"Iridescence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the iron is in what the chemist calls the form of a protosalt) is oxidized by the action of the air on the surface of the lake into a persalt, which is insoluble, and appears on the surface in patches that display the peculiar iridescence characteristic of petroleum floating on water. Indeed, not infrequently these films of peroxide of iron are incorrectly attributed to petroleum. These films become heavy by addition of new particles; they sink through the water, and in this manner, in time, a large amount of iron ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... rose and gold; while the icicled cliffs on the opposite side of the cove, with the facades of glaciers, show every tint of blue from pale sky to deep beryl, darkening to indigo and purple in the deep sea-water at their bases. It is, or might be called, the iridescence of a land with rocks all opals, and trees all evergreens; for the dullest verdure here seems vivid by contrast with ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... disappointment, it is in itself disappointment; it is not what it expected to be; and it finds nothing which confronts it quite, if at all, responsive to the inward vision. The greatest, the loveliest things in the world lose their iridescence or dwindle before it. The old come to things measurably prepared to see them as they are, take them for what they are worth; but the young are the prey of impassioned prepossessions which can never be ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... appurtenances of all kinds, as well as the woman herself, are significant—is a delicate and subtle aura of the higher refinement—the long refinement of the spirit through many generations—which, to an eye accustomed to look for gradations of moral beauty, possesses a peach-blow iridescence of its own. From one point of view, the old-fashioned forms of thought and courtesy are stilted and useless. From another they retain still the lofty dignity of ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... used now and then to tremble, and partly to break, with tones that were pathetic beyond description. These were denotements of the fiery soul that smouldered beneath her grave exterior, and gave iridescence to every form of art that she embodied. Sometimes her whole being seemed to become petrified in a silent suspense more thrilling than any action, as if her imagination were suddenly inthralled by the tumult and awe of its own ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... notice that three of my sailors were shrivelling up, and Conrad began to act as if he were daft. Hawkins burst right before my eyes. Then Abeuchapeta got prismatic around the eyes and began to fade, and I noticed a slight iridescence about myself; and as for Morgan, he had the misfortune to lie down to take a nap in the sun, and when he waked up, his whole right side had evaporated. Then we saw what the trouble was. We'd struck this lava island, and were gradually succumbing to its intense heat. We rushed ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... and feet were grotesque, but there was something about their throats, stretched out in waning iridescence, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... He had not been many days in Rome when he saw that the city of the saints and martyrs was wholly given up to idolatry and social corruption, and was as different as possible from the city of his dreams. He cared not for the fine arts which covered this pollution with a deceitful iridescence of refinement; and the ruins of pagan Rome had no power to move his heart, preoccupied as it was with horror at the monstrous wickedness which made desolate the very sanctuary of God. When he ascended on his knees the famous Scala Santa, the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... on so large a scale that the spiderweb fills the end of the theatre. Then the ant-tragedy does the same. They can be classed as particularly apt hieroglyphics in the sense of chapter thirteen. Their horror and decorative iridescence are of the Poe sort. It is the first hint of the Poe hieroglyphic we have had except the black patch over the eye of the uncle, along with his jaundiced, cadaverous face. The boy meditates on how all nature turns on cruelty and ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the distance they might have been a rainbow torn from its moorings, borne violently forward on a high wind. The rainbow broke in spots, fluttered, and then came together again. It vibrated with color. It pulsed with iridescence. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... along in the shadow of the deeply-cleft valley, while beyond stretched the sunlit plain, level as a sea, rich with fields of ripe corn. The mists still lingered around me in the mountains, rolling about in the form of soft white masses of vapour, with here and there a fringed edge of iridescence. The cool freshness of the morning and the beauty of the varied scenery ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... beautiful creatures. It was a bright turquoise blue or azure, showing, in certain lights, a tinge of gold. This was the colour of their backs; while underneath they were of a silvery white, gleaming with a lively iridescence. A row of spurious fins above the tail, and another underneath, were of a bright yellow; while their large round eyes exhibited an iris ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid |
