"Blinding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three distinctly high cones before me, and then the mist, finding it cannot drive me back easily, proceeds to desperate methods, and lashes out with a burst of bitter wind, and a sheet of blinding, stinging rain. I make my way up through it towards a peak which I soon see through a tear in the mist is not the highest, so I angle off and go up the one to the left, and after a desperate fight reach the cairn—only, alas! to find a hurricane raging and a fog in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... within those slowly approaching walls of smoke a century or two ere he became aware that he was not alone, after all. There was a Presence there beside him. Light, and a Presence! Blinding light. He reasoned that other men, the men outside of the walls of smoke, the firemen perhaps, and by-standers, might think that light came from the fire down in the pit, but he knew it did not. It radiated from the Presence beside him. And there was a Voice, calling his name. He seemed ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... narrow, and she struggled along through the black, suffocating hole, until her breath had almost failed her, and she had nigh been choked to death! Poor girl! She could not reach her eyes to clear them of the soot that was blinding and maddening her with pain, and she began to tremble lest she should lose her senses. But she prayed to God to deliver her, and made one supreme effort to free herself. She felt the air from above; the hole began to widen, and she could lay her head ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... deed—such, when they came, rushed on him suddenly; but in the realm of thought and imagination and motive he would often find himself, as it were, entering a swarm of such things, that hovered round him, impeding his prayer, blinding his insight, and seeking to sting the very heart of his spiritual life. Then once more he would fight himself free by despising and rejecting them, or would emerge without conscious will of his ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... into the mizzen rigging, and looked through the smoke. Dead men he could descry through the blinding veil, rolled in heaps, laid flat; dead men and dying; but no man upon his feet. The last volley had swept the deck clear; one by one had dropped below to escape that fiery shower: and alone at the helm, grinding his ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... submerged log and the slender blade snapped short off with a loud crack, the ticklish canoe careened suddenly to one side, then righted again with a sullen splash. At the sound the silent point quickly stirred with life. There was the hum of excited voices and a blinding flash of flame lit up the darkness, followed by the sharp crack of rifles and the hum ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... effulgent as Indra's bow, hath always trembled in fear. At the leonine roars of Bhimasena and the blare of Panchajanya and the twang of Gandiva, our heart will die away within us. Moving like flashes of lightning, and blinding our eyes, Arjuna's Gandiva is seen to resemble a circle of fire. Decked with pure gold, that formidable bow as it is shaken, looks like lightning's flash moving about on every side. Steeds white in hue and possessed of great speed and endued with the splendour of the Moon or the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... beautiful prayer—or so it seemed to me—a ray of blinding light cleaved up from where Vere stood, like a shot arrow speeding straight through house and night into inconceivable space. Then the room vanished from my sight as the great wave burst out ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... fireworks, which were to be let off in the lawn that lay below their standpoint and between them and the front of the dwelling-house. Here they sat as the evening closed in. As soon as it was quite dark the whole front of the mansion-house suddenly blazed forth in a blinding illumination. There were stars, wheels, festoons, and leaves, all in fire. In the center burned a rich transparency, exhibiting the arms ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "It's blinding!" he cried, his eyes blinking and filling with water as he gazed upon the scene. "I can't stand it. ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... as the Spring where the South has brightened Earth with bloom in one passionate night, Swift as the violet heavens had lightened Swift to perfection, blinding, white, Dian arose: and Actaeon saw her, Only he since the world began! Only in dreams could Endymion draw her Down to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... coast, Wallace gladly saw the helm in his hand. But he had scarcely stepped forward himself to give some necessary directions, when a heavy sea, breaking over the deck, carried two of the poor mariners overboard. Wallace instantly threw out a couple of ropes. Then, amidst a spray so blinding that the vessel appeared in a cloud, and while buffeted on each side by the raging of waves, which seemed contending to tear her to pieces, she lay to for a few minutes, to rescue the men from the yawning gulf; ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... recently contained an account of a motorcycle race in Newark, New Jersey. The scene was a great bowl-shaped motor-drome. In the midst of cheering thousands, when riding at the blinding speed of ninety-two miles an hour, the motorcycle of one of the contestants went wrong. It climbed the twenty-eight-foot incline, hurled its rider to instant death and crashed into the packed grandstand. ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... had viewed Joe as a handsome, solid figure—a man well thought of, one who would give her a home with bigger rooms and better furniture in it than most fishermen's daughters might reasonably hope for. But this new blinding light was more than the memory of Joe could face uninjured. He shriveled and shrank in it. Like St. Michael's Mount, seen afar, through curtains of rain, Joe had once bulked large, towering, even grand, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... accompanied by warm blasts of wind. There was sunshine overhead, but the peaks were shrouded in scudding vapours, trees bent under the force of the wind; the sea, a welter of light and shade, was dappled with silvery patches under the swiftly careering clouds. Soon there came a blinding downpour. Gullies were blocked up with mud; rills carried tons of it into the sea. Then the gale died down; the sun beamed out of a bright evening sky. The ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... dying year I bade farewell, Within my hands she left a mantle dark, Whereon mine eyes did mark Loved names I scarce for blinding tears could read; But from its folds fresh blushing flow'rets fell Of that fair spring-tide ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... at the warm and light breath of the wind and became covered with tiny wrinkles that reflected the sun in blinding fashion and laughed at the sky with its thousands of silvery lips. In the deep space between sea and sky buzzed the deafening and joyous sound of the waves chasing each other on the flat beach of the sandy promontory. ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... worth while. It is just as sensible to flout soldiers on the drill-ground as to wave aside as of no account a troup of trained lions or sea-lions on the stage. Any animal that can be taught to perform difficult feats, and that delivers the goods in the blinding glare and riot of the circus ring or the stage footlights, is entitled to my profound respect for its powers ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... gladly left the smoking ruin of his home and guided us on a drove-road into the wilds of Lochaber, among mountains more stupendous than those we had left behind. These relentless peaks were clad with blinding snow. The same choking drifts that met us in Corryarick filled the passes between Stob Choire and Easan Mor and Stob Ban, that cherish the snow in their crannies in the depths of midsummer. Hunger was eating at our hearts when we got to Glen Nevis, but the glen was empty of people, and ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... theologians,—only much less in degree than in these last. It does not commonly improve the sympathies of a man to be in the habit of thrusting knives into his fellow-creatures and burning them with red-hot irons, any more than it improves them to hold the blinding-white cantery of Gehenna by its cool handle and score and crisp young souls with it until they are scorched into the belief of—Transubstantiation or the Immaculate Conception. And, to say the plain truth, I think there are a good many coarse people in ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... sharply, so sharply that for a single moment she thought that something had angered him. And then—all in one single blinding instant—she realized that which no words could utter. For he caught her swiftly to him, lifting her off her feet, and very suddenly he covered her face and neck and throat with hot, devouring kisses—kisses that electrified ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... a patch of grass. Annie Foster found herself getting melancholy, as she gazed upon it, and thought of how the winds must sometimes sweep across it, laden with sea-spray and rain and hail, or with the bitter sleet and blinding ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... Artois remembered a blinding storm that had crashed over a mountain village in Sicily long ago, a flash of lightning which had revealed to him the gaunt portal of a palace that seemed abandoned, a strip of black cloth, the words "Lutto in famiglia." They had seemed ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the tropic moon was blinding as the sun. Away to the faint translucent line of the horizon rolled an infinity of shining sea. Straight ahead rose a dark conical mass. It was the mountainous shape ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... vivid pictures which the revolutionary papers and periodicals draw of the abuses, corruptions and wrongs of our age, they succeed in blinding many American citizens to such an extent that the latter do not realize that they have been caught in the snares of a deceitful and dangerous enemy. Like the soap-box orators, these publications, besides criticising real present-day abuses, frequently ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... with and loved, even if they be 'green in death, and festering in their shrouds,' with the wind moaning amongst the stunted yew—trees, and the rain splashing and scattering on the moss covered tombstones, and the blinding blue lightning flashing, while the. headstones glance like an array of sheeted ghosts, and the thunder is grumbling overhead, without a qualm—direness of this kind cannot once daunt me; it is here and now, when all nature sleeps ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... tempted him. He made up his mind to bathe, and at once walked toward the shore. The instant he stepped outside the shadow line of the forest trees, the blinding rays of the sun beat down on him so savagely that for a few minutes he felt sick and his head swam. He trod quickly across the sands. The orange-coloured parts were nearly hot enough to roast food, he judged, but the violet parts ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Against the blinding glory, looming gigantic in the mist, I saw the Sagamore, an awful apparition in his paint, turn to salute the rising sun. Then, the mysterious office of his priesthood done, he lifted his rifle, tossed the heavy piece lightly to his shoulder, and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... just opening my window for the night when the dreadful thing happened. Suddenly the whole island seemed to be illuminated. I turned my eyes instinctively to the place where the Uruguay lay, and there high into the heavens mounted a blinding pillar of flame. The wind was still blowing pretty fresh away from me and towards the ship, but even against it the roar that followed shook every window and door in the house. The pillar of flame vanished the next instant, but high in the air fire-balls seemed to linger for some ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... Corniche,—a genuinely tropical temperature, where dates, cactus, the aloe, with its tall, candelabra-like branches, grow in the fields. When he saw those slender trunks, that fantastic vegetation shooting up in the white, hot air, when he felt the blinding dust crunching under the wheels like snow, de Gery, his eyes partly closed, half-dreaming in that leaden noonday heat, fancied that he was making once more the tiresome journey from Tunis to the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of Cromwell's character, as henceforth entirely dismissed from all candid and intelligent minds. It was quite natural that such a view should be taken of their terrible enemy by the royalists of the Restoration, hating his memory with a most cordial hatred, and accustomed, in their blinding licentiousness, to look upon all religion as little better than cant and hypocrisy. It was quite natural that such a portrait of him should be drawn by the men who unearthed his bones, and vented ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... eyes took in at one confused glance. The thing that gave him unreasoning terror was the hundred-foot-high metal monster before him. It defied description. It was unlike any color known on Earth, a blinding color sinister with power and evil. Its shape was equally ambiguous—it rippled like quicksilver, now compact, now spread out in a thousand limbs. But what appalled Phobar was its definite possession of rational life. More, its very thoughts were transmitted to him ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... to meet outside of the pages of fiction, and felt himself utterly unable to combat them. Under the present circumstances even neighbourly friendship with Sylvia would be difficult. It was not that Mrs. Latham had overawed him in the least, but she had raised in him so fierce and blinding a resentment by her only half unconscious reference to his mother, that he resolved that under no circumstances should she run the risk of being equally rebuffed. He would protect her from a possible intercourse, where ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... 'Nevertheless when IT,' the heart, 'shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.' The law, then, doth veil the heart from Christ, and holds the man so down to doing and working for the kingdom of heaven, that he quite forgets the forgiveness of sins by mercy through Christ. Now this veiling or blinding ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... later times books and formulas of a terrific character were commonly employed, upon the reading or recital of which the prodigies resorted to began to display themselves. The heavens were darkened; the thunder rolled; and fierce and blinding lightnings flashed from one corner of the heavens to the other. The earth quaked and rocked from side to side. All monstrous and deformed things shewed themselves, "Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire," enough to cause the stoutest heart to quail. Lastly, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... bank a blinding sun hung in a sky without a cloud—a sky of undiluted azure; but farther south, and as the sun declined, traces of vapours from the huge but still distant city stained the heavens. Gradually the increasing haze changed from palest lavender and lemon-gold to ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... electricity and steel, and a fitting part of the intense age in which they exist. That we have as yet seen but a partial development of the possibilities of the electrical discovery, no one can doubt. The rush of the trolley car, and the blinding flash of the electric light, are but challenges thrown out to the future for even greater achievements. That they will come no one will question; but where is the daring prophet who will hazard a guess as to what they ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... saw nothing degrading to man's dignity in the theory of evolution. In a wonderfully fine sentence he gives his own estimate of the theory as it affects man's future on earth. "Thoughtful men once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudices, will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discover, in his long progress through the past, a reasonable ground ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... figure stood within the great gateway. The pitiful glimmer of a lantern swung from his mitted hand. His eyes, keen, penetrating, in spite of the blinding snow, searched the direction where the trail flowed down from the Fort. He was waiting, still, silent, in the howl of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... forgetful of herself, implored God to protect her sister and her helpless children. She was deaf to the clamor of the infuriate mob around her. She was insensible to the dishonor of her own appearance, with disheveled locks blinding her eyes, and with her faded garments crumpled and disarranged by the rough jostling of the cart. She forgot the scaffold on which she stood, the cords which bound her hands, the blood-thirsty executioners ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... "The blinding Trail and Night and Cold are man's: mine is the trail that finds the Ancient Lodge. Morning and Night they travel with me; my camp is set by the pines, its fires are burning—are burning. The lost, they shall sit by my fires, and the fearful ones shall seek, and the sick ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the seated man with a sudden force of gesture. "Look at that sea that has shone and quivered there for ever! See the white spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. And this blue vault, with the blinding sun pouring from the dome of it. It is your world. You accept it, you rejoice in it. It warms and supports and delights you. And ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... in the blinding sun. I looked down on the dry earth as I walked. Presently I saw at my feet the white dust of the road. At the same time I heard a woman's cry. The stranger took his ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... its sequel? She longed to feel that they might be merciful and not tell it. She coveted happiness for her son, and in her heart was prepared for almost any surrender that would purchase it for him. If the lure were not so great! If the woman were not so blinding fair, why, then one might find a virtue in excusing her, in condoning her silence, even. But, clothed in that power, to ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... battalion. They could die at the wire or in the trench, but they could not be moved. While mechanically carrying on his work, his mind was with the fighting, dying remnant of his comrades. The O. C. of the C. C. S. passing on his rounds found Barry carrying on with tears blinding his eyes so that he could hardly see the figures he was ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the beauty of Fiammetta di Foscone became blinding. In her there was no sign of an unnatural preservation, as, for example, in a flower that has been sustained, yet subtly altered, by imprisonment in ice. Nor did her countenance show in the least that glaze of time which changes, without abating, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... these Formosans are altogether too friendly, Harold," said Denviers, as we eventually reached the rough coast to which we had been directed, and our boat was being dragged through the blinding surf ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... there was no possibility of our escaping a horrible death. The little sloop was shipping water, the snow was falling so fast as to be blinding, and the waves were tumbling over our counters in reckless white-sprayed fury. There was no telling what instant we should be dashed against some drifting ice-pack. The tremendous swells would heave us up to the ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... enjoyment, said something to the woman in the doorway, and gestured at the charred body on the ground. The violet light grew to blinding intensity. A puff of smoke ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... and snow From off the Shanklin shore. It caught us in its blinding whirl One instant, and no more;— For ere we dreamt of trouble near, All earthly hope ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... streets until the glare grew blinding and the smoke nearly choked him. Then they were stopped entirely by the crowd, and Colonel Kirby sat motionless; for he had a nearly perfect view of a holocaust. The house in which Ranjoor Singh was supposed to be was so far burned that little more ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... crepitation, as if a multitude of iron-shod elves were dancing on it. The thunder crashed, roared, reverberated, like the toppling of great edifices. The lightning tore through the black cloud-canopy in long blinding zig-zags. The wind moaned, howled, hooted—and the square chamber where Peter stood shook and rattled under its buffetings, and was full of the chill and the smell of it. Really the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... use the phrase for ever on her lip, "on the fair realm of France." As her passion grew she recalled old prophecies that a maid from the Lorraine border should save the land; she saw visions; St. Michael appeared to her in a flood of blinding light, and bade her go to the help of the king and restore to him his realm. "Messire," answered the girl, "I am but a poor maiden; I know not how to ride to the wars, or to lead men-at-arms." The archangel returned to give her courage, ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... did not rightly know what had happened. There was a blinding flash before his eyes, a something tore off his cap, and something stung his cheeks like spirts of scalding water. His left hand felt numb and dead. This all happened in the fraction ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... a blinding revelation, and forth-with it seemed to him that he stepped into a new world. She had tried him too far, had thrown him off his balance. He was unfit for this further and infinitely greater provocation. His senses ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... because ye ask amiss." For where this faith and confidence is not in the prayer, the prayer is dead, and nothing more than a grievous labor and work. If anything is given for it, it is none the less only temporal benefit without any blessing and help for the soul; nay, to the great injury and blinding of souls, so that they go their way, babbling much with their mouths, regardless of whether they receive, or desire, or trust; and in this unbelief, the state of mind most opposed to the exercise of faith and to the nature of prayer, they ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... built entirely of galvanized iron; a blinding object to start out of the scrub on a blazing, hot day. God forgive the man who invented galvanized iron, and the greed which introduced it into Australia: you could not get worse roofing material for ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... roar as of flame from the very mouth of the pit, and for the space of a single second all grew light as day. A blinding flash passed across my face, and there was heat for an instant that seemed to shrivel skin, and flesh, and bone. Then came steps, and I heard Colonel Wragge utter a great cry, wilder than any human cry ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... long suburban winding Of bowery road-way, villa-edged and trim. Iron-railed city street, where gas-lamps blinding Glare through the foggy distance dense ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... another shantee, but a few yards from the entrance of that wondrous cavern which is formed by the falling flood on one side, and by the mighty rock over which it pours, on the other. To this frail shelter from the wild uproar, and the blinding spray, nearly all the touring gentlemen, and even many of the pretty ladies, find their way. But here I often saw their noble daring fail, and have watched them dripping and draggled turn again to the sheltering stairs, leaving us in full possession of the awful scene we so ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... twice our own, and more than one tenth of the entire world. Think of these people, who have the greatest capacity for suffering of any nation on earth, suddenly released, like their own prisoners, with steps unsteady and eyes unaccustomed to the blinding light of freedom. Think of what such a movement of hope and cheer and re-creation may mean to troops hard pressed or demoralized, facing another ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... very next morning, a most violent snowstorm set in, so that the face of the river and the hills all round about, and the very heavens themselves were lost in the blinding snow-drifts that flew before the gale. Gradually the cold became so intense that the Ice King laid his grip upon the waters of the Tien-ho, and turned the flowing stream into a crystal highway, along which men might travel with ease and safety. Such a sight had never been seen before by any of the ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... hands upon the rail, and searching with desperate eagerness from face to face, as one who has staked all he has watches the wheel spinning his fortune away. The gentlemen of the jury sat quite motionless, looking straight ahead at the blinding sun, which came through the high, uncurtained windows opposite. Outside, the wind banged the shutters against the wall, and whistled up the street and round the tin corners of the building, but inside the room was very silent. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... fury of ten males of her species (bitterly conscious of the young thing glued to the teat in her pouch), she was left a torn and trampled mass of scarcely recognizable fur and flesh, crushed among scrub-roots. Lesser creatures succumbed under the blinding stabs of Finn's feet; and once he leaped, like a cat, clear into the lower branches of a bastard oak tree, and pinned a 'possum into instant death before swinging back to earth on the limb's far side. He killed that ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... The smoke penetrated faster, blinding and stifling; the giant shadow came and went. But now the greater part of the roof fell in with an awful report; the blazing timbers thundered down to the basement with endless clatter of red-hot tiles; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... individual, marked by her own characteristics. He thought of her passionate assertion of the principles of her home training with pity and worshipful admiration. It was innocence incarnate pleading for guilt which she believed like herself, because of the blinding power of her own light. "She thinks them all like herself," he said to himself. "She reasons from her knowledge of herself." Then reflecting how Carroll had undoubtedly sent his son to return his pilfered sweets, he began to wonder ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that an historic character like Alexander I, standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to those strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and self-deception inseparable from power; a character who at every moment of his life felt a responsibility ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... find no keyhole. Again she pushed, this time with all her strength. Jerking suddenly, the door opened inwards, and Ellenor, leaning against it, fell forward over the high threshold into pitch darkness. She felt a blinding blow and a sickening pain, and ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... with the golden hair, who has been waiting in that rainbow-glory fifty years ago for it to go on and say what it may of what followed. She comes out on the terrace through the high middle-window that opens on it, and now she stands in the blinding gleam, shading her eyes with her hand. It is late in July, and one may listen for a blackbird's note in vain. That song in the ash that drips a diamond-shower on the soaked lawn, whenever the wind breathes, may still be a thrush; his last song, perhaps, about his second ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first, I ask not; but unless God send his hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In his ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... now and then the lips moved convulsively, as if in an effort to speak. Something so unnatural and so forboding dwelt on his kind, dear features, that a racking pain seized the girl's heart as she looked, her throat filled up, and hot, blinding ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... gorgeous magnificence—splendid masques in honour of a birthday, like Comus at Ludlow Castle—bird-huntings, where ladies, with attendant squires, sallied forth in fanciful array, armed with silken nets to catch the prey, after having wiled them from the trees by blinding them with polished mirrors—horns sounding, and music stationed in woody dells—and all carried on with a grandeur like the cavalcades of the duke and duchess in Don Quixote. A sub-collector of taxes, we say, doing all this, shows very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... nearly deafened the men, a solid sheet of blinding flame reached in a flaming cone into the air for nearly fifty feet. The screeching roar continued for a moment, then the heat was so intense that Arcot could stand no more, and pulled the cord. The flame died instantly, though a slight ionization clung briefly. In ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... inside my head. There was a shock, a whirl, a blinding darkness, followed by a flash of light. Mr Travers had said "America," and the word had a terrible significance. I sat stunned into silence, and Mr Travers obviously gloated over ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... distinguished through the crowd the cream-coloured felt hat and feathers of Molly, her double. But no—it was a cream-coloured felt hat, but the face below it was not Molly's. Then at last a panic seized the poor little girl. She fairly lost her head, and the tears blinding her so, that had Molly and all of them been close beside her, she could scarcely have perceived them, she ran half frantically through the rooms. Half frantically in reality, but scarcely so to outward appearance. Her habit of self-control, her ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... testify that I have used no artifice. I have, on the contrary, cut away priceless slabs of opus alexandrinum. My gold I have lacquered down to dull bronze, my purples overlaid with sepia of the sea, and for hell-hearted ruby and blinding diamond I have substituted pale amethyst and mere jargoon. Because I would say again "Disregarding the inventions of the Marine Captain whose other name is Gubbins, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... with deadly cold and almost blinding violence. The wind came with awful surges, and roared and boomed among the crags. The clouds dashed and seethed along the surface, shutting out all landmarks. I was every moment in fear of slipping or being blown over a precipice, but there was no shelter; I was on the roof ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... The splendid charge of his company was met with a blinding storm of shot from the Venetian guns, but not a man gave back. Right up to the cannon they charged, shouting in the face of the fire—"France! France!"—but the cry was changed to "Bayard! Bayard!" as the chevalier ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... inspired by time? Imagine the Parthenon as it must have looked with the frieze of the mighty Phidias fresh from the chisel. Could one behold it in all its pristine beauty and splendour we should see a white marble building, blinding in the dazzling brightness of a southern sun, the figures of the exquisite frieze in all probability painted—there is more than a suspicion of that—and the whole standing out against the intense blue sky; and many ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... drop the charmed ear tingling, Rills of music intermingling, Murmuring in their mazy winding, All the steeped senses blinding, Their intricate courses wending, Closer still the streams are blending. Down the rapid channel rushing, Floods of melody are gushing; Flush the tender rills with gladness, Drown the listener in sweet madness. Onward sweeps the eddying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... had no sooner left my lips, than a piercing cold wind caused me to cast my eye upon the thermometer. In the new regime of science the mercury was descending rapidly; but in a moment the instrument was obscured by a blinding fall of snow. Towering icebergs rose from the water on every side, hanging their jagged masses hundreds of feet above the masthead, and shutting us completely in. The ship twisted and writhed; her decks bulged upward, and every timber groaned and cracked like ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... whose hands are uplifted To throw back her blinding hair; A shape whose bosom is heaving, But draws not in ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... a blazing of comets dropping into an everlasting dark, with naught but a ship of fire billowing away to the flame of the northern lights, with naught but the rush of a sea, blinding, deafening, bearing me to the engulfment of the eternal—I lost knowledge of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Brussels—if the Uhlans have spared it—a mad and monstrous picture. It is called "A Scene in Hell," and hangs in the Musee Wiertz. And what you see on the canvas are the fierce and blinding flames of hell; and amid them looms the dark figure of Napoleon, and around him the wives and mothers and maids of Belgium scream and surge and clutch and curse—taking their ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... had fled eastward by the path he came. All day he sought to flee them in his shame, Watching from lofty crag or deep ravine, And crouching in the heath, with haggard mien— He sought in vain to hide till darkness cast Its blinding ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... hands to keep back the blinding tears that crowded to her eyes. What was she crying for? There was nothing to cry for; she was happy—quite happy; she was away from Jimmy—away from the man whose presence had only tortured her during those last few days; she was at home—at Upton House, and Kettering was there whenever she wanted ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... will not freeze before I get to them," thought Joe, as he staggered through the blinding snow. "They can't, though, for there'll be sure to be steam for some hours yet. I guess I'll stop home, and get something to eat for them, and a bottle of coffee. I'll put it in one of those vacuum flasks, and it will ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... servants under him had appeared, a circumstance that, to Monte-Cristo, seemed inexplicable. He, however, did not pause to give it thought, but dashed up the stairway and strove to reach his wife's apartment; blinding, stifling clouds of smoke, through which penetrated the glare of the conflagration, drove him back again and again, but he renewed his attempts to force a passage with undaunted energy and courage. Finally, compressing his lips and holding his ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... years ago, was the first white man to see it, called it the Victoria Falls, and has told the world how he crept to the edge of the awful abyss and peered over in the vain effort to see the bottom through that roaring, blinding cloud of 'sounding smoke.' Long, long ages ago a terrible earthquake occurred at this spot, and from shore to shore of the Zambesi (which is here more than a mile wide) a huge crack, one hundred yards across, suddenly ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... brought Priscilla to her feet, alert and quivering. Like a sudden and blinding shock she understood, what seemed to her, a whole life history. She stumbled to the door and faced Dr. Hapgood, hat in ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... of grateful emotion rushed over the boy, blinding his eyes with tears, and before he could speak to thank his benefactor, dinner was called. The girl perceived the tears in his eyes, and as they went out to dinner she looked at him with a comradeship born of the knowledge that he, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... towards him, stood Oro encased in some transparent armour, as though to keep off heat, and with him his daughter who under his direction was handling something in the rock behind her. Then there was a blinding flash and everything vanished. All of this picture passed so swiftly that we could not grasp its details; ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... every thing short of a caress. He appointed some fifteen general officers from Kentucky, and he permitted the Kentucky loafers to secure their full share of "soft places." General Bragg, doubtless, was entirely free from any blinding affection for Kentuckians, and few of them felt a tenderness for him. Despite the terrors of his stern rule, they let few occasions escape of evincing their feeling toward him. It was said, I know not how truly, that at a later date General Bragg told Mr. Davis that ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... himself Chevalier, 'Tis not easy a reason to render; Unless blinding eyes, that he thinks to make clear, Demonstrates ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... disappears, groups of hills, detached from the land, become islands, skerries, deep-sea rocks, in turn. At length the waves at full wash within a few yards of the granitic block. And now, yielding to the undermining influences, just as a blinding snow-shower is darkening the heavens, it comes thundering down the steep into the sea, where it lies immediately beneath the high-water line, surrounded by a wide float of pulverized ice, broken by the waves. A keen frost sets in; the half-fluid mass around is bound up for many acres ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... angry waters boiled and roared. At many points an instant's hesitation on his own part, Scotty well knew, or a second's relaxation of Dan's vigilance, would hurl boat and crew to destruction. They were in it now, dashing through a blinding rain of spray, leaping, turning, dodging, twisting, as though the boat were a ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... myself—that of immortality. As to any communication between the parted, I had never, during his life, pondered the possibility of it, although I had always had an inclination to believe that such intercourse had in rare instances taken place. Former periods of the world's history, when that blinding self-consciousness which is the bane of ours was yet undeveloped, must, I thought, have been far more favourable to its occurrence. Anyhow I was convinced that it was not to be gained by effort. I confess that, in the unthinking agony of grief after Charley's death, many a time when I ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... downpour of spray was drenching the occupants of the racer, but they paid scant heed to it. Rob dived in his pockets and put on a pair of goggles. The spray was blinding him. He waved to Tubby to go further astern and keep the rear part of the boat well down when they made the sharp ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... and the star of Irish liberty to arise. Mat, owing to his fiery and impatient temperament, naturally belonged to that section of the Fenian Brotherhood which demanded prompt action, and still in the age of illusions and of blinding rage, he would admit no difficulties, and feared no obstacles. Mat had sworn in hundreds of members. He had passed through the town of Ballybay on the memorable night when an Irish regiment, as it was leaving for other quarters, cheered through the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... sports as they cannot become sharers of. Its ancient name is 'hoodman-blind'; and when hoods were worn by both men and women—centuries before hats and caps were so common as they are now—the hood was reversed, placed hind-before, and was, no doubt, a much surer way of blinding the player than that now adopted—for we have seen Charley try to catch his pretty cousin Caroline, by chasing her behind chairs and into all sorts of corners, to our strong conviction that he was not half so well ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... oath, too, for that matter, leaving you free to exaggerate as much as you choose. Besides, I have given you just the bare facts. Now, if you had been telling Dandamis's story, what embroidery we should have had! The supplications of Dandamis, the blinding process, his remarks on the occasion, the circumstances of his return, the effusive greetings of the Scythians, and all the ad captandum artifices that ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... the records of aerial combats on the western battle front shows an average of eighteen combats daily; on some days there were as many as forty distinct aerial battles, while on others, in blinding snow and rainstorms no machines were aloft. In the 3,000-odd duels in the air, the Franco-American Flying Corps began to take a prominent part early in the spring of 1916, shortly after the various American volunteer aviators had been gathered into a single unit and been placed at the point of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... wind has blown a gale in our faces all day, and the clouds of dust have been almost blinding. The mission of San Buenaventura does not differ, in its general features, from those of other establishments of the same kind heretofore described. There is a large garden, inclosed by a high wall, attached to the mission, ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... the case of Marsham and Diana; for their moment of high feeling was no sooner over, and she sitting quietly again, her hand in his, the blinding tears dashed away, than Marsham's mind flew inevitably to his own great sacrifice. She must be comforted, indeed, poor child! yet he could not but feel that he, too, deserved consolation, and that his own most actual plight was no less worthy of her thoughts than ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to speak with accuracy.... It was dark. Everything seemed to sway in the galloping wind—the trees, the shrubs, the magnetic arc lights and even the luxurious iron and stone inclosures before the line of houses. Furthermore the dust was blinding. In spite of all this, in spite of the fact that the vision was fleeting, I received the definite impression that this figure sought to escape unseen. It hurried away into the darkness, hugged the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... these, he said, he would have no anger against them for the future, and this satisfaction would be sufficient for him if it should be given. Then as he was thus speaking, the men who sat by him said interrupting him: "Euenios, this satisfaction the Apolloniates pay to thee for thy blinding in accordance with the oracles which have been given to them." Upon this he was angry, being thus informed of the whole matter and considering that he had been deceived; and they bought the property from those who possessed it and gave him that which he had chosen. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... mystery of the stars." His naive conception of eternity as "a chamber something like a bathhouse, long neglected, and with spider's webs in its corners" reminds us of Nietzsche when he describes his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence. The Russian has told us in memorable phrases of the blinding, intense happiness, a cerebral spasm, which lasts the fraction of a second at the beginning of an epileptic attack. For it he declares, for that brief moment during which paradise is disclosed, he would sacrifice a lifetime. Little wonder in the interim of a cold, grey, miserable existence ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... first sight of the sea, will be associated in memory hereafter with the greatest and most cruel sufferings of our poor slaves, for to-day they suffered unusually from the wind and cold—the tempest of sand blinding them, and the miserable creatures falling continually on the wayside. I secured my eyes and face from the sand by tying round them a dark silk handkerchief, through which I saw my way without getting eyes, ears, and mouth full of sand. All our animals, as well as our people, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... purposes—she knew not what.... The problem existed no more. Her life was arranged. And now, far more sincerely than in the King's Road twenty minutes earlier, she regarded the career of a spinster with horror and with scorn. At best, she suddenly perceived with blinding clearness, it would have been pitiful—pitiful! Twenty minutes earlier, in the King's Road, she had dreamt of belonging absolutely to some man, of being at his disposal, of being under his might, of being helpless before him. And ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... terrible want of thee, Believed itself managing arms with God; Yea, when my trampling hurry through the earth Made cloudy wind of the light human dust, I thought myself to move in the dark danger Of blinding God's own face with blasts of war! Until my rage forgot his crime against me, His hiding thee, the beauty I had dreamt. Yea and I filled my flesh with furious pleasure, That in the noise of it my soul should hear No whispering thought of desperate desire. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... electric torches, like bull's-eye lanterns, burning holes in the night. Seeing a civilian under guard, they would stare and ask questions. Even when they came close, owing to the light in my eyes, I could not see them. Sometimes, in a half circle, there would be six or eight of the electric torches blinding me, and from behind them voices barking at me with strange, guttural noises. Much they said I could not understand, much I did not want to understand, but they made it quite clear it was no ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... the distant ocean, or watch the rolling of the surf; did they wander over the verdant hills, or settle on the beetling cliff; did she raise her cherub-face to the heavens, and wonder at the studded firmament of stars, or the moon sailing in her cold beauty, or the sun blinding her in his warmth and splendour;—she knew that it was God who made them all. Did she ponder over the variety of the leaf; did she admire the painting of the flower, or watch the motions of the minute insect, which, but for her casual ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the train official to the station officials; and they agreed that snow was about to come. And it came, rapidly, plenteously. The train had not been more than an hour on its journey when the cotton- wool clouds commenced to dissolve in a blinding downpour of snowflakes. The forest trees on either side of the line were speedily coated with a heavy white mantle, the telegraph wires became thick glistening ropes, the line itself was buried more ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... day of all they got the news. Out of the mail box in the lane Luke got it—going down under an old rubber cape in a steady blinding pour. It got all damp—the letter, foreign postmark, stamp and all—by the time he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to see them in the hot sunshine, and turned restfully to the cool green of the trees which encircled the lawn. In the centre was a round pool, surrounded by a ring of white marble, and containing a still sheet of water, which flashed like a mirror in the blinding light. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... statue. An official, running out to the coach, handed him a silken cord, which he secured with a turn around the wrist. The coach rolled on. The cord tautened; the swathings sundered and fell from the gleaming splendor of marble, and a blinding flash, followed by another, and a third, blotted out the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... altogether one of the cleanest and daintiest and most gentlemanly of all the wild creatures. But when he had to, he could contract those muscles around the oil sac with such violence that the deadly oil—blinding and suffocating—would be shot forth to a distance of several feet, right into the face of the enemy. And that, let me tell you, was never good ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... she struggled back along Twenty-third Street, the wind had changed, and the storm driving furiously down the long blocks caught her in a whirl of blinding snowflakes. In the swirling whiteness of the distance, the black outlines of the city appeared remote and shadowy, while the waning lights, which shone like dim moons at the crossing, revealed the ghostly figures ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... up the shade and squinted for a moment. The sun in the heavens and the reflection on the Whangpoo were blinding. The sampans made her think of ants, ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... to answer her, but I could not, for the hot, stifling blinding smoke was now in my throat, when the yelling outside seemed to increase. There was a loud rushing sound; the trampling of horses; the jingling of cavalry sabres; a loud English hurray; and a crash; and I knew that there ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while, there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... man, woman and child that has died in this settlement since I was grown, and I ain't goin' to shirk my duty to Brother Thompson—not that I ever expected to do it for him." She babbled on, gently urging me from the room, where her presence was the last blinding touch of ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... general might well be of doubtful mind—was to-morrow to bring a second and a more fatal Falkirk? The army of Scotland was protected, as Wallace's army at Falkirk had been, by difficult ground. But the English archers might again rain their blinding showers of shafts into the broad mark offered by the clumps of spears, and again the English knights might break through the shaken ranks. Bruce had but a few squadrons of horse—could they be trusted to scatter the bowmen of the English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at length ready, and then bending gently over the wrinkled face so calmly sleeping, 'Lena gazed through blinding tears upon each lineament, striving to imprint it upon her heart's memory, and wondering if they would ever meet again. The hand which had so often rested caressingly upon her young head, was lying outside the counterpane, and with one burning kiss upon it she turned away, first placing ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... swept the scene before him. The brilliant sunshine on field and river and winding road for a moment was blinding. The biting air stung his face, and life seemed suddenly a splendid, joyous thing. The girl beside him was looking ahead, as if at something to be seen there; and again ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... explained to her that the art of diplomacy lies in seeing the beam in the other man's eye and drawing attention to it, while blinding oneself to the mote in one's own, and if possible convincing the other man that the mote does not exist. Dulcie, however, had her full share of intelligence, with the result that, in modern ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... political economy, and travel in safety on your mother earth; cast away the blinding spectacles of the philosophers, and use the eyes you have received from nature. Practise the vulgar principles, that it is erroneous to ruin immense good markets, to gain petty bad ones—that you cannot carry on losing trade—that you cannot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... the faint trembling of the beautifully constructed mechanism. The green ray leaped out across the blinding whiteness of our light rays. I jammed the muzzle down until the whole force of the atomic stream was spouting against the magnetic plate which held the ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... fluttered, fluttered and hopped, feeling the dragon's hot breath close behind frizzling his feathers and blinding his eyes with smoke. He seemed like to be roasted alive in this horrible underground oven. But oh, there was the hole close before him! Pouf! With a terrible roar the dragon snapped at him as Whitebird popped ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... going to be a mighty bad storm. Seems like the seasons get twisted these-er-days. Now if it was spring——" She did not finish her sentence, for a wave of wind brought the lagging storm on its breast; a blinding flash of lightning and a crash of thunder set it free and then the deluge descended. A wall, seemingly tangible, descended from the clouds to the ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... her. "And tell her, Bee—for I am sure I shall never be able to say it to her,—all about our thanks, and how sorry I am that I cared so little about her or her comfort." "If I had only believed, instead of blinding myself so wilfully!" she almost whispered to herself with a deep sigh; but being now ready, she ran downstairs and entered her brother's room. His countenance bore traces of weeping, but he was still calm; and as she came in he looked anxiously at her. She spoke quietly as she sat ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most woodsmen, have a sixth sense upon which they rely, an intuitive faculty we call instinct. It is more infallible than their conscious reasoning or physical senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. It leads them unerringly through unblazened forests, during blinding storms or in the darkness of night. It helps them solve the enigma of echoes, and sometimes when the vagrant breezes trick their sensitive noses, and bring scents to them from the opposite direction of their sources, it senses the deception, and, setting them on the right path, delivers ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... will not find it easy to apply herself to fresh subjects of study, yet she will never lose what she has once mastered." But in this case the mastering was the difficulty. To her, life had hitherto meant a round of recurring duties, to be performed conscientiously as they came, and love a blinding illumination revealing to a humble worshipper the form of a hero and a saint, but ending preferably in renunciation—if voluntary and wholly unnecessary so much the nobler and better. To think of love in connection with an ordinary, average man was something very like ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... delusive promise of good to Africa, and its vague anticipations of putting an end to the slave-trade by armed colonies on the coast of that ill-fated continent, has been the means of obstructing emancipation at home, of unprofitably absorbing the energies and blinding the judgment of many sincere friends of the slave, and of strengthening the unchristian prejudice against color. The abolitionists of Europe, with few exceptions, have seen the error of their former course of action, and are now striking directly at the root, instead of lopping the branches ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... moment the fate of them both still hung in the balance. If, even at this instant, the father had remembered his love rather than his dignity, had thought of the past and its happy years, rather than of the blinding, swollen present; or, on the other side, if the son had but submitted if only for an hour, and obeyed in order that he might rule later—the whole course might have run aright, and no hearts have been broken and no blood shed. But neither would yield. There was the fierce ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... roots and among vines in the dark, no two plunging in the same direction. A furious blast roared through the trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring wind and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... moment focussed on a bed of waxen callas before a hedge of ceanothus, and struck into dazzling relief the cold white chalices of the flowers and the vivid shining green of their background. Presently it slid beyond to a tiny fountain, before invisible, and wrought a blinding miracle out of its flashing and leaping spray. Yet even as he gazed the fountain seemed to vanish slowly, the sunbeam slipped on, and beyond it moved the shimmer of white and yellow dresses. It was Yerba and Milly returning to the house. Well, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... bristled with danger, but through it was the sole safety. The measure he has adopted was imperative. It is wonderful to see the unseasonable senility of what is called the Peace party, through all its masks, blinding their eyes to the main feature of the war, namely, its inevitableness. The war existed long before the cannonade of Sumter, and could not be postponed. It might have begun otherwise or elsewhere, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... sin and failed ignominiously. Only Galahad the Pure was permitted to see the cup unsurrounded by a blinding glory, a fearful splendor of watching ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... ready on the quay, where the postmen ran, and the carriages rolled amid smoke and noise, under the light that fell from the windows. Through the open doors travellers in long cloaks came and went. At the end of the station, blinding with soot and dust, a small rainbow could be discerned, not larger than one's hand. Countess Martin and the good Madame Marniet were already in their carriage, under the rack loaded with bags, among newspapers thrown on the cushions. Choulette had not appeared, and Madame Martin ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... its crusted surface. If it thundered at all, it seemed to be between a groaning and a rumbling sound. The trees and hills seemed white with livid fire. I can remember that storm now as the grandest picture that has ever made any impression on my memory. As soon as it quit lightning, the most blinding snow storm fell that I ever saw. It fell so thick and fast that I got hot. I felt like pulling off my coat. I was freezing. The winds sounded like sweet music. I felt grand, glorious, peculiar; beautiful ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... in the whole relation of woman to society today. That males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the existence of this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; and it is only explainable when one regards it as a result of the blinding effects of custom and habit. Personally, I have felt so profoundly on this subject, that this, with one other point connected with woman's sexual relation to man, are the only matters connected with woman's position, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... put up in the best business every night, and actually keeping money out of the house, by being forced down the people's throats, while other people are passed over? Isn't it extraordinary to see a man's confounded family conceit blinding him, even to his own interest? Why I KNOW of fifteen and sixpence that came to Southampton one night last month, to see me dance the Highland Fling; and what's the consequence? I've never been put up in it since—never once—while the "infant phenomenon" has been grinning through artificial ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... sighed at the word "home." McAllister volunteered a song, and struck up the "Callum's Lament," a dismally cheerful Gaelic ditty. In the midst of this they reached the landing-place, from which they walked through drenched heather and blinding rain to the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... No-man the last of you all." Then, heavy with the wine, he fell into a deep sleep. The tiny weapons of the wanderers would have been of little effect against this man-mountain, so taking a great pole, they heated it red-hot in the fire, and all together plunged it into his one great eye, blinding him. Up he jumped, roaring and howling horribly, and groping in the dark to find his prisoners; but they easily avoided him. Then came other Cyclops running at the noise from their distant caves, and called to him, "Who ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... have ever been close enough to it to hear it—is very different from that, and far more awful. Still and silently it broods till its time is come. And then there is one ear- piercing crack, one blinding flash, and all is over. Nothing so swift, so instantaneous, as the thunder itself, and ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power;[8] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence of the diminution ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... others—here she was in her black silk dress, her best shawl pinned across her chest, and her bonnet tied in a square bow which reached nearly to her ears, which Mattie Tubbs, who tied it, had said was all the style. Here she was, in that huge building, where the lights were so blinding and the crowd so great that she shut her eyes involuntarily, while she tried to realize ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... triumph come to Day And the gleaming conqueror In his blinding glory treads O'er the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... Racine depends, as contrasted with the troubled life of Shakespearean drama, on an almost even speed of dialogue, and on a so continuous exclusion of the animation of common life, that thought remains lofty and language rich. Shakespeare, upon whose stage everything may happen, even the blinding of Gloster, and who has no formal check except what is implied in the slow, elaborate structure of blank verse, obtains time for reverie by an often encumbering Euphuism, and by such a loosening of his plot as will give his characters the leisure ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... Danish nation and made his name famous in song and story. As he stood on the quarter-deck of the "Trinity" a cannon close by was exploded by a Swedish bullet, and splinters of wood and metal wounded the king in thirteen places, blinding one eye and flinging him to the deck. But he was instantly on his feet again, cried with a loud voice that it was well with him, and set every one an example of duty by remaining on deck till the fight was over. Darkness ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the touch of a wild thing, was amusingly harmless, considering the howls with which his onslaught was evaded as long as our flying legs were loyal to us. My father's gentle laughter and happy-looking lips were a revelation during these bouts. I remember with what awe I once tied the blinding handkerchief round his head, feeling the fine crispness of his silky hair, full of electricity, as some people's is only on frosty days; yet without any of that crinkly resistance of most hair that is full of energy. But there were times when I used to stand at ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... at hame! That was where the headlights they borrowed from motor cars came in. They put one on each side of the porch and one off in front, so that all the light was centered right on the porch itself, and it was bathed in as strong a glare as ever I sang in on the stage. It was almost blinding, indeed, as I found when I turned to face them and to sing for them. Needless to say, late though it was and tired as I was, I never thought of refusing to give them the ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder |
