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Twinkling   Listen
noun
Twinkling  n.  
1.
The act of one who, or of that which, twinkles; a quick movement of the eye; a wink; a twinkle.
2.
A shining with intermitted light; a scintillation; a sparkling; as, the twinkling of the stars.
3.
The time of a wink; a moment; an instant. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump,... the dead shall be raised incorruptible."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books



... journey to Fort Lawrence, as the beautiful view of Colchester had just opened upon me, and as I was contemplating its richness and exquisite scenery, a tall, thin man, with hollow cheeks and bright, twinkling black eyes, on a good bay horse, somewhat out of condition, overtook me; and drawing up, said, "I guess you started early this ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... darker they could see the twinkling lights of many a mining town and camp shining out in the ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... live the life of the moth, and of the worm, because you are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we may have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only—perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye; still we are men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. "He maketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister";[252] and shall we do less than these? Let us do the work of men while we ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... for any farmer to stand; and our friend brooded over it, and brooded over it, till at last a bright idea came into his head. He seized the conch, blew it loudly, and cried out, "Oh, Ram! I wish to be blind of one eye!" And so he, was, in a twinkling, but the money-lender of course was blind of both, and in trying to steer his way between the two new wells, he fell ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... is suddenly stricken with paralysis in the middle of the case, you must be ready to carry it through triumphantly alone," he observed, with quietly twinkling ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... school were on him in an instant, and the faculty turned around to discover the source and cause of the disorder. But Belton had come to himself as soon as he made the noise, and in a twinkling was as quiet and solemn looking ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... when the sun has set the whole population of the villages, armed with blazing torches of straw, disperse over the country and scour the fields, the vineyards, and the orchards. Seen from afar, the multitude of moving lights, twinkling in the darkness, appear like will-o'-the-wisps chasing each other across the plains, along the hillsides, and down the valleys. While the men wave their flambeaus about the branches of the fruit-trees, the women and children tie bands of wheaten-straw ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... pretended to get into a great rage; although his twinkling eyes and suppressed chuckle testified that it was only pretence all the time, though his ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... below. Luigo, with a big leathern wallet fastened in front of him, filled with five-cent pieces, took his stand in the centre of the shed. The thirty shearers, running into the nearest pen, dragged each his sheep into the shed, in a twinkling of an eye had the creature between his knees, helpless, immovable, and the sharp sound of the shears set in. The sheep-shearing had begun. No rest now. Not a second's silence from the bleating, baa-ing, opening and shutting, clicking, sharpening ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... ever changing, and displaying new and still more horrible features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly. At one moment the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time; and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... hated, slept. She heard Margaret and Sydney saying something in the middle of the grass-plot about the Milky Way: looking up, she was surprised to perceive how plain it was, and how many stars were twinkling in the sky. She was sure Hester must be dreadfully tired with sauntering about so long. They had been very inconsiderate, and must go away directly. Sydney must call ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... road lies there," he said, "and yonder are earthworks. See! Where the faint light is twinkling! that low line is what ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... twilight began to darken in the town, and the lights of the windows were to us as the courses of the stars of that sky which, from our prison chamber, could not be seen. We watched their progress, from the earliest yellow glimmering of the lamp in the darksome wynd, till the last little twinkling light in the dwelling of the widow that sits and sighs companionless with her distaff in the summits of the city. And we continued our vigil till they were all one by one extinguished, save only the candles at the bedsides of the dying. Then we twined a portion of our clothes into a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the giant ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... directions of the rotations of cyclones and anticyclones. It is difficult to take seriously the suggestion that these domestic phenomena on the earth are due to the influence of the fixed stars. I cannot persuade myself to believe that a little star in its twinkling turned round Foucault's pendulum in the Paris Exhibition of 1861. Of course anything is believable when a definite physical connexion has been demonstrated, for example the influence of sunspots. Here all demonstration is lacking ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... wave their locks, 420 And wondering Naiads peep amid the rocks; Pleased trains of Mermaids rise from coral cells, Admiring Tritons sound their twisted shells; Charm'd o'er the car pursuing Cupids sweep, Their snow-white pinions twinkling in the deep; 425 And, as the lustre of her eye she turns, Soft sighs the Gale, and ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... hushed as suddenly as it had whooped. Warned by the twinkling lights far behind her—lights which must be the small part at last visible of Echo, Idaho—Lorraine went on. She had been walking steadily for four hours, and she must surely have come nearly twenty miles. If she ever reached the top of the hill, she ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... would both have been sent post-haste to Bedlam in those days; or perhaps Homer himself would have tied a millstone about their necks, and have sunk them as public nuisances by woody Zante. Besides, it puts almost an extinguisher on any little twinkling of the picturesque that might have flared up at times from this or that suggestion, when each individual had his own regular epithet stereotyped to his name like a brass plate upon a door: Hector, the tamer of horses; Achilles, the swift of foot; the ox-eyed, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... for you both." The hauteur faded from the young face. Our own Mary Virginia appeared, changed in the twinkling of an eye. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... they saw mixed masses slowly getting into regular form. The sunlight made twinkling points of the bright steel. To the rear there was a glimpse of a distant roadway as it curved over a slope. It was crowded with retreating infantry. From all the interwoven forest arose the smoke and bluster of the battle. The air was always occupied ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... sir," said my father, looking suspiciously at his guest from under his shaggy eyebrows, for with that grave face and those twinkling eyes it was hard to know how to ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... where he stripped off his overcoat and wrapped it about her. But she was hardly conscious of what he was doing, for suddenly everything seemed to be spinning round her. The lights of the torches bobbed up and down in a confused blur of twinkling stars, the sound of voices and the trampling of feet came faintly to her ears as from a great way off, while the grim, black bulk of the piled-up coaches of the train seemed to lean nearer and nearer, until finally it swooped down on top of ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... do," he replied, his handsome brown eyes twinkling with increased merriment, "and I am one of those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... the German bayonets came round the corner in sight of this fortress a terrible change took place: in the twinkling of an eye all the openings blazed out at once, and the building seemed to shake from its foundations; forty-eight red tongues of flame blazed out suddenly to right and left, as if so many throats of Vulcan ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... was Margaret Brandt you came to see," and the twinkling brown eyes held the merry gray ones with ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... the Son of Sigmund, and beheld no man anear, And again was the night the midnight, and the twinkling flames shone clear In the hush of the Glittering Heath; and alone went Sigmund's son Till he came to the road of Fafnir, and the highway worn by one, By the drift of the rain unfurrowed, by ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... Prudy, twinkling off the tears; "yes, I can neither. I won't go crying in! I didn't hurt me velly bad. I'm ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May

... cold southern ocean, where the sharp evening breeze was rolling the short seas into little patches of white. The horizon was clear, and there was no prospect for some time of any sudden call to shorten sail. The sky was a perfect blue vault in which the stars were twinkling, while the red of the recent sunset held fair on the jibboom end, showing that the quartermaster at the wheel knew his business. I edged toward the door of the house, and then seeing that my actions were not creating too much notice from the poop, I slid back the white panel and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... realm Where Wrong and Retribution meet. But, woe to that poor, worthless wight Who lives a bitter, stagnant life, Who follows after every ill And knows not either Faith or Love, (For Faith in deeds alone doth live). Eternal woe shall be his doom - More torments he shall then behold Yea, in the twinkling of an eye Than any ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... known as "Slim" Hoover by the humorous propensity of men on the range to give nicknames on the principle of contraries, for he was fattest man in Pinal County. Slim was one of those fleshy men who have nerves of steel and muscles of iron. A round, boyish face, twinkling blue eyes, flaming red hair gave him an appearance entirely at variance with his personality. A vein of sentiment made him all the more lovable. His associates—ranchers, men of the plains, soldiers, and the owners and frequenters of ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... country where one is not forced to shut himself in narrow rooms to escape cold that chills or heat that suffocates? A land where it is not necessary to load the body with heavy clothing in winter, or to toast one's legs at a continual fire, a practice which ages people in the twinkling of the eye, exhausts their force, and provokes a thousand different maladies. The air of Hispaniola is stated to be salubrious, and the rivers which flow over beds of gold, wholesome. There are indeed no rivers nor mountains nor very few ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... commotion. At this instant Le Blanc presents himself. His sedan chair, that had been hidden, is planted before the Marechal. He cries aloud, he is shaking on his lower limbs; but he is thrust into the chair, which is closed upon him and carried away in the twinkling of an eye through one of the side windows into the garden, La Fare and Artagnan each on one side of the chair, the light horse and musketeers behind, judging only by the result what was in the wind. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... then show how the twinkling of a star is really in the eye and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays from the stars originate in the eye; and add, that if the twinkling of the stars were really in the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... one other man within sight along that sunny stretch of sand—a small, dark man with a shaggy, speckled beard and quick, twinkling eyes. He was at work upon a tangled length of tarred rope, pulling and twisting with much energy and deftness to straighten out the coil, so that it leaped and writhed in his ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave his name. She seemed to him such a funny ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... privilege to cry off on Greeks. Look at those fellows down there, trampling over one another to get more beer. What have they to do with Athens, or Athens with them? I take it, Mr. Ware," he went on, with a grave face but a twinkling eye, "that what we are observing here in front of us is symbolical of a great ethical and theological revolution, which in time will modify and control the destiny of the entire American people. You see those young Irishmen there, struggling like pigs at ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... west Fred noticed, even in the night, a change in the country. It was not that he passed once in a while a solitary soldier guarding a culvert, as he neared a railway, or a patrol, with its twinkling fire, watching this spot or that that needed special guarding. That was part of war, the part of war that he had been able to foresee. It wasn't anything due to the war that made an impression on his mind so much as a sort of thickening of the country. ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... strangers, one of whom immediately wheeled to the left about, and being by this time very near me, gave me an opportunity of contemplating his whole person. He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose, and small twinkling eyes. His head was eased in a woollen night-cap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke. He was wrapped in a ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam,— Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home: 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed As if it could not be; And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... little girl," replied Slattin, rising and standing looking down at her, with his gold tooth twinkling in the lamplight, "there will be a whole division, if ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... a little. By breakfast time the sun re-appeared, and we could see five or six miles ahead of the vessel. It was shortly after this, that as I was standing in the main rigging peering out over the smooth blue surface of the sea, a white twinkling point of light suddenly caught my eye about a couple of miles off on the port bow, which a telescope soon resolved into a solitary isle of ice, dancing and dipping in the sunlight. As you may suppose, the news brought everybody upon deck, and when almost immediately ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... shared his room with a friend, a lad about two years older than himself. One night between ten and eleven o'clock, when all were in bed and asleep after a tiring day and an early dinner, the near roaring of a tiger awakened the camp. In a twinkling the servants had transferred themselves and their bedding from the verandah into the centre room and securely bolted the door. Roar after roar sounded through the night, but the young Maharajah slept the healthful and deep sleep of tired childhood and the mighty voice of the ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee

... There were lights twinkling in the shops, where they were making change, and weighing out tea and sugar, and measuring calico, although outside it was not ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... rushed wildly about the room the Scarecrow had only time to note a whirl of skirts and a twinkling of feet as the girls disappeared from the palace — pushing and crowding one another in their ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... The tassel of the cotton night-cap nodded, interrogatively, toward the object on which the twinkling ex-mariner's eye had fixed itself—on Charm's slender figure, and on the yellow half-moon of hair framing her face. There was but one verdict concerning the blonde beauty; she was a creature made to be ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... it? What do you mean?" And Charlie's twinkling glance said condescendingly: "What's the old cock got hold of now? ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... they waited— While the heavenly dome turned purple, And the twinkling stars were lighted, One by one, until the darkness Scintillated with their sparkle; And a milky way of star-dust Arched across, to hold the heavens High ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... there's a plenty for all of them, and the pig craturs into the bargain. Your father and your mother, and your brother, and your three sisters, send their duty to you, and their blessings too—and you may add my blessing, Terence, which is worth them all; for won't I get you out of purgatory in the twinkling of a bed-post? Make yourself quite aisy on that score, and lave it all to me; only just say a pater now and then, that when St Peter lets you in, he mayn't throw it in your teeth, that you've saved your soul by contract, which is the only way by which emperors and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... was constructed on a completely new principle. It consisted of a cleaver hung in a frame like a window; when any poor wretch got in, down it came with a tremendous din, and took off his head in a twinkling. They got the squire into one of these machines. In order to prevent any of his partisans from getting footing in the parish, they placed traps at every corner. It was impossible to walk through the highway at broad noon without tumbling into one or other ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... In a twinkling Skipper Zeb and Toby had their rifles at their shoulders, and with the report of the rifles, which was almost simultaneous, two of the birds fell to ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... the Miss Mees had alluded earlier in the day, was glaringly patent to Mrs Devitt's sharp eyes; beside this indefinable personal quality, Mrs Devitt observed with a shudder, Victoria seemed middle-class. Mavis's fate, as far as the Devitts were concerned, was decided in the twinkling of an eye. For all this decision, so suddenly arrived at, Mrs Devitt greeted Mavis kindly; indeed, the friendliness that she displayed caused the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... will do all the fussy things in travelling—taking the tickets, and counting the luggage, and all that—they're such big men, aren't they?" said Denny, with mischief in her twinkling green eyes. ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth

... aurora, warm while they dazzle. And our celebrated composer is discomposed easily by alert and nimble-footed mischief. And our professor of Greek and Hebrew roots is rooted to the ground with astonishment at finding himself put through all the moods and tenses of fun in a twinkling. Ah, culpable sirens, if the pangs ye have inflicted were reckoned up unto you,—the heart aches and side aches,—how could ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... shook her head. "No," she said, curious little twinkling lines deepening round her eyes, "I never did—a ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... to each other as they made their way to the pit, the lights from their lamps twinkling in the darkness of the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... supply of millet was found. So the men lit fires and cooked the grain. It was dark before they had finished eating, and then they built up the fires, piling on heavy logs which were lying near. Certain faint, twinkling lights were visible on a hillside very far off, and in the direction in which they had seen the cattle being driven in the afternoon, and towards these Kondwana led his men silently, and at a ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... their packs and set out wearily. Carroll, limping and stumbling along, was soon troubled by a distressful stitch in his side. He managed to keep pace with Vane, however, and some time after noon a twinkling gleam among the trees caught their eye. Then the shuffling pace grew faster, and they were breathless when at last they stopped and dropped their burdens beside the boat. It was only at the third or fourth attempt that they got her down to the water, and the ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... breathed through elm and ash From new-mown hay and heliotrope, And came through Philip's open sash With sheen of stars that lit the cope, And twinkling of ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... rock sliding, A fiery colour ran, And out of its thickness gliding The twinkling mist ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... Gissing volume, for which I possessed some material he needed, that I first made his acquaintance. He has had something of Gissing's restricted and grey experiences, but he has nothing of Gissing's almost perverse gloom and despondency. Indeed he is as gay a companion as he is fragile. He is a twinkling addition to any Christmas party, and the twinkle is here in the style. And having sported with him "in his times of happy infancy," I add an intimate and personal satisfaction to my pleasant task of saluting this ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... at work before the sun, Mr. Leach," said the captain, speaking clearly, but in a low tone, as they approached the camel. The head of the animal was tossed; then it seemed to snuff the air, and it gave a shriek. In the twinkling of an eye an Arab sprang from the sand, on which he had been sleeping, and was on the creature's back. He was seen to look around him, and before the startled mariners had time to decide on their course, the beast, which was a dromedary trained ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... emigrating, with all his goods and gods, to that wonderfully winning region, in the estimation of this people, the valley of the Mississippi. The emigrant was a stout, burly, bluff old fellow, with full round cheeks, a quick, twinkling eye, and limbs rather Herculean than human. He might have been fifty-five years or so; and his two sons, one of them a man grown, the other a tall and goodly youth of eighteen, promised well to be just such vigorous and healthy-looking personages as their father. The old woman, by whom we mean—in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... this weapon in your hand!" He thrust the automatic into the patriarch's fingers. "This is a revolver. Have you ever heard that word? With this, and other weapons even stronger, our race, your race, used to fight. It can kill men at a distance in a twinkling of an eye. It is swift and very powerful! Let this be the proof that we are what we say, survivors from the time that was! And in the name of that great day, and in the name of what we still can bring to pass for you and yours, save us from ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... deduction of beauty from the favourite of the gods." And drawing, with his lumbering hand, the tumbler near him, he filled it two-thirds up of pure wine, and presently his lips grappled with it like a camel at the bucket in the desert, with such effect that the contents changed vessels in a twinkling. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... be in the Centre. And when he reflected upon his own Body, he felt such a part in his Breast, of which he had this notion, viz. That it was impossible for for him to subsist without it, so much as the twinkling of an eye, tho' he could at the same time conceive a possibility of subsisting without his other parts, viz. his Hands, Feet, Ears, Nose, Eyes, or even his Head. And upon this account, whenever he fought with any Wild Beast, he always took particular ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... that the snow came. In the morning we woke to window-ledges heaped white, and snowflakes falling so whirling thick that it was impossible to see ten feet ahead. The mud was gone; in a twinkling the gloomy city became white, dazzling. The droshki with their padded coachmen turned into sleights, bounding along the uneven street at headlong speed, their drivers' beards stiff and frozen.... In spite of Revolution, all Russia ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... gives us something we do not expect," said Santiago to Rezanov, whose eyes were twinkling. "The other girls dance El Son and La Jota very gracefully—yes. But Conchita dances with her head, and the musicians and the partner, when she takes one, have all they can do to follow. She will choose ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... Rabbit," said the voice. "What's yo' hurry?" Peter stopped abruptly and looked up in that tree. There, peering down at him from a hole high up in the trunk, was a sharp, whitish-gray face, with a pair of twinkling ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... peace of heaven, when the balanced sun was striking level light all over them! And if this were not enough to make a man contented with his littleness and largeness, then to see the freshened Pleiads, after their long dip of night, over the eastern waters twinkling, glad to see us all once more ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... as she went on and it grew darker she began to wonder if she were in the road. She brushed away the stinging flakes and looked around, peering into the darkness gathering around her. Through the blinding, hurrying flakes she could see twinkling lights here and there, and presently she located the piece of woods just beyond her own home, but it was far to the left, and she realized that she had turned into a by-road instead of keeping to the main one. The tears began to course down her cheeks when ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... West may have thought of Mesa and its prospects, he kept behind his thin, close-shut lips. He was a dry, gray little man of fifty-five, with sharp, twinkling eyes that saw everything and told nothing. Certainly he wore none of the visible signs of greatness, yet at his nod Wall Street trembled. He had done more to change the map of industrial America than any ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... the area of the spacious apartment, within the powerful light of a glaring torch, while their juniors and inferiors were arranged in the background, presenting a dark outline of swarthy and marked visages. In the very center of the lodge, immediately under an opening that admitted the twinkling light of one or two stars, stood Uncas, calm, elevated, and collected. His high and haughty carriage was not lost on his captors, who often bent their looks on his person with eyes which, while they lost none of their inflexibility of purpose, plainly betrayed their admiration ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... as all human beings, but an inconceivable spark of knowledge shone out like a bright tiny star above all my dark infirmities. And it is upon this little twinkling star, dear reader, that I would fix your attention, and not upon ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... the clock-tower, steer away southwards, over Oxford city and all its sleeping wisdom and folly, over street and past spire, over Christ Church and the canons' houses, and the fountain in Tom quad; over St. Aldate's and the river, along which the moonbeams lie in a pathway of twinkling silver, over the railway sheds—no, there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and footpaths of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate, the hills beyond, and Bagley Wood, were there then as now; and over hills and wood we rise, catching the purr of the night-jar, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... time he had lived among a tribe of blacks in Africa; at another been a member of a party of exiled Russians, on tramp to the mines of Siberia. He was telling of an exciting adventure he had had among the Arabs when the twinkling lights in a train crossed the trestle caused him to come to ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... pathetic chapter in the history of human struggle than the emergence of the smothered ambition of this race to meet the social exigencies involved in the professional needs of the masses. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the plowhand was transformed into a priest, the barber into a bishop, the housemaid into a schoolmistress, the day-laborer into a lawyer, and the porter into a physician. These high places of intellectual ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... standstill. I made out, sir, a man—I couldn't tell who—dash out of the Albergo d'ltalia Una, climb into the cab, and then, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap clear of the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. As you blow a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the foot-plate, sir, I can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the National Guards in Rincon and one other place. Fortunately the line had not been torn up. In four hours they reached ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... say, on days like these, I get a sudden gleam of bliss. "Not on some sunny day of ease, He'll come . . but on a day like this!" And, in the twinkling of an eye, These tiresome things ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn

... Hannah was forced to admit that it far outshone the Boston swan-boats. The travelers arrived late at night, and on passing through the station came out on a broad platform where, instead of cabs and cars, numberless gondolas floated, illumined by twinkling lights. ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett

... if any one else is coming along. Two in a morning is quite stirring," he said deliberately. "I'm sure the fire is still burning—unless you'd prefer to have him perish of starvation?" he paused to inquire politely of the girl, his twinkling eyes bringing a sudden irrepressible ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... Saint Remy?' 'Yes,' was the answer, 'here is one.' 'It is for me,' said he; 'here is my passport.' While the postmaster examined it, the old man drew out his purse to pay the postage. At one end I saw the gold glittering through the meshes, at least forty or fifty louis," cried Calabash, her eyes twinkling, "and yet he is dressed like a beggar. He is one of those old misers who are stuffed with gold. Come, mother, we know his name; it may serve us to get into the crib when Amandine finds out if ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... everything; cut off the picture, when it has passed among the cylinders, whereupon fresh canvas will be rolled in for a new one; another machine will stretch them; and they will pass through a varnish bath in the twinkling of an eye. But this is in the future. What I want of you, sir, and of other men of influence in society, is to let our people know of the great good that is ready for them now, and of the greater benefit ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... said Helen. "My uncle used to say no one could be a good friend who does not tell the whole truth." "That I deny," thought Cecilia. The twinge of conscience was felt but very slightly; not visible in any change of countenance, except by a quick twinkling motion of the eyelashes, not noticed by ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... I rest me, underneath the gaunt and ghastly trees; Underneath fantastic-fronted caverns crammed with many a muffled breeze. Far away from dusky towns and cities twinkling with the feet of men; Listening to a sound of mellow music fleeting down the gusty glen; Sitting by a rapid torrent, with the broken sunset in my face; By a rapid, roaring torrent, tumbling through a dark and lonely place! And I hear the bells beyond the forest, and the voice ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... "that it was a young maiden who beguiled three of our friends into the palace of the king of the Laestrygons, who ate up one of them in the twinkling ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... whirled round, oh! so fast, and the wheat was ground into white flour for the Baker, who kindled his fires and beat his eggs in the twinkling of an eye; and he was not quicker than the Sea-captain, who loosed his sails in the fresh'ning gales, just as he had said he would, and sailed away ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay

... Mama walks so fast, street lamps jig without bending a leg... lights in the windows play twinkling tunes on crimson and blue bottles like bubbles big as balloons... Faster and faster... and pink light spurts over cakes doing polkas in little white shirts, with cake-princesses ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... woman looked up, her shrewd black eyes twinkling under their well-defined brows. "You have observed, then, that I am patient? But yes, my dear, God help the wife of an artist if she is not! He is terrible, my man, at times, but luckily I was born long-suffering. He has, too, a way of wrenching at button-holes ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... down the men saw a great convex surface on which lay narrow ribbons of silver, winding veinlike through dark areas that were in some places lit by little clusters of twinkling lights. As they watched, the distances on the surface shrank in on themselves; they could see the outline of a great circle. The sight stimulated the exhausted men. In a hushed and awestruck voice, Jim Wilson broke ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... as he watched the stars twinkling and corruscating. "Yes, you are right, when you assert that the destinies of men are foreknown, and may by some be read. My destiny is, alas! that I should be severed from all I value upon earth, and die friendless and alone. Then welcome death, if such is to be the case; welcome a thousand ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... evening, when the horizontal day Chequered his farewell on the western wall; Shying the court, where, for the frolic lords, Under the profaned silence of the rose, The syrinx, and the stringed sonorous shell, Governed the twinkling heeled Terpischore. We softly went and turned towards the bay, And found another world, contemplative Of shells and pebbles by the ocean shore. I do remember, once, on such an eve, Pacing the polished margin of the deep, We found two weeds that had embraced each other, And talked of friendship, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... behind the hedge; and the Swami leaped into attention with the swift motionlessness of a wild animal. Lena roused herself heavily and blinked about. There was no Swami to be seen. His turban lay on the table, but he himself had disappeared in a twinkling. She heard a rush of feet and voices raised in excitement and then a sharp command. Even while she listened, confused, a blue-coated starred man appeared at the opening in the hedge and over his shoulder she ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... American man of letters whose figure, reproduced characteristically and with simple quaintness, should decorate the Park. To a statue of Washington Irving all the gates should open, as every heart would open, in welcome. That half-humorous turn of the head and almost the twinkling eye, that brisk and jaunty air, that springing step, that modest and gentle and benign presence, all these could be suggested by the artist, and in their happy combination the pleased loiterer would perceive old Diedrich ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life! But this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he said: "Well, if it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George! it's got a lot ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... him in them, and finally secured his order for a case. As we were finishing our talk a happy-looking pair came in the door, and I took up the morning paper while Mr. Clark went forward and greeted one of them, a Mr. Healey, very cordially, as if he were a very old friend, and then Healey, his eyes twinkling, said: ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... waters of the creek glancing in the clear frosty moonlight, with the fishing smacks and other small craft riding cosily at anchor on either side, the straggling village of Brightlingsea within a stone's throw—a tiny light still twinkling here and there in the cottage windows, and a perfect blaze of ruddy light streaming from the windows of the "Anchor," and flooding the road with its cheerful radiance—the bewildered glances with which they regarded this scene, I say, showed that even ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... harm o' Tom, eh?" said Mr. Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Riley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, "She understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read,—straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... have abandoned her design of immediately returning home, and was gradually edging nearer the table, with her twinkling black eyes ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... then, was very superb indeed. For the whole building was dressed in red; and the sinking sun, streaming in, through a great red curtain in the chief doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own. When the sun went down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, except for a few twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and some small dangling silver lamps, it was very mysterious and effective. But, sitting in any of the churches towards evening, is like a mild dose ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... uncorked, and scatters the worlds with the foam of what ambrosial liquor may have been within. Beyond, a Spanish goddess, some minor deity in the Dionysian theogony, dances continually, rapt and mysterious, to the music of the spheres, her head in Cassiopeia and her twinkling feet among the Pleiades. And near her, Orion, archer no longer, releases himself from his strained posture to drive a sidereal golf-ball out of sight through the meadows of Paradise; then poses, addresses, and ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... thin and gray, and he shuffles along on a couple of poor old shanks, which will never look any stouter unless it be under the influence of a fit of the gout. He wears a white neckcloth, arranged with the celebrated wisp-tie—shoes a great deal too big for him—and to his keen, twinkling eyes he applies a pair of heavy horn or silver-set glasses. These old gentlemen appear to know each other as if by magic. They cluster in groups like corks in a basin of water, and then go hobbling eagerly along, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... altogether a very miserable subject, and in as unfavorable a condition to accept comfort from a wife and children as poor Christian in the first three pages of the "Pilgrim's Progress." With a superhuman effort he opens his book, and in the twinkling of an eye he is looking into the full "orb of Homeric or Miltonic song;" or he stands in the crowd—breathless, yet swayed as forests or the sea by winds—hearing and to judge the pleadings for the crown; or the philosophy which soothed Cicero or Boethius in ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... of the defeat he had sustained and the catastrophe he had brought down upon me: his touch of my hand told me that, and his desire for darkness and sleep. He had nothing to look to, nothing to see twinkling its radiance for him in the dim distance now; no propitiating Government, no special Providence. But he never once put on a sorrowful air to press for pathos, and I thanked him. He was a man endowed to excite it in the most effective manner, to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... stood on its hind legs. Its tail disappeared, its ears became long, longer, silky, golden; its nose became very red, its eyes became very twinkling; in three seconds the dog was gone, and before Gluck stood his old acquaintance, the King of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... on the earth, the sea From east to west lies twinkling bright With shining beams from beacons high, Which ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... about it when he got home. Invariably the same thing would happen. He would take my two hands and put them so that I held his coat-lapels. Then he would place his hands on my shoulders, beam all over, eyes twinkling, and say:— ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... Unceasingly murmuring fountain, he too a saga unending. Covered with straw was the floor, and upon a walled hearth in the center, Constantly burned, warm and cheerful, a fire, while down the wide chimney Twinkling stars, heavenly friends, glanced upon guest ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... and lighter song Now woo the coming hours along. For mark, where smooth the herbage lies, Yon gay pavilion curtained deep With silken folds thro' which bright eyes From time to time are seen to peep; While twinkling lights that to and fro Beneath those veils like meteors go, Tell of some spells at work and keep Young fancies chained in mute suspense, Watching what next may shine from thence, Nor long the pause ere hands unseen That mystic curtain backward drew, And all that late but ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... lads ascended the mountain; and soon from the top the glare of the bonfire lit up the darkness, and the sound of a hymn broke the stillness of night. In a circle round the great fire lesser fires were kindled; and last of all the lads ran about swinging their lighted torches, till these twinkling points of fire, moving down the mountain-side, went out one by one in the darkness. At midnight the bells rang out from the church tower, mingled with the blast of horns and the sound of singing. Feasting and revelry ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... Mandells and one of the Hungry Folk had rushed upon the fallen man and were spearing him from his knees back to the earth. In the twinkling of an eye, Tyee saw four of them cut down by the bullets of the Sunlanders. The fifth, as yet unhurt, seized the two rifles, but as he stood up to make off he was whirled almost completely around by the impact of a bullet in the arm, steadied by a second, and overthrown ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... well enough, a lean soldierly-looking man, brown with the African sun, with pleasant twinkling blue eyes, a thick moustache and curly hair, just a little thin on the top. His face was rather scarred with African adventure and did not show much special trace of his last night's tussle with the police. There was a cut at the back of his head where he had fallen on the kerb stone but that ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... and all in a flash Snap remembered that in the evening he had cleaned the firearm, but had not loaded it. The fox heard the click, caught sight of Snap, and whirling around made a leap for the woods and was out of sight in a twinkling. ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill

... me, Zura," I said, not knowing what else to do; and the three of us made our way toward the high twinkling light that marked the House of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... a stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence along a vessel's deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and behind it a white-painted taffrail. Her eyes were travelling forward to the bowsprit again, when, close by the foremast, they were arrested, and she caught her ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Spirit, together with the softer virtues, the purity and talents of the Indians? Are they of the Tartar race? Their complexion, "the shadowed livery of the burning sun," might be offered in evidence; they have not the flat head, the angular and twinkling eye, nor the diminutive figure of the Chinese ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... things, that in him there be nothing, spiritual or natural, which opposeth God; and that his whole soul and body, with all their members, may stand ready and willing for that to which God hath created them; as ready and willing as his hand is to a man, which is so wholly in his power, that in the twinkling of an eye, he moveth and turneth it whither he will. And when we find it otherwise with us, we must give our whole diligence ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... felt cool and pleasant to his bare little feet as he crossed to the door. He had almost reached the head of the stairs when, looking up, something so pretty met his eyes that he stopped to admire. It was a star, shining against the pure sky like a twinkling silver lamp. It seemed to beckon, and the ladder to lead straight up to it. Almost without stopping to think, Dickie put his foot on the first rung and climbed nimbly to the top of the ladder. The star was ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... immediately into his presence and said to him, O Mesrur, the night is very oppressive and I wish thee to dispel my uneasiness. Then Mesrur said to him, O Commander of the Faithful, arise now and go to the terrace-roof of the palace and look upon the canopy of heaven and upon the twinkling stars and the brightness of the moon, while listening to the music of the rippling streams and the creaking norias as they are spoken of by the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... parked beside the gate. "Come on, Letitia, and let me take you home," she called over her shoulder, and Letitia followed to secure the short spin around the corner to the old Cockrell home, which was set back from the street behind a tall hedge of waxy-leaved Cherokee roses. Thus almost in the twinkling of an eye I was left alone, which state, however, did not last more than a few seconds, for around the corner of the house from the chapel, from which direction the whole world seemed to be going or coming, arrived Mrs. Elsie Spurlock, beaming the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... and old Night, Cimmerian Muse, all hail! That wrapt in never-twinkling gloom canst write, And shadowest meaning with thy dusky veil! What Poet sings and strikes the strings? It was the mighty Theban spoke. He from the ever-living lyre With magic hand elicits fire. Heard ye the din of modern rhymers bray? It ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the misty mass, invisible worlds floated by that had nothing to do with his own. A sound coming out of the unknown created them in a twinkling. They came into existence in the same way that the land had done that morning he had stood upon the deck of the steamer, and heard voices and noise through the fog, thick and big, with forms that looked like huge gloves ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... he stopped and chuckled behind his great beard when he saw Jerome's alarmed eyes. "Hullo," said he, "who have we got here?" Eben Merritt had a soft place in his heart for all small young creatures of his kind, and always returned their timid obeisances, when he met them, with a friendly smile twinkling like light through his bushy beard. Still, like many a man of such general kindly bearings, he could not easily compass details, and oftener than not could not have ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... figure lurched toward him into the full light of the room. Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair, awed, spellbound, and motionless. He saw the figure standing plainly before him; he saw distinctly the familiar furniture of his room, the storm-twinkling lights in the windows opposite, the flash of passing carriage lamps in the street below. But the figure before him was none other than the dead man of whom he had ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... search of "bits." The present shrine of Saint Martin is enclosed (provisionally, I suppose) in a very modem structure of timber, where in a dusky cellar, to which you descend by a wooden staircase adorned with votive tablets and paper roses, is placed a tabernacle surrounded by twinkling tapers and pros- trate worshippers. Even this crepuscular vault, how- ever, fails, I think, to attain solemnity; for the whole place is strangely vulgar and garish. The Catholic church, as churches go to-day, is certainly the most spectacular; but it must feel that it has a great fund of impressiveness ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... hand came forth and grasped Monck's. A merry red face beamed at him from under the great umbrella. Twinkling eyes with red lashes ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... proposal, made quietly but with twinkling eye, would have shut the mouth of nine advisers in ten, but ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... his father's tent he had another dream, and this time it was about the stars that could be seen through a slit in the tent, gleaming and sparkling in the dark blue sky. He dreamt that the sun and the moon and eleven of the largest of the twinkling stars came and ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous

... and tobacco. The village itself is neatly laid out, and contains about three hundred inhabitants. The different aspects of the country north and south of Kelat are striking. We had now done with deserts for good, for at night lights were seen twinkling all over the plain, while in the daytime large tracts of well-cultivated land ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... story of Mr. King, American citizen—Phineas K., Whom I met in Orkhanie, far away From freshening cocktail and genial sling. A little man with twinkling eyes, And a nose like a hawk's, and lips drawn thin, And a little imperial stuck on his chin, And about him always a cheerful grin, Dashed with a ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... road out of the place, he will soon find it well-nigh impossible to make a sortie. Except that army France has nothing she can really rely upon. It is all very well to talk of a general rising, but you can't create an army in the twinkling of an eye; and a host of half-disciplined peasants, however numerous, would have no chance against an enemy who have shown themselves capable of defeating the whole of the trained armies of France. No, no, Dampierre, you must make up your mind beforehand ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... to somebody about that ravine. She was full of it. Father Fitzpatrick's study over-looked it. Besides, she wanted to see him before she left Winnebago. A picture came to her mind of his handsome, ruddy face, twinkling with humor as she had last seen it when he had dropped in at Brandeis' Bazaar for a chat with her mother. She turned in at the gate and ran up the immaculate, gray-painted steps, that always gleamed as though still ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... and knew it. Nature had gifted him with a susceptible heart and a fond eye for the beauties of femininity. So when he looked round and saw the woman threading her way through the maze of vehicles at "Dead Man's Corner," with her skirt held up just enough to show two twinkling little feet in French shoes, and over them a graceful, willowy figure, and over that an enchanting, if rather too highly tinted, face, with almond eyes and a fluff of shining hair under the screen of a big Parisian hat—that did for him on ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... a beautiful night it was; up rose the moon, and innumerable stars decked the firmament of heaven. I sat on the shaft, my eyes turned upwards. I had found it: there it was twinkling millions of miles above me, mightiest star of the system to which we belong: of all stars the one which has most interest for me—the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... the extraordinary pocket, and lo, another brood of a dozen or more young, scarcely larger than a pea, are hanging in clusters on the teats. In pulling the creature about, in great amazement, he suddenly receives a gripe on the hand; the twinkling of the half-closed eye, and the breathing of the creature, evince that it is not dead: and he adds a new term to the vocabulary of his language, that of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... tumbling back like a young dolphin, found her feet on the beach, and flew to where was a cloak and a pair of Chinese slippers piled on the sand. The long rays of the just rising sun were now flashing level atop of the sea, and the sea-water clinging to her in a million twinkling drops as she ran. Cogan remembered a marble nymph he had once seen under a fountain in a square on a sunny morning in Rome, only the figure in Rome was a couple of hundred, or perhaps a couple of thousand, years old and needed washing, ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... boy sat with his mother at the window. Together they watched the shadows gather—the hills and the city and the river dissolve: the whole broad world turn to points of light, twinkling, flashing, darting, in the black, voiceless gulf. Nor would she fail to watch the night come, whether in gentle weather or whipping rain: but there would sit, the boy in her arms, held close to her breast, her hand straying restlessly over his small ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... says; "Mr. Bacheller is admirable alike in his scenes of peace and war. He paints the silent woods in the fall of the year with the rich golden glow of the Indian summer. He is eloquently poetical in the lonely watcher's contemplation of thousands of twinkling stars reflected from the broad bosom of the St. Lawrence, and he is grimly humorous in some of his dramatic episodes. Nor does anything in Crane's 'Red Badge of Courage' bring home to us more forcibly the horrors of war than the between-decks and the cockpit of a crippled ship swept ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... any cautious feints. At the moment when the huntress goes indoors, with her captured game between her legs, they fling themselves on her prey, which is on the point of disappearing underground, and nimbly lay their eggs upon it. The thing is done in the twinkling of an eye: before the threshold is crossed, the carcase holds the germs of a new set of guests, who will feed on victuals not amassed for them and starve the children ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... bit off the end, lighted it and took a few whiffs, Lieutenant-Commander Stearns all the while regarding his comrade in arms with twinkling eyes. ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock

... good management." Besides the ordinary shifting of the sands by the restless, current, there was another factor occasionally to guard against. This was earthquakes. Sometimes they might change the depth of water on the lower river in the twinkling of an eye. On one occasion, a schooner lying in a deep part was found suddenly aground in three feet of water, with no other warning than a rumble and a shock. Heintzelman, in one of his reconnoissances, discovered the adjacent land full of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... twinkling eyes, and pulling at his heavy beard with one hand, while he held the neck of his violin with the other. When Mother Cockleshell ceased he poured out a flood of the kalo jib with much gesticulation, and ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... window which led to the garden had just been opened by Marechal, and the mild odors of a lovely spring night perfumed the drawing-room. They all went out on the lawn. Thousands of stars were twinkling in the sky, and the eyes of Micheline and Pierre were lifted toward the dark blue heavens seeking vaguely for the star which presided over their destiny. She, to know whether her life would be the long poem of love of which ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... sank to his knees and framed, as best he could, a prayer of gratitude. How long he thus remained in grateful contemplation of his narrow escape from death he never knew, but he was at length aroused by a shout from above, and, looking up, saw an approaching light twinkling like a star of good promise through the blackness. The call that came to him was one of anxious uncertainty; but, as his answering shout sped upward, it was changed to an exultant cry of joy. Then came cheer after cheer as the skip slowly descended ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... man actually lives and moves before our eyes. The veracity of the picture is destroyed by no final inconsistency. What Numa is, Numa will be. Daudet never descends at the end of his novels like a god from the machine to change character in the twinkling of an eye, and to convert bad men to good ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... the whole of the day, and they fell with a velocity which showed they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere. When the most elevated station in the country where this was observed was ascended, the webs were still to be seen descending from above, and twinkling like stars in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious. The flakes of the web on this occasion hung so thick upon the hedges and trees, that basketsful might have been collected. No one doubts (he observes) but that ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... or can you see?" asked Fred, the second brother, a couple of years younger than Hadria, whom he addressed. His features were irregular; his short nose and twinkling grey eyes suggesting a joyous and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... changed "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." At the voice of God they were glorified; now they are made immortal, and with the risen saints are caught up to meet their Lord in the air. Angels "gather together the elect from the four winds, from ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... in the watch tower at the outer gate were plainly visible, and the twinkling of them reminded Barney of the danger of detection from that quarter. Quickly he recrossed the apartment to the wall-switch that operated the recently installed electric lights, and an instant later the chamber was in ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... watchers by the river shore, it was much more so to him for whom they thus lay awake. Utter midnight blackness all around, the profound and impressive stillness made more profound and impressive by the trickling of some current near, the occasional glimpse of some tiny star twinkling among the dark, straggling clouds overhead; such was Elwood ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... flowered satin waistcoat, his powdered wig, and rosy cheeks, but most of all she liked his merry, twinkling eyes. ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks



Words linked to "Twinkling" :   minute, heartbeat, New York minute, split second, moment, instant, wink, bright, flash, blink of an eye



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