"Dimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard from time to time of Proteus on the platform—how he was more and more eccentric—how he could not be understood—how abrupt his manner was. But the Chair did not believe that the flame which had once been so pure could ever be dimmer, especially as he recognized its soft lustre on every ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... lights in the house became dimmer, and the sound of the music and the tread of the dance reached them ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of storm cleared from the streets of Ascalon, the worn and tired look came back into faces that had been illumined for a little while with hope. Farther away, fainter, the thunder sounded, dimmer the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... success, I hastened to apply the same plan of magnifying segment by segment to my photograph of Jupiter. But, alas, although something suggestive did appear, or so I fancied, the image grew dimmer with each analysis, until, under the higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it up as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... look of reproach at me for having beguiled him from his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first, turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms—sixty feet—it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not have been ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... water cold, And having on the fire placed it, And some butter, and be bold— When 'tis hot enough—taste it. Oh! the Chicken meant for me Boil before the fire grows dimmer, Twenty minutes let it be In the saucepan left to simmer. Oh, my tender Chicken dear! My boil'd, delicious, tender Chicken! Rub the breast (To give a zest) ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Christians, with revelation to guide them, are ever starting aside like a broken bow in their conceits of God. Either they would have Him all justice and no mercy, or else all mercy and no justice: and the looser they hold by the revelation God has made of Himself, the dimmer and the more out of proportion be their thoughts of God. The most men frame a God unto themselves, and be assured that he shall be like themselves—that the sins which he holds in abhorrence shall be the sins whereto they ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... in a little slot beneath it; hidden behind a corner of green cloth beyond suspicion; that opened, for all that, when the edge was coaxed with a finger-nail. It had been her first experience of a secret, and a fascination hung about it still. That confused image of a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite of a perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence of the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had clung about this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, even into these later years. It crossed Ruth's mind as she found the key, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... was silent. Some new emotion seemed to move her. Her face was softer than he had ever seen it, her beautiful eyes dimmer. His mind was filled ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gleams and the grey seas glimmer, Pale and sweet as a dream's delight, As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer, Touched by dawn or subdued by night. The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad, Swings the rollers to westward, clad With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer, Lures and lulls ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... came to the father, Joseph, and told him to take the Baby and hurry to the land of Egypt, for the wicked King wanted to do it harm, and so these three—the father, mother and Baby—went by night to the far country of Egypt. And the star grew dimmer and dimmer and passed away forever from the skies over Bethlehem, but little Ruth grew straight and strong and beautiful as the almond trees in the orchard, and all the people who saw her were amazed, for Ruth ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... Heck, she did it in such a way that I couldn't help ogling a bit myself. If I haven't said that Farrow was an attractive woman, it was because I hadn't really paid attention to her looks. But now I went along and ogled, realizing in the dimmer and more obscure recesses of my mind that if I ogled in a loudly lewd perceptive manner, I'd not be thinking of what she ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, Like Hezekiah's, backward runs The shadow of my days. I kiss the lips I once have kissed; The gas-light wavers dimmer; And softly through a vinous mist, My college ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... watching with spotless conscience the victim on the rack. They choked me—I gasped for breath, stretched out my arms, rolled shrieking on the floor—the narrow chequered glimpse of free blue sky, seen through the window, seemed to fade dimmer and dimmer, farther and farther off. I sprang up, as if to follow it—rushed to the bars, shook and wrenched at them with my thin, puny arms—and stood spell-bound, as I caught sight of the cathedral towers, standing out in grand repose against the horizontal ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... had blundered in not forcing the wall; he was running uphill, with a group of sheds, another wall, and a still steeper and rougher field beyond. His bulk told against him; and behind him he heard the quick thump of Oscar's feet on the turf. The starlight grew dimmer through tracts of white scud; the surface of the pasture was rougher to the feet than it appeared to the eye. A hound in the Claiborne stable-yard bayed suddenly and the sound echoed from the surrounding houses and drifted ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... physical strain were now telling upon Harry. He leaned his head against the corner of the seat and the wall, drew his overcoat as a blanket about his body and shoulders, and let his eyelids droop. The dim train grew dimmer, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... world, but only indirectly through the powers or [Greek: dynameis], hence dynamic Pantheism. These powers emanate successively from the highest one, forming a chain of intermediate powers mediating between God and the world of matter, the links of the chain growing dimmer and less pure as they are further removed from their origin, while the latter loses nothing in the process. This latter condition saves the Neo-Platonic conception from being a pure system of emanation like some Indian doctrines. In the latter the first ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... as the electrical needle, moving across the copper plate, made electrical contacts of different degrees of strength, it worked a delicate galvanometer on the receiving end. The galvanometer caused a beam of light to vary—to grow brighter or dimmer, according as the electrical current was stronger or weaker. And this light, falling on the sensitive plate, made a picture, just like the one on the copper ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... conduct of France both in war and in peace. The twenty-five millions without the gates gazed at the hundred thousand within, and the more they gazed the louder and more bitter became their comment, the dimmer and the more tawdry did the glitter of it all appear to them, and the weaker and more half-hearted became the attitude of the one hundred thousand as they attempted by insolence and superciliousness to maintain the pose of their ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... massive, answered to the summons, and arose. The page entered with the same precipitation which had marked his whole proceeding, and found himself in a large hall, or vestibule, dimly enlightened by latticed casements of painted glass, and rendered yet dimmer through the exclusion of the sunbeams, owing to the height of the walls of those buildings by which the court-yard was enclosed. The walls of the hall were surrounded with suits of ancient and rusted armour, interchanged with huge and massive stone scutcheons, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... him. There was neither sorrow or disquiet expressed in them; they seemed smaller and dimmer. Her face was pale; and pale ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... quite free from ridicule." On Easter Day, 1865, the world knew how little this ridicule, how much this kindness, had really signified. Thereafter, Lincoln the man became Lincoln the hero, year by year more heroic, until to-day, with the swift passing of those who knew him, his figure grows ever dimmer, less real. This should not be. For Lincoln the man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more than Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious. Invaluable is the example of the man, intangible that of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... moved in plain sight. Soft pads in sand, faint metallic tickings of steel on thorns, low, regular breathing of horses—these were all the sounds the fugitives made, and they could not have been heard at one-fifth the distance. The lights disappeared from time to time, grew dimmer, more flickering, and at last they vanished altogether. Belding's fleet and tireless steeds were out in front; the desert opened ahead wide, dark, vast. Rojas and his rebels were behind, eating, drinking, careless. The somber shadow lifted from Gale's heart. He held now an unquenchable ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... justify its issuing forth to attack the private dust of other people. And if it ever did, lo, it would find the necessity no longer there. Its bright untiringness would unconsciously have done its work, and every dimmer soul within sight of that cheerful shining been strengthened and inspired ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... had clouded over a little, and a cooler wind was blowing across the breast of the hill. Fairfield yonder, that long smooth slope of verdure which a little while ago looked emerald green in the sunlight, now wore a soft and shadowy hue. All the world was greyer and dimmer in a moment, as it were, and Coniston Lake in its distant valley disappeared beneath a veil of mist, while the shimmering sea-line upon the verge of the horizon melted and vanished among the clouds that overhung it. The weather changes very quickly in this part of the world. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the last year or more a modification had been going forward in my mental condition, and was growing more and more marked. My insight into the minds of those around me was becoming dimmer and more fitful, and the ideas that crowded my double consciousness became less and less dependent on any personal contact. All that was personal in me seemed to be suffering a gradual death, so that I was losing the organ through which the ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... am. I knew it was coming. The light was getting dimmer every day. I could hardly see your face this morning ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... away toward Nukahiva, with Upolu growing constantly dimmer, John, who had been studying the schedule, turned ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... only thin reflected lights That shake a little. How I long to take One from the cold black water—new-made gold To give you in your hand! And see, and see, There is a star, deep in the lake, a star! Oh, dimmer than a pearl—if you stoop down Your hand could almost reach it up to me. . ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... lamp of the lovely daughter of the foam, dear Hesperus, sacred jewel of the deep blue night, dimmer as much than the moon, as thou art among the stars pre-eminent, hail, friend, and as I lead the revel to the shepherd's hut, in place of the moonlight lend me thine, for to-day the moon began her course, and too early she sank. I go not free-booting, nor to lie in wait for the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... on that autumn morning is burning dim. It burns dimmer every year, as England yields more and more to Rome. And every living soul of us all is responsible to God for the preservation of its blessed light. O sons and daughters of England, shall it ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the telescope, and saw the glowing surface of the disc resolved into a marvellous web of shining patches on a dimmer background, and in the midst a large blotch which reminded me of a quarry hole as delineated on the plan of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... the deeper path the light grew dimmer. Outside, it would still be clear golden twilight but here the grey had come. And now the trees grew closer together and a whispering began—a weird and wonderful sighing from the soul of the forest; the old, primeval cry to the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... love in the Pulou ravine, where they caught the bright iiwi birds, and the scarlet apapani. Ah, what sweet joys in the banana groves of Waiakeakua, where the lovers saw naught so beautiful as themselves! But the "misty eyes" were soon to be made dim by weeping, and dimmer, till the drowning brine should ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror, this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of motiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination. The once imposing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... red disc behind the desert. He watched it sink, while the golden-red flood of light grew darker and darker. Thought seemed remote from him then; he watched, and watched, until he saw the last spark of fire die from the snow-slopes of Coconina. The desert became dimmer and dimmer; the oasis lost its outline in a bottomless purple pit, except for a ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective view of the nest. The eggs all disappeared but one (5), which increased in size; the bright point of light now shone with great intensity like a star; then it gradually grew dimmer and dimmer till it disappeared into the usual hazy obscurity into which all ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... would be safer to follow these tracks for a time at least, to see where they come out. There are some tracks across the stream there, but they are older and dimmer and might have been made ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the evening, still daylight, though in the darkened house dimmer than without. Olive drew the blind aside, took one long gaze into the cheerful sunset landscape to strengthen and calm her mind, and then walked with a firm step to the chamber-door. It was not locked ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... increasing most threateningly now. Yes, it was assuming the same umbrella shape and detaching itself a little from the eastern edge of the Earth. There was still a narrow rim of bright white light on the Earth, and this dimmer umbrella shape was faintly separated from its edge. Its outlines were marked by flashes of rainbow colours, as had been the case on the other side. I sprang to the wheel and gave it several frantic turns back the other way. Then I ran up to the telescope for a hurried view, and Mars was nowhere ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... knew that my fears were understood, and the odd thing, now that I look back upon it, is that I wasn't afraid. The understanding seemed natural, the understanding of my higher self. It was only when the vision grew dimmer and dimmer that I began to feel this silly nerve-exhaustion; it was only then that I began to wonder ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Each, with its quiver of color, seemed a life afraid,—trembling on the blind current that was bearing it into the outer blackness.... Are not we ourselves as lanterns launched upon a deeper and a dimmer sea, and ever separating further and further one from another as we drift to the inevitable dissolution? Soon the thought-light in each burns itself out: then the poor frames, and all that is left of their once fair colors, must melt ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... fire of light brush was made first. Then several large logs were placed about it, each with one end in the flame, so that they looked like the spokes of a great wheel radiating from a center of fire. As the ends of the logs burned away, the fiery ring at the center grew wider and dimmer. When a hotter fire was wanted, the logs were pushed toward the center till the glowing ends came together once more and ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... at her through eyes dimmer still, then rose, waggling the bent forefinger. "But not one day over ten weeks, so ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... two fiery eyes looking in at the window, huge, and wide apart. Next, I saw the outline of a horse's head, in which the eyes were set; and behind, the dimmer outline of a man's form seated on the horse. The apparition faded and reappeared, just as if it retreated, and again rode up close to the window. Curiously enough, I did not even fancy that I heard any sound. Instinctively I felt for my sword, but there ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... turned back to the cliffs behind me. Yes! they ere there too, dimmer by reason of the shadows, but there for certain, from the snowfields far above down, down—good Heavens! to the very level where I stood. There was one of them not ten yards away half in and half out of the ice wall, and setting ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... The whole court considered the issue of this day's audience, expected with so much doubt and anxiety, as a decisive triumph on the part of Leicester, and felt assured that the orb of his rival satellite, if not altogether obscured by his lustre, must revolve hereafter in a dimmer and more distant sphere. So thought the court and courtiers, from high to low; and they ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Sperry—passed her with a smile and a friendly word—and is speaking to me, singling me out, offering me his arm! He is smiling, too, not as he smiled on Miss Sperry, but more warmly, with more that is personal in it. I took his arm in a daze. The lights were dimmer than I thought; nothing was really bright except his smile. It seemed to change the world for me. I forgot that I was plain, forgot that I was small, with nothing to recommend me to the eye or heart, and let myself be drawn away, asking nothing, anticipating ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... higher parts, only through the crimson glory of the departing light. And now the sun has disappeared—is gone—but still how beautiful is the fading splendor that sleeps for a little on the mountain tops, then becomes dimmer and dimmer—then a faint streak which gradually melts away until it is finally lost in the soft shadows of that thoughtful hour. And even thus passeth away all human glory! The ruin which we have mentioned stood about half way between the residence of Brian M'Loughlin and the mountain ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... around him. Then the moon grew dimmer, and a strange, new radiance began to illuminate the landscape. It increased so imperceptibly that it was some time before he recognised it as the Muspel-light which he had seen in the Wombflash Forest. He could not give it a colour, or a ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at last ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... and the arms of Andrew Lanning around her, and his tense, desperate face close to hers. It became less dreamlike that moment. She began to understand that if she lived to be a hundred, she would never find that memory dimmer. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... Goethe, than whom no man had ever more studied the elements of the diviner art, was right as an artist in his dislike to the over-cultivation of the aesthetical. The domain of the Ideal is the heart, and through the heart it operates on the soul. It grows feebler and dimmer in proportion as it seeks to rise above human emotion.... Longinus does not err, when he asserts that Passion (often erroneously translated Pathos) is the best part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... desolate.' He looked upon her seriously; Then said: 'Arise and follow me.' The path that lay before them was Nigh covered over with long grass; 110 And many slimy things and slow Trailed on between the roots below. The moon looked dimmer than before; And shadowy cloudlets floating o'er Its face sometimes quite hid its light, And filled ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... hill and along the road, their lanterns making a bright spot on the snow; the little childish voices talking, laughing, and little bands running backward and forward, some disappearing at a turn of the road, the lantern getting dimmer, and finally vanishing behind the trees. We went very slowly, as the roads were dreadfully slippery, and had a running escort all the way to the Mill of Bourneville, with an accompaniment of drums and trumpets. The melancholy plains ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... broken in on a solitude in that place before, I was now the intruder upon a desolation. Alderling was living absolutely alone, except for the occasional presence of a neighboring widow—all the middle-aged women there are widows, with dim or dimmer memories of husbands lost off the Banks, or elsewhere at sea—who came in to get his meals and make his bed, and then had instructions to leave. It was in one of her prevailing absences that I arrived with my bag, and I had to hammer a long time with the knocker on the open ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... the seat On which I sat, I heard the sound Of gurgling waters, and I found The boat aleak alarmingly. . . . I turned and looked upon the sea, Whose every wave seemed mocking me; I saw the fishers' sails once more— In dimmer distance than before; I saw the sea-bird wheeling by, With foolish wish that I could fly: I thought of firm earth, home and friends— I thought of everything that tends To drive a man to frenzy and To wholly lose his own command; I thought of all my waywardness— ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... to my dreams, do not interest the reader. Why stir up more of them? I am content to have brought this fact into prominence: the first glimmers of light penetrating into the dark chambers of the mind leave an indelible impression, which the years make fresher instead of dimmer. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... on each other's heels. Slowly the day consumed itself. It grew dimmer and dimmer for Jay, though I have no doubt that habit protected her, and that she behaved herself ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... came another age, and the Cycle of the Fenians. It too is full of excellent tales, but all less titanic and clearly-defined: almost, you might say, standing to the Red Branch as Wordsworth and Keats to Shakespeare and Milton. The atmosphere is on the whole dimmer, the figures are weaker; there is not the same dynamic urge of creation. You come away with an impression of the beauty of the forest through which the Fenians wandered and camped, and less with an impression of the personalities of the Fenians themselves. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... brow, Wet towels bound about his pow, Locked legs and failing appetite, He thought so hard he couldn't write. His soaring fancies, chickenwise, Came home to roost and wouldn't rise. With dimmer light and milder heat His goose-quill staggered o'er the sheet, Then dragged, then stopped; the finish came— He couldn't even write his name. The Thundergust in three short weeks Had risen, roared, and split its cheeks. Said Pondronummus, "How ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... be a member of young Thorvald's team. Though, because of Garth Thorvald, Shann's toll of black record marks had mounted dangerously high and each day the chance for any more duty tours had grown dimmer. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... barn grew dimmer, and they could see to work no longer. When Tess had reached home that evening, and had entered into the privacy of her little white-washed chamber, she began impetuously writing a letter to Clare. But falling into doubt, she could not finish it. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... that beautiful light grew dimmer, and more dim, till it was gone— gone with the pure soul ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Rattar was now half seen beyond the curving end of the belt that bounded the drive. It was dim against the night sky, and the garden was dimmer still. Carrington kept on the grass, following the outside of the trees, and then again plunged into them when they curved round at the top of the drive. Pushing quietly through, he reached the other side, and there ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... more that passed through her mind—sensations of tiredness and loneliness; trampling squadrons and shadowy armies of vague feelings and vaguer prompting; and deeper and dimmer whisperings and echoings, the flutterings of forgotten generations crystallized into being and fluttering anew and always, undreamed and unguessed, subtle and potent, the spirit and essence of life that under ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... depths below, transparent here almost to the sea bed. His eyes were wide with reverie. He seemed another boy, not the gay singer of five minutes ago. But then he had been in the blaze of the sun. Now he was in the shade. And swiftly he had caught the influence of the dimmer light, the lack of motion, the delicate hush at ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... It appeared to be the upper portion of a large, round, dark shape which was about four times the diameter of the light itself. As they watched, the UFO moved in closer, or at least it appeared to be getting closer because it became more distinct. When it moved in, the men could see a second and dimmer light on the lower edge of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... hauled hers up. The other was backed to the ladder and they came on board. A silent salute passed between Oscarovitch and the lieutenant, and a few minutes later the yacht's boat was hoisted to the davits, and the white shape was growing smaller and dimmer amidst the light haze that lay on the water shimmering under the slanting rays of the ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... responsive chords in his nature. His mind, he told me, became filled with a measureless yearning for the old culture of pagan philosophy, and as the past became clearer and more real, so the present grew dimmer, and his thoughts were gradually weaned entirely from all the natural objects of affection and interest which should otherwise have occupied them. To what a terrible extent this process went on, Miss Maltravers's ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... he had a shock, for the torch was very near spent and began to grow dimmer; so he put it out to save the dying rays against when he might need them. And he slowed down and rested for half an hour, then refreshed, he pushed slowly ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... lay Tawny on thick ferns and gray On dark waters: dimmer, Lone and deep, the cypress grove Bowered mystery and wove Braided lights, like those that love On the pearl plumes of a dove Faint to ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... world. SUSTAINED. I entrench myself behind that protecting word. There are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas Howells's moon sails cloudless skies all night ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... changed. The "river of time" may pass through various landscapes, but it is the same river, and, at the last, it brings to us, as "the banks fade dimmer away" and "the stars come out" "murmurs and scents" of the same infinite Sea. Yes, there is only one Philosophy, as Disraeli said, jesting; and Matthew Arnold, among the moderns, is the one who has been ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... for me, I know. I ain't whining none. I just lie here and watch the world getting dimmer until I begin to be seeing things out of my past. That shows the devil ain't losing no time with me. But the thing that comes back oftenest and hits me the hardest is the sight of your mother, lying with you in the hollow of her arm ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... is far from my dream of life - Calmly contented, serenely glad; But, vexed and worried by daily strife, It is always troubled, and ofttimes sad - And the heights I had thought I should reach one day Grow dimmer ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... through the open window into the empty room; the few remaining flowers were hustled from their stalks; the red eye of the stove grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally faded into darkness, and the colored drawing of the patent derrick broke loose at another corner, and flapped and fluttered against the wall in ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... going immediately after the sale at Mosside, but Willie had been ailing ever since, and that had detained her. Everything which Alice could do for her had been done. Old Sam, at thoughts of parting with his little charge, had cried his dim eyes dimmer yet. Mrs. Worthington, too, had wept herself nearly sick, for now that the parting drew near she began to feel how dear to her was the young girl who had come ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... so seldom interferes with kindly intention in the lives of men, had cut what had become a strangling knot, and Kitty, from a dreadful, never-forgotten burden, had become a rather touching, piteous memory, growing ever dimmer as first the months, and then the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... he had fallen, to feel that those souls were dearer to God than his. The wind blew over him and passed on to the myriads and myriads of other souls on whom God's favour shone now more and now less, stars now brighter and now dimmer sustained and failing. And the glimmering souls passed away, sustained and failing, merged in a moving breath. One soul was lost; a tiny soul: his. It flickered once and went out, forgotten, lost. The ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... same orbs. Ship, ocean, sky—all had vanished. I was conscious of nothing but the figures in this extraordinary and fantastic scene. Then all at once darkness fell upon me, and anon from out of it, as to one who grows accustomed by degrees to a dimmer light, my former surroundings of deck and mast and cordage slowly resolved themselves. Miss Harford had closed her eyes and was leaning back in her chair, apparently asleep, the book she had been reading open in her lap. Impelled by surely I cannot say what motive, I glanced ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... innermost thought, and recalling here only that which is most obvious and superficial (who is sufficient for the deeper things that lie like pearls in the depths of his being?), the light grows dimmer, and I know that the day has gone. I retrace my steps until through the clustered trunks of the trees I see once more the green meadows soft in the light of sunset. As I pass over the boundary line ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... prettily explains, he never stops to play except where the window smiles on him: a frowning lattice he will pass in silence. I behold in him a disappointed man,—a man broken in health, and of a liver baked by long sojourn in a tropical clime. In large and dim outline, made all the dimmer by his dialect, he sketches me the story of his life; how in his youth he ran away from the Milanese for love of a girl in France, who, dying, left him with so little purpose in the world that, after working at his trade of plasterer for some years in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the prie-dieu, stirring neither hand nor foot; as immovable, in fact, except for my breathing, as a figure cut out of stone. Looking and wondering still, after a time it seemed to me that the lights were growing dimmer, that the room was growing colder; that some baleful presence was beside me with malicious intent to gradually numb and chill the life out of me, to freeze me, body and soul, till the two could no longer hold together; and that when morning came, if ever it did come to that accursed room, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... separated the two. Through the window to the left was colour, courtesy, splendour; there was Death at least disguising himself, well cloaked, taking mincing steps, bowing, wearing a plume in his hat and a decent mask. In the right-hand window all the colours were fading, war after war they grew dimmer; and as the colours paled Death's sole purpose showed clearer. Through the beautiful left-hand window were killings to be seen, and less mercy than History supposes, yet some of the fighters were merciful, and mercy was sometimes a part of Death's courtly pose, which went with ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... verge of his ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied from the richness of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think I did not scent it from the first? An excellent scheme, and excellently managed. 'Twill blow away her doubts, and now she'll wed you, I'faith, the likeness is most admirable. I saw the trick—yet these old eyes grew dimmer 155 With very foolish tears, it look'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... commander frowned. "I don't want to. A dim view would be taken back on Terra if I did it without needing to. Dimmer view would be taken of needing to without doing it, though. I'll make another ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... when the daylight's last glimmer Smites crimson and gold on the snow of his crest, At evening he rides through the shades growing dimmer, While the banners of sunset stream red in the West; His comrades of morning are scattered and parted, The clouds hanging low and the winds making moan, But smiling and dauntless and brave and true-hearted, All proudly he rides down ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... looking neither to the right nor to the left. It was evening by the time he reached the edge of the plain: everything was growing dark. The endless vapours and the high banks of cloud in which the whole of this world was sunk grew dimmer and dimmer. In front of him was an empty level space, and about two miles further on the huge mushrooms stood out, tall and wide like the monuments of some prehistoric age. And underneath them on the soft carpet there seemed to move a myriad ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Dimmer and duskier grew the long shadows now gathering in the Cathedral,—two of the twinkling candles near the Virgin's statue suddenly sank in their sockets with a spluttering noise and guttered out,—the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... after philosophy, each one showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the other aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in which we are passes on from century to century, from millennium to millennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer, those who repeat far out-number those who know; and those who speak with clear vision of the spiritual verity are lost amidst the crowds, who only hold traditions whose origin ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... after three months' absence, I perceived unwelcome change. She was not as alert mentally or physically as when I went away. A mysterious veil had fallen between her wistful spirit and the outer world. Her vision was dimmer and her spirit at times withdrawn, remote. She laughed in response to my jesting, but there was an absent-minded sweetness in her smile, a tremulous quality in her voice which ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... replenish the fire, the light had grown dimmer, but a quick, shadowy flitting told Fred the brute was moving briskly about, only a few paces from where the lad was straining his vision to ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... In this strife of ignorances, the amenities and charities of life were lost sight of and forgotten; and, if not quite trampled out of existence, it was owing more to that celestial spark which, with a dimmer or a brighter light, guides every man who comes into the world than to the lessons of the teachers. Men were dismissed from the colony, or otherwise punished, on bare suspicion of wrong-doing or wrong-thinking. Nor is it unlikely that hostility ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... up into the indigo-velvet sky. Above him was the enormous triangle formed by Deneb, Vega, and Altair. Framed within it were a thousand other dimmer stars, but all, he knew, far, far bigger than the speck of solidified ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... young men. I repeat it—myself and some ten thousand other young men; for who among us ever thinks of himself but as a young man? It is the world that ages, not we. The children cease their playing and grow grave, the lasses' eyes are dimmer. The hills are a little steeper, the milestones, surely, further apart. The songs the young men sing are less merry than the songs we used to sing. The days have grown a little colder, the wind a little keener. ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... incandescent destruction blindly over farm, city, or virgin ice. The planet was in three-quarters phase from here, and Tulan could see the flecks of fire in the darkness beyond the twilight zone. Near the edge of that darkness he made out the dimmer, diffused glow of Capitol City, where Anatu would be giving two ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... sides, having slept covered up with mats provided for us. We then cautiously pushed open the reed-formed door, and stood looking out up and down the street of the village. The stars were still twinkling overhead, though gradually growing dimmer as the grey light of morning advanced. I carefully marked the course we were to take, and observing all the doors closed, we now sallied forth, and crept cautiously along towards the end of the street which opened out in the direction ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... there remains ample room for speculation both as to the dim beginnings of the ancient city and its still dimmer end, whereof we can guess only, when it became weakened by luxury and the mixture of races, that hordes of invading savages stamped it out of existence beneath their blood-stained feet, as, in after ages, they stamped out the Empire ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... even cared to feel the cheek of Lightfoot, who made a point of rubbing up his master's whiskers with it, "Better wait, and let him come round," thought Mary; "I never did see him so put out." Then she ran up the stairs to the window on the landing, and watched her dear father grow dimmer and dimmer up the distance of the hill, with a bright young tear for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... poorer looking, than when she saw him last, but in his wrinkled face there was the same benignant, heavenly expression which, when she was better than she was now, used to remind her of the angels. His snowy hair was parted just the same as ever, but the mild blue eye was dimmer, and it rested on her with no suspicious glance as, partially reassured, she glided across the threshold, and bowed civilly when ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... dearest, it is true. Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken: even your loved words Float in the larger meaning of your voice As something dimmer." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... wind That is lifting it now; and it is not the mind That hath moulded that vision. A pale woman enters, As wan as the lamp's waning light, which concentres Its dull glare upon her. With eyes dim and dimmer, There, all in a slumb'rous and shadowy glimmer, The sufferer sees that still form floating on, And feels faintly aware that he is not alone. She is flitting before him. She pauses She stands By his bedside all silent. She lays her white hands On the brow of the boy. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... flaming fan; dusk was a glimmer Like undersea where sly dreams haunt the coral. The garden sang of fame when the golden shimmer Of sun glowed on the proud leaves of the laurel,— But time and love fought out their ancient quarrel; The songs are fainter now; the lights are dimmer. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... character, which presents a curious and interesting subject for study. Probably no exhaustive solution is possible. One wanders off into the mystery of human nature, loses his way in the dimness of that which can be felt but cannot be expressed, and becomes aware of even dimmer regions beyond in which it is vain to grope. It is well known that the coarse and rough side of life among the pioneers had its reaction in a reserved and at times morose habit, nearly akin to sadness, at least in those who ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... dimmer, and the forms of the digger-singers seemed suddenly vague and unsubstantial, fading back rapidly through a misty veil. But the words ring strong and defiant ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... and dimmer, What do ye know of my weal or my woe? Was I born under The sun or the thunder? What do I come from? and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and it was upon the images of these features that Roger labored. He leaned far forward, with his face close to the canvas, holding his brushes after the Spencerian fashion, working steadily through the afternoon, and, when the light grew dimmer, leaning closer to his canvas to see. When it had become almost dark in the room, he lit a student-lamp with a green-glass shade, and, placing it upon a table beside him, continued to paint. Ariel's voice interrupted him ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... sublimed; my imagination, no longer importing women from observation, created its own delectable sirens, grown exacting and transcendental, petitioned reality in vain. Substance had receded for good now, and soon even these tormenting shadows of it became ever dimmer and dimmer, until they too at length faded ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... by a system of rewards and punishments, and we seem therefore to have good reason to believe that fear and joy, anger and desire, certain powers of perception and inference, are in their minds similar to our own. But fear in a fish is certainly a much dimmer apprehension of danger than in us, even if it deserves the name of apprehension. And the mental state which we call "alarm" in a fly or any lower animal is very difficult to clearly imagine or at all express in terms ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... crunched gravel and paused where ripples still ran in, endlessly bringing lines of dimmer and dimmer light. A rocking boat was tied to a stake. Anchored and bare-masted, farther out in the mouth of the bay, a fishing-smack tilted slightly in rhythmic motion. While they stood a touch of crimson replaced the sky light in the water, and great blots like blood ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the field resistance, to register 110 plus 11 volts, or 121 volts at the switchboard to make up for the loss at half-load. At full load, his voltage at the end of the line would be 121 minus 18, or 103 volts; his motor would run a shade slower, at this voltage, and his lights would be slightly dimmer. He would probably not notice the difference. If he did, he could walk over to his generating station, and raise the voltage a further 7 volts by turning the rheostat handle ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... little domestic attentions had the usual reflex effect upon the heart which administered them, and all that the recurring image of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising predilections was so far unavailing, that that very image waxed dimmer and dimmer, while the present object was always working through the magic of sensation. Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her protege, until at length she got, as the saying goes, "over head and ears." Nay, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... its lashing rain upon their unprotected forms, drenched them utterly and damped their spirits. A sense of some indefinable presentiment of future dimmer crept over the mind, that subtle consciousness of approaching death forced its black pessimism upon their thoughts. They watched the heavy grey clouds scuttling overhead, watched the rain dropping from off each man's steel helmet, and gazed across ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... the case as Ishmael grew up, and his father's heart began to cling to him. The promise was beginning to grow dimmer, as years passed without the birth of the promised heir. As verse 18 of this chapter shows, Abram's thoughts were turning to Ishmael as a possible substitute. His wavering confidence was steadied and quickened by this new revelation. We, too, are often tempted to think ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the light, and dimmer yet, just as though evening were coming—and before him, Neville saw the dawn like a silvery gateway in the sky. Straight toward it the Cloud Horse rushed, and stopped so suddenly that ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... heard the convent bell ringing, and knew that there must be visitors at the gate, for loud voices sounded through his dream. Presently he knew that he was coming awake, but though the sunny monastery garden grew dimmer and dimmer to his sleeping sight, the clanging of the bell and the sound of shouts grew louder and louder. Then he opened his eyes. Flaming red lights from torches, carried hither and thither by people in the court-yard outside, flashed and ran along the wall of his room. Hoarse shouts and ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... rejoined her. She was sitting just as they had left her—but whether it was through the light being dimmer, or through a certain thoughtfulness in her face, Agatha thought she did ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... noonday sun penetrates only through openings in the vault and forms patches of light. Dust floats about in the shafts of light, mixed with smoke from water-pipes. The greater the distance the dimmer this confined air appears. There is also an indescribable odour. The smell of men and animals, of dusty goods, of rank tobacco, of rotting refuse, strong spices, fresh, juicy fruit—all mixed together into a peculiar odour which is characteristic ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... which had been burning so brightly grew dimmer and lower until the figures could hardly be seen. They gradually became more indistinct, and finally the gloom was as deep as anywhere in the dense woods. Only a few smouldering embers were left, and they gave ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... crossing the line. This fiasco was a mortifying blow to General O'Mahony and his supporters, and the cohorts of Roberts and Sweeny gained more confidence and support as the star of the Stephens faction grew dimmer. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... came shining level with the lower window, and we knew it was getting late. After a while the twilight began to get dimmer and grayer. There isn't much out there when the sun goes down. Then the judge ordered ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood |
