"Spark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... estimate, and thought I could pull you through by a slight majority. Now, it's different. While you may lose some votes from the 'near-silk stocking' class, yet for every vote so lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the fans ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of Bonaparte, no such vast forces had been under arms. To command these required not only the divine military spark, but hardly-acquired experience. And the mimic war which the elements of European army life always affords had been wanting to educate our generals. It is not wonderful, then, that two years of fruitless campaigning was needed to teach our leaders how to utilize on such difficult terrain ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the carburetor rubbing on the spark plugs," she said plaintively, "I'd get the Doric in spite of everything. Did you ever see such blue eyes ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... anything about chemistry—volatile essences, noxious drugs, subtle poisons? I do." (Here Tom Ryfe observed his ally turn pale.) "Permit me to remark, sir, that if you don't, you are like a school-boy carrying a pocketful of squibs and crackers on the fifth of November, unconscious that a single spark may blow him into the Christmas holidays before he can say 'knife!' Let me see those lozenges, sir—let me have them in my hand; I'll tell you in five seconds what they're made of, and how, and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat; And slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; And love is love, in ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... present, but it is only, perhaps, because we are too remote and unimportant to waste a thought about. Happy insignificance! As one of the little means of supporting existence in so remote a spot, and keeping alive, at the same time, the spark of literary excitement, I began, in December, a manuscript jeu d'esprit newspaper, to be put in covers and sent from house to house, with the perhaps too ambitious cognomen ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... The spark which lit up his genius could not live in that goodness which constituted the groundwork of his nature, but in passion, called forth by the sight of great misfortunes, great faults, great crimes, in fact, by the sight of all which attracted ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... eloquence which on this occasion flashed forth from the coarse and unlettered Henry, as the spark-of fire from the flint, continued to distinguished him both as a Member of the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg, and afterwards as a member of Congress. He took from the first a bold and active part against the pretensions of the mother country; indeed Mr. Jefferson goes so far ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... In the days of danger from her own people which had followed the disastrous Japanese war, Russia had courted her subject nations by granting them every species of favor. Now with her returning strength she recommenced her unyielding purpose of "Russianizing" them. Finland was deprived of the last spark of independence; so that her own chief champions said of her sadly in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... to explain. In five minutes he and the captain were head over heels in spark plugs and batteries and valves and cylinders. Mr. Black endeavored to help out with quotations from his experience as a motorist, but his suggestions, not being of a nautical nature, were ignored for the most part. After a time he lost interest and settled back ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... an End, and put to Silence all the other Boasts, there was a young Prodigal Spark that had wasted a fair Estate in being a Customer to her House, thought he had now a fit opportunity to put her in Mind of his own Merits, and therefore ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... Her person, though not strikingly handsome, was pleasing, and her temper and disposition appeared to be perfectly amiable. He began therefore to pay her very serious attention, but here again poor Lionel had only to lament his mistake. He found Claribel quite as untutored as her cousins, without a spark more desire of improvement. He was not likely to meet with a repulse from so gentle a creature, but the acquiescence with which she received his assiduities seemed more the result of habitual passiveness than of reciprocal attachment. She betrayed ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... or two before Melanie moved or gave any symptoms of recovering from her fainting fit, and during those minutes the lips of Raoul had been pressed so often and so warmly to those of the fair insensible, that had any spark of perception remained to her, the fond and lingering pressure could not have failed to call the "purple light of love," to her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... entirely for men, I should think when it was proposed to women they would feel, at least, some spark of the old spirit of races allied to our own. "If he is to be my bridegroom and lord" cries Brunhilda, [Footnote: See the Nibelungen Lays.] "he must first be able to pass through fire and water." "I will serve ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... performance drew many people to church. The singers were undeniably the great attraction, and they knew it; consequently I was somewhat in their power, and had to submit to various anthems and pieces, such as "Vital Spark." "Angels Ever Bright and Fair," and others, not altogether to my taste, but which they evidently performed to ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... four commonsense fundamentals: continued reduction of the growth in Federal spending; preserving the individual and business tax reductions that will stimulate saving and investment; removing unnecessary Federal regulations to spark productivity; and maintaining a healthy dollar and a stable monetary policy, the latter a responsibility of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... at all times of the year and in all weathers, an abundant, practically a boundless, supply of electricity. It has never yet happened to him to send his collector up to even so low a height as four hundred feet without getting a spark in his discharge-box at the earth. He has discovered, however, that the greater the amount of moisture in the air, the greater is the height to which he must send the collector before getting the first spark. There is no doubt that large quantities of electricity ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... Frobisher knew what it was. Far away, on the edge of the horizon, appeared a small spark of light which shot rapidly up into the sky, where it hung for a few seconds and then burst into a mushroom-shaped cluster of red stars that gradually floated downward again, fading from view ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... unjust? Which arises from those African wars, that relate to the present subject? The African princes, corrupted by the merchants of Europe, seek every opportunity of quarrelling with one another. Every spark is blown into a flame; and war is undertaken from no other consideration, than that of procuring slaves: while the Europeans, on the other hand, happy in the quarrels which they have thus excited, supply them with arms and ammunition for the accomplishment ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... the lover, lights its beacon "like a spark fallen from the full moon"; but "presently the light grows feebler, and fades to a discreet nightlight, while all around the host of nocturnal creatures, delayed in their affairs, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... in that 'refuge.' It was just like being in jail. We were locked up and guarded like prisoners. Even then, if I could have liked the other boys it might have been all right. But they were mostly street-boys of the worst kind—lying, and sneaking, and cowardly, without one spark of manhood or one idea of square dealing and fair play. There was only one thing I did like, and that was the books. Oh, I did lots of reading, I tell you! But that could n't make up for the rest. I wanted the freedom and the sunlight ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... it loomed, a cratered, jagged globe of desolation indescribable; of sheer, bitter cold incarnate and palpable; of stark, sharp contrasts. Gigantic craters, in whose yawning depths no spark of warmth had been generated for countless cycles of time, were surrounded by vast plains eroded to the dead level of a windless sea. Every lofty object cast a sharply outlined shade of impenetrable blackness, beside which the weak light of the sun became a dazzling glare. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... word, sir," said Kennedy, his features working sympathetically. "To-night at eight I will go on watch with you. By the way, leave me those A. Spark notes." ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... so clever as need be, and she listened with a face that didn't show a spark of the thought behind it. But he failed to move her an inch, because, unknown to him, she'd got a fine trump card up ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... powder gives a flash about one ten-thousandth of a second in duration, but that is by no means the speed limit of the film. The only trouble is enough light and sufficient shutter speed. Pictures have been taken by means of spark photography with an exposure of less than one three-millionth of a second. The whole secret of this machine lies in the shutter. This big disc with the slots in the edge is set up before the lens and run at such a speed that half a million slots per second pass before the lens. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... elisions of the West, his speech had a dignity that suggested breeding. It was quite likely he was not a gentleman, according to the code in which she had been brought up, but it was equally sure there burned in him that dynamic spark of self-respect which is at the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... all that sorrow could To ease her woes give utterance, loud had wail'd In wild lament; all spark of reason fled, Her bosom tearing, through the world she roam'd. And now his limbs inanimate she sought; Then for his whiten'd bones: his bones she found, On banks far distant from his home inhum'd. Prone on his tomb her form she ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... not. With good economy, He fills his garish day with business, And posts his ledger, satisfied, at ev'n. Out on you! You are all alike—you, too. O were my sister here! She's wise—than I Far cleverer! Yet, too, when in her breast The spark of will and resolution falls, She flashes out in flames, like unto mine. Were she a man, she'd be a hero. Ye Before her courage and her gaze should flinch. Now let me sleep until she comes, for I Myself am but the dreaming ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... read Cicero nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns: and what is more astonishing he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator: he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam and ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... iron rivet that he drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow over ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... sheet mica is for insulating purposes in the manufacture of a large variety of electrical equipment. The highest grades are employed particularly in making condensers for magnetos of automobile and airplane engines and for radio equipment, and in the manufacture of spark plugs for high tension gas engines. Sheet mica is also used in considerable amounts for glazing, for heat insulation, and as phonograph diaphragms. Ground mica is used in pipe and boiler coverings, as an insulator, in patent roofing, and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... to a settlement of these poor refugees without a feeling of pity for the sufferings they have endured; and this spark of pity quickly warms and kindles into indignation when we think of the story of hapless Acadia—the grievous wrong done those simple-minded, harmless, honest people, by the rapacious, free-booting adventurers ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... know that, in casting about impatiently for an immediate causus belli, Wenceslas had hit upon poor, isolated, little Simiti as the point of ignition, and the pitting of its struggling priest against Don Mario as the method of exciting the necessary spark. He could not know that Wenceslas had represented to the Departmental Governor in Cartagena that an obscure Cura in far-off Simiti, an exile from the Vatican, and the author of a violent diatribe against papal authority, was the nucleus about which anticlerical sentiment ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of vice is trodden, at least once a week, by the same class of young men. The merchants' clerks are certainly creatures of no imagination, or they would have struck out some new way of going to the devil; they evidently have not a spark of what an eminent Irish lawyer called "the poetry of wickedness;" they uniformly begin with plundering the money drawer, and ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... his deliberate sanction to this unchristian and barbarous policy. Yet Father Meehan writes: 'But no; not even the dint of that manifesto, with the ring of true steel in its every line, could strike a spark out of their hearts, for they ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... The spark came swimming across the deck. "Hello! Hello, there—ah—" There was a note of querulous uneasiness there that somehow jarred with my ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... and the loathsomeness of their many foul scandals among them; but they go a further length, to pass as severe a sentence on their duties and ordinances as God hath done, Isa. i. and lxvi. The Spirit convinceth according to scripture's light, and not according to the dark spark of nature's light; and so that which nature would have busked(306) itself with as its ornament, that which they had covered themselves with as their garment, the duties they had spread, as robes of righteousness, over their sins to hide them; all this now goeth under the name of filthiness and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... she can do that in a way to make you feel that you have received a favor. She kept reminding me that it was my business to wait on her: if these things were paid for in cash, I should want high wages, for the duties are far from light. But I can stand it: within the bosom of Robert T. glows a spark of warm and pure philanthropy. When I see my fellow-creatures in need, and this good right arm refuses to extend its friendly aid, may my hand cleave to the roof of my mouth—O well, you know what I mean. I used to retire to my meagre and philosophic cot-bedstead with aching ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... thing to a man who stood before some blades of copper pushing at them with a wooden stick, while above his head fat sparks leaped the gap between two brassy spheres. As if to complete this illustration for a bronze-age edition of "First Steps in Electricity" another cable twisted up from the spark gap and vanished out a small window. The entire thing might have been labeled "How to Generate A Radio Signal in the Crudest Manner." As Jason reached this conclusion in the smallest fraction of a second, and at almost ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... putting questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine, the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race; remains fast by the soul and sees ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... baggy overalls over the blue flannel suit which he still wore when flying, Carl was directing Martin Dockerill in changing his spark-plugs, which were fouled. About him, the aviators were having their machines packed, laughing, playing tricks on one another—boys who were virile men; mechanics in denim who stammered to the reporters, "Oh, well, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... he sheathed his hanger, and grasped his cudgel. Meanwhile the people of the house being alarmed, one of my female cousins opened a window, and asked what was the matter. "The matter!" answered the lieutenant; "no great matter, young woman; I have business with the old gentleman, and this spark, belike, won't allow me to come alongside of him," that's all. After a few minutes pause we were admitted, and conducted to my grandfather's chamber through a lane of my relations, who honoured me with very significant ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... ought to exist in every village. Prompt action would often arrest the serious proportions of a fire. It would be a good thing if some substitute could be found for the wooden tiles used for roofing; in course of time they become like tinder, and a spark will fire the roof. The houses in Hungary are not, as a rule, constructed of wood, as in Upper Austria and Styria, nor are they nearly so picturesque as in that part of the world. In some Hungarian villages ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... had evidently taken no end of pains with his book, and done it gallantly well, too, making the thing hum: and I could not conceive why he should have been at that trouble—unless it were for the same reason that I built the palace, because some spark bites a man, and he would be like—but that is all vanity, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... main-spring of his actions. He had loved and mistrusted, had betrayed and destroyed the victim of his jealous regard; yet his hatred remained unextinguished—his revenge ungratified. The malice of envy and the gnawings of disappointed vanity were now concealed beneath the sullen apathy of age; but the spark slumbered in the grey ashes, although the heart had out-lived its fires. To make his character more intelligible it will be necessary to trace his history from the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... In the course of a recent correspondence with Mr. Stickney, I asked him if he recalled this incident. Under date of May 20, 1905, he wrote me from Sarasota, Florida: "The maple sugar incident had almost faded from my memory, but like a spark of fire smouldering under rubbish it needed but a breath to make it live, and I recall my reflections, after my astonishment, that you did so many quaint things, that it was quite in accordance with them that you should produce maple ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... desire—became the one thought of a life. Then, in the quiet silent night, while the full moon was shining, the Dryad saw a spark fly out of the moon's disc, and fall like a shooting star. And before the tree, whose leaves waved to and fro as if they were stirred by a tempest, stood a noble, mighty, and grand figure. In tones that were at once rich and strong, like the trumpet ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the repeated applications made to him for help to save alive those honest producers of his wealth. The noble example of Lord Derby and other proprietors in Lancashire failed to kindle in his heart a spark of humanity, not to speak of generous emulation. The sum of 3,000 l. was raised in Lisburn, and by friends in Great Britain and America, which was expended in saving the people from going en masse to the workhouse. Behold a contrast! While the great ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... yellow wall, the delicate moulding of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration, not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact, the whole appearance of this wide dull tract seems eminently adapted to sepulchral piles. It is most melancholy, most funereal; and even that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... wireless telegraphy. The sending of a message across the garden in far-away Italy was a simple matter—the depressed key completed the electric circuit created by a strong battery through the induction coil and made a spark jump between the two brass knobs, which in turn started the ether vibrating at the rate of three or four hundred million times a minute from the tin box on top of a pole. The vibrations in the ether circled wider and wider, as the circular waves spread from the spot ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... Tailor: Mr. Dishart never got the length of the pulpit. He fell in a swound on the vestry floor. What caused it? Oh, nothing but the heat. Thrums is so dry that one spark would set it ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... leaning forward more than one-third of a cubit, which alone is the greatest and most insupportable fault committed by vulgar commonplace pretenders. Concerning the arms, they say that these are both stretched out without one touch of grace or one real spark of artistic talents, just as if you had never seen a naked model. Again, the right leg of Hercules and that of Cacus have got one mass of flesh between them, so that if they were to be separated, not only one of them, but both together, would be left without a ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Admiral Nelson, after slightly mentioning the reception with which he had thus been honoured, particularly by their Sicilian majesties, he makes use of these modest and pious expressions—"You will not, my lord, I trust, think that one spark of vanity induces me to mention the most distinguished reception that ever, I believe, fell to the lot of a human being; but, that it is a measure of justice due to his Sicilian majesty and the nation. God knows, my heart is amongst ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... flames increased the warmth to such a degree that those who were the nearest shifted their position. The warrior who was on his feet stepped forward a single pace, and was still standing in his idle fashion with his hands half folded behind him, when a spark flew outward with a snap, and dropped down the neck of the unsuspicious red man. When he felt the burn, like the thrust of a big needle, he sprang several feet in the air, and began frantically clutching at the tormenting ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... it your hand that cut him down from the tree this morning, and if it was not, why do I need you now? Is my shame not enough in your eyes but that you must taunt me further? Do my innocent children want to look upon the faces of those who robbed them of a father? If there is a spark of manhood left in one of you, show it by leaving me alone! And you other scum, never fear but that you will clutter hell in reward for last night's work. Begone, and leave me ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... faint and hoarser,—his grasp was childish weak,— His eyes put on a dying look—he sighed and ceased to speak: His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled,— The soldier of the Legion, in a foreign land—was dead! And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strewn; Yea, calmly ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the middle of the causeway. The lane, which was composed of dwellings of the lowest order, tenanted by the most abject profligates, was dark as midnight; for the tall dingy buildings absolutely intercepted every ray of light that proceeded from the murky sky, and there was not a spark in any of the sordid casements, nor any votive lamp in that foul alley. The only glimpse of casual illumination, and that too barely serving to render the darkness and the filth perceptible, was the faint streak ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... worldly wisdom kept for others' use, Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 350 His purse or knowledge all men's, like the sea. Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might (With pauses broken, while the fitful spark He blew more hotly rounded on the dark To hint his features with a Rembrandt light) Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more Whom he had seen, or knew from others' sight, And make them men to me as ne'er before: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... sunbeams which covered the early mythic houses. He and his assistants stand near the hut shaking rattles and singing a brief song to Qastcej[)i]ni, at the conclusion of which the patient is released. The initial spark of the fire used at these ceremonies and for all religious purposes is obtained by friction, and is regarded as essentially different from fire produced by flint and steel or otherwise, because the first spark ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... himself on the leeward side, he thought he saw something gleam, far out across the wrathful night. A wavering red spark— He brushed a stiffened hand across his eyes, wondering if the madness of wind and water had struck through into his own skull. A gust of ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... sublime research, philosophy May measure out the ocean deep, may count The sands or the sun's rays—but God! for Thee There is no weight nor measure:—none can mount Up to Thy mysteries; Reason's brightest spark, Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark: And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, Even like ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at frequent intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the bows and go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a shower of brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old Father Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and a great clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... noon he was fighting with his back against the wall. In Workingman's Hall he was making his last fierce fight to hold from crumbling the resolution of the strikers who still stood by their guns.... He threw the fire of his soul into their dull, phlegmatic faces. It struck no answering spark. Never before had he spoken to men without a consciousness of his powers, without pose, without dramatics. Now he was himself, and more dramatic, more compelling than ever before. ... He pleaded, begged, flayed his audience, but it did ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... into everything, I would go into the traghetti, which have their manners and their morals, and which used to have their piety. This piety was always a madonnina, the protectress of the passage—a quaint figure of the Virgin with the red spark of a lamp at her feet. The lamps appear for the most part to have gone out, and the images doubtless have been sold for bric-a- brac. The ferrymen, for aught I know, are converted to Nihilism—a faith consistent happily with a good stroke of business. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... surmounted by a statue—still showed signs of the fire, which, in 210 B.C., would have destroyed it but for thirteen slaves, who won their liberty by checking the blaze. Tradition had it that here the holy Numa had built the hut which contained the hearth-fire of Rome,—the divine spark which now shed its radiance over the nations. Back of the Temple was the House of the Vestals, a structure with a plain exterior, differing little from the ordinary private dwellings. Here Drusus had his litter ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... wagon behind him, his new suit was rumpled into many wrinkles and marked by dust and grass stains; his flame-coloured tie was twisted under one ear; his new straw hat was mashed quite out of shape; and in his eyes was a light that sundry citizens, on meeting him, could only interpret to be a spark struck from inner ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... frantic winds reached down the big schoolhouse chimney and drew up a spark of fire from the furnace in the basement. They lodged it where it would do the most harm, and, in a short time, the janitor was running with a white face to the principal's office. As quietly as possible each teacher was called out ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... was that the boy had overheard one or other of the Koshare's intimate conversations. But how came it that the Koshare knew about Okoya's aversion toward them? Who could have told them? Only his mother knew the secret! Had she, perhaps, she—The thought was like a spark which glowed for a while, grew to a flame, flared and flickered unsteadily within his heart, then began to shrink. No, no; it was impossible! it could not be! His mother would never betray her child! The flame died out, the spark remained fast ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the heart of India, a mortal so far favored as never to have worn the abominable European costume—those hideous habits, and frightful hats, which render the men so ridiculous, so ugly, that in truth there is not a single good quality to be discovered in them, nor one spark of what can either captivate or attract! There comes to me at last a handsome young prince from the East, where the men are clothed in silk and cashmere. Most assuredly I'll not miss this rare and unique opportunity of exposing myself to a very serious and formidable temptation! ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... reduced to simple laws the complicated motions of the planets he cried out in ecstacy: "O God! now think I Thy thoughts after Thee!" Thus when a great writer of old time has been vouchsafed a spark of the divine fire we may think his divine thoughts after him by re-reading. And Shakespeare tells us in that deathless speech of Portia's, that since mercy is God's attribute we may by exercising it become like God. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... more grieved than surprised at the language she heard Major Bridgenorth use, and reasonably concluded that the society and circumstances in which he might lately have been engaged, had blown into a flame the spark of eccentricity which always smouldered in his bosom. This was the more probable, considering that he was melancholy by constitution and descent—that he had been unfortunate in several particulars—and that no passion is more easily nursed by indulgence, than the species of enthusiasm of which ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... original. The world is the ring of his spells, And the play of his miracles. As he giveth to all to drink, Thus or thus they are and think. With one drop sheds form and feature; With the next a special nature; The third adds heat's indulgent spark; The fourth gives light which eats the dark; Into the fifth himself he flings, And conscious Law is King of kings. As the bee through the garden ranges, From world to world the godhead changes; As the sheep go feeding in the waste, From form to form He ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... said and done. All this does not suit an English gentleman. You think differently; or perhaps you do not care whether it does or not. I admit I can't hold forth as you do; nor string a lot of fine words together. I am only an old nincompoop compared to a clever young spark like you. But I request you to keep off these topics in the company I like to see round my table. They don't like Jacobins, you ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... hearing what I said, exclaimed, "Massa, me got light, nebber fear!" Groping about, he soon found two pieces of dry wood, and fashioning them with his knife, he began to rub one against the other in a way which at length produced a bright spark. I had a handful of leaves ready, and we had quickly a capital fire blazing up just inside the cave. How grateful we ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... generally met without a third. However many weeks might have passed, they always met as if they had parted only the night before. There was neither shyness nor forwardness in Dawtie. Perhaps a livelier rose might tinge her sweet round cheek when she saw Andrew; perhaps a brighter spark shone in the pupil of Andrew's eye; but they met as calmly as two prophets in the secret of the universe, neither anxious nor eager. The old relation between them was the more potent that it made ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... shyness or imbecility. But—he could not get engaged to Muriel Coppin. That was reserved for Roland Bleke, the nut, the dasher, the young man of affairs. It was all very well being able to tell a spark-plug from a commutator at sight, but when it came to a contest in an affair of the heart with a man like Roland, Albert was in his proper ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... to Van, were blended in grayish streaks, on either side, as his gaze was fastened on the vanishing car ahead. He shoved up his spark, gave her all the gas, froze to the wheel like a man of steel—and swooped like a ground-skimming ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Mr. Kennedy was destroying some tanglefoot fly paper that had been used by burning same near the building, and the wind had blown a spark into a rat hole and the draft brought the fire up inside the studding and was hard to get at, but was put out by the chemicals and no ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... took fodder for the horses, then tossed upon the grass a bag of meal, a piece of bacon, and a frying-pan. The boy collected the dry wood with which the earth was strewn, then struck flint and steel, guarded the spark within the tinder, fanned the flame, and with a sigh of satisfaction stood back from the leaping fire. His father tossed him a bucket, and with it swinging from his hand, he made through the wood towards a music of water. Goldenrod and farewell-summer and the red plumes of the sumach lined his ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... played upon his life. We first meet with it in connection with the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and his habit of inward conversation with himself, made possible by means of the Logos, "the reasonable spark in man, common to him with the gods." "There could be no inward conversation with oneself such as this, unless there were indeed some one else aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one's disposition of oneself." This, in a dim way, seemed a fundamental necessity of experience—one ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its dullest mood, ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most neglected was that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... over Lucy's arrival at Lord Mauleverer's house; we must pass over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was consigned to dust with which, could it have retained yet one spark of its haughty spirit, it would have refused to blend its atoms. She had loved the deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... awful!" he exclaimed. "Haven't you a spark of manhood left? no brains? no bowels? nothing ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... clans he usually has either to pass through the territory of an enemy or to run the risk of meeting one at his destination. This does not mean that he will be attacked then and there, for he is on his guard, but it must be remembered that he is in Manboland and that a mere spark may start a conflagration. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... idea occurred to him. The magazine had not been drowned. Should it not be done, all on board might be blown to destruction. It was a work of awful danger, for a spark might fly in before the powder was destroyed, and produce the dreaded catastrophe. He gave the necessary orders, and then devoted himself to other endeavours to save the lives of some of those on board. That all could be saved, he ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... of himself the professor's straight mouth curved a little. A spark of pride glowed in his cool eyes as he bent them upon the smiling face of his friend. Yet his tone was mocking as he said, "Then it is the fountain of youth? One is never too ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the worlds have ceased to roll, When the long light has ceased to quiver When we have reached our final goal And stand beside the Living River, This vital spark — this loving soul, Must last for ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... Afar, a tiny spark glimmered from some watchman's box, which seemed to stand on the edge of the world. Akakiy Akakievitch's cheerfulness diminished at this point in a marked degree. He entered the square, not without an involuntary ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little leathern case containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands. If this tinder does not readily catch, a small quantity of the white floss of the seed of the ground willow is laid above the moss. As soon as a spark has caught, it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when, the pointed end of a piece of oiled wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame, the whole process having occupied perhaps ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... lightning-winged, bears the news far and wide. By the evening Pere Francois and Armand Valois return. In a few hours Natalie de Santos turns backward. The swift wheels speeding down the Truckee are slower than the electric spark bearing to the ex-queen of the El Dorado, the wife of a day, the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... These books seemed to him in nowise raised above the common; they were to be enjoyed in some measure, but they evoked no high commendation; and the contemporary critic never suspected that these unpretending volumes, unlike the most of their competitors in public favor, contained the vital spark which alone bestows enduring life. He failed wholly to guess that these books had in them the elements of the universal and the permanent—just as he was unable to perceive that the more obviously literary, rhetorical, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... from that period the conduct of Mrs. Meeker toward her daughter was much less indifferent, not to say harsh, than it had previously been. Harriet was, in a way, connected with her last recollection of Augustus. And this spark of a mother's tenderness did, to an extent, spread a diffusing warmth over ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... "Not one spark," said Charles. "If I ever am a man again, I shall ask Mary Corby to marry me. I ought to have done so sooner, perhaps. But I love your wife, Welter, in a way; and I should grieve at her death, for I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... solar spectrum some hundreds of the dark lines are known to correspond with the spectrum of iron. This correspondence is exhibited in a vivid manner when, by a suitable contrivance, the light of an electric spark from poles of iron is examined in the spectroscope side by side with the solar spectrum. The iron lines in the sun are identical in position with the lines in the spectrum of glowing iron vapour. But the spectrum of iron, as here described, consists ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... body of the rash man if he was unable to answer the questions of this last sentinel. These rigorous precautions were rendered necessary by the vicinity of these terrible powder magazines, which a single spark might blow up, and with it the town, the fleet, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... too good for me, too orthodox, too strait-laced," exclaimed the Russian one day in his quiet, jeering way. "Or it may be that I am not good enough for them. Any way, we do not coalesce. Rather are we like flint and steel, and eliminate a spark whenever we come in contact. They look upon me as a pagan, and hold me in horror. I look upon three-fourths of them as Pharisees, and hold them in contempt. Good people there are among them no doubt; people ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... to object to the unreasoning ambitions, the fluctuations of desire, the hopes and fears of youth. In fact (ll. 16-30), he counts these very aspirations toward the impossible, this very state of mental and spiritual unrest and doubt, a proof of the spark of divinity which separates men from beasts and allies them to God. It is a characteristic Browning doctrine that conflict, struggle, the pangs and throes of learning, are the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... pay the interest of the mortgage—if I can't take care of you all by some kind of work, I will marry him. But if you have a spark of love for me, save, economize, try to think of some ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... words! David's face got as red as though it had been rubbed with red pepper and saltpetre both. The flame of it seemed to kindle some faint spark of spirit in him. He picked up the middling, and as he looked her squarely in the eye, with a humorous light in his, he nodded at the pieces of bacon ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... echoing him, and now and then coming the deep rumble of expostulations from the parson's great chest, and Ralph Drake's peals of horse-laughter, and I was left to consider what a tinder-box this Colony of Virginia was, and how ready to leap to flame at a spark even when seemingly most at peace, and to regard with more and more anxiety Mary Cavendish's part in ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... noted, are gravest when alone, and they are wise, for the world has too much gravity for us to go about it with a long face, making matters worse. Let each of us be the centre of his own gravity. Maggie Delafield had, perhaps, that spark in the brain for which we have but an ugly word. We call it "pluck." And by it we are enabled to win a losing game—and, harder still, to lose a losing ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... machine, giving an eighteen inch spark. It was set in motion by a lever fitted into the table, which I could easily reach from where I sat. As I spoke the visitor was treated to a little exhibition of electricity. The change in his bearing was amusing. He shook ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... order of the young sprouts, and reinterred the aged beans. This was one of his many blunders. However, we have nothing to do with his gardening. We have said he was innocent as a lamb, but he was by no means so pacific; on the contrary, his temper was as inflammable as gun cotton—the slightest spark would set it in ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Ronk, lay hold quick, and break this fellow's clasp," he cried, briefly. "The girl retains a spark of life yet, but the man's arms fairly ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... returned Dick, with suppressed emotion, "that no Redskin shall cross this threshold as long as we three men have a spark ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Steal to thy grave undress'd, to meditate On our sad loss, accompanied by none, An obscure mourner that would weep alone. So, when the world's great luminary sets, Some scarce known star into the zenith gets, Twinkles and curls, a weak but willing spark, As glow-worms here do glitter in the dark. Yet, since the dimmest flame that kindles there An humble love unto the light doth bear, And true devotion from an hermit's cell Will Heav'n's kind King as soon reach and as well, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... lingered in hope and in doubt, While her form it grew wasted and thin; But the last dying spark of existence went out. As the oysters were just ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... most thirsty-looking level, the low brushwood on which cracked and snapped as we walked through it, with a brittle dryness that testified how perfectly parched-up was everything. A single spark would instantly have wrapped the whole face of the country in one sheet of fire. Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes they were loaded ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... lips to utter the words which would have ended everything between them. His eyes met hers and the words slipped back into his throat. The spark of manhood that was left in him revolted against this wanton assault upon the pure soul that looked ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... stay, by the thatch having, through long exposure to a torrid sun, become like tinder. The roofs became ignited without any visible cause except the intense solar rays, and excited terror in the minds of the inhabitants, as the slightest spark carried by the wind would have set the whole town in a blaze. There is not a single inscription on stone visible in Massangano. If destroyed to-morrow, no one could tell where it and most Portuguese interior villages stood, any more than we can do those ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... controlled herself. The first vehemence of her pride and anger was over now. She had discovered that the dawning inclination on which she had bestowed a few dreamings and sighings, trying, in foolish girlish fashion, to fan a chance tinder-spark into the holy altar-fire of a woman's first love—had gone out in darkness, and that her free heart lay quiet, in a sort of twilight shade, waiting for its destiny; nor for the last few days had she even thought ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Diligence is as necessary to the author as to the grocer, the solicitor, the dentist, the barrister, the soldier. Nothing but nature can give the aptitude; diligence must improve it, and experience may direct it. It is not enough to wait for the spark from heaven to fall; the spark must be caught, and tended, and cherished. A man must labour till he finds his vein, and himself. Again, if literature is an art, it is also a profession. A man's very first duty is to support himself and those, if any, who are dependent on him. If he cannot ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... all nature condemns so unholy an alliance. Until then let it be the stage; only I ask you to strive for the very best it offers. Have confidence in yourself, little girl, in your ability, your power, your spark of genius touched by suffering. Every hour you pass now in hideous, misshapen melodrama is worse than wasted. You have that within you well worthy of better setting, nobler environment, and you wrong yourself to remain content with less. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the days o' delight we hae seen, When the flame o' the spirit would spark in the e'en; Then I say, as in sorrow I think on ye a', Where will I find hearts like the hearts ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and a being, moreover, who had set no very high ideals before his eyes, was not, as we have seen, destitute of the quality of sympathy, nor could he entirely obliterate from his memory a time when he himself had been fired by a spark of ambition, and had recognised a longing to accomplish something great. True, the spark had been but a feeble one at best, and the unceasing demands upon his powers to supply the bare necessaries of life, occasioned ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham |
