"Background" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were gone onward something more, we to see that there went a lightening and a darkening afar along the Gorge, so that the background of the night was made to lose somewhat of the intensity of its darkness, as with constant shudders of light; and this to be surely the far away dance of the flame of the Great Gas Fountain. And we then to watch alway as we journeyed, and to ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... overlooking the river, and close to the town station, is a small colonnade of the Renaissance style, which is most familiar to us in the architecture of Bath; it has an outlandish look, with its classical lines seen against the background of the smooth river and green Devonshire country, and has not the homely charm of ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... House, to the great crowd that had assembled about it, to congratulate him, and the Nation, upon the downfall of Rebellion. His first thought in that speech, was of gratitude to God. His second, to put himself in the background, and to give all the credit of Union Military success, to those who, under God, had achieved it. Said he: "We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal Insurgent ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... arabesques, which, against the dark skins, effectually destroyed any likeness to human beings. It would be difficult to conceive of anything more uncanny and less human than the appearance of these Devil Dancers as they stood against a background of palms in the black night, their painted faces lit up by the flickering glare of smoky torches. As soon as the raucous horns blared out and the tom-toms began throbbing in their maddening, syncopated rhythm, the pandemonium that ensued, when thirty men, whirling themselves in circles ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... restriction against the women taking part in the men's dances. They also act as assistants to the chief actors in the Totem Dances, three particularly expert and richly dressed women dancers ranging themselves behind the mask dancer as a pleasing background of streaming furs and glistening feathers. The only time they are forbidden to enter the kasgi is when the shaman is performing certain secret rites. They also have secret meetings of their own when all men are banished.[3] ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... Eastern village whose cause had departed. A community drained of the male principle, leaving only a few queer men, the blacksmith, and some halfling boys, to give tone to the background of dozens of ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the negative. My friends, and you more especially, dearest friend, have done their part in this respect fully and in the kindest manner. It seems to me now high time that I should be somewhat forgotten, or, at least, placed very much in the background. My name has been too frequently spoken of; many have taken umbrage at this, and been uselessly annoyed at it. While "paving the way for a better appreciation," it might be advisable to regard my things as a reserve corps, and to introduce new works ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... crimson paper, and furnished with a sofa covered with crimson velvet, three arm chairs similarly covered, and six cane-bottomed chairs. Festoons of flags hung before the front of the box against a background ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... its masses of clustering chimneys, a little bare and weather-beaten, impressed him with a sense of dignity due as much to the purity of its architecture as the singularity of its situation. Behind—a wonderfully effective background—were the steep gardens from which, even in this uncertain light, he caught faint glimpses of colouring subdued from brilliancy by the twilight. These were encircled by a brick wall of great height, the whole of the southern portion of which was ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 700 feet wide; the banks are steep, with a flat alluvial meadow between them, through which the river flows. The country is finely wooded. Chirk Castle stands on an eminence on its western side, with the Welsh mountains and Glen Ceriog as a background; the whole composing a landscape of great beauty, in the centre of which Telford's aqueduct ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... soldiers, bathing in the Arno, are surprised by the sound of trumpets, and run to arms. His design has reached us only in an old engraving, which perhaps helps us less than what we remember of the background of his Holy Family in the Uffizii to imagine in what superhuman form, such as might have beguiled the heart of an earlier world, those figures may have risen from the water. Leonardo chose an incident from ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... pedestrians stalking along in their white buffalo robes. These were the dignitaries of the village, the old men and warriors, to whose age and experience that wandering democracy yielded a silent deference. With the rough prairie and the broken hills for its background, the restless scene was striking and picturesque beyond description. Days and weeks made me familiar with it, but never impaired its effect ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... prospects I had seen to the westward; and as for the hills, "capped with eternal snow," Mr. Coxe's description led me to look for them, but they had flown, for I looked vainly around for this noble background. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... junks, gleaming white against the background of dark foliage, were silently and dexterously manoeuvred by small, yellow, naked men, with long hair piled up on their heads in feminine fashion. Gradually, as we advanced farther up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... caused his quivering lips to stream with blood. Gaunt said nothing this time, nor did he renew his worse than useless efforts to burst his bonds, but he directed toward the fellow a look of such deadly ferocity that the wretch actually quailed under it, and seemed glad enough to slink away into the background under cover of an order which another Malay, apparently one of the officers of the proa, now stepped forward and gave him. Possibly the order given may have been to desist from further ill- treatment ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... a trifle clearer the character of the actors, or perhaps slightly to heighten the impression of commonplace reality. Even in "Sin and Sorrow" and "A Protegee" whole passages merely illustrate the background against which the plot is set rather than help forward the action itself. Many plays, such as "A Family Affair," end with relatively unimportant pieces of dialogue. Of others we are left to guess even the conclusion of the ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... nothing," said Cooleen Bawn, "but my love for you. If you were not surrounded by danger as you are, if the whoop of vengeance were not on your trail, if death and a gibbet were not in the background, I could part with you; but now that danger, vengeance, and death, are hovering about you, I shall and must partake of them with you. And listen, Reilly; after all it is the best plan. Papa, if I accompany you—supposing that we are taken—will relent for my sake. I know his love for ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... mental powers quickened. The house being on the main highway, there was always something to look at against the background of the beautiful common, and she conceived a vivid interest in the passing show. An active in lieu of a passive mind did its part in the improvement of her health. The tables were turned. Now it was she who ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... of Norfolk, the lonely fens and quaint villages of which are a picturesque background of some of her best stories. In 1870, shortly after her marriage, she went with her husband, the Rev. George Frederick Cross, a clergyman of the Church of England, to Wangaratta, in Victoria. After residing successively in several other country towns of this colony, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... when he descended from the train and saw Laura awaiting him against a green background of forest, all recollection of Barclay and his financial genius, was swept from his thoughts. As he looked at her small distinguished figure, and met her charming eyes, radiant with love, he told himself that he had, indeed, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... as there is the difference of two continents and two civilizations between them, it did not seem fair to let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without touching his features in half-shadow into our background. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... generality of girls; but she could not help wondering if there would be any young men present, and if, indeed, there were any young men in Slowbridge who might possibly be produced upon festive occasions, even though ordinarily kept in the background. She had not heard Miss Belinda mention any masculine name so far, but that of the curate of St. James's; and, when she had seen him pass the house, she had not found his slim, black figure, and ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in the corridor. He saw nothing but a line of closed doors, presumably to servants' quarters. Now, however, the vibrant rasp of the radio spark was perceptibly stronger and had a background of subdued noise, echoes of distant voices, deadened sounds of hasty footfalls, now and again a heavy thump or the bang ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... rather taken with the rustic seat that was standing on a white fur mat in front of a scene representing the Jungfrau, but he headed me off it. If I liked the Jungfrau as a background I could have it, but not with the seat; that was for engaged couples only. He recommended a pair of skis, or a bobsleigh; he could put a fine fall of snow into the negative. But as I had arrayed myself in a black coat, with one of those white waistcoat slips, and a flowing tie with a pearl pin, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... I had not observed her; she had her back to the light, was dressed in dark colors, and sat in the careless attitude of one who keeps in the background. The fact is, this one pleased me much better. Eyes with long lashes, rather narrow, but which would have been called good in any country in the world; with almost an expression, almost a thought. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... or the lack of it, which permitted Titian (in a picture now in the National Gallery, London) to paint the shadows of his figures falling away from the spectator into the picture, and towards the setting sun in the background. The return to nature, however, was not accomplished at once. It is doubtful, indeed, if a painter can ever arrive at a respectable technical achievement without imbibing certain conventions which prevent complete submission to nature; absolute ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... the appearance of a new type of management. A group of younger men and women with a broad background, an intense interest in cooperation and a capacity of growing up with the business is working now to make these cooperatives even more successful. The cooperative movement is likely to grow in pretty close proportion ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... separately and subsequently. But our knowledge of the Sun's Corona has developed so entirely by steps from a small beginning that it is neither easy nor advantageous to keep the history separate or in the background and I shall therefore not ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... alone in the bedroom which she shared with a nurse, did she take it quite out of the envelope and gaze long at the faded yellow photograph, caressing with, her eyes every detail of faces and clothing, the steps of the veranda, and the bushes which served as a background to his and hers and his aunts' faces, and could not cease from admiring especially herself—her pretty young face with the curly hair round the forehead. She was so absorbed that she did not hear her ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... fact that you aren't making any sense about this gambling kick you're on, Tex. You should have laughed my teasing off. Who would seriously suggest that you were a psi personality?" she demanded. "And most of all, with my background in psi, do you think I ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... have been expected to welcome the co-operation of one of his own family who was foremost among the rising men of Cecil's own generation, and who certainly was most desirous to do him service. But it is plain that he early made up his mind to keep Bacon in the background. It is easy to imagine reasons, though the apparent short-sightedness of the policy may surprise us; but Cecil was too reticent and self-controlled a man to let his reasons appear, and his words, in answer to ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... As a background to modern, or scientific, Socialism there is the Socialism of the Utopians, which the authors of the Manifesto so severely criticised. It is impossible to understand the modern Socialist movement, the Socialism which is rapidly becoming the dominant issue in the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... there was a sound of shuffling in the porch, the door was thrown open, and a gaunt, haggard man, with torn, snow-sprinkled garments, pale face, and bloodshot eyes, stood pictured on the background ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... before stated that Drury did not skulk in the background when he published his book in 1727; but, on the contrary, invited the public to Tom's Coffee-house, where he engaged to satisfy the incredulous, and resolve the doubting. By the 3rd edition of Madagascar, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... written without restraint. They show, I am sure, what the general trend of sentiment was in Germany for and against submarine warfare and disclose, too, that while the Emperor was often in the background and seemingly not the most powerful factor in the situation, it was his system that dominated Germany, his spirit that bred the lust for military gain at whatever cost—even the respect of the whole civilised world. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... the string to cut and the bag to open, I feel something of Peachey's wonder to think of you, across all this distance and change, as still sitting in your great chair by the green lamp, while past a dim background of books moves the procession of youth. Many of us, growing older in various places, remember well your friendship, and are glad that you are there, urging our successors to look backward into good books, and ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... correspondingly constant; if the currents are variable, our mood also will be variable. Not only is mood dependent on our sensations and thoughts for its quality, but it in turn colors our entire mental life. It serves as a background or setting whose hue is reflected over all our thinking. Let the mood be somber and dark, and all the world looks gloomy; on the other hand, let the mood be bright and cheerful, and the world puts ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... Stetson called the residence of Ipscott Bullone, leader of the majority party in the Marak Assembly. Mrs. Bullone took the call with blank screen. There was a sound of running water in the background. Stetson stared at the grayness swimming in his desk visor. He always disliked a blank screen. A baritone husk of a voice slid: ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... looking down into the basin below. From their feet ran a great semicircle of marble seats, descending tier below tier to a marble pavement, and facing a great ruined wall of pillars and arches which in the past had formed the background for the actors. From the height on which they stood above the city they could see the green country stretching out for miles on every side and swimming in the warm sunlight, the dark groves of myrtle on the ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... from Richmond to throw every thing else into the background. An express arrived at Randalls to announce the death of Mrs. Churchill! Though her nephew had had no particular reason to hasten back on her account, she had not lived above six-and-thirty hours after his return. A sudden seizure of a different nature ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... his elbow, watching. Charge after charge, wild and impetuous, break the slowly retreating battalions. In vain I heard Carter's stern oaths (may the angel of tears forgive him!), and Charlie Marsh's boyish calls. The men are facing us. The enemy, cheering, and in the background huge torches flaming with pitch, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... serfs had not been freed by Nicholas. That sovereign had long understood the necessity for the change, and in 1847 he had actually appointed a Commission to report on the best means of effecting it. The convulsions of 1848, followed by the Hungarian and the Crimean Wars, threw the project into the background during the remainder of Nicholas's reign; but if the belief of the Russian people is well founded, the last injunction of the dying Czar to his successor was to emancipate the serfs throughout his empire. Alexander was little capable of grappling ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... and altos, "And there came all Manner of Flies," set to a shrill, buzzing, whirring accompaniment, which increases in volume and energy as the locusts appear, but bound together solidly with the phrase of the tenors and basses frequently repeated, and presenting a sonorous background to this fancy of the composer in insect imitation. From this remarkable chorus we pass to another still more remarkable, the familiar Hailstone Chorus ("He gave them Hailstones for Rain"), which, like the former, is closely imitative. Before the two choirs begin, the orchestra prepares the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... portraits are grouped in the foreground of this 'conversation' piece, the background being filled with ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... still felt those secret pangs of bitter disappointment and the fever of unsatisfied desire, but he was both too unselfish and too proud to show what he suffered. There are some of us who keep our dark thoughts and secret, hopeless longings in the background, as the maimed and diseased beggars are kept off the streets in Paris, and only let them come from their hiding-places at long intervals, like the beggars again, who crawl forth once or twice a year to solicit alms and pity. Although Mr. Morris knew Calvert so well, his impetuous ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... tricks of the trade with magnificent speed. She was never so meek and helpless of expression as when she slipped in front of another actor or actress and filled as much of the foreground as her slenderness permitted. When she was crowded into the background she knew how to divert attention to herself during the best moments of the other people in the scene. And she could most innocently spoil any bit that she did not like to do herself or have ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... of laughter even when in repose. Jolly wrinkles lurked around his eyes. Beth saw two rows of pearly teeth though his mouth was partly hidden by a mustache and beard. His nose was large and flat. It looked like a dirty piece of putty thrown at haphazard on a black background. Beth, however, did not mind ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... velvet made a perfect background for her golden curls, a bit tumbled by her afternoon ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... ran through me as I listened to my companion's words and saw the stern gravity which had hardened his features. This brutal preliminary seemed to shadow forth some strange and inexplicable horror in the background. Lestrade, however, shook his head like a man who is only ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Bishop said thoughtfully. "White and brown and yellow. Russian and British and French and German and Chinese and Spanish. They were chosen for technical background rather ...
— Competition • James Causey
... best to make him little. When I was lying on my back there in the Pantheon in Rome, looking up through that wide opening, and watching a moving-picture show that has no rival, the fleecy clouds in their ever-changing forms against that blue background of matchless Italian sky, those gendarmes debated the question of arresting me for disorderly conduct. My conduct was disorderly because they couldn't understand it. But, if Raphael could have risen from his tomb only a few yards ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the ups and downs and circuits had quite wearied us. Gradually the rocks decreased in size, and were more widely spread; a plain slightly depressed in the centre, dotted here and there with thinly growing thickets, was reached. In the background there was a clump of firs and a glittering lake, quite a liquid oasis hidden ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... frankness of the eighteenth century—a bastard system, symptomatic of an age in which nothing that grows up is at all like the thing that has vanished, in which transition leads nowhere, everything is a matter of degree; all the great figures shrink into the background, and distinction is purely personal. I am fully convinced that it is impossible for a woman, even if she were born close to a throne, to acquire before the age of five-and-twenty the encyclopaedic knowledge of trifles, the practice of manoeuvring, the important small ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... in how many ways this feeling appeals to us; it seems to be the background of our whole finite being. Saint ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... disappointed. The Daika reformers had invariably contrived that conciliation should march hand in hand with innovation. Temmu relied on coercion. He himself administered State affairs with little recourse to ministerial aid but always with military assistance in the background. He was especially careful not to sow the seeds of the abuses which his immediate predecessors had worked to eradicate. Thus, while he did not fail to recognize the services of those that had stood by him in the Jinshin tumult, he studiously refrained from ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... wanted, I remember, a button—and hastened to the Park. I did not tell my wife anything about it. I did not care to have her with me. In all such adventures I find her more useful as a sentimental figure in the background—I, of course, allow no sentiment in the foreground—than ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... the poverty of their own surroundings by the magnificence of that great Cathedral which rose above the low horizon of their roofs, and opened its doors to poor and rich alike. The buildings that have so long outlived their inhabitants may be taken as the background—like the permanent stone scenery in a Greek theatre—to the shifting kaleidoscope of many-coloured life in the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... his title, his personality and role. In this artificial and declamatory tragedy of the Revolution he takes the leading part; the maniac and the barbarian slowly retire in the background on the appearance of the cuistre; Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the stage is left to Robespierre who attracts all the attention.[3187]—If we want to understand him we must look at him as he stands in the midst ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... accordingly came in, took his glass, and sat himself just where Bell directed, on a step at her feet. Amy colored, and there was a subdued titter somewhere in the background, and Bell calmly resumed the reins of the conversation. "No, there is no knowing what we shall be put through this afternoon. One time when Mrs. Upjohn had got us all safely inside her doors, she divided us smartly into two classes, set herself in the middle, and announced that we were there for ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... meaning of the struggle, arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and political changes which really are in the background of the war. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... at this juncture that Marais arrived, accompanied by Marie. Where he came from I do not know, but I think he must have been keeping in the background on purpose to see what kind of a ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... of pine that form the background to the Falls, when seen from above, are entirely lost from the surface of the river, and the descending floods seem to pour down ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... girouettes on its steeples," and it was love for Italian fashions that had brought king and courtiers here to-day, with great eclat, as they said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely considered dress of the moment, pressing the university into a perhaps not unmerited background; for the promised speaker, about whom tongues had been busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had come from Italy. In an age in which all things about which Parisians much cared must be Italian there might be a hearing ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... not, however, on these details that we desire to dwell, but to use the scenes before us as a background and contrast to magnify certain features in the death, grave, and abiding influence ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the dark hills, half-seen in the light of the rising moon, she settled down. Rupert turned to his silent companion. He had become aware during the evening that something was wrong, and his own sense of injury was frightened into the background. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a sudden dwarf palmetto bristling all its bayonets against the peaceful night, and all the way singular uncouth shapes of vegetation, like conjurations of magic, cutting themselves out with minuteness upon the vast clear background so darkly and weirdly that the voyagers seemed to be sliding along the shores of some new, strange under-world,—now they got out, and, wading ankle-deep in plashy bog, drew the boat and its slumberer heavily after them,—now went slowly along, afloat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... which can be invented by primitive imaginations. Each society has its own uniform, made up of tinsels and figured satins, tin-foil, gold and silver leaf, gaudy textiles, magnificent epaulets bearing large golden stars on a background of silver decorated with glittering gems of colored glass; tinted "ostrich" plumes of many colors sticking straight up eighteen inches above the heads of their wearers, gaudy ribbons, beruffled bodices, puffed sleeves, and slashed trunks. Some of these strange costumes are actually reminiscent ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... roadside after nightfall. A fire of sticks is burning near the ditch a little to the right. Michael is working beside it. In the background, on the left, a sort of tent and ragged clothes drying on the hedge. ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... the abrogation of the Sabbath by Christ or by His Apostles, but St. Paul declared that its observance was not binding on Gentile converts. Accordingly, in the very early days of Christianity the Sabbath fell more and more into the background, yet not without leaving some traces behind it (see art. Sonnabender in Kraut's Realenzyklop). Among Christians the first day of the Jewish week, the prima Sabbati, the present Sunday, was held in honour ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... to foresee will be passed on them. It will undoubtedly be asserted that an undue prominence has been given to the religious side of the Irish question, while its many political aspects have been left in the background. This charge will be laid at the door of the clerical and religious character of the writer, and may give rise to the notion that the view here taken of the subject is not the right one, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... habitations. Water is plentiful, and though the scenery certainly lacks trees except in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages and houses, it has, nevertheless, a certain picturesqueness on account of its background of wooded mountains. I started from Pithoragarh at 6.30 A.M.; leaving the road to Tal on the left, I followed the track at a medium elevation of 6250 feet, arriving at Shadgora (6350 feet) just in time to witness the blessing ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... han't had a drop!" said Mr. Coggan to a self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the piano must decide for himself. He has already discovered that modern piano playing requires a perfect technic, together with the personal equation of vigorous health, serious purpose and many-sided mentality. Mme. Rider-Possart says: "Technic is something an artist has to put in the background as something of secondary importance, yet if he does not possess it he is nowhere." The student will not overlook the fact that to acquire the necessary technical control he must devote time and thought to it outside of piece playing. He ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... of the impossible, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow shows fascinating combinations of the unusual. Cooper achieved his greatest success in presenting the Indians and the stalwart figure of the pioneer against the mysterious forest as a background. Hawthorne occasionally availed himself of the older romantic materials, as in The Snow Image, Rappaccini's Daughter, and Young Goodman Brown, but he was more often attracted by the newer elements, the strange ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... not my original intention to let you off so easily. I started with the idea of giving you a rapid but glowing and eloquent word-picture of the valley of the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence. For background, I thought I would sketch in the historical and legendary events connected with the district, and against this, for a foreground, I would draw, in vivid colours, the modern aspect of the scene, with remarks ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... on once more; but when close to the gate she met her father, who asked her in a surly tone what she did there at that late hour. He had witnessed the whole fight to the end, only keeping well in the background to escape observation, and was just returning from the hospital when he met Fan. Hearing that she was going to see her mother, he ordered her home, saying that at the hospital they would admit no ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... his opportunities for personal observation. But he has done enough to render us grateful for his labors. By the vivid delineation of scenes and scenery, as they were presented fresh to his own eyes, he has furnished us with a background to the historic picture, - the landscape, as it were, in which the personages of the time might be more fitly portrayed. It would have been impossible to exhibit the ancient topography of the land so faithfully at a subsequent ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... the city and deeper into the country, they were dazzled by the beauty of the scenery. The sun struck hot and bright upon the road, while the shrubs and foliage on the outskirts of the woodland seemed outlined in molten gold against the softer background of shadowy green. The river shone and sparkled in the brilliant sun like some great, glistening jewel turned to liquid sunshine. The world ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... to get back to our smooth, but still varied landscape. For a permanent residence, it seemed to me that there could be no comparison between this and the wilderness, necessary as the latter is for a resource and a background, the raw material of all our civilization. The wilderness is simple, almost to barrenness. The partially cultivated country it is which chiefly has inspired, and will continue to inspire, the strains of poets, such as compose the mass of any literature. Our woods are sylvan, and their inhabitants ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... thought no more about the father, who had loved ten generations in his son, nor of the aunt, and her almost insane devotion. He was looking forward to Paris with vehement ill-starred longings; in thought he had lived in that fairyland, it had been the background of his brightest dreams. He imagined that he would be first in Paris, as he had been in the town and the department where his father's name was potent; but it was vanity, not pride, that filled his soul, and in his dreams his pleasures were to be ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... will hardly walk down a street side by side unless the colors of their costumes harmonize. You find a negress selling oranges or citrons; an Arab boy with red fez and white turban, carrying purple fruit in a basket of leaves—always the right juxtaposition of colors. The sky furnishes them a superb background of deep blue, and the repose of these solemn Orientals, who sit here like bronze statues, save that they smoke incessantly, inspires you with a curious respect. They are men who believe in fate—what need ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... at her best at rehearsals. For the first time, as he watched her, Roland found himself feeling that there was a case to be made out for the managers who had so consistently kept her in the background. Miss Verepoint, to use the technical term, threw her weight about. There were not many good lines in the script of act one of "Pass Along, Please!" but such as there were she reached out for and grabbed away from their owners, who retired into corners, scowling and muttering, like dogs ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... the house is not only to be useful, but to be aesthetically a background for the dwellers therein, subordinate to them, not obtrusive. In most of our modern building and furnishing the people are relegated to the background as insignificant figures. This is largely why the home feeling is absent, ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... not remain long in the background after they had reached the drawing-room, for Dr Blimber had him out in no time, dancing with Florence. He did not appear to Paul to be particularly happy, or particularly anything but sulky, or to care much what he was about; ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... was quite simple. The retinal vessels stand out slightly in relief, and thus a perfect shadow of the system is cast on the retina. It was this shadow I saw, and the white screen was merely a convenient background for it. I don't know if ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... identified and of which some knowledge is essential to an understanding of his acts and character. Others are brought into prominence only as they are associated with the chief actor in the great drama. Many of them are disappearing,—fading into the smoky and lurid background. But that colossal central figure, playing one of the grandest roles ever set upon the stage of human life, becomes more impressive ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... apozem[obs3], moxa[obs3]; acid, aqua fortis[Lat], aqua regia; catheretic[obs3], nitric acid, nitrochloro-hydric acid[ISA:CHEMSUB], nitromuriatic acid[ISA:CHEMSUBPREFIX]; radioactivity, gamma rays, alpha particles, beta rays, X-rays, radiation, cosmic radiation, background radiation, radioactive isotopes, tritium, uranium, plutonium, radon, radium. sunstroke, coup de soleil[Fr]; insolation. [artifacts requiring heat in their manufacture] pottery, ceramics, crockery, porcelain, china; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... plan, which far exceeds the above, there being no line, or any peculiarity denoting two exposures. The specimen referred to, was a gentleman represented on one plate by two full length portraits. This was produced by using a black velvet for the background. The plate was exposed sufficient time to produce one impression, and then the gentleman assumed another position, and is repeated as looking at himself. From the fact that the time required to develop black velvet being so much longer than that for producing a portrait, we are ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... is very beautiful to trace throughout Peter's writings the echoes of the great facts which he had seen, and which to the end of his days formed the background of all his thoughts. ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... applicant has been approved by the psychographs, his background will be thoroughly investigated. We may find criminal types who show the blackest of careers, but who would turn over a new leaf if given the chance and prove to be more valuable than men with the best ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... being pleasurable or painful according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the particular circumstances ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the purpose of these diversities. We know, for one thing, that out of them come some of the noblest instances of character and of achievement. Ignorance and crime and poverty and vice, stand in fearful contrast to knowledge and integrity and wealth and purity; but they likewise constitute the dark background against which the virtues of human life stand out in radiant relief; virtues developed by the struggle which they create; virtues which seem impossible without their co-existence. For, whence issues any such thing as virtue, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... taken away, a child of seven, her memories of this southern town had grown vague, and it seemed strange to hear Uncle Landor refer to it as her home. He also said it was the sort of a background she needed for the next few years, until she should be ready for college. After that he promised, if she still wished it, she might come ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... and wealth of former days. Rare shrubs still grew in the spacious front yard, and gnarled remnants of orchard trees were to be seen in the rear. A dozen other buildings, large and small, occupied the background, some with the roofs partly fallen, ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... Elisabetta,"—this to his wife standing silently in the background—"we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three o'clock tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our return. Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to receive her. But"—this to Mrs. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... herself this serious institution, she seemed to be looking into an enchanted grove, with Cupids weaving garlands, and storks bringing little golden-locked angels under their wings; while before a little cabin in the background, which yet was large enough to contain all the bliss in the world, sat the ideal married couple, gazing into the depths of each ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... coins fall into your coffee and the finest wines and wittles lie smilingly about your path, with a kind of dissolving view of fine scenery by way of background; and may all speak well of you—and me too for that matter—and generally all things be ordered unto you totally regardless of expense and with a view to nothing in the world but enjoyment, edification, and a portly and honoured age.—Your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comparison of Crabbe's poems with Wordsworth's will sufficiently indicate. Both are true painters; but while in the one we see poverty as something gross and degrading, and the Tales of the Village stand out from a background of pauperism and crime; in the other picture poverty means nothing worse than privation, and the poet in the presence of the most tragic ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... was certainly a picturesque place, and I was glad that I had come. The colouring was charming: there was red rock in the background, here and there covered with grass, and ablaze with flowers. Wild roses and poppies, pink-thrift and white daisies, all contributed to make the old rock gay. But the yellow ragwort was all over; great patches ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... with a couple of hasty strokes of the pencil. But if we take even these few bare words and look at them, feeling that there is a man like ourselves sketched in them, I think we can get a real picture out of them, and that even this dim form crowded into the background of the Apostolic story may have a word or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... bowling along, my mind has unconsciously been dwelling on Jane Austen. Think of it, sir, only one hundred years ago and no railroads. Have we really lost or gained? Marvelous girl, that, sir. Masterpiece of literature when she was twenty-one, and no background but an untidy English village. You've heard of Jane ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... and varied landscape unfolds before us in the changing lights of a long summer's day; and at each appropriate artistic moment becomes the background of a mythological, idyllic, or semi-mythical scene. In the early dawn we see Prometheus amidst departing thunders chained to his rock:[131] the glutted, yet still hungering vulture cowering beside him; in the dews of morning, Artemis triumphant in her double character of huntress-queen and ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of peninsula formed by a deep loop of the river Avon on its way from Stratford-on-Avon to Tewkesbury. The broad vale in which it lies is enclosed by a semicircle of hills, which provide a background to every varied landscape, and give a sense of homeliness and seclusion which those who are familiar with unbroken stretches of level country will at once recognise and appreciate. From the east to the south-west range the Cotswolds, not striking in outline but depending for their beauty in great ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... secretary-general of the league. If the commission report fails to bring satisfactory action, the matter may be taken to a permanent court of international justice for final decision. The chief reliance for securing enforcement of the law will be publicity with a possibility of economic action in the background. ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... Charter of Larmenius is to be believed, the newly elected Grand Master of the Temple was the Duc de Bourbon, who had already incurred the Cardinal's displeasure. Obviously, therefore, Templar influence was kept in the background. This is not to imply bad faith on the part of Ramsay, who doubtless held the Order of Templars to be wholly praiseworthy; but he could not expect the King or Cardinal to share his view, and therefore held it more ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... when he began to bethink him of the least among his investments. Like many other wealthy men, my respected connection is troubled more or less, in the background of his consciousness, by a pervading dread that he will die a beggar. To guard against this misfortune—which I am bound to admit nobody else fears for him—he invested, several years ago, a sum of ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... Punch. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in passing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, and areas that Leech had made the background for his magnificent ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... a room, for instance, papered with a paper with a dark background and a light pattern on it. Well, you can manoeuvre your eye about so as either to look at the black background—and then it is all black, with only a little accidental white or gilt to relieve it here and there; or you can focus your eye on the white and gold, and then that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Background: Malaysia was created in 1963 through the merging of Malaya (independent in 1957) and the former British Singapore, both of which formed West Malaysia, and Sabah and Sarawak in north Borneo, which composed ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... least, could so establish themselves as not to greatly feel the hotel atmosphere. Carefully chosen colours textures, and appointments formed the background of their days, the food they ate was a thing produced by art, the servants who attended them were completely-trained mechanisms. To sit by a window and watch the kaleidoscopic human tide passing by on its way to its pleasure, to reach its ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hands raised to their faces in melancholy meditation. In the foreground of the picture, which is painted with all the sumptuous splendor of Venetian art, is a stately vase, around which hangs a festoon of gorgeous flowers, its end dragging upon the pavement. In the background, between the columns, smiles the blue sky of Italy—the only thing Italian not deteriorated by time. The careful student of this picture, if he has been long in Paris, is some day startled by detecting, especially in the faces of ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... rose a lovely dark green mountain, and when there was a rainbow, as there frequently was, nothing could have looked more enchanting than it did rising from the opposite bank of the stream with the wet, shadowy mountain for a background. All the Flower family would invariably run to their front windows and their ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... and I, being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat, remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the world on the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... in the room situated at the south end of the edifice. The dust of ages was thick upon it and so concealed the characters as to make them well-nigh invisible. With care I washed the slab, then with black crayon darkened its surface until the intaglio letters appeared in white on a dark background. (The photographs of this inscription can be seen at ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... traveller, but it stays with him always, and colours his impressions of such other cities as may attract his wandering footsteps. So soon as he has left the plains behind on his way to the coast, the town's defects are relegated to the background of the picture his memory paints. He forgets the dirty lanes that serve for roads, the heaps of refuse at every corner, the pariah curs that howled or snapped at his horse's heels when he rode abroad, the roughness and discomfort of the accommodation, the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... needs of later Hellenic citizens. In time of peace the later Greeks are weaponless men, not surrounded by and entertaining throngs of armed retainers, like the Homeric chief. The women of later Greece, moreover, are in the background of life, dwelling in the women's chambers, behind those of the men, in seclusion. The Homeric women also, at least in the house of Odysseus, have their separate chambers, which the men seem not to enter except on invitation, though ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... it; and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn, and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white, as always—a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if you might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... She was very real to him, this woman, and compelling, with her silences, her broken phrases. Rarely, very rarely before in his life, had he had this experience of intimacy without foreknowledge, without background—the sense of dealing with ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... tried to comfort himself again by the thought of all the hours of happy enthusiasm he had spent amongst his papers, working for a great idea with infinite patience. He recalled to mind something that he had always tried to keep in the background of his hopes, the foundation-stone of his life, which he had hidden out of sight. Deep in his heart was the hope that he might one day write a valiant book; he scarcely dared to entertain the aspiration, he felt his incapacity too ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a background of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one side of ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... a moment later, peering in cautiously, the sunshine casting a rude outline upon the floor, and his figure to those within showing silhouetted against the background of light, beleggined, befringed, and begloved after the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... lifting his countenance above the horizon that morning, centred his whole attention upon a pair of polished brass-bound hubs. The rest of the scene, grass and flowers "in unrespective same," formed a mere background on the general plane of existence while the sun beamed upon the brass—delighted, no doubt, to find an ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... obligingly effaced herself as far as possible by taking the box-seat by the chauffeur as they drove down, and when they arrived, and Michael and his mother strolled about in the warm sunshine before lunch, keeping carefully in the background, just ready to come if she was wanted. But indeed it seemed as if no such precautions were necessary, for never had Lady Ashbridge been more amenable, more blissfully content in her son's companionship. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... comfortable on that porch with its southern exposure, the fireflies dancing to the chirp of the crickets, the span of the railroad trestle looking like a fairy bridge against the background of the sky. Mr. Keeler ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... colonial writings of the seventeenth century, those that have lost least of their interest through the lapse of years are narratives of struggles with the Indians. The image of the "bloody savage" has always hovered in the background of the American imagination. Our boys and girls have "played Indian" from the beginning, and the actual Indian is still found, as for three hundred years past, upon the frontier fringe of our civilization. Novelists like Cooper, historians like Parkman, poets like Longfellow, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... He was sure, and reasonably sure, that no other statesman could play the game so well; he therefore claimed the right to play it. Carteret, on the other hand, was far too strong a man to be quietly pushed into the background. He was determined that if he remained in the service of the State he would be a ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... when beginning a printed discussion, What am I looking for? What is the author going to talk about? Often this will be indicated in topical headings. Keep it in the background of your mind while reading, and search for the answer. Then, when you have read the necessary portion, close the book and summarize, to see if the author furnished what you sought. In short, always read for a purpose. Formulate ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... by the pensioners who were sent out to assist in founding the colony. Round and about them are other houses and cottages, extending along the shores of the bay, and sprinkled on the sides of a gentle slope. They are generally of light tints, which contrast well with the dark background of the hill beyond, and give the place a pretty appearance. Further up is the church, not a very ecclesiastical-looking building; and beyond again, the cemetery, which has a neat chapel attached to it. The Government House is a long, low cottage edifice, which looks well from the harbour; ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... his own employment—it was to be treated as a thing not to be spoken of; but the welfare of the others was inquired after, and especially of Robina—who was the name-child of the eldest sister, the gentlest of the set, and the most in the background, quiet and tearful—pleased to hear that her godchild was at school, and as Felix emphatically said 'a very good girl,' anxious that he should take charge of 'a little ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge |
