"Dimly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very few trees on it, and in extent, as it reached away to the north seemed interminable. South was a nearly level plain, and to the west I thought I could dimly see a range of mountains that held a little snow upon their summits, but on the main range to the south there was none. It seemed to me the dim snowy mountains must be as far as 200 miles away, but of course I could not judge accurately. After looking at this grand, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Barclay and Perkins, while 'A patient life of unrewarded toil' renders sympathetically the weakness of the veteran discharged after years of service, waiting patiently for the end. One instance of a more imaginative kind shows us 'Neptune's Horses' as the painter dimly discerned them, with arched necks and flowing manes, rising and leaping in the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... host that the saints were fighting on their side. The battle-field was clear of the smoke from the burning weeds, which had curled away, and hung in white clouds of fantastic shape on the brow of the distant mountains. Some imaginative zealot, seeing this dimly through the dust of the battle, called out to his fellows, to look at the army of saints, clothed in white, and riding upon white horses, that were pouring over the hills to the rescue. All eyes were immediately turned to the distant smoke; faith was in every ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... fire first. There was need of it, too, for he could dimly make out two men, near the extreme head of the train, who were firing rapidly and firing their weapons in a fashion that drove up spurts of dirt ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... twilight yet; its various contents shewing dimly, the phoebe who had built her nest under the low roof just astir, but the wood work was going on briskly. Not indeed under the saw—that lay idle; but with the sort of noiseless celerity which was natural to him, Reuben Taylor was piling the sticks ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... earnestly in each other's faces, yet said nothing. A future grander, and more terrible than they had imagined, seemed suddenly defined before them, and each dimly felt the burden and the honor of his own ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... in all the churches is the strangest possible. The same monotonous, heartless, drowsy chaunting, always going on; the same dark building, darker from the brightness of the street without; the same lamps dimly burning; the selfsame people kneeling here and there; turned towards you, from one altar or other, the same priest's back, with the same large cross embroidered on it; however different in size, in shape, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... pass and kill time, for something that will drug or flutter or amuse. Beyond and above these things there is something else. The very central cause and essence of it—most definitely and most keenly felt by nobler spirits and cultivated intelligences, but also dimly and unconsciously animating very ordinary people—is the human delight in humanity—the pleasure of seeing the men and women of long past ages living, acting, and speaking as they might have done, those of the present living, acting, speaking as they do—but in each case with the portrayal ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... comrades appear, he filled his chest and opened his mouth, and the awful skirl arose once again, as if to pollute the night-air. Then Ongoloo roared. With mingled surprise and ferocity his men took up the strain, as they rushed towards the now dimly visible foe. ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... the next morning Dave Carson and Pocus Pete, astride their favorite horses, and carrying with them a substantial lunch, set off after the strays which had been dimly observed the day before up Forked ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... breast as that fair cantatrice had done in his own. Pac-chierotti is the third in the great triad of the male soprano singers of the eighteenth century, and the luster of his reputation does not shine dimly as compared with the other two. He commenced his musical career at Palermo in 1770, at the age of twenty, and when he went to England in 1778 expectations were raised to the highest pitch by the accounts given of him by Brydone in his "Tour through Sicily and Malta." His first English ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... Bab, creeping on tiptoes to the window. Before their front door, she could dimly outline the figures of two men, who were evidently arguing and protesting ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... stared at the light. Dimly, very vaguely be could make out that a causeway led downward from almost where he stood. He was convinced that should he try to climb back Ismail would merely reach out a hand and shove him down again, and there was no sense in being put to that indignity. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... he says, on a day like this, when the wind plays cello music across the rooftops.... I think about things. The town is like a fireless, dimly lighted room. Yesterday the windows sparkled with sunlight. To-day they ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... in the great dining-room, with the orchestra playing dimly in the adjacent Palm Court, Mrs. Osborn Kerr would put on the ineffable wedding gown, and all the other guests and the servants, with experienced eyes, would know it for what it was; and Mr. Osborn Kerr wore the dinner jacket from the best tailor in town, and after ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... the store on the side street without further incident. She looked across timidly at Nelson's windows. A lamp burned dimly there, so she ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... fortunes. They were apt to think of themselves as the inventors and monopolists of political liberty. Cut off by a vast stretch of ocean from the Old World, and having lost that contact with its affairs which the relation with Britain had hitherto maintained, they followed but dimly, and without much comprehension, the obscure and complex struggles wherein the spirit of liberty was working out a new Europe, in the face of difficulties vastly greater than any with which the Americans ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... open. Beyond, in the dimly lighted room, sat Leslie Moore, with her arms flung out on the table and her head bent upon them. She was weeping horribly—with low, fierce, choking sobs, as if some agony in her soul were trying to tear itself out. An old black ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... You will be rejoicing that glory is at its height when hateful death will come once again, and with eyes wide with horror, you will discard all things, and dimly and softly the fragrant spirit will waste and dissolve! You will yearn for native home, but distant will be the way, and lofty the mountains. Hence it is that you will betake yourself in search of father and mother, while they lie under the influence of a dream, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... interlace Those dimly-visioned boughs, As these young lovers face to face Renew their ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... rail, and, leaning on it, looked over the moonlit sea. He was thinking of ships as his wandering eye roved over the sea spaces, little dreaming of the message that the perfumed breeze was bearing him. The message that had been received and dimly understood by Emmeline. Then he leaned with his back to the rail and his hands in his pockets. He was not thinking now, he ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... eyes as planets roll, Thy sister-lights would scarce appear: E'en suns, which systems now controul, Would twinkle dimly through their ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... herself to answer. Humiliated to the last degree by Miss Wharton's bald injustice, she felt as though she wished never to see or hear of Jean Brent again. It was not until they were half way across the campus that she found her voice. She was dimly surprised at the resentment in her tones. "You chose your own course, Miss Brent, regardless of what I thought. That course has not only involved you in serious difficulty, but me as well. If you had obeyed me in the beginning, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... said the Inspector, pointing as he spoke to a big vessel showing dimly through the scud to starboard of us. "Pull ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... quiet street not very far from the Ritz Hotel. Mr. Parker led us across the pavement and we entered a block of flats. The entrance hall was dimly lit and there seemed to be no one about. Mr. Parker, however, rang for a lift, which came ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The lantern burned dimly, but it was not at the lantern he looked. In the farthest corner, scarcely visible in the feeble light, stood his wife, and at her shoulder was the gun, trained steadily ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Oxygen is a supporter of combustion, nitrogen is not. Increase the proportion of oxygen in the air, and the same substances burn with increased brilliancy; but diminish the proportion gradually, and they will burn more and more dimly until they become extinct. Iron and steel, as well as wood and the ordinary combustibles, will burn with great brilliancy ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... in the sitting-room," replied the maid, with round eyes of curiosity upon the pair. Charlotte was making a desperate effort to walk by herself, to recover herself, but Anderson was still almost carrying her bodily. She wondered dimly at the strange trembling of her limbs, at the way the bright orange and red of the marigolds and nasturtiums swam before her eyes, and once again she saw quite distinctly the evil face of the man peer out at her from among them; ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... duty into such love as He manifested toward men. He embodied the heroism of meekness, the courage of self-sacrifice, the vision of goodness. He was an example of all that is strong, serene, sacrificial, in the midst of the lowest and most unresponsive conditions. So much we see, and the rest we dimly, but ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... of thirty, he settled down, with every intention of making it his home for life; and here he shortly after wooed and won the daughter of a neighbouring clergyman, whose only dower was the beauty of a countenance which but dimly reflected the inner beauty of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... for a recess or two extending to the ship's skin, penned in between bunkers. Twelve hundred tons of coal, distributed like a thick wall round us, make the place warm in the tropics. Forward, the stokeholds, dimly enough lit save when a furnace door opens and a fiery glow illuminates the bent back and soot-blurred face of some cosmopolitan fireman. Overhead, each lit by a single lamp, are the water-gauges—green glass tubes ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... cottage-room, dimly lighted by a lamp, and Mary spinning near her bedside. She sings a country air, and goes on working, till a rustling noise is heard, more light is thrown upon the stage, and a glorious creature, in white raiment, with broad golden wings, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... exclamation of surprise and anxiety—the tides and currents were bearing them away from the intended landing- place. It was now almost low water, and instead of an immediate shore, there lay before them a vast field of scarred rocks, dimly seen. He gave the signal to lay-to, and himself took the bearings. The tide was going out rapidly, disclosing reefs on either hand. He drew in carefully to the right of the rock known as L'Echiquelez, up through a passage scarce wide enough for canoes, and to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... interested in Fred and Sylvie! They had slipped into an easy friendship,—a friendship in which neither crossed a certain line, but from widely different motives. Fred's strongest and highest one was honor toward his friend. He began dimly to realize that high culture and refinement of the intellectual senses, a perfect state of outward finish and polish, did not always strengthen the soul's morality and purity. Patience, self-sacrifice, obedience to a creed ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... unspeakably appealing regret, a monotonous listlessness, a suggestion of hopeless surrender to something tragic and inevitable. Barclay was puzzled by it. It seemed illogical, and evaded him, like a melody with a dimly familiar motif which he was unable to place or even fully recall. It haunted him singularly, when Cavendish had left, and afterwards, in his leisure moments, came back to him, striving, as he fancied, to make itself understood. Intimately ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... felt about the room—it was unoccupied. Then he passed to the door at the far end. Cautiously he opened it until a narrow crack gave him a view of the dimly lighted chamber beyond. Within all seemed asleep. The mucker pushed the door still further open and stepped within—so must he search every hut within the village until he ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the little band moved on, picking its way along the uneven shore, and peering anxiously through the deepening shadows for signs of the distant ferry. Like a cavalcade of ghosts, but dimly seen as dimly seeing, they pressed on, all eyes for what light might give them guidance, all ears for what sound ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... silks so light that I hesitate to record the incredible number of square yards that you might pass through the ring on your little finger,—these, and a great many other indescribable objects, were all familiar to me. I pushed my way through the dimly-lighted warehouse, until I reached the back office, or parlor, where I found Hop Sing waiting to ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... impressed itself upon Mark Brendon after this stage in his inquiry. A time was coming when the false atmosphere in which he moved would be blown away by a stronger mind and a greater genius than his own; but already he found himself dimly conscious that some fundamental error had launched him along the wrong road—that he was groping in a blind alley and had missed the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... saw those two familiar clusters of chalets and hotels replaced by a great dispersed multitude of houses—we should see their window lights, but little else—that we were the victims of some strange transition in space or time, and we should come down by dimly-seen buildings into the part that would answer to Hospenthal, wondering and perhaps a little afraid. We should come out into this great main roadway—this roadway like an urban avenue—and look up it and down, hesitating whether to go along the valley Furka-ward, or down by Andermatt through the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... mother's immaculate breast now becomes apparent. A school of small fish basking near the surface rise and fall with the gentle undulating swell, seeing dimly overhead the blue sky, flecked with hosts of fleecy white clouds. A nearer, swifter cloud approaches, hesitates, splashes into their midst,—and the parent gull has caught her first fish of the day. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... swing door, and they came into the theater. It was dimly lighted, and over the rows of stalls pale coverings were drawn. The hundreds of empty boxes gaped. The distant galleries were lost in the darkness. It was a vast house, and the faint light and the emptiness of it made it look even vaster than ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... communion dresses, and one of them had an orange marigold in her black hair, just over her ear. They danced with the men and with each other. There was an atmosphere of ease and friendly pleasure in the low, dimly lit room, and Thea could not help wondering whether the Mexicans had no jealousies or neighborly grudges as the people in Moonstone had. There was no constraint of any kind there to-night, but a kind of natural harmony about their movements, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... ought to be only too glad," said the patient, with a sort of sullenness, which Lady Alice felt that she could but dimly understand. "I suppose I'm the sort of man to be helped; and yet I can't help fancying there's a—Past—a Past behind me—a life in which I once was proud of my independence. But it strikes me that this ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... indeed, folly; but it may be a divine folly. It is, at all events, a folly to which poets incline. But poets are not wise; indeed, the poetry of true wisdom is a creation which can, at the best, be but dimly imagined. Perhaps, of them all, Lucretius had the largest inkling of what such poetry might be; but he disqualified himself by an aptitude for ecstasy, which made his poetry superb and his wisdom of no account. To acquiesce is wise; to be ecstatic in acquiescence ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... depths of the thicket I found a human figure crouched. It glided to me, and I made out dimly the squat form of Pete, Barnes's ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... I felt it first,—a light, moist touch upon my burning forehead,—and I imagined I was a child once more, back at the old home, caressed by the soft hand of my mother. But as consciousness slowly returned I began to realize dimly where I was, and that I was no longer alone. A gentle hand was stroking back the hair from off my temples, while the barest uplift of my eyelids revealed the folds of a dark blue skirt pressed close to my side. Instantly I realized who must be the wearer, and remained motionless ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... bird flies quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movement, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... made the man; His image is the whole, not half; And in our love we dimly scan The love which ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... future vengeance in the hands of Providence—by the secret interference of the women of the Bashaw's family. As the boy, however, grew up, he could not fail to excite the suspicions of the Bashaw, for the old hoary-headed assassin saw in him, not darkly or dimly, the sword which was being drawn by avenging Heaven to cut off his family root and branch, perhaps his own head, and break up for ever his blood-cemented kingdom. These suspicions of a guilty conscience came at length to such a pitch, that the day arrived when the innocent youth ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... and we went below to reflect, and search once more for that half-sovereign. The cabin was small and close, and dimly lighted, and evil smelling, and shaped like the butt end of a coffin. It might not have smelt so bad if we hadn't lost that half-sovereign. There was a party of those gipsy-like Assyrians—two families apparently—the women and children lying very sick about the lower bunks; and a big, good-humoured-looking ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Dimly Arcot felt a wave of sleepiness sweep over him; he yawned prodigiously. There was no conscious awareness of his sinking into a deep slumber. It seemed that suddenly visions began to fill his mind—visions that developed with a returning consciousness—up from the ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... passed Helen's and Lily's door she heard them whispering together and also heard a deeper voice. Whose could it be? It was so unusual that she paused a moment in the dimly lighted hall. She did not mean to be an eavesdropper, but she thought all the girls from the west wing were down on the terrace where she had left them that perfect May night. They had gone out there immediately dinner ended, for study hour had lately been held from five to seven on account ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... other homestead, and high up on a spur of foot-hill that stood at least three hundred feet above the general level of the valley. From his "coigne of vantage" the whitewashed walls and the bright colors of the flag of the fort could be dimly made out,—twenty ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... that large, bare and dimly lighted room, with the wind shrieking in the chimney and the powerful limbs of some huge tree beating against the walls without, with a heavy thud inexpressibly mournful, I found to my surprise and something like dismay, that the sleepiness ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... crash near me, it might have been the fall of a rose leaf on velvet, and I had small heed of the fierce faces which bent over me, yet the hands extended toward my wounds were tender enough. And I saw as in a dream, Capt. Robert Waller, with his arm tied up, and wondered dimly if we were both dead, for I verily believed that I had killed him, and I heard him say, and his voice sounded as if a sea rolled between us, "'Tis the convict tutor, Wingfield, who held the door, and unless I be much mistaken, he hath his death-wound. Make a litter and lift him gently, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... younger than Lucretius that the Marian terror and the Sullan proscriptions can hardly have left any strong traces on his memory. When he died, Caesar was still fighting in Gaul, and the downfall of the Republic could only be dimly foreseen. In time, no less than in genius, he represents the fine flower of the Ciceronian age. He was about five and twenty when the attachment began between him and the lady whom he has immortalised ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Dimly she saw a running figure in the night mist, flung the rifle across the window sill and fired. Then she fired again—or thought she ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... darkness lightened and two soldiers crossed the road. When they reached the skeleton whose white outlines could be dimly seen in the gray ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... night they stopped a few minutes to listen and look about on the outskirts of the Indian village. Thick willows stretched up to it, with mist that moved before a light wind drifting past them; and the blurred shapes of conical tepees showed dimly through the vapor. The night was dark but still, and Harding knew that a sound would carry some distance. He felt his heart beat tensely, but there was nothing to be heard. He had seen dogs about the ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... masters; and an open bookcase, surmounted by plaster casts and the half of a human skull, displayed an odd miscellany of books—Shaw and Swinburne, Tom Jones, Fabian Essays, Pope and Dumas, cheek by jowl. Constance Widgett's abundant copper-red hair was bent down over some dimly remunerative work—stencilling in colors upon rough, white material—at a kitchen table she had dragged up-stairs for the purpose, while on her bed there was seated a slender lady of thirty or so in a dingy green dress, whom Constance had introduced with a wave of her hand as Miss Miniver. Miss ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... appointed from above a direction. Sounds were heard that could not be accounted for; they were made by the evil spirits not yet banished from the desert places of which they had so long held possession. Sights, inexplicable and mysterious, were dimly seen—Satan, in some shape, seeking whom he might devour. And at the beginning of the long winter season, such whispered tales, such old temptations and hauntings, and devilish terrors, were supposed to be peculiarly rife. Salem was, as it were, snowed ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... us in fragments; the surface of the world throws back to us but broken glimpses. In the perspective of a lifetime the fragments flow together into order, and we dimly see the purpose of our being here; in moments of illumination and deeper insight a glimpse may disclose a sudden harmony, and the brief segment of nature's circle becomes beautiful. For then is revealed the shaping principle. Within the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... of this continual fight with and triumph over physical weakness. A woman hall-keeper tells, 'One evening I caught her creeping like an old woman, through the dimly lighted hall, bent almost double with bronchitis. "Oh, Adjutant," I cried, "you're ill. You should go home to bed." When she knew I had seen her, she steadied herself to take breath, smiled sternly, then waved me off, and presently walked briskly into her converts' meeting.' A lieutenant ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... daytime, and had an accurate idea of the route. However, he had landmarks to follow. What guided Dave were the lights of the various towns on the route to Kewaukee and railway signals. These were dimly outlined by a glow only at times, but Dave as he progressed felt that he was keeping fairly close to ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... very few, she explained. The Black ones who waited upon the Spider were a mysterious order—so mysterious, indeed, that none knew exactly who were members of it and who were not. Nor could she tell how the strange and gruesome cult first originated, save that it was dimly whispered that the Ba-gcatya had taken it over from the nation they had driven out, and that in accordance with an ancient prophecy uttered by a famous magician at the time of their flight from Zululand. But as ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... could never understand. It isn't as if the flat were particularly cheap; indeed the fact of its being situated over a public-house seems to enhance the rent. She said she liked the shape of the knocker and the pattern of the bathroom taps. I dimly perceive that it must have had something to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... on a dark night is confusing to the most observant wayfarer. On either side, beyond the light of the car, illusory forest stands for mile upon mile. Up hill or down or across the level it is the same—a narrow, winding trail through dimly seen woods. The most familiar road grows strange; the miles are longer; you drive through mystery and silence and the world around you ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... the way of trade, sail west from Spain for the spice islands; for between the Indies of Columbus and the Indies which he had hoped to find lay an uncharted and boundless ocean which reduced the Atlantic to the measure of familiar inland waters; and between the two seas, dimly perceived as yet, stretched the continent which was indeed a Mondo Novo—the New ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... like to live in Scarborough Square?" He smiled unsteadily and shook his head. "No, I wouldn't know how to live there. I wouldn't fit in. I am just myself. You are a dozen selves in one. But I am beginning to see dimly what you see clearly. Concerning my selfishness there is certainly nothing hazy. The walls around my house have been pretty high, and perhaps they should come down. You have much to teach me. I have a habit ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... dream, Lysbeth saw a skiff glide out from among the rushes before her. She saw also a strange mutilated face, which she remembered dimly, bending over the edge of the boat, and a long, brown hand stretched out to clasp her, while a hoarse voice bade her keep still and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... of the dunes the sea flashed a burning blue; storm-twisted cedars led a rutted road down to it; in the salt air the piny odor was sharp with sunlight. Katherine had dropped beneath one of the dwarfed trees, and leaning back, smiled dimly up at him with a stricken face which North ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... then he is sure of nothing," said the doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table. He nursed his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other sustained the elbow. "It is the last thing a man ought to be sure of." The candle, half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick, lighted up from below his inclined face, whose expression affected by the drawn-in cicatrices in the cheeks, had something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated remorseful bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of meditating ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... bewildered with surprise, longing for the night to see what might be the meaning of this mystery or prodigy, and as I had heard her called a witch, I expected wonderful things from the interview. At last the time came, and I entered the room, which was small, and low, and dimly lighted by an earthenware lamp. The old woman trimmed it, sat down on a chest, drew me to her, and without speaking a word, fell to embracing me, and I to taking care that she did not ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dawn, while the troops were falling dimly and spectrally into line, and he was mounting his horse to be ready for orders, he remembered Gildersleeve's drunken tale concerning the commandant, and laughed aloud. But turning his face toward brigade headquarters (a sylvan region marked out by the branches of a great oak), ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... Surely it is transparent that the Apostles did not teach as Dr. Waterland. I had always felt a great repugnance to the argumentations concerning the Personality of the Holy Spirit; no doubt from an inward sense, however dimly confessed, that they were all words without meaning. For the disputant who maintains this dogma, tells us in the very next breath that Person has not in this connexion its common signification; ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and started back toward the shore they had left behind them. Casey ran to head him off, yelling threats, and William, in spite of his six water cans—two of them empty—broke into a lope. Casey glanced over his shoulder as he ran and saw dimly that the burros had turned and were coming after him, their ears flapping loosely on their bobbing heads as they trotted. Beyond him, the light still traveled ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... space of a few feet between it and the water, and we had to bend our heads to avoid the rocks above us. The boatmen gave two strong strokes, and we shot out from under the overhanging ledge, and found ourselves in the open with the stars shining murkily above us, and the moon showing herself dimly and cloudily through a gathering haze. Right in front of us was a dark blur, which, as we pulled towards it, took the outline of a large lugger rising and falling with the pulse of the sea. Her tall thin spars and delicate network of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dawn, Maya awoke. Remembering what she had seen dimly the night before, she went ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... but only with the natural form in which it primarily manifests itself—that of the nation. But the naturalness of this principle disappears in its development, since nations appear in interaction on each other and begin dimly to perceive their unity of species. The freedom of spirit over nature makes its appearance, but to the spirit explicitly in the transcendent form of abstract theistic religion, in which God appears as the ruler over Nature as merely dependent; ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... there must be that I know not here, Or know too dimly through the symbol dear; Some touch, some beauty, only guessed by this— If He that made us loves, it shall replace, Beloved, even the vision of thy face And deep communion of thine ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... part of the vital quality of the 'Dramatic Idyls' that, in them, the act and the motive are not yet finally identified with each other. We see the act still palpitating with the motive; the motive dimly striving to recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this that the psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. Such at least is the case in 'Martin Relph', and the idealized ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Campagna rose the city—pale phantom—upholding one great dome, and one only, to view of night and the world. Round and above and behind, beneath the long flat arch of the storm, glowed a furnace of scarlet light. The buildings of the city were faint specks within its fierce intensity, dimly visible through a sea of fire. St. Peter's alone, without visible foundation or support, had consistence, form, identity; and between the city and the hills, waves of blue and purple shade, forerunners of the night, stole over the Campagna ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... periwinkle blue to which she was still faithful—her dark fine hair, hanging about her, a mantle in itself, she recalled those days when she, too, had vibrated to that savage lust for life; those days of concentrated egoism, of deep and powerful passions whose existence she had only dimly begun to suspect after she dismissed ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... They sat together on the ground and looked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with a sort of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence, and dropped their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... circle, its center sucked hollow, exactly as a glass quarter-filled with water behaves when rotated quickly. Thus the outer surface of the dome, coated inside with the milky liquid, gleamed and scintillated as the whirl of light struck it and danced off it: and it even became dimly reflective. ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... box of cards toward him, from which a pencil dangled by a string. The penniless wrote his name and handed it in. Then he moved away, went down the tortuous granite stair, and waited in the obscurity of the dimly lighted porch below. The card was to meet the contingency of the Doctor's coming in by some other entrance. He would watch ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... principles—the duel between his earthly and his heavenly nature—had taken place within his soul, and at such a depth that he had understood it but dimly. One thing was certain, that he had never for one moment ceased ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... stars—Ursa Major (now almost overhead) sprawling its glittering shape across the heavens, and the little Pleiades twinkling like a diamond spray against dark velvet. At times I could make out every lonely peak and valley in the lunar world, and even distinguish far-away Polaris twinkling dimly over the earth's great mystery. The stars are never really ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... royal throne, Bringing a thousand things Strange and curious;—One, a bone— The hinge of a fairy's wings; And one, the glass of a mermaid queen, Gemmed with a diamond dew, Where, down in its reflex, dimly seen, Her face ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... fitting understanding. Besides, there was other work for him below,—work of a simple kind, to which he had now for some weeks looked forward. He crept down the stairs very stealthily. The hall door was still open. He could see dimly the figure of a man standing ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... from lit interiors. On the other side of the deep pit of the court was the vast expanse of flat roof containing the famous roof garden. Amid dwarf trees and festoons of coloured lights, the figures of men and women who counted themselves the cream of London could dimly be seen walking about or sitting at tables; and the wild strain of the Tsigane musicians, as they swayed to and fro in their red coats on the bandstand, floated towards the dome through the heavy summer air. In the near ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... and potency of the human word, we may perhaps dimly apprehend the potential magnitude of the Word of God, the Creative Fiat, when as a mighty dynamic force it first reverberated through space and commenced to form primordial matter into worlds, as sound from a violin bow moulds sand into geometrical figures. ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... inmost thought they really have. Each finds somewhat in his childhood peculiar and remarkable, on which he loves to dwell. It gives him a secret importance in his own eyes, and he bears it about with him as a kind of inspiring genius. Intimations of his destiny, gathered from early memories, float dimly before him, and are ever beckoning him on. That which he really is no one knows save himself. His words and actions do but inadequately reveal the being he is. We are all greater than we seem to each other. The heart's deepest secrets will not be told. The secret of the interest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... livid brow, placed his hand upon the ponderous door, for the purpose of retreating within, and barring out the ruthless assailants. The rest instinctively imitated his motions, but at the same time their eyes were yet riveted on the dimly burning match. A small flash was observed to illumine the trench—another and a larger one succeeded! The first train of powder was ignited—the Indians were bursting through the snow-crust with direful yells—the blaze ran quickly along the plank—it reached the end of the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... and buttresses, took on a new and delicate beauty, a subtleness of charm and refinement that only such a veiling could produce. Every moment the panorama changed. This was veiled completely, that entirely uncovered, while other features were dimly discernible, or so softened by the fleecy, attenuated clouds that they seemed the airy fabrics of a child's dream of oriental splendor. Now as filmy steam, then as densest vapor boiling up from a world-deep cauldron of unearthly beauty, the moisture ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... Laura and Vi stared. Vi had not even heard that Miss Arbuckle had lost an album, and Laura just dimly remembered Billie's having ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... the ancient world, as it was known to Greece and to Rome, and as it can be dimly surveyed through the records of classic antiquity, we find that before the Christian era the populations were divided and subdivided into races or tribes, with names signifying a common origin or descent; at any rate some kind of tribal association. The designation ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... all over the reaction had set in, and she began to feel a little tired, although she was almost too happy for words. She walked along, dimly alive to what ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... a friend, you send him to dance with your wife, for you have commenced a system of concessions which will ruin you. You already dimly perceive ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... he could dimly make out the depression in the earth where the stream ran. He dropped his pack and ran forward, then threw himself flat in the darkness and felt in the stream bed for a pool deep enough to drink from. His fingers touched ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... sleepy waiter had received payment for the coffee and cleared away the cups. The moon slipped behind the lofty cliff of the Citadel, and the little square lay in soft shadow with the church spire shining dimly above it. Pat continued the memoires intimes ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... seen in Wales, over an area of about 8 miles, all keeping their own ground, whether moving together perpendicularly, horizontally, or over a zigzag course. They looked like electric lights—disappearing, reappearing dimly, then shining as bright as ever. "We have seen them three or four at a time afterward, on ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... her soft, frightened hand trustfully clinging fast to his, only to be comforted by his touch, had been a sign and a symbol to him of some dearer trust and faith for him alone—if in some way, as she dimly visioned it, the thought had once been his, it had gone long ago. Every action showed it. And yet, and yet—so unconquerably does the soul speak that, though he might deny her attraction for him, she knew that she had it. It was something to which he might ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... Corraterie—which formed an inner line of defence pierced by the Tertasse gate—had outside shutters of massive thickness, capable of being lowered from within. He closed these in haste and found, when he turned from the task and looked for her—a small round hole in each shutter made things dimly visible—that she was gone ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... holiness, and quiet beauty about it, that excites the imagination strangely. The little chapel itself has the same touching and impressive character. A solitary lamp, whose glare is tempered by delicately painted glass, hangs before the altar. The light of day enters dimly, yet richly, through crimson curtains, and the silence with which the well-lined doors opened from time to time, admitting a youth of the establishment, who, with noiseless tread, approached the altar, and kneeling, offered a whispered prayer, and retired, had something in it more calculated, perhaps, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... goes on. He speaks of selling all his casts and books and medals, that the produce may keep her "out of Natalia's clutches"; and if he survives the meeting with the gang in Venice, there is just one hope, for dimly she ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne |
