"Nimbus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hadn't. After she was gone he supposed that he ought to have asked for those references, if only because she would think him so unbusiness-like not to, but he could as soon have insisted on references from a saint in a nimbus as from that ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... beside the countess, sinking into the perfumed atmosphere which surrounded her with a sort of nimbus of keen voluptuousness. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sun, and are in a strong light, while the near woods which form the background are in deep shadow. They look like large luminous motes. Their swiftly vibrating, transparent wings surround their bodies with a shining nimbus that makes them visible for a long distance. They seem magnified many times. We see them bridge the little gulf between us and the woods, then rise up over the treetops with their burdens, swerving neither to ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... young and girlish speech. It was delivered with tremendous sincerity. Yet it did not matter much what she said, for what counted was that Lydia's contralto voice was very young and rich, that her golden hair was like a nimbus about her head, that her lips were red and sweet, that her cheeks were vivid and that her eyes were very blue, very ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... persons who passed him cheerfully on their way to friends and friendly hearths shrank from him into the mists as they went by. Lucian imagined that the fire of his torment and anguish must in some way glow visibly about him; he moved, perhaps, in a nimbus that proclaimed the blackness and the flames within. He knew, of course, that in misery he had grown delirious, that the well-coated, smooth-hatted personages who loomed out of the fog upon him were in reality shuddering only with cold, but in spite of common sense he still ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the lavish sun filled air with gold; Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled, And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare, Forming about her head a nimbus rare. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... on one leg, and smiling, and waving his arms, and causing the ample folds and sleeves of his smock to flutter until he seemed to be moving in the midst of a nimbus, Nilushka would sing in a halting ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... sick man began to breathe stertorously. Even Ida started at that. She glanced nervously towards the bed. Little Evelyn, in her night-gown, her black fleece of hair fluffing around her face like a nimbus of shadow, came and stood in ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... crushed rose-petals there when you opened it. It would be a pity to shut out so much loveliness by switching on the electricity, so when Nick came he found Angela, a tall, slim black figure, with a faint gold nimbus round its head, silhouetted against a background of flaming sky. Standing as she did with her back to the window, he could hardly see her face, but the sunset streamed full into his as he crossed the room, holding out ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous moonshine, Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float, Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine, These that we feel ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... to me lak you don't nebber go on er deep-sea v'yge whar you gets de genuwine joe-flogger, an' de plum-duff, an' sich like," said Nimbus, the yacht's cook. "Ef you had, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... on a buffalo skin, watched them idly. The game reminded her of the jack-stones of her childhood. Then her eye slanted to where Lucy stood by the gate talking with a trapper called Zavier Leroux. The sun made Lucy's splendid hair shine like a flaming nimbus, and the dark men of the mountains and the plain watched her with immovable looks. She was laughing, her head drooped sideways. Above the collar of her blouse a strip of neck, untouched by tan, showed in a milk-white band. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... flashed in and out of the sunshine; and he took note of the radiant nimbus above her head each time ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... and the blaring of the band as it had saluted her trembling, bowing figure in the box—finally would prove too strong for her. He, too, had come in for some of the applause, a sort of inverted glory which like a frosty nimbus envelopes the head of the librettist. Now he recalled all this and rejoiced that his ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... discourse sensibly slackened: and, a little beyond, he pulled his travelling cap over his ears, and settled down to slumber. I sat wide awake beside him. The spring night had a touch of chill in it, and the breath of our horses, streaming back upon the lamps of the caleche, kept a constant nimbus between me and the postillions. Above it, and over the black spires of the poplar avenues, the regiments of stars moved in parade. My gaze went up to the ensign of their noiseless evolutions, to the pole-star, and to Cassiopeia swinging beneath it, low ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the first time in Florence, Murillo, who has two groups of the Madonna and Child on this wall, the better being No. 63, which is both sweet and masterly. In No. 56 the Child becomes a pretty Spanish boy playing with a rosary, and in both He has a faint nimbus instead of the halo to which we are accustomed. On the same wall is another fine Andrea, who is most lavishly represented in this gallery, No. 58, a Deposition, all gentle melancholy rather than grief. The ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the purple night. Oneiros standing next was a youth whose eyes smiled as though they beheld visions that were welcome to him; in his hand, amongst the white roses, he held a black wand of sorcery, and around his bended head there hovered a dim silvery nimbus. Thanatos alone was a man fully grown; and on his calm and colourless face there were blended an unutterable sadness, and an unspeakable peace; his eyes were fathomless, far-reaching, heavy laden with thought, as though they had seen at once the heights of heaven and the depths of hell; and he, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... personages in the boat, who had themselves taken back to the landing of the Piazzetta. The gondolier scarcely knew what to think of their strange conduct; until, as they were about to separate, the oldest of the group, suddenly causing his nimbus to shine out again, said to the gondolier: "I am Saint Mark, the patron of Venice. I learned to-night that the devils assembled in convention at the Lido in the cemetery of the Jews, had formed the resolution of exciting a frightful tempest and overthrowing my ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... St. Mark and St. John carrying their gospels, St. Bartholomew showing the knife with which he was flayed; and higher still the lawgiver Moses, ending in the serried ranks of angels against the azure firmament, each head circled with a golden nimbus. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... dozen times on bare toes at the top of the stairs, spinning until her silken skirts expanded in a nimbus, then danced down-stairs into Tess's arms, where ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... in silence that she seated herself, and he began to work. He felt as if some fair saint were sitting to him, and that the picture would never come out right without a nimbus round the head. As he went on with his rapid drawing in charcoal he saw a change settle heavily upon the face before him. Utter sadness seemed to come there as soon as the lines relaxed into their ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... temples in Tongchuan, and two beyond the walls which are of more than ordinary interest. There is a Temple to the Goddess of Mercy, where deep reverence is shown to the images of the Trinity of Sisters. They are seated close into the wall, the nimbus of glory which plays round their impassive features being represented by a golden aureola painted on the wall. The Goddess of Mercy is called by the Chinese "Sheng-mu," or Holy Mother, and it is this name which has been adopted by ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... the South Sea, savage and tempestuous, blowing a fitful blast. The lesser waters have a lighter quality. The hair of the sea-spirits suggests seaweed and coral. From the mouths of of the sea-chargers jets of water rise to meet the nimbus and rainbows of the semi-spherical downpour ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... sat with her folded hands resting on the rail of the balustrade, her head slightly drooped upon her bosom; and the beautiful face was lighted by the dying sunset splendour, that seemed to kindle a nimbus around the golden head, and rendered her in her violet drapery like some haloed Mater Dolorosa, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Umbrian school Designed upon a gesso ground The nimbus of the Baptized God. The wilderness is ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... except for the snow which trigged feet and runners in some degree; it was damp and heavy; but the frantic threshing of the plunging beasts kicked up a smother of snow none the less. It was like a thunderbolt in a nimbus—the rush of Flagg ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the Apostles' Creed. Most of the screen was fifteenth-century work, and it was one of the finest in the county; much of the work was Flemish. On it were images of saints, both male and female, and of some of the prophets, the saints being distinguishable by the nimbus or halo round their heads, and the prophets by caps and flowing robes after the style of the Jewish costumes in the Middle Ages. There was also a magnificent pulpit of about the same date as the screen, and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the real thing now took place. He stood up on his hind legs and shot into the air, alighting on his four feet as if to pierce the earth. He whirled like a howling dervish, grunting, snorting—unseeing, and almost unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He came to earth with a thud, his legs whirling uselessly in the air. He resembled a beetle in molasses. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... occurs upon the ancient coins of Western Asia and was not improbably more or less akin in signification to the crux ansata of Egypt. The fact that upon very ancient remains still existing the Baal is represented as crowned with a wheel-like nimbus of rays should ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... about northeast-and-by-north-half-east. Well, it was so near my course that I wouldn't throw away the chance; so I fell off a point, steadied my helm, and went for him. You should have heard me whiz, and seen the electric fur fly! In about a minute and a half I was fringed out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles and miles and lit up all space like broad day. The comet was burning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept up on him. I slipped ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... or a fete, or a first communion, we never knew. But the town of St. Lo is ever gloriously lighted, for us, with a nimbus of young heads, such ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... which appeared worn rather than naturally thin, and large eyes that looked at the anvil as if it was the horizon of the world. He had got a horse-shoe in his tongs when I entered. Notwithstanding the fire that glowed on the hearth, and the sparks that flew like a nimbus in eruption from about his person, the place looked very dark to me entering from the glorious blaze of the almost noontide sun, and felt cool after the deep lane through which I had come, and which had seemed a very reservoir of sunbeams. I could see ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... the moonlight, quite ethereal-looking, and her hair a nimbus for that small white face of hers; just as small, just as white, and just as smooth as when those big eyes used to look up into our eyes under an Indian moon. And she is always agreeable, always witty, or at least "smart." Still, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Dearer than words on paper, shall depart, And be no more the warder of my heart, Whereof again myself shall hold the key; And be no more, what now you seem to be, The sun, from which all excellencies start In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart Of moonlight, even, splintered ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... stood in the unbroken sweep of her Court gown. Her slim hands gripped the ermine which fell from her shoulders to the floor and slowly crushed it between clenched fingers. About her head the light touched her hair into a soft nimbus. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... picture drawn from our Lord's own description of His loving care and self-sacrifice. Another was derived from the words of St. John the Baptist, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" By this symbol, known as the Agnus Dei, our Lord is represented by the figure of a lamb—often with a nimbus, or glory, about the head—bearing a cross, the symbol of His sacrifice, or a banner, the sign of ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... and more hazy to him. For a time there was, in the centre of the haze, a nimbus of light which revealed his cards to him and the towers of chips which he constantly called for and which as constantly disappeared—like the towers of a castle in Spain. Then the haze thickened, and the one thing ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... summer—a white, lucid, shining day, with a delicate veil of mist softening all outlines. How the river dances and sparkles; how the new leaves of all the trees shine under the sun; the air has a soft lustre; there is a haze, it is not blue, but a kind of shining, diffused nimbus. No clouds, the sky a bluish white, very soft and delicate. It is the nuptial day of the season; the sun fairly takes the earth to be his own, for better or for worse, on such a day, and what marriages there are going on all about us: the marriages of the flowers, ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... who had danced many a time before his shrine, had no objection whatever to the godlet, except only when he neglected to appear Olympianly, as divinity should, with a nimbus of rentrolls ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... rack; cirrus, cat's-tail, mare's-tail; cumulus, stratus, nimbus; cirro-cumulus, cirro-stratus, cumulo-stratus; storm scud, wane cloud; tarnish, blemish; eclipse, obscurity. Associated Words: nephology, meteorology, nubiferous, nephelodometer, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the mountain and went down to the lake, moving feverishly along the shore; his wandering eyes became fixed upon a point on the tranquil surface, and there, surrounded by a silver nimbus and rocked by the tide, stood a shade which he seemed to recognize. Yes, that was her hair, so long and beautiful; yes, that was her breast, gaping from the poniard stroke. And the wretched man, kneeling in the sand, stretched out his arms to ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... a faint scraping sound on the outside of his cabin, and a dark shadow eclipsed the faint nimbus of light which the foggy night sent through his porthole. On the deck directly over his head three dark figures sat in deck chairs, while a fourth paced the deck, his cigar glowing like the tail ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... crackle of a match from the shadowed corner. The keen, gnarled young face sprang from the darkness, vivid and softened with a strange triumph, then receded behind an imperfect circle, clouded the next instant by a nimbus of smoke. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... away her imagination to popular movements; she was also naturally a hero-worshipper; she hoped more enthusiastically than he was wont to do; she was more readily depressed; the word "liberty" for her had an aureole or a nimbus which glorified all its humbler and more prosaic meanings. Browning, although in this year 1847 he made a move towards an appointment as secretary to a mission to the Vatican, at heart cared little for men in groups ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... preserved in the aisle, does not strictly belong to the cathedral, having been found at S. Mary's Church. Above a round-headed canopy are some Norman buildings; in the chamfer of the canopy is an invocation of the Archangel Michael, a figure of whom below has wings and nimbus, and in the robe a portion of a naked figure with pastoral staff ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... you, if I could, our pleasant evenings of lingering, after coffee, behind the tremulous screen of honeysuckle, with the night very dark and quiet beyond the warm nimbus of our candle-light, the faces of my two companions clear-obscure in a mellow shadow like the middle tones of a Rembrandt, and the professor, good man, talking wonderfully of everything under the stars and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... number, seems to move along, in all the majesty of suffering, bearing their crowns of martyrdom as offerings to the Redeemer. The Christ is here not an infant but a full-grown man, the Man of Sorrows, His head encircled with a nimbus, and two angels are standing on either side. The martyr-procession starts from a building, with pediment above and three arches resting upon pillars below. The intervals between the pillars are partly filled with curtains looped up in a curious fashion and ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... stricken mother. To Tucker and herself the coarse fare was unbearable even after the custom of fifteen years, and time had not lessened the surprise with which they watched the young man's healthful enjoyment of his food. Even Lila, whose glowing face in its nimbus of curls lent an almost festive air to her end of the white pine board, ate with a heartiness which Cynthia, with her outgrown standard for her sex, could not but find a trifle vulgar. The elder sister had been ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... The nimbus or nightcap again appears as in the Ridley specimen, but, whatever it be, the teeth are undoubtedly the ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... 1846.—A strong wind from N.E. blew during the day, and was very high at 11 A. M. The party were chiefly employed breaking in the young bullocks. At noon, nimbus, and some rain, tantalised us with the hope of a change; but the sky drew up into clouds of cumulus by the evening. The vegetation of the Bogan now recalled former labours: the ATRIPLEX SEMIBACCATA of Brown was a common ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... overflowing with all the felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to mankind, pure, honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for each other amid the shadows. It seemed to Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to Marius that Cosette had a nimbus. They touched each other, they gazed at each other, they clasped each other's hands, they pressed close to each other; but there was a distance which they did not pass. Not that they respected it; they did not know of its existence. Marius was conscious of a barrier, Cosette's innocence; and Cosette ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of national prizes in view!—the pleading oration before the Court of the elect, erudites, we will call them, of an intelligent, yet half barbarous, people; hesitating, these, between eloquence and rival eloquence, cunning and rival cunning. Why, in such a case, the shadow-nimbus of Force is needed to decide the sinking of the scale. But have these English never read their Shakespeare, that they show so barren an acquaintance with human, to say nothing of semi-barbaric, nature? But it is here that we Germans prove our ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as I still sat there, the door was very gently opened, and I beheld Giuliana standing before me. She detached from the black background of the passage, and the light of my three-beaked lamp set her ruddy hair aglow so that it seemed there was a luminous nimbus all about her head. For a moment this gave colour to my fancy that I beheld a vision evoked by the too great intentness of my thoughts. The pale face seemed so transparent, the white robe was almost diaphanous, and the great dark eyes looked so sad and wistful. Only in the vivid scarlet ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... brilliant climax of her own devising. He was willing to be led. The climax turned out to be a dinner. Anne had long ago discovered the secret influence of a fine dinner on the politics of the world. The halo of a saint pales before the golden nimbus which well-fed guests see radiating from their hostess after dinner. A good man may possess a few robust virtues, but the dinner-giver has them all. Therefore, the manager of the alliance gathered about her table one memorable evening ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... into a blue nimbus of crackling flame, his skin blackening, charred. He was dead in an instant. A second pillar of flame bloomed next to the car, and a choking scream was cut off at the moment it began. Ihjel ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... very marked variations. It is possible that they may be layers of clouds because the upper portions of terrestrial clouds where they are illuminated by the sun appear white. But various observations lead us to think that we are dealing rather with a thin veil of fog instead of a true nimbus cloud, carrying storms and rain. Indeed, it may be merely a temporary condensation of vapor under the form ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and violet-powder enveloping them as they passed before vulgar mortals, these rapacious and insolent courtiers were the impersonation of extortion and oppression to the Parisian populace. They were supposed, not unjustly, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in, grave, yet with something blithe and unperturbed in his bearing that, as she stood waiting for what he might say to her, seemed the very nimbus of chivalry. He was splendid to look at, too, tall and strong with clear kind ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... silent, looking at Rilla—at the delicate, girlish silhouette of her, her long lashes, her dented lip, her adorable chin. In the dim moonlight, as she sat with her head bent a little over Jims, the lamplight glinting on her pearls until they glistened like a slender nimbus, he thought she looked exactly like the Madonna that hung over his mother's desk at home. He carried that picture of her in his heart to the horror of the battlefields of France. He had had a strong fancy for Rilla Blythe ever since the night of the ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... passion to the sealed door of the marble room. The heavy doors swung inward under my trembling hands. Sunlight poured through the window, tipping with gold the wings of Cupid, and lingered like a nimbus over the brows of the Madonna. Her tender face bent in compassion over a marble form so exquisitely pure that I knelt and signed myself. Genevieve lay in the shadow under the Madonna, and yet, through her white arms, I ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... to world, penetrates the great enigma, breathes with a respiration large, tranquil, and profound, like that of the ocean, and hovers serene and boundless like the blue heaven! Visits from the muse, Urania, who traces around the foreheads of those she loves the phosphorescent nimbus of contemplative power, and who pours into their hearts the tranquil intoxication, if not the authority of genius, moments of irresistible intuition in which a man feels himself great like the universe and calm like a god! From the celestial ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... could be found and be filled with potatoes, the temperature would at once begin to rise, and the later in the season, the faster it would go up. I repeat that a cellar filled with potatoes will have a much higher temperature than the same cellar would have if empty. This I have learned as Nimbus learned tobacco growing—"by 'sposure." I hope I won't be asked "why." I don't know. The reason is unimportant. The remedy is the thing. The only help for it that I know of is to give the cellar plenty of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... hair, turning it into a nimbus of ruddy gold, and there was something delicately flower-like in the droop of her small bent head on its slender throat. It reminded ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... shadows, sat Lampron engraving, solitary, motionless, beneath the light of a lamp. His back was toward me. The lamp's rays threw a strong light on his delicate hand, on the workmanlike pose of his head, which it surrounded with a nimbus, and on a painting—a woman's head—which he was copying. He looked superb like that, and I thought how doubly tempted Rembrandt would have been by the deep significance as well as by ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... talk was said to be something extraordinary, and his gestures and grimaces irresistibly diverting, yet he could also launch stinging barbs and on occasion utter insulting sarcasms. In fact the outside public were wont to regard him as invested with a nimbus of wonder, or even as a sort of daemonic being. Though these evenings were beyond all conception gay and festive, Hoffmann seldom drank to excess. Of course he drank a good deal: he had acquired the habit, as ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... passages about her. Lempriere, Smith, Anthon, Drissler, and others would have done honor to her. Classic mythology would have been full of her presence. Olympian Jove would have been presented to us with this divinity as his constant attendant, and a nimbus around his immortal brows of her making. Bacchus would have had a rival, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... brings the wealthy and the work-girl to a baffling level, in a blue serge costume of severe cut; a plain white linen coat-collar and a small hat, which covered, but did not hide, a mass of hair which, against the slanting sunlight at her back, lent the illusion of a golden nimbus about ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... a maiden somewhere, In a sober sunlit gloom, In a nimbus of shining garments, An aureole of ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... though the tempest itself made a light. By it I marked the Admiral, upright where he could best command the whole. He had lashed himself there, for the ship tossed excessively. His great figure stood; his white, blowing hair, in that strange light, made for him a nimbus. It was strange, how the light seemed to seize that and his brow and his gray-blue eyes. Below the eyes his lips moved. He was shouting encouragement, but only the intention could be heard. The intention was heard. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... the soul did not even give herself the trouble to reform and ennoble his features, she contented herself in annihilating them with her rays; it was, as it were, the nimbus of the old saints not now remaining round the head, but extending over all the features, pale and almost invisible, bathing his ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... spirit. Pius VII., who was quartered in the Pavilion of Flora, led the life of an anchorite, with all the modesty and piety of an old monk, fasting every day as in his convent, and edifying even the impious by the nimbus that shone around his pale and mystic face. It was impossible to approach this worthy Vicar of Christ without a filial feeling of tenderness. The crimes of the French Revolution—the massacre or the execution of the priests, the profanation of the altars, the persecutions and blasphemies—had ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... the yearning for man's beautiful, dog-like sympathy that watches woman in her grand dark hour before she blooms into motherhood. When she knew the truth, she resolved to tell Eustace, and she came into his room softly, with shining eyes. He was sitting reading the Financial News in a nimbus of cigarette smoke, secretly glorying in his momentary immunity from the prison rules of the fantastic. Winifred's entry was as that of a warder. ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... proclamation of the Lamb of God, and Peter's quotation of this very prophecy, and the continual recurrence in the Apocalypse of the name of The Lamb as the title of honour of 'Him who sitteth on the throne.' A kind of nimbus or aureole shines round the humble figure as drawn by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Blessed Lord, used in Church decorations. The lamb is the chief emblem of our Saviour who was called by St. John Baptist, "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." The lamb is represented with a nimbus or glory of four rays, one partly concealed by the head. The rays are marks of divinity and belong only to our Lord. The lamb bearing a flag or banner signifies Victory, and is an emblem of the Resurrection. This symbolism is ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... is; moreover, it lies hidden by a bank of French-grey clouds, here and there sun-gilt and wind-bleached. We saw the 'Pike' bury itself under the blue horizon, at first cloaked in its wintry ermines and then capped with fleecy white nimbus, which confused itself ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... representations of our Saviour Gian Bellini 'displays a perception of moral power and grandeur seldom equalled in the history of art.' The example given is that of the single figure of the Lord in the Dresden Gallery, where the Son of God, without nimbus, or glory, stands forth as the 'ideal of ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... was as other children: about its head was neither nimbus nor material crown; its lips opened not in speech; if it heard their expressions of joy, their invocations, their prayers, it made no sign whatever, but, baby-like, looked longer at the flame in ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Verena. His scruples were doubtless begotten of a false pride, a sentiment in which there was a thread of moral tinsel, as there was in the Southern idea of chivalry; but he felt ashamed of his own poverty, the positive flatness of his situation, when he thought of the gilded nimbus that surrounded the protegee of Mrs. Burrage. This shame was possible to him even while he was conscious of what a mean business it was to practise upon human imbecility, how much better it was even to be seedy and obscure, discouraged about one's self. He had been born to the prospect of a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... sleep under the moon, we rose at 5 A.M. and loaded the camels. It was a raw morning. A large nimbus rising from the east obscured the sun, the line of blue sea was raised like a ridge by refraction, and the hills, towards which we were journeying, now showed distinct falls and folds. Troops of Dera or gazelles, herding like goats, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... idea of creation which the present writer has ever seen was exhibited in 1894 on the banner of one of the guilds at the celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Munich Cathedral. Jesus of Nazareth, as a beautiful boy and with a nimbus encircling his head, was shown turning and shaping the globe on a lathe, which he keeps in motion with his foot. The emblems of the Passion are about him, God the Father looking approvingly upon him from a cloud, and the dove hovering between the two. The ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... see save where its delicate colorings were contrasted against the dark green leaves of the oaks beyond the fence. Not the tangible, vapory haze of early morning, but a tinted, ethereal haze, the visible effluence of the summer, the nimbus of its power and glory. From tall cord grasses arching over the side of the road, drawing water from the ditch in which their feet were bathed and breathing it into the air with the scent of their own greenness; from the transpiration of the ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the headboard behind him, and from the footboard, strong lights played full and flary upon his twitching, aching eyelids; and finally, towards dawn, with every nerve behind his eyes taut with pain and strain, awakening unrefreshed to consciousness of that nimbus of unrelieved false glare which encircled him, and the stench of melted tallow and the stale reek of burned kerosene foul in his nose. That, now, had been the hardest of all to endure. Endured unceasingly, it had been because of his dread ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... a beautiful clear golden yellow. Great teachers often have this so strongly in evidence, that at times their students have glimpses of a golden "halo" around the head of the teacher. Teachers of great spirituality have this "nimbus" of golden yellow, with a border of beautiful blue ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... glass and adjusted the bonnet to her head. She tied the strings carefully under her chin in a great square bow; then she turned towards Rose. The fine white wreath under the brim encircled her face like a nimbus; she looked as she might have done sitting ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... air and water.] Bubble [Cloud.] — N. bubble, foam, froth, head, spume, lather, suds, spray, surf, yeast, barm^, spindrift. cloud, vapor, fog, mist, haze, steam, geyser; scud, messenger, rack, nimbus; cumulus, woolpack^, cirrus, stratus; cirrostratus, cumulostratus; cirrocumulus; mackerel sky, mare's tale, dirty sky; curl cloud; frost smoke; thunderhead. [Science of clouds] nephelognosy^; nephograph^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... left, a daughter seventeen years old. Her name was Fiammetta. Even in Florence it was said that to the north, amid the wilderness of cypress-trees, there dwelt a maiden whose beauty surrounded her with golden rays like a nimbus." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod, letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew a nimbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced and gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and in and ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... walked to the farmhouse supported by Pep and the Little Chaplain, feeling on his back sympathetic, trembling hands. His recollections were vague, dim, surrounded by a nimbus of white haze; something resembling the confused memory of acts and words ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ancestors; and it is a fault that none need really blush for in the present. For such as they there still remains the example of the turnpike-loving clerk, with all its golden possibilities. Denied the great delight of driving a locomotive, or a fire-engine — whirled along in a glorious nimbus of smoke-pant, spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar — what bliss to the palefaced quilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge and Chelsea! to drive a four-horsed Jersey-car to Kew at ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... is the most beautiful hair in all the world, of course," said Barnabas. She was already busy twisting it into a shining rope, but here she paused to look up at him from under this bright nimbus, and with ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Bulwan—came 10,000 yards jarring and clattering loud overhead—then flung a red earthquake just beyond the Lancers' horses. Again and again,—it looked as if he could not miss them; but the horses only twitched their tails, as if he were a new kind of fly. The 4.7 crashed hoarsely back, and a black nimbus flung up far above the trees on the mountain. And still the steady tack and tap—from the right among the Devons and Liverpools, from the right centre, where the Leicesters were, from the left centre, among the 60th, and the extreme ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... seconds after the appearance of a woman." Then it took a shot at the Senator's self-appreciation. "No one can approach him, if anybody can approach him, without being conscious that there is something great about Conkling. Conkling himself is conscious of it. He walks in a nimbus of it. If Moses' name had been Conkling when he descended from the Mount, and the Jews had asked him what he saw there, he would promptly have replied, 'Conkling!' It is a little difficult to see why Mr. Conkling did not gain a reputation during the war. Many men took advantage ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Louvre," two paces from "Titian's Mistress." Compare the two women, study closely the two pictures, and you will understand the difference between the two brains. Rembrandt's ideal, sought as in a dream with closed eyes, is Light: the nimbus around objects, the phosphorescence that comes against a black background. It is something fugitive and uncertain, formed of lineaments scarce perceptible, ready to disappear before the eye has fixed them, ephemeral and dazzling. To ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... long caravan, or string of caravans, was under way. It was the same forest, admitting, on the narrow line which we threaded, but one man at a time. Its view was as limited. To our right and left the forest was dark and deep. Above was a riband of glassy sky flecked by the floating nimbus. We heard nothing save a few stray notes from a flying bird, or the din of the caravans as the men sang, or hummed, or conversed, or shouted, as the thought struck them that we were nearing water. One of my pagazis, wearied and sick, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley |
