"Mirror" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unwelcome, and we sigh for the elegance and composure of old days; but these discomforts are a necessary accompaniment of growth, and will vanish when the growing pains are past. The Press is the mirror of the aspirations, the virtues and the faults of the new mankind; its power is stupendous and constantly increasing; many are beginning to dread it as a possible agent of ill; but in truth its real power can ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... careers, with uncovered heads are bound to say that they kept their integrity to the last, and that all the world's discouragements could not disarm their power, break their courage, or dim the clear mirror of their purity." ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... readings should be to the nearest 0.01 inch. To avoid error due to parallax, the readings may be taken by means of a reading telescope about ten feet distant and approximately on a level with the wire. A mirror fastened to the scale will increase the accuracy of the readings if the telescope is not used. As in all tests on timber, the strain must be continuous to rupture, not intermittent, and readings must be taken "on ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... (1) Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1887. Educated at the University of Missouri and Washington University in St. Louis. He was associated for a short time with "Reedy's Mirror". In 1912 he received the first prize, of five hundred dollars, for a poem entitled "Second Avenue", contributed to the prize contest of "The Lyric Year", and afterwards ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... years at peace with the world and perfectly satisfied with myself. Although I was dangerously over forty, and my hair, which had been impressively dark, was conspicuously gray in spots, my figure was good, my dress correct, and my mirror told me that I was still in a position to be in the matrimonial running if I tried. I mention these trifling physical details merely to save my modesty the humiliation and annoyance of referring to them in future, and to prepossess the gentle reader wherever the ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... her; a woman who felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish days; they had gone by, and she had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate the deception of a marriage which, all that it should be in the eyes of the world, was in reality wretched. What had the delicate pride of young womanhood done for her—the bliss foregone, the sacrifices ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the reason of my resentment against fate. It was because I was labeled as old while, in fact, I was still young. Of course that was it. Old? Ridiculous! When my daughter was gone I gazed searchingly at myself in the mirror. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... mimic forest stand; Where cypress shades; the minarets snowy hue, And gleams of gold dissolve on skies of blue; Daughter of Eastern art! the most divine, Lovely, yet faithless bride of Constantine: Fair Istamboul, whose tranquil mirror flings, Back with delight thy thousand colourings; And who no equal in the world dost know Save thy own image, pictured thus below! Dazzled—amazed—our eyes, half-blinded, fail, While sweeps the phantasm past our gliding sail. Like as in festive ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... gentleman having got into perverse, haughty, sulky, ill-conditioned ways, and made a bad Life and Reign of it,—better to lie mostly hidden from us henceforth, at least for many years to come. The excellent Parting Letter which Friedrich gave him got abroad into the world; was christened the MIRROR OF PRINCES, and greatly admired by mankind. It is indeed an almost faultless Piece of its kind; comprising, in a flowing yet precise way, with admirable frankness, sincerity, sagacity, succinctness, a Whole Duty of Regnant Man; [In OEuvres de Frederic, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... I did, or the Bonners would have had a weeping Ivy on their hands, and dear knows it's moist enough without that, so I carried her away just for pity!" explained Laura, who stood before the rack mirror surveying a few locks of straight hair which stuck to her forehead. "I was just telling Ivy it's good there's no lightning; but the rain does take the starch out of things. Just look at my poor hair, while Ivy's curls are ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... he describes pleasantly how sometimes in moments of distraction he pictures himself with an air of loftiness, of majesty, of penetration, according to the idea that is occupying his mind, and how if by chance he sees his face in the mirror, he is nearly as much amazed as if he saw a Cyclops or a Tartar.[55] Yet his nature, if we may trust the portrait, revealed itself in his face; it is one of the most delightful to look upon, even in the cold inarticulateness of an engraving, that the gallery ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... a social "cup o' tea" upstairs, which Polly considered the height of luxury, and then each took a mirror and proceeded to prink to her heart's content. The earnestness with which Polly made her toilet that night was delightful to behold. Feeling in a daring mood, she released her pretty hair from the braids in which she usually wore ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... John Joseph of the Cross, the mirror of religious life, the father of the poor, the comforter of the distressed, and the unconquerable Christian hero: but when death came to pluck him from the tree he dropped like a ripe fruit, smiling, into his hands: or, even as a gentle stream steals unperceived into the ocean, so calmly that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that he had been suffering from his throat, and had overtired himself by walking over the common. Then, recognising from a distorted vision of himself in a Venetian mirror hanging by that something of his natural colour had returned to him, he rose ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that it was a black object, and finally reported it a raft with people on it. Later, when Jimmie reached port, he heard an explanation of the sparkle which had caught his eye—a woman on the raft had a little pocket-mirror, and had used this to flash the sun's rays upon the vessel, until at last ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... in its circulation, swelled in heart and brain, till these organs were like to burst; and the slightest attempt to move the body from the one intolerable posture caused pains to shoot along the quivering nerves. Bodily suffering clouds the brain and distorts the images formed on the mirror of the mind. Even the face of God, reflected there, may be turned to a shape of terror by the fumes ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... only explain that these things which I call honourable, (besides the fact of our living ourselves on their account,) are also by their own nature deserving of being sought for their own sake. Children show this, in whom nature is perceived as in a mirror. What eagerness is there in them when contending together! how vigorous are their contests! how elated are those who win! how ashamed those who are beaten! how unwilling are they to be blamed! how eager to be praised! what labours will ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... rising like a pyramid to a point in the middle. There were eight faces in all, some of them composed of emerald, amethyst, or turquoise. But one face—the one that turned at a direct angle towards the wearer's eye—was not a gem at all, but an extremely tiny convex mirror. In a moment I spotted the trick. He held this hand carelessly on the table while my brother-in-law dealt; and when he saw that the suit and number of his own card mirrored in it by means of the squeezers were better than Charles's, ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... divine!" she ejaculated. "Push that pink dogwood back a little, Aunt Dorrie—make it like a frame around the mirror for the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... stanza in the Third Canto of Childe Harold, "Even as a broken mirror," &c., has been often admired. In Carew's poem, The Spark, I find the following lines, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... silent in such a tone of voice that they held their peace. An instinctive fear seized them, and when they entered the house they began to weep. It was not yet night. The last hours of the sunset cast strange lights over the inside of the house—on the door-handle, on the mirror, on the violin hung on the wall in the chief room, which was half in darkness. But in the old man's room a candle was alight, and the flickering flame, vying with the livid, dying day, made the heavy darkness ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... abysses, her fury and her peace—why is it, that as we gaze insatiably at these never ending miracles, we are haunted by so unaccountable a sadness, which is not in the things themselves, for Nature never mourns, but in some element that we ourselves import? For if the Soul be only Nature's mirror, her looking-glass, whence the melancholy? It is because beneath our surface consciousness, far away down below, in the dark organic depths that underlie it, we feel without clearly understanding that, as the Hindoos put it, we have missed the fruit of our existence, owing ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... but as she chatted, skillfully leading the young wife's conversation to her own affairs, she listened to the two voices behind her, watched the two figures reflected in the mirror before her, and felt a secret pride in Manuel's address, for it was evident that the former ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... thought she made a far more striking picture, and her sympathy with the timid wild creatures which evidently knew and trusted her awakened something responsive in him. Half the pool now glimmered in the rosy light, with here and there an alder branch reflected upon its mirror-like surface, and Millicent stood on a strip of gravel with her figure clearly outlined against it. Dressed in closely-fitting, soft-colored tweed, tall and finely symmetrical, she harmonized with rock ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... man arose, lifting his arms, outstretching his palms to hush the lamenting throng. His voice shook with the weight of many winters, but his eyes were yet keen and mirrored the clear thought and brain behind them, as the still trout pools in the Capilano mirror the mountain tops. His words were masterful, his gestures commanding, his shoulders erect and kindly. His was a personality and an inspiration that no one dared dispute, and his judgment was accepted as the words fell ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... occurrence, and the grave has already claimed two of the six,—Risk, the robust English gentlemen, and Hughie, the cheery, ingenious adventurer. It is not easy to draw a fair picture of one's self, even with the aid of a mirror, and when one can readily note the ravages of time in thinning locks and increasing wrinkles, it is hard to speak of the robust health of youth without exaggeration. At that time, however, he was about twenty-three, having dark hair and eyes, a medium stature, and splendid health. ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... "for a magic mirror." Hetty gave a start, thinking she spoke of a glass which should hide her deformity. But Molly went on gravely. "I should call it my Why Mirror, for it would show us why we live as we do, and why mother goes ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and looked into the mirror above the fireplace. I was pale, but not sufficiently so to excite suspicion; and with a smile which frightened Nighthawk, took my way toward ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... This is a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the mirror in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes, no less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature; on the love of children, wife, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... also helped themselves. When all is said of his dogmatism, his petulance, his "evil behaviour," he remains the master spirit of his time, its Censor, as Macaulay is its Panegyrist, and Tennyson its Mirror. He has saturated his nation with a wholesome tonic, and the practice of any one of his precepts for the conduct of life is ennobling. More intense than Wordsworth, more intelligible than Browning, more fervid than Mill, he has indicated the pitfalls in our civilisation. ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Whispers the promise of to-morrow, Tells us of future days to come, When you shall glad our rustic home; When this wild whirlwind shall be still, And summer sleep on glen and hill, And Tweed, unvexed by storm, shall guide In silvery maze his stately tide, Doubling in mirror every rank Of oak and alder on his bank; And our kind guests such welcome prove As most we wish ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... few minutes, then he took a railroad "Pathfinder" from his grip and rapidly turned the pages. Peterson saw it in the mirror, and asked, between strokes:— ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed hansoms)—"after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... lies a portion of Shoshone Lake. Like a sleeping babe in its mother's lap, nestles this tiny lakelet babe in the mountains. It shines like a plate of silver or beautiful mirror. It is a gem worth crossing a continent to see, especially as there runs between the lake and the point of view a little valley dressed in bright, grassy green as a kind of foreground in the rear. There is thus a silvered lake, a lovely valley, with bright and warm green shades, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... The mind is like a mirror bright on its stand. Dust it and wipe it from time to time, Lest it be ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... cloud, reflected on these shallows, muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, violet, and rose are spread around us. In front stretches the lagoon, tinted with a pale light from the east, and beyond this pallid mirror shines Venice—a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate flush. Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has faded. The western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with dark fire-rimmed clouds. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... greater book than The Rescue by JOSEPH CONRAD, because the sinister thrill of suspense yields to the ever- fresh romance of young love. I have read and re-read it with tears of pure delight, punctuated with shrieks of happy laughter."—Lord Thanet in "The Maryland Mirror." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... coolly ordered the two men to put the wounded horse out of his misery and to drag him where she could not see him, But her eyes did not tarry with them, did not leave the big bulk of Sledge Hume until it had disappeared around a bend In the road. Then she went to her mirror and stood looking at herself with large, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... speech in Parliament. They were inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race. Whoever raised a voice and said, This, or that, or you, are responsible! should first have looked into his own mind and into the history of his race and then into a mirror. Least of all should any American have been ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... call to mind the children we have described, the embroidered, gilded, dressed-up, powdered little gentlemen, decked with sword and sash, carrying the chapeau under the arm, bowing, presenting the hand, rehearsing fine attitudes before a mirror, repeating prepared compliments, pretty little puppets in which everything is the work of the tailor, the hairdresser, the preceptor and the dancing-master; alongside of these, little ladies of six ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... along, beyond El Capitan, the Three Brothers shoulder the sky at about the same dizzy height. Near the head of the great valley, North Dome, perfect in outline as if turned in a lathe, and its brother, the Half Dome (or shall we say half-brother?) across the valley, look down upon Mirror Lake from an altitude of over four thousand feet. These domes suggest enormous granite bubbles if such were possible pushed up from below and retaining their forms through the vast geologic ages. Of course they must have ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... whisked away. Hiram heard Lettie giggling somewhere in the folds of it. And he found himself staring straight into a long mirror which reflected both himself ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... her with holding back. She did admit a 'trifle.' We've been married ten or a dozen years now, and, d'ye know, sometimes it seems to me I don't know her at all, and that nobody knows her, and that she doesn't know herself—just the same way as you and I can look at ourselves in a mirror and wonder who the devil we are anyway. Paula and I have one magic formula: Damn the expense when fun is selling. And it doesn't matter whether the price is in dollars, hide, or life. It's our way and our ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Maston and Belfast were placed in the upper part of the instrument and not in the lower, which they reached by a circular staircase, a masterpiece of lightness, while below them opened a metal well terminated by the metallic mirror, which measured two hundred and eighty ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... moment her gaze rested on the claw-footed mahogany table, bearing a family Bible and a photograph album bound in morocco; on the engraving of the "Burial of Latane" between the long windows at the back of the room; on the cloudy, gilt-framed mirror above the mantel, with the two standing candelabra reflected in its surface—and all these familiar objects appeared to her as vividly as if she had not lived with them from her infancy. A new light had fallen over ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of the Light Kingdom—the city not made with hands—eternal in the heavens. For all this time-world, as a wise man says, is but like an image, beautifully and fearfully emblematic, but still only an emblem, like an air image, which plays and flickers in the grand, still mirror of eternity. Out of nothing, into time and space we all came into noisy day; and out of time and space into the silent night shall we all return into the spirit world—the everlasting twofold mystery—into the light- world of ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of the demons, taking out of his pocket a small oval mirror, "if you see a beautiful woman, hold this mirror before her face. If the surface of the mirror becomes clouded, leave her; but if the surface of the mirror remains as clear as before, bring her to me, for she is the one I want for ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... such a place. In fact, I noticed before we had had time to seat ourselves that we had already attracted the attention of two show girls who sat down the aisle and were amusing themselves at watching us by means of a mirror. It would not have been very difficult to persuade them to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... preserve health and sight, protect cattle, and command fish in the sea or river. They are in all manner of shapes, strings of mucuna and poison-beans; carved images stuck over with feathers and tassels; padlocks with a cowrie or a mirror set in them; horns full of mysterious "medicine;" iron- tipped poles; bones; birds' beaks and talons; skins of snakes and leopards, and so forth. We shall meet ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... puny human image was easily reflected in beautiful and picturesque and grotesque shadows, which were mistaken for gods. But the Nature and Universe revealed by modern Christian science are too vast and profound to mirror anything short of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Nick before a mirror for an hour at a time, making faces while he spoke his lines, smiling, frowning, or grimacing as best seemed to fit the part, until the boy grew fairly weary of his own looks. Then sometimes, more often ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... slightly different from others used for the same purpose. The sounds set up by the headphone are conveyed to the apex of an inverted copper cone which is 7 inches long and 10 inches in diameter. Here it is reflected by a parabolic mirror which greatly amplifies the sounds. The amplification takes place without distortion, the sounds remaining as clear and crisp as when projected by the transmitting station. By removing the cap from the receiver the shell is screwed into a receptacle ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... burst yon globed yellow grape (Which is the sun to mortals' sealed sight) Against her stained mouth; Or if white-handed light Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools, Still lucencies and cools, Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams; Like to the sign which led the Israelite, Thy soul, through day or dark, A visible brightness on the chosen ark Of thy sweet body and pure, Shall it assure, With auspice large and tutelary gleams, Appointed solemn courts, and ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... to make me throw the chair through the panes of the mirror Into the street— There I sit with raised eyebrows: All bars are full, My bar is empty—isn't that terrific... Isn't that strange... isn't that enough to make you puke,,, The damned jerks—the miserable phonies— Everyone goes right by me... Bloody mess... Here I am burning ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... honorable and an extravagant silence is well spent and surely if the temper show that then being happy is everything. Resembling is not a suspicion. It is autocratic. There is no rebuke. A fence is not furnished. No mind is matter. This is so little that there is no minor mirror. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... reset a hare-trap with a turnip, picked up in a neighboring field; once he limed a young sapling and fixed a bit of a mirror in the branches, but not a bird alighted, although the blackthorns were full of fluttering wings. And all the while we had been twisting and doubling and edging nearer and nearer to the Sainte-Ysole woods, until we were already within their cool shadow, and I heard the tinkle ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... few remains of Assyrian toilet articles. A bronze disk, about nine inches in diameter, with a long handle attached, is thought to have been a mirror. In its general shape it resembles both the Egyptian and the classical mirrors; but, unlike them, it is perfectly plain, even the handle being a mere flat bar. [PLATE CXXXVI., Fig. 3.] We have also ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... kindled by his visions of imperishable loveliness in the person of his departed Beatrice, now resolves to dedicate to her honor his great life-labor,—even his immortal poem, which should be a transcript of his thoughts, a mirror of his life, a record of his sorrows, a painting of his experiences, a description of what he saw, a digest of his great meditations, a thesaurus of the treasures of the Mediaeval age, an exposition of its great and leading ideas in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... Majesty graciously to take off your clothes,' said the impostors, 'then we will put on the new clothes, here before the mirror.' ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... star of Even Is mirror'd in the silent sea, And we can almost deem that heaven Derives its calmest smile from thee. Oh, virgin, if the lute Invokes thy name in song, Be thine the only voice that's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... upon a woman who is pregnant and whose face is slightly bloated. In that night's dream I look in a mirror and see that my face is plump. I think I am too old. I see on the street a young girl in short skirts wheeling a baby carriage. My friend tells me that the girl is a mother. That night I dream of being in a shop to buy an article which I in reality intended to purchase ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Together they lifted and carried the sleeping girl out of the room, across the landing, into a larger apartment, the contents of which were wrapped in gloom and mystery. A single electric light was burning on the top of a square mirror fixed upon an easel. Towards this they carried the girl and laid her in an ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... begun our talking, God hath sent great comfort unto both, which for my own part I commonly want. The exposition of your troubles, and acknowledging of your infirmity, were first unto me a very mirror and glass wherein I beheld myself so rightly painted forth, that nothing could be more evident to my own eyes. And then the searching of the Scriptures for God's sweet promises, and for his mercies freely given unto miserable offenders—(for ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... entering in and sharing our human experience and revealing Himself as man, those who have reflected most deeply about the matter have commonly been led to believe that so indeed it is. They have felt that in Jesus Christ man, as the mirror and the Son of GOD, reflects the Father's glory. They have felt that in Jesus Christ GOD, the Eternal Source of all things, has expressed and revealed Himself in a human life: that GOD has spoken a ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... bright hot red sun rose in the sky, casting his beams down on our heads, and making the pitch bubble up from the seams in the deck—as it had done not unfrequently during the voyage—a few cats' paws were seen playing over the mirror-like deep. The sails bulged out occasionally, again to hang down as before; then once more they swelled out with the gentle breeze, and the brigantine glided through the water, gradually increasing her speed. I was eagerly looking out ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... was clear. "Thank Heavens there are as yet no rivals," Hawke murmured. "Neither confidential friend of the old boy, no dashing Ruy Gomez as yet in the way." Hawke viewed himself complacently in the mirror. He was severely just to himself, and he well knew all his own good points. "Pshaw!" he murmured, "any man not one-eyed can easily play the Prince Charming to a hooded lady all forlorn, a mere child, a tyro in life's soft battles of the heart. I must ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], in some place of security. At night, perhaps, when candles were lit and curtains drawn, and he was alone, he may have arrayed himself in the gorgeous chasuble before the mirror, as Hetty wore her surreptitious finery. "There is a great deal of human nature in man." If Laud really strutted in solitude, draped rather at random in these vestments, the ecclesiastical gear is even more interesting than the thin ivory-headed staff which supported him on his way to the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... that the Telegraph is much talked of in all society, and I learn that the Theatre des Varietes, which is a sort of mirror of the popular topics, has a piece in which persons are made to converse by means of this Telegraph some hundreds ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had I remained there through ten Presidencies yet to come, I doubt whether the tale of "The Scarlet Letter" would ever have been brought before the public eye. My imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with which I did my best to people it. The characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... consistent. They are always faithful to her, they never misinterpret her, they are a mirror which always reflects her exactly, precisely, minutely, unerringly, and always the same, to date, with only those progressive little natural changes in stature, dress, complexion, mood, and carriage that mark—exteriorly—the march of the years ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this, and his curiosity gave him some little temporary spurt of interest as the curtain rose. Up it went, slowly, slowly, and the apartment in the palace stood revealed in all the glory of gilded pillars and mirrors and rugs. In front of a huge stretch of mirror on the right was a couch, on which sat Cleo, wrapped in a sort of yellow silk cloak which fell about her in pleasing folds. Morgan was beginning to think that she must have deemed it best to omit the innovation, when Cleo rose languorously, took a step towards the great ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said, "he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anybody."[68] But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day, and magically reflect ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... little what arguments in its support this passion to dominate may garner from that twilight region in which the advanced guard of science is labouring patiently to comprehend Nature and mankind. Men take from the treasury of truth what they are able to take. And what imperialists take is a mirror to their own ambition ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... standard- bearers, as we called the tall dead trees, wrapped in fire, and waving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the air. Then we could turn from the scene to the lake, and see every branch and leaf and cataract of flame upon its banks perfectly reflected, as in a gleaming, fiery mirror." ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fascinated by their own reflection, broke out passionately against the expression they felt in the figure of despair, of atheism, of denial. Like the others, the priest saw only what he brought. Like all great artists, St. Gaudens held up the mirror and no more. The American layman had lost sight of ideals; the American priest had lost sight of faith. Both were more American than the old, half-witted soldiers who denounced the wasting, on a mere grave, of money which should ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... portrait. Henry had a strange affection for the wrong picture of himself. He disliked the Bastien Lepage, the Whistler, and the Sargent, which never even saw the light. He adored the weak, handsome picture by Millais, which I must admit, all the same, held the mirror up to one of the characteristics of Henry's face—its extreme refinement. Whistler's Philip probably seemed to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French life. It was largely court life, lively, vivacious, licentious, but in that very respect characteristic of the time. Moreover, there was another quality about it that showed French taste at ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... turned from a mirror, at which she was trying on a diamond crescent. Her face clouded at sight of Count O'Halloran and Lord Colambre, and grew dark as hatred when she saw Sir James Brooke. She walked away to the farther end of the shop, and ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... shut them); and on its marble top lay her shawl-pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to the mirror, and half fearfully, half curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blonde hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down to get a better light ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... "malade imaginaire" junior. What he had won in medicine was to be more of an invalid than a doctor. At three and twenty he thought himself a valetudinarian, and passed his life in inspecting his tongue in the mirror. He affirmed that man becomes magnetic like a needle, and in his chamber he placed his bed with its head to the south, and the foot to the north, so that, at night, the circulation of his blood might not be interfered with by the great electric current of the globe. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... great as the sullenness. Did that offer a good foundation for crime? I disliked Arthur. I had no use for the boy, and I wished with all my heart to detect guilt in his actions, rather than in those of the woman I loved; but I could not forget that tinge of awe on features too heavy to mirror very readily the nicer feelings of the human soul. It would come up, and, under the influence of this ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... vast number of these apartments, some full of china, no less fine than curious; others lined with porcelain, so delicate, that the walls were quite transparent. Coral jasper, agates, and cornelians adorned the rooms of state, and the presence-chamber was one entire mirror. The throne was one single pearl, hollowed like a shell; the princess sat, surrounded by her maidens, none of whom could compare with herself. In her was all the innocent sweetness of youth, joined to the dignity of maturity; ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... hours, but lasts continuously, day and night, for three months—a warm, bright, fragrance-laden summer, with an infinite wealth of color and changing beauty. Distances of seventy to eighty miles across the mirror of the sea approach, as it were, within earshot. The mountains clothe themselves up to the very top with greenish-brown grass, and in the glens and ravines the little birches join hands for play, like white, sixteen-year-old girls; while ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... salesman or saleslady what is the best way to arouse desire for a suit, a cloak or a gown. Almost without exception they will answer: "Place the garment on the prospective customer and let him see himself in a good mirror and in a good light." In this way the individual actually sees himself enjoying possession. There is no stronger stimulus ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... and walked along the bank, keeping pace with it, while the Countess sat motionless, crouching in the stern of the craft, her fingers strained about the fatal packet. The slow glide of the boat, as almost imperceptibly it approached the low bank; the stillness of the mirror- like surface on which it moved, leaving only the faintest ripple behind it; the silence—for under the influence of emotion Count Hannibal too was mute—all were in tremendous contrast with the storm which ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... here by the creek, resting after my walk, a warm languor bathes me from the sun. No sound but a cawing of crows, and no motion but their black flying figures from over-head, reflected in the mirror of the pond below. Indeed a principal feature of the scene to-day is these crows, their incessant cawing, far or near, and their countless flocks and processions moving from place to place, and at times almost darkening ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and Silence, Enthroned in Heaven, looks down Upon her own calm mirror, Upon a sleeping town: For Bregenz, that quaint city Upon the Tyrol shore, Has stood above Lake Constance A thousand years ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... leaving what is afar off to the care of chance and fortune. Talk to a man of his condition thirty years hence, and he will not regard you. Speak of what is to happen tomorrow, and he will lend you attention. The breaking of a mirror gives us more concern when at home, than the burning of a house, when abroad, and some hundred ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... pure in heart That shall see God. As if a well that lay Unvisited, till water-weeds had grown Up from its depths, and woven a thick mass Over its surface, could give back the sun! Or, dug from ancient battle-plain, a shield Could be a mirror to the stars of heaven! And though I am not yet come near to him, I know I am more nigh; and am content To walk a long and weary road to find My father's house once more. Well may it be A long and weary—I had wandered far. My God, I thank thee, thou dost care for me. I am content, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... be presented with meat and drink, of which he readily partook, and seemed to enjoy himself very comfortably, till happening to see himself in a mirror which was given him among other toys, he was so frightened that he started back and overturned two of the men, and did not easily recover his composure. This giant fared so well, that several others came to visit ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... clutching blindly at the wall for support, stumbled forth into the hall, along the corridor, down the stair, until at last he found Tellier, his face purple, rearranging his cravat before a mirror in the ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... from Newport, Mayo, to Mulrany was very pleasant. The roads winds along Clew Bay, that bay of many islands, for quite a distance. Clew Bay was resting, calm as a mirror, blue and bright, not a lap of the wave washed up on the shore of Green island or Rocky Point the day we drove past. No fisher's boat divided the water with hopeful keel. The intense solitude of bays and inlets as well as the loughs looks like enchantment. It reminds one of the drowsy do-nothingness ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... every substance is like an entire world and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole world which it portrays, each one in its own fashion; almost as the same city is variously represented according to the various situations of him who is regarding ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... half a dozen plants in tubs were ranged beside the door; the pavement was besprinkled with clean bran. It was a nice little, quiet, old-fashioned cafe; inside, in the comparative dusk, I saw a stout, handsome woman, with pink ribbons in her cap, perched up with a mirror behind her back, smiling at some one who was out of sight. All this, however, I perceived afterwards; what I first observed was a lady sitting alone, outside, at one of the little marble-topped tables. My brother-in-law had stopped to look at her. There was something ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... the most tragic fate, however, was that suffered by the British Isles. What happened there stunned the world, and brought realization to humanity that unless some miracle intervened, it was but a mirror of the doom that awaited all. For England, Ireland and Scotland were habitable no more. London, Dublin, Glasgow—all their proud cities, all their peaceful hamlets, centuries ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... have clearer and deeper insight into that will, which to know is life, in keeping of which there is great reward. And thus our apostle's promise may be fulfilled for each of us. 'We all with unveiled faces reflecting'—as a mirror does—'the glory of the Lord, are changed ... into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... shadows twinkled a priceless mirror; shutting off Calvin's serving table was a painted screen worth its weight in gold. It was a far cry from the catsup bottles and squalid service of George's early days. The Bannisters of Huntersfield wore their ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... worlds! You're no gold brick, Belle, and you know it, even though you do refuse to go to the mirror. But the fellow who ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... door ajar as Maggie had directed, and stood before the glass to see if anything could be done to make herself more attractive in his eyes. It did not seem so, considering the lack of embellishments. She turned from the mirror sighing, doubtful of the success of Maggie's scheme, but determined to do her part in it, let the result be what it might. Her place was there at his side, indeed; none had the right to ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... to Ken, and next moment Ken had his eyes glued to the binoculars. In the circle of sea thrown on the mirror, the first thing he saw was an untidy looking tramp, her rusty plates showing as she rolled slowly ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... don't think I should like it if she did come! It doesn't fit into my idea of her, some way. Mother is like a queen— everyone waits upon her, and goes up to her presence like a throne-room. I peeped into the mirror in the hall as I passed, and tucked back some ends of hair, and straightened my tie, and then the door opened, and there she stood—the darling!—holding out her arms to welcome me, with her eyes all soft and tender, as they used to be when she came to say "good night." Mother is ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... She stood before the mirror, and looked at herself, blankly, gloomily. Her eyes fell a little, and took a new expression, that of anxious scrutiny. Gazing still, she raised her arms, much as though she were standing to be measured by a dressmaker; then she turned, so as to obtain ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... if we do not take care, changes its character altogether, mastering us instead of being kept in its fit place, and in check, as it ought to be by sense and reason. From time to time, as Sir Tom made these reflections, there would flit across his mind, as across a mirror, something which was not thought, which was like a picture momentarily presented before him. One of the most persistent of these, which flashed out and in upon his senses like a view in a magic lantern, was of that moment in the midst of the flurry of ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... the mirror. "That was no place to sleep. You should have taken a comfortable room at ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... castes had rallied to the Flag, and truly we had witnessed the truth of what the poet told us. 'The East is West and the West is East.'" Surrey Mirror. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... waiting-room under the eyes of half a score of enemies, that is to say, of ten other women, arranges her tresses, purchased or natural, uses powder-puff and hare's foot if she choose, and turns away from the mirror armed for conquest; but an American similarly situated, forgets half her hair-pins, does not dare to wash her face carefully lest some one should sniff condemnation of her fussiness, and looks worse after her efforts at beautifying. A French girl, told that her English accent is bad, ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... down the stone aisle noisily, and Fred Hurst began to push in the stops preparatory to closing the organ. In doing so he caught a glimpse of his face in the small mirror which hung at one side, and he ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... if he had not a trouble in the world. They took great care of him. He was never allowed to be too hot or too cold. Everybody gave him a cheerful word in passing his cage, and if his singing was too loud, they gave him a little mirror to look at himself in. He loved this mirror, and often stood before it for an hour ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... morning sunlight and Peter saw his face in it. That was strange, that Peter Piper of Piper's Crossroads should see his own face looking at him from the radiant surface of a scout prize cup. He had never even seen such a good mirror before. He just gazed at it, and continued to gaze, as Scoutmaster Ned held it up. Awarded for the—it shone so, he could hardly make out the words—for the best all scout stunt of ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... perceive how she had impressed me. The day after, I played the same part with M. Pestalozzi, although his charming daughter was pretty enough to excite my gallantry. But to my own great astonishment I was a mirror of discretion, and in four days that was my character all over the town. I was quite astonished to find myself accosted in quite a respectful manner, to which I was not accustomed; but in the pious state of mind I was in, this confirmed me in the belief that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... friend asleep—to know how he looketh? What is usually the countenance of thy friend? It is thine own countenance, in a coarse and imperfect mirror. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and then there was a faint clink of metal. I peeped cautiously round the screen and looked on the back of a man who was standing by the table on which he was noiselessly depositing a number of spoons and forks and a candlestick. Although his back was towards me, a mirror on the opposite wall gave me a good view of his face; a wooden, expressionless face, such as I have since learned to associate with the English habitual criminal; the penal servitude ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... of his upper garments then put on this horrible dress. When he had finished his revolting toilet, even to the drawing on of the skull-cap, he surveyed himself in the mirror that reflected as ghastly a figure of "Death," as Milton, Dante, or ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... cultured people there, more from her own social class in life. But it was going to be such fun to surprise Mom Wallis with that bonnet and see her old face light up when she saw herself in the little folding three-leaved mirror she was taking along with her and meant to leave for Mom Wallis's log boudoir. She was quite excited over selecting some little thing for each one of the men—books, pictures, a piece of music, a bright cushion, and a pile of picture magazines. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... trunk and took from it several bundles and packages, some of which he put in his pockets and some, like a true merchant, he carried under his arm. Then putting on his large, black felt hat, he turned to leave the room. In passing the mirror he looked at himself, and broke out into a ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... down and invisible, the disagreement remained; and compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy's bosom as she sat in her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a tarnished mirror. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... light, broken by the weltering of the mimic waves into ten thousand fragments, whilst the few stars that overhung it in the firmament appeared to shoot through it in broken lines, and to be multiplied fifty-fold in the gloomy mirror ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... heartily thankful that Colombo and I were still where we should be! Not that a short interval of tropical warmth would have been unwelcome that night, for although the cold was not so severe as it had been inland, I found on halting for breakfast that a mirror in a small bag under my pillow was coated with a ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... was burst asunder, and half of it fell into the Valley. A fire burst out of the earth in the East, and the ca'-lah (snow) on the sky mountains was changed to water, which flowed down and formed the Lake Ah-wei'-yah [Mirror Lake]. And all the streams were filled to overflowing, and still the waters rose, and there was a great flood, so that a large part of the Valley became a lake, ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... struck Captain Lane's elegant mansion on the hill, fired from spite, as the house was far removed from the fort, and no one was near it. A cannon-ball entered the great, broad bay window overlooking the sea, made a wreck of the furniture in the parlor, crashed through the wall, shivering a tall mirror and spreading ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... went down to White Orchards with Rosemary for the following week-end, and after she had smoothed her hair and given a scornful glance at the pale face in the mirror, with its shadowy eyes and defiant mouth, she slipped out to the lower terrace for a breath of the soft country air. Halfway down the flight of steps she stumbled and caught at the balustrade, and stood shaking for a moment, her face pressed against its rough surface. Once before—once ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... went inside to put away his money, but was seen to steal sly glances, and a rearrangement of the blue neck-ribbon in his little cracked mirror. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... remembrances again,—that his fancy by degrees grew morbid, and its pictures unreal. "It is impossible," he one day thought to himself, "that she should have lived in that room so long, sat in that window, dreamed on that couch, reflected herself in that mirror, breathed that air, without somehow detaching invisible fibres of her being, delicate films of herself, that must gradually, she being gone, draw together into a separate individuality an image not quite bodiless, that replaces her in her absence, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... learning. He was looked up to by all the other brethren, and even the gray-haired Father Prior had recourse to his stores of knowledge. But the poisonous worm of doubt began to gnaw at his soul; the mirror of his faith was blurred by his deep meditations. His keen eye would often wander over the faded parchment on which the living word of God was written, while his childlike believing heart, humbly submitting itself, would lamentingly cry out, "Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!" ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... foul desecration. But Calvin's virtues were his own, and the faults he fell into belonged to the influence of the age. It was much so with those greatest and best of men, the New England Pilgrim Fathers. I know they had faults, but they were only spots upon the polished mirror. God reared them up, a rare race of men, for a rare purpose; and I do not like to hear them abused because they were not perfect. If Laud had come to Plymouth Rock instead of Brewster, Bonner instead of Carver, what kind of a community ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... laughed exultant over Greece, I who held that swarm of young lovers in my porches, give my mirror to the Paphian; since such as I am I will not see myself, and such as ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... to the mirror, and while she was exclaiming over it, he remarked, "I guess it don't make you look much worse, Phil. But it doesn't make you look much nicer. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... felt a little in awe of an Earl, as she had never met one before, and was about to make a shy response, when a slight movement of her head showed her her own reflection in a nearby mirror. ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... one of those narrow English rivers in which half a dozen boats might lie side by side, but hardly wide enough for a race between two rowing abreast of each other. Just here the river is comparatively broad and quiet, there being a dam a little lower down the stream. The waters were a perfect mirror, as I saw them on one of the still days we had at Stratford. I do not remember ever before seeing cows walking with their legs in the air, as I saw them reflected in the Avon. Along the banks the young people were straying. I wondered if the youthful ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... about him, he beheld a round table covered with a green cloth, and half-a-dozen cherry-wood chairs, newly reseated with straw. The colored brick floor had not been waxed, but it was clean; so clean that the public, evidently, seldom entered the room. There was a mirror above the chimney-piece, and on the ledge below, amid a sprinkling of visiting-cards, stood a shopkeeper's clock, smothered with dust, and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets. A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... way to the farther end of it, where there was but one window with many panes, each with a bull's eye in it, and in the dirtiest Possible state. When I reached this window, I turned about, and in a recess, standing at right angles with the side wall of the shop, was a large mirror in an old-fashioned dingy frame. Reflected in this I saw what in old houses I have heard termed an "alcove," in which, among lumber and various dusty articles hanging on the wall, there stood a table, at which three persons were seated, as it seemed to me, in earnest conversation. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... its fringing coral reef, on which the swell of the great Pacific—so calm and undulating out beyond—fell in tremendous breakers, with a long, low, solemn roar like distant thunder. As yet no object broke the surface of the mirror-like bay within the reef. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... you to understand that I have consulted my mirror. And I know just how likely I am to appeal to the imagination of a young girl. I take my chance, nevertheless. Your question, divested of oratory, means what shall I do if Desire finds her mate and that mate is not myself? My answer, also ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas, beginning "Yet even these bones," are to me original. I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here persuades himself that he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... so plainly, the vendor of tea and melons at the tower told me; she had seen the sea by Shoreham Gap that morning, but often went a week without seeing the Hog's Back. Below, to the south-west, Vachery Pond lay a gold mirror; Chanctonbury Ring faithfully marked the south as the rain drew past, and I left Leith Hill with the rain cloud riding down wind like night over the weald ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... him, too, I read: his Little Flowers, his Testament, The Mirror of Perfection; but my greatest delight was derived from his Song of the Creatures, which I ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... one of his chief personal misfortunes. Philip, magnificent, lavish, debonair, found many lenient apologists for his crimes, while his son received criticism for his faults even from the faithful among his servitors. How a reflection of his bearing glows out from the mirror turned casually upon him by Commines' skilful hand! Take the glimpse of Louis XI. as he lures on St. Pol's messenger to imitate Charles. The Sire de Creville inspired by the royal interest in his narration about an incident at the court of Burgundy, puffs out his cheeks, stamps his ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... from the basket in which it had been confined, and a wonderful crayon sketch of Maria-Theresa's stepson, Archduke Francis-Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The colossal fire-place niched in one of the corners of the studio, is surmounted, not by a mirror, but by a panel of well-nigh priceless Oriental embroidery, the brilliant colors of which have been softened and rendered ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Company have painted their steamer for the Prince all white—given her a buff funnel, and she flies the Royal Standard with the quarterings wrong, as usual, and looks mighty big and fine as she surges south over the silky, mirror-like surface of the river. There is a blaze of sun, and three dug-out canoes, with men in pink and white, flying bannerets, go out to meet her. With their gay colours, the white steamer, and the gleam of brass-work, you have a subject for a picture after the style ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... and the river; the decent thatched roofs and whitewashed walls of the farm, and the elm trees that grew beside it, were mirrored in the pond. A flotilla of geese and ducks paraded, in stately fatuity, to and fro across the mirror. A battered little wooden bridge, painted green, enabled the people of the farm to reach the banks of the river. Christian crossed it, and went up to the open door of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... obliging attendant and furnished with spy glasses of great power with which they could see more distinctly the beauty and greatness of the world, and the roughness and inconvenience of traveling the King's Highway. To each one was also given an ingenious pocket mirror in which could be seen, at any time, ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... vast and adequate picture of the sea, the symbol at once of man's eternal striving and of his eternal impotence. Here, at last, the colossus has found its interpreter. There is in "Typhoon" and "The Nigger of the Narcissus," and, above all, in "The Mirror of the Sea," a poetic evocation of the sea's stupendous majesty that is unparalleled outside the ancient sagas. Conrad describes it with a degree of graphic skill that is superb and incomparable. He challenges at once the pictorial vigour of Hugo and the aesthetic sensitiveness of Lafcadio ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... his head so proudly that the perpendicular feather of his cap leaned backward at a sharp angle. With his scarlet soldier's coat, all burst along the seams, and not meeting by a yard over his red silk undershirt, with his bit of broken mirror dangling at his waist like a lady's jewelled "vanity set," with his china-ink black mustache and superb beard, he presented for all the purposes of the time and place an appearance in keeping with the magnificence of his voice and ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... age, for Punch was not started till 1841, and Thackeray's first great masterpiece of pathos and satire, "Vanity Fair," did not begin to appear till five years later. Each of these writers in his own way held "the mirror up" to English human nature, and showed "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure," with manly boldness indeed, but with due artistic reticence also; each knew how to be vivid without being vicious, to be realistic without being ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... of the quips and allusions is gross and offensive. No one can take up the book without being struck and arrested by these violations of modesty and decorum; but no one can master its contents and become possessed of it as a whole without perceiving that the mirror is held up to nature, that it reflects spots and blemishes which, on a survey of the vast and various orb, dwindle into natural and so comparative insignificance. Byron was under no delusion as to the grossness of Don Juan. His plea or pretence, that he was sheltered by the superior grossness ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... musty retreat she had removed her dripping hat, hung it on the fender to dry, and stretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel vases of dyed immortelles, while she ran her fingers comb-wise through her hair. The gesture had acted on Darrow's numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation; and when he had asked: "Aren't your feet wet, too?" and, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Commedia, as well as its filling up and coloring, are determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Aisne furnishes abundance of freestone, gypsum and clay. There are numerous tile and brick works in the department. Its most important industrial establishments are the mirror manufactory of St Gobain and the chemical works at Chauny, and the workshops and foundries of Guise, the property of an association of workpeople organized on socialistic lines and producing iron goods of various kinds. The manufacture of sugar is very important; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... New England, because they were a faithful reproduction of the commonplace, played upon by sentiment and slightly moralized, but quite in the tone of the community; and all men like to see themselves and their ways reflected in the mirror of words. They continue to yield the same mild pleasure now, perhaps rather by virtue of a reminiscent charm, for this life still exists on the horizons of memory as a part of the days gone by. They belong with the literature ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... bell an ancient serving-man appeared in the doorway, and the old gentleman, after waiting a little to see from the countenances of those present (he could observe them in the mirror opposite) whether his allusion to his will had produced any effect, and finding no notice taken of it whatever, said in a ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... spoke, she happened to look at a big mirror, and in it she saw the form of her father reflected, just riding up to the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the mirror of humility and almost childlike simplicity, is applied in the Bible to Zebulon, a man obedient and devoid of pride, and in the Gospel to St. Matthias, who also was gentle and guileless; the chalcedony, as an emblem of charity, was ascribed to Joseph, who was so merciful and pitiful ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... litter in the midst of the furs. Nothing could be more gentle and respectful than the way in which they moved him; and he never thought of refusing to go. Then they put something on his head, and, lifting the litter, carried him once round the room, to fall into order. As he passed the mirror he saw that he was covered with royal ermine, and that his head wore a wonderful crown of gold, set with none but red stones: rubies and carbuncles and garnets, and others whose names he could not tell, glowed gloriously around his head, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... yet give thee my daughter to wife, thou must still do something more for her sake." So he asked what it was to be, then? "I have a great fish-pond," said the King. "Thou must go to it to-morrow morning and clear it of all mud until it is as bright as a mirror, and fill it with every kind of fish." The next morning the King gave him a glass shovel and said, "The fish-pond must be done by six o'clock." So he went away, and when he came to the fish-pond he stuck his shovel in the mud and it broke in two, then he stuck his hoe in the mud, and broke it ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the root of the artist's power; Sophocles, Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe, in a very profound sense, make game of life. But to make game of life was to each of these the very loftiest and most imperative employ to be found for him on this planet; to hold the mirror up to Nature so that for the first time she may see herself; to 'be a candle-holder and look on' at the pageantry which, but for the candle-holder, would huddle along in the undistinguishable blackness, filled them with the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... and fifth day after the winter solstice. The ceremony was performed with great pomp by the same officials, who procured the new fire from heaven by reflecting the sun's rays either from a metal mirror or from a crystal on dry moss. Fire thus obtained is called by the Chinese heavenly fire, and its use is enjoined in sacrifices; whereas fire elicited by the friction of wood is termed by them earthly fire, and its use is prescribed ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... impart to language, became irresistible to a people that had itself become a Pericles. Universal civilization, universal poetry, had rendered the audience susceptible and fastidious; they could appreciate the ornate and philosophical harangues of Pericles; and, the first to mirror to themselves the intellectual improvements they had made, the first to represent the grace and enlightenment, as Themistocles had been the first to represent the daring and enterprise, of his time, the son of Xanthippus began already to eclipse that very ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a while. On either side, from their window-balcony, the lights of Lungarno spread out in a brilliant half-circle, repeating themselves, after the fashion of women, in the mirror of the Arno. On the hill across the river the statue of David was visible above ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... on the bureau, removed one or two articles, and left the receptacle open, with the cover propped against the mirror. Despite the lateness of the hour he then went out, to roam about the village. His fellow traveler watched only to see him out of the house, ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... (H) and mirror (M), which may be removed and stored to left of dial (D) when instrument is closed for transportation. D, DIAL: records color values in terms of standard white (100), the opposite end of the scale being absolute blackness (0). E, EYE-PIECE: to shield eye and sample from extraneous ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... robe—yes, and the golden hair." And, having put on the blue robe, she took from Ashimullah's hand something that he had taken from the square box, and put it on her head. Then Ashimullah gave her a smaller box, and, taking out paints and brushes and a mirror, she made a complexion for herself. And thus she was transformed into a golden-haired lady with cheeks of rosy red, and in this guise she passed in to the ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... even for three days. It strengthens and instructs the heart of man. . . . No matter what there be in the world, you will find it all written down in Rataziaev's works. And so well written down, too! Literature is a sort of picture—a sort of picture or mirror. It connotes at once passion, expression, fine criticism, good learning, and a document. Yes, I have learned this from Rataziaev himself. I can assure you, Barbara, that if only you could be sitting among us, and listening to the talk (while, with the rest of us, you ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
