"Opal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself suddenly transported, as it were, from the quiet of so sober a town as that of Philadelphia to the tropical enchantment of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, the night brilliant with a full moon that swung in an opal sky, the warm and luminous darkness replete with the mysteries of a tropical night, and burdened with the odors of a land breeze, he suddenly discovered himself to be overtaken with so vehement a desire for some unwonted excitement that, had the opportunity presented itself, he felt himself ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... massive, and still, and awful, terrible affirmations of the verity of the Ideal. For this world of colossal heights and fathomless gulfs, of blinding snows, of primeval silence, of infinite revelation, of splendid lights upon manifold summits of opal, topaz, and sardony, all seemed to him the witness and visible manifestation of his most secret and dreadful thoughts. He had seen these things in his visions, he had shaped them in his hidden reveries, he had dared to believe that such a region as this might be—nay, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... always dressed as he was now, in a conservative black suit, the jacket a trifle longer than usual, and a black neckcloth with an Uller organic-opal pin. He didn't work at anything, but quarterly—once every planetary day—a draft on the Banking Cartel would come in for him, and he'd deposit it with the Port Sandor Fidelity & Trust. If anybody was unmannerly enough to ask him about ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... of Asti. But there was a bottle of Trasimene. She wished to taste it, in memory of the lake which she had seen silent and beautiful at night in its opal cup. That was when she had first ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... they come back no more? Oh! many an hour I lingered to watch their gorgeous dyes In soft and shadowy outlines against the purple skies; Through their regal halls, air-woven, the parting radiance streamed, Ever varying like the opal's hue: and often have I deemed They were come with tender message, in the holy hush of even, From the Loved of years ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... an azure sea is flowing, 'Mid long peninsulas of shining sand, From opal unto pearl the moon is growing, Dropped like a shell ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... breathe the freshened air just as the first touches of the sun quickened to an opal splendour the pallor of that daybreak. All the earth was steaming, and the Bagnanza, suddenly swollen, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Bobby Vallis—her full name was Roberta. There were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... was tawny with gold, her eyes with purple were dark, Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... where in the world; with views of life as serious, and as earnest, not living for pretence or show, but for the most rational and religious ends. Now, when all this goodness is silvered over, as it were, reflecting like mother-of-pearl or opal, a thousand fanciful shades and changes, is not the result beautiful? Some families into which I have entered, some persons with whom I have talked, have left a most delightful impression upon my mind; and I have talked, by means of imperfect English, French, and interpretations, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... gleam, the waves light up With radiant momentary hues,— Amber and shadowy pearl and gold, Opal and green and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... Douglas Dale exclusively claret. When the dinner had reached its conclusion, a stand of liqueurs was placed upon the table, one of the few art-treasures left to the impoverished adventuress, rare and fragile Venetian flacons, and tiny goblets of opal and ruby glass. These glasses were the especial admiration of Douglas Dale, and Paulina filled the ruby goblet with curacoa. She touched the edge of the glass playfully with her lips as she handed it to her lover; ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... value. Some of the finest opals ever seen are in this necklace; they were taken from the crown of an Indian price and bequeathed to one of our ancestors. So much is said about the unlucky stone—the pierre du malheur, as the French call the opal—that I did not care ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... '08. We ask him where he heard the tune. "O, I catch him from the phunny-graph, me at the Mission." Canned culture even here! It is light enough to read on the deck at quarter past eleven. We chunk along through a lake of amethyst and opal, the marvellous midnight light keeping us from sleep. On the scow astern, sprawled on the season's output of fur, the men smoke and argue. In the North, men talk of feats of strength and endurance, boast about their dogs, and discuss food. Two kindred ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... her small brown boots were sheltered by spats of that pale tan complexion exhibited by Pullman porters on the Pennsylvania Railroad; that her person was both slender and vigorous; that her shoulders were carrying a sumptuous fur of the colour described by the trade as nutria, or possibly opal smoke. The word chinchilla would have occurred irresistibly to this observer from behind; he might also, if he were the father of a family, have had a fleeting vision of many autographed stubs in a check book. The general impression that he would have retained, ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... all the black waves of space beat vainly and were eternally rolled back. Here there was light, but no such light as she had ever known; it did not fall from sun or star, but, changeful and radiant, welled upward from that land in a thousand hues, as light might well from a world of opal. In its dazzling, beautiful rays she saw fantastic palaces and pyramids, she saw seas and pure white mountains, she saw plains and new-hued flowers, she saw gulfs and precipices, and pale lakes pregnant with wavering flame. All that ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... pool, as the boy drew near and watched it, quivered and glanced with the ever-changing colours of a liquid opal. He dipped his hands in it and wet his lips. It seemed as if a lively breeze passed ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... of great illuminations Of dreamy doctrine caught from poets of old, Because of delicate imaginations, Because I am proud, or subtle, or merely cold. Natheless my soul's bright passions interchange As the red flames in opal drowse and speak: In beautiful twilight paths the elusive strange Phantoms of personality I seek. If better than the last embraces I Love the lit riddles of the eyes, the faint Appeal of merely courteous fingers,—why, Though 'tis a quest ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... hours before they fade. Others shed their leaves at once, and then it is more beautiful still to see the sky strewn with the scattering of their innumerable petals, sulphurous yellow and rosy red. In that bay, which they call the Opal Bay, the golden sands appear more charming still from being fastened, like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the surrounding coast, to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its wrecks, where every winter many a brave vessel falls a victim to the perils of the sea. Balbec! the oldest ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of his trouser pocket his exquisite hand with its long tapering pink nails, a hand which seemed still more exquisite from the snowy whiteness of the cuff, buttoned with a single, big opal, and gave it to his nephew. After a preliminary handshake in the European style, he kissed him thrice after the Russian fashion, that is to say, he touched his cheek three times with his perfumed moustaches, and ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... turned the grey river-reaches to purple, gold, and opal; and it was as though the lumbering dhoni crept across the splendors of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... silly about it. Beauty is an attribute of the divine. I worship it for its own sweet sake wherever I find it, in pearl or opal, dewdrop or flower, the stars, or a woman's face or ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... substance in the hillocks. Based upon a soft white sandstone, a bed of clay formed the lowest part of the cliff; upon this bed of clay, a bed of chalk reposed; this chalk was superseded by a thick bed of saponaceous earth, whilst the summit of the cliff was composed of a bright red sand. Semi-opal and hydrate of silex were found in the chalk, and some beautiful specimens of brown menelite were collected from the upper stratum ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... steamer rounded the point and turned into Avalon Bay. Almost a perfect semicircle, the beach of glistening white sand enclosed a basin of turquoise sea in which were reflected the dark, rich tones of the cliffs, all glowing like an opal beneath the sun, while above rose the hills covered with the wild lilac and greasewood of California. Even the tame sea-lions which frequent the harbor and follow incoming boats, and which frequently ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... silenced in a moment;—this single sentence, spoken like the expression of the experience of a lifetime, produced an effect which all his logic could not. He had rubbed some talismanic opal, pronouncing the spirit-compelling sentence engraved thereon, and a new world of doubts and mysteries, marvels and revelations burst on me. One phase of existence, which had been hitherto a reality to me, melted away into the thinness of an uncompleted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... clothes he intended to wear. He put on, for this sacred interview, where everything depended on a first impression, a pair of black trousers and carefully polished boots, a sulphur-colored waistcoat, which left to sight an exquisitely fine shirt with opal buttons, a black cravat, and a small blue surtout coat which seemed glued to his back and shoulders by some newly-invented process. The ribbon of the Legion of honor was in his buttonhole. He wore a well-fitting pair of kid gloves of the Florentine ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed forest. The valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A white mist from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand's breadth of tree tops half-way down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand with young summer. Nothing ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... mountains arise Dim in the dawning of opal-hued skies, Nearer and clearer peaks burst on the view Lightened ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... for her with as fervent aspirations as ever rose from a man's faithful heart. And in the dusky stillness of the evening, with the faint odour of dewy flowers round me, and distant stars shining dimly in that far-off opal sky; against which the branches of the elms looked so black and dense, I used to beguile myself—or it may be that the influence of the scene and hour beguiled me—into the thought that my separation from Margaret could be ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... less dense. Round the edges of each of these were little irregular rainbow-coloured halos of their own interrupting and variegating the continuous bands of the corona; while throughout all was discernible a perpetual variability, like the flashing or shooting of colour in the opal, the mother-of-pearl, or similarly tinted translucent substances when exposed to the irregular play of bright light—only that in this case the tints were incomparably more brilliant, the change more striking, if not more rapid. I could not say that at any particular ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... he had thought of some opals and hydrophanes; but these stones, interesting for their hesitating colors, for the evasions of their flames, are too refractory and faithless; the opal has a quite rheumatic sensitiveness; the play of its rays alters according to the humidity, the warmth or cold; as for the hydrophane, it only burns in water and only consents to kindle its ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Jane's twisted words sent a little breeze of laughter before the coming storm. For the rest of the afternoon Zura had little to say. Book in hand she sat in the windowseat overlooking the water, watching the snow-white sails skim the opal sea. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... the world; and of the cuttlefish who live in the sides of the cliffs and stretch out their long black arms, and can make night come when they will it. She sang of the nautilus who has a boat of her own that is carved out of an opal and steered with a silken sail; of the happy Mermen who play upon harps and can charm the great Kraken to sleep; of the little children who catch hold of the slippery porpoises and ride laughing upon their backs; of the Mermaids ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... due to secondary twinning and the separation of secondary products along these and other planes of chemical weakness ("solution planes") in the crystal. The secondary products consist of mixtures of various hydrated oxides—opal, goethite, limonite, &c—and appear as microscopic inclusions filling or partly filling cavities, which have definite outlines with respect to the enclosing crystal and are known as negative crystals. It is to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... the top drawer. It had never been worn and Tim should have it. And as he hurried back and forth he thought of other things he would like Tim to have. There was his tennis racket, the one Tim always borrowed when Don wasn't using it, and a scarf-pin made of a queer, rough nugget of opal matrix. He would tell Tim he was to have those and not to pack them with the other things. The thought of making the gifts almost cheered him for awhile, and, together with the excitement of running away, caused him to hum a little tune under his breath as he jammed the ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... replied. 'Ah, sir, had you seen that treasure, sapphire and emerald and opal, and the golden topaz, and rubies red as the sunset—of what incalculable worth, of what unequalled beauty to the eye!—had you seen it, as I have, and alas! as SHE has—you would understand ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... First, that the peculiar skill of colourists is seen most intelligibly in their work in glass or in enamel; secondly, that Nature herself produces all her loveliest colours in some kind of solid or liquid glass or crystal. The rainbow is painted on a shower of melted glass, and the colours of the opal are produced in vitreous flint mixed with water; the green and blue, and golden or amber brown of flowing water is in surface glassy, and in motion "splendidior vitro." And the loveliest colours ever ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... tramp held his hand the other possessed himself of the ring. The ring contained an opal of which Tom was very proud, and to part with the article made the young cadet ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... we fled upon a pulsing train; For breath of morn, outside I stood. Then up a carmine stain Flushed calm and rich the long, low east, deep reddening till the sun Eyed from its molten fires and shot strange arrows, one by one On certain fields, and on a wood of distant evergreen, And fairy opal blues and pinks on all the snows between: (Broad earth had never such a flower, as in my country grows, When at the rising winter sun, the plain is all a rose.) Then seemed all nymphs and gods awake—heaven brightened with their smiles, The land was theirs; ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... no doubt violate all that is lovely and moderate by the insistence of his descriptions. He would find adjectives for the blue sea, but probably he would refuse to search for words for the white. A white Mediterranean is not in the legend. Nevertheless it blooms, now and then, pale as an opal; the white sea is the flower of the breathless midsummer. And in its clear, silent waters, a few days, in the culmination of the heat, bring forth translucent living creatures, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... reached the beautiful island of Capri, a pink ethereal sunset that flooded headland and rock, orange orchard and vineyard, in a faint and luminous opal glow. Their vessel anchored outside the quay of the Marina Grande, and signaled for a boat to take them off. A little skiff put out from the beach, and into this they and their luggage were transferred. The transparent crystal water over which they rowed was clear as an aquarium, and alive with gorgeous ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... of Cos, and through this diaphanous dress the outlines of her lovely form were seen. Around her waist circled a zone of gems—ruby, sapphire, emerald, hyacinth, garnet, topaz, aqua marine—blended together in magnificent confusion. A splendid opal glinted above her brow, and her hair, like sunlight mixed with gold, came forward shading eyes of loveliest blue, then flowed back like rippling ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the badge; instead of which they wore sapphires curiously cut, hanging from their necks by a golden chain. The courtiers wore brownish cloaks, wrought with flowers encompassing young eagles; their tunics were of an opal-colored silk, so were also their lower garments; thus were ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... electric cars and motors; no click of the horses' feet on the asphalt pavement—no pavement, indeed, and no horses, no twentieth-century rush of life. It is Venice, it is June, and the two combine to make an illuminated chapter. To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal. How wonderful it is to drift—a sky above and a sky below—on still waters at sunset, with the Dream City mirrored in the depths, every shade of gold and rose and amber mirrored back,—the very atmosphere a sea of color, recalling to one Ruskin's words ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... and the little black buttes standing afar, off—small spewings of age-old volcanos dead before man was born—seemed fascinating, unknown islets anchored in a sea of enchantment. Across the valley to the west nearer mountains, all amethyst and opal tinted, stood bold and inscrutable, with jagged peaks thrust into the blue to pierce and hold the little clouds that came floating by. Even the gulch at hand had been touched by the enchanter's wand and smiled mysteriously in the vivid sunlight, ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... can be seen at an immense distance from the sea; we, ourselves, are, at the very least, sixty miles from its base, and yet how clearly distinct, how tangibly present, how boldly out-lined it stands against the opal tints ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... those airy fabrics the value of which depends entirely upon the skillful work, or rather penmanship, which distinguishes it. I have even fancied that if I could steal a feather from the living opal swinging like a jeweled pendulum from the heart of the great tiger-lily which nods its turbaned head so stately within the mosquito-net cage standing upon the little table, my poor lines would gather a certain beauty from the rainbow-tinted ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... very top, is a hollow full of water, with a sandy bottom; with a blob of jelly stuck to the side, and some mussels. A fish darts across. The fringe of yellow-brown seaweed flutters, and out pushes an opal-shelled crab— ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... "My opal ring!" cried Mollie, staring at it unbelievingly. "Oh, I can't believe it. Give it to me, Betty; it has my initials on the inside. Yes, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... to rest when thou hearest one calling: "This is the End," with the sounds of music behind him. And if in the dust and darkness thou pass by Lo and Mush and the pleasant temple of Kynash, or Sheenath with his opal smile, or Sho with his eyes of agate, yet Shilo and Mynarthitep, Gazo and Amurund and Slig are still before thee and the priests of their temples will ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... toward the distant beach. Opposite, stretched a point of land rising into a low hill, which shone in the yellow afternoon sun; and from its end the unbroken sea stretched away into a lovely distance, whose color was like that of an opal, and which had no boundary but a mysterious dim line of faintly tinted sky. Sails shone against the moving water; gulls were dipping and diving; a flock of wild-ducks with glossy black heads swam a little away out from the shore. Beyond the point ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... serried coast, Lighting the snow-peaks with its beacon-fires, Driving before it all the fleet-winged host Of chattering birds above the Mission spires, Filling the land with light and joy, but most The savage woods with all their leafy lyres; In pearly tints and opal flame and fire The morning came, but ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... rich mines of gold, silver, copper, quicksilver, antimony, iron, sulphur, nickel, opal, and other mines. Hungary has the richest salt mines in the world—where the extraction of one hundred weight of the purest stone salt, amounts to but little more than one shilling of your money—and ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... stay is made. The water is a wonderful opal colour; the great Desert on our left, the barren rocks, sunburnt and bare on our right, help to make a fascinating picture. One remembers the first time one had passed through the Canal, years before in time of peace, and how one had been filled ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... moment, standing before him, the hood of her capote, with its rich purple, dropping from the fluttering yellow hair that the moonlight deepened into gold, and the fire-opal clasp rising and falling with her breath, like an imprisoned flame. He touched her hand, still warm and soft, with his own, which was icy. She withdrew it, turned her eyes, whose fair, faint lustre, the pale forget-me-not blue, was darkened by the antagonistic light to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... was about to start up and touch the glass with my hand, when beneath this milky colour and from the heart of the whirling film, there began to gleam an underlying brilliance after the fashion of the light in an opal, but with this difference, that the light here was blue— a steel blue so vivid that the pain of it forced me to shut my eyes. When I opened them again, this light had increased in intensity. The disturbance in the glass began to abate; the eddies revolved more slowly; the smoke-wreaths faded: ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... too, our woods show wond'rous sights Such as are read of in "Arabian Nights," When branch and bough are all laden with gems Bright as those that deck Eastern diadems; And the sun sheds a blaze of dazzling light On ruby and opal and diamond bright. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... tender palm of a huge master hand with the knuckles of rough blue hills knotted around it, and dotted over the fostering meadows were comfortable homes, each with its morning altar fire sending up opal wreaths of mist smoke from the red brick or stone chimneys. Long creek lines marked their way across the fields which were growing tender green with the upbringing of the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... were dear and familiar to her. She climbed nimbly and well; and her senses knew the magic of high places. But never surely had even travelled eyes beheld a nobler fantasy of Nature than that composed by these snows and forests of Lake Louise; such rocks of opal and pearl; such dark gradations of splendour in calm water; such balanced intricacy and harmony in the building of this ice-palace that reared its majesty above the lake; such a beauty of subordinate and converging outline in the supporting mountains on either hand; as though the ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... depths of Africa and the society of Boers and Kaffirs to an enchanted palace! This must be the bridal chamber of the establishment. I believe they have made a mistake and think me the King of the Pearl and Opal Islands. I wish dear old Jordan could see this. I wish, O God, I wish my Grace, my queen, could see this, that I might first crown her with flowers, and then fall ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... nuggets, big and little, near the creeks during and after heavy rains; and I might mention that having with some difficulty interested Yamba in the subject, she was always on the look- out for the tell-tale specks and gleams. In some of the ranges, too, I found the opal in large and small quantities, but soon discovered that the material was too light and brittle for spear-heads, to which curious use I essayed to put this beautiful stone. Talking about spear-heads, in the ranges where I met Jacky Jacky there ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the sheet upon which we write, and the "white caps" are tossing up as if in greeting to Him who walks the pavements of emerald and opal: ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... the east, where a light, delicate and mysterious as the distant lights in the opal, was gently ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... The opal heart of afternoon Was clouding on to throbs of storm, Ashen within the ardent west The lips of thunder muttered harm, And as a bubble like to break Hung heaven's trembling amethyst, When with the sedge-grass by the lake ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... suggestion of the Reach. Clear, beautiful, limpid, wide-spreading, irregular pools, set in an undulating field of emerald-green mossy surf, shaded with graceful foliage and gleaming in the sunlight with exquisite opal tints—a giant necklace of opals, set in links of emerald green, and thrown down at hazard to fall in loops and curves ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... one of these chatty tete-a-tetes, the munificent Riza Bey, upon whom the King had already conferred his own portrait set in diamonds, and other gifts worth several millions of francs, placed in the Royal hand several superb fragments of opal and turquoise said to have been found in a district of country bordering on the Caspian sea, which teemed with limitless treasures of the same kind, and which the Shah of Persia proposed to divide with France for the honor of her alliance. The king was enchanted; for these ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... creature in arrowed flight. Dimly there crept into my mind memory of the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of Buddha—the Akla bird whose feathers are woven of the moon rays, whose heart is a living opal, whose wings in flight echo the crystal clear music of the white stars—but whose beak is of frozen flame and shreds ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... that towards the far horizon seem unfathomably blue, yet near around are patched in the sunshine with opal, with green, and with azure, and tremble like mercury under the moon ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... cameo, or a natural rarity, such as a black pearl, is a possession more distingue than a large brilliant which any one who has money enough can buy as well as yourself. Of all precious stones, the opal is the most lovely and commonplace. No merely vulgar woman ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Zik is heavy and the sky is opal in its effects. The chemists have thus far found in nature ninety elementary substances, and it is partly due to this large variety that the Zikites have surpassed their fellow men in thousands ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... with a view to the elucidation of the laws regulating the residual charge; and incidentally some extraordinarily high insulations were noted among the flint glasses. The glass which gave the smallest residual charge was an "opal" glass; and flint glasses were found to insulate 105 times as well as soda lime glasses. The plates of Wimshurst machines are made of ordinary sheet window glass, but as the insulating property of this material appears to vary, it is generally necessary to clean, dry, and test ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... of wealth, endlessly extended. Alas! the glowing splendor from the hills and valleys burned into the blue eyes of the young man; his pupils rapidly absorbed the molten torrents of gold and silver; circles of light from amethyst, opal, and emerald, bent like rainbows round the azure orbs. The subterranean flames roared and crackled; the hills were shaken to their centre; the caves were heaving in their depths, and fresh, glittering, golden, diamantine lumps came ever gushing from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... and columns of pure turquoise; the windows were made of precious stones brilliantly polished. At the sumptuous feasts of the prince of the land, enchanting slaves served the most delicate dainties on golden dishes. There were mountains of opal rising above valleys reveling in jewels, with crystal streams, whose bottom ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... counterparts in the heavens, presenting in a jewelled form contrasts of colour, pleasing harmonies, and endless variety of shade. The diamond, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, topaz, and ruby sparkle among crowds of stars of more sombre hue. Agate, chalcedony, onyx, opal, beryl, lapis-lazuli, and aquamarine are represented by the radiant sheen emanating from distant suns, displaying an inexhaustible variety of colour, blended ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... we had navigated all day, gradually widened as we advanced; the shores as they receded were covered with opal tints; the vessel began to roll, and we entered the sea of Marmora. At sunset the Mussulmans with whom the deck was crowded collected in groups, and devoutly said their evening prayer. Their countenances were wrapped in deep devotion, and they appeared to take no notice of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... golden brown tints of autumn. The sunbeams, distinctly bluish in the fine mist, slantingly penetrated the dark spruce, and fell in golden radiance upon the pale green moss, and the blue ether and the brown and green foliage shone in a brilliance of hue suggesting the brown and blue lustre of the opal. I had already seen her approaching from a distance, her white bare feet noiselessly pressing the soft moss. I gazed intently at her face; at the young fresh complexion; the softly waved lustrous blonde hair with the little, fine loose hairs standing out around ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... new turned furrows; amid the jewel glint of water in the sun; in the diamond sparkle of the morning; against the changing opal skies of evening; the bees and all their winged kin floated and darted, flashed and danced, and whirled, from flower to flower and field to field, from blossom to blossom and tree to tree, bearing their pollen messages of love and life while sweet ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... and we sauntered about on the flat roof, white as marble in the moonlight. The sky was milk—the desert, honey —far off Cairo with its crowned citadel, pale opal veined with light, and faintly streaked with misty greens and purples; the cultivated land a deep indigo sea. The fantastically built hotel (in its ancient beginnings the palace of a Pasha) was like a closely huddled group of chalets, looked down on ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... detailed description. There, as in all places in close proximity to the ocean, I was spell-bound amid the ceaseless ebb and flow, the endless melody of the waves glowing and scintillating with myriad gem-like hues from the amethyst, the emerald and the diamond, to the many-hued opal, its varied and changing beauty bearing all the brilliant glory of the fabled dolphin, born in ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... chance of civil war, mingled in the melee, tooth and nail, or rather fin and tail. Then the vapors would darken round them again, till, with the stray rays caught and refracted in their fleece, it seemed like living in an opal full of cloudy color and fire. Far off they heard the great ground-swell of the surf upon the beach, or there came the dull report of the sportsmen in the marsh, or they exchanged first a laugh and then a yawn with some other unseen party becalmed in the fog and drifting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that the world is really a liquid prism, and stream of opal. And then, last of all, to keep the whole history of it in the fantastic course of a dream, warped here and there into wild grotesque, we moderns, who have preferred to rule over coal-mines instead of the sea (and so have turned the everlasting ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... inspection than it had seemed from our observatory south of Salem. Only here and there toward its lower rim a tatter in it revealed the giant's rugged brown muscle of volcanic rock. The top of the mountain, like that of Shasta, in direct sunlight is an opal. So far above the line of thaw, the snow seems to have accumulated until by its own weight it has condensed into a more compactly crystalline structure than ice itself, and the reflections from it, as I stated of Shasta, seem rather emanations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... apparition. Her hair, of velvet blackness, fell in curls half-way down her shoulders; her brow, white as alabaster and polished as a mirror, reflected the rays of the sun; her beautiful and finely arched black eye-brows melted into the opal of her temples; her eyelids were fast down, and the curled black fringe of lashes veiled a glowing and liquid glance of divine emotion; the nose, straight, slender, and cut by two easy nostrils, gave to her profile that character of antique beauty which is vanishing day by day from the earth. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... written: "I looked at the dome of the Palace of Horticulture and saw strange colors at play within its dark green depths. Circles and clefts of blue and red and green shifted, faded and returned like hues within a fiery and living opal. It was the workshop of a maker of moons, who cast his globes aloft ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... is like an opal Made to lie upon your breast In dreams of ardor, clouded o'er By ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... with the sunshine and the crisp freshness of the morning air. My apartment was in the southeast angle of the Chateau, and my bedroom windows—overlooking the inner court—commanded the view along the range of the Alpilles to the Luberoun and Mont-Ventour, a pale great opal afloat in waves of clouds; while from the windows of my sitting-room I saw over Mont-Majour and Arles far across the level Camargue to the hazy horizon ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... certain of all sensible ideas peculiar to each sense; for whatever of each kind is present in any subject, excludes all other of that sort: v.g. no one subject can have two smells or two colours at the same time. To this, perhaps will be said, Has not an opal, or the infusion of LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM, two colours at the same time? To which I answer, that these bodies, to eyes differently, placed, may at the same time afford different colours: but I take liberty also to say, that, to eyes differently placed, it is different parts of the object that ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... was saying to-night as he sat in the rush chair by the fire in the farm kitchen—Ellis on a bench beside him, the little round table supporting the portfolio before them, "that cosy, picturesque-looking cottage Nance's! those opal tints over sea and sky—that blue smoke curling from the chimney, and that crescent moon rising behind the hill! Come, Ellis, you have given ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... out on the deck, longing for the tonic of pure air. The morning was misty—it had rained during the night—and clouds hung heavy and low over the city. Out from this gray smother the city gleamed like a veiled opal. Neither Felix nor her aunt was to be seen. When she went down to breakfast, after a brisk tramp back and forth across the deck, she was rosy and dewy, her triumphant youth showing no sign of her vigils. She was saying to herself: "Now I've come, it's too idiotic not to enjoy ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... end of this town of the dead, the desert again opens before us its mournful whitened expanse. On such a night as this, when the wind blows cold and the misty moon shows like a sad opal, it looks like a ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... in Maryland! The air steeped in perfume and soft as a caress; the sky a luminous gray interwoven with threads of silver, flakings of pearl and tiny scales of opal. ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging home; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God: "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace?" Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset, all the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. The music of his songs die away into "peace;" as when some master holds our ears captive with tones so ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... Vienna her twentieth birthday occurred, and as she was very fond of ornaments, we all took the opportunity of the splendid jewellers' shops in that Teutonic Paris to purchase her a birthday present of jewellery. Mine, naturally, was the least expensive; it was an opal ring—the opal was my favourite stone, because it seems to blush and turn pale as if it had a soul. I told Bertha so when I gave it her, and said that it was an emblem of the poetic nature, changing with the changing light of heaven and of woman's eyes. ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... shifting opal lights in her eyes were the fires of her will. She would speak. She would hide nothing. Let the responsibility be on Claude. Her avowal was like that of a calamity or a crime. "I've loved him ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... a country ship or two was roosting under the date-trees; the landscape everywhere stretching away level and lonely. In the sky in the east was a long streak of greenish light, which widened and rose until it grew to be of an opal colour, then orange; then, behold, the round red disc of the sun rose flaming up above the horizon. All the water blushed as he got up; the deck was all red; the steersman gave his helm to another, and prostrated himself on ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... last to be inexhaustible. It was like a diamond on sunny days, flashing out light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which shine with ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... succession of voluptuous curves, it spreads thence in distance with strands and belts of varied color, away and away, until blind with light it faints on a prodigiously far horizon. Its falling noises are as soft as the sighs of Christabel. Its colors are the pale and milky colors of the opal. But ah! what an impression of boundlessness! How the silver ribbon of beach unrolls for miles and miles! And landward, what a parallel sea of marshes, bottoms and dunes! The sense of having all the kingdoms of the world spread out beneath one, together ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... Nature's books, a wondrous volume is open, disclosing in its strata the hidden secrets of many by-gone geological ages. Here on the north flank of the mountain are two thousand feet of stratifications. On the ledges, tier above tier and story above story, are seen the opal and agate stumps and trunks of twenty ancient forests, some of the trunks ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... troops were aboard, and the men were allowed on deck. For the first time Claude saw the profile of New York City, rising thin and gray against an opal-coloured morning sky. The day had come on hot and misty. The sun, though it was now high, was a red ball, streaked across with purple clouds. The tall buildings, of which he had heard so much, looked unsubstantial and illusionary,—mere shadows of grey and pink ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... her steadily with beaming eyes. Then he took from his pocket a little purse of woven gold and opal-tinted beads, and held it in his open hand for her to see, watching the bright blush that spread over her face, and the faint, glad smile that parted ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... the purple of the heavens could never be reproduced in paint. Here the cloud mass thinned and paled, and a tint of rose began to flush the billowy, flowery, creamy white. Then came the surpassing splendor of this cloud pageant—a vast canopy of shell pink, a sun-fired surface like an opal sea, rippled and webbed, with the exquisite texture of an Oriental fabric, pure, delicate, lovely—as no work of human hands could be. It mirrored all the warm, pearly tints of the inside whorl of the tropic nautilus. And it ended abruptly, a rounded depth of bank, on a broad ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... crimson sunset sky Virginian woodlands leafless lie, In wintry torpor bleak and dun. Through the rich vault of heaven, which shines Like a warmed opal in the sun, With wide advance in broken lines ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... mail-boat steamed out of the harbour, he climbed to the top deck and stood there gazing back at the shore. Exquisitely beautiful, Ireland looked in the evening glow. Up the river, in an opal mist, he could see Dublin, still sore from her latest wounds, and here close at hand, he saw the waves of mountains reaching far inland, each mountain shining in the light with a great mingling of colours. Beautiful, but more than beautiful! ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... another of Nature's wonders, a petrified forest, quite unique in that the exposed tree trunks are solid masses of agate, chalcedony, jasper, opal and other silicate crystals, the variety of whose colouring, with their natural brilliancy, makes a wonderfully beautiful combination. These trees are supposed to have been the Norfolk Island pine, a tree now extinct, are of large dimensions, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... as their own boat seemed to be standing absolutely still and the line of canoes dashing rapidly at them with the paddles churning up the water on either side, there was a fierce yelling, a gleam of opal-rimmed eyes, a crash which made the boat quiver from stem to stern. The sail jerked and snapped as if it were going to fall over the side, and then they were past the centre canoe, sailing on ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... tender gladness, Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies; Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies In mystic rings, Where softly swings The music of a thousand wings ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... There were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent identification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... deep in thine inmost folds, Within an opal hollow, there abides The lady of the mist, The Undine of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... hundred or two kilometres away men are killing one another—women are searching for some trace of their homes—the ground is teeming with corpses—the air is foetid with the smell of death! And yet we enjoy the opal sunset at Versailles and smile at the quaint appearance of the ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... were an even turquoise with little filmy, fleecy shreds of clouds drifting across; the air was elixir; and the blue waters, capped here and there with white, ran joyously to meet the green sloping shores, where the haze still lingered. Ahead, an island glowed like an opal. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again, And the last light upon the wolds is done, And silence falls on flock and fields and men; And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes the night, and all again is still, And, from this land of worship that I sing, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... the moon had wheeled Four honeyed weeks away, From her chamber came Pandora Decked with trappings gay, And before fond Epimetheus Fondly she did stand, A box all bright with lucid opal Holding ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "Because she's a fire-opal, and to the world at ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... thought so," said Mrs. Peyton. "He asked enough for it; it might have been the companion to Cleopatra's. The opal setting is pretty, too, don't you think? And I have some new stones. You ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... tales. No sooner were they seated than the sound of music was heard—distant, but now nearer, till there came floating on the lake, until it rested before the pavilion, a gigantic shell, larger than the building itself, but holding in its golden and opal seats Signor Mardoni ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... congruity therein. "No—I could never have married him!" she said, gently shaking her head. "Dear father was right. It would have been too coarse a life for me." And she looked at the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and slender fingers that ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... you love me. But how can I count on you? I am your mistress, alas! but you are not my lover. It is for you that Shakespeare has written these sad words: 'Make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.' And I, Octave," she added, pointing to her mourning costume, "I am reduced to a single color, and I shall not change it for ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... replied Miss Allen with provoking coolness. "I can just about afford to lose my place for the sake of an opal ring." ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... clear, with great white clouds piled high above the peaks, and as the train crept steadily upward, feeling its way across the mountain's shoulder, we were able to look back and down and far out upon the plain which was a shoreless sea of liquid opal. At ten thousand feet the foot hills (flat as a rug) were so rich in color, so alluring in their spread that we could scarcely believe them to be composed ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... imparted to me will, I dare say, appear at first very extravagant, but before you laugh at it, give me time to explain. It is the existence of a marvelous opal mine in the interior; the precise location of which is known to no one ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... away with her hand, turning her face to one side, and leaned back in her cushions, while Ellery waited, hardly breathing. There was a deep hush on the opal waters under the April morning sky, and no sound but the far-off note ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter |
