"Opal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... translucency, semiopacity; opalescence, milkiness, pearliness^; gauze, muslin; film; mica, mother-of-pearl, nacre; mist &c (cloud) 353. [opalescent jewel] opal. turbidity &c 426.1. Adj. semitransparent, translucent, semipellucid^, semidiaphanous^, semiopacous^, semiopaque; opalescent, opaline^; pearly, milky; frosted, nacreous. V. opalesce. (ii) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... though, blessed be God! there do come in all our lives long periods of halcyon rest, when 'birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave,' and the heavens above are clear as sapphire, and the sea around is transparent as opal—yet the little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, may rise on the horizon, and may thicken and blacken and grow greater and nearer till all the sky is dark, and burst in lightning and rain and fierceness of wind, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... such a smiling world, under a sky so exquisite, gliding over the opal of the still lagoons ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... river rushed down, a stupendous torrent of foam-crested billows and swirling whirlpools, impatient to make its leap into the depths at their feet where it was presently to be swallowed up in a bank of mist, which shimmered beneath the two adventurers like a giant opal lighted by all the colours of the rainbow. Below the rainbow-coloured mist the river again appeared, rushing in fearful power past beetling, frowning cliffs, which directly hid it from view. The very rocks upon ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... The white-winged boats were flitting lightly to and fro, like gauzy-winged insects in the summer air,—the song of the fishermen drawing their nets on the beach floated cheerily upward. Capri lay like a half-dissolved opal in shimmering clouds of mist, and Naples gleamed out pearly clear in the purple distance. Vesuvius, with its cloud-spotted sides, its garlanded villas and villages, its silvery crown of vapor, seemed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... feelings must we regard the mad new style, the Nocturnes in 'Blue and Silver,' the Harmonies in Flesh-colour and Pink, the Notes in Blue and Opal."—Knowledge. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... include the numbers 24 to 30. The first table contains a very attractive collection of minerals, including the varieties of jasper; all kinds of opals—the sun opal, the semi-opal, wood opal, and wood partially opalised. The second table (25) is covered with varieties of Silicates of Lime, magnesia, and alumina; also soapstone, keffekil, or the meerschaum, highly esteemed by smokers, serpentine, chrysolite, &c. The third case (26) is devoted ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... had piped through her repertoire and was now graciously accepting the support of Amiel's arm. Dorothea and the Monster, somewhat withdrawn from the circle, watched a crooked moon lift itself above the horizon and lay a trail of opal glory on the waves. Still awaiting inspiration, she regarded it with as little interest as Lucretia Borgia might have given the sunset that preceded one ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... in Budmouth-Regis, near the King's statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in the row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of salt water projected from the outer ocean—to-day lit in bright tones of green and opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there on the right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood Fancy Day; and she ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... burn themselves into the consciousness with a joy akin to pain, and of which only a few are allotted to each human life. I stood watching the sinking sun throw a crimson net over the snow mountains as the shadow of night crept slowly up the hillside. The sky took on an opal light in which were merged and transcended all the colours of the day. Every pinnacle and rock was lit up as by a heavenly fire, the pines were outlined like black sentinels against the sky, guardians of that merciful green life from ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... that certain stones should cure certain evils: the blood-stone was of very general efficacy, it was claimed, and the opal, when folded in a bay leaf, had the power of rendering the owner invisible. Some stones, especially the turquoise, turned pale or became deeper in hue according to the state of the owner's health; the owner of a diamond ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... She had notified the town police. This brought the conversation around to the maharajah's emeralds. Hadn't he and his attendants been overcome in the same manner? Thomas thought of the sapphires. Since nobody knew he had them, he stood in no danger. But there was Kitty's great fire-opal, glowing like a coal on her breast, seeming to breathe as she breathed. It was almost as large ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... had arrived, and Mary Virginia changed into white, in which she glowed and sparkled like a fire opal. We three dined together, and as she became more and more animated, a pink flush stole into her rather pale cheeks and her eyes deepened and darkened. She was vividly alive. One could see why Mary Virginia was classed as a great beauty, although, strictly speaking, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... ceremony must intervene before politeness permitted them to leave. At length, however, they found themselves again on the ferry-boat. Water and sky were grey, with a dividing gleam of sunset that sent sleek opal waves in the boat's wake. The wind had a cool tarry breath, as though it had travelled over miles of shipping, and the hiss of the water about the paddles was as delicious as though it had been splashed into ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Italy, said he, and bade me reflect on that; still, I would turn my eyes toward the graceful monument, so wickedly annexed by the three Julii, and then away over the wide plain that lay beneath this ragged spur of the Alpilles. In the distance I could see Avignon, and the pale, opal-tinted, gold-veined hills that fold in the fountain of Vaucluse. Never, since we came into Provence, had I been able so clearly to realize the wild fascination of her haggard beauty. "Here Marius stood in his camp," I thought, "shading his eyes from the fierce ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... as judicious, quiet, discreet, and religious, as any where in the world; with views of life as serious, and as earnest, not living for pretence or show, but for the most rational and religious ends. Now, when all this goodness is silvered over, as it were, reflecting like mother-of-pearl or opal, a thousand fanciful shades and changes, is not the result beautiful? Some families into which I have entered, some persons with whom I have talked, have left a most delightful impression upon my mind; and I have talked, by means of imperfect English, French, and interpretations, with a good ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... substance in the hillocks. Based upon a soft white sandstone, a bed of clay formed the lowest part of the cliff; upon this bed of clay, a bed of chalk reposed; this chalk was superseded by a thick bed of saponaceous earth, whilst the summit of the cliff was composed of a bright red sand. Semi-opal and hydrate of silex were found in the chalk, and some beautiful specimens of brown menelite were collected from the upper stratum ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... they halted, while, struggling after them, the first triumphant beam struck the bosses of their harness to glittering jewel-points, and, breaking through layer on layer of curdling vapor at their feet, suffused it to a wondrous fleece, where carnation and violet and the fire that lurks in the opal, wreathing with gorgeous involution, seethed together, until, at last, the whole resplendent mist wound itself away in silver threads on the spindles of the wind. Then boot in the stirrup again, onward, over the mountain's ridge, desolate rook defying the sun, downward, plunging through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... pillow, and with the right hand rubbing both eyes in an endeavor to see once more my natural surroundings. But no! Instead, suspended in this endless light, appeared a wonderful colossal cross of indescribable splendor. This wonderful cross can be likened only to a gigantic opal. Its rays of light seemed to penetrate me through and through as over my mind flashed the thought, "I must have died, and this is ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... times, too, our woods show wond'rous sights Such as are read of in "Arabian Nights," When branch and bough are all laden with gems Bright as those that deck Eastern diadems; And the sun sheds a blaze of dazzling light On ruby and opal and diamond bright. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... esteem the more, I told him, I would show him a seal of composition, engraved after a very valuable antique; upon which I pulled out my watch with a rich gold chain, adorned with three seals set in gold, and an opal ring. He viewed each of them with great eagerness, handled the chain, admired the chased case, and observed that the whole must have cost me a vast sum of money. I affected indifference, and replied in a careless manner, "Some trifle ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... entered the faculty room suave and smiling. His clothes were a trifle outgrown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but for all that there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole. This latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... he was altered; everything was altered. He remembered the ecstasy of their excursion to Switzerland. He remembered the rapture with which, on their honeymoon, he had clasped a new opal bracelet on her exciting arm. He could not possibly have such sensations now. What was the meaning of life? Was life worth living? The fact was—he was growing old. Useless to pretend to himself that it was not so. Both he and she were growing old. Only, she seemed to be placidly content, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... pictures of palace buildings. It was a group,—a pile; under these roofs a family of five—Americans, republicans, with no law of primogeniture to conserve the estate beyond a single lifetime—were to live like a little royal household. And the father had made all his money in fifteen years in Opal Street. This country of ours, and the ways of it, are certainly pretty nearly the queerest under the sun, when one looks it all through ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Printing on Opal, Celluloid, etc., is quite simple; it suffices to coat the material with the following gelatine solution, and, when the film is dry, to proceed in operating by any one of the processes ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... fair, from a pale cloud of incense, like some seraphic apparition. Her hair, of velvet blackness, fell in curls half-way down her shoulders; her brow, white as alabaster and polished as a mirror, reflected the rays of the sun; her beautiful and finely arched black eye-brows melted into the opal of her temples; her eyelids were fast down, and the curled black fringe of lashes veiled a glowing and liquid glance of divine emotion; the nose, straight, slender, and cut by two easy nostrils, gave to her profile that character of antique beauty which is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tree-trunks, and each forest sound —The trickling stream's Murmur in its dreams, The shepherd's pipe, far-echoing by chance,— Melt all for thee To one soft harmony, While for the lighting of thy mossy slope The moon thy lover sheds an opal glow, Pale silver-green, the colour of the leaves Of olive-trees, The limelight on the stage for Youth and Joy and Hope? And at the first rose menace of the dawn Must thou go, Fly to thy ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... transparent and colorless. Some colored varieties are given special names, as amethyst (violet), rose quartz (pale pink), smoky or milky quartz (colored and opaque). Other varieties of silicon dioxide, some of which also contain water, are chalcedony, onyx, jasper, opal, agate, and flint. Sand and sandstone ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... preened his opal breast; And o'er the meads the bobolink, With vexed perplexity confessed His tinkling gutturals in a kink, Or ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... distempered chocolate; gaselier with opal-tinted globes; two cast-iron Cavaliers holding gas-lamps on the mantel-piece. Oil-portrait, enlarged from photograph, of Mrs. TIDMARSH, over side-board; on other walls, engravings—"Belshazzar's Feast," "The Wall of Wailing at Jerusalem," and DORE'S "Christian Martyrs." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... heavens, presenting in a jewelled form contrasts of colour, pleasing harmonies, and endless variety of shade. The diamond, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, topaz, and ruby sparkle among crowds of stars of more sombre hue. Agate, chalcedony, onyx, opal, beryl, lapis-lazuli, and aquamarine are represented by the radiant sheen emanating from distant suns, displaying an inexhaustible variety of colour, blended in tints of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... "October is the opal," she added, and she laughed outright, for Miss Wood's birthday was on the fifteenth of ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... touch the ground; for she had toddled down that road as a child, and knew every stone in it; knew where to leave it for the narrow little path which provided a short cut, and where to turn aside for the marvelous view of the tiny harbor that looked like a child's toy on the edge of the opal sea. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... ago I followed Attalano, my guide, down the narrow Mexican street of Tampico to the bank of the broad Panuco. Under the rosy dawn the river quivered like a restless opal. The air, sweet with the song of blackbird and meadowlark, was full of cheer; the rising sun shone in splendor on the water and the long line of graceful palms lining the opposite bank, and the tropical forest beyond, with ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... when we got below decks. All hands were up, I suppose, when that ship went down, and the rush of water as she plunged, washed them off. We found seven big chests in the 'tween-decks forward of the cabin, and in them all were coins, and jewelry, and here and there in the mess, what might have been an opal, or some kind of jewel. All the stuff was black from the action of the salt water; but we knew we had the real thing, and hooked on tackles. We had to come up to help each time we lifted a chest, for, after the chest was out of water, it was too heavy for the crowd above; ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... prepared to answer this difficult query, leads his relative gently up to a "Nocturne in Opal and Silver." The Uncle conveys his opinion of it by a loud and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... red wax, and when she removed the enveloping pasteboard, she found a heavy gold ring, bearing a large beautifully tinted opal, surrounded with small diamonds. On the inside was engraved "Douglass and Regina," with the date of the day on which he had left the parsonage ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... current. They are chiefly used for lighting halls and railway stations, streets and open spaces, search-lights and lighthouses. They are sometimes naked, but as a rule their brightness is tempered by globes of ground or opal glass. In search-lights a parabolic mirror projects all the rays in any one direction, and in lighthouses the arc is placed in the focus of the condensing lenses, and the beam is visible for at least ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... Cook's ships were once more afloat, {321} gliding among the sylvan channels of countless wooded islands up past Sitka harbor, where the Russians later built their fort, round westward beneath the towering opal dome of Mount St. Elias, which Bering had named, to the waters bordering Alaska; but, as the world knows, though the ships penetrated up the channels of many roily waters, they found no open passage. Cook comes down to the Sandwich ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Hamlet himself, the poem even here is too great to be resumed in the person. But Constance is the jewel of King John, and Katherine is the crowning blossom of King Henry VIII.—a funeral flower as of "marigolds on death-beds blowing," an opal of as pure water as "tears of perfect moan," with fitful fire at its heart, ominous of evil and sorrow, set in a mourning band of jet on the forefront of the poem, that the brow so circled may, "like to a title-leaf, foretell ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... on the road at his feet, his face quite pale, a sleepless night evidently behind him. He came into the birches without noticing them at first, and when he looked up he was for a moment so taken by surprise that he was transfigured. The valley at his feet shimmered like an opal through the slender white pillars of the trees. The wood was like a many-columned chapel, unroofed and open to the sunlight. Nathaniel gave a cry of rapture, and dropped the bag of salt. "Oh!" he cried, stretching out his arms, and ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... is very beautiful. The dulcet air and stillness are lovely. This morning we watched the opal dawn, and the stars becoming pale before it, as also the old moon, which rose between five and six o'clock, and, in the form of a boat of pure silvery-gold, floated up the sea of clear, rosy air. I am so very early a riser that the first faint light ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... went through the prime jewels, illustrating their moral properties, especially of the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald, and the opal, by ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... place. 'Don't! It makes me want to get out there again. What colour that was! Opal and umber and amber and claret and brick-red and sulphur—cockatoo-crest—sulphur—against brown, with a nigger-black rock sticking up in the middle of it all, and a decorative frieze of camels festooning in front of a pure pale turquoise sky.' He began to walk up and down. 'And yet, you know, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... brought many happy excursions up the Peak, never was one so exquisitely enjoyed as this had been. The sun had dropped behind the hill when the tired party reached the Red House, and a big moon was coming up serenely in the opal sky. Mr. and Miss Goldthwaite paused at the avenue gate, saying they would not come any further; so the good-nights were said there ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... attitude as they crept along or leaped sideways after the travellers. Hazel noticed with a startled glance at the sky that the sun was low and would soon be down. And that of course where the sun hung like a great burning opal must be the west, but that told her nothing, for the sun had been high in the heavens when they had started, and she had taken no note of direction. East, west, north or south were all one to her in her happy care-free life that she had hitherto led. She tried to puzzle it out and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... quadrangular shape, with its stratified appearance, to the sunken and deceptive masses that were difficult to perceive before they were under the bow. I have rarely seen a finer sight. The sea was literally studded with these beautiful masses, some of pure white, others showing all shades of the opal, others emerald green and occasionally, here and there, some of deep black. Our situation was critical, but the weather favored us for a few hours. On clearing these dangers we kept off to the south and west under all sail, and at 9 P.M. we counted eight large ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... yellowish-white powder (darker whilst hot), insoluble in acids, and contains 78.67 per cent. of tin. Cold dilute nitric acid dissolves tin to a clear solution, which becomes a white enamel-like jelly on heating; this (filtered off, washed, and dried) forms an opal-like substance, which is converted on ignition into stannic oxide with evolution of nitrous fumes. Stannic oxide when ignited with chlorides is more or less completely converted into stannic chloride, which volatilises. The presence of chlorides during the ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... is. "Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze stirred the air, purified by lightning; I left the west behind me, where spread a sky like opal, azure inmingled with crimson; the enlarged sun, glorious in Tyrian dyes, dipped his brim already; stepping, as I was, eastward, I faced a vast bank of clouds, but also I had before me the arch of an even rainbow; a perfect rainbow—high, wide, vivid. I looked long; my eye drank in the scene, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, 'Thou shalt ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... height Of sunless suns and reigning sin,— Flame-decked this plain of warring kings Where poisoned fumes and beacons burn! And thro' the hyoids, huge and red, Past portals black and guidons bright To onyx lees and opal sands, The Cyclopean vaults of dwale, And cavern'd shapes that Typhon bled, Greet each wand'ring spectre's sight; Where pixies dance on wind-blown strands, Lurke gyte incubi in a hall. Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom! Where shadows vague and coffined light, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... exceed two cubits and half a span. There were four holes in it, in each of which an empty ball was fastened, hollow within, and open o' top, like a little lamp; its circumference about two hands' breadth. Each ball was of precious stone; one an amethyst, another an African carbuncle, the third an opal, and the fourth an anthracites. They were full of burning water five times distilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly put into Pallas' golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus. In each of them was a flaming wick, partly of asbestine flax, as of old ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... one hundred and forty-six years before the coming of Christ. The North African Coast, with its broad hem of golden sand, its green belt of feathery palm trees, and its background of barren, red-scarped hills, shimmered like a dream country in the opal light. Save for a narrow edge of snow-white surf, the Mediterranean lay blue and serene as far as the eye could reach. In all its vast expanse there was no break but for a single galley, which was slowly making its way from the direction ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and he, sitting silently opposite her, dreamed—the old dream that comes to most good men and true once in their lives. He scarcely moved until the dawn lightened with opal the dreary plain, bringing back the horizon and day, when he woke from his dream with a sigh, and then a laugh. Then he listened for the sound of distant hoofs, and hearing them, crept noiselessly from the coach. A compact body of horsemen were bearing down upon it. He ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... benign or terrible. Kenkenes caught a single glance of the eyes under the gray shelter of the heavy brows. Once, the young man had seen hanging from Meneptah's neck the rarest jewel in the royal treasure. The wise men had called it an opal. It shot lights as beautiful and awful as the intensest flame. And something in the eyes of this mighty man brought back to Kenkenes the memory of the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... drawing-room pleased her. That room was like an asylum of bourgeois rectitude, luxurious dignity, in which she felt protected, saved. Some little objects on which her eyes lighted, a pocket scent-bottle ornamented with an opal, a paper-knife of burnished silver left inside a book, fully reassured her. She was moved, almost surprised at the sight of them, as if they had acquired some new and particular meaning. Then she shivered slightly and perceived ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... sons of gentle Mrs Constable, were Jasper, otherwise John; Sapphire, whose real name was Robert; Garnet, baptised Wallace; Opal, whose name was ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... there was a vast, square plaza, covering thousands of acres. Toward it, on two sides, converged scores of streets; they stretched away from it like the ribs of a giant fan. On the remaining two sides there was a tremendously large building with a V-shaped front, opening on the square. The play of opal light on its many-bubbled roof resembled the glimmer ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... or not, Jane's twisted words sent a little breeze of laughter before the coming storm. For the rest of the afternoon Zura had little to say. Book in hand she sat in the windowseat overlooking the water, watching the snow-white sails skim the opal sea. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... on a rock in the opal surf,—a little scarlet mermaid, combing her hair with her thin fingers, from which the water almost washed the wedding ring. It was—who knew how long, since the pretty bathing-suit had been taken down from the garret nails? What ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... by the sea! ah, who would know This damp wild ragamuffin on the strand Who importunes the passers-by to throw Big stones across the opal-shining sand? ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... the room was in darkness. He rose eagerly and peered out. But he saw no one. Across the street the arc-lamp burned dimly, like an opal in the matrix, while of architectural outlines not one remained, the fog having kindly ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... or Nathaniel P. Willis, I might be able to weave my stupid nothings into one of those airy fabrics the value of which depends entirely upon the skillful work, or rather penmanship, which distinguishes it. I have even fancied that if I could steal a feather from the living opal swinging like a jeweled pendulum from the heart of the great tiger-lily which nods its turbaned head so stately within the mosquito-net cage standing upon the little table, my poor lines would gather a certain beauty from the rainbow-tinted ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... peculiar skill of colourists is seen most intelligibly in their work in glass or in enamel; secondly, that Nature herself produces all her loveliest colours in some kind of solid or liquid glass or crystal. The rainbow is painted on a shower of melted glass, and the colours of the opal are produced in vitreous flint mixed with water; the green and blue, and golden or amber brown of flowing water is in surface glassy, and in motion "splendidior vitro." And the loveliest colours ever granted to human sight—those ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the broken cabinet. It was evidently a receptacle for valuable curios; for in it were some great scarabs of gold, agate, green jasper, amethyst, lapis lazuli, opal, granite, and blue-green china. None of these things happily were touched. The bullet had gone through the back of the cabinet; but no other damage, save the shattering of the glass, had been done. I could not but notice the strange arrangement of the curios on the shelf of the cabinet. All the ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... O high, from the opal sky, Shouting against the dark, "Why, why, why, must the day go by?" Fell a ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... an azure sea is flowing, 'Mid long peninsulas of shining sand, From opal unto pearl the moon is growing, Dropped like a ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... told him he was to meet. And as they stood by the fireplace looking into each other's eyes, he gradually became aware of his happiness. It broke in his heart with a thrill and shiver like an exquisite dawn, opal and rose; the brilliancy of her eyes, the rapture of her face, the magnetic stirring of the little gold curls along her forehead were so wonderful that he feared her as an enchanter fears the spirit he has raised. Like one who ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... semi-precious) gem, jewel, diamond, brilliant, beryl, emerald, chalcedony, bloodstone, agate, heliotrope girasole, onyx, sardonyx, garnet, sardine stone, jade, opal, peridot, chrysolite, sapphire, ruby, topaz, turquoise, turquoise matrix, zircon, hyacinth, carbuncle, amethyst, pearl, coral, bijou, doublet, carnelian, briolette, cabochon, chatoyant, rhinestone, amphibole, aquamarine, tourmaline, rhodolite, spinel, bufonite. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... meet his guests. He is garbed in a coat made of watered silk, its straight collar faced with dark-green material edged with gold. A green and gold shoulder knot sets off the garment, which is provided with large opal buttons set in brilliants, this same adornment appearing on the hilt of his sword, which he lays aside as he approaches. From the sides of his wig depend two carefully-arranged locks, dusted with a tan-colored ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... once achieved. He had already handed his spear in a lordly style, like a sceptre, to the piteous Parkinson, and was about to assume one of the cushioned seats like a throne. But at this open appeal to his rival there glowed in his opal eyeballs all the sensitive insolence of the slave; he knotted his enormous brown fists for an instant, and then, dashing open the door, disappeared into his own apartments beyond. But meanwhile Miss Rome's experiment in mobilizing the British Army had not succeeded ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... sunset and the hollow caves, And the ice-girdled peaks that hold serene Each its own star, far out at sea to mark Thy westward way, O Princess, through the dark. The rose-red sunset dies into the dusk, The silver dusk of the long twilight hour, And opal lights come out, and fiery gleams Of flame-red beacons, like the ash-gray husk Torn from some tropic blossom bursting into flower, Making the sea bloom ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... dashed over the smooth road at a lively pace the glowing sunset painted scarlet the white turbaned head of the distant mountain, while it bronzed and gilded the clouds in the west. Opal fires burned all over the sky, as the twilight threw its amber hues about us, and presently the men halted, each taking out a funny little painted paper lantern from under the seat, and lighted a candle inside of it, which they hung on the end of the shafts. We went on then along the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... sauntering along in the lovely summer twilight, now resting on some grassy hedge-row bank, or standing still, looking at the great barges, with their crimson sails, lazily floating down the river, making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water. They did not talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion; and her lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins's behaviour, with some surprise and distaste of the habit ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... an irregular volley of musketry rattled warningly from the naked mountain ridges; over a great grey shoulder of rock the sun sank in a splendid opal glow; from very near at hand came the clatter of tin cups and the sound of a subdued British laugh. And in the room of the Brigadier-General a man lifted his head from his hands and stared ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the spiritual change in her that was even greater than the physical! If only he could see the beauty of those far lavender hazes! If only he could understand how even now she was heartsick for the night trail where one looked up into the sky as into a shadowy opal! If only he knew the peace that had dwelt with her on the holiday ledge where there were tints and beauties too deep for words! And yet with the wistfulness came a strange sense of satisfaction that all this new part of her must ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... sweet kind voice restored him to consciousness. Muttering a few words of incoherent recognition, he sank upon a sandalwood settee, as Goliath, the little slave, brought aromatic coffee in cups of opal, and alabaster spittoons, and pipes of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "My opal ring!" cried Mollie, staring at it unbelievingly. "Oh, I can't believe it. Give it to me, Betty; it has my initials on the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the people standing near the fish-pond. Their white garments on the dark background of the myrtles gleamed like gold from the evening rays. On the sky the evening light had begun to assume purple and violet hues, and to change like an opal. A strip of the sky became lily-colored. The dark silhouettes of the cypresses grew still more pronounced than during bright daylight. In the people, in the trees, in the whole garden ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... eyes and a newer understanding. Harpeth Valley lay like the tender palm of a huge master hand with the knuckles of rough blue hills knotted around it, and dotted over the fostering meadows were comfortable homes, each with its morning altar fire sending up opal wreaths of mist smoke from the red brick or stone chimneys. Long creek lines marked their way across the fields which were growing tender green with the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... soul knew it. Life revived with passion. Longings which you had forgotten came and took you by the throat, saying, "You shall no longer be satisfied with negative peace. Rouse, and live!" Then flitting, exquisite, purple flaws struck across milk-opal water in the bay. Fishing boats lifted themselves in mirage, sailing lightly above the water; and islands sat high, with a cushion of ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed with ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... of all shades, and little Maltese terriers. One of these was a perfect beauty. Its hair was like spun glass, of a bluish, pinkish gray, snow-white in the partings. When it trotted about, it looked like an opal, or a piece of live Venetian glass. Its name ought to have been "Jewel," for it ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... responded Marston, and no more was said. So that at twilight they were speeding down the long, empty ocean drive with good salt air in their faces, and lights of cottages spotting the opal night with orange blurs. It was a large, gay house-party, and the person who had been called, it was told from one to another, "the young Phillips Brooks," a person who brought among them certain piquant qualities, was a lion ready to their hand. With the ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... swift decision that set all the little bells on them clashing stormily, she straightway hurled herself, so to speak, into the giddy paces of a dance that was more like an enigma than an exercise. Round and round she floated wildly, like an opal-winged butterfly in a net of sunbeams,—now seemingly shaken by delicate tremors as aspen leaves are shaken by the faintest wind, ..now assuming the most voluptuous eccentricities of posture, . . sometimes bending wistfully ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire, once his native seat; And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendant world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... peaks, their crests snow-mantled. Over the level lowlands about the lake the silent forests of pine and fir swept away on all sides. The lake, some two miles in length, lay like an opal in the palm of the mountains, flashing fiery colors that it stole from ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... they saw the Acropolis across the plain. The sun fell on the red in the natural rock and intensified the white of the marbles. Against the sombre mountains the isolated citadel glowed inly, like a milk-white opal shot with rose. Paulus caught his breath. Was it here, his flame ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... crystallization rose into the radiation of the living tree, and sentient plume, the splendor of nature in her more exalted power would not be restricted to a less variety of design; and the beautiful caprice in which she gave to the silver its frost and to the opal its fire, would not be subdued under the slow influences of accident and time, when she wreathed the swan with snow, and bathed the dove in iridescence. That the infinitely more exalted powers of life must exercise more intimate influence over matter than ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... was climbing now and its pallid disk was slowly flushing to the wakefulness of fiery rose. The sky overhead was livening to turquoise light and here and there along the upper slopes were gossamer dashes of opal and amethyst, but this beauty of unveiling turrets and gold-touched crests was lost on eyes in which dwelt a nightmare from which there was ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... jewel. Each icy tree and bush emitted thin threadlike flames, high and aerial in tone, but of a piercing intensity. It was as if the quiet valley had been flooded all at once with dust of emerald and opal, of sapphire and amethyst and diamond. And as the light grew the miracle changed slowly, one keen gleam dying out as ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ascending from the sun's disc to the zenith, assuming the appearance of a range of snowy mountains, whose summits were heaped one upon another. The dome of clouds was tinged at its base with, as it were, the foam of rubies, fading away into opal and pearly tints, in proportion as the gaze was carried from base to summit. The sea was gilded with the same reflection, and upon the crest of every sparkling wave danced a point of light, like a diamond by lamplight. The mildness of the evening, the sea breezes, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had navigated all day, gradually widened as we advanced; the shores as they receded were covered with opal tints; the vessel began to roll, and we entered the sea of Marmora. At sunset the Mussulmans with whom the deck was crowded collected in groups, and devoutly said their evening prayer. Their countenances were wrapped in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... like also is certain of all sensible ideas peculiar to each sense; for whatever of each kind is present in any subject, excludes all other of that sort: v.g. no one subject can have two smells or two colours at the same time. To this, perhaps will be said, Has not an opal, or the infusion of LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM, two colours at the same time? To which I answer, that these bodies, to eyes differently, placed, may at the same time afford different colours: but I take liberty also to say, that, to eyes differently ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... more restrained in tone than his first impression of it. Her gown was of a vague colour—a sort of blue-grey, in which the element of blue was suggested as a light continuous tinge. A crimson silk scarf, fastened with an opal buckle, formed a pleasing sash, and fell to the knee. As before, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... plain, I could well judge of the feat we had accomplished in our descent. Up to the level of the cave there were shrubs and brush-wood. Higher up, orchids, with their bright flowers and opal-green leaves; higher still rose a perpendicular and almost smooth rampart, utterly impassable except through the fissure which had afforded us egress. Sumichrast guided us through the thicket, where the frangipanni-plants, covered with their ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... eternally rolled back. Here there was light, but no such light as she had ever known; it did not fall from sun or star, but, changeful and radiant, welled upward from that land in a thousand hues, as light might well from a world of opal. In its dazzling, beautiful rays she saw fantastic palaces and pyramids, she saw seas and pure white mountains, she saw plains and new-hued flowers, she saw gulfs and precipices, and pale lakes pregnant with wavering flame. All ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... about the whole affair were that the lowest third of the case was filled with a liquid, thickish and emerald green and possessing a curious iridescence, and that just beneath the niche was fixed a strip of ebony tilted upwards and bearing in distinct opal ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... King Prigio, into the silver dawn of the moon. All now became clear and silvery; the coasts of the moon came into sight, with white seas breaking on them; and at last the king reached the silver walls, and the gate of opal. Before the gate stood two beautiful ladies. One was fair, with yellow locks, the colour of the harvest moon. She had a crown of a golden snake and white water-lilies, and her dress now shone white, now red, now golden; and in her hand was the golden pitcher that sheds the ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... white dress against the sinking sail, said nothing, but stared at the lights that outlined the yacht against the deep distance of the sky, and that seemed, as the shadowy hull swung dark on the water, to start out from nowhere in pin-pricks of diamonds set in opal moonlight. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... rag-time of the vintage of '08. We ask him where he heard the tune. "O, I catch him from the phunny-graph, me at the Mission." Canned culture even here! It is light enough to read on the deck at quarter past eleven. We chunk along through a lake of amethyst and opal, the marvellous midnight light keeping us from sleep. On the scow astern, sprawled on the season's output of fur, the men smoke and argue. In the North, men talk of feats of strength and endurance, boast about their dogs, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... to do his best to make it a success; and Kate, not at all averse to a waltz or two, dressed herself for the occasion with her habitual striving after artistic effect. She was one of those women who make a picture of themselves as naturally as a bird sings. She had an opal necklace which Jack had given her because, he said, she had as many moods as an opal had colors; and she wore this with a crepe gown, the tint of the green lights in her necklace. A box of flowers came for her as she was dressing; ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... Gorky writes: "I should have liked to transform myself into dust and be blown about by the wind; I should have liked to stretch myself out on the steppe like the warm waters of the river, or throw myself into the sea and rise into the sky in an opal mist; I should have liked to drink in this evening so wonderful and melancholy.... And, I know ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... horses' feet on the asphalt pavement—no pavement, indeed, and no horses, no twentieth-century rush of life. It is Venice, it is June, and the two combine to make an illuminated chapter. To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal. How wonderful it is to drift—a sky above and a sky below—on still waters at sunset, with the Dream City mirrored in the depths, every shade of gold and rose and amber mirrored back,—the very atmosphere a sea of color, recalling to one Ruskin's words that "none of us appreciate the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... singers, only showing the back of his head and his black hair that fell in rather long curls upon his neck. And although she had asked the names of several others, she had not dared ask his. The fine profile, the grand half-savage look, the brown, almost tawny pupils moving rapidly on the bluish opal of the eyes; all this had impressed ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... the hunter lay quiet. From time to time the calf struggled and bellowed. Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides; they prowled about with hungry howls, and shoved black-tipped noses through the grass. The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue. A star shone out, then another, and another. Over the prairie slanted the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... ireful Cybebe spoke and loosed the yoke with her hand. The monster, self-exciting, to rapid wrath his heart doth spur, he rushes, he roars, he bursts through the brake with heedless tread. But when he gained the humid verge of the foam-flecked shore, and spied the womanish Attis near the opal sea, he made a bound: the witless wretch fled into the wild wold: there throughout the space of her whole life a bondsmaid did she stay. Great Goddess, Goddess Cybebe, Goddess Dame of Dindymus, far from my home may all thine ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... dome of the wire-gauze cover, crowding eagerly about the prisoner; others, saluting her in passing, flew to the lamp, circled round it a few times, and then, fascinated by the luminous splendour radiating from the opal cone of light, clung there motionless under the reflector. Already the children were raising their hands to seize them. "Leave them," I said, "leave them. Let us be hospitable: do not disturb the pilgrims who have come to the tabernacle of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre |
