"Darkness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ten-headed (Ravana) was highly gratified, for on account of his perverted understanding, the man-eating one slightened human beings. Then the great Grandsire addressed Kumbhakarna as before. His reason being clouded by darkness, he asked for long-lasting sleep. Saying, 'It shall be so' 'Brahma then addressed Vibhishana, 'O my son, I am much pleased with thee! Ask any boon thou pleasest!' Thereupon, Vibhishana replied, 'Even in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Every company had its long list of killed, wounded, and missing. Over two hundred were gone. Nearly two hundred, we felt quite sure, had fallen dead or disabled on the field. Many eyes were in tears, and many hearts were bleeding for lost comrades and dear friends. General Rousseau rides up in the darkness, and, as we gather around him, says, in a voice tremulous with emotion: "Boys of the Third, you stood in that withering fire like men of ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... seen through the open door, had there been any to see, was almost as motionless as a tableau, and it was a starkly grim one, with murky shadows against a fitful light. A ray of the setting sun forced its inquisitive way inward upon the semi-darkness of the interior. A red wavering from the open hearth, where supper preparations had been going forward, threw unsteady patches of fire reflection outward. In the pervading smell of dead smoke from a blackened chimney hung the more pungent sharpness of freshly ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... rocks on his left, and the dreamy, restful state into which the boy had been falling passed away. For the thoughts that came fast now were beginning to grow troublous. It would not be long before it was night, and with the darkness an exciting time would arrive. Chris thought that the Indians would not wait long before they attacked, and a great anxiety now oppressed him. Would his father think of this and be prepared, or would he wait too long, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... made that same evening, and in the middle of the night the body of Britannicus was buried in the Field of Mars, a vast parade-ground in the precincts of the city. In addition to the darkness of the night, a violent storm arose, and the rain fell in torrents while the interment proceeded. Very few, therefore, of the people of the city knew what had occurred until the following day. The violence of the storm, however, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... still greater compensation for her had she known that at the very moment when she peered out through the darkness, looking for some vagrant glimmer of a light from Layson's camp, he had, himself, just gone back to his cabin after having stood a long time staring through the darkness toward her own small cabin ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Arizona. By the time they had come to the spot where the sheepman said he had met Kate gray streaks were already lightening the sky. The party moved forward slowly toward the canyon, spreading out so as to cover as much ground as possible. Before they reached its mouth the darkness had lifted enough to show the track of ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... national loss if they were required to return home. If the American missionary would only look about him in the large cities of the Union he would find enough of misery, enough of suffering, enough people falling away from the Christian churches, enough of darkness, enough of vice in all its conditions and all its grades, to furnish him work for years to come." This is a sentiment Americans may well think of; but there are "none so blind as those who will not see." There will always be women and men willing to spend ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... not clamour for vengeance, We do not whine for fear; We have cried in the outer darkness Where was no man to hear. We cried to man and he heard not; Yet we thought God heard us pray; But our God, who loved and was sorry - Our ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... glow'd; the subtle flame Ran quick thro' all my vital frame, O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung; My ears with ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... came we had reached Cui-kau. The sampans in which we were to spend eight days were drawn up on the beach with twenty or thirty others. Right above us was the straggling town looking very much like the rear view of tenement houses at home. Darkness blotted out the filth of our surroundings but could do nothing to lessen the odors that poured down from the village, and we ate our ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... climate characterized by persistent cold and relatively narrow annual temperature ranges; winters characterized by continuous darkness, cold and stable weather conditions, and clear skies; summers characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... illuminate the ceiling predominantly with the result that this bright area distracts attention from the table. A brightly illuminated table holds the attention of the diners. Light attracts and a semi-darkness over the remainder of the room crowds in with a result that is far more satisfactory than that of a dining-room ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... provoking enigma, alike to the theologian and the political economist. Like a troubled dream, delirious in contrast with the coherence and stability of Western life, the land and its people seem to be conjured out of a secret of darkness, a wonder to the senses and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... was, in Greek Street, a few doors from Soho Square, and almost opposite to that house where, in the first years of the century, a little girl, and with her a boy named De Quincey, made nightly encampment in darkness and hunger among dust and rats and old legal parchments. The Vingtieme was but a small whitewashed room, leading out into the street at one end and into a kitchen at the other. The proprietor and cook was a Frenchman, known to us as Monsieur ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... good old England, not America, for here bishops are known to be meek and good. All this was a dream: but then there came, soaring giant-like, 'Young America,' and manifest destiny which he spread over the land for the benefit of mankind. Then there came a great darkness, followed by a little light that crept feebly onward as if fearing to spread itself on the broad disc of the horoscope—it was the light of Mr. Pierce, beneath which hovered doubtful devils. How rapacious they seemed! They ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... commonly follow satiated lust. Rodolfo was now impatient to get rid of Leocadia, and made up his mind to lay her in the street, insensible as she was. He had set to work with that intention, when she came to herself, saying, "Where am I? Woe is me! What darkness is this? Am I in the limbo of my innocence, or the hell of my sins? Who touches me? Am I in bed? Mother! dear father! do you hear me? Alas, too well I perceive that you cannot hear me, and that I am in the hands of enemies. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of oil ran over his body and spread on the ground. But these could no longer hurt him. The half-breed had leaped outside the cabin, enraged that Cutler should have got out during the moment he had been dealing with Kelley. The scout was groping for his ivory-handled pistol off in the darkness. He found it, and hurried to the little window at a second shot he heard inside. Loomis, beating the rising flame away, had seized the pistol from the shelf, and aimlessly fired into the night at Toussaint. He fired again, running to the door from the scorching heat. Cutler got round the ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... sat and wept on the hillside, I wept till the darkness fell; I wept for a maiden afar off, A maiden who ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in suspense, my sweet Margery, he has come, and is not far off," answered Charley and before he could say more, Tom, who had followed Becky to the door, darted out into the darkness, and was soon heard exclaiming, "Come in, come in, my dear boy, joy does no ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... said Schill to himself, smiling, and stepping back from the window. "But their love and its boisterous demonstrations are not exactly intended for myself individually. These kind people greet in me the first hope dawning to them after a long period of darkness; and, therefore, I will joyfully indulge them, and I will thank them by brave deeds. Yes, by deeds! The time of procrastination is over. I must hesitate no longer: ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... eclipse, darkness and sulphureted hydrogen!—we would dive into another tunnel and out again—gasping—on a breathtaking panorama of mountains. Some of them would be standing up against the sky like the jagged top of a half-finished cutout puzzle, and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... HELL. The Harrowing of Hell was the mediaeval belief in the descent of Christ to hell to redeem the souls of Old Testament saints, and to despoil the powers of darkness. It is the subject of ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... instinct which leads thieves always to take the safest path, he found himself at the end of the Rue Lafayette. There he stopped, breathless and panting. He was quite alone; on one side was the vast wilderness of the Saint-Lazare, on the other, Paris enshrouded in darkness. "Am I to be captured?" he cried; "no, not if I can use more activity than my enemies. My safety is now a mere question of speed." At this moment he saw a cab at the top of the Faubourg Poissonniere. The dull driver, smoking his pipe, was plodding along toward the limits of the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... long gray twilight of the North, and at last the stars, and night, and darkness, with the icebergs, white, spectral, and coldly majestic, rising in silhouette against the distant sky, and the throbbing, restless sea, somber and ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... from torpor, ravenous with hunger. It was all the grand savagery, the terrible strength of Mother Earth, the Great Protector, from whose loins I had sprung, but who is unspeakably awesome until you see her face in the rising sun. Then the nightmare of the darkness which empalls her with a cold sense of death, turns into a radiance as of gold ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the silent room, and the dead coals in the grate dropped one by one into the fender with a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture still sat in the armchair with the same graceful pose and the same lovely expression, and smiled sweetly at the encircling darkness. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... a means of escape, and this was no slight task, for he could scarcely move a step, and his great big body was not at all easy to conceal. Indeed, the only means he could see open to him was to lie down in one of the great ditches which lay here and there all over the land, and trust to the darkness concealing him until the soldiers had returned ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Darkness fell. It was nine o'clock now. There was a discharge of firearms, and a great flame mounted up from the pile on the hill, and put out the stars and filled ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... opening one of the letters, "here is a Radcliffean tour along the picturesque coasts of Dorset and Devonshire. Why he went this tour, unless for the pleasure and glory of describing it, Heaven knows! Clouds and darkness rest over the tourist's private history: but this, of course, renders his letters more piquant and interesting. All who have a just taste either for literature or for gallantry, know how much we are indebted to the obscure for the sublime; and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... nothing could keep him from knocking him down. He felt that a stake and burning fagots would be the proper thing, but, failing that, fists would do. Yet, there was Becky's name to be considered. Revenge, if he took it, must be a subtle thing—his mind had worked on it in the darkness of ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... alludes to that well-known but unusual and very long darkness of the sun which happened upon the murder of Julius Cesar by Brutus and Cassius, which is greatly taken notice of by Virgil, Pliny, and other Roman authors. See Virgil's Georgics, B. I., just before the end; and Pliny's Nat. Hist. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... his noon-tide blaze, New wonders still thy curious search attend, Begun on earth, in highest Heav'n to end. O! while thou dost those God-like works pursue, What thanks, from human-kind to thee are due! Whose error, doubt, and darkness, you remove, And charm down knowledge from her throne above. Nature to thee her choicest secrets yields, Unlocks her springs, and opens all her fields; Shews the rich treasure that her breast contains, In azure fountains, or enamell'd plains; Each healing stream, each ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... songs never sung, And my plays to darkness blown! I am still so young, so young, And life ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... staggered; and whirling he fell, and the meat was scattered around, And the double cup moreover, and his forehead smote the ground; And his heart was wrung with torment, and with both feet spurning he smote The high-seat; and over his eyen did the cloud of darkness float. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... distant click of the elevator depositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. A train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creak which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching lay of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... being a mere money-maker, the inglorious driver of sweated labourers. If only these two could meet—and agree—there might possibly be some hope for the Dawn of that New World which the War surely came to found and the washy kind of Peace which followed seems to have thrust back again into darkness. True, there are some business men who perceive behind their business a goal, an ideal, in which there is something more than their own personal wealth and glory, the be-diamonding of a fat wife, and the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... like two persons in their dotage, gazing about them at things they did not see. Their deserted salon, so filled with memories to them, was feebly lighted by a single lamp which seemed expiring. Without the sparkling of the flame upon the hearth, they might soon have been in total darkness. ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... or amethyst ... unnumbered jacinths, emeralds, sapphires, chrysolites, and topazes, and, lastly, those matchless carbuncles which, placed on the High Altar of St. Mark's, blazed with intrinsic light, and scattered darkness by their own beams;—these are but a sample of the treasures which accrued to Venice" (Villehardouin, lib. in. p. 129). (See Sketches from Venetian History, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... even be compared with that which is produced by the glow of a clear sky. Nature, at the first view, appears to be covered with a gauze veil, the azure of the firmament seems black, the intensity of light is like darkness. With Henri, as with the Spanish girl, there was an equal intensity of feeling; and that law of statics, in virtue of which two identical forces cancel each other, might have been true also in the moral order. And the embarrassment ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... "Darkness to daylight shall lift up thy paean, Hill to hill thunder, vale cry back to vale, With wind-notes as of eagles AEschylean, And ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... was no easy task to avoid these danger spots, for the horses floundered on the muddy soil. Vaguely the girl wondered how she would find her way back in the darkness, as she had planned. She said little as they approached the road- house, for the thoughts within her brain had begun to clamor too wildly; but Struve, more arrogant than ever before, more terrifyingly sure of himself, was loudly garrulous. As ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... rapidly across the meadow, in my excitement tripping and falling several times in the first hundred yards. In daylight I have no doubt that I should easily have seen a gateway or at least an opening from the old meadow, but in the fast-gathering darkness it seemed to me that the open field was surrounded on every side by impenetrable forests. Absurd as it may seem, for no one knows what his mind will do at such a moment, I recalled vividly a passage from Stanley's story of his search for Livingstone, in which he relates how he escaped ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... anatomy of melancholy states that: "If a drunken man begets a child it will never likely have a good brain," Michelet predicts: "Woe unto the children of darkness, the sons of drunkenness who were, nine months before their birth, an outrage on ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... or had ought to be somewhere in this valley between Posa Buena and Taylor's ranch. But where is Struve, the hardier ruffian of the two? He ain't been seen since they broke out. He sure never reached Ft. Lincoln. My notion is that he dropped off the train in the darkness about Casa Grande, then rolled his tail for the Mal Pais country. Your eyes are asking whys mighty loud, my friend; and my answer is that there's a man up there mebbe who has got to hide Struve if he shows up. That's only a guess, but it looks good to me. This man was the brains of the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... the darkness was lit up by a vivid flash, a thunderous boom traveled across the bay, and the heavy shot tore its way screaming over the Raleigh, quickly followed by a second, which fell astern of the Olympia ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... so much sunshine at command, Why light with darkness mix? Why dash with pain our pleasure? Your Helicon ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... from Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and Welsh Poetry of a religious or serious character. The first half of the book is concerned with Irish poems. The first group of these starts with the dawning of Christianity out of Pagan darkness, and the spiritualising of the Early Irish by the wisdom to be found in the conversations between King Cormac MacArt—the Irish ancestor of our Royal Family—and his son and successor, King Carbery. Here also will be found those pregnant ninth-century utterances known as ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... a forest of bracken. Here was a great, beautiful chamber for him! and what better bed than God's heather! what better canopy than God's high, star-studded night, with its airy curtains of dusky darkness! Was it not in this very chamber that Jacob had his vision of the mighty stair leading up to the gate of heaven! Was it not under such a roof Jesus spent his last nights on the earth! For comfort and protection he sought no human shelter, but went out into ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... which, in that time, had become visible in Fanny Lovering. The very light of her life seemed to go out suddenly; and, for a while, she had groped about in thick darkness. A few feeble rays were again becoming visible; but from a quarter of the heavens where she had not expected light. Wisely, gently, and unobtrusively had Mrs. Waring, during this period of gloom and distress, cast high truths into the mind of her suffering ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... Better in the stifling cabin, on the sofa thou shouldst lie, Sickening as the fetid nigger bears the greens and bacon by; Better, when the midnight horrors haunt the strained and creaking ship, Thou shouldst yell in vain for brandy with a fever-sodden lip; When amid the deepening darkness and the lamp's expiring shade, From the bagman's berth above thee comes the bountiful cascade, Better than upon the Broadway thou shouldst be at noonday seen, Smirking like a Tracy Tupman with a Mantalini mien, With a rivulet of satin falling o'er ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... a dreadful feeling at his heart, tumbled out of bed. "Isn't Joe!" he found time to say, with a glance in the darkness over toward Joel's bed. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... write a more extended and complete exposition of the problem, but limitations of strength, due to advancing age, have made that hope impracticable. But as one man drops the torch, another hand will grasp it; and where now is darkness and secrecy, there will one day be knowledge ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the unrelenting tutelage of Treiste molded her young days pretty rigidly to form, but more than once, during the rehearsals of "The Web," Lilly, seated in the black maw of the auditorium, would turn suddenly to the feel of her daughter's gaze burning like sun through glass into the darkness. The company adopted her as a pet. The director babied her. Once, as the afternoon rehearsal was disbanding, she crept up through a box to the stage. The footlights were dark, but she came down quite freely toward them, seeming to feel their mock blaze, and sang a snatch or two ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... half-hour to accomplish the distance between the ship and the spot where the boats had been moored, and during the whole of that time Gurney and Saunders kept their eyes intently fixed upon the settlement, while I steered; but the place remained wrapped in darkness, and nothing occurred to occasion ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... logical conclusions which M. Taine at last reveals to us,—conclusions which are to transform and change the soul as well as the understanding. This doctrine has hitherto been but a dream, and society has, up to the present time, walked in darkness. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... you will enter an antechamber rich in the magic of the East. In a reverent obscurity you will find Buddha on the right, Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one, while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in the darkness an Oriental woman will be seated on the ground, twanging on a sarabar, and now and then crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in darksome rites. You will thus be "worked up" to a sense of the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... P.M., it drew once more along the land from the westward. The distance between the ice and the land increased as we proceeded, and at midnight the channel appeared to be four or five miles wide, as far as the darkness of the night would allow of our judging; for we could at this period scarcely see to read in the cabin at ten o'clock. The snow which fell during the day was observed, for the first time, to remain upon the land without dissolving; thus affording a proof of the temperature ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... footsteps of the other; then she would double back and go the other way, and thus they kept it up, never coming face to face. I stopped dreaming and gave them my entire attention; I was beginning to feel a thrill of suspense as to which one would finally outwit the other and overtake her. The darkness deepened; more stars came out; the moon rose; still the exciting game did not come to a finish. Finally, a woman came out on the porch of the house on the corner and called, "Emma! Mary! Come in now." They ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... telegraphed the glad tidings to his mother, who waited their coming with joyful anticipation. Long before the cars reached the city, Mrs. Leroy was at the depot, restlessly walking the platform or eagerly peering into the darkness to catch the first glimpse of the train ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... at last, and he did not follow her. Like her, he was bewildered, but for him she was a light he could not put out: for her he was the symbol of that darkness which ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... it doggedly. She limped along, getting wearier every mile of the way. But it was not until she discovered that she was lost to all sense of direction that she broke down and wept. The land here was creased by swales, one so like another that in the darkness she had gone astray and did not know ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... remained in a silence which seemed to increase with the darkness. At length the stillness became so marked that Barlasch slowly turned his head towards the bed. The same instinct had come to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... clouds still keep their station, 40 The unborn Earthquake yet is in the womb, The bloody Chaos yet expects Creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The Elements await but for the Word, "Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,[296] Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise, Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored: Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice? Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields, 50 Ploughed by the sunbeams solely, would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... sun rode high in the heavens, and the nights were light. The darkness lay crouching under the earth and had no power. And he possessed the child's happy gift ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... is waiting for me and that I shall meet him in the dawning?" she said. "Oh yes, I have known that in my heart for a long time. It troubled me terribly when I lost his letters. They had been such a link, and for a while I was in outer darkness. And then—by degrees, after little Dinah came back to me—I began to find that after all there were other links. Helping her in her trouble helped me to bear my own. And I came to see that ministering to a need outside one's own is the surest means of finding comfort in sorrow for oneself. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... rode on slowly until darkness came, but never saw so much as a light that might guide us. And presently we let the dogs loose, thinking that they would go homewards. But a greyhound is not like a mastiff, and they hung round us, careless, or helpless, ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... wake again. Some of the sober Shokas offered to carry the two helpless men on their backs. We were wasting valuable time and the sky was getting clouded. When the moon had disappeared behind the high mountain, I went ahead to reconnoitre. All was darkness but for the glimmer of a brilliant star here and there in the sky. I crawled to the bridge and listened. Not a sound, not a light on the opposite bank. All was silence, that dead silence of nature and human ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... barren of all interest; for nothing touches me but what has a reference to her. If the clock strikes, the sound jars me; a million of hours will not bring back peace to my breast. The light startles me; the darkness terrifies me. I seem falling into a pit, without a hand to help me. She has deceived me, and the earth fails from under my feet; no object in nature is substantial, real, but false and hollow, like her faith on which I ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... more akin to contempt than to love. Why should he love me? I was not born to be loved, not made to be loved. And yet I wanted love so much. I wanted all or nothing, and I have got pity—pity that puts you in a madhouse, and comfortably leaves you to rot! Oh, my God! is this madness—this horror of darkness that seems pressing on my brain? (A knock at the door.) What's that? Come in! (Enter Jane with tea.) No, not there, Jane—the small table; and bring another cup, ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... first and second guard of their adversaries, but when they reached the third they were detected; for on account of fatigue and fear, and the darkness and cold, the women and children kept calling to the men of fighting age to come back. They would all have perished or been captured, had not the barbarians been so busily occupied with seizing the plunder. This gave an opportunity for many of the most ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... anything. I warrant you now that many a time it's only been the fear they have for our hustling little fire eater of a police officer, Chief Sutton, that's kept Buck and his crowd from trying a heap more stunts than they did. Remember when they cut the wires, and left that big meeting in pitch darkness? Yes, and that other time they turned loose a dozen mice at the bazaar, and set the ladies to shrieking and fainting? But thank goodness I've got through the Winter without losing my boat, and ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... with paved highway, could the Editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... whom she fondly loved, had so unnerved and frightened her that she too fell a prey to the delusion. They ended by admitting her into the sisterhood of this convent, excusing the payment of the large sum usually demanded; and as her darkness was now great in proportion to the measure of light against which she had sinned, they found her a valuable decoy-bird to draw others into the snare. I did not learn all these particulars at the time, nor until after her decease, when I met with a near family connection of hers who ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... he rose up in his stirrups and struck Sir Palamydes upon the crown of the helmet so dreadful a buffet that the brains of Sir Palamydes swam like water, and he must needs catch the pommel of his saddle to save himself from falling. Then Sir Tristram smote him another buffet, and therewith darkness came upon the sight of Sir Palamydes and he rolled off from his horse into the ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... himself so disrespectfully treated by such a sorry-looking individual, lost his temper, and raising the lamp full of oil, smote Don Quixote such a blow with it on the head that he gave him a badly broken pate; then, all being in darkness, he went out, and Sancho Panza said, "That is certainly the enchanted Moor, Senor, and he keeps the treasure for others, and for us only ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it was he also who arranged with the Chinese that one-tenth of the tonnage dues—afterwards raised to seven-tenths—should be devoted to port improvements and lighting the coasts. Until he took the matter in hand, vessels had been obliged to grope around the difficult China coast in total darkness; to-day, thanks to his foresight, lighthouses are dotted from Newchang in the north to Hainan in the south, and a little fleet of three Revenue ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... move Souls inert to life and love. But there's one who doth inherit Angel gift and angel spirit, Bidding tides of gladness flow Through the realms of want and woe; 'Mid lone age and misery's lot, Kindling pleasures long forgot, Seeking minds oppressed with night, And on darkness shedding light, She the seraph's speech doth know, She hath done their deeds below; So, when o'er this misty strand She shall clasp their waiting hand, They will fold her to their breast, More ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Mozart's music strike my ears. With what inconceivable alternate force and tenderness did Schlesinger's magic playing impress it deep into my heart! Such lovely impressions remain on my soul, there to work for good, past all power of time and circumstance. In the darkness of this life they reveal a bright, beautiful prospect, inspiring confidence and hope. Oh Mozart, Mozart, what countless consolatory images of a bright, better world hast ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... lantern before she ventured down the long flight of steps. The match spurted, and now the tiny yellow flame sprang up and shed a faint light on the immediate space around her. It only made the outer darkness seem more intense. But no matter, she could see two steps in front of her; and holding the lantern steadily before her, she stepped carefully down and down, until she stood on the firm greensward of the glen. Ah! how different everything was now from its usual aspect. The ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... started for the Worsleys, where she was dining. One little lighted house looked much like another perched on the mountainside, and the wooden board painted 'Branksome Hall, Maj.-Gen. T.P. Worsley, R.E.,' nailed to the most conspicuous tree from the main road, was invisible in the darkness. Madeline arrived in consequence at the wrong dinner-party, and was acclaimed and redirected with much gaiety, which gave her a further agreeable impression of the insouciance of Simla, but made her later still at the Worsleys. So that half ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... consider it. A sigh! That meant a person. Striking a match, she looked eagerly down the hall. Something was moving between the two walls. But when she tried to determine its character, it was swallowed up in darkness,—the match had gone out. Anxious for the child and determined to go her way to the kitchen, she now felt about for the gas-fixture and succeeded in lighting up. The whole hall again burst into view but the thing was no longer there; the ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... him, and he found himself standing in the darkness of midnight, with the splendid clothes upon his back, and the magic purse with its hundred pieces of gold money in ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... you this way." She preceded him through a narrow passage to a flight of steps leading up into the darkness. "These stairs are not often used, but we shall escape the crowds in the ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... abundance, I adore you, and you worship me; my heart is enraptured, my senses charmed by it; but amidst this highest bliss, I have the misfortune of not knowing which it is whom I love. Dispel this darkness, and unfold to me who this ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... to be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this great Western Sun be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world? ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... dreaming imbecility, of wickedness, of frenzy, through every phasis of Babylonian confusion; yet, also, teeming and heaving with life and the instincts of truth—of truth hunting and chasing in the broad daylight, or of truth groping in the chambers of darkness; sometimes seen as it displays its cornucopia of tropical fruitage; sometimes heard dimly, and in promise, working its way through diamond mines. Not the tropics, not the ocean, not life itself, is such a type of variety, of infinite forms, or of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... natural emotions of anxiety and suspense. His reception was not of a nature to compose him. He was shown into a darkened room. The one lamp on the table was turned down low, and the little light thus given was still further obscured by a shade. The corners of the room were in almost absolute darkness. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... disaster, made a frantic dash, and ran into Hamp's arms. The latter dropped the candle, and it was extinguished as soon as it struck the floor, plunging the scene in utter darkness. ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... and then a big voice was booming down to her and a big form was pacing deliberately by her side. Twice he took her into a restaurant and gave her lunch. She had never been in a restaurant before, and it seemed to her like a place in fairyland. The semi-darkness of the retired rooms faintly colored by tiny electric lights, the beautifully clean tables and the strange foods, the neatly dressed waitresses with quick, deft movements and gravely attentive faces—these things thrilled her. She noticed that the girls in the restaurant, in spite ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... had now, for some time, been coming thicker and thicker over the field. But still the deadly struggle went on in the darkness, as the red and white badges intimated the respective parties, and their war-cries rose above the din, - "Vaca de Castro y el Rey," - "Almagro y el Rey," - while both invoked the aid of their military apostle St. James. Holguin, who commanded the royalists ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... begins his short account of the year 1141 by saying that the history of Italy during that period is almost entirely hidden in darkness, because there are neither writers nor chroniclers of the time, and he goes on to say that no one knows why the town of Tivoli had so long rebelled against the Popes. The fact remains, astonishing and ridiculous,—in the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... remain as they were of old, resplendent with the beautiful works of God, though not, as of old, marred so terribly by the diabolical devices of man. "Cannibal Islands" some of them still are, without doubt, but a large proportion of them have been saved from heathen darkness by the light of God's Truth as revealed in the Holy Bible, and many thousands of islanders—including the descendants of those who slew the great Captain of the last generation—have enrolled themselves under the banner of the "Captain of our salvation," ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... beneath. The very air felt like the quarry out of which the snow had been dug which was being ground above. The wind felt black, the sky was black, and the lamps were blowing about as if they wanted to escape for the darkness was after them. It was the Sunday following the induction of Fergus, and this was the meteoric condition through which Donal and Gibbie passed on their way to the North church, to hear him preach in the pulpit that was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... jewels, like the ruby and diamond; but none of these rival the brilliancy and beauty of flame. What diamond can shine like flame? It owes its lustre at night-time to the very flame shining upon it. The flame shines in darkness, but the light which the diamond has is as nothing until the flame shine upon it, when it is brilliant again. The candle alone shines by itself, and for itself, or for those who have arranged the materials. Now, let us look a little at the form ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... providing for their own subsistence, how could they be better employed than in qualifying themselves for the instruction of others? Would not their minds be better satisfied with discovering luminous truths, than in wandering through the thick darkness of error? Would it be more difficult to discern the clear principles of Morality, than the imaginary principles of a divine and theological Morality? Would men of ordinary capacities find it as difficult to fix in their heads the simple notions of ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... the narrow streets of the town to a chamber which was set apart for the infliction of punishment. It was a dark, vaulted apartment under a public building. The massive pillars of stone which supported its roof looked pale and ghostlike against the thick darkness which was beyond them, giving the idea of interminable space. One of the sbirros lighted a lantern, and led the way through a massive door, all studded with huge nails, into a small square chamber, the walls of which looked as if they ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... to protect him, and after sending his family by night across a little mountain river, he remained alone in the darkness on the other side. The Bible tells us that there he met God in the shape of a man and wrestled with Him until morning, saying, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." And God did bless him and gave him a new name—that of "Israel," which ...
— The Farmer Boy; the Story of Jacob • J. H. Willard
... Nibelungen. In the title of the poem 'Nibelungen' is simply equivalent to 'Burgundians': the poem relates the downfall of the Burgundian kings and their people. Originally the Nibelungen were, as their name, which is connected with nebel, 'mist', 'gloom', signifies, the powers of darkness to whom the light-hero Siegfried fell a prey. After Siegfried obtains possession of the treasure the name Nibelungen is still applied to Alberich and the dwarfs who guard it and who are now Siegfried's vassals. Then after Siegfried's death the name is given to the Burgundians. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... said. "I was wonderin' wheer yo' were. Yo' came just at the reet moment, as yo' aye do!" Then, in a loud voice, addressing the darkness: "Yo're not hurt, Sam'l Todd—I can tell that by yer noise; it was nob'but the shot off the door warmed yo'. Coom away doon ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... getting permission to take two regiments and a section of artillery, and go in pursuit of Morgan. In thirty minutes after the orders were read to the soldiers, the column was on its march. The road was mountainous, the darkness dense, the route almost impassable, but the Kanawha river was reached at the break of day. The steamers were both in sight, and on these the eager men and the artillery were embarked. By daylight ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frederic," cried an employe: "it's the gas-regulator." "Bah! has the gas got a regulator, then? Lucky gas! Let's see what will happen." With this he turned the knob and plunged the whole theatre into darkness. Two thousand Frenchmen and women cried out in alarm and consternation. Great was their indignation and savage their inquiries as to the cause of the occurrence. But no sooner were they informed that Lemaitre ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... across the sky field on their way to the roost in the old burial-ground. There go two, there twoscore in a whirling, scudding flurry, like a swift-blown bunch of autumn leaves. For more than an hour they keep passing—till the dusk turns to darkness, till all are ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... laughter rang up the stairs as Dolores, evading Buttons's arm, which that young man had tried to pass about her waist, dashed away into the darkness and out of sight. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, (See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last! See—the prismatic colours, glistening and rolling!) Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell; Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil; Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown; A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random; Just as much ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... and smiled. She laughed pretty laughs; she admired everything; she took out the darling little jack-in-the-boxes, and was so obliged to Sam. And when they got home, and Mr. Huxter, still with darkness on his countenance, was taking a frigid leave of her—she burst into tears, and said he was a ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Veitel stared down into the river, and put his foot into it to see how deep one would have to wade before reaching those steps. So occupied was he with the escape of the old man, that he did not heed, did not even feel the cold. The water rose to his knee. He looked round once more. All was darkness, mist, silence, like that of the grave, but for the wail of the water ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... metaphysical vanities and contradictory bewilderments of opinions concerning the divine nature and the elements of man, which, as far as a demon-spirit could go, had plunged the created world, both physically and morally, into the darkness of chaos again. The Holy Scriptures are now the foundation studies of our country, and ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... this time on he grew worse. He was very gentle the last months of his life, and touchingly grateful for every attention shown him. Every evening he would place himself at the piano and improvise for half an hour. When too fatigued to continue, he would sit at the window till long after darkness had fallen. He gradually grew weaker till he passed peacefully ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... at such a crisis, is no common calamity to the world. Our country mourns a father. The Almighty disposer of human events has taken from us our greatest benefactor and ornament. It becomes us to submit with reverence, to HIM who 'maketh darkness his pavilion.' ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... involved in darkness, of which the sedative effect is well known to nurses and governesses who have to deal with pettish children. It retarded the pace of the irritated Baronet, if it did not abate his resentment, and Mr. Oldbuck, better acquainted with the locale, got up ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... they never shirked any task, never turned from any drudgery, that could lighten the load of another. Dear hands! how many blood-stained faces they have washed, how many wounds they have bound up, how many eyes they have closed in dying, how many bodies they have sadly yielded to the darkness ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a sort of preliminary. Then, restraining himself no longer, he embodied his sentiments in an article for the North American Review entitled, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." There was crying need for some one to speak the right word. He was about the only one who could do it and be certain of a universal audience. He took as his text some Christmas Eve clippings from the New York Tribune and Sun which he had been ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... conversation, neither man noticed that the wooden shutter in the adobe wall close at hand had been noiselessly opened from within, just an inch or two. Neither knew, neither could see that behind it, in the gathering darkness of the short summer evening, ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... entrance, with a glow of light and the sound of feet hurrying in the passages. There were men too, half-a-dozen or so standing at the doors of the stables, while others leaned from the windows. One or two lanthorns just kindled glimmered here and there in the semi-darkness; and in a corner two smiths were shoeing ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... the soul is as a sun, but with this noble distinction,—the sun is confined in its career; day after day it visits the same lands, gilds the same planets or rather, as the astronomers hold, stands, the motionless centre of moving worlds. But the soul, when it sinks into seeming darkness and the deep, rises to new destinies, fresh regions unvisited before. What we call Eternity, may be but an endless series of those transitions which men call 'deaths,' abandonments of home after home, ever to fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age after age, the spirit, that ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and misty. He went through the wood, stumbling and feeling his way to the Mill. Birkin was away. Good—he was half glad. He turned up the hill, and stumbled blindly over the wild slopes, having lost the path in the complete darkness. It was boring. Where was he going? No matter. He stumbled on till he came to a path again. Then he went on through another wood. His mind became dark, he went on automatically. Without thought or sensation, he stumbled unevenly on, out into the open again, fumbling for stiles, losing the path, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... be making a cigarette. A match flared and lighted his face for an instant, then was pinched out, and he was again only a black shape in the half-darkness. ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... of the time the sun dips only a little way below the horizon and broad daylight is continuous. The birds, therefore, have twenty-four hours of daylight for at least {75} eight months in the year, and during the other four months have considerably more daylight than darkness." ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... his rays decline, The clustering billows o'er his ramparts sweep, Slow droops his banner—fades his light divine, And darkness rules the deep. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... made no sign. She watched the cart, slowly picking its way over the rough ground of the farm-yard, till it turned the corner of the big barn and disappeared in the gusty darkness. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... freshened. The shades of night gathered; the Admiral gave his signal; the nets were shot and the Short Blue fleet sailed away into the deepening darkness of ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... a low-down trick is this, Brennan?" he snapped, glaring through the darkness at the face of his captor. "What's become of Pasqual Mendez? ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the soles of my feet; and if he rides to the wars, may the plague strike me if I don't stick to his elbow!' He raised his hand excitedly as he spoke, and instantly losing his balance, he shot into a dense clump of bushes by the roadside whence his legs flapped helplessly in the darkness. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in darkness! The lights were out in the teepees. The whole camp was wrapped in solid slumber. And as we sunk to rest in our bed of new-mown hay, we breathed a prayer for the slumbering Sioux around us; May the Cloud, by day, ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... his tired limbs, and sat down for a time, in a spot where a fallen boulder sheltered his naked body from the cool morning wind. In a few moments he rose, flexed his muscles and peered through the starlit darkness for a way up the cliff behind the beach. He found it impossible to ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the street, boiling with rage and shame, he hurried onward, scarcely knowing or caring whither he went; out into the open country, and on through woods and over hills he tramped, nor thought of turning back till the sun had set, and darkness began to creep about ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... she said, and passing her arm through his she stared for a few moments with a singular intentness into the darkness ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... bloom in its fullest beauty. Believing her beyond his reach he felt a sudden overpowering sense of utter loneliness. Fully clad as he was, he flung himself upon his bed, but his arm, his breast, still tingled with the contact from the dance. Sleep held aloof from him. Darkness was no refuge from her tempting face, for, visible to his soul, it stood ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not lead him to destruction; ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... was chilly in comparison with that of the warm summer's morning in which the outside world was rejoicing, and Derrick shivered as he first encountered its penetrating dampness. Of course the darkness was intense, but at first it was partially dispelled by the lights of the half-dozen miners in whose company he had entered the road. As they gradually left him behind, their twinkling lights grew fainter and fainter, until at last they vanished ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Day Ev'n and Morn Nor past uncelebrated nor unsung By the Celestial Quires, when Orient Light Exhaling first from Darkness they beheld; Birth-day of Heavn and Earth! with Joy and Shout The ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... scud of the ocean, My body is rough with the rime. 25 But one stout hero and soldier, With heart to face such a storm. Wild scud the clouds, Hurled by the tempest, A tale-bearing wind, 30 That gossips afar. The darkness and storm Are nothing to me. This way and that am I turning, Climbing the hill Ma'e-ma'e, 35 To look on thy charms, dear one, The fragrant buds of the mountain. What perfume breathes from thy body, Such time as to thee ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... neighbouring clearing. Our kind hosts gave us a cup of coffee about five o'clock, and we then started for home. The last mile of our walk was performed in the dark. The forest in this part is obscure even in broad daylight, but I was scarcely prepared for the intense opacity of darkness which reigned here on this night, and which prevented us from seeing each other while walking side by side. Nothing occurred of a nature to alarm us, except that now and then a sudden rush was heard among the trees, and once a dismal shriek ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... peculiarities of design, equally wonderful with those of any other works which have come from the hand of the Creator. The history of these races, however, must remain for ever, more or less, in a state of darkness, since the depths in which they live, are beyond the power of human exploration, and since the illimitable expansion of their domain places them almost entirely out of the reach ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the street lamps are not lighted; so that, as it too frequently happens, when the moon is overclouded, or on rainy evenings when she is totally obscured, the streets are for the most part in perfect darkness. This petty economy is called "the magistrates' light," they having the direction of the lighting, paving, and cleansing ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... tends to evil, they incline to good; whilst mankind is advancing towards darkness, they are aspiring to enlightenment; whilst mankind is drawn towards vice, they are attracted by virtue. And, this granted, they demand the assistance of force, by means of which they are to substitute their own tendencies for those ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... Sunday's walk over the stubbles near Winchester. His criticisms are always good, and their form picturesque. He compares human life to a chamber that becomes gradually darkened, in which one door after another is set open, showing only dim passages leading out into darkness. This, he says, is the burden of the mystery which Wordsworth felt and endeavoured to explore; and he thinks that Wordsworth is deeper than Milton, though he attributes this, justly, more to 'the general and gregarious advance of intellect, than individual greatness of mind.' So far as ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the window, threw it wide open as though he were stifling, and, erect before the darkness, he began to talk into the street, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and great wealth, but even of the natural aristocracy of knowledge and virtue." It seemed to two young New Englanders who traversed the vast region from the Western Reserve to New Orleans in 1813, in the interests of missionary societies, that the people were wrapped in spiritual darkness, "being ignorant, often vicious, and utterly destitute of Bibles and religious literature." The General Bible Society of the United States was founded in 1816 to dispel this irreligious gloom. Within five years this organization and its numerous auxiliaries ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... times, no living poet ever arrived at the fullness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgement upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... your feelings and sympathize with them," said Mr. Middleton. "There you sat in the encircling darkness, asking yourself with no hope of an answer, 'Was it Mildred? Was it her sister? Was it Mildred contemptuously repudiating the idea of marriage with me, or the sister haughtily scoffing at some sentiments just professed by Mildred? But I should not have spent ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... to the east window. It was true. The rioters, supplied with oil and torches, had made their way in the darkness through Callahan's picket line near the river and ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... faith, the party separated. The grandson and the hireling took their several ways to the folds, while old Mark himself slowly continued his course towards the dwellings. It was near enough to the hours of darkness, to render the preparations we have mentioned prudent; still, no urgency called for particular haste, in the return of the veteran to the shelter and protection of his own comfortable and secure abode. He therefore loitered along the path, occasionally ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... of your country and your Church, and especially of your missionary stations. These to a man of missionary enterprise, who loves to bear the banner of the cross, and push its victories more and more upon the territories of darkness and sin, are motives of high and almost irresistible influence. And they have so affected my mind, that although my local attachments to the land of my fathers, and for that branch of the Church where I was, and have been nurtured, are strong; although my aged parents lean upon me ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... immediately carried me above, sick as I was. Here I learned that a boat was approaching in the darkness, and that preparations for defence were ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... propounded as they went downstairs; and the fixed eye of Philosophy—and its rolling eye, too,—soon lost the three figures, and the basket in the darkness of the street. ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sky, and a great rush of air and a loud rumble of noise extended for many miles around the city; the first blast was soon followed by the sounds of falling buildings and of growing fires, and a great cloud of dust and smoke began to cast a pall of darkness ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... not true that the work is a specially difficult one. The Revelation of God's mind made through Holy Scripture and through the life of His Incarnate Son is an open book that any one can study; and to any objection that such study has led chiefly to difference of opinion and darkness rather than light, the answer is that such disaster follows for the most part only when the guidance of the Catholic Church is repudiated; when, that is, we pursue a course in this study which we should not pursue in relation to any other. If ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... halo deepens along the mountain top; the dark-blue dome of the sky fills with a lighter azure; the star swoons, and the sun peers over the crest. It ascends. Its rays plunge into the pool of darkness still upon the meadow; they pierce it, at first separately as with rapier thrusts, and then finally billow down into it in a cascade of molten gold. The shadows flee; the sunlight strikes the cabin; and Charles-Norton ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... her in the carriage while she was driving homeward. During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement were so ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... the invading heathen Danes, who, by this time, had begun their ravages in the land. Amongst the rulers of Northumbria in those days, the name of Alfwald the Just, who was called "the Friend of God," shines out with enduring light across the stormy darkness of that terrible period; yet even his just and merciful rule and noble life could not save him from the hand of the assassin. He was buried with much mourning and great pomp in the Abbey at Hexham; and during the recent excavations the fact of a Saxon interment ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... reply twenty of the fighting-men of Mo, having recognized us, dashed across, and notwithstanding our resistance, had seized us. Goliba, too, was quickly made prisoner, and above the shouting and hoarse imprecations we heard in the darkness ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux |
