"Flickering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dry above the surge, heard all about them the dreadful whistling of the blast; great billows broke across their path, but an irresistible force cleft a way for them through the sea. These believing ones saw through the spray a dim speck of light flickering in the window of a fisherman's hut on the shore, and each one, as he pushed on bravely towards the light, seemed to hear the voice of his fellow crying, "Courage!" through all the roaring of the surf; yet no one had spoken a word—so absorbed was each by his own peril. In this ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... was secretly and justly proud of saving his captain's life and of bringing off that "cursed nice little cannon." He gloried over it many a time to himself, and often of late took the medal of honor from its imitation-morocco case, and read the inscription by the light of his flickering candle. The embossed silver words seemed to spread a lambent glow over all the squalid little cabin—seemed almost to set it on fire! More than once some irrepressible small boy, prowling at night in the neighborhood ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... gestures of diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe-bowl. As if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky passage, from his private room to the parlor, the star on Feathertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a flickering gleam upon the wall, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... like gold in the candlelight, and her glittering crown flashed as if a circle of fairy fireflies had been caught in its soft meshes. Her dark eyes peered anxiously around the big shadowy room, lighted only by her flickering taper. ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the Bergen winter night, when the hickory fire is roaring, Flickering streams of ruddy light on the folk before it pouring— When the apples pass around, and the cider follows after, And the well-worn jest is crowned by the hearers' hearty laughter— When the cat is purring there, and the dog beside her dozing, And within ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... of my uncle's' aged 60, used to tell us children yarns every night by the kitchen fire (no other light;) and the last yarn demanded, every night, was this one. By this time there was but a ghastly blaze or two flickering about the back-log. We would huddle close about the old man, and begin to shudder with the first familiar words; and under the spell of his impressive delivery we always fell a prey to that climax at the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with everything, why do you come here, why stay here?" complained the Iron King with a last flickering effort ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... fever encreased towards night. The sensation is most dreary, to use no stronger term, with which one looks forward to passing the long hours of night beside a sick bed, especially if the patient be an infant, who cannot explain its pain, and whose flickering life resembles the wasting flame ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... horseback in 1849, he took with him a Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns's poems. He said that those books read and thought about, on the great plains, forever after spoiled him for reading poorer books. "The silence, the solitude," he said, "and the strange flickering light of the camp fire, seemed to bring out the tremendous significance of those great books; and I treasure them ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... that had dripped lay in black patches upon the sand. Then I saw, without understanding, the cause of my phantom,—a ruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite. I misinterpreted this, fancied it was a reflection of my flickering lamp, and turned again to the stores in the shed. I went on rummaging among them, as well as a one-armed man could, finding this convenient thing and that, and putting them aside for to-morrow's launch. My movements were ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... having the size and appearance of a pie—a meringue pie, well browned. A path led to another garden where in a hidden nook we one day discovered a quantity of chanterelles that were like wonderful black morning-glories. It was duskily shaded there, and through the flickering green we noticed a vivid, red spot that was like a flame. We pushed out to it and came upon a tiny, silent brook slipping through a bed of cowslip and water-arum, and at its margin a scarlet cardinal-flower, burning a ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a baby," said Billy, when the flickering lights of Cuivaca shone to the south of them, and the road ahead lay clear to the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... who watch by sick-beds find relief Unwittingly from the great stress of grief And anxious care in fantasies outwrought From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet, Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why They scarcely know or ask,—so, thou and I, Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong In the endurance which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... told her of Davenant's journey to France he could see her eyes grow bigger and blacker than ever in the flickering firelight. She kept them on him all the while he talked. She kept them on him as from time to time she lifted her cup ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... wearily climbed the steps, and flew rather than walked down the long Parade. The flickering gas lamps showed between patches of darkness, the rain drizzled on, and she felt helpless and bewildered, not knowing where to turn next. Wherever Dickie was, bronchitis must be dogging his footsteps, and all the time she seemed to hear Susie's voice appealing to her. Poor Susie! who ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... imagined that at eight or ten feet below us it was paved with the sea, which came rushing and foaming along it, and dashing up against the solid rock at its termination; while the light thrown from the flickering billows quivered in its arched roof above us, and the whole place was filled with the solemn sound of the ocean; and if any one can imagine to himself any situation more sublime, I should like to know what that is. The roof is composed of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... and paved without a causeway—for it was built when there were no vehicles in Orkney—and crooked as the inside of a whelk shell, suggesting starlight smuggling and romantic meetings. In the windows and obscure corners of the passages dim lamps peeped forth in the darkness, and the flickering firelight in the houses fell upon the stones through the open doorways, whereat sailors stood smoking their pipes ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... approached the entrance, and when he at last summoned courage and drew aside the curtain fastened firmly to the earth, which the wind puffed out like a sail, he beheld a dark room, from which a similar one opened on the right and left. The one on the left was as dark as the central one; but a flickering light stole through numerous chinks of the one on the right. The tent was one of those with a flat roof, divided into three apartments, which he had often seen, and the woman who irresistibly attracted him was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they drove out into the cold, frosty morning. Amid question and answer the flickering stars paled and sought their sky-blue beds, and the good mother sun began to weave golden curtains about them out of sparkling rays of light, so that their chaste retirement, their innocent sleep, might not be sullied by the eyes of curious sinners. Jack Frost shook his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... still as death. Hortense opened the chapel door noiselessly, and we glided in. Darkness here too, and yet not darkness, for great giant shadows leaped over the vacant pews, and chased one another over the cold, white keys of the organ. The sanctuary light was flickering fitfully in its crystal bowl, and peopling the holy precincts with phantom worshippers. Gleams of silvery moonlight flooded the farther end, and brought out to advantage every hoary blade and tree and flower that lay upon the glistening window panes. If we had needed inspiration ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... simplified the situation, but before I could recall the men, several of them had reached the bed-ground. As fast as horses could be secured, others dashed through the lighted circle and faded into the darkness. From the flickering of matches it was evident that the boys were dismounting and looking for some sign of trouble. Zilligan was swearing like a pirate, looking for his horse in the murky night; but instead of any alarm, oaths and derision ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... great shadowy forms in wool and leather, bulking over Cappen like storm-gods. Svearek nodded toward the flickering glow. "One of the islands, somebody must be living there. I cannot bring the ship closer for fear of surf, but one of ye should be able to take the boat thither and fetch us fire and ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... grammar, and thus a little of everything. How many times have I regarded with poignant compassion that sad sketch made by nature and mutilated by society! How many times have I followed in the darkness the pale and vacillating gleam of a spark flickering in abortive life! How many times have I tried to revive the fire that smoldered under those ashes! Alas! her long hair was the color of ashes ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... belated Buvat tremble from head to foot, he had run no real peril, but on arriving at the Rue des Bons Enfants things took a different look. In the first place, the aspect of the street itself, long, narrow, and only lighted by two flickering lanterns in the whole length, was not reassuring, and this evening it had to Buvat a very singular appearance; he did not know whether he was asleep or awake; he fancied that he saw before him some fantastic vision, such as he had heard told of the old Flemish sorceries; the streets seemed alive—the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the old man portrayed the autumn day, the fruit as golden as the sunshine, a strong, hopeful man, who had passed away in a far-distant land, but who was still a living presence to both. Amy looked at the picture in the flickering blaze until her eyes were blinded with tears. But such drops fall on the heart like rain and dew, producing ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... cairn their answer tost: "Minstrel! the fame of whose romantic lyre, Capricious-swelling now, may soon be lost, Like the light flickering of a cottage fire; If to such task presumptuous thou aspire, Seek not from us the meed to warrior due: Age after age has gathered son to sire Since our grey cliffs the din of conflict knew, Or, pealing through our vales, victorious ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... than acknowledge that he must die of shame in presence of them. It is just possible that the emancipation of art is the only ray of hope illuminating the future, an event intended only for a few isolated souls, while the many remain satisfied to gaze into the flickering and smoking flame of their art and can endure to do so. For they do not want to be enlightened, but dazzled. They rather hate light —more particularly when it is ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... lecturer once was in it, but he was not; he was dead. Another time was in Flushing, Long Island. There was not room in the hall, and they sent me out to talk to the crowd in the street. The sight of it, with the flickering torchlight upon the sea of upturned faces, took me somehow as nothing ever had, and the speech I made from the steps, propped up by two policemen, took the crowd, too; it cheered so that Roosevelt within stopped and thought some enemy had captured the meeting. When ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... me give you another example: I have a tame pigeon which has a great affection for me. It sits on my shoulder and squats down with its wings out as birds do when courting, pecking me to make me take notice of it, and flickering its wings. I like to hold it so that it can't move its wings, because I imagine this increases its excitement. If it struggles, or seems to dislike my holding it, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sitting kicking their heels on the stone steps of the post-office opposite the screen on which the pictures were flickering. Some they saw and others they did not notice, for their talk was of David and of the strange things he had ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... has spangled all the ground, Or winter bleak the flickering hearth around Draws close the circling seat; The child still sheds a never-failing light; We call; Mamma with mingled joy and fright Watches its ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... went to the window. Darkness had come; he could see Okar's lights flickering and winking at him from the buildings that skirted the street. Various sounds reached his ears—Okar's ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... His chatter, which was always the most irrepressible thing in the world, had, perhaps, to-day some direction behind it. For the first time in my long acquaintance with Andrey Vassilievitch he interested me. The little man was distressed by the heat and dirt; his fingers were always flickering about his clothes. He was intensely polite to every one, especially to Trenchard, paying him many compliments about England and the English. The English were the only "sportsmen" in the world. He had been once in London for a week; it had rained very much, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... buildings on the island shine as if it were a festal illumination, and between the dark firs there falls a lustre from the panes behind them as of a thousand flames, as if the trees were covered with flickering—Christmas lights; the colours of the rainbow become stronger and stronger, the background darker and darker, and the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... while she felt his charm stealing like a drug over her senses. Though she had begun to realize the thinness of his mental qualities, she was still as completely in the power of his physical charm as she had been on the day of her wedding. In the flickering light of the fire he appeared to diffuse the glamour of romance, of adventure; and she felt that this single day in New York had left a vital impression upon him. It was as if he had become suddenly more alive, more inexplicable in his ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the river-bed as Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. The reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her overnight that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... carrying torches, and provided with spades and pickaxes, came behind, and in this order they descended to the vault. It was a dismal and terrifying procession; anyone beholding these dark and sad countenances, this pale and resigned man, passing thus into these damp vaults illuminated by the flickering glare of torches, might well have thought himself the victim of illusion and watching some gloomy execution in a dream. But all was real and when light penetrated this dismal charnel-house it seemed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Beth-Haccarem; more to behold, If men had known, than all the glory told Of splendid Caesar in his marbled home On the white Isle; or audience-hall at Rome With trembling princes thronged. A clay lamp swings By twisted camel-cords, from blackened rings, Shewing with flickering gleams, a Child new-born Wrapped in a cloth, laid where the beasts at morn Will champ their bean-straw: in the lamp-ray dim A fresh-made Mother by Him, fostering Him With face and mien to worship, speaking naught; Close at hand Joseph, and the ass, hath brought That precious twofold burden ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... doorway Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a heavy brutal face, as he slouched past her. She started back, about to run, but stopped. Just beyond him in the doorway stood the girl she sought. The pale light of a flickering gas jet above her head revealed her face. There was no mistaking her now. Elizabeth forgot her fears and went forward with a ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... subsided to a low murmur here and there about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the blast; the lamps grew dim; and the majority of the castaways settled themselves among the flickering shadows to think—to forget the present, if they could—to sleep, if ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ground. These, measuring about forty feet in length, eighteen in breadth, and twenty in depth, were destined to receive scores of bodies irrespective of creed or class. The carts being brought to these dark and weirdsome gulphs, looking all the blacker from the flickering lights of candles and garish gleams of lanterns placed beside them, the bodies, without rite or ceremony, were shot into them, and speedily covered with clay. For the accomplishment of this sad work night was found ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... past; their frightened teams ringing out a warning which the thunder drowned; harrows and ploughs left out in fields; miles upon miles of hedge-divided country, with the distant fringe of trees as obvious as the scarecrow in the bean-field close at hand; in a trembling, vivid, flickering instant, everything was clear and plain; then came a flush of red into the yellow light; a change to blue; a brightness so intense that there was nothing else but light; and then the deepest ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... that clear morn, before whose faintest ray Earth's bliss will pale, a taper's flickering gleam; I see it break! the pure, celestial day, And stars of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Benjamin Franklin. He was one of the old original pioneers, I think. I disremember exactly what he is celebrated for, but I believe it was flying a—oh, yes! flying a kite, that's it. The publisher mentioned it. He was out one day flying a kite, you know, like boys do nowadays, and while she was flickering up in the sky, and he was giving her more string, an apple fell off a tree and hit him on the head, and then he discovered the attraction of gravitation, I think they call it. Smart, wasn't it? ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... on I was able to peer into it and see nothing but its beauty. There was a core of intensity, intolerably bright; about that, lambency but no flame, in which I saw leaves and straws and fronds of fern flickering, spiring, heeling over and over. That it whirled as well as floated was now clear, for a strong wind blew before and after it as it rushed by. This happened as I sat there. Blinding but not burning, heralded by a keen wind, it came by me and passed; a swift ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... anything further the tea appeared. Burrill and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot buttered and toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant. As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form enthroned in their employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated that Burrill made a step backward ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... o'erthrown upon Pavia's plains, That, bound for Naples, halts upon its way: As an ill-nourished lamp or taper wanes, For want of wax or oil, with flickering ray. Lo! the king leaves his sons in Spanish chains, And home returns, his own domain to sway. Lo! while in Italy he leads his band, Another wars upon his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... all night upon her silken cushions, and watched the flickering little lamp and the strange shadows it cast among the rich, painted carvings of the ceiling. She slept little, but waking she dreamed of the gold and the glitter of Shushan, of the magnificence of the young king, and of the brilliant hard-featured beauty of Atossa, whom she already ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... is over the women of the household gather around the flickering lights, and until far into the night work on these garments, bead necklaces, ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... back into the room the sights revealed by the flickering torchlight convinced me that our sufferings were almost light in comparison with those of others. I saw one man, a few paces behind me, turn purple in the face, as if some one were strangling him. Two or three ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... evening in late May she became seriously alarmed for his reason. Circumstances suddenly combined to strangle the last flickering breath of patience in Will, and the slender barriers were swept away in such a storm as even Phoebe's wide experience of him had never parallelled. Miller Lyddon was out, at a meeting in the village convened to determine after what fashion Chagford ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... of ivory Whereon no thing was writ,— But, at night—and the dazzled eyes would see Flickering lines o'er it,— And each, as you read from the magic tome, Lightened and died in flame, And the memory held but a golden ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... outstretched sides, whereon all the waves break from the open sea and part into the hollows of the bay. On this side and that enormous cliffs rise threatening heaven, and twin crags beneath whose crest the sheltered water lies wide and calm; above hangs a background of flickering forest, and the dark shade of rustling groves. Beneath the seaward brow is a rock-hung cavern, within it fresh springs and seats in the living stone, a haunt of nymphs; where tired ships need no fetters to hold nor anchor to fasten them with crooked bite. Here with seven sail gathered of all his ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... old man and the young clasped hands across the corpse, and the simple old Rabbi perceived a smile flickering over the face of Chayah's father. Perhaps it was only a sudden ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this appears to me little better than idle, restless vanity. O my friend, what a fuss and a pother we are all making, we little flies who are going round on the great wheel of time! To-day we are flickering and buzzing about, our little bits of wings glittering in the sunshine, and to-morrow we are safe enough in the little crevice at the back of the fireplace, or hid in the folds of the old curtain, shut ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... liberally distributed among them because there was hardly grass enough for a "burro." We were all ready to turn in, but there stood our temporary commander, his long legs a-straddle, his hands clasped behind him, and the flickering light of the fire betraying in his face both profound ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... in which most of the cafe chantants are situated, is bright with electric light, the back streets of the city are lit by flickering oil-lamps, and here the stranger must almost grope his way about after dark. If wise he will stay at home, for robbery and even murder are of frequent occurrence. A large proportion of the population here consists of time-expired convicts, many of whom haunt the night-houses ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... table-land, with the hounds about three fields in advance, Hammersley riding foremost, and taking all his leaps coolly as ever. As I swayed to either side upon my saddle, from weakness, I was lost to all thought or recollection, save a flickering memory of some plan of vengeance, which still urged me forward. The chase had now lasted above an hour, and both hounds and horses began to feel the pace at which they were going. As for me, I rode mechanically; I neither ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fire in her chamber, her old black mammy—Mammy Henny—bending close, combing out her marvellous hair. She had been studying the coals, watching the little castles pile and fall; the quick smothering of slowly fading sparks under a blanket of gray ashes, and the wavering, flickering light that died on the curling smoke. She had not spoken for a long time, when ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... candles of wax on the graves, and kneeling in devotion; it being their childish belief, he says, that their prayers on this day have efficacy to release their deceased relatives from purgatory, and that the dim taper flickering on the sod lights the unbound soul to its heavenly home. Of course these rites are not literal expressions ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... instant of universal surprise shared by the mayor, after which Clark gathered Dawson and Belding with his magnetic eye, and the two pushed up the windows nearest them. The cool night air breathed in and set the big oil lamps flickering, but with it there came the dull monotone of the rapids. Clark leaned slightly forward, and, smiling, began ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... and closed the door behind her, guided by the light of a still flickering fire, when a sound from ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... de Guiche went to the Abbey Church of Saint Denis. He hid himself here, to avoid being watched, and when the huge nave was closed, and all the attendants had left, he rushed forward and flung himself at full length upon the tombstone which covers the vast royal vault. By the flickering light of the lamps, he mourned the passing hence of so accomplished a woman, murdered in the flower of her youth. He called her by name, telling her once more of his deep and fervent love. Next day, he wandered about in great pain, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... said this, and instinctively drew nearer my side so that our heads almost touched over the flickering flame from whose heat and light we sought courage. She seemed to feel grateful for this contact, and the next minute, flinging all her scruples to the wind, she began a relation of events which more or less ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... were gathered for the monthly issue of rations by the Government. That evening in the log store, with some fifty or sixty Indians gathered around the stove on boxes or seated on the counters under the flickering light of the lanterns hanging from the roof, we spoke of God's love ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old fashioned turban of gauze, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... sounds torture me: I see them in my brain; They spin a flickering web of living threads, Like butterflies upon the garden beds, Nets of bright sound. I follow them: in vain. I must not brush the least dust from their wings: They die of a touch; but I must capture them, Or they will turn to a caressing flame, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... flickering of lanterns about the camp that night, and a rumour that brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a paddling of the naked feet of doolie-bearers and the rush ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... his back upon the town, and walked slowly on. In two minutes a flickering light shone upon his form, and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... was about to disperse, a figure like that of the traditional peasant of the Danube—squat, rugged, barefooted, with a long beard, dishevelled hair, a broad, grave brow, and a stern, commanding glance—rose in the midst of the flickering reflections by which the hall was half lighted, and standing erect before the bar, said in a deep, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... as he prayed Leonie crept up to the doorway of the temple, staring unblinkingly at the far end of the interior illuminated by the flickering wicks of the hundreds of little lights. She inhaled deeply, and half closed her glaring eyes as the overpowering sickly perfume of flowers, and some other indescribably sickening odour went to her ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... and moved out into the center gangway. They could see a light flickering some distance in advance, and had no ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... and silence grew very oppressive, and made us start nervously at the least thing. The sudden arrival of our donkey with its cart gave me a dreadful fright. The friendly beast greeted us with a joyous bray and rubbed its shaggy sides against us in the most companionable way. In the flickering light of my lamp I caught sight of its long ears waving over me—I don't believe I had seen three donkeys before in my life; there were none where I came from—and heard that demoniac shriek, and I verily believe ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... occasion, about midnight, soon after I was taken to the hospital, I was burning with fever, and became intolerably thirsty for a drink of water. No attendants were in sight, and the candles had all gone out but one or two, which emitted only a sort of flickering light that barely served to "render darkness visible." My suffering became well-nigh unendurable, and I could stand it no longer. I got up and staggered to the door of the tent and looking about me saw ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... lofty, sculptured by the gnomes into grotesque and astonishing forms, led from the inhabited vestibule to the wonders beyond. They had gone but a few rods when they saw a faint glimmer before them, which increased to a mild yellowish radiance flickering on the walls. It was ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... still a flickering flame playing about the red embers of their fire, for they had made it very big; and the moon had arisen and was shining bright in ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... of weird-colored flame had quickly died and only a few flickering pieces of wood from the cauldron fire burned in scattered spots about the yard. Of the cauldron, there ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... was filling the room with soft flickering light, it cast strange shadows on the curtained walls and revealed the girl's strained white face pitilessly. Craven had risen and was standing looking down on her. She grew aware of his scrutiny and flinched, the hot blood ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the soul run feebly a perpetual acceleration, whether by novelty or by extravagance, will be demanded; where they run full and heavy, then, under the restraint of form, they will but run more proudly and more strong. It is the flickering of life that fears hard rules in verse and may not feel the level classics of our Europe. Their rigidity is not that of marble; they are not dead. A human acquaintance with their sobriety soon fills us as we read. If we lie in the way of ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... a shaky hand. The room was warm, the lamp flickering hotly in the summer breeze. He thought of Joan and the ferry. Did she scull the old, flat-bottomed punt back and forth, back and forth, when the winter wind was howling up the river? What did she wear when winter settled, sharp ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... glared, and the neighboring church clock, striking the hour, seemed to beat on her heart as it smote relentlessly the girl's returning consciousness. Then she took up the work again, and the needle, with whose little point in pain and sickness and consuming solitude, in darkness, desolation, and flickering, fainting faith, she pricked back ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... you all understand what you're to do," said the lieutenant as he gathered his little party about him in one of the larger dugouts, where a flickering candle gave light. "You'll all provide yourselves with wire cutters, hand grenades and pistols. Rifles will be in the way. Take your gas masks, of course. No telling when Fritz may send over some of those shells. Blacken your faces, as usual. A star ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... as usual, high up among the billowy pillows, her hands clasped above her head, her dark, dreaming eyes fixed on the fire. She looked as though she were thinking, but she was not. Her mind was simply a blank. She was vaguely and idly watching the flickering shadows cast by the firelight on the wall, the gleam of yellow moonlight shimmering through the curtains; listening to the faint sighing of the night wind, the ticking of the little fanciful clock, to the pretty plaintive tunes it played before it struck ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... rule, in moments of overwhelming emotion, the eyes search too eagerly, too furiously, to see properly at all; but this does not seem to have been the case with Spinrobin. The shadows ran about like water and the flickering of the candle-flame dazzled, but there, opposite to him, over by the darkness of the dead fireplace, he saw instantly the small black object that was the immediate cause of his terror. Its actual shape was merged too much in the dark background ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... starved!" returned Tom, a slight smile of humour flickering for a second on his pale face even in that hour ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... last loiterers are gone, shaking phosphorus from their gills, and leaving a train of it in their tails; and the many-windowed Pharos of the harbour has all its panes lit up, and twinkles after its own fashion. Round the bay an interrupted crescent of flickering light is reflected in the water, strongest in the middle, where the town is thickest, and runs back; and far behind all lights comes the clear outline of the darkly defined mountain rising over the city. Our own lantern also is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... aggregation of atoms—such aggregation resulting from the motion of the atoms. The primary motion of the atoms—which are the cause of the origination of the entire world—is assumed to be brought about by the unseen principle (adrishta), 'The upward flickering of fire, the sideway motion of air, the primary motion on the part of atoms and of the manas are caused by the unseen principle.'—Is then, we ask, this primary motion of the atoms caused by an adrishta residing in them, or by an adrishta ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... complete silence in the large room, filled with long, wavering shadows that the flickering firelight chased over the walls ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... charged with coarse rancid oil, hung from the roof, the dull smoky red light flickering on the dead corpse, as the breeze streamed in through the door and numberless chinks in the walls, making the cold, rigid, sharp features appear to move, and glimmer, and gibber as it were, from the changing shades. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the night! None saw it rise— That black cloud stealing up the glassy skies— Till threatening murmurs, loud and louder grown, Burst from its swelling bosom, and the moon Slips into brief oblivion, while a glare As of far, flickering torches, seems to bear The challenge of the gods. Awake, awake! Make ready for the tempest, ere it break! Drive tent-pins deeper, stretch the covering tight— Hobble the ponies, scattering in affright Before the thunder-peals. ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... He tried to catch the expression in her eyes, but all he saw was the flickering gold of her hair as the wind tossed it against the rounded whiteness of her neck. His brain kept muttering, "Little bits of herself! What did she ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... and plunge into his pages. It is absurd to go on writing in these days for a normal-sighted public. The growing tenseness of life, with its small print, its newspapers read by artificial light, and its flickering motion pictures, is whittling down the section of the populace which has perfect sight to ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... I led them, too, (By passing thro' the flame the thigh-bones, wrapt In rolls of fat, and th' undivided chine), Unto the mystic and perplexing lore Of omens; and I cleared unto their eyes The forecasts, dim and indistinct before, Shown in the flickering aspect of a flame. Of these, enough is said. The other boons, Stored in the womb of earth, in aid of men— Copper and iron, silver, gold withal— Who dares affirm he found them ere I found? None—well I know—save who would babble lies! Know thou, in compass of a single phrase— All ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... A flickering anger seemed suddenly to blaze up in Stanley Rees. He cast a furious glance at the man whose fingers ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... flickering at intervals round the aerodrome. A vivid orange colour against the dim blue sky. The horizon was greyer, and little flames flashed intermittently from it. There were the ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... kine were moving slowly as they fed along the edges of the stream, and a dog was bounding about with exceeding swiftness here and there among them. At a sharply curved bight of the river the man could see a little vermilion flame flickering about, and above it a thin blue veil of smoke hanging in the air, and clinging to the boughs of the willows anear; about it were a dozen menfolk clear to see, some sitting, some standing, some walking to and fro, but all in company together: four of were brown-clad ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... walking in a lake, and now even the instinct of self-preservation must have been flickering, for he waded on, rejoicing merely in getting rid of the dog. Something in the water rose and struck him. Instead of stupefying him, the blow brought him to his senses, and he struggled for his life. The ground slipped beneath his feet many times, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... The first thing he made for her was a butter-stamper. In it he carved a mythological bird, a phoenix, something like an eagle, rising on symmetrical wings, from a circle of very beautiful flickering flames that rose upwards from the rim ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence |
