouring between birds and the furry creatures. How the plumage of a cardinal, or indigo bunting, or hummingbird glows in the sunlight, and reflects to our eyes the most intense vermilion or indigo or an iridescence of the whole gamut of colour. On the other hand, how sombrely clad are the deer, the rabbits, and the mice; gray and brown and white being the usual hue of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... scout-like horns thrust out in front and on either side. These were constantly shot by fangs from the mass of lightning in the clouds, themselves a hell of angry colours, There was the inky black of the outer sheath, next a seam of half-black, half-orange, then a depth of iridescence which constantly changed its hues, and, finally, a molten pot boiling and ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... struck with her increasing animation and gaiety. The heavy, listless look had left her eyes, and they now glittered with life and fire. When they left the tables to stroll by the milk-white terraces of the Casino, there was a flush in her cheeks and iridescence in her speech very different from ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... asks George Eliot, in 'Middlemarch,' 'ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintance?' And, to press the metaphor, the cobweb, as far as Mark and Mabel were concerned, brilliantly as it shone in all its silken iridescence, would have rolled up into a particularly small pill. Mark was anxious that his engagement should be as short as possible, chiefly from an uneasy fear that his great happiness might elude him after all. The idea of losing Mabel became day by ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... instant of the two of them standing alone there in the little hallway, Charley Scully turned swiftly to Marjorie Clark, catching up her small hand. His eyes carried the iridescence of bronze. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... which is narrowly materialistic. It dogmatically asserts that there is nothing in existence but matter and physical forces, and the iron laws according to which they develop. Life, according to this school, is only a product of the happy combination of the atoms; feeling and thought are but the iridescence of the brain tissues; conscience but a transmuted form of ancestral fears and expediences. Soul, revelation, providence, nothing but illusions of the childish fancy of humanity's infancy. Opposed to it, fighting with all the intensity of those who fight for their ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... transparent balsam, very rich and precious-looking, and stand erect like casks on the topmost branches. The inside of the cone is, if possible, still more beautiful. The scales and bracts are tinged with red and the seed-wings are purple with bright iridescence. Both of the silver firs live between two and three centuries when the conditions about them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may be seen heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising generation, with a protecting grove of hopeful saplings ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the glory of that morning. The sky was blue and cloudless, the sun was as hot as though this were indeed a midsummer morning. The whole land, saturated still with the fast receding sea, seemed to gleam and glitter with a strange iridescence. Great pools in unaccustomed places shone like burnished silver, the wet sands were sparkling and brilliant, the creeks had become swollen rivers full of huge masses of emerald seaweed, running far up into the marshland and ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
