"Ray of light" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the door and swept the interior of the place with a ray of light cast by his lantern. There were one or two petrol cans and some odd lumber suggesting that the garage had been recently used, but no car, and indeed nothing of sufficient value to have interested ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the one ray of light, clothed only in his tunic of white and his sandals, a human jewel of radiant color and slender strength, a godlike conception of youth and grace, his harp before him, the lilies crushed under his feet that he had torn from the strings which his fingers touched caressingly, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... visage of the master of the house, seated immoveable before him,—all these conspired to produce a strong impression on his mind. The windows were closed and darkened; a single pane in the upper part of one of them admitted a strong ray of light. My father forgot the strange repute of his sitter in zeal for his art. 'How splendidly the fellow's face is lighted up!' he thought to himself, and set to work with furious eagerness, as though fearful of losing the favourable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... repeated Arthur. "Should one ray of light ever be thrown upon the affair, you will see, Mr. Dean, that ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... there strikes one ray of light. It is a very faint ray, but in the absence of all other light it is precious. It is that which is supplied by the prehistoric ruins and the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... DEAR TENNYSON,—True thanks again, this time for the best of Christmas presents, another great work, wise, good, and beautiful. The scene where Harold is overborne to take the oath is perfect, for one instance. What a fine new ray of light you are ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... shaking," she interposed, with pardonable severity. "Are you sure you are awake now? Oh, look! There is a ray of light! How heavenly! But why didn't you relight ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... a white ray of light is split up into seven darker shades of color, so the divine personality or Ego has been broken into countless susceptible substances. As seven darker shades melt together in one clear pencil of light, out of the union of all these substances a divine being would issue. The existing form ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... could not bail just then, for as the moon went out and left us in total darkness, one faint, flying ray of light lit upon the face of the man I had gripped, who was now half lying, half floating in the bottom ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... complete. The little "ignorants," as they are dubbed by the older pupils, are then plunged head and ears into the task of learning to form the written characters as well as the construction of sentences. It is setting foot in an unexplored wilderness. No ray of light penetrates the darkness of that wilderness save the tiny torch just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... until midnight, when the forest woman reined in and directed a ray of light against ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... the last words were almost inaudible: it was very wonderful for her to say so much. And a new ray of light seemed to flash on Jacinth's path as she listened. If such a thing were possible, if it could come to pass that Lady Myrtle should reinstate her nephew and his family in their natural place in her affection and regard, what happiness, what softening of past sorrows ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... A ray of light flashed upon Austin's memory. "Oh! I think I understand," he ventured hesitatingly. "Are you—can you ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... snapped asunder. And the end was not yet. She saw, as she gazed at the darkness of the palms of Beni-Mora, a greater darkness approaching, deeper than any darkness of palms, than any darkness of night. But now she saw also a ray of light in the gloom, the light of the dawning strength, the dawning unselfishness in Androvsky. And she resolved to fix her eyes upon it as he fixed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... instinct which caused Collot d'Herbois to find the door; he tore it open, letting in a feeble ray of light from the corridor. He stood in the doorway one moment, his slouchy, ungainly form distinctly outlined against the lighter background beyond, a look of exultant and malicious triumph, of deadly hate ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... should dare, what would she do?" thought he. The recollection of their conversation at dinner emboldened, but the fear of scandal restrained him. Mme. de Marelle reclined silently in her corner. He would have thought her asleep, had he not seen her eyes glisten whenever a ray of light penetrated the dark recesses of the carriage. Of what was she thinking? Suddenly she moved her foot, nervously, impatiently. That movement caused him to tremble, and turning quickly, he cast himself upon her, seeking her lips with his. She uttered a cry, attempted ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... morning plans the transactions of the day," says Victor Hugo, "and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits of neither distribution ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Saturday evenings. When I returned, about half-past ten it was, I knocked at the door of his bedroom. He didn't answer, and I walked away softly, so as not to disturb him in case he'd gone to sleep already. The hall was dark, and as I went through it I saw a ray of light coming from the keyhole of the Professor's study. That surprised me, because he never worked as late as that before. I thought it over a moment, then I crept up and looked ...
— The Case of the Golden Bullet • Grace Isabel Colbron, and Augusta Groner
... A hundred thoughts whirled together, and all around them was wrapped the warm, strong feeling of his hand on hers. What did she mean that he would tell her father? There seemed to be a deep, hidden self in her. Up out of these depths came a whisper, like a ray of light, and it said to her that there was more hope for Lin Slone than he had ever had in ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... the height to which its vault extended, the gloom prevented even an estimate. For not a ray of light found its way through the bark wall. Neither cleft nor fault was there through which the wind or rain could come. Our two Crusoes would therein find themselves in a position to brave with impunity the inclemency of the weather. No cave could be ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... breast the storm, were driven along by the irresistible current of events, each drifting toward the darkness of an inevitable doom which, we now know, was inexorably awaiting him as he passed from the ray of light into the gloom in his "dance ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... There was one ray of light in the darkness, however. The municipal employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go dark that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange psychology of the mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and by three o'clock that afternoon the light ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tell by the look that crossed Kennedy's face that at last a ray of light had pierced the darkness. He reached for a bottle on the shelf labelled ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... two minutes late. He was making a record for himself. He was demonstrating that it is the daring young driver who has the sand to go up against the darkness as fast as wheels can whirl. He wished the snow was off the headlight. He knew the danger of slamming a train through stations without a ray of light to warn switchmen and others, but he could not bring himself to send the boy out to the front end in that storm the way she was rolling. And she did roll; and with each roll the bell tolled! tolled!! ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... that though the circumstances were dark, yet there were some rays of light. If, however, they gave up their independence, where then could they look for a ray of light? He was prepared to give his last drop of blood for his country. It had been asked whether they should continue until they were eventually annihilated. But he would ask: Should they not continue until they were all ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... gather in their crops. Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia is in this respect even worse off than the higher plains of Assyria. A temperature of 120 deg. in the shade is no unusual occurrence in Baghdad; true, it can be reduced to 100 deg. in the cellars of the houses by carefully excluding the faintest ray of light, and it is there that the inhabitants mostly spend their days in summer. The oppression is such that Europeans are entirely unmanned and unfitted for any kind of activity. "Camels sicken, and birds are so distressed by the high temperature, that they sit in the date-trees ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... old Doorman, is straightening the furniture in the room. He clumsily clears the floor of a litter of letters and places them in the corner with the unopened bag. He draws the heavy draperies of the windows and adjusts them so that no ray of light can reach the outside. MRS. LINCOLN enters and ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... wood, and went for some considerable distance down a choked and rugged path which all at once ended in a clearing. In the middle stood a small house of wood. The frosted roof sparkled in the moonlight, and a thin stream of smoke rose from a wide chimney at one end, but there was never a ray of light from door or window to be seen. The man went straight up ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... what I supposed would give me the most happiness; whereas, now I know how great would have been my misery, and how surely and quickly I should have discovered it. I was entirely blinded, but now I see plainly; it is as though a great ray of light had come into my heart to show me life as it really is, and myself as I ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... could not be helped. In the terrible nebulous welter in which his people found themselves, it was not unnatural that each man should grope towards his separate ray of light. The Russian, too, was equally bewildered, and perhaps all this profusion of theories came in both from the same lack of tangibilities. Both peoples ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... adventures, and saw the ladder distinctly before he came to it. When they had reached it, walking on tip-toe, Tommaso planted his foot firmly against the foot of it, so as to hold it steady, and he pointed to a little ray of light that shone out through the hole in the shutter. Don Alberto nodded and went up very cautiously. It was one of those long ladders used by Italian vine-dressers and had heavy rungs very far apart. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... accounted for upon this hypothesis? Next to the tail itself, the curve is the most noticeable feature, and if we consider the extraordinary length of these appendages, the astounding velocity at which comets move in their orbits, and the time that would elapse before a ray of light, emitted from the nucleus, would reach the end of the tail, perhaps the curve—which, if I am not deceived in my observations, always dips toward its orbit—can be accounted for. If a comet moved in a direct line toward the center of the sun, there would be no curve to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... bells, and nothing doubting that they were ringing for the first Mass, the pious woman dressed herself, and came downstairs and out into the street. The night was so obscure that not even the walls of the houses were visible, and not a ray of light shone from the murky sky. And such was the silence amid this black darkness, that there was not even the sound of a distant dog barking, and a feeling of aloofness from every living creature was perceptible. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... I want to be able to say to the people that all the great doctrines we have advocated for years, have been made possible by your action. I do not want them to say that the Populists have been advocates of reforms when they could not be accomplished, but when the first ray of light appeared and the people were looking with expectancy and with anxiety for relief, the party was not equal to the occasion; that it was stupid; it was blind; it kept 'the middle of the road,' and missed the ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... funnels of 144 atoms 576 Atomic weight 31.82 Number weight 576/18 32.00 SELENIUM (Plate X, 2) is distinguished by the exquisite peculiarity, already noticed, of a quivering star, floating across the mouth of each funnel, and dancing violently when a ray of light falls upon it. It is known that the conductivity of selenium varies with the intensity of the light falling upon it, and it may be that the star is in some way connected with its conductivity. It will be seen that ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey face and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right of me and a half-dozen yards in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray of light slanted ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... from the woods, opened the gate and rode upon the lawn. Not a ray of light came from the house anywhere. Every ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... miles away, but let us remember how clearly the eye can see a bright lamp at the same distance as it sheds a sister beam. Thus far no substance has been discovered with a mechanical responsiveness to so feeble a ray of light; in the world of nature and art the coherer stands alone. The electric waves employed by Marconi are about four feet long, or have a frequency of about 250,000,000 per second. Such undulations pass readily through brick or stone walls, through common roofs and floors—indeed, through all substances ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... ray of light in the darkness that could guide him to the clue of the mystery. He could only say to himself, "It must be, it must be an obscure and horrible madness," and keep his theory to himself. Sometimes, as he sat pondering over the whole affair, he smiled, half sadly, half sarcastically. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Philistines of male and female sex, incapable of finding their way out of the narrow circle of their prejudices. It is the breed of the owls, to be found everywhere when day is breaking, and they cry out in affright when a ray of light falls upon ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the tireless Sheridan, with that lately developed arm of the Federals, the cavalry, raided right and left and struck hard blows at the crumbling cause where they were least expected. Yet in this same dark hour there had been a ray of light. Once the Confederacy had come within hairbreadth of overwhelming success, for Early's hard riding troopers had made a dash for Washington but a few weeks before and, with the prize almost in their grasp, had only been turned back by a great force which the grim, watchful Grant suddenly threw ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... four moved towards the door, through the keyhole of which a ray of light was stealing from the lamp that had been left on ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... won Donelson, I confess I was almost cowed by the terrible array of anarchical elements that presented themselves at every point; but that victory admitted the ray of light which I ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... went so far as to shake hands—with the left hand. Would that similar stations were established all over this neglected land! While churches and mission buildings crowd each other in the home lands, the Chaco, with an estimated population of three millions, must be content with this one ray of light in ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... which never dreams, but understands all things; 250:9 which never errs, and is ever conscious; which never believes, but knows; which is never born and never dies. Spiritual man is the likeness of this Ego. 250:12 Man is not God, but like a ray of light which comes from the sun, man, the outcome of God, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the astrolabe be suspended so that it shall hang plumb. Direct the index or diopter to the sun at noon, so that the same ray of light may shine through both holes in the two tablets or pinules on the diopter, and the diopter will point to the degree of the sun's meridian altitude indicated on the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... was against me, and although we talked over a dozen things together, no ray of light came to cheer ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... now approached the panel, upon one corner of which a ray of light from the altar fell obliquely. Father Ricardo sprinkled it liberally from where he stood on the ground, repeating some formula as he did so, and then mounted a small pair of steps which had been placed ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... did inquire; but not a ray of light did he succeed in letting in upon the mystery. The inquiry might, however, have lasted longer and been more successful, had not lord Herbert just then come home, with the welcome news of the death of Hampden, from a wound received in attacking prince Rupert at Chalgrove. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... essays in the periodicals. Among the essayists the name of Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) stands highest. In his essays selected for republication we find hardly any branch of general knowledge untouched, and while he treated none without throwing on them some brilliant ray of light, he contributed to many of them truths alike valuable and original. His criticisms on Poetry are flowing and spirited, glittering with a gay wit and an ever-ready fancy, and often blossoming into exquisite felicities of diction. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... those hours. A thoughtless maid servant who for some earthly reason smiled in church was in danger of being banished as a vagabond. Robert Pike, a devout Puritan, thinking the sun had gone to rest, ventured forth on horseback one Sunday evening and was luckless enough to have a ray of light strike him through a rift in the clouds. The next day he was brought into court and fined for "his ungodly conduct." With persons accused of witchcraft the Puritans were still more ruthless. When a mania of persecution swept over Massachusetts in 1692, eighteen ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... snow with his hands and feet, but the exterior surface was not thawed, as he had thought. With the ray of light, a violent cold entered the cabin and seized upon everything moist, to freeze it in an instant. Penellan enlarged the opening with his cutlass, and at last was able to breathe the free air. He fell on his knees to thank God, and was soon joined ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... walked on resolutely, not daring to ask for the termination of that sentence. She crept into the little room, bent over the bed, and looked down on Peggy's face through a mist of tears. It was drawn and haggard with pain, and the eyes met hers without a ray of light in their hollow depths. That she recognised was evident, but the pain which she was suffering was too intense to leave room for any other feeling. She lay motionless, with her bandaged arms stretched before her, and her face looked so small and ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... black beams crossed and recrossed each other; with wainscoted walls, and a carved chimney-piece of almost black oak. A sombre place in gloomy weather, yet so decorated with old china vases, and great brass salvers, and silver cups and tankards catching every ray of light, that the whole room glistened in this bright May-day. In the broad cushioned seat formed by the sill of the oriel window, which was almost as large as a room itself, there sat the elder Mrs. Sefton, Roland Sefton's foreign mother, with his two children standing before her. They had ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... filled him with delight. He was taller and broader than the rest, his air was more martial—there was something inspiring in the way in which he held his sword. His golden epaulets were a miracle of splendor, but it was the plume, the great white plume, that held the boy enthralled. A ray of light from the morning sun, reflected by the window of the stable, found its way through a chink in the blind and fell just upon this plume. The effect was electric. Sam was fascinated, and he continued to hold the lead soldier so that the dazzling ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... roused the son of Peleus when they are fighting in dire straits at their ships' sterns about the body of Patroclus. Like it or no, this is how it is decreed; for aught I care, you may go to the lowest depths beneath earth and sea, where Iapetus and Saturn dwell in lone Tartarus with neither ray of light nor breath of wind to cheer them. You may go on and on till you get there, and I shall not care one whit for your displeasure; you are the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... surfaces, the section being carried obliquely from one obtuse corner of the prism to the other, in the direction of its length. The surfaces of this section, after having been carefully polished, are cemented together again by means of Canada balsam. A ray of light, on entering the prism, is separated by the double refraction of the calc-spar into an ordinary and an extraordinary ray; the former undergoes total reflection at the layer of balsam at an incidence which allows the extraordinary ray to be transmitted; the latter, therefore, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... been advantageously mentioned to the prince, and his royal highness was desirous to see him perform. Upon this visit an incident occurred which we should think it unpardonable to omit mentioning, not only on account of its importance as it relates to our subject, but as it serves to throw a ray of light on the character of one of the most ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... one morning and found himself in total darkness. Not a ray of light came from the outside world, and, of course, not an object in the room could be seen. He rubbed his eyes and sat up to make sure that he was not dreaming. Then he called loudly for someone to come and open a window for him, but no one came. He got up and groped his way to the iron door and tried ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... impossible to hold his little hand out long, for it began to ache and grow stiff; so he pulled it in, and comforted himself with the ray of light that came through the hole, and the thought of the fresh air he now ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... K. would have given much to evade it. Not that he had owned himself in love with Sidney. Love was not for him. But into his loneliness and despair the girl had came like a ray of light. She typified that youth and hope that he had felt slipping away from him. Through her clear eyes he was beginning to see a new world. Lose her he must, and that he ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was about to travel and in want of rest, he did not go to sleep. With his two companions who were to accompany him to Zmudz, he drank throughout the whole night. But he was not intoxicated, and at the first ray of light he was already in the courtyard where the horses were ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... springing. There, too, were bears and asps and scorpions. Mid the frightful clamor of roars, growls and hisses, rose the clear voice of the saint, as he triumphantly mocked the demons in their rage. Suddenly the awful tumult ceased; the wretched beings became invisible and a ray of light pierced the roof to cheer the prostrate hero. His pains ceased. A voice came to him saying, "Thou hast withstood and not yielded. I will always be thy helper, and will make thy name famous everywhere." ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... till 1816, nothing was divulged. In the spring of 1816, the Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer, in a speech delivered by him in 1833, says, "The intelligence broke in upon me, like a ray of light through the profoundest gloom, and by a mere accident, which occurred in the spring of 1816, that, upon two several occasions, the General Assembly of Virginia had invited the United States to obtain a territory beyond their limits, whereon to colonize certain portions of our colored population. ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... sheltering tree for what seemed two hours, and then stealthily approached the wagon. No one was in it. Then he removed his boots and stole on tiptoe to the hut. At first he could find no chink or crevice through which to look, but finally, on one side of the log chimney, he spied a ray of light. Approaching the hole and applying his eye to it, Jim beheld a picture that startled ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... by which Renan sought to explain his own genius. "A long line of obscure ancestors," he says, "has economised for me a store of intellectual energy," and he jots down in his note book certain suggestions, a little immature but still emitting a ray of light. "It is absurd," he says, "to imagine that this victory or survival of values (that is low values, values, that is, that seem to be mediocrity) can be antibiological: we must look for an explanation in the fact that they are probably of some vital importance ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... needst not to be told—yet in love let us tell thee—that there are a thousand ways of dealing in description with Nature, so as to make her poetical; but sentiment there always must be, else it is stark nought. You may infuse the sentiment by a single touch—by a ray of light no thicker, nor one thousandth part so thick, as the finest needle ever silk-threaded by lady's finger; or you may dance it in with a flutter of sunbeams; or you may splash it in as with a gorgeous cloud-stain stolen from sunset; or you may bathe it in with a shred of the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... from his lips, when, by a ray of light which beamed into the well, he saw her he loved, her whose beauteous form he had so often attempted to clasp to his breast, ascending. Now she rises, suspended as it were, by nothing, now she has gained the earth. Already has she felt the change which has come over her, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the next berth, No. 5. No. 6 is fitted in the same way, so that we can rake No. 5 from both sides. But, mind you, on no account touch those knobs until the train is moving fast and until you have switched out the lights. If No. 5 was dark when you opened the peep-hole, a ray of light from your side would give the show away. And unless there was a good deal of vibration and rattle in the train you might be heard. Now cut away to No. 6, fasten the door, and go to bed. I shall sit up and watch, but there is ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... A ray of light from the window glinted on the holy Book of books that the girl treasured. She opened it. A line read at random comforted her. Clasping the volume in her hands, she knelt in prayer, ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... set for me on my slate. I was then in my ninth year; and I can remember, to this day, with perfect distinctness, how utterly discouraged I became, as day by day went by, and still I had not found a correct result to any one of my sums, nor gained a single ray of light on the subject. Strange as it may seem, I remained for several months in simple addition before I knew how to sum up figures, and then the meaning of addition flashed, in a sudden thought upon my mind, while I was at play. I had no trouble after that. During the next ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... broke out from the crew at that moment, for right overhead the blackness opened, and a clear, bright ray of light shot down upon the deck, quivered, faded, shot out again, and then rapidly grew broader ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... a while. A ray of light had traversed the dark and tortuous ways of his subtle brain. While he mused the woman became impatient. She continued to talk on with the volubility peculiar to her kind. He paid no heed to her, until one phrase struck ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... that could sift through the violet and amber of the stained glass windows; but in one, the big one at the end, was the figure of a snowy dove, with outstretched wings. Through this silvery pane a long slanting ray of light, dazzling in its white radiance, streamed across the keys of the organ and the man ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... out of the Heavens, and Time should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in comparison with what it was now. The darkness was so profound, that looking into it was painful and oppressive—like looking, without a ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before the eyes as it could be, without touching them. I doubled the look-out, and John and I stood in the bow side-by-side, never leaving it all night. Yet I should no more have known that he was near me when he was silent, without putting out my ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... alone this difficult problem can be solved we shall examine in the book on the "Theory of War." In every case the conception of War, as here defined, will be the first ray of light which shows us the true foundation of theory, and which first separates the great masses and allows us to ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... on his hat and took a stroll in the lane. It was a perfect summer's evening, warm and star-lit; yet its peace failed to penetrate his tortured soul. A glow-worm twinkled in the grass under the hedge, but no ray of light pierced the impenetrable gloom within. He returned to his room, and, after sitting for a while at the open window, looking down on the sluggish waters of the tranquil river, he threw himself on his knees beside his bed. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... glad of an answer to my volume of a letter, and that it gave you satisfaction. Words are a poor portrait of Una, this ray of light. The distinctness and intelligence of her language are a kind of miracle. Her father said one day that she was the book of Revelation. Once, I said for her Mother Goose's "Cushy cow bonny, let down your milk!" and after hearing the whole ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... compelled to pause. He was far down on a side street that was little better than an alley-way. The building before him was dirty and old, evidently a storehouse, and the open stone steps led down to a steep cellar from which not a ray of light ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... not see the speaker, since no ray of light penetrated into the passage. He stretched out a groping hand, and, although he was conscious of an odd revulsion, touched the shoulder of the man in front of him and maintained that unpleasant contact whilst ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... council closed the Indians filed out of the lodge, and one, a tall old man, fantastically attired in skins, entered the medicine lodge alone, carefully closing the entrance after him to exclude any ray of light. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... hung motionless over Msene, an extensive group of villages scarcely distinguishable in the gloom. Once in a while, the reflection of a wandering ray of light in the dull water disclosed a succession of ditches regularly arranged, and, by one last gleam, the eye could make out the calm and sombre forms of palm-trees, sycamores, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... when I had lit the lantern I cast its rays about the gulf beneath me till I found the continuation of the broken stairway above, and then picking my way carefully down the dank, slimy steps, I led the way into the heart of the rock, the rest following, guided by the spreading ray of light in ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... illuminated, at least temporarily, by a ray of light. The doctor had been absent most of the day before on a visit to some distant patient. Now he came to me and told me he wanted to show me how to make bilious powders. Several trays of dried herbs had been drying under the kitchen stove until their leaves were quite brittle. He ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the Neo-Platonic scheme of emanation as we saw it in Plotinus, a gradual and successive emanation of the lower from the higher in the manner of a ray of light radiating from a luminous body, the successive radiations diminishing in brightness and spirituality until when we reach the Sphere the process of obscuration has gone so far as to make the product material and ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... its tendrils threw. Thence issued crane, and swan, and drake, And trooping birds that love the lake. The Vanars rushed within to cool Their fevered lips in spring or pool. Vast was the cavern dark and dread, Where not a ray of light was shed; Yet not the more their eyesight failed, Their courage sank or valour quailed. On through the gloom the Vanars pressed With hunger, thirst, and toil distressed, Poor helpless wanderers, sad, forlorn, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... murmured fervently. "Consul, let us depart and leave Mr. Ricks to himself. Call me up, Cappy, when you see a ray of light. Two heads are better than ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of the shadows of the prairie, Elizabeth saw a group of antelope standing only a few hundred yards from the train, tranquilly indifferent, their branching horns clear in a pallid ray of light; and once a prairie-wolf, solitary and motionless; and once, as the train moved off after a stoppage, an old badger leisurely shambling off the line itself. And once, too, amid a driving storm-shower, and what seemed to her ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the wall of the Needle, dug in its very crust, turned round and round the pyramid, encircling it like the spiral of a tobogganslide. Each hurrying the other, they clattered down the treads, taking two or three at a bound. Here and there, a ray of light trickled through a fissure; and Beautrelet carried away the vision of the fishing-smacks hovering a few dozen fathoms off, and of ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... be their cavalry mostly. I suppose Jeb Stuart is there leading them. At any rate we'll soon know better what's doing. Look there toward the east. Don't you see a ray of light ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... can break through the wall." She took the bread-knife, and picked and bored at the mortar of a stone, and when she was tired, the waiting-maid took her turn. With great labour they succeeded in getting out one stone, and then a second, and a third, and when three days were over the first ray of light fell on their darkness, and at last the opening was so large that they could look out. The sky was blue, and a fresh breeze played on their faces; but how melancholy everything looked all around! Her father's castle lay in ruins, the town and the villages ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... but still it was not dark around them, for at each footstep shone a clear blue light. He observed that this proceeded from a small ball which rolled down before him from step to step, and, every time that it alighted on a step, a clear blue ray of light streamed out, which spread out its rays till the ball had rolled to another. At last the steps ceased, and before him extended a long passage, the opposite end of which was lighted by a clear point: they approached it, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... ahead into the far shadows. He could see that beyond her somewhere a ray of light filtered blue, but he halted at the entrance, puzzled at the black roof where all the rock of the mountain was gray and white except where mineral streaks were of reds and russets and moldy greens. Then he put his hand up and touched the roof and understood. Soot from ancient fires was discernible ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... early, exchanged his helmet for a skullcap, and, wrapping himself in his cloak, made his way to the house from which he had seen the men come forth. It stood at the corner of the street. Thick hangings hung across the openings for the windows, and prevented even a ray of light from finding its way out. Listening attentively Malchus could hear a low hum of voices within. As there were still people about he moved away for half ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... poor bewilder'd Kurd am I, Than any Kurd more helpless!—Oh, do thou Strike down a Ray of Light into my Darkness! Turn by thy Grace these Dregs into pure Wine, To recreate the Spirits of the Good! Or if not that, yet, as the little Cup Whose Name I go by, not unworthy found To pass ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is the safer and the better way—for us at least. But look—that brilliant rain-drop trembling there in the sunshine suggests to me another illustration. Passion, when we contemplate it through the medium of imagination, is like a ray of light transmitted through a prism; we can calmly, and with undazzled eye, study its complicate nature, and analyze its variety of tints; but passion brought home to us in its reality, through our own feelings and experience, is like the same ray transmitted ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... that in the development needed to fit the individual for the full and glad enjoyment of the sunshine to come, a ray of light would blur the film, and spoil the picture instead of producing one that is strong, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... A ray of light all at once broke upon the mind of the host as he was giving himself to the devil ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... We embark upon a ray of light, and glide rapidly to the portals of our Universe. Soon we perceive a tiny speck, scintillating feebly in the depths of Space, and recognize it as our own celestial quarters. This little star shines like the head of a gold pin, and increases in size as we advance toward it. We traverse ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp exclamation, but remained immovable. Indeed, in the darkness, in this unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible. He stood listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... is the ray of light which leads us from night, and twilight, and fog, and mist, and mystification, on this subject, to clear day. I will illustrate it by the law which has controlled and now regulates the most delicate of all the relations of life,—viz.: that of the ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... the broad stairs, which rose midway of the hall, sending a long ray of light ahead of him. I followed in no very happy frame of mind, for I confess that this midnight exploration of an unknown house, with a murdered man for its only occupant, was getting on my nerves. But Godfrey proceeded calmly ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces; but still all was blackness and vacancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... leaning against the stone framework of one of these chinks in the wall. The beams of western sunlight came slanting in at precisely the angle of her figure as she leaned back in infantile repose; her white ribbons, her snowy apron, her golden hair caught and held the sunshine, and the ray of light which relieved the gloom of the gray old vault seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the manuscript, and then sorrowfully, reverently, and in fear and trembling, she burnt it sheet after sheet, until the whole was consumed. As each leaf was licked up by the fire, it seemed to her that "a fresh ray of light and peace" transfused the soul ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... forward in the total darkness, and with Will following, Josh went slowly, feeling his way step by step for about fifty yards, when a faint ray of light sent joy into their breasts; and on pushing forward they found their way stopped by what seemed to be a heap of fallen rock and earth, at whose feet the little stream that ran from the mine ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... wall, and the distant rumble of carriages below. May angels watch over you; over me, a grenadier in a bearskin does it, six inches of whose bayonet I see projecting above the window-sill, a couple of arm's-lengths from me, and reflecting a ray of light. He is standing above the terrace on the Danube, and thinking ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... simplicity in any worthy fashion. All the strength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, everything that consoles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our dark paths, everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendid goal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity, those who have made another object of their ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... a resemblance which he could only half recall. It was very late when the two men said good-night. They were each conscious of the great delight of having found a friend. The candles had flickered out long before, but the fire still burned, and struck a ray of light from ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... no idea who his deliverer was, but he thanked him and took his hand. He was led along evil-smelling passages into which no ray of light penetrated, but which were evidently familiar to his guide. There were turnings, now to right, now to left, an opening and shutting of doors, and finally entrance into a wider space where the air was ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... and dreary, and hopeless; never was the hand of power so heavily laid upon their limbs; never were they so restricted in regard to locomotion and the advantages of education, as at the present time. Athwart their sky scarcely darts a single ray of light—above and around them darkness reigns, and an angry tempest is mustering its fearful strength, and 'thunders are uttering their voices.' Treachery is seeking to decoy, and violence to expel them. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... don't regard me of enough importance to be intrusted with the merest trifles of everyday life, I thought, sorrowfully; but just then my eye fell on the ring, when it flashed into my gloomy heart a ray of light ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... suspense of the next few minutes made them seem like hours. The canoes whirled on and on with a dizzy swaying motion, but not the faintest ray of light broke ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... in the library, from which the bed had been moved, and which was in trim and dreary order. The rain still beat fitfully upon the windows, and the room was quite dark. Gifford had pushed the writing-desk up to the window for the last ray of light, and now he sat there, the papers all arranged and nothing more to do, yet a vague, tender loyalty to the little dead gentleman keeping him. And sitting, leaning his elbows on the almost unspotted sheet of blue blotting-paper which covered the ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... entirely afloat, launched on the seas of doubt without chart or compass. The life and well-being of the race seemed to hang on the slender thread of such traditions as were handed down by-ignorant mothers and nurses. One powerful ray of light illuminated the darkness; it was the work of Andrew Combe on "Infancy." He had, evidently watched some of the manifestations of man in the first stages of his development, and could tell, at least, as much of babies as naturalists ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... away from it in its affliction. He knew that thousands of human souls, nigh to perishing, were daily turning towards him as their only hope on earth, and he was resolved, so long as he could dispense a single ray of light, that his countenance should never be averted. It is difficult to contemplate his character, at this period, without being infected with a perhaps dangerous enthusiasm. It is not an easy task coldly to analyse ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ship. Madden looked back quickly. From the top deck there was a jet of fire, as if someone were turning a hose of flame in the direction of the small boat. Leonard looked back at the dinghy. It appeared as if the ray of light were beating the little vessel into splinters. It seemed to crumble into itself, to wither, to go to dust, and the water beneath it beat up in a froth ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... lay down he noticed a ray of light in a dark corner of his room, and on examining the panelling, found that a crevice existed through which he could see perfectly into his sister's room. There she still lay slumbering peacefully, and it suddenly struck ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... Darwin implies that the mere asking of the question how species has come about opened up a field into which speculation itself had hardly yet ventured to intrude. It was the mystery of mysteries; one of our greatest philosophers had said so; not one little feeble ray of light had ever yet been thrown upon it. Mr. Darwin knew all this, and was appalled at the greatness of the task that lay before him; still, after he had pondered on what he had seen in South America, it really did occur to him, that ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... enter the dark front-door. We feel our way to the right, where a solitary ray of light comes from the chink of a half-opened door. Here is the front room of the house, set apart as its place of especial social hilarity and sanctity,—the "best room," with its low studded walls, white dimity window-curtains, rag carpet, and polished ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... years, which carry us on imperceptibly from childhood to youth, and thence through manhood to age, whence we drop like fruit, fully ripe, into the quiet mother earth. Places were changed—a tree gone here, a bough there, bringing in a long ray of light where no light was before—a road was trimmed and narrowed, and the green straggling pathway by its side enclosed and cultivated. A great improvement it was called; but Margaret sighed over the old picturesqueness, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... been originally a projection from the building; and the small fissure, which communicated with the dungeon, contrived for air, had terminated within it. But the aperture had been a little enlarged by decay, and admitted a dim ray of light to its recesses, although it could not be observed by those who visited the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... and pondered many an hour over stories his favorite companion had related to him. What curious and subtle processes had the queer fellow not been watching in the closely guarded quiet of the room where the stranger had spent his days; the strange thing cowering in its darkness; the ray of light piercing the cloud one day and seeming lost again the next; the struggles the imprisoned thing made to come forth— to cry out that it was but immured, not wholly conquered, and that some hour would arrive when it would fight its way through at last. Tembarom had ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he heard the soft opening of a door, and before it closed again, one sob reached his ears, and stabbed the heart that had laid within him like cold iron; and he knew that all her self-control had broken down. The door closed swiftly, shutting out the last ray of light reflected from the wall, and he found his way back to his chair, and sat there doggedly fighting with himself, and praying for Heaven's mercy on her, until his eyes tingled as if they had been pricked ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... deep of the telescope, the world within world of the microscope,—in these and many other fields it is hard to tell whether it is the scientist or the poet we are listening to. What greater magic than that you can take a colorless ray of light, break it across a prism, and catch upon a screen all the divine hues ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Terra Incognita, etc., of Galilee and its Prophet, Christianity is of no avail: if they cannot be saved without, why are not all orthodox? It is a little hard to send a man preaching to Judaea, and leave the rest of the world—Negers and what not—dark as their complexions, without a ray of light for so many years to lead them on high; and who will believe that God will damn men for not knowing what they were never taught? I hope I am sincere; I was so at least on a bed of sickness in a far-distant country, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... windows. The early flight of the Skinners left the dragoons at liberty to exert themselves in saving much of the furniture, which lay scattered in heaps on the lawn, giving the finishing touch of desolation to the scene. Whenever a stronger ray of light than common shot upwards, the composed figures of Sergeant Hollister and his associates, sitting on their horses in rigid discipline, were to be seen in the background of the picture, together with the beast of Mrs. Flanagan, which, having slipped its bridle, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... possible in the middle of the causeway. The lane, which was composed of dwellings of the lowest order, tenanted by the most abject profligates, was dark as midnight; for the tall dingy buildings absolutely intercepted every ray of light that proceeded from the murky sky, and there was not a spark in any of the sordid casements, nor any votive lamp in that foul alley. The only glimpse of casual illumination, and that too barely serving to render the darkness and the filth perceptible, was the faint streak of lustre where the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... know of her, apart from the list in Gellius and one passage of Servius, from the two passages of Livy quoted without comment by Dr. Frazer. The first of these (viii. 1), which may be taken from the pontifical books, seems to let in a ray of light on her nature and function. In 338 B.C. the Volscians had been beaten, and "armorum magna vis" was found in their camp. "Ea Luae Matri se dare consul dixit, finesque hostium usque ad maritimam oram depopulatus est." That is, as I understand the words, he dedicated the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... A ray of light penetrated through the keyhole. The little girl sprang nimbly from the bed, ran to the door, and peered through the tiny aperture. Suddenly footsteps came toward the door. When it opened, however, the little eavesdropper was back underneath the covers of the bed. The ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... reply. She was wondering drearily what she could find to say when the dreaded interview came about; shrinking from the thought of adding to the mother's pain, feeling a paralysing sense of defeat; yet, at this very moment of humiliation, a ray of light illumined the darkness and showed ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that?—who ever thought of that? To them it seemed that death ended all that was reality, and began all that was visionary. But whether early education is to blame, certain it is that many people do come to this state. They seem stoneblind to the future. Not one ray of light gets an entrance into their spirits from the great and eternal world, on whose confines they every moment live. They think, fear, hope, rejoice, plan, and purpose; but always about this world,—never about the other! To ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... ray of light, Geraint awoke, and his anger against Enid was not passed; so, without more ado, he set her on her palfrey and bade her drive the horses on in front as before, charging her that, whatever befell, that day at least, she should ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... was blackest darkness and a silence that inspired the men with awe. The asses, however, picked their way through the tall trees that grew so high and so thick that not the least ray of light could penetrate. How many days they traveled thus they knew not, for day and night were alike. The men slept when they were tired, ate when they were hungry and trusted to ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... evil doing, prepared him to receive benefit from his converse with the missionaries at Beirut, which began in 1826, when he was twenty-six years of age. He was then ignorant of the Gospel, with his mind in great darkness and confusion. His first ray of light was from the good example of his missionary friends. Comparing their lives with their preaching, he admired the consistency of the two. He then compared both with the Scriptures, reading through the entire New Testament. At length day dawned upon his darkness. He became fully satisfied, that the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... a part of what the speaker was saying. He was gazing at this form half hidden in the shadows, a figure with hands drooping, with face upturned, and just caught barely by one vagrant ray of light which left the massed shades piled strongly about the heavy hair. There came upon him at that moment, as with a flood-tide of memory, all the vague longing, the restlessness, the incertitude of life which had harried him before he had come to this far land, whose swift activity had helped him to ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... eternal thought every living thing, humble or sublime, translates after its own fashion. He speaks to you in the dark nights and in the bright light of dawn, in the infinite radiance of the worlds beyond all reckoning, and in the humble stalk that awaits, in the valley bottom, its ray of light and its drop of dew. Listen!—If there is anguish in the voice of poor humanity, there are in great nature profound words of soothing, of hope. Look at the flower in the fields, listen to the birds in the skies! After ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... in the light of heaven, while among themselves they appear as men. This is of the Lord's mercy, that they may not appear as loathsome to one another as they appear before the angels. But this appearance is a fallacy, for as soon as any ray of light from heaven is let in, their human forms appear changed into monstrous forms, such as they are in themselves (as has been described above). For in the light of heaven everything appears as it is in itself. For this reason they ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... for what we are going to say. You may, possibly for yourself, when reviewing the past history of man, have chanced to perceive the same—we are not jealous of participation in a field so ample—but even in such a case, if the remark (on which we are now going to throw a ray of light) should appeal to you in particular, with less of absolute novelty, not the less you will feel thankful to be confirmed in your views by independent testimony. We, for ourselves, offer the remark as new; but, in an age teeming with so much agility of thought, it is rare that any remark can have absolutely ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... attendant upon its original production. He would find the records of this long history in the library around him. In every age, the thought, born of pain, has been reproduced with travail. It did not do its mission at once, penetrate like a ray of light into the heart of the race, and leave a chemical effect which should last forever. No, the blood of man's spirit was not purified,—only an external application was made, and that application must be repeated with torture upon every generation. Was this designed to be the function of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... only a ray of light, but it worked wonders, for it changed the current of my thoughts, setting me thinking that the sun was just peeping over the edge of the mountain lying to the east, and brightening the mists that lay in the valleys, and making everything look ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... other men could not understand. He tried to explain what Kant's book was about, but it was all perfect darkness before my eyes; I was trying to lay hold of a word here and there, but it all floated before my mind like mist, without a single ray of light, without any way out of all that maze of words. But when at last he said he would lend me the book, I fell on it and pored over it hour after hour. The result was the same. My little brain could not take in the ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... they passed on to the brilliantly lighted chateau, David made out the indistinct outlines of other buildings almost hidden in the out-creeping shadows of the forest-edges, with now and then a ray of light to show people were in them. But there was a brooding silence over it all which made him wonder, for there was no voice, no bark of dog, not even the opening or closing of a door. As they drew nearer, he saw a great veranda reaching the length of the chateau, with screening ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... dropped behind the horizon, the halo faded from the shining hair and every ray of light from the childish face. There came in its place that deep, wondering sadness which is more touching than any maturer sorrow,—just as a child's illness melts our hearts more than that of man or woman, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the street, the darkness was as it were divided by a ray of light, that neither flickered nor wavered. What a picture it brought at once before her!—the pale, lame grandchild of old Jenny Oram, watching by the dying bed of the only creature that had ever loved her—her poor deaf grandmother. And the girl's great trouble was, ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... 421, emphasizes with fiery accents the mood of storm and stress characteristic of the movement as a whole. After the fury has subsided, the dramatic motto asserts itself in the closing measures, poco sostenuto; the problem is still unsolved and the last C major chord is but a ray of light cast on ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... and always, in some way, it comes; not in my way—not just as soon as I ask for it—but in His own way, He always provides. I have learned to trust and not be afraid, even though the clouds hang heavy, and I see no ray of light, the promise is there, and for me, 'I will never leave thee, or forsake thee.' I am so entirely dependent on Him for everything that sometimes, in little matters, my faith will, for a brief season, droop. Sometimes I have to plead and plead over again some particular promises; but these times of ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... the opportune interference of the British consul, and of the good-will which Lucien had inspired in the breast of the Dey, a ray of light stole into the gloomy Bagnio, and tended to cheer at least ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... they stood upon the broad gravel-walk before the Warren-house. The building was profoundly dark, and none were moving near it save themselves. From one solitary turret-chamber, however, there shone a ray of light; and towards this speck of comfort in the cold, cheerless, silent scene, Mr Willet bade ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... be that the story of one may help all, and that the tale of one should that went out alone into the darkness and on the other side found light, that struggled through the Storm and on the other side found Peace, may bring some ray of light and of peace into the darkness and the storm of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... demonstration or two with my atomic pistol and the flashlight—these people are fairly stricken by a ray of light directly in the eyes—and we have reached ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the Mercutians did not move from their first landing place. Newspaper speculation regarding their capabilities for offensive action ran rife. Perhaps they could not move. They appeared to possess but one ray of light-fire; this had an effective radius of ten miles. The only other offensive weapon shown was the rocket, or bomb, that had destroyed the C., B. and Q. train near Garland and the town itself. Reports differed as to what had set fire to the town ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... grinding noise from the walled end of the passage. A moment later a blinding ray of light swung in, ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... like these, we turn to the story of Samson's mother, and hear Jehovah directing her to walk before Him in the spirit of consecration, which is to be the life-long spirit of her son. He surely intimates that the child's character begins with, and depends upon, that of the mother. A ray of light and encouragement dawns upon us. True, we are fickle and changeable, and subject to vicissitude; but He, our God, is far above all these shifting scenes, and all the varying circumstances of this mortal life are under his control, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... ray of light shines through a crack in the door of the room.... Swiftly the door opens, a girlish figure appears on the threshold, a lighted lamp in ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... was a preacher, a writ a lawyer, a pill a doctor, a sail a sailor, a sword a soldier, a button a tailor, a nail a carpenter, a hammer a blacksmith, a trowel a stone mason, a pebble a geologist, a flower a botanist, a ray of light an astronomer, and even a word gave him ample suggestion to build up an ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... earthly joy. Cities were bombarded, fields of grain trampled in the mire, villages burned. Famine rioted over its ghastly victims. Hospitals were filled with miserable multitudes, mutilated and with festering wounds, longing for death. Not a ray of light pierced the gloom of this dark, black night of crime and woe. And yet, undeniably, the responsibility before God must rest with the League. Henry IV. was the lawful king of France. The Catholics had risen in arms to resist his rights, because they feared that he would ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... before the dwelling of the commandant; for he knew nothing of the mutiny, nor that all save the sentinels at the gates had been withdrawn. After listening for a moment, and hearing nothing, he made his way to the window from which came the ray of light, and tapped gently upon its shutter. He was compelled to repeat the noise several times before it attracted attention from within. At last he heard the well-known voice of his old tutor, Le Moyne, ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... that with time the uncertainty of the problem will gradually diminish, demonstrating if not what the geminations are, at least what they cannot be. We may also confide a little in what Galileo called "the courtesy of nature," thanks to which a ray of light from an unexpected source will sometimes illuminate an investigation at first believed inaccessible to our speculations, and of which we have a beautiful example in celestial chemistry. Let us therefore ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... for a long ray of light that struggled in between the heavy door and its casing, but as Stella Donovan stood there in the gloom she was aware that she was not the only occupant of the cell. She crouched back, gripped in the hands of another fear, but the next moment her alarm was lessened somewhat ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... last ray of light disappears he is at his easel," said a young student whom a gay escapade had temporarily banished to the fifth floor. "I hear him move now and then and cough. He has a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... birch; and here, where a few tiny holes were not likely to be noticed from the outside, two or three small openings, almost hidden by the moss and dead leaves, let in the air and an occasional ray of light. The big tree made a solid roof overhead, and the chamber was large enough, with a little crowding, to accommodate a whole family ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... were palsied—her tongue quivered—her lips separated yet there came forth no voice, no sound to break the silence of oppressed nature. Her eyes moved mechanically towards the heavens—they were dark as the earth; had God deserted her?—would he deny one ray, one little ray of light, to lead her to her child? Why did the moon cease to shine, and the stars withhold their brightness? Should she never again behold her boy, her first-born? Her heart swelled, and beat within her bosom. She shivered with intense agony, and leaned her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various |
