"Transparency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to her; this, the heart of Paris, had taken full possession of him. The splendid evening seemed to widen the horizon. There were patches of vivid light, and of clearly defined shadow; there was a brightness in the precision of each detail, a transparency in the air, which throbbed with gladness. And the river life, the turmoil of the quays, all the people, streaming along the streets, rolling over the bridges, arriving from every side of that huge cauldron, Paris, steamed there in visible billows, with a quiver ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... if an electric shock had passed through her, and the eyes, wild in their brightness, stared directly at me. And what eyes they were! The membrane grew red and redder until it was of the color of blood, standing out in frightful contrast with the transparency of the cornea. The pupil gradually dilated until it seemed about to burst out of the socket. The nostrils, which had been sunken and motionless, quivered, swelled, and glowed. The respiration became short, quick and gasping. The limp and dripping ears stiffened and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... months. He remembered the face of his own mother dimly through the years; it was a little like what he wanted to see here in the subway. He searched for simplicity, for transparent truth, for depth of spirituality, for meek strength and gentle power. But simplicity in the subway? Guileless transparency of any sort? ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in expiratory valve-like obstruction of a bronchus are those of an acute obstructive emphysema (Fig. 74), namely, 1. Greater transparency on the obstructed side (Iglauer). 2. Displacement of the heart to the free side (Iglauer). 3. Depression and flattening of the dome of the diaphragm on the invaded side (Iglauer). 4. Limitation of the diaphragmatic excursion ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... dog dashed in and tore through the sheet. Where the impact of his body came, the mist bulged in, then broke. For a while there were two sheets, separated by a more or less clearly defined, vertical layer of transparency or maybe blackness rather. The two sheets were in violent commotion, approaching, impinging upon each other, swinging back again to complete separation, and so on. But the violence of the motion consisted by no means in speed: it suggested a very much ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... as his goddess was beautiful. Not merely negroidal, in lips, nose, ears, and tight black wool divided on the absolute equator; not racially but uniquely ugly—till he smiled—and spoke. He smiled and spoke with a joy of soul, a transparency of innocence, a rapture of love, that made his ugliness positively endearing even apart from the entranced recognition ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... furnish scenery of an interesting sort. The historian Laurie, whose book, "The Story of Australasia," is just out, invoices its features with considerable truth and intemperance: "The marvelous picturesqueness of every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply impressed" the early explorers. "If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves floored with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and glass is white." (Color differences are always unsatisfactory in this comparison unless transparency is also mentioned.) "Glass is square and wood is round." "Glass is bigger than wood" (or vice versa). "Wood is oblong and glass is square." "Glass is thin and wood is thick." "Wood is made out of trees and glass out of windows." "There is no glass ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... Dream, on the other hand, there flows a luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have been brought about without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours are of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described resembles those elegant pieces of arabesque, where little genii with butterfly wings rise, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... other hand, Haeckel has recently well shown that the transparency and absence of colour in the lower oceanic animals, belonging to the most different classes, may be well accounted for ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... however, is indifferent; no natural organ is or should be transparent. Transparency is a virtue only in artificial instruments, organs in which no blood flows and whose intrinsic operation is not itself a portion of human life. In looking through a field-glass I do not wish to perceive the lenses nor to see rainbows about ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Unions [Sergei BELKIN]; Kazakhstan International Bureau on Human Rights [Yevgeniy ZHOVTIS, executive director]; Pensioners Movement or Pokoleniye [Irina SAVOSTINA, chairwoman]; Republican Network of International Monitors [Dos KUSHIM]; Transparency International ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... leeward of the lava-river rolling from the lake, they were almost suffocated by the vapour, and it was with difficulty they pursued their advance. The lava was more glassy and had a look of greater transparency, as if it had been fused at an exceptionally high temperature; and the crystals of alum, sulphur, and other minerals with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colours. In some places the transparency was complete, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... some new invalid quality of fussiness, of a pretty and superfluous cluttering that had not been characteristic of Alice's belongings a year ago. Alice, too, wore newly a certain stamp of frailty, her always pure high forehead had a faint transparency and shine that Norma did not remember, and the increasing accumulation of pillows and little bookcases and handsome stands about her suggested that her horizon was closing in, that her world was diminishing to this room, and this ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... hearth. Menials, splendid in apparel, showed their faces with diffidence in thy apartment, trod lightly on thy marble floor, and suffered not the sanctity of silence to be troubled by a whisper. Thy lamp shot its rays through the transparency of alabaster, and thy fragrant lymph flowed from vases of porcelain. Such were formerly the decorations of thy hall, the embellishments ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... their houses, and moved either by enthusiasm or self-interest, they had spent large sums for this purpose. Among the notable illuminations was that of the engineer Chevalier, on the Pont Neuf. There was a transparency in which, amid encircling laurels and myrtles, was to be seen an optician turning his glass up to the sky towards a bright star, around which was this inscription: "In hoc signo salus!"—"In ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... face with both hands and began to sob like a Magdalen. Her hands were, in truth, beautiful, more beautiful even than Don Luis had described them to be in his letters. Their whiteness, their pure transparency, the tapering form of the fingers, the roseate hue, the polish and the brilliancy of the pearl-like nails, all were such as might turn the head of ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Transparency and opacity constitute another contrast of colouring, the former of which belongs to shade and blackness, the latter to light and whiteness. Even contrast has its contrast, for gradations or intermedia are opposed to contrasts or extremes; and, upon the right management ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... season lasts about six weeks, from May into June. Just before it commences a transparency of a goat, drinking from a tall, slender glass, is placed as a sign before certain beer locals, called in Munich dialect bock stalls, not because goats are kept there, but because wonderful beer, called ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... it's my book. But I didn't want Mr. Pellew to bother about bringing it back," with a judicious infusion of enthusiasm that the visitor's efforts to get away should fail. However, the flaw was slight, and no one cared about the transparency of the pretext. Moreover, Maggie, a new importation from the Highlands, thought that her young ladyship, whose beauty had overwhelmed her, was at the bottom of it—not ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... will be noted in the ground glass of the camera that the skin may be seen plainly but the ridge detail is very poor. This difficulty may be due to the poor contrast of the ridges and furrows when using direct lighting. If so, it can be overcome by scraping the skin to transparency and then photographing it by transmitted light (i.e., passing light through the skin). Sometimes, due to the condition of the skin, even though it is tissue thin, it will not be transparent. This can be overcome by soaking the skin ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... of fineness; but when you look into it, you will find that they have always been drawing more and more form within the space, and never finishing for the sake of added texture, but of added fact. And all those effects of transparency and reflected light, aimed at in common chalk drawings, are wholly spurious. For since, as I told you, all lights are shades compared to higher lights, and lights only as compared to lower ones, it follows that there can be no difference ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... low in the sky, a sulky blue cloud. Beneath it, the sea, still unruffled, was of a dense blue that, so it seemed, would have been black altogether but for its transparency and ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to relax his vigour and admit the approaches of the sun, like a playful child whom one could banish at will. A line of white clouds, with purple bases, were drawn about the horizon, standing like anger, as it were, within call. The sky on every side was of that deep transparency seen after many days of rain. The colours of the earth and grass were deepened and intense from the same cause. In many places in the fields, sheets of water showed above the grass, vivid as a wet rock ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... Orloff, "the transparent man," an exhibitionist, showing curious deformity of the long bones and atrophy of the extremities. He derived his name from the remarkable transparency of his deformed members to electric light, due to porosity of the bones and deficiency of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... at whose door we alighted for a moment to obtain a particular point of view, told us that at sunset the mountain assumed a peculiar transparency, with most mysterious hues of blue and purple; so that she had seen irreligious natures, frivolous and light, when suddenly called out to look, stand petrified, or rather exalted above themselves, and irresistibly turning their faces, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The transparency of salt water has long been recognized. Its clarity is believed to exceed that of spring water. The mineral and organic substances it holds in suspension actually increase its translucency. In certain parts of the Caribbean Sea, you can see the sandy bottom with startling distinctness ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... point of contact. She had the Ellwell features, regular, angular, prominent; with her father's high forehead and finely tapering hands, and also her father's thin unwholesome skin. But instead of the livid tan complexion of the man who had beaten about the years of his life, the woman's pinkish transparency likened her again to the water-lily of the Middleton ponds. Her sister Ruby was more striking, much in the florid style of her brother. While she was young, she would be delicate enough to carry this kind ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... shining gloriously on his brow. Miss Melville stood near him, talking with great animation, emphasizing her words with quick, decided gesticulation, while he seemed a passive listener. I had seen handsomer gentlemen, perhaps,—but never one so perfectly elegant and refined in appearance. The pale transparency of his complexion had the purity and delicacy of alabaster without its whiteness, seen by ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... cheesemonger at the top of Great Queen Street displayed a transparency on which he had inscribed the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the temptation of that moment! He saw the whole truth instantaneously, that she was lost to him unless he came unreservedly to her position. In that brief moment her face had become an exquisite transparency illumined with an assurance of hope. He had an instinctive conviction that even if he admitted that he had spoken the words, yet would add, "Mara, I am won at last to accept your view of right and duty," all obstacles between them would speedily ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... of glass. This was so surprising in itself that when Davy presently discovered that he was made of beautiful, clear lemon candy, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, as explaining his transparency. He was neatly dressed in a sort of tunic of writing-paper, with a cocked hat of the same material, and he had under his arm a large book, with the words "HOLE-KEEPER'S VACUUM" printed on the cover. ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... Tyrian garment woven by poets and thinkers out of words and phrases for the clothing and adornment of the mind; and the strength and fineness of the tissue, together with its beauties of color, depend on the purity and precision, the transparency and directness of its threads, which ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... have said that Bosio was a handsome man, for he photographed well, as the phrase goes. His clear, pale complexion, his well-cut, refined features, his smooth, thick, silky hair looked singularly well against the smoked background, and had at once the strength and the transparency which make a good photograph by adding an illusion of relief to the flatness of mere outline and light and shade. Probably the likeness was flattered. But Veronica did not think so just then, coming as she did from a disillusionment which had affected her more strongly than she knew. She compared ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... FROSTED TREES, the most astonishing and brilliant that I ever remember to have noticed. The previous storm and mist had thickly covered every exposed object,—the loftiest trees, the minutest blade, hill and dale, with the icy garment. This transparency was most perfect, defining every form and ramification into exact models of the entire body, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... frying, keep pouring some of the fat over them with a spoon; when the yelk just begins to look white, which it will in about a couple of minutes, they are done enough; the white must not lose its transparency, but the yelk be seen blushing through it: if they are done nicely, they will look as white and delicate as if they had been poached; take them up with a tin slice, drain the fat from them, trim them neatly, and send them up with the bacon ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... tortuous vicoletto, lighted only by a single lamp burning in the niche of a Madonna. The purity and transparency of the air gave a celestial softness and clearness to the very darkness itself; and one could find one's way without difficulty under such a limpid night. But in a little while we began to pass through a "venella," ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... business investment, increase efficiency in agriculture, improve trade, and recapitalize the nation's banks. In June 2000, the government completed an IMF-sponsored, three-year structural adjustment program; however, the IMF is pressing for more reforms, including increased budget transparency and privatization. Higher oil prices in 2000 helped to offset the country's lower cocoa export revenues. A rebound in the cocoa market should increase growth to ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... yellows, and gave them depth by glazing over with the same; and we are pretty much of Wilson's mind, who, when told of a new brown, said "I am sorry for it." Very many of our modern pictures are ruined by the violent contrasts of the asphaltum and similar browns with less obtrusive pigments. The very transparency is, in our eyes, an objection. Asphaltum, for instance, besides that it is a changeable and never thoroughly drying pigment, is too transparent for depth. It was a mistake of Gainsborough when he said ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... allow astronomers to make complete observations on the lunar surface, the terrestrial atmosphere should possess a transparency seventy times greater than its present power of transmission. But in the void through which the Projectile was now floating, no fluid whatever interposed between the eye of the observer and the object observed. Besides, the travellers now found ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... in seeing how completely the workman is master of the particular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting, its unctuous quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rugged ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... setting sun, admitted through the window of a back room, shot obliquely through the open door, and lighting on the chair, shone with a dull transparency ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... The transparency and ingenuousness, in a way, of that delusion, the airy tone, the hint of already growing pride, were perfectly delicious. But, in truth, this was one of the greatest surprises ever sprung by the clearing up mood of the West Wind upon one of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... up to a good light, are seen to be downy and of ice-like transparency; they are of a delicate, pale, violet colour, and a little more than an inch in diameter, produced on stems 3in. to 4in. high, which are nearly red, and furnished with numerous hairs; otherwise the flower stems are nude, seldom more than two flowers, and oftener ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... Drummond: not recognizable by his friends; his features resembling a transparency disfigured by the smoke of the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... zouave knickerbockers. Their torches were encased in fantastic glass lanterns alternately red, white, and blue. On the occasion of their first parade, when they drew up before the house to receive their transparency, adorned on one side with a villainous portrait of myself superscribed by the motto, "Our Fathers Fought For Freedom, We Are Fighting For The Right," and on the other a cut depicting the rival candidate up to his ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness of borrowed wealth; no tracery-work from worm-eaten manuscripts, from forgotten chronicles, nor piecing out of vague traditions with fragments and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy, staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish the daubing of the painter from the light that shines through the flimsy colours and gives them brilliancy. Here all is clearly made out with strokes of the pencil, by fair, not by factitious means. Our author takes a given subject from nature or from books, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the blind half way. I examined the old man attentively. There was no doubt about the curious pallor of his skin. It was like the pallor of extreme collapse, save for the presence of a faint colour in his cheeks which seemed to lie as a bright transparency over a dead background. My fingers again sought his pulse. It was full and steady. As I counted it my eyes rested on ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... indeed a fearful change; sometimes the conjunctiva is highly injected; at other times it is scarcely affected, hut the eyes have an unusually bright and dazzling appearance. They are like two balls of fire, and there is a peculiar transparency of the hyaloid membrane, or injection ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... cheeks to thin locked lips. Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter landscape, enjoyable in pictures, or on skates, otherwise nipping. . . . Mental directness, of no greater breadth than her principal feature, was the character it expressed; and candour of spirit shone through the transparency she was, if that mild taper could be said to shine in proof of a vitality rarely notified to the outer world by the opening of her mouth; chiefly then, though not malevolently to command: as the portal of some snow-bound monastery opens to the outcast, bidding it be known that the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her. Her face was shell-like in its clear fairness and transparency, and the beautiful expressive eyebrows drawn delicately on the white forehead appealed ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... these,—above all. They look like frozen sky. Or one might fancy that a vast heart or core of amethyst was deeply overlaid with colorless crystal, and shone through with a softened, lucent ray. Such transparency, such intense delicacy, such refinement of hue! Sometimes, too, there is seen in the deep hollows, between the lofty billows of blue, a purple that were fit to clothe the royalty of immortal kings, while the blue itself is flecked as it were with a spray of white light, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... actually thought again of the telegram), and actually caught the hat with his feet. A prolonged and piercing yell of wind split the welkin from end to end. The eyes of all the men were blinded by the invisible blast, as by a strange, clear cataract of transparency rushing between them and all objects about them. But as the large man fell back in a sitting posture and solemnly crowned himself with the hat, Michael found, to his incredulous surprise, that he had been holding his breath, like a man ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of rare and beautiful plants, we are indebted for most of our Ixias, and among others for the present species, which though not of that value, nor possessing the delicacy or fragrance of the blossoms of some others, is a very desirable plant, not only as an object of curiosity, from the transparency of the base of the corolla, but as it adds much to the brilliancy of a collection, is easily obtained, ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... behind-hand in gold or silver work, which is generally heavy and tasteless; but then again, they have attained great celebrity by their porcelain, which is remarkable not only for its size, but for its transparency. It is true that vases and other vessels four feet high are neither light nor transparent; but cups and other small objects can only be compared to glass for fineness and transparency. The colours on them are very vivid, but the drawings very stiff ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... and even 'the rough places will be made smooth, and the crooked things will be made straight,' and distasteful work will be made at least tolerable, and hard burdens will be lightened, and the things that are 'seen and temporal' will shimmer into transparency, through which will shine out the things that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... sought to accumulate the most exquisite specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates, and stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and "running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java; elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair blue silks, and wrought with fleurs de lys, birds, and images; veils of lacis worked in Hungary ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... blood were not decomposed, but simply collected in the capillary vessels of the skin and subjacent tissues, where they still preserved their proper color, and could be seen more easily than otherwise on account of the semi-transparency of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of her gracious manner, and evident consciousness of her own condescension, the winsomeness of the dancing eyes fascinated Cherry at once. Indeed, the simplicity and transparency of her little dignities disarmed all displeasure, they were so childish; and they vanished in a moment in a game at play with Bernard and Stella. When Wilmet brought out Geraldine's portfolio, her admiration ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I have not the remotest idea of how or why we confronted Nelson and the Lions, I cannot by any effort of memory see us arriving or leaving; but I see myself pausing in my lecture on English history, as a lighted transparency, a straggling crowd and a band bear down upon us suddenly out of nowhere. It is a poor, vicious sort of crowd, the gutter-sweepings of London; pale, stunted lads, haggard, idle slatterns, a handful of women of the street, a trio of tawdry flower girls. Around ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... stumped a chunky woman, crowding fifty. She was in a worse state of dishabille. She hadn't quite made it to bed and was still in her slip. Her stockings had been unhitched from her garters and hung in slack transparency around her fat calves, like the ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... light, fleeting touch upon his life. He had never mentioned Miss Gossamer to Piney in all their mutual experience, yet the tramp-boy was constantly skirmishing up from afar with a generalisation, like a high-held transparency, that illuminated Miss Gossamer's memory for Bruce. Three hypotheses had presented to Bruce in the way of explanation: one, that he himself was possessed by a little embarrassed consciousness that he should have had any past at all in view of the present; another, that Miss Sally Madeira ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... of those elaborate paper transparencies which delighted our grandmothers, illuminated from within so as to present a charming tinted picture with varying degrees of shadow and of light. Voltaire was able to make the transparency, but he never could light the candle; and the only result of his efforts was some sticky pieces of paper, cut into curious shapes, and roughly daubed with colour. To take only one instance, his diction is the very echo of Racine's. There are the same pompous phrases, the same inversions, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... float, were drifting about, and, together with a very active, silvery-blue Idotea, half an inch long, prayed upon the Velellae. At another time, among many other pelagic crustacea, we obtained three kinds of Erichthus, a genus remarkable for the glassy transparency of its species, also Hyalaea inflexa and H. tridentata, curious pteropodous molluscs which ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... act so?" I said, half to myself, as we drove on, and father stopped shaking with laughter. "There isn't the slightest reason why they should not go to walk together; why do they manoeuvre with all the transparency of ostriches?" ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... evidently no intention of saluting the monarch; and Sir Roger de Launay gazed at her in mingled surprise and admiration. She was certainly wonderfully beautiful. Her complexion had the soft clear transparency of a pink sea-shell—her eyes, large and lustrous, were as densely blue as the dark azure in the depths of a wave,—and her hair, of a warm bronze chestnut, caught back with a single band of red coral, seemed to have gathered in its rich curling clusters ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... surveyed the churches and the palaces, Corinne conducted Oswald to the villa Mellini, a solitary garden, without any other ornament than its magnificent trees. From here is seen, at a distance, the chain of the Appenines; the transparency of the air colours these mountains and throws them forward in the perspective, giving them a most picturesque appearance. Oswald and Corinne remained in this spot to enjoy the charms of the sky and the tranquillity of nature. It is impossible to form an idea of this singular ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... nature, and of its Author, as the muddy water of a torrent which has ravaged the plains, coming to rest, and diffusing itself over some low grounds out of its course, deposits there the slime it has taken up, and, resuming its wonted transparency, reflects, with its own shores, the verdure of the earth and the light of heaven. Thus does solitude recruit the powers of the body as well as those of the mind. It is among hermits that are found the men who carry human existence to ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... river Nile lost its transparency four days before the army reached Sennaar. The day that presents the river troubled, marks the commencement of its augmentation. The day before we observed this change in the Nile, its waters ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... are considered the best, on account of their transparency and exceeding strength. Most frequently each string is made up of two or three separate strands, twisted together with the utmost care. But there is another use of the greatest value, and that is as a thread for sewing up wounds in internal surgery, because, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... of height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardily be seen without delight. From ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is a kind of fine dust, or something like that, which dims the bark; but, when you put on oil or varnish, there is a sort of transparency given to the outside coating, which brings the natural color of the bark fully ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... answered the bell, and Roger requested him to remove the things from the table. The man left the room, and did not return. Roger therefore cleared and moved the table himself, and with difficulty got the bust upon it. Finding then several stains upon the pure half transparency of the marble, he rang the bell for a basin of water and a sponge. Another man appeared, looked into the room, and went away. He rang once more, and yet another servant came. This last condescended to hear him; and, informing him that he could get what he wanted in ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... remarked how very much Pauline resembled him. True, he was pale, and she was a very Hebe, but the dazzling transparency of the complexion was the same, the silky, nut-brown hair the same, and the classical chiseling of mouth and nose identical. Her eyes were "deeply, darkly," matchlessly blue, and his were hazel; her features were quivering ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... discovered by Father Jacques, who passed through it in 1646, on his way to the Iroquois, by whom he was afterward tortured and burned. It is thirty-six miles long by three miles broad. Its elevation is two hundred and forty-three feet above the sea. The waters are of remarkable transparency; romantic islands dot its surface, and elegant villas line its shores. Fort William Henry and Ticonderoga, situated at either end of the lake, were the salients respectively of the two most powerful nations upon the globe. France and England sent ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... see any analogy between aquosity and that condition of matter we call vital or living. Aquosity is not an activity, it is a property, the property of wetness; viscosity is a term to describe other conditions of matter; solidity, to describe still another condition; and opacity and transparency, to describe still others—as they affect another of our senses. But the vital activity in matter is a concrete reality. With it there goes the organizing tendency or impulse, and upon it hinges the whole evolutionary ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... there, in the golden radiance of the summer noon, she presented an almost faultless specimen of a type of beauty that is rarely found nowaday, that has always been peculiar, and bids fair to become extinct. A complexion of dazzling whiteness and transparency, rendered more intensely pure by contrast with luxuriant silky hair of the deepest black,—and large superbly shaped eyes of clear, dark steel blue, almost violet in hue,—with delicately arched brows and very long ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... graceful and winning in bearing and manner, and with great claim to personal beauty. Her figure was tall, slender, and as flexible in movement as that of a Delsarte disciple; her face, framed in dark hair and lighted by luminous blue eyes, had the transparency and rose-flush of tint so often seen in New England, and she was magnetic, earnest, impassioned. No photographs can do the least justice to Mrs. Eddy, as her beautiful complexion and changeful expression cannot thus be reproduced. At once one would perceive that ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... and west, the peaks of the Appenines are in full sight, rising over the spires of the city and the groves of the Cascine. Every evening I see them through the soft, delicately-colored haze of an Italian sunset, looking as if they had caught something of the transparency of the sky, and appearing like mountains of fairy-land, instead of the bleak and barren ridges of rock which they really are. The weather since my arrival in Tuscany has been continually serene, the sky wholly cloudless, and the temperature uniform—oppressively warm in the streets at ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... high-strung creature she rode. Thirty- eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did not look twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a girl, with all the delicate, fine-pored and thin transparency of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... it; and, secondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams of light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little pebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves; in the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation: in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an instrument known to artists as the "stump." When you can manage ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the surface of the water. It is considered a great delicacy and must be fished for in the early morning before the sun touches the water and releases the spawn, which instantly begin to feed and lose their rare transparency.] ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... connection with that of her mamma, seemed like a great basket of roses when all her friends assembled there, seated on low chairs in unstudied attitudes: the white rose of the group was Mademoiselle d'Etaples, a specimen of pale and pensive beauty, frail almost to transparency; the Rose of Bengal was the charming Colette Odinska, a girl of Polish race, but born in Paris; the dark-red rose was Isabelle Ray-Belle she was called triumphantly—whose dimpled cheeks flushed scarlet for almost any cause, some said for very coquetry. Then there were three little girls called ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that one continually variegated aspect presents itself to the view. In this earth, being such, all things that grow grow in a manner proportioned to its nature—trees, flowers, and fruits; and again, in like manner, its mountains and stones possess, in the same proportion, smoothness and transparency and more beautiful colors; of which the well-known stones here that are so highly prized are but fragments, such as sardin-stones, jaspers, and emeralds, and all of that kind. But there, there is nothing subsists that is not of this character, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... still among the wineberries, for a minute or two, and, though a cold green transparency had replaced the fires of sunset behind the tall trunks now, and the trout were splashing furiously in the pool, he forgot all about the rod beside him as he pondered over a question which had ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked Than water interfused to make them one. Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, Illumined every side. A watery light Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed Another moon new-risen, or meteor fallen From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene. So stood the brittle prodigy, though smooth And slippery the materials, yet frost-bound Firm as a rock. Nor ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the beauty of form, the grandeur and simplicity of the figures, the richness of the vegetation (though not luxuriant like that of a more southern region), the precision of the outlines in the clear air and the beauty of the colors in their transparency—so the enjoyment of nature is here a purely artistic one, free from everything distracting. Everywhere else the ideas of contrast appear and the enjoyment of nature is elegiac or satiric. It is true that these sentiments exist only for us. To Horace, Tibur seemed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... much miss him. Yes, they were very happy. They went to the opera often of evenings—to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the German towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and knits stockings on the one side, over against the bourgeoisie on the other; and His Transparency the Duke and his Transparent family, all very fat and good-natured, come and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit is full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-coloured mustachios, and twopence a day on full pay. Here it was that Emmy found her delight, and was ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shoulder, as he chose. He used his arms as easily at night as during the day. I was told this feat of his skill, which will, perhaps, seem impossible to those who have not travelled in Corsica. A lighted candle was placed at eighty paces, behind a paper transparency about the size of a plate. He would take aim, then the candle would be extinguished, and, at the end of a moment, in the most complete darkness, he would fire and hit the paper ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... The transparency of the atmosphere upon the Plains is such that objects can be seen at great distances; a mountain, for example, presents a distinct and bold outline at fifty or sixty miles, and may occasionally be seen as far ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... direction of the rickety cabin in the hollow there, but toward the "Lame Gulch Opera House." This temple of the muses was easily discoverable, being situated in the main street of the town, and marked by a long transparency projecting above the door, upon which the luminous inscription, "Opera ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... excellent transparency, also shown at the Theatre, and at the corner, near the Fly-Market: In short, emulation and ingenuity were alive; but perhaps were in no instance exhibited to greater advantage than in the display of fireworks, which, from one ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... adherent of the Potts faction. Alfred's father was just as strong for Patton. The father was well disposed toward Albert but he was very much disgusted with Albert's fondness for torch-light processions, particularly when Albert bore a transparency on which was painted, in crude letters, a motto ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... specimens of rich brocades and silks; of their famous lacquered ware, such as chow-chow boxes, tables, trays, and goblets, all skilfully wrought and finished with an exquisite polish; of porcelain cups of wonderful lightness and transparency, adorned with figures and flowers in gold and variegated colors, and exhibiting a workmanship that surpassed even that of the ware for which the Chinese are remarkable. Fans, pipe-cases, and articles of apparel in ordinary use, of no great value but of exceeding ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Athens to be the seat of sages, because, enriched with an air of the greatest purity, it prepared with glad liberality the lucid intellects of its sons for the contemplative part of life. Assuredly for the body to imbibe muddy waters is a different thing from sucking in the transparency of a sweet fountain. Even so the vigour of the mind is repressed when it is clogged by a heavy atmosphere. Nature herself hath made us subject to these influences. Clouds make us feel sad; and again a bright sky fills us with joy, because the heavenly substance of the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... mysterious, sublime, and infinite! withdrawing from our eyes the veil spread above us by the light of day, giving back transparency to the Heavens, showing us the prodigious reality, the shining casket of the celestial diamonds, the innumerable stars that succeed each other interminably in immeasurable space! Without Night we should know nothing. Without it our eyes would ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... in and out among his hopelessly disorganized thoughts. Terror flashed, but with it flashed also wonder and delight—the audacity of unreflecting courage—and more—even a breathless worship of the powers, knowledge and forces that lifted for him in that little bedroom the vast Transparency that ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... and at the top of each light, under the cusping, was a coat of arms. The head of the middle division formed the centre of the whole scheme, and seemed to represent a shield of silver-white crossed by waving sea-green bars. Westray's attention was attracted by the unusual colouring, and by the transparency of the glass, which shone as with some innate radiance where all was dim. He turned almost unconsciously to ask whose arms were thus represented, but the Rector had left him for a minute, and he heard an irritating "Ha, ha, ha!" at some distance down the nave, that convinced ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... known as the transfer process. In this process a reversed photographic negative is made from the copy, from which a positive or "transparency" is made, either by contact or in the camera. A piece of carbon paper is then coated lightly with gelatine, sensitized with bichromate of potassium and allowed to dry. The paper is then placed in contact with ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... moustache, and smiled at her in tender amusement, as she sat up in a much lace and ribbon befrilled jacket, her hair hanging down in a heavy plait on either side the white column of her warmly white throat. Her face was refined to a transparency of colouring, even as it seemed of texture, from confinement to the house and from lassitude following upon fever, which, while he recognized its loveliness, caused him a pretty sharp pang. Still she looked content, as he told himself. Her glance was frank and calm, without ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... enquired concerning the spot where he had been deposited. Her features had lost the distortion of grief; her eyes were brightened, her very person seemed dilated; while the excessive whiteness and even transparency of her skin, and something hollow in her voice, bore witness that not tranquillity, but excess of excitement, occasioned the treacherous calm that settled on her countenance. I asked her where he should be buried. She replied, "At Athens; even at the Athens which he loved. Without the town, on ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... contemplative expression which irradiates the features of the elect is again visible in our painter's figures. In the colouring of both, vivacity is combined with softness, and vigour of chiaro-scuro goes together with transparency of tint. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... more level. There were considerable sections where the forest had entirely disappeared. The extended fields, inviting the plough, waved with luxuriant grass. It was truly a delightful region. The climate was salubrious; the atmosphere in cloudless transparency rivalled ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... to prove the clearness of our mind is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency of the water.—Pope. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... of shrugs executed by perfect shoulders beneath a gown of cynical transparency. Lanyard was aware that the violet eyes, large with apprehension, flashed transiently his way, as if in hope that he might submit some helpful suggestion. But he had none to offer. If the manner in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... for the day without a cloud. At last they ceased, and after a brief interval we found ourselves where we were before they began, with no more knowledge of the mystical, and no less love to the simplicity of truth spoken in words of plain meaning and thoughts of undisguised transparency. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... lies the bustling frontier city. You wonder to see glistening dome and spire far out there under the very shadow of the Rockies. At least you would have wondered a decade ago in the Centennial year. You note the transparency of the atmosphere. Science has told you that at such an altitude the air is rarefied. There is no light haze to soften outlines and to lend enchantment to a distant view. Roof, spire, chimney, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... out of bed as the crashing almost split their eardrums; and good women of the village, their hair still down and in wrappers hastily thrown on, went out on the sidewalk in front of their doors to see what was going on. The bluish transparency of dawn was barely gilded with the rays of the still invisible sun. But the "Jews of Jerusalem" were on a rampage, banging their harsh cymbals together as they marched along the streets. One would have thought the Calendar had suddenly gone mad and transported Carnival to Easter week. The ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in the interior and at the top of the building, windowless but lighted by a huge double skylight each half of which must have been some eight or ten feet across. The light falling through this skylight passed through plate glass of marvellous transparency. One looked up at the sky as ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... requisite which can only be insured by careful gauging. In selecting the E string, choose those that are most transparent; the seconds and thirds, as they are made with several threads, are seldom very clear. The firsts never have more than a few threads in them, and hence, absence of transparency in their case denotes inferior material. Before putting on the first string, in particular, in order to test its purity it will be well to follow Le Roy's advice, which is to hold between the fingers of each hand a portion of the string sufficient to stretch from the bridge to the nut, and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... upon Isabel in the little upstairs parlour, or her bedroom, and question her minutely about her ways and ideas; and she would look at her silently for a minute or two together; and then suddenly laugh and kiss her—Isabel's transparency was almost as great a riddle to her as her own obscurity to Isabel. And sometimes she would throw herself on Isabel's bed, and lie there with her arms behind her head, to the deplorable ruin of her ruff; with her buckled feet twitching ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... fortresses, dungeons and temples. In a word, even the Alps, with all their peculiar grandeur, and certainly on a scale so vastly more enlarged, possess no one aspect that is so remarkable for its resemblance to the labours of man, composed of a material of the most beautiful transparency, and considered as the results of human ingenuity, on a scale so gigantic. The glaciers have often been likened, and not unjustly, to a frozen sea; but here were congealed mountains seemingly hewed into all the forms of art, not by the chisel it is ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... distrust. He distrusted himself enough. It was as though he carried about with him wounds that only Eleanor's soft touch could be allowed to approach. And from the first evening he had very naturally divined in this Yankee girl, with her mingled reserve and transparency, her sturdy Protestantisms of all sorts, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... umbrella are often most lovely, and present an astonishing variety. As an example of the beauty which they sometimes display, we may refer to a species which resembles an exquisitely formed glass-shade, ornamented with a waved and tinted fringe. The most perfect grace of form, the transparency of the crystal, and colour as delicate as that of the flower, combine to render this frail being one of the loveliest of ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... day when at Ajaccio he attended a performance of "Norma," in which the moon was represented by a round transparent disc, lit from behind by a lantern hanging at the end of a string, whose oscillation revealed by turns first the luminary and then the transparency. This was enough to disgust him for ever with the theatre and the opera, whose motionless choruses, contrasting with the sometimes frantic movement of the music, left him with a memory of an ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... lines perpendicular to the refracting edge of the prism, such as are produced in the field of an ordinary spectroscope by particles of dust upon the slit. In the present case, these lines may be due to variations in the transparency of the air during the time of exposure, or to instrumental causes, such as irregular running of the driving clock, or slight changes in the motion of the telescope, resulting from the manner in which its polar axis ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... that the colour of the Greenland Sea varies from ultramarine blue to olive-green, from the purest transparency to striking opacity; and that these colours are permanent, and do not depend on the state of the weather, but on the quality of the water. He observed that whales were found in much greater numbers in the green than ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the animal. On the upper side of the body, but alternating in position with these curtains, are the four ovaries, crescent-like in shape, and so placed as to form the figure of a cross, when seen from above through the transparency of the disk. I should add, that, though I speak of some organs as being on the upper and others on the lower side of the body, all are under the convex, arched surface of the disk, which is gelatinous throughout, and simply forms a transparent vaulted roof, as it were, above the rest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and like a strange vision, out from the undulating ripples rose slowly a creature more fantastic than the boy's wildest dreams. The head was green, with large unwinking, glittering eyes. In slow contortions, the body, of a transparency that showed the light through, writhed like a tremendous ribbon-snake, and a sharp row of serrated fins surmounted all its length, from which, near the head, scarlet streamers floated like a mane. A moment thus it held its head erect, then sank below the surface. The ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler |
