"Blackness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they ate not in the meadow, for their hearts should be set in humility and patience, and the bulls were proud and black save only three. By the bulls is to understand the fellowship of the Round Table, which for their sin and their wickedness be black. Blackness is to say without good or virtuous works. And the three bulls which were white save only one that was spotted: the two white betoken Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale, for they be maidens clean and without spot; and ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... human. This attitude, one feels (and it is only to be arrived at by feeling), is absolutely right. We all start off with certain scarce expressible feelings that certain things are fundamentally decent and permissible, and that others are the reverse, just as we do not take our idea of blackness and whiteness from a text-book. If anybody proposed that all Scotsmen should be compelled to eat sago with every meal, the idea, although novel to most of us, would be instantly dismissed, even, it is probable, by those with sago interests, because it would ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... and barked, and run back, again and again, and jumped up on Auld Jock's legs, the man might never have won his way across the drowned place, in the inky blackness and against the slanted blast of icy rain. When he gained the foot of Candlemakers Row, a crescent of tall, old houses that curved upward around the lower end of Greyfriars kirkyard, water poured upon him from the heavy timbered gallery of the Cunzie Neuk, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... into Amiens for dinner. These nights were "not devoid of attraction," and on the "bad nights for the troops" I would often dine at the aerodrome and see the raiders off. It was uncanny, these great birds starting off into the blackness—to what? ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... this moment Batouch, the brother of the Caid of Beni-Kouidar, came slowly in through the doorway from the blackness of the sand-swept court. There was a strange smile on his handsome face, and he was caressing his black beard gently with one delicate hand. He saw me, smiled more till I caught the gleam of his white teeth, passed ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... when he turned off the main road and started up the long hill toward the Bolton place—not just dark, but a blackness so profound that the mare between the shafts was only a half formless splotch of gray as she plodded along ahead. Even his dread of the place, which formerly had been so acute, did not penetrate the mental misery that wrapped him; he did not vouchsafe ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... has the same effect. There is no other reason, therefore, why the oil becomes at once black in the air, than that the fire-air present in the air deprives it of its phlogiston, and thereby develops a subtle acid, previously united with this phlogiston, which produces the blackness. ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... But the Holy Spirit more emphatically said: "Come now." You said: "No, I can't. I can't come now." And that Holy Spirit stands in your heart to-night, with His hand on the door of your soul, ready to come out. Will you let Him depart? If so, then, with a pen of light, dipped in ink of eternal blackness, the sentence may be now writing: "Ephraim is joined to his idols. Let him alone! Let him alone!" When that fatal record is made, you might as well brace yourselves up against the sorrows of the last day, against the anguish of an unforgiven death-bed, against ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... glossy leaves, undistinguishable from the flowers around them. Now and then a colibri whirred downward toward the water, hummed for a moment around some pendent flower, and then the living gem was lost in the deep blackness of the inner wood, among tree-trunks as huge and dark as the pillars of some Hindoo shrine; or a parrot swung and screamed at them from an overhanging bough; or a thirsty monkey slid lazily down a liana to the surface of the stream, dipped ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... much of incipient madness in the calm survey which I began to take of my situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have given rise to the swelling of the veins, and the horrible blackness of the fingernails. I afterward carefully examined my head, shaking it repeatedly, and feeling it with minute attention, until I succeeded in satisfying myself that it was not, as I had more than half suspected, larger than my balloon. Then, in a knowing manner, I felt in both my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... little as possible on the stone, beside the weed itself. Especially scrape off any small sponges, and see that no worms have made their twining tubes of sand among the weed-stems; if they have, drag them out; for they will surely die, and as surely spoil all by sulphuretted hydrogen, blackness, and evil smells. ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... absolutely firm and fixed. A ship in overdrive feels exactly as if it were buried deep in the core of a planet. There is no vibration. There is no sign of anything but solidity and, if one looks out a port, there is only utter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... was a small circle of blue sky, round and round whose edge the edging of cloud seemed to be circling, with extreme velocity. The light seemed to pierce straight down onto the vessel, and she stood, pale and white, while all around her a pitchy blackness seemed to prevail. ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... northern hills begin with the basalt buttresses of Antrim and the granite ribs of Down, and pass through northern Ulster and Connacht to the headlands of Mayo and Galway. Their rear is held by the Donegal ranges, keeping guard against the blackness of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... this was quite true. She was fearless with regard to all natural things; storms, gales, all Nature's moods she could meet without flinching. Animals of all kinds had no terrors for her; neither had the dark—that land of blackness peopled with horrors for so many children. It was only in her dealings with her fellows that fear entered, and with ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... and 6. Lod. Mercatus de Inter. morb. cur. lib. 1. cap. 17. Altomarus, cap. 7. de mel. Guianerius, tract. 15. c. 1. Bright cap. 37. Laurentius, cap. 5. Valesius, med. cont. lib. 5, con. 1. [2663]"Distemperature," they conclude, "makes black juice, blackness obscures the spirits, the spirits obscured, cause fear and sorrow." Laurentius, cap. 13. supposeth these black fumes offend specially the diaphragma or midriff, and so per consequens the mind, which is obscured as [2664]the sun by a cloud. To this opinion of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... sailors call a fresh-water wash. The same bucket, to be sure, had to go through several hands, and was spoken for by one after another, but as we rinsed off in salt water, pure from the ocean, and the fresh was used only to start the accumulated grime and blackness of five weeks, it was held of little consequence. We soaped down and scrubbed one another with towels and pieces of canvas, stripping to it; and then, getting into the head, threw buckets of water upon each other. After this came shaving, and combing, and brushing; and when, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... tightly compressed; her eyes fiercely bright. She had thrown a black shawl over her head on coming away from the drawing-room into the draughty corridors. This shawl, which she had forgotten to remove, together with the dead blackness of her dress, gave her pale face a strangely spectral appearance. Clinging to her, and yet guiding her, came Angela, with the white flower crushed and drooping from her hair. She also was ashy pale, but there was a more natural and tender look of grief to be read in her wet eyes and on ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the table. The cabin was now in inky blackness. Across that black four more threads of scarlet light were laced. The man stumbled about seeking ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... wretched wanderer through the night, when the dawn reddens you will see no trace of a way to return. But why return? Death will serve as well. If the Dark which sounded the flute should lead to destruction, why trouble about the hereafter? When I am merged in its blackness, neither I, nor good and bad, nor laughter, nor ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... had come over him. If his life had depended on it, he couldn't have lifted his hand. The surface of his mind examined every detail of her—the intense whiteness of her face and the severe blackness of her clothes, the fact that she wore no jewel of any sort, not even a ring—except, of course, her wedding-ring. He had never seen it before and it seemed a gaudy splash of colour out of harmony with the rest ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... the Moon over Sun-spots an opportunity is afforded of comparing the blackness, or perhaps we should rather say, the intensity of the shade of a Sun-spot with the blackness of the Moon's disc. Testimony herein is unanimous that the blackness of the Moon during the stages of partial eclipse is intense compared ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... without reason and without warning, even that was taken from her, and in its place something burned that she did not know, save that it was a bad thing, and made even blackness blacker. She heard their voices still. They were happy together, while she was alone outside, her forehead resting against the chill glass, and her hands half numb upon the stone; and so it would always be hereafter. They would ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... her mysterious vigour, ever big with impending birth, merciless with impending death. As she showed herself to him then, with life all untried before him, so she showed herself still when, in the blackness of his present humour, all life worth the name appeared over and passed. He had changed, so he believed, to the point of nullity and final ineptitude. She remained strong, active, relentless as ever. As long ago, so now, she struck him ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... his head hurting again, he heard three rapid pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... as of the sea broke on our ears, rising and falling as if breaking on the shore, but the ocean was thirty miles away. The heavens became redder and brighter, and when we reached the crater-house at eight, clouds of red vapour mixed with flame were curling ceaselessly out of a huge invisible pit of blackness, and Kilauea was in all its fiery glory. We had reached the largest active volcano in the world, the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... instead of golden— And long the bride's maids wait the lord In the bridal-chamber olden; Ah, well! pale hands unwove the flowers That bound the milk-white forehead— The star has sunk, the red moon glowers Down slopes of blackness horrid. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... brightness, like the lurid flashes from his own torment, burst from his eye. The very anger and malice he strove to quell made it burn still hotter. His visage gathered blackness, cloud hurrying on cloud, like the grim billows of the storm across a glowing atmosphere. Rapid was the transition. Rage, apprehension, abhorrence,—all that hate and malignity could express, threw their appalling shadows over his features. Still the dark hints ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... town, on Saturday, the 2d, was visited by a terrible storm, which will long be remembered by those who witnessed its effects and suffered from its fury. It arose in the south-west, and came scowling in blackness, sufficient to indicate its anger, for the space of eighty or a hundred rods in width, covering our usually quiet village; and for nearly half an hour's duration, the rain fell in torrents, the heavens blazed with the lightning's flashes, trees fell and were uprooted ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... through the dark, cold night until the lighted windows of Tranquil Vale showed softly in the blackness. There was a light in the front room of No. 5, and the sound of somebody moving hurriedly about followed immediately upon Mr. Vyner's knock. Then the door opened and Captain Trimblett stood ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... common and social, but it is so great and venerable that no one can match it with an equal report. All the epithets by which we would extol it are disgraced by it, as the most brilliant artificial lights become blackness when placed between the eye and the noonday sun. It is older, it is earlier in existence than the earliest star that shone in heaven; and it will outlive the fixed stars that now in heaven seem fixed forever. There is nothing in the created universe of which it was not the prophecy in its primal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... had no difficulty whatever. Although the surface of the water was of inky blackness, from the shadowing trees above, and the huge trunks standing out of it now and then forced them into an occasional deviation, they ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... us, link arms! Close in the crevices, children! The River!" And all that multitude, whom I had seen treading quietly the grass and fallen leaves with prosperous feet, came hurrying, their eyes no longer fixed on the rich plain, but lifted in trouble and defiance, staring at that rushing blackness. And the Voice called: "Hasten, brothers! The dike ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ledge. Down she went, into the darkness and into the water, not knowing where one ended and the other began. Her eyes were closed, but they might as well have been open; there was nothing for her to see in all that blackness. Down she went, as if it were to the very bottom of black air and black water. And then, suddenly she ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... lining the eastern horizon, are the soft pencils of bashful day over-topping the jagged sawteeth of the yet sleeping mountains, fifty or more miles away. A faint hinting of the lightening of the sky only deepens the blackness of the snow-streaked peaks. The cowardly coyote's yelp comes more and more faintly, the burrowing owl's "to-whit, to-whoo" falls dying on the moveless air, and the white sparrow of the sagebrush starts up as if to catch the early worm he ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... I must say they do understand making coffee." Without more ado he ate his bread ravenously, and, in spite of its blackness and heaviness, felt very much refreshed when he had finished. The coffee was certainly good, and George drank it sparingly, lest it should be long before he got ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... in the power room they looked in amazement at the tiny machines that ran the ship. The long black cylinder of the main power unit for the molecular drive looked weak and futile compared to the bulky machines that ran their own ships. The power storage coils, with their fields of intense, dead blackness, interested ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Over in the west a faint, ghostly gleam of light still lingered, seen dimly through the trees; but it only made the utter blackness of the great forest-shadows more horrible. The huge trunks of the pines and maples towered up, up—they could scarcely see how far, grim, and gloomy and silent; here and there a dead branch thrust ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... to let go the haulyards and lower the sail, but the parrel jammed and the yard would not come down. I sprang to my feet and hung on to a rope. The sky aft was dark as pitch, but the moon still shone brightly ahead of us and lit up the blackness. Beneath its sheen a huge white-topped breaker, twenty feet high or more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break—the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it. Suddenly, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the coming darkness of night. Almost before the two lads had realised more than the fact that something black was approaching there was a loud rushing noise, a crash, and shock, as the boat was struck a tremendous blow on the side, whirled round, sucked under water, and then all was blackness, choking, strangling sensations, and ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... move to and fro in the hollow where the house stood, and shouts occasionally mingled with the wind, which retained some violence yet, playing over the trees beneath her as on the strings of a lyre. But not a bough of them was visible, a cloak of blackness covering everything netherward; while overhead the windy sky looked down with a strange and disguised face, the three or four stars that alone were visible being so dissociated by clouds that she knew not which they were. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... and still and cloudless they were for early June. And then there was a moon for a little while—a calm, wonderful moon that sent its fair light through the tall trees like a benediction. After that there were stars—millions of them—each in its place surrounded by that blue-blackness that is luminous and unearthly. Securing a guide, Truedale and Lynda sought their own way and slept, at night, in wayside shelters by their own campfires. They had no definite destination; they simply wandered like pilgrims, taking the day's dole ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... against the couch. His hand touched Ana's body. One last shred of consciousness enabled him to pick her up and drag her out. In the open, he fell, aware, before blackness descended, that flames leaped high over the laboratory building and that Unani Assu ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... things terrestrial. All his attention was concentrated upon the great blue circle of the telescope field—a circle powdered, so it seemed, with an innumerable multitude of stars, and all luminous against the blackness of its setting. As he watched he seemed to himself to become incorporeal, as if he too were floating in the ether of space. Infinitely remote was the faint red spot he ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... in impenetrable darkness, except for the faint and quivering radiance which the sphere emitted, and as I plunged my eyes into its depths in an effort to see what lay there, it seemed to me that I had never seen blackness so black. As I stared into it, with straining eyes, a vague form grew dimly visible beside the glowing sphere; and then I recoiled a little, for suddenly it took shape and I saw it ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... for her birth,—the scrupulousness of modesty, for her history. The night, that consecrated so many homes and gathered together so many families in innocence and repose, was to her blacker than its own blackness in misery and turpitude; the morning, that radiated gladness over the face of the world, revealed the extent and exaggerated the sense of her own degradation. But the vision of Jesus had alighted upon her; she had seen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... that Neptunian harvest, mixed with an abundant supply of water, would already have generated the flame-bright liquid which dyes the robes that adorn the throne. The colour of that dye is gay[211] with too great beauty; 'tis a blushing obscurity, an ensanguined blackness, which distinguishes the wearer from all others, and makes it impossible for the human race not to know who is the king. It is marvellous that that substance after death should for so long a time exude an ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... inkier the blackness All the clearer do we see To select the whitest pigeon In the dove-cote, and the bluest Blue jay on ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... the oars. All the evening they rowed steadily, and as they still swept along night came down suddenly. They kept close to the shore, where to their right arose great mountains straight up from the water's edge. They were covered with forest, and here and there in the blackness ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... shortest way to Nantucket," soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb's question. "The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it into a fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward—I see it lightens up there; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the moon grew pale, and for a while the horsemen rode into a wall of blackness, conscious of progress only by the sound of hoof-beats which they were relentlessly urging forward. Then dawn flashed up over the chaos of rocks, pursuing night with the sweep of its broadening, translucent wings across the valley to the other range. The tops of the cotton-woods rose ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... thousand fantastic shapes—a wild chaos of ruin, desolation, and barrenness—a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent asunder—of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted masses of blackness that mimicked branching roots, great vines, trunks of trees, all interlaced and mingled together: and all these weird shapes, all this turbulent panorama, all this stormy, far-stretching waste of blackness, with its thrilling suggestiveness of life, of action, of boiling, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from his chair and stood with his face towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the conflict within him. It was of no use now—his resolution not to speak till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes before he turned ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... his nerve," was Bill's rejoinder as they shouldered their sacks and slipped off into the deep blackness shrouding the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... last they were close by and could pierce the gloom, and there at the foot of the cross, beside the cairn of stones that helped to support it, was a little huddled bit of blackness. It moved as they looked, and they knew the voice that came ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... colourless and uniformly sombre. Far and near, innumerable chimneys sent forth fumes of various density broad-flung jets of steam, coldly white against the murky distance; wan smoke from lime-kilns, wafted in long trails; reek of solid blackness from pits and forges, voluming aloft and far-floated ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... upon the heads of our horses; the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon flowers and glittering laurels, whilst all around the massy darkness seemed to invest us with walls of impenetrable blackness, together with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical and affecting. As we staid for three or four minutes, I alighted. And immediately from a dismantled stall in ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the velvet blackness came two white eyes, milky, opalescent, small, far away,—awful eyes, like a dead dream. More beautiful than I can describe, the flakes of white flame moving from the perimeter inward, disappearing in the centre, like a never ending flow of opal water into a circular tunnel. ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... my room. It is bare and always cold; always I must shiver some minutes before I shake it back to life. As I close the shutters I see the street again; the massive, slanting blackness of the roofs and their population of chimneys clear-cut against the minor blackness of space; some still waking, milk-white windows; and, at the end of a jagged and gloomy background, the blood-red stumbling apparition of the mad blacksmith. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... jerk that seemed almost to crack his spine, he sensed that the blackness wasn't a pansy at all, but just a round, earthy sort of blackness in which he himself lay mysteriously prone. And he heard the wind still roaring furiously away off somewhere. And he heard the rain still drenching and sousing away off somewhere. But no wind seemed to be tugging directly at ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... silently, pausing for a while to listen for sounds of pursuit, and at last, with minds relieved, if not quite certain, plodded on into the obscurity. They had entered, it seemed, an aisle of a forest which stretched, darkly impenetrable, on either side. Before them, blackness, darkness within dark, like a cave, a smell of dampness like a dungeon. The sky lightened for a moment and they saw the shape of leaves and tree fronds far above them like a pattern on a carpet—a pattern which changed with elflike witchery, for a wind had blown ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... was playing airs from the operas of the day, and Maurice yielded to the spell of the romantic music. He leaned over the pavilion rail, and out of the blackness below he endeavored to conjure up the face of Nell (or was it Kate?) who had danced with him at the embassies in Vienna, fenced and ridden with him, till—till—with a gesture of impatience he flung away the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the blackness of the night with a firmer step, with a new assurance. I had had my interview, the thing was definitely settled; the first thing in my life that had ever been definitely settled; and I felt I must tell Lea before I slept. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... enemy, his ramparts drifted high, and his roads marked with snow. The black firs on the ridge stood out against the frozen clouds, still and hard; the slopes of leafless larches seemed withered and brown; the distant plain far down gloomy with the same dull yellowish blackness. At a height of seven hundred feet the air was sharp as a scythe—a rude barbarian giant wind knocking at the walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept sideways even to the windows to look out upon the world. There was everything to repel—the cold, the frost, the hardness, the snow, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... place among them, with no stain of bribes in her hands, and with no soil of meanness upon her garments. And then the "peace" and "prosperity," which President Buchanan saw in vision on the eve of May-day, will indeed prevail and be established, while the blackness of infamy will brood forever over the memory of the magistrate who used the highest office of the Republic to perpetuate the wrongs of the Slave by the sacrifice of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... to many geographical surprises in the course of this incessant transformation of the map of the continent. Many of us may remember in our school geographies, the particular blackness and prominence of the Kong Mountains, extending for two hundred miles parallel with the Gulf of Guinea. They were accepted on the authority of Mungo Park, Caillie, and Bowditch, all reputable explorers who had not seen the mountains, but believed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... drove over that!" shuddered Andy, as he pointed into the blackness of the hollow. "That must be a ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... safe the securities of his life and career, when it snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut out the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, came the opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in despair: "Blind! ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Near the window of a room sat a young woman bending over a table. A gas-jet on a bracket in the wall, a few inches higher than her head and a foot distant from it, threw a strong radiance on her face and hair. The luminous living picture, framed by the window in blackness, instantly entranced him. All the splendid images of the past faded and were confuted and invalidated and destroyed by this intense reality so present and so near to him. (Nevertheless, for a moment he thought of her as the daughter of Sir Thomas More.) She was drawing. She ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... as night. The whole swamp, save the little island on which they sat, was lost in the dusk, and a wind, heavy with damp, came moaning out of the vast wilderness. Thunder rumbled on the horizon, then cracked directly overhead, and flashes of lightning cut the blackness. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... he lighted his lamp, but the flaring name illuminated only a little space in the brooding, hovering blackness about him. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the morning light. It began very soft and low, a strange, broken murmur, like the music of a brook, and as it swelled that weird and mournful tone was slowly lost in one of hope and joy. The Indian's soul was coming out of night, blackness, the sleep that resembled death, into the day, ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... pangs of the lover are described just as they are described in the case of his [Shakspere's] Orlando—dishevelled hair, blackness under the eyes, disordered dress, a desire for solitude, and the habit of writing the girl's name on every tree—symptoms which are perhaps now regarded as natural, and which many romantic personages have no doubt imitated because they found them in literature, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... victory and death; and when the twilight faded into night, the moon arose in solemn beauty, and cast mysterious gleams upon the strange stern landscape. The wide river, flowing rapidly between its rugged banks, rolled in inky blackness beneath the overshadowing crags; while the waves in mid-channel flashed along in dazzling light, rendered more intense by the surrounding darkness. In this luminous track the huge steamer glided majestically forward, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... an instant. Even as the dome shattered under the copter's shell and Dark recognized the imminence of death, the groundcar twisted out of control and careened from the highway. He felt it spinning over and over, and then blackness closed ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Ida had deceived? What would Ida say? What would her father say if he knew that she was—? She could not say the word even to herself. When she was in bed and her light out, she was overcome by a nervous stress which almost maddened her. Faces seemed to glower at her out of the blackness of the night, faces which she knew were somehow projected out of her own consciousness, but which were none the less terrific. She even heard her name shouted, and strange, isolated words, and fragments of sentences. She lay in a deadly fear. Now was the time when, if her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... raven once in snowy plumes was dress'd, White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast, Fair as the guardian of the Capitol, Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl; His tongue, his prating tongue, had changed him quite To sooty blackness from the purest white. The story of his change shall here be told: In Thessaly there lived a nymph of old, Coronis named; a peerless maid she shined, Confessed the fairest of the fairer kind. 10 Apollo ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Nagasaki is ascending at the same time as ourselves; but yonder, and very far away, in a kind of vapory mist which seems luminous on the blackness of the sky; and from the town there rises a confused murmur of voices and rumbling ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... again with blacker shadows in the next clause, which substitutes for 'darkness' the still more tragic words, 'the region and shadow of death.' The realm of darkness is the region of death. That dread figure is the lord of it, and, grimly enough, its very intensity of blackness has power to throw a shadow even there where there is no light, and to deepen the gloom. The second clause advances on the first in another respect, for while the former spoke only of 'seeing' the light, the latter tells of the blessed suddenness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... followers frequently to consider their image in a glass, that so those of them that prided themselves on their appearance might above all else take care that they did no dishonour to the splendour of their body by the blackness of their hearts; while those who regarded themselves as less than handsome in personal appearance might take especial pains to conceal the meanness of their body by the glory of their virtue? You see; the wisest man of his day actually went so far ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... crossing the black gulf of the room, and drawing near to where she lay. The next flash revealed, as it bended over her, the ghastly face of Karl, down which flowed fresh tears. The rest of his form was lost in blackness. Lilith did not faint, but it was the very force of her fear that seemed to keep her alive. It became for the moment the atmosphere of her life. She lay trembling and staring at the spot in the darkness where she supposed the face of Karl still to be. But the next flash showed her ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... with thick dark eyebrows and long lashes, and olive complexion—that appeared almost white in contrast with the jetty blackness of his beard—but above all, the extreme contraction of a thin upper lip, indicated the countenance of a man of quick resolves and fiery passions. A shade of tranquil melancholy over these features to some ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... openly before us that we could see the whole of it distinctly with our naked eyes. And what at this nearer view seemed most impressive about it was its gloominess; that was due not less to the prison-like effect of its heavily built houses and its massive walls than to the dull blackness of the stone whereof these same were made. Nowhere was there sparkle, or glitter, or bright color, or brightness of any sort to be seen; and it seemed to me, as I gazed upon this sombre stronghold, that dwelling always within it well enough might wear a ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... and she was gone. He glanced quickly behind him, but the room lay black.... A transient pallor on the blackness, and the door banged. He sat a long time, solemn, gazing at the serrated silhouette of the town against a sky that obstinately held the wraith of daylight, and listening to the everlasting murmur of the invisible weir. Not a sound came from the town, not the least ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... their people; that the chain of friendship between him and the Cherokees is now like the sun, which shines both in Britain and also upon the great mountains where they live, and equally warms the hearts of Indians and Englishmen; that as there is no spots or blackness in the sun, so neither is there any rust or foulness on this chain. And as the King had fastened one end to his breast, he defied them to carry the other end of the chain and fasten it to the breast of Moytoy of Telliquo, and to the breasts ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... nothing. Then, in an instant, the blackness vanished from the screen and it framed a vista of such cosmic, stunning splendor that ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... the East, your acquaintance with Yiddish, and Syrian and Hebrew, the very swarthiness of your skin, and blackness of your hair, dear boy, may all serve you in good stead. For, if you feel led to it, I should suggest that you adopt that Syrian costume I once saw you in. This course would have many advantages, for while you could the more readily mix with the people, and obtain entree often where you otherwise ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... bagatelle, a thing that to many men was as small an affair as a stray sixpence; and here was this man, as good, so to speak, as any—well educated, full of gifts and accomplishments, well born, well connected, not a prodigal nor open sinner, losing himself in the very blackness of darkness, feeling that a kind of moral extinction was the only prospect before him, for want of this little sum. It seemed incredible even to himself, as he sat and brooded over it. Somehow, surely, there must be a way of deliverance. He looked piteously about him in his solitude, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... night which I recall for its dense blackness, there came a tap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the small window of my room in the Castle. I knew by the method of the disturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet and peering hard into the outer darkness before ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... He looked at the calendar which he had scratched upon the wall. It was the twenty-fourth day of December. He wondered whether God knew what was happening and whether He had planned it. Then he gave up wondering, for behind him, from the blackness of the cave, the ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... convicted of being inconsistent, a slave to his passions, and a victim of hot temper by his own slave Davus. We are reminded again of the literary method of Horace in his Satires when we read the dramatic description of the shipwreck in Petronius. The blackness of night descends upon the water; the little bark which contains the hero and his friends is at the mercy of the sea; Lichas, the master of the vessel, is swept from the deck by a wave, Encolpius and his comrade Giton prepare to die in each ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... to use it, those who have wealth as well may go further than the rest. Also beauteous things are pleasant to the sight and there is joy in gathering them. Yet at the last they mean nothing, for naked we came out of the blackness and naked we return there. Vanity of ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... glass, "should be full of interest to the psychologist. Here we are, brought together by some miraculous chance to spend one night of our lives in an African jungle, two human beings of the same age, brought up together thousands of miles away, jogging on towards the eternal blackness along lines as far apart as the mind ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... renounce the decencies of dress; and seemed to value himself for his neglect of the laws of cleanliness. In a satirical performance, which was designed for the public eye, the emperor descants with pleasure, and even with pride, on the length of his nails, and the inky blackness of his hands; protests, that although the greatest part of his body was covered with hair, the use of the razor was confined to his head alone; and celebrates, with visible complacency, the shaggy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... at last they were in total darkness—darkness pierced only by the powerful search-light which threw its dazzling, trumpet-shaped rays far ahead. But, search as he would in the direction they were going, the unfortunate American could see nothing but the ever-receding wall of blackness. ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... soft, indolent mists, lingering in mountain hollows, that will rise towards noon, laden with the scent of flowering lindens; now they are storm-clouds, threatening destruction and rolling with thunder. Night comes on, and suddenly the blackness is rent by so glaring a light that the plain assumes for an instant the hues of mid-day; then the darkness falls again, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... things as are necessary for an animal's life. Secondly, a thing is said to be perfect relatively: and this perfection regards something connected with the thing externally, such as whiteness or blackness or something of the kind. Now the Christian life consists chiefly in charity whereby the soul is united to God; wherefore it is written (1 John 3:14): "He that loveth not abideth in death." Hence the perfection of the Christian life consists simply in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a full minute, as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood. When it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand again. "I'm just as sorry as I can be!" she declared, and the slate-blue ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current. Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the express-office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless panes, the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... cakes and the hot tea refreshed the three, and after an hour Mary-Clare seemed quite herself. She went to the door and looked out into the heart of the storm. The red lightning ran zigzag through the blackness. It seemed like the glad summer, mad with fear, seeking a way through the sleet ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... blackness of the shed he worked himself up to the pitch of talking as if she were present. And he said some fine ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... year the shadow of a new trouble fell on England, and none heeded it, though we know it over well now—the shadow of the coming of the Danes. My own story must needs begin with that, for I saw its falling, and presently understood its blackness. ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... sun was hidden by blackness. A fearful tempest burst over the land. The people on the other islands saw Polobulac wrapped in ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... the clamors that floated up in indistinct and broken fragments, he knew that they had tracked him. He heard the tramp of their feet as they came under the loggia; he heard the click of the pistols—they were close upon him at last in the blackness ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... hut, and those within it. The inky sky was without a star. The puffs of rain rattled dismally on the roof of the old cabin. But all this somberness of nature brought comfort and lightness of heart to the besieged. Paul's spirits rose with the blackness of the night and the wildness ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Mr. Austin and the lantern toward the barn, and the road was quite deserted. Mrs. Delancy and Crosby started off rapidly in the direction of the town. The low rumble of distant thunder came to their ears, and ever and anon the western blackness was faintly illumined by flashes of lightning. Neither of the fugitives uttered a word until they were far ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... resolutely prosecuting them. This, it appears to us, is a case of singular interest, and rarely exemplified, if at all elsewhere, in these our days. How has this man, to whom the world once offered nothing but blackness, denial and despair, attained to that better vision which now shows it to him, not tolerable only, but full of solemnity and loveliness? How has the belief of a Saint been united in this high and true ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... not a complete darkness, but a series of lights showing against the silence of the blackness of the nave; and in the middle of the nave, like a great funeral thing, was the choir which these Spanish churches have preserved, an intact tradition, from the origins of the Christian Faith. Go to the earliest of the basilicas in Rome, and you will see that sacred enclosure ...
— On Something • H. Belloc |
