"Darkness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inch of the way, if her mother would have let her. To her eyes the novel strangeness of the scene was entrancing. Not beautiful, certainly; not beautiful yet; by mist and rain and darkness how should it be? but she relished the novelty. The charmed stillness pleased her; the gliding gondolas; the but half revealed houses and palaces; the odd conveyance in which she herself was seated; ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... way to the door of his wife's dressing-room. It was in darkness; and, so far as he could judge by ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... methods were secrets sprung upon them. All their own methods were new things made out of nothing. They wondered alike what would be done on the other side and what could be done on their own side; every movement against them was a stab out of the darkness and every movement they made was a leap in the dark. First, on the one side, we have Tancred trying to take the whole fortified city by climbing up a single slender ladder, as if a man tried to lasso the peak of a mountain. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... closed, and every cabin has its iron deadlight down. After 7 o'clock dinner all the electric lights in the whole ship are switched off, which is quite unnecessary; on the "Transylvania" we got absolute darkness without such drastic measures. You have to go to bed in the dark, no candles being allowed, the only lights being an oily lamp in the smoking-room, and one in ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... damn," said Fuselli boisterously; but as he lay staring into the darkness, cold terror stiffened him suddenly. He thought for a moment of deserting, pretending he was sick, anything to keep from going ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... one hurry over and tell 'em that it's time to hustle on to the field and take their medicine," urged Hi. "We don't want to have the game called for darkness before ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... now regard the cantor house, which was quickly gained, as his own. Though it was now in the deepest darkness, he gazed up at the high, narrow building, with the pointed arches of the windows and the bracket which supported the image of St. Cecilia carved from sandstone, as intently as if he could distinguish every defect in the windows, every ornament carved in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... defiance, beaten down and overwhelmed by the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if the picture, while hidden behind the cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time acquiring an intenser depth and darkness of expression, till now it gloomed forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present hour. Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the portrait of Edward Randolph, as he appeared when a people's curse had wrought ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a case. Along comes Dave before daybreak, when the first hooters were beginning to call. Just as he reaches your ranch he notices a horse slipping away in the darkness. Perhaps he hears the little girl cry out. Anyhow, instead of turning in at the gate, he decides to follow. Probably he isn't sure there's anything wrong, but when he finds out how the horse he's after is burning the wind ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... conditions, at a depth of some twenty feet in water, the view becomes exceedingly blurred, but here the waters seemed to be impregnated with a luminous fluid, and Benito was able to descend still lower without the darkness concealing the ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... Splendiano showed the way with his miserable little bit of torch, which only burned with difficulty, and even then in a feeble sort of a way, so that the wretched light it cast merely served to reveal to them the thick darkness of ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... natural period for maturing, so has love. At engagement you have merely selected, so that your familiarity should be only intellectual, not affectional. You are yet more acquaintances than companions. As sun changes from midnight darkness into noonday brilliancy, and heats, lights up, and warms gradually, and as summer "lingers in the lap of spring;" so marriage should dally in the lap of courtship. Nature's adolescence of love should never ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... darkness when she remembered that Dr. Harpe had taunted her with having displayed her love to all the town. She no longer made any attempt to conceal it from herself, the sure knowledge had come with Van ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... his author. His long letter concludes not inappropriately with these words: "I have just observed, although certainly rather late, that I have written a letter full of shadows, and instead of lighting a torch to illuminate the darkness, have, I fear, only deepened the gloom. Should this be the case, the reader at any rate will not withhold from me the praise of having preserved the ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... woman's enthusiastic fancy: but in truth it was everything to me. After vespers the holy man was able to give me an hour in the church, and verily it was the opening of new life to me. Since my light had been taken from me, all had been utter desolate darkness before me. He put a fresh light before me, which now, after fifty years, I know to have been the dawn of better sunshine than even that which had brightened my youth—and I thank my good God, who has never let me entirely lose sight ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... still sleeping when the first straggling feeble rays of dawn began to creep through the darkness. Diana stood at the door of the van and looked anxiously at the sunrise. Her experienced eye soon saw that it was going to be a fine day, and she gave a sigh of relief. She was still dressed as she had been ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... silence, and well there might be. The one lamp, twinkling faintly against the wall, did but make darkness visible, and revealed the horror of this dismal scene. The weary hours began to crawl away, marked only by Hope's watch, for in this living tomb summer was winter, and day ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... brainless and wholly bloodless teachers whose doctrine he himself on the one hand, and Luther on the other, arose together to smite severally—to smite them hip and thigh, even till the going down of the sun; the mock sun or marshy meteor that served only to deepen the darkness encompassing on every side the doubly dark ages—the ages of monarchy and theocracy, the ages of death and of faith. To Panurge, therefore, it was unnecessary and it might have seemed inconsequent to attribute other gifts or functions ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... are devoted to the religious rites only, are in a deep gloom, but those who are given up to fruitless meditations are in a still greater darkness. ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... the water, or the sound of the whispering breeze in the leaves. Then, coming back from these sweet recollections to reality, she shed tears, and called on her husband and son. So deep was her reverie that she did not hear the room door open, did not perceive that darkness had come on. The light of a candle, dispersing the shadows, made her start; she turned her head, and saw Derues coming towards her. He smiled, and she made an effort to keep back the tears which were shining in her eyes, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... silence for a minute and the light of the Talking Cricket disappeared suddenly, just as if someone had snuffed it out. Once again the road was plunged in darkness. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... quiet and obscure in their origin. As the magnificent forest was slowly and obscurely germinated in darkness, in the seeds from which it sprung, so are the great discoveries in science and philosophy matured in quietness and obscurity. The thinker hears afar the sound of strife and the agitation of parties warring for power. He knows the follies and errors that agitate mankind, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... each other so well and had no divided interests; it always seems to me that a sister ought to dwell in the heart of a brother and keep it warm for that other and sacred love that must come by-and-by; not that the wife need drive the sister into outer darkness, but that there must be a humbler abiding in the outer court, perchance a little guest-chamber on the wall; the nearer and more royal abode must be for the ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... after a century of modern factory industry are at length beginning to have some definite ideas regarding industrial training for boys who are to supply the human element in the factory scheme. (Regarding girls, they still grope in outer darkness.) ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night. As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... degenerated into a mere sheep track, was increasingly difficult to trace. Though neither would admit it, both the girls felt uneasy. They could not recognize any familiar landmarks to show them their whereabouts. Suppose darkness came on, and found them still ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... modern epic poems. We are not sure that this is not in some degree to be attributed to his want of sight. The imagination is notoriously most active when the external world is shut out. In sleep its illusions are perfect. They produce all the effect of realities. In darkness its visions are always more distinct than in the light. Every person who amuses himself with what is called building castles in the air must have experienced this. We know artists who, before they attempt to draw ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gentle gaiety ought to prevail in the priest's house. Gaiety is the mark of a pure heart and a quiet conscience. Where there is hatred and division there is more room for the spirit of darkness. Our Saviour has said: "Every house ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... who under-stood not a word of Tappy's speech. "Approach! I think I've been insulted!" He drew his sword and glared angrily through the darkness, and Tappy, having backed as far as possible, fell heels over pigtail into the silver fountain. At the loud splash, Dorothy hastened ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... one of them sit up part of the night, and keep an eye on Tom's berth. This was agreed to, and they divided the hours of darkness into watches, each one taking a turn at guarding the precious map. But they might have spared themselves the trouble, for no further attempt was made ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... Darkness had not fully come when it became clear to the watchers within the building that something unusual was going on among the Sioux outside. Nearly the entire party came together on the crest of the ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... Kelt?" she continued, laughing in the darkness. "But it doesn't matter. Whichever you are, you will have to listen to me. I love this place. I love Shropshire. I hate London. I am glad that this will be my home. Ah, dear"—she was now moving back towards the house—"what ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... seemed to tower to the very skies. Thomas was not fond of waiting, but he thought that he had the best of it in this case: it was more cheerful to sit in the carriage and "flick" the flies from Rex and Regina than to go poking about in the gloomy pine-woods. Yet, notwithstanding the darkness of its interior and the sombre character of its dense masses of evergreen foliage as seen from without—whence the name of "black timber," which has been applied to it—the shade and shelter it affords and the sentiment of grandeur it inspires cause it to become allied with the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... with her living freight On to the foe she came, And the rifles snapped their hate, And the darkness ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... hospitable shore, and rejoined her husband at Santon in the duchy of Cleves. From this town, however, they were soon chased by the imminent apprehension of molestation from the bishop of Arras. It was on an October evening that, followed only by two maid-servants, on foot, through rain and mire and darkness, Bertie carrying a bundle and the duchess her child, the forlorn wanderers began their march for Wesel one of the Hanse-towns, about four miles distant. On their arrival, their wild and wretched appearance, with the sword which Bertie carried, gave them in the eyes of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... upon his bed of rocks. The sun had gone down, and the darkness gathered over him; but no one appeared to render him any assistance. The blow had been a heavy one, and the blood ran down the back of his head from the ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... afternoon of the next day the destroyer Racoon took off Brigade and Regimental Headquarters with A and B companies, followed by the sweeper Whitby Abbey, with C and D companies under Major Jowitt. Singing and cheering we passed down the long line of shipping to the harbour mouth, then into darkness and silence, bound at last to meet ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... step, a blow. . . . Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And has the nature of infinity. Yet through that darkness (infinite though it seem And irremoveable) gracious openings lie. . . . Even to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... a heavy escort. Instead he decided on the easier and usual method of travel by boat, and so set out in his sloop with forty armed men. On June 6, when they came abreast Jamestown, they were fired on by the guns of the fort. So they turned about and sailed further up the river. With the coming of darkness Bacon, with twenty of his men, rowed ashore, and held a long conference with Richard Lawrence and William Drummond, Berkeley's inveterate enemies. It is obvious that Bacon had known these men before. It is even possible that he had boarded at Mrs. Lawrence's ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... in a pitiful tone, "Sister," says he, "I have heard you say that when anything troubles you, of all things you apprehend going to bed, because there it increases upon you, and you lie at the mercy of all your sad thought, which the silence and darkness of the night adds a horror to; I am at that pass now. I vow to God I would not endure another night like the last to gain a crown." I, who resolved to take no notice what ailed him, said 'twas a knowledge I had raised from my spleen only, and so fell into a discourse of melancholy and ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... the traveller spoke to himself at his window in the morning, as he had spoken to himself at the Junction overnight. And as he had then looked in the darkness, a man who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected fire: so he now looked in the sun-light, an ashier grey, like a fire which the brightness of the sun ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... of his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... duties. A sort of instinct kept all his nerves and senses strained, detecting anything that might furnish information, and, although night had closed in, he found he was able to distinguish many things that he would not have thought possible in such darkness. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... might persuade thee; but now all that I have I give, even these tears. O my father, I am thy child; slay me not before my time. This light is sweet to look upon. Drive me not from it to the land of darkness. I was the first to call thee father; and the first to whom thou didst say 'my child.' And thou wouldst say to me, 'Some day, my child, I shall see thee a happy wife in the home of a rich husband.' And I would answer, 'And I will receive thee with all love ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... willing obedience to all the commands of Christ, and the joyous rewards of faithful service. As he surveys the progress of recent years, he sees the fulfilment of Isaiah's prediction, "The people, that walked in darkness, have seen a great light, they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... nor saw, nor felt. She had reached the end of her strength, and black darkness had closed down upon her agony, blotting out all things. She sank senseless ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... loss), and the melons (which never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the night. For he flieth in the darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get up before the dew is off the plants,—it goes off very early,—you can sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the disease of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right); and soot is unpleasant to the bug. But the ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... been smooth: but anon, it grew black, and stirred; and out of the thick darkness came clamorous sounds. Soon, there shot into the air a vivid meteor, which bursting at the zenith, radiated down the firmament in fiery showers, leaving ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... decay. The yielding, burning soil, that fled my feet, I seem'd to feel and struggled to retreat; And 'midst the dread of horror's mad extreme I lost all notion that it was a dream: Sinking I fell through depths that seem'd to be As far from fathom as Eternity; While dismal faces on the darkness came With wings of dragons and with fangs of flame, Writhing in agonies of wild despairs, And giving tidings of a doom like theirs. I felt all terrors of the damn'd, and fell With conscious horror that my doom ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... 4 A.M. Called up by the Quartermaster. With Surgeon C. W. White, U.S.N., took (A) one five inch glass beaker, bottomless, (B) three clean glass slides, (C) chloride of calcium solution, [symbol: dra(ch)m] i to [symbol: ounce] i water. We went, as near as I could judge in the darkness, to about that portion of the wall that lies west of the hospital, southeast corner (now all filled up), where on the 10th of August previously I had found some actively growing specimens of the Gemiasma verdans, rubra, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... thought. He thought of many things—of Vera Lebedeff, and of her father; of Hippolyte; of Rogojin himself, first at the funeral, then as he had met him in the park, then, suddenly, as they had met in this very passage, outside, when Rogojin had watched in the darkness and awaited him with uplifted knife. The prince remembered his enemy's eyes as they had glared at him in the darkness. He shuddered, as a sudden ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... who were in the same predicament, leaned over the side, listening. The swimmers were invisible in the darkness, but their progress was easily followed by the noise they made. Jem was the first to be hauled on board, and a minute or two later the listeners on the schooner heard him assisting Dobbs. Then the sounds of strife, of thumps, and wicked words broke on ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... thoughts did come when that figure had wholly disappeared. Her eye, looking out into the darkness, could not but see another figure on which it had often in past times delighted almost unconsciously to dwell. There, walking on that very road, another lover, another Fitzgerald, had sworn that he loved ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Time and again she changed her position. Now she was leaning against one casing of the doorway, now against the other. A nervous glance over her shoulder, as some sound in the darkness of the room behind her set her shivering, told of the state of her nerves, as also, with ears ever on the alert, her fearful glances at a definite spot in the rapidly dimming hills told of a straining, harassed expectancy. Her nerves were almost at breaking-point. Her handsome ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... tears! Fall, stars that govern his nativity, And summon all the shining lamps of heaven To cast their bootless fires to the earth, And shed their feeble influence in the air; Muffle your beauties with eternal clouds; For Hell and Darkness pitch their pitchy tents, And Death, with armies of Cimmerian spirits, Gives battle 'gainst the heart of Tamburlaine! Now, in defiance of that wonted love Your sacred virtues pour'd upon his throne, And made ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... great soft, sweet-smelling darkness, roofed in by the far-off sky alight with stars; and beneath him in the valley he could catch the glimmer of the big lake and the blotted masses of pine and cypress ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... into a shaking hand the match went out, and the loafer noiselessly melted away into the soft and impenetrable darkness. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Ragnaroek, the Twilight of the Gods! Odin mounts his war-steed. The vast ash Yggdrasil begins to shiver through all its height. The beatified heroes of Valhalla, who have ever been on the watch for this dread era, issue forth full of the old dauntless spirit of the North to meet the dread agents of darkness and doom. Garm, the Moonhound, breaks loose, and bays. "High bloweth Heimdall his horn aloft. Odin counselleth Mimir's head." The battle joins. In short, the fiery baptism prophesied in the dark scrolls of Stoic sage and Hebrew and Scandinavian scald alike wraps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... shadow of herself. Something—some part of her seemed to have flitted away. He asked himself with a sudden cold horror, whether indeed it had remained by the side of that silent figure, blotted out now from sight, who sat upon the rocks while the darkness fell about him! ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... while the page returned with a troubled face. This Zygfried did not observe on account of the darkness, for the fire in the stove was too far back to ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... seen dovecotes brought from Yorkshire without any trace of chequering, like the wild rock-pigeon of the Shetland Islands. The chequered dovecotes from the Orkney Islands, after having been domesticated by Colonel King for more than twenty years, differed slightly from each other in the darkness of their plumage and in the thickness of their beaks; the thinnest beak being rather thicker than the thickest one in the Madeira birds. In Germany, according to Bechstein, the common dovecote-pigeon is not chequered. In India they often become chequered, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... kind of actions done by violence and in the light of day, and another kind of actions which are done in darkness and with secret deceit, or sometimes both with violence and deceit; the laws concerning these last ought to have a character ...
— Laws • Plato
... Jesuits who were gone towards Mazna. I could think of no better expedient, and therefore went away in the night between the 23rd and 24th of April with my comrade, an old man, very infirm and very timorous. We crossed woods never crossed, I believe, by any before: the darkness of the night and the thickness of the shade spread a kind of horror round us; our gloomy journey was still more incommoded by the brambles and thorns, which tore our hands; amidst all these difficulties I applied myself to the Almighty, praying him to preserve us from ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... you are cruel. Come near, my father, nearer—I would see you, But mists and darkness cloud my failing sight. O Death! suspend thy rights for one short moment, Till I have ta'en a father's last embrace— A father's blessing.—Once—and now 'tis over. Receive me to thy mercy, gracious ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill, all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be, ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come, for he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit; and his shadowy march, on the eve of danger, must ever be the pledge, that ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... blushed with the sun's rising ray, And he shone in his strength like the sun at midday; But a cloud of black darkness has ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... staggering march, in the darkness. A hundred yards and a halt of a minute; a quarter of a mile and a halt of half an hour; an exasperating march. At two o'clock in the morning we were permitted to break ranks. I was too tired to sleep. Where we were I knew ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... Woods and, taking him by the arm, they disappeared into the darkness. We heard a choking cry, and the next moment Woods came running toward us. His face was distorted with horror and his eyes were ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... d'Orleans—the sole prince of the blood old enough to be Regent—to put M. le Duc du Maine in his place, from which to the crown there was only one step, as none are ignorant, left to be taken? It seems by no means impossible: M. du Maine, that son of darkness, was, judging him by what he had already done, quite capable of adding this new crime to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... climate characterized by persistent cold and relatively narrow annual temperature ranges; winters characterized by continuous darkness, cold and stable weather conditions, and clear skies; summers characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the darkness Kennedy attached the ends of the wires to the curious little coil I had seen him working on in the laboratory, and we proceeded down the hall to the rooms occupied by Poissan, Kennedy had allowed for the wire to reach from the elevator-shaft ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... as I could collect my scattered senses, I found myself nearly suffocated, and grovelling in utter darkness among a quantity of loose earth, which was also falling upon me heavily in every direction, threatening to bury me entirely. Horribly alarmed at this idea, I struggled to gain my feet, and at last succeeded. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... mountains. These, throughout well-nigh their entire extent, from where the Simplon road now cuts the chain, to the sea, were peopled by the professors of the gospel. They were a Goshen of light in the midst of an Egypt of darkness; and in these peaceful and sublime solitudes holy men fed their flocks amid the green pastures and beside the clear waters of evangelical truth. But persecution came: it waxed hot; and every succeeding century beheld ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... quench, no argument destroy, no misfortune annihilate. Comforting, indeed, for reasons, the arguments of Socrates that life survives death. After the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, Cicero outlined arguments which have consoled the mind of multitudes. But in the hour of darkness and blackness, for a man to put out upon Death's dark sea, upon the argument of Cicero, is like some Columbus committing himself to a single plank in the hope of discovering an ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... them hicks?" It was Gray's driver speaking. Through the gloom of early evening he was guiding his car back toward Ranger. The road was the same they had come, but darkness had invested it with unfamiliar perils, or so it seemed, for the headlights threw every rock and ridge into bold relief and left the holes filled with mysterious shadows; the vehicle strained, its motor raced, its gears clashed noisily as it ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Now Government is carried on by an administrative body, which, though nominally dependent, has at its back a majority of the elected pledged not to criticise. And the difference between the two systems is as the difference between darkness and light. That body is now forcing the monarchy also into the same non-critical attitude, or at least is securing that the criticism shall be impotent of result. And I have the right, sir, to ask what are you doing ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... on my pillow, happy with a great relief, I thought I heard two laughs in the darkness, one in a tone of silver from beneath me and one of the sound of a choke from opposite me where was reposed that Mr. G. Slade ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... signal, he particularly distinguished himself by his judgment and daring.[127] It will be recalled, also, in connection with this question of pilot-ground battles, that a central position nearly lost the flag-ship at New Orleans, owing to the darkness and to the smoke from the preceding ships; the United States fleet came near finding itself without its leader after the passage of the forts. Now as the mention of a reserve prompted one set of considerations, so the name of pilotage suggests certain ideas, broader than ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... was as carefully tended as ever; and amid the comely appointments of the altar shone forth that Presence which speaks to men of an act of love perpetually renewed. But to Odo the voice was mute, the divinity wrapped in darkness; and he remembered reading in some Latin author that the ancient oracles had ceased to speak when their questioners lost faith in them. He knew not whether his own faith was lost; he felt only that it had put forth on a sea of difficulties ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the way the newly set out plants had taken root. Bending over the flower beds she was hardly conscious that darkness had fallen over the earth—a heavenly, summer-cool darkness with veiled stars prophetic of a blessed shower. She repaired to the porch swing to dream her dreams of fluffs and frills, arrange a dream house and live therein. It should be quite ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... now again Within that square of darkness, look! a light That feels its way with hesitating pulse, As we do, through the darkness that it drives To blacken ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... she still lay there, thinking—thinking— thinking! The sunlight crept lower and lower over the room's disorder; its last bright triangle was gone, twilight came, and the soft early darkness. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... a time absorbed in thought against a pillar where she had left him, then sauntered with bowed head and preoccupied manner to the main entrance, down the steps and out into the darkness. He did not even notice that he passed Ida Mayhew, where she stood among a group of gay chattering young people. Still less did he know that she had been furtively watching his interview with Miss Burton, and that when ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... elsewhere says, "but we may go farther, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness." Not only, he adds, does friendship introduce "daylight in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts;" it "maketh a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests:" in consultation with a friend a man "tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... was no more than an hour: it seemed an eternity of apprehension. There was the slight hissing of the seal of my door. The panel slid. I had leaped from my bunk where in the darkness I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... and democracy's best days lie ahead. We're a powerful force for good. With faith and courage, we can perform great deeds and take freedom's next step. And we will. We will carry on the tradition of a good and worthy people who have brought light where there was darkness, warmth where there was cold, medicine where there was disease, food where there was hunger, and peace where there ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was dark and troubled, the dread winds were abroad, and fast and frequent hurried the clouds beneath the thrones of the kings of night. And ever and anon fiery meteors flashed along the depths of heaven, and were again swallowed up in the grave of darkness. But far below his brethren, and with a lurid haze around his orb, sat the discontented star that had watched over ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tattoo quite unconsciously; when I pictured him as following the two women toward the Wooded Island, her head was lifted again and her lip curled scornfully. But when I had reached the point where the two figures, springing suddenly from the darkness behind him, had hurled him over the parapet into the deepest part of the lagoon, a low moan burst from her lips, and she put out her ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... restraints and patriotic morality of Confucianism, it has failed to assimilate, or even to understand, the moral foundations of Europe's civilisation. It has exchanged its old lamp for a new, but it has not found the oil, which the new vessel needs, to lighten the darkness withal. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow—Hope, shining ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... perhaps, would not be satiated; everything was new to him, everything amused him; and so it happened that, while he was dressing and studying from his window the view that had been only obscurely hinted at in the darkness of night before, a sudden desire came over him to remain where he was for that day, climb the hills that rose before him, and see what manner of country ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... thee: this place, it hath a curse on't, This farmstead once a castle: I'll get me straight away!" He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened, And went ere the dawn ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... thinker save Sydney—the latter's work was not published until 1689—was writing with the Church hardly less in mind than the purely political problems of the State; even the secular Hobbes had devoted much thought and space to that "kingdom of darkness" which is Rome. And, Sydney apart, the resistance they had justified was always resistance to a religious tyrant; and Cartwright was as careful to exclude political oppression from the grounds of revolution as Locke was to insist upon it as the fundamental excuse. Locke is, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... complete darkness as to the results of brother and sister marriage in the human species. We have of course various cases of ruling families who perpetuated themselves in this way, but the data from such peoples refer to an advanced stage of culture and to a favoured ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... Ascension into Heaven and the Holy Spirit descending on the Apostles. This work, truly very great and rich and most excellently executed, must have, in my judgment, amazed the world in those times, seeing, above all, that painting had lain so long in such great darkness; and to me, who saw it again in the year 1563, it appeared very beautiful, thinking how in so great darkness Cimabue could see so great light. But of all these pictures (and to this we should give consideration), those on the roof, as being less injured by dust and by other accidents, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... certainly not displayed any marked affection for religion, in the last published before the war (Marriage) brings his hero face to face with the great realities, and makes him exclaim to his wife that he may "die a Christian yet," and urge upon her the need for prayer, if only out into the darkness. Of course, as all the reading world knows, since the war commenced, Mr. Wells has set up his own altar "IGNOTO DEO," not with much more satisfactory results than those attained by Mr. Masefield. It is an historical fact that times of war have also been times of religious awakening, and it is natural ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... he be, but the Prince of Darkness in person, who had laid a wager with Pluto that he would frighten Don Juan De Murana, and went back to his place furious at ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... dark maze I tread, And griefs around me spread, Be Thou my guide; Bid darkness turn to day, Wipe sorrow's tears away, Nor let me ever stray From ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... and this slave-woman's hands would have been folded for a moment. Justice would have overtaken her with its late reward; for that she had begged for her children, maybe stolen for them, but always managed for them some way. A moment—and the darkness would reign in her as before; her eyes glower, her fingers feel out graspingly—how much? she would say. What, no more? she would say. She would be right again. A mother many times, realizing life—it was worthy of ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... again, more slowly, as if he were not certain that he had read it aright before. Finally, with something very nearly approaching an oath, he crushed the short document in his hand, and strode to the window, where he stood for a long time, staring out into the darkness, without moving. His valet entered the room and made some remark about dressing him for the evening, but Duncan sharply ordered the man away, telling him to return in half an hour. Afterward he went ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... their heads to accompany us, which would have effectually prevented the success of our undertaking. We rode backwards and forwards several times among the men, and talked away to each other in the style they were accustomed to do, our object being to put off starting as long as possible, till darkness was approaching, that we might have a better chance of escaping. At last we could delay no longer, so riding up side by side to the natives we begged them to start us fairly, when off we set digging nor spurs into our horses' flanks and whacking the unfortunate beasts with ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing but smoke and ashes: night approached, and was about to add darkness to our other dangers; while the equinoctial gales, as if in alliance with the Russians, increased in violence. Then Murat and Prince Eugene hastened to the emperor's quarters: in company with the Prince of Neufchatel they ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... the general terms of the new covenant, and that in common for every saint in all ages (Gal 3:13)-but by curse here we are to understand that, or those curses that do, and have frequently befallen the church for her sin and apostasy; as namely, the giving up his people to their own darkness and ignorance; his suffering them to swerve from his true worship and ordinances: his giving them up into the hand of those that hate them, to become among them a hissing, a taunt, a reproach, and a by-word, as it is at this day (Zeph 1:12-17; Psa 43:28; Jer 29:18; 44:8,12). His taking away from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... eyes and in silence, they touch with their little hands, profound impressions rise in their consciousness, and they exclaim with a new form of happiness: "I see with my hands." They alone, then, can fully understand the drama of the mysterious privilege your soul has known. When, in darkness and in silence, their spirit left free to expand, their intellectual energy redoubled, they become able to read and write without having learnt, almost as it were by intuition, they, only they, can understand in part the ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... this digression: David Trevarrow made up his mind, as we have said, to "go on," and, being a man of resolute purpose, he went on; seized his hammer and chisel, and continued perseveringly to smite the flinty rock, surrounded by thick darkness, which was not dispelled but only rendered visible by the feeble light of the tallow candle that flared ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... battle which no man or angel can fight for them—I mean the battle between their selfishness and their duty—the battle between their love of pleasure and their fear of sin—the battle, in short, between the devil and his temptations to darkness and shame, and God and His promises of light, and strength, and glory,—all who have not been converted to God, to them St. John speaks as little children—people who are not yet strong enough to stand alone, and do their ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... tell them his adventures just then; only when darkness fell, and the Feast of Lanterns began, he took his part in ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Darkness rapidly sets in in these regions of eternal summer. The sunny shores and genial climes of the Mediterranean, where the very touch of the air seems a perfumed caress, lack only one thing to make them a paradise. Those pleasant hours which obtain in our less favoured ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... there was a lengthy pause in the conversation, because Rosina considered his interruption to be extremely rude and would not broach another subject. They went a long way in the darkness of a heavily clouded ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... like a flash of lightning, suddenly revealed to him that very object, in the form of woman: and he discovered, in the storm of his delight, that women were the very victims for whom he had been blindly groping in the darkness all his life. And he threw himself upon them, like a prey, finding with intoxication that the Creator had framed him as a weapon constructed wholly for their destruction. And he said to himself, in triumph: I am, as it seems, a magnetic gem, omnipotent and irresistible, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm,— A cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.... The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seaman—couldn't conceal—knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the ground, and they took him up covered with great darkness, and having put him into a litter they carried him out. So he that came with many servants, and all his guard into the aforesaid treasury, was carried out, no one being able to help him, the manifest power of God being known. And ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... a cigar," said he, "which has all the flavor and shock of a richer looking and more suggestive leaf." He indicated the rather negative wrapper, and went on: "As you see, it hasn't any of that lush darkness which one usually associates with potent tobacco. And all because the wrapper was grown in Pennsylvania; for a casual inspection tells nothing of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... of appalling silence. The tornado had passed. With this strange calm the darkness lifted and we knew that ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... moment later I felt my breath taken away, and I was lifted almost from my feet by a sudden gust. I linked my arm around the trunk of a swaying pine tree and hung there till the lull came. Up into the darkness from that unseen gulf below came showers of spray, white as snow, falling like rain all about me. It ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... indistinct, but men formed themselves about the luminous points here and there, and, when these broke and dispersed into lesser gleams, still men formed themselves about each of them. There arose a system of things better, indeed, than that darkness, but full of war and lust and greed, in which the weak rendered homage to the strong, and served them in the field and in the camp, and the strong in turn gave the weak protection against the other strong. It was a juggle in which the ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... that the darkness had put a stop to further investigations. The air in the church grew every moment more clammy and chill, and he was tired, hungry, and very cold. He was anxious, if possible, to find lodgings at once, and so avoid the expense ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the day, Raskolnikoff went out and wandered about the streets. At last he sat down under a tree to rest, and fell into a reverie. His limbs felt disjointed, and his mind was in darkness and confusion. He placed his elbows on his knees and held his head ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the man who attempted to reach it did so at the risk of his life, and there were no more lives to spare. Not until nightfall did the commanding officer deem it prudent to send out a fatigue party for water. Then three men volunteered to go, and under cover of darkness, and of a firing party, they made the trip safely, filling and bringing in as many canteens as they ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... back-kitchen life which were never intended for other eyes than those that grope in them by day or night. How unnatural, and, more, almost profane and inhuman, is the fiery locomotion of the Iron Horse through these densely-peopled towns! now the screech, the roar, and the darkness of cavernous passages under paved streets, church vaults, and an acre or two of three- story brick houses, with the feeling of a world of breathing, bustling humanity incumbent upon you;—now the dash and flash out into the light, and the higgledy-piggledy glimpses of the next five minutes. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... two round circles shining in the darkness, two flashing, bright, shining things, and he was more ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... Maria sat against the wall of the old church, waiting for them. The child ran through the darkness and grasped ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... realize the importance of putting some promises at any rate under public sanction. We have not now to attempt any reconstruction of archaic judgment and justice, or the lack of either, at any period of the darkness and twilight which precede the history of the middle ages. But the history of the law, and even the present form of much law still common to almost all the English-speaking world, can be understood only when we bear in mind that our forefathers did not start from any general conception of the state's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... load from my heart. I now see daylight where all seemed darkness; and beholding yonder hill feel the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... of dazzling brightness on the water about its shores, then darkening again and vanishing back into the general gloom. Thus island after island may be seen, singly or in groups, coming and going from darkness to light like a scene of enchantment, until at length the entire cloud ceiling is rolled away, and the colossal cone of Mount Rainier is seen in spotless white looking down over the forests from a distance of sixty miles, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... not a very clear night, and but few stars shone in the firmament. In the darkness the lad walked first to one side of the steam yacht and then to the other. Then he strolled toward the bow, to have a little ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... out of Gath by means of a treatise on elementary trigonometry, and evaded Askelon on the wings of an undulatory theory of light. It is different with us, you know, who have emerged from the land of darkness by the regular classical and literary highway. We feed upon Rabelais and Burton; he flits carelessly from flower to flower of the theory of Quantics. If he were an idealist painter, like Rossetti, he would ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... special cells scattered among the epidermal cells of the skin, and connected by means of a sensory nerve fibre with a little bunch of nervous matter in the body. Such a simple visual apparatus serves them only in distinguishing light from darkness, but this to them is most important knowledge, as it enables them to avoid the surface of the earth by day, when their worst enemies, the birds, are in active ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... mother's shocked, pained face, so she held her peace. The long hours till bedtime slowly dragged away, and for once Polly went up-stairs without her usual goodnight talk. But, for some reason, sleep would not come to her, even then. Instead of that, she lay with wide-open eyes, staring into the darkness and picturing Alan as she saw him turn away, with the cold water dripping from his clothing. Suddenly she heard the bell ring sharply, violently. Springing out of bed, she stole noiselessly to the head of the stairs to listen, ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... terms; they are so apt to cover deficiency of ideas, or to obscure the issue. But certainly the sun which colours our complexion and orders our daily habits, influences at the same time our character and outlook. The almost hysterical changes of light and darkness, summer and winter, which have impressed themselves on the literature of the North, are unknown here. Northern people, whether from climatic or other causes, are prone to extremes, like their own myths and sagas. The Bible is essentially a book of extremes. It is a violent document. The Goth or ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... him from his hold, but that was only for a moment or two, and then he was swung, gasping and streaming with water, high above the sea again. It was bad enough merely to hold on, but that was a very small share of his task, for the big black sail that cut the higher darkness came rattling down its stay and fell upon him and his companion bodily. As it dropped the wind took hold of the folds of it and buffeted them cruelly. This was a thing he had once been accustomed to, but as he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... example; for he realized that a moving object could be made out in the darkness. By this slow process of locomotion they reached the bank of the river, and heard the dull flow of the water from the middle of the great stream. The bank was high and steep; and it was soft and wet. From this point they could see a steamboat,—a ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... the chain taut, when the rowers slackened their exertions the mass parted, and Mr. Troke, hooking himself on to the side of the Ladybird, saw a huge log slip out from its fellows and disappear into the darkness. Gazing after it with an indignant and disgusted stare, as though it had been a refractory prisoner who merited two days' "solitary", he thought he heard a cry from the direction in which it had been borne. He would have paused to listen, but all his ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... dread! He tore the golden brooches that upheld Her queenly robes, upraised them high and smote Full on his eye-balls, uttering words like these: "No more shall ye behold such sights of woe, Deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought; Henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see Those ye should ne'er have seen; now blind to those Whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know." Such was the burden of his moan, whereto, Not once but oft, he struck with his hand uplift His eyes, and at each stroke the ensanguined orbs Bedewed his beard, ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... spirits are lent me to dispel the darkness which at present too often over-clouds my mind, will, I hope, make me superior to all the calamities that can ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the Rebellious Crolians, as is before noted, and reflecting on the Danger he was in upon the sudden Progress of that Rebellion, for indeed he was within a trifle of Ruin in that Affair; and had not the Crolians been deceiv'd by the darkness of the Night and led to a large Ditch of Water, which they could not pass over, they had certainly surpriz'd and overthrown his Army, and cut them in pieces, before they had known who had hurt them. Upon the Sense of this Danger, he takes up a pretence of necessity ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... in power, Wallenstein the mysterious, the ambitious, the victorious; soldier of fortune and arbiter of empires; reader of the stars and ally of the powers of darkness; poor by birth and rich by marriage and imperial favor; an extraordinary man, surrounded by mystery and silence, victorious through ability and audacity, rising from obscurity to be master of the emperor, and falling at length by the hand of assassination. In person he was tall and thin, in countenance ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... at the cigar which glowed redly in the darkness of the wing corridor, Blount waited until his man had been given time to reach the basement. Then he walked slowly back to the main corridor and descended by the public stair without awakening the elevator boy, who was sleeping soundly in his car ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... under the circumstances. He stated that he had been aroused by a filing, grating sound at his bedroom window, which was on the ground floor, and that he sprang from his bed, threw open the front door, and fired upon a figure that retreated rapidly and was soon lost in the darkness. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... be well known, thought she, and he may meet with acquaintances every where. However, by the attention of Charles, she passed the day with a very tolerable proportion of pleasure. Their arrival at Albany was undistinguished by any remarkable event, though Julia looked in vain through the darkness of the night, in quest of the fertile meadows and desert islands which Anna had mentioned in her letter. Even the river seemed straight and uninteresting. But Julia was tired—it was night—and ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... moment all the world was fairy. Then, with a wild scrabble of claws upon stone, a small white shape shot from beneath my chair, took the broad steps at a bound and vanished into the darkness. The welter of barks and growls and grunts of expended energy, rising a moment later from the midst of the great lawn, suggested that a cat had retired to the convenient shelter ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... heard of the Wishing Well, but he said that no spirit of earth or air could have power for ever over a Christian soul. But, even when he spoke, he remembered that, once in seven years, the fairy folk have to pay a dreadful tax, one of themselves, to the King of a terrible country of Darkness; and what if they had stolen Randal, to ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... cause suffices us to set man against man, life or death. But—and now I come to the very difficulty—looking here and there I cannot see a war new in any respect, either of parties, or objects, or pretence, out of which such a prodigious fame is to be plucked. You discern the darkness in which I am groping. Light, O ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... obtain a more favourable quotation for the dollar. With the approach of dusk, however, his impatience drove him once more to the front balcony. The night fell, mild and airless; the lamps shone around the central darkness of the garden; and through the tall grove of trees that intervened, many warmly illuminated windows on the farther side of the square, told their tale of white napery, choice wine, and genial hospitality. The stars were already thickening overhead, when the young man's eyes ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... me then, it slapped me fair over the chops, like flicking yer with the wet sleeve of a jacket. He rose four foot when I swounded. He might ha' been more an' he might ha' been less. Darkness put him out, only that I recollect,' said the man, turning up his pale face to the stars, 'taking notice of a couple of eyes like red lights floating in water and a grin of teeth wide as ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... candle burning on the table for the cigars, and led the way into the basement of the beautiful old Colonial mansion, doubly memorable as Washington's headquarters while he was in Cambridge, and as the home of Longfellow for so many years. The taper cast just the right gleams on the darkness, bringing into relief the massive piers of brick, and the solid walls of stone, which gave the cellar the effect of a casemate in some fortress, and leaving the corners and distances to a romantic gloom. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with snort and with cry. Loud neighs his black courser; hark his horn, how 'tis swelling! He chases his comrades, his hounds wildly yelling. Speed along! speed along! for the race is all ours; Speed along! speed along! while the midnight still lours; The spirits of darkness will chase him in scorn, Who dreads our wild howl, and the shriek of our horn, Thus yelling and belling they sweep on the wind, The dread of the pious and reverent mind: But all who roam gladly in forests, by night, This conflict of spirits will ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... "samir," one who enjoys the musamarah or night-talk outside the Arab tents. "Samar" is the shade of the moon, or half darkness when only stars shine without a moon, or the darkness of a moonless night. Hence the proverb (A. P. ii. 513) "Ma af'al-hu al-samar wa'l kamar;" I will not do it by moondarkness or by moonshine, i.e. never. I have elsewhere ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... sir!" Yes, we must upon our "distemper sprinkle cool patience." If all is not well, yet all is coming well. In this faith we find peace. The endless progress of the race is assured now that evolution has come with its message and shed light where before there was darkness, reassuring those who thought and who ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... depressing effect upon me. So long as there seemed some theory to build on, so long as there was a ray of light ahead, I had hoped that the tragedy would be explained and expiated; but now my theory had crumbled to pieces; I was left in utter darkness, from which there seemed no way out. Never before, in the face of any mystery, had I felt so blind and helpless, and the feeling took such a grip upon me that it kept me awake for a long time after I got to bed. It seemed, in some mysterious ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... knocked out Worsley, Greenstreet, and Hudson went down in the bunkers and cleared the ice from the bilges. "This is not a pleasant job," wrote Worsley. "We have to dig a hole down through the coal while the beams and timbers groan and crack all around us like pistol-shots. The darkness is almost complete, and we mess about in the wet with half-frozen hands and try to keep the coal from slipping back into the bilges. The men on deck pour buckets of boiling water from the galley down the pipe as we prod and hammer from below, and at last we get ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... symmetry, now that wasted away in a desperate disuse. They see visions which in some wider world might become wholesome realities or might be dispelled by the light but which in Winesburg must lurk about till they master and madden with the strength which the darkness gives them. Religion, deprived in Winesburg of poetry, fritters its time away over Pharisaic ordinances or evaporates in cloudy dreams; sex, deprived of spontaneity, settles into fleshly habit or tortures its victim ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... from the well, the oil and water rose nearly to the surface. The question was now to be tested whether the petroleum would present itself in sufficient quantities to justify further proceedings, or whether it was, like many another dream, to vanish in darkness, or dissolve in tears. The well was tubed, and by a common hand pump yielded ten barrels per day. By means of a more powerful pump, worked by a small engine, this quantity was increased to forty barrels per day. The supply was uninterrupted, the engine working day and night, and the question ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... leaned his ear against it; he could hear now distinctly the sound of voices—he heard even the woman's laughter. For the height of about four feet the wall had been bodily removed. He made a small hole in the canvas—there was still darkness. He enlarged the hole until he could thrust his hand through—there was nothing but canvas the other side. He knew now where he was. There was only that single thickness of canvas between him and the room. He had but to make the smallest hole in it and he would be able to see through. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Lamp borne by Agnes. I now heard the massy Gates unbarred. By the candle in his hand I distinguished old Conrad, the Porter. He set the Portal doors wide open, and retired. The lights in the Castle gradually disappeared, and at length the whole Building was wrapt in darkness. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... preaching of the gospel began, men are instructed to "seek first the kingdom of God" (Mat. 6:33), and they "press into it" (Luke 16:16) by the saving virtue of Him "who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." Col. 1:13. Taking our place by the side of the writer of the Revelation, we testify with him that we are already "in the kingdom and patience ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... up, and then descending, was truly frightful; not a gleam of sky was to be seen, all was a mass of gigantic trees, straight and lofty, their wide spreading branches mingling overhead, and producing throughout the forest an endless darkness and unbroken gloom. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... shore, so as to deceive the Turks as to where the landing was to be. He pushed a raft containing these in front of him. It was a frosty night, and he was naked and painted black. Firing from the ships was going on all around. It was a two-hours' swim in pitch darkness. He did it, crawled through the scrub to listen to the talk of the enemy, who were so near that he could have shaken hands with them, lit his decoys and swam back. He seems to look on this as a gay affair. He is a V.C. now, and you would not think to look at him ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... twenty-one flickering fire-brands, suspended overhead and in front of us, to furnish light. There were no tables or chairs, no flowers or decorations, no sign of anything to eat. Other guests were moving about through the semi-darkness to their places, seemingly without inconvenience. I was whispering to the doctor that I would need eyes of much greater candle power to enjoy the function, when we arrived at our places. A double row of comfortable cushions ran along the edge of our floor, where it seemed to sink to a lower terrace, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... logs went screaming and grinding down the skids, but darkness made launching them dangerous, and they could not light the lumber road on the hill. They worked in the dark, rolling out the sawn trunks from among the brush and melting snow until there was room ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... knowledge, however inadequate, of the history of the Jewish polity during its last two hundred years—between the time of the Maccabees and the fall of the nation—which would otherwise have been buried in almost unrelieved darkness. And at the same time he has preserved a record of some interesting pieces of Egyptian, Syrian, and Roman history. Just because he was so little original, he has a special usefulness; for he reproduces the statements of more capable writers than himself, who have ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... near to the terrace, then stop. She was sure that it was the mason's figure. He must be on his way to town to take the evening train for the city, which passed Bellevue at nine forty-five. She utterly forgot what she was saying, what was being said to her, in her intense effort to discover in the darkness what the figure just above the terrace was doing. She could not tell whether he had gone back to skirt the house and go on by a more roundabout way or was waiting for an opportunity to descend unobserved. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Canadian Voyageur with his songs, as he rowed or paddled his bateaux and large northwest canoe. Now, the roaring noise of the wheels of steamers, the shrill whistle of the propeller, and the whitening sails of hundreds of vessels have succeeded to the past age of darkness and quiet. Civilization and commerce have broken the charm which beautified Indian scenery in years forever ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... me out of darkness into the light, when He broke the fetters and snapped the chains eleven years ago, I went home and said to my wife, 'I am going to live for Jesus, and we will start here, at home. We will have family prayers—we were not a large family, only nine of us, and for the first time in their lives, my ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman |
