"Opaque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of beauty. After a little time the life of pleasure and selfishness will make the sweetest fact opaque and repellent, while self-sacrificing thoughts are cosmetics that at last make the plainest face to be beautiful. In the calm of scholarship men have given up the thought that culture consists of an exquisite refinement in manners and dress, in language and equipage. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in the last of the warm-coloured sunset. There were no trees; but every little hollow, every tiny plateau, every bit of slope that was not too steep for clinging roots to find hold, was clothed with a mat of blueberry bushes. The berries, of an opaque violet-blue tone (much more vivid and higher in key than the same berries can show when picked and brought to market) were so large and so thickly crowded as to almost hide the leaves. They gave the austere steeps of ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... advise decently. Now the Saturday Review has neither this, that, nor the other qualification. Indeed his words read like subtle and lurking irony by the light of those phenomenal and portentous vagaries which ever and anon illuminate his opaque pages. What correctness can we expect from a journal whose tomahawk-man, when scalping the corpse of Matthew Arnold, deliberately applies the term "sonnet" to some thirty lines in heroic couplets? His confusion of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... cap, with a black ribbon passed two or three times round the crown. To preserve the purity of the muslin, and the lustre of the ribbon, she always wore a piece of white paper, folded up between her head and the muslin, making the top of the cap appear much more opaque than ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... sunlight left, and they worked with torches. Ashe began his inspection of the relatively simple transfer—the two upright bars, the slab of opaque material forming a doorstep between them. This was only a skeleton of the gates Ross had used in the past. But continual experimentation had produced this ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... had the courage to look into the basin), that after a few seconds, the blood which had been taken away separated itself of its own accord into two portions; the one a yellowish transparent liquid, the other an opaque red mass floating on the top, and which is called the coagulum of the blood or clot. This coagulum owes its color to an infinity of minute red bodies of which we will speak more fully by and by, and which are retained as if in a net, in the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... both classed as by Titian, cannot take rank as more than atelier works. Still farther from the master is the Initiation of a Bacchante, No. 1116 (Cat. 1891), in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. This is a piece too cold and hard, too opaque, to have come even from his studio. It is a pasticcio made up in a curiously mechanical way, from the Louvre Allegory and the quite late Education of Cupid in the Borghese Gallery; the latter composition having been manifestly based by Titian himself, according to what became ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... echo of the whisper that had preceded her. She was wearing the same ruching, the same bangles, the same everything—minus the bonnet with the veil—that she had worn that previous afternoon. There was an opaque flatness in her eyes. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the door, opened it, and stepped outside. The sky was thick and heavy, with only a white blur where the moon was smothered. Fifty yards away the gray gloom became opaque. Over the thousand miles of drift to the north there came a faint whistling wind, rising at times in fitful sweeps of flinty snow, and at intervals dying away until it became only a lulling sound. In one of these intervals both ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... to the mountain atmosphere were evidenced in the opaque density of the fog that had ensued on the crystalline clearness of the sunset. It hung like a curtain from the zenith to the depths of the valley, obscuring all the world. It had climbed the cliffs; it was shifting in and out among the pillars of the veranda; it even crossed the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a few moments. Then the guitar sounded fiercely, and several male voices began the sextette from "Lucia." Johnny's reedy tenor they knew well, and the bricklayer's big, opaque barytone; the others might be anybody over there—just Mexican voices. Then at the appointed, at the acute, moment, the soprano voice, like a fountain jet, shot up into the light. "HORCH! HORCH!" the old people ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... away and rowed off into the fog, waving adieus to the little group that watched them from the Maid of the North. Both kept their eyes upon the steamer until a veil of gauze, ethereal but opaque, closed in between them. The sun, still near the horizon, lit up the mist with a golden light, and Pats with the haughty lady seemed floating away ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... On one of the opaque walls was Dali's original "Eucharist," with its muffled, robed figures looking oddly luminous in the queer combination of city lights and interior illumination. Farther back, a Valois gleamed metallically above the shadowed bas-reliefs of ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... charge of having aught of Green in her eye?—hath with her cambric handkerchief rubbed the sinister orb into a state of roseate irritation—externally—but there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor fly,—Green or otherwise—nor particle of solid opaque matter floating in it. 'Tis, indeed, pure optic illusion on the Widow's part, illusion born, perchance, partly of fear, partly of pique. There is nothing, my dear paternal Uncle, but one lambent, feverish fire, deliciously attractive, even in its angry heat, fascinating even whilst phlogistic, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... why the leaves did not stir in the trees, why there were no nightbirds, no crickets, no croaking frogs, no sign of life save that steady, clocklike tread inside the wall. So dark was it that the wall itself was but a deeper shadow against the almost opaque blackness beyond. No night, it seemed to them, had ever been so dark, so still. After the oppression came the strange feeling of dread, the result of an enforced contemplation of the affair in which they were to take a hand, ignorant of everything ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... totally different quarter, we may go further and arrange for the singers to be put out of sight altogether. He (and more particularly, she) might be posted behind some sort of screen, diaphanous in respect of the vocalists' view of the conductor, but opaque to the audience. When I think of some of the rather antique and amorphous prime donne of German, Italian and French opera, I know that any scheme which would render them invisible and permit their acting parts to be played by young and gracious figures would meet with my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... meat and extras, and the mutual crowding of the messengers, some of the dinners were not put on the fire till an hour or two after the fainting patient should have had his meal: and then, of course, he could not take it. The cold mutton-chop with its opaque fat, the beef with its caked gravy, the arrowroot stiff and glazed, all untouched, might be seen by the bedsides in the afternoons, while the patients were lying back, sinking for want of support. Probably the dinners had been brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... himself. As the fog grew denser and night fell, the spot became a desert, and its chill gloom began to be burdensome even to his prepossessed mind. He stopped and gazed as far as the mist let him over the water, which lay smooth and motionless, like a sheet of opaque glass; the opposite bank was shrouded from his view, and imagination allowed him to think himself standing on the shore of some almost boundless lake. Seen under such conditions, the Serpentine put off the cheerful ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... over once more. Tallis was dressed in the uniform of Earth's Space Force, and the insignia of a full general gleamed on his collar. His face and hands had been sprayed with an opaque, pink-tan film, and his hairless head was covered with a black wig. He wouldn't pass a close inspection, but MacMaine fervently hoped that ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... readily obtained at the drug store as a solution, or tablets may be bought which answer the same purpose) in a test tube, and boil. If no yellow discoloration takes place, it is in good condition. Add a few drops of the grape sugar solution and boil, when the mixture suddenly turns to an opaque yellow ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Moscow with ten degrees of frost. In St. Petersburg, where the winter sun is, "as in northern climes, but dimly bright," and where the city is frequently enveloped in a mist (which is, however, ethereal vapour compared to the opaque fogs of London), the cold is, on the same principle, more severely felt than in Moscow. Nevertheless, in St. Petersburg people go about far more lightly clad than in the more southern towns of the empire,—for St. Petersburg is half ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... will be the characters of a cloud thus occupying the interior of a cyclone? It will have a rotatory motion; and this it has been seen to have. Being funnel-shaped, as analogy warrants us in assuming, its central parts will be much deeper than its peripheral parts, and therefore more opaque. This, too, corresponds with observation. Mr. Dawes has discovered that in the middle of the spot there is a blacker spot: just where there would exist a funnel-shaped prolongation of the cyclonic cloud down toward the Sun's ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... attendant sat near fanning him, and Miss Lou first thought that he was asleep. As she approached with the surgeon he opened his eyes with the dazed expression so common when the brain is enfeebled from loss of blood. At first they seemed almost opaque and dead in their blackness, but, as if a light were approaching from within, they grew bright and laughing. His smile showed his white, even teeth slightly, and her look of deep commiseration passed into one of wonder as she saw his face growing positively radiant ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... there noiselessly, looked out, and listened. There was a grove of pines and spruces on that side of the house. There was a bench under a pine. Upon this bench Henry gradually perceived a whiteness more opaque than that of the fog. He heard a voice, then a responsive murmur. Then the fragrant smoke of a cigar came directly in his face. Henry shook his head. He remained motionless a moment. Then he left the room, and ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... justice. It is a matter of great importance to our lost and undone race. It lies near to every human heart, and exercises a wonderful influence over our impulses and our ultimate success or failure. When we pause to consider the opaque and fathomless ignorance of the great masses of our fellow men on the subject of evolution, it is not surprising that crime is rather on the increase, and that thousands of our race are annually filling drunkards' graves, with no other visible means of support, while multitudes of enlightened ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... particular rays which are of the same characters as the two lines in question. In other words, we say that if the heated vapour of a substance gives a spectrum of bright lines, corresponding to lights of various kinds, this same vapour will act as an opaque screen to lights of those special kinds, while remaining transparent to ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... aware of a greater sense of air and sun than I had had since I entered the house, of a farther extent of that shining floor, broken by great opaque oblongs which absorbed light and gave out colors beautiful and dim; of a uniform even interplay of color upon all sides of me, as if the walls were hung with tapestry of one pattern; but all I was really intensely conscious of was a seated figure. She was sitting almost profile to me, with her ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views, obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies may be proved to be a beautifully constructed calcareous fabric, made up of a number ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... drawing-room of the villa was furnished in European fashion with plenty of comfortable arm-chairs and sofas made of bamboo. The floors were covered with thick soft mats and the front walls facing the piazza were really sliding panels covered with opaque paper through which the light cast a soft mellow luster. As a matter of fact, Dr. and Mrs. Spears, the owners of the villa, had kept it as Japanese as possible without interfering with their foreign ideas of comfort. The only ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... was gathering beneath the opaque foliage, Martin Paz, Liberta and Don Vegal were compelled by fatigue to stop. They had reached the banks of a river; it was the river Madeira, which the Indian recognized perfectly; immense mangrove trees bent above the sleeping wave and were united to the ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... The sidewalk lights abruptly flicked on in a flood of amber light that thickened the twilight beyond their circle to an opaque purple ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... the sea; in front the land; above, the sky—but a sky without stars; an opaque mist masked ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... worldly objects can never be emancipated. That man, on the other hand, who casts off such objects (in this world), succeeds in enjoying great happiness hereafter. Like one afflicted with congenital blindness and, therefore, incapable of seeing his way, the sensualist, with soul confined in an opaque case, seems to be surrounded by a mist and fails to see (the true object for which he should strive). As merchants, going across the sea, make profits proportioned to their capital, even so creatures, in this world of mortals, attain to ends according to their respective acts. Like ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a very pretty woman leaned out. I have seen her many times. She is Polish, the daughter of a concierge, and now the mistress of a young Cossack, who is leaving shortly for the front. She has heavy, pale-yellow hair, wound around her head in thick braids, and she wears pearls, opaque like her skin. She beckoned the little girls into her room. They went eagerly. Soon ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, and was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the 40 cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. At the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... sacrificial system, which becomes unmeaning elaboration of empty and often repulsive ceremonies, if they are not recognised as its very centre. Of course, the meaning of the sacrifices was hidden from many a worshipper. They became opaque instead of transparent, and hid the great truth which they were meant to reveal. All forms labour under that disadvantage; but that they were significant in design, and largely so to devout hearts in effect, admits of no reasonable doubt. That which they signified was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... while I have never engaged in any sport, know nothing of such matters, nor could I learn them. And then there is such a vast difference mentally between us: his mind is as quick and nimble as his muscles, while mine is much like a muddy stream, I'm afraid,—opaque and sluggish. Yes, I have often wondered over his friendship ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of Egypt, as are the modern crude brick dwellings of the fellahin. In the ruins of the palace were found several small objects of interest, and close by was an ancient glass manufactory of Amenhetep III's time, where much of the characteristic beautifully coloured and variegated opaque glass of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... and windows being thoroughly closed, and all crevices stopped, he kindles piles of the collected juniper in the different apartments, till the vapour collected from the burning branches condenses into opaque clouds, and coughing, sneezing, wheezing, gasping, and other demonstrations of suffocation ensue. The operator, aware that the more intense the smuchdan, the more propitious the solemnity, disregards these indications, and continues, with streaming eyes ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... him, trembling by now themselves, they had to help him from his horse and quiet and rest him by the roadside before he could tell his tale. Waiting nervously, Bruce took the nuggets and regarded them; beautiful specimens, one stratum opaque, and seaming on to that stratum another, reddish and glinting, like the spiked fire of gold; and on that stratum another, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... when the light became obscured for a moment, as if by some large and opaque body in passing, he did not look up immediately, and, when he did, was surprised to find the only armchair occupied by a portly person, who seemed to be trying ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... evaporation, are greater than they would be with the thermometer at the same point in America. I have frequently felt in Italy, with the mercury below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and with a mottled and almost opaque sky, a heat of solar irradiation which I can compare to nothing but the scorching sensation experienced in America at a temperature twenty degrees higher, during the intervals between showers, or before a rain, when the clear blue of the sky seems ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... "Sportsman" from the convenient buttress of the teapot and substituted "Punch" when he became aware that day had turned to night. Looking up he perceived that his open window, which was rather small and of the casement variety, was completely blocked by a huge, shapeless, and opaque mass. Next moment the mass resolved itself into an animal of enormous size and surprising appearance, which fell ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... even 4 of these cavities. The exudate on standing separates into 2 parts; a solid called "guad" which forms the lower layer, and a supernatant liquid which is the balsam. It is dense, viscid and very fluorescent; opaque and gray-green by reflected light. It has an odor similar to that of copaiba, is bitter and aromatic. Its density is 0.964. It is soluble in benzine, in bisulphuret of carbon, chloroform, the essential ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... it into foam as it is secreted. Beside the two oscillating ladles we see the internal organs rising and falling, protruding and retreating like a piston-rod, but it is impossible to observe the precise nature of their action, bathed as they are in the opaque blob of foam. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the power of the engines was quite disproportionate to the object in view. The Rhine now assumed a more desolate character. For miles and miles not a village nor even a solitary town to be seen; the Hartz mountains forming a blue opaque mass in the distance; the stream rapidly passing through narrow and deep channels, leaving one half of the bed of the river dry. At times we passed very dangerous straits, where the waters boiled and eddied over ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... apartments, thought long and earnestly of this interview. Leonora Kimball had been taught to believe that the chief badges of an aristocracy were complete idleness of the women, and the possession of enough wealth to support such idleness. It mattered not how mentally insipid or morally opaque or physically inane such women might be, the true test of being fitted for the purple was whether or not they had ever done any useful work, and whether or not they had money enough so that the other members ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... the public materials only of the very best quality; consequently, I take the prices of other persons' goods as no criterion or standard for mine. The wax is manufactured under my own immediate superintendence; soft, and perfectly dull on one side. It is sufficiently opaque of itself not to require being painted on the wrong side for white flowers, which is the case with common wax. I likewise prepare wax, called "double wax," it is twice as thick as the ordinary wax. When the single wax is used double, ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... no radio on the other's suit; he couldn't answer. But he did shake his fist angrily. The helmet ports were opaque, so there was no way to tell what expressions went with the gesture. Brion shrugged and turned back to salvaging the equipment pack, pushing the punctured balloon free and sealing the lock. When pressure was pumped back to ship-normal, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... heads of the horses and cattle, as already stated; nor was I aware of this until, on returning to them, I found the reins in the hands of Piper's gin; a tall woman who, wrapped in a blanket, with Piper's sword on her shoulder, and having a blind eye, opaque and white like that of some Indian idol, presented rather a singular appearance as she stood the only guardian of all we possessed. Her presence of mind in assuming such a charge on such an occasion was very commendable, and seemed characteristic ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... there about the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the almshouse as the natural home of their old age. At last, after creeping, as it were, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge which, sooner or later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian. For thirty years past, neither town-record, nor gravestone, nor the directory, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not this done?—I will tell you why. Because that great truth, in which are contained all treasures of all possible knowledge, was still opaque even to Bull and Waterland;—because the Idea itself—that 'Idea Idearum', the one substrative truth which is the form, manner, and involvent of all truths,—was never present to either of them in its entireness, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to possess the secret of the fusion of sense and spirit in the world. To the average eye sense-objects are opaque, or, at best, transmit only a faint glimmering of an idea. To Dr. Thomas Arnold's mind Wordsworth's concern with the flower which brought "thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears" was ridiculously excessive, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... other solid substances besides glass exert a similar action on a beam of polarized light. Even opaque solids like iron possess this property. Kerr has proved that a beam of light passed through an extremely thin plate of highly magnetic iron has its plane of polarization slightly rotated. Faraday showed that the power ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the restaurant. The window was lighted up brilliantly. No blind was drawn over it. There was opaque glass at the bottom, but not at the top. She was tall and could look through the glass at the top. She did so, and at once ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... they varied from a deep blue to olive green; long stripes stretched north and south in such decided lines that the eye could follow each shade out of sight. Sometimes a transparent sheet of water would follow a perfectly opaque sheet. ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Horizontal bars of black shadow were forming under them, and lurid wreaths wrapped themselves about the crests of the hills. The wind had grown more violent as Port Huron came in view. Waving curtains of opaque rain, swinging from the overburdened clouds, dropped down upon the surface of the river. The black swaying fringes, sweeping irresistibly along the water, churned the surface ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... utmost expedition possible, and the men, with much grumbling, crept out from their secluded corners and slowly proceeded to drag their relaxed and sweating bodies up the rigging. To shorten sail in such opaque darkness as then enveloped the ship was a lengthy task, and it was nearly one o'clock in the morning before that task was completed and the exhausted men were once more down ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... heavy eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision, and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the deepest seas ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... with the thing under his arm and partly concealed by the sleeve of his gown. Watching him as he approached the master's desk and spoke with Mr. Colfe, the form-master, Dam noted that he had what appeared to be a long oblong glass box of which the side turned towards him was white and opaque. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... through the sea of grass that stretched beyond the Missaguash. When the tide was out, this river was but an ugly trench of reddish mud gashed across the face of the marsh, with a thread of half-fluid slime lazily crawling along the bottom; but at high tide it was filled to the brim with an opaque torrent that would have overflowed, but for the dikes thrown up to confine it. Behind the dike on the farther bank stood the seeming officer, waving his flag in sign that he desired a parley. He was in reality no officer, but one of Le Loutre's Indians in disguise, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... his pipe, and the Norwegian made a quid both round and opaque, and bowing to us, stuffed it into his mouth. Its proper arrangement with his tongue kept him silent for a second, and in that second, we heard the prolonged, faint call of a man in distress; but it was so ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the cabin; but among the whole eighteen women I did not see a single good-looking one. Their husbands placed themselves in two rows from the cabin to the ship's ladder, holding large cloths stretched before them, and forming in this way a kind of opaque moveable wall on both sides. Presently the women came out of the cabin; they were so covered with large wrappers that they had to be led as if they were blind. They stood close together between the walls, and waited until the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... and watched her then slightly pause at the wide window that, in Buckingham Crescent, commanded the prospect they had ramified rearward to enjoy; a medley of smoky brick and spotty stucco, of other undressed backs, of glass invidiously opaque, of roofs and chimney-pots and stables unnaturally near—one of the private pictures that in London, in select situations, run up, as the phrase is, the rent. There was no indication of value now, however, in the ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... safe. I must confess for the first half-mile I felt very timid, especially when the ice is so transparent that you may see every little pebble or weed at the bottom of the water. Sometimes the ice was thick and white, and quite opaque. As we kept within a little distance of the shore, I was struck by the appearance of some splendid red berries on the leafless bushes that hung over the margin of the lake, and soon recognized them to be the aforesaid high-bush cranberries. My husband soon stripped the boughs of their tempting ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... to Mariotte's observation, says, that the retina is very imperfectly transparent, resembling oiled paper, or horn: and, besides, that its whiteness demonstrates that it is sufficiently opaque for stopping the rays of light as much as is necessary for vision: whereas, if vision be performed by means of those rays which are transmitted through such a substance as the retina, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... and worry, dispersing the mental clouds that hover over all men at times, thinning the fog until it disappeared, rather than rolling the vapour away, as the warm sun dissipates into invisibility the opaque morning mists, leaving nothing but clear air, all round, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... animal, and the hungry black boy, thrusting his hand with outspread fingers below it, closes the fingers and withdraws anything but an inviting morsel. To the tongue-shaped shell is attached a pedicle or stalk, attaining a length of ten inches, opaque and tough, which is broken off, seared over the fire, and eaten with apparent relish. It is remarkable that in localities in which this mollusc is found a seaweed occurs similar in shape and size, the chief difference in appearance ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... each one of them has to stop to play with it awhile an appreciable amount of time is lost, not to mention the strain it puts on their respective tempers. The paper of which an envelope is made should always be opaque enough to conceal the contents ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... good position, and between them two divers in two boats found the Grecian's wreck in half an hour. Indeed, they had made their first descent practically within hand-touch of her, but the water was full of a milky clay and very opaque, and sight below the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... itself remained as mysterious as before. Of course they did not touch it with bare hands—all wore insulated mittens—but the dazzling stuff was certainly as hard as steel and as highly polished. It was neither transparent nor opaque, but translucent, "like pink mother-of-pearl," ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... of green wood on the fire, for these gentlemen were gradually cutting down the park in order to keep themselves warm, he went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, a regular Normandy rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by some furious person, a slanting rain, opaque as a curtain, which formed a kind of wall with diagonal stripes, and which deluged everything, a rain such as one frequently experiences in the neighborhood of Rouen, which is ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to deny a certain element of elation. Not one of those excellent men but was already realising that a great door had opened, as it were, in the opaque fabric of destiny, that they were to get their money again that had seemed sunken for ever beyond any hope in the deeps of retail trade. Life was already in their imagination rising like ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Washington—seeing it's you that wants the ride? And what do you think you'll do, Washington, when you get to Hawkeye? Finish your invention for making window-glass opaque?" ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... touch. Others have suffered little from time or damp, but are streaky and full of bubbles. A few are, however, perfectly homogenous and limpid. Colourless glass was not esteemed by the Egyptians as it is by ourselves; whether opaque or transparent, they preferred it coloured. The dyes were obtained by mixing metallic oxides with the ordinary ingredients; that is to say, copper and cobalt for the blues, copperas for the greens, manganese for the violets and browns, iron for the yellows, and lead or tin for the whites. One ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... carelessly. The Treasury presented a deplorable spectacle of neglect: the riches had aged with the Cathedral, the diamonds did not flash, the gold seemed tarnished and dusty, the silver was blackened, the pearls were opaque and sick, the smoke from the wax tapers and the damp atmosphere of the church had sadly ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... water bath, yields the light brown, water-soluble [Greek: a]-naphtholsulphonic acid. A dilute solution of the latter, when treated with formaldehyde in the cold, undergoes no change; on heating the mixture on the water bath a brown precipitate is thrown down. If gelatine solution is added to the opaque liquid, a yellow flocculent precipitate separates. If caustic soda is added to the opaque liquid containing the condensation product described above, a clear solution results from which no deposit separates on the addition of acetic acid. Gelatine ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser
... There was something more, in the girl's face, that, people called gentle and shy: a weak, uncertain chin; thin lips, never still an instant, opening and shutting like a starving animal's; gray eyes, dead, opaque, such as Blecker had noted in the spiritual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... is only a question of more or less, where the darkness shall begin, and what it shall eclipse first. To the others who have loved the dying, and have gone before him, it is not a darkening, but a dawning. Perhaps to them it is the brightest dawn when it has been the most opaque and colourless sunset on the side of the earth." Or as Keble, with divine humility of richest spiritual ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... and regular patterns so very minute and the shades so delicately softened one into the other and into the ground of the bead that nothing but the finest touch of the pen could equal them. The agate parts disclose flowers and patterns deep in the body of the bead and thin shafts of opaque colors running from the center to the surface. The coloring matter of the blue bead has been proved by experiment to be iron; that of the yellow, without doubt, is lead and antimony, with a trifling quantity of copper, though this latter ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... cloud of inky fluid spread over the waters and into the opaque waves the waving arms sank, dragging with them to the depths of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... look into water contained in a vessel, some into a drop of blood, some into ink, some into a round opaque stone, some into mirrors, and many into some form of crystal or a glass ball. Indeed, the "gazer" seems to be quite independent as to the medium of his sight-seeing, so long as he has the "power." This "power" is put also to a ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... love Is like sudden sun upon a river— The slipping water Is instantly opaque and glorious. No longer can we look into it Counting the pebbles, Watching the ribboned water-reeds, Or searching idly For that something which we lost (A ring with gems) It is all glamour, now! We turn away, shading ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... quite still; and after a moment the livid terror died out in his face and a rushing flush spread over it—a strange, dreadful shade, curiously opaque; and he half turned, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... indeed! The salt entirely disappears and leaves the water transparent, whilst the chalk changes it into an opaque liquid like milk. ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... diameters, we observe minute granules, whether crystalline or not we cannot say, very similar to those described in the account of the daguerreotype. But now their effect is reversed. Being opaque, they darken the glass wherever they are accumulated, just as the snow darkens our skylights. Where these particles are drifted, therefore, we have our shadows, and where they are thinly scattered, our lights. On examining ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... "the girl must have a name. You must marry her, Francis—she shall be Lady Tunnell-Penge." Then the impulsive monarch stooped, and, opening a locket on the unconscious woman's breast, read the name Sarah in blue diamonds on an opaque background. "But," he added softly under his breath, "I shall know her ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... must have passages; a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other author ever soared so high, or sustained ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... strike the eye with its fulness undiminished by its own beauty; for if you look at the open sky such a breadth of the same hue tones itself down. But let the eye rise upwards along a wall of oak spray, then at the rim the rich blue is thick, quite thick, opaque, and steeped in luscious colour. Unless, indeed, upon the high downs,—there the June sky is too deep even for the brilliance of the light, and requires no more screen than the hand put up to shade the eyes. These level plains by the Thames are ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... night presented an indescribable spectacle. It is literally impossible to describe it, for every detail was obscured by the immense clouds of dust that hung over the place like a pall, clinging and opaque. The water-works and wells were fortunately intact, but until everything had been carefully tested and examined, the horses, who had drunk nothing since the previous day, ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... Shinner was the concert agent with connections in Paris whom Audrey had first consulted in the enterprise of launching Musa upon the French public. He was a large, dark man, black moustached and bearded, with heavy limbs and features, and an opaque, pimpled skin. In spite of these characteristics, he entered the room soft-footed as a fairy, ingratiating as a dog aware of his own iniquity, reassuring ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... mile away, to a great English novelist—a dinner to which the Breckenridges had of course been asked and upon which Rachael had weeks ago set her heart. She was tired, and her thoughts floated lazily about nothing at all, or into some opaque region of their own knowing, where the ills of the body might ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... not," said Margaret. She was very pale and her lips were a tight line. Her eyes were opaque and lustreless. She was in reality suffering what a less egotistical nature could not even imagine. All her life had Margaret Edes worshipped and loved Margaret Edes. Now she had done an awful thing. The falling from the pedestal of a friend is nothing to hurling ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... this nor that," say our Scribe. "For as he stood in the tribune, the picture of the field of daisies and poppies suggested the picture of Spring. A speaker is not always responsible for the frolics of his fancy. Indeed, an audience of some five thousand souls, all intent upon this opaque, mysterious Entity in the tribune, is bound to reach the very heart of it; for think what five thousand rays focussed on a sensitive plate can do." Thus our ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... reply to this and, turning away, continued his tasks. Joan had a close look at his eyes and again she was startled. They were not like eyes, but just gray spaces, opaque openings, with nothing visible behind, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... fireside any longer in the old sense? It hardly seems as if the young people of to-day can really understand the poetry of English domestic life, reading it, as they must, by a reflected illumination from the past. What would "Cotter's Saturday Night" have been, if Burns had written it by the opaque heat of a stove instead ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... again and said something in a low, melodious voice, which was, of course, quite unintelligible save for the evident friendliness of its tone. Then, releasing her hands, he took Redgrave's in the same fashion, and then led the way towards a vast, domed building of semi-opaque glass, or rather a substance that seemed to be something like a mixture of glass and mica, which appeared to be one of the entrance ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... chiffon which apparently performed the office of keeping her dress from sliding to the floor. In reality, under its fluid, gauzy draperies, it was constructed on a firm, well-fitting, well-fastened foundation of opaque cloth which quite adequately clothed the young body, but its appearance was of a transparent cloud, only kept from floating entirely away by those gleaming straps on the shoulders, an effect carefully calculated in the original model, and inimitably caught ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... platform, twilight fell. Looking up, I saw a low green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking around, except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious. Thirty rounds lower, I stepped off on the pierres perdues of the foundation; a dumb helmeted figure took me by the hand, and made a gesture (as I read it) of encouragement; and looking in at the creature's window, I beheld the face of Bain. There we were, hand ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... elements of which had never been given us separately in experience, would be unanalyzable. If all cold objects were moist, and all moist objects cold; if all liquids were transparent and all non-liquids opaque, we should find it difficult to distinguish cold from moisture and liquidity from transparency. On his part, James adds further that what has been associated sometimes with one thing and sometimes with another tends to become dissociated from both. This might be called a law of association ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... repetition of scenes that had been exhibited there on scores of previous Octobers, and had been allowed to pass away without a single dirge from the imperturbable beings who walked among them. Far in the shadows semi-opaque screens of blue haze made mysteries of the commonest gravel-pit, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... be asked to accompany her; and at the same time prayed to be spared that trial. Already he had ventured too perilously close to the brink of open avowal of his heart's desire. And that way—well he knew it!—humiliation lay, and opaque despair. Better to live on in the melancholy company of a hopeless heart than in the wretchedness of one rejected and despised. And who—and what—was he, that she should look upon him with more than the transient favour of pity or of gratitude ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... constructions of reason soon become merely speculative, soon pass, I mean, beyond the sphere of practical application; and the man of affairs, adjusting himself at every turn to the opaque brutality of fact, loses his respect for the higher reaches of logic and forgets that his recognition of facts themselves is an application of logical principles. In his youth, perhaps, he pursued metaphysics, which are the love-affairs of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the opportunity to say something in reply—but I preferred to hold my peace. He then handed me a folded length of soft white material, opaque, yet fine ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... that peculiar caliber which does not originate an idea, but which inserts a solid bone construction as well as keen little sparklets into the fabric of another's labor, and makes the whole translucent where before it may have been opaque. On Broadway he was called a play doctor, and Mr. Vandeford was not the first manager who had shut him up with quarts of refreshment to tinker on the play of many a literary, ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... each successive year. For the reproduction of manuscript by the blue process, the best plan that I have found has been to write the manuscript upon the thinnest blue tinted French note-paper, with black opaque ink—the stylographic ink is very good—and, afterward, to dip the paper into melted paraffine, and to dry the paper at the melting temperature. This operation, if cheaply done, requires special apparatus. For positive printing from the glass negative, I use a multiple frame, by the aid of which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... sat, enjoying their one-course dinner as no gourmet ever enjoyed a city feast, night and frost crept stealthily, almost visibly, over the stupendous snow-peaks and pinnacles of opaque ice that towered on all sides, breathing out cold; and contemplating, as if in silent amazement, these atoms of 'valiant dust' who dared and were beaten back, and dared again; who day by day pushed farther into their white sanctuary ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... tossing first to one side, then to the other, until at length, sitting up in my bunk and putting my face to the open port in quest of a breath of fresh air, the fancy took me that the darkness was no longer quite so opaque as it had been, nay, I was sure of it, for by putting my face right up against the circular opening I was enabled to catch an occasional transient gleam of faint, shifting light that I knew was the glancing of the coming dawn upon the back of the oily swell that came ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of printing-ink; and we have now Cennino's authority for using it with blue pigments. Sir Humphrey Davy informs us, that the Vestorian or Egyptian azure, the excellence of which is proved by its duration of 1700 years, may be easily imitated by carbonate of soda, opaque flint, and copper filings. The translator has made many experiments on the effect of the alkalis and neutral salts when mixed with colours, and has every reason to be satisfied with the addition of soda, when properly used." We have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... antennae somewhat red, at the tip brownish; ocelli yellow; the four facial keels distinct; thorax light brown behind with foveated impressions, amidst which arise a few longish prominences, transverse grooves feeble, dorsal keel very distinct. Elytra longer than the body, slightly opaque, light brown, with a few indistinct spots; wings scarcely as long as the elytra, with a greenish hue, except at the tip which is brownish; abdomen brown, shining, palest beneath, segments keeled above, posterior tibiae of a bright red, sides at the base yellowish, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... and the protoplasm of the two fuses into one mass. (The union of the nuclei has also been observed.) The young spore thus formed contracts somewhat, becoming oval in form, and soon secretes a thick wall, colorless at first, but afterwards becoming brown and more or less opaque. The chlorophyll bands, although much crowded, are at first distinguishable, but later lose the chlorophyll, and become unrecognizable. Like the resting spores of OEdogonium these require a long period of rest ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... out of the light into the darkness that rings it round, and out there he is a victim to the beasts of prey that hunt in darkness. An eclipse of the sun is not caused by any change in the sun, but by an opaque body, the offspring and satellite of the earth, coming between the earth and sun. And so, when Christian men lose the light of God's face, it is not because there is any 'variableness or shadow of turning' in Him, but because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is noble? What does the word "noble" still mean for us nowadays? How does the noble man betray himself, how is he recognized under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeianism, by which everything is rendered opaque and leaden?—It is not his actions which establish his claim—actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable; neither is it his "works." One finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in what we know. We change from weaker to stronger lights, and each more powerful light pierces our hitherto opaque foundations and reveals fresh and different opacities below. We can never foretell which of our seemingly assured fundamentals the next change will not affect. What folly, then, to dream of mapping out our minds in however general ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... from fifteen to twenty feet. When he selects a river instead of a lake for his winter bathing, its waters, like those of the shallower streams, may also contain a large quantity of sludge, thus rendering them opaque even to the sharp little eyes of the dipper. Then what does he do? He has a very natural and cunning way of solving this problem; he simply seeks a deep portion of the river and dives through the turbid water to the clear water beneath, where ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... epithet "raw," by the by, is vague, and needs definition. Every tint is raw which is perfectly opaque, and has not all the three primitive colors in its composition. Thus, black is always raw, because it has no color; white never, because it has all colors. No tint can be raw which is not opaque; and opacity may be taken away, either by actual depth and ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... another of the wonders of which Meteorology takes cognizance. The celebrated Malus, in 1808, while looking at the light of the setting sun shining upon the windows of the Luxembourg, was led to the discovery that a beam of light which was reflected at a certain angle from transparent and opaque bodies, or by transmission through several plates of uncrystallized bodies, or of bodies crystallized and possessing the property of double refraction, changed its character, so as to have sides, to revolve around poles peculiar to itself, and to be incapable of a second reflection. The angle ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... and liberality are not wasted. Whensoever thou shalt anoint thine eyes with the ointment in this jar, for the space of three hours afterwards thou shalt see through all solid substances that lie fifty feet in front of thee as though, instead of being opaque and dense as stone or brick, they were clear and translucent as a diamond of the first water. But of this power tell no man anything, lest ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... about her. The cold breath across her face and hands and needling through her shivering body, the increasing sounds of treetops in commotion, the recurring appearance of branches where before had been only an opaque vault, did little to inform her that the fog was about to lift. The rising wind merely made her the more miserable and alone. Nor was it until a disk of gold smote suddenly on the rock before her that she looked up and beheld a twinkle of blue sky. The fog puffed across ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... naked to the sun's rays, absorbs a good portion of them; but, being an opaque body, those rays penetrate to a small depth only. Its surface, by this accumulation of absorbed rays, becomes considerably heated. The residue of the rays are reflected into the air resting on that surface. This air, then, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is a white, opaque fluid, secreted in the lacteal glands of the female, in the mammalia. These glands consist of numerous follicles, grouped around an excretory duct, which unites with similar ducts coming from other lobules. By successive unions, they form large branches, termed the lactiferous ducts, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... facts, And when he goes forth he carries two long curved poles To prevent him from stumbling among the dark and hidden places; For he has gazed into the brilliant and pellucid orbs of Mian, And all other lights are dull and practically opaque. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... for a political and religious belief were bound to build of such belief foundation for a sturdy nation of the future. It is easy to look back and realize. It is hard to look forward with eyes that see; but one must be a very opaque thinker, indeed, not to wonder what this latest vast migration of Saxon blood portends for future empire. The Jutes and Angles and Saxons poured into ancient Albion for just one reason—to acquire each for his own freehold ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... with a coating of white opaque glass entirely over the blue," Uncle Bob explained. "Then the artist with extreme care and some sharp instrument cut this beautiful picture of the harvest gatherers. Notice, too, how the pattern is repeated on the handles. It is a pity the base or foot of the vase is ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... of smoke that was defined by the sunlit entrance to the tunnel. The witch stirred, and her familiar added fuel, while behind them the smoke, rising and curdling, formed the mysterious background of light: opaque, and yet in a state of incessant movement, as of some white raging fire, thinner and more deadly than any ordinary earthly element, that seemed to sicken and flicker in the blast of a furnace, and then rushed ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... betraying innate pride of race—he looked, on every count, no unworthy heir to the House of Sinclair and its simple honourable traditions: one that might conceivably live to challenge family prejudices and qualms. The thick dark hair, ruffled from sleep, was his mother's; and hers the semi-opaque ivory tint of his skin. The clean-cut forehead and nose, the blue-grey eyes, with the lurking smile in them, were Nevil Sinclair's own. In him, at least, it would seem that love was justified of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... sight. Moreover, I am not going to waste any more time discussing why I put in this little drawing. If it disturbs your conception of what it was I saw, paste over it a little bit of paper. I have made it small for the purpose; but remember that the paper should be thin and opaque, for thick paper will interfere with the shape of this book, and transparent paper will disturb you with ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... after swallowing an Opaque Meal, in a Man 626 suffering from Malignant Stricture of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the gem. For it is affirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone, with particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition that, as the youthful pair departed, the gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff, and fell into the enchanted lake, and that, at noontide, the ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to me as if this water were flowing slowly from left to right, and making my figure clearer every moment. It was like the end of an eclipse. Whatever it was that hid me, did not appear to possess any clearly defined outlines, but a sort of opaque transparency, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... should meet." He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching it with his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before the chimney-piece. With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose and his small, opaque eye he looked much like an Englishman. His whiskers were fair and glossy, and he had a large dimple, of unmistakably British origin, in the middle of his handsome chin. He was "distinguished" to the tips of his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine, perpendicular ...
— The American • Henry James
... the people with so much low meanness. It was with a despairing heart and the certitude of final disaster that Amedee, needing a little sleep after the fatigue, wandered through Paris's obscure streets, barely lighted here and there by petroleum lamps, under the dark, opaque winter sky, where the echoes of the distant cannonading unceasingly growled like the barking ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... strong, and the details of the facade, flying buttress, gargoyle and cornice, with a glimpse of the apse and spire, were all distinct. But as the Tenor thoughtfully perused them, the whole fabric suddenly disappeared from view, blotted out by an opaque body round which the moonlight showed like a rim of silver, tracing in outline the slender figure of the Boy. The Tenor had forgotten him for once, and was startled from his reverie by the unexpected apparition; but he did not alter his position or make any sign. The Boy preferred to come and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... before, taking care not to have too much air in the bottom. If the cork is adjusted properly, the bottle may be held in the hand and the sides pressed with the fingers, thus causing the small bottle to descend and ascend at will. If the small bottle used is opaque, or an opaque tube such as the cap of a fountain pen, many puzzling effects may be obtained. —Contributed by John Shahan, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... nevertheless there is a great difference in the size, character, and colour of their tusks, which may arise from variations in climate, soil, and food. The largest tusks are yielded by the African elephant, and find their way hither from the port of Zanzibar: they are noted for being opaque, soft or "mellow" to work, and free from cracks ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... of huge logs pyramidally sloping upwards, with fireplace in the middle of the floor, and no egress for smoke or ingress for light except right overhead, which, in bad weather, you could shut, or all but shut, with a lid. Lid originally made of mere opaque board, but changed latterly into a light frame, covered (glazed, so to speak) with entrails of animals, clarified into something of pellucidity. All this Olaf, I hope, further perfected, as he did ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... have felt much surprise at the complete disappearance of flints over wide and nearly level areas, from which the chalk has been removed by subaerial denudation. But the surface of every flint is coated by an opaque modified layer, which will just yield to a steel point, whilst the freshly fractured, translucent surface will not thus yield. The removal by atmospheric agencies of the outer modified surfaces of freely exposed flints, though no doubt excessively slow, together with the modification ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... by the side of the pool, no sign of life was visible. Far up through the green foliage of the jungle I could see a solid ceiling of cloud, while beneath me the liquid clay of the pool was equally opaque and lifeless. As a seer watches the surface of his crystal ball, so I gazed at my six-foot circle of milky water. My shift forward was like the fall of a tree: it brought into existence about it a temporary circle of silence and fear—a circle whose periphery began at ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... "Roses are not very opaque things to see through," he answered smiling, while Mrs. Stoutenburgh rescued Faith and putting her arm round her drew her off towards the sofa. Where Faith was glad to get at a distance from the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... metaphysic—exists first as such. Then it is unfolded into life and art. Our vision, our belief, our metaphysic is wearing woefully thin, and the art is wearing absolutely threadbare. We have no future; neither for our hopes nor our aims nor our art. It has all gone gray and opaque. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... timorous sand-pipers sought the low ridge of his cabin, while a wrecking crew of curlew hastily manned the uprooted tree that tossed wearily beyond the bar. By noon the flying clouds huddled together in masses, and then were suddenly exploded in one vast opaque sheet over the heavens. The sea became gray, and suddenly wrinkled and old. There was a dumb, half-articulate cry in the air,—rather a confusion of many sounds, as of the booming of distant guns, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... fell through the slit to the door-mat, Katie made at Melisande a grimace which, had not the panels been opaque, would have astonished the Emperors. Resuming her dignity, she picked the thing up, and, at arm's length, examined it. It was inscribed in pencil. Katie's lips curled at sight of the large, audacious handwriting. But it is probable that whatever kind of handwriting ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... days of barbarian battle. To him all men were Pagans who loved not the sound of his voice, nor wrestled with him in prayer before the Lord, nor fed him with rich food, nor gave him much strong green tea to drink. But these men were of opaque stuff, and were not dismayed, and they called him St. Anthony, and with a prophetic and deadly patience waited. The time came when the missionary shook his denouncing finger mostly at Pretty Pierre, who carefully nursed his silent wrath until the occasion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... other grains) are potent nutrient sources with low C/N ratios. Spent malt is especially potent because brewers extract all the starches and convert them to sugar, but consider the proteins as waste because proteins in the brew make it cloudy and opaque. Hops may be easier to get. Malt has uses as animal feed and may be contracted for by some local feedlot or farmer. These materials will be wet, heavy and frutily odoriferous (though not unpleasantly ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... dimness; not merely fog, nor smoke, nor yet a pall of suspended dust, but rather what one might expect in a blending of those three. Only a tinge of moonlight from above softened the dull hue. It was not darkness as night usually is dark. It was an impenetrable, opaque narrowing of the horizon, and closing in of the heavens above us; which, as we advanced, constantly shifted its boundary, retaining us still in the center of the great amphitheater of half-night. We could see one another, but beyond or above the encompassing ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... altar been illuminated by lights from other shrines. In the early days of the empire, Rome was fully aware of the glamour of Amon, of the star of Ormuzd, Brahm's cerulean lotos and the rainbow heights of Bel-Marduk. But in the splendour of Jove all these were opaque. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... among these cliffs the bird built its eerie, and how the young birds were taken by the Arabs. Crows followed the caravan in great numbers, and these reminded Owen of his gamekeeper, a solid man, six feet high, with reddish whiskers, the most opaque Englishman Owen had ever seen. "'We must get rid of some of them,'" Owen muttered, quoting ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... almost invisible dial set flush with its surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish—a fearsome weapon. Squat, huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing lenses and parabolic reflectors. Laboring under the weight of the thing, he strode along corridors and clambered heavily down short stairways. Finally he came to the purifier room, and grinned savagely as he saw the greenish haze of light obscuring the door and walls—the shield was ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... blinking, opaque, immobile, save for his piercing and mysterious eyes, had no explanation to give. All he said was, "Me no see all sides house same time"; so suggesting that, as the room had windows on all three sides, Louise must have escaped while he made his supposed sentry- go, slip-slopping ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mist is rising slowly from the fields and casting an opaque veil over everything within eyesight. Lighted up by the moon, the mist gives the impression at one moment of a calm, boundless sea, at the next of an immense white wall. The air is damp and chilly. Morning is still far off. A step from the bye-road which runs along the edge of the forest ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... gates I was aware of the approaching fog. I had seen it scores of times in that abominable low-lying part of the town, and I knew the symptoms. There was a faint smell in the air, an odour that bit the nostrils, carrying the reek of that changeless wilderness of factories and houses. The opaque grey sky lost its greyness and was struck to a lurid yellow. Banks of high fog rolled up the east and moved menacingly, almost imperceptibly, upon the town. For a moment there were dim shadows of the wharves and the riverside houses, with a church tower ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... sincere idolator than Van Berg, in his worship of beauty, never existed; but it was the beauty of a complete man or a complete woman. Even in his early youth he had not been so sensuous as to be captivated by that opaque fragment of a woman—an attractive form devoid of a mind. Indeed with the exception of a few boyish follies, his art had been his mistress thus far, and it was beginning to absorb both ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... wind had dropped, the sky became blacker than ever, and another deluge of rain fell, so densely that at a distance of a few yards it seemed to be an opaque wall. Coming to the conclusion that he had better take shelter until he could at least see his way, he planed downwards, calling to Rodier to keep a sharp look-out for a landing place. Suddenly, in the midst of the downpour, a huge dark shape loomed up ahead, appearing to rise almost perpendicularly ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... looked at her, she became conscious of some subtle intangible change that had shadowed, as it were, the marvellous beauty of her face and form. Her large deep eyes had lost their lustre, her clear creamy skin looked dull and opaque. Even the magnificent hair seemed to have been robbed of its sheen, and here and there amidst its masses gleamed ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... by malice on idiocy, that no human creature above the intellectual level of its author will ever dream of attempting to decipher the insignificant significance which may possibly—though improbably—lie latent under the opaque veil of its ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... again, and the faint light on the opposite wall grew tremulous and shifting with the movement of the foliage without. But presently the glow became quite obliterated, as if by the intervention of some opaque body outside the window. He rose hurriedly and went to the casement. But at the same moment he fancied he heard the jamming of a door or window in quite another direction, and his examination of the casement ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury's garden dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with pock-marks, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost palpable, lay upon the mutest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Yorkshire. Also how the fair bride was married from the house of Hamilton Veneering, Esquire, of Stucconia, and was given away by Melvin Twemlow, Esquire, of Duke Street, St James's, second cousin to Lord Snigsworth, of Snigsworthy Park. While perusing which composition, Twemlow makes some opaque approach to perceiving that if the Reverend Blank Blank and the Reverend Dash Dash fail, after this introduction, to become enrolled in the list of Veneering's dearest and oldest friends, they will have none but themselves to thank ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... be our cross-Channel springboard. There we ran into a mist, thick as a London fog. It covered the Channel like a blanket, and completely enveloped Dovstone and district. To cross under these conditions would have been absurd, for opaque vapour isolated us from the ground and cut the chain of vision which had bound together the six machines. We dropped through the pall of mist and trusted to Providence to save ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... had remained standing, was a slim replica of her mother, with an apple-cheeked face and opaque blue eyes. Her small head was prodigally laden with braids of dull fair hair, and she might have had a kind of transient prettiness but for the sullen droop of her round mouth. It was hard to say whether her expression implied ill-temper or apathy; but Wyant was struck ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton |
