"Mirror" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... held under the table, knees and feet and clothing exert no deleterious effect, but the gaze of a human eye is fatal to all Spiritual manifestation; although to one of our number, on three occasions, a pocket mirror, carefully adjusted, unknown to the Medium, gave back the reflection of fingers, which were clearly not Spiritual, opening the ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... rides into Jerusalem we see, as in a mirror, this Paradox made plain. Thy King cometh to thee, meek. Was there ever so mean a Procession as this? Was there ever such meekness and charity? He Who, as His personal right, is attended in heaven ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... is, no longer, romance in real life. But the truth is that we live the romance that former ages told and sang. The magic carpet of the Arabian tales, the mirror that brought to view most distant objects, have come out of poetry, and present themselves in the prosaic form of steam ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... gone only a block from the house; for Elenora, who always was tardy, had to be dressed in a hurry. Then Tom had come down stairs with an elegant part to that portion of his hair which was right above his forehead, but the back section, which the mirror did not show, was tousled and unkempt. It took an effort on Mrs. O'Brien's part to make the children presentable; and hurry plus effort was not good for—well, for folks who do not weigh as little as they did when ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... A.D. 1600, there was a terribly hard winter, so that the fresh Haff [Footnote: The river Haff] was quite frozen over, and able to bear heavy beams. Now, as the ice was smooth and beautiful as a mirror, my Lord of Stettin proposed to his guests—Joachim Friedrich, Elector of Brandenburg, his brother-in-law, and old Duke Ulrich of Mecklenburg, his uncle, to go over the Haff in sleighs, and pay a visit to the princely widow and her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... she whispered to her companion, glancing into the mirror which she had just drawn from her bag, "that Lord Dredlinton isn't going to be foolish. He does ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tall and of a clean-limbed, supple grace, now emphasised by the riding-habit which she was wearing—for she had been in the saddle during the hour which Lady, O'Moy had consecrated to the rites of toilet and devotions done before her mirror. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacity and intelligence lent her countenance an attraction very different from the allurement of her cousin's delicate loveliness. And because her countenance was a true mirror of her mind, she argued shrewdly now, so shrewdly ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... of the door is a sideboard, a solid mahogany affair, with racks for glasses and tumblers, and cupboards for wine. In the centre of it is a mirror which, on sliding down into a recess, reveals a small square hatch ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... merry fit of laughter, and then stopped short with a hair-brush in his hand, staring at his face in the glass, for he hardly knew it; he looked so different to the sad, depressed lad whose countenance had gazed wearily at him from the mirror when he rose of a ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... execution, which would probably have surprised the brilliant projector himself if he could have seen it, and which has impressed, and will always impress, every one to whom it has been presented in the living reality or in the mirror of history—to whatever historical epoch or whatever shade of politics he may belong—according to the measure of his ability to comprehend human and historical greatness, with deep ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a mirror of his character. Tyranny was wrought into his every fibre. He demanded an oriental homage. As his carriage whirled by, it was held the duty of all others in carriages to stop, descend into the mud, and bow themselves. Himself threw his despotism into this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... it's true," she murmured, softly, standing with dewy eyes before her mirror. "He is the best fellow in the world, and I was blind that I did not see it from the first. But all will yet be well;" and she drew a letter from her bosom ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the dwelling, the entrance to which was through the azotea. The latter was half covered by the roof I have just mentioned. The floor was composed of slats an inch in width, laid half that distance apart. Chairs, tables, benches, a cupboard, a few small ornaments, a mirror, and some lithographs in frames, composed the furniture of the interior. The cleanliness of the house and the arrangement of its contents testified to the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... bureau and slowly she raised her eyes to the mirror and then gazed long and sadly ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... is indispensable. This knowledge will help us in understanding that which distinguishes it from other European literatures, not only from the viewpoint of the art which it expresses, but also as the historical and sociological mirror of the nation's life in the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... having been held in good repute by the literary patrons and critics of his own age. His fame rests upon three works, or rather three parts of one scheme—Speculum Meditantis, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis. The first of these, the mirror of one who meditates, was in French verse, and was, in the main, a treatise upon virtue and repentance, with inculcations to conjugal fidelity much disregarded at that time. This work has been lost. The Vox Clamantis, or voice of one crying in the wilderness, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... those who petitioned him. He, who gambled away tens of thousands at one roll of the dice and laughed at it, became more strict and more petty in his business, occasionally dreaming at night about money! And whenever he woke up from this ugly spell, whenever he found his face in the mirror at the bedroom's wall to have aged and become more ugly, whenever embarrassment and disgust came over him, he continued fleeing, fleeing into a new game, fleeing into a numbing of his mind brought on by sex, by wine, and from there he fled back into the urge to pile up and obtain ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... in a reverent manner. 5. Re—flect'ing, throwing back light, heat, etc., as a mirror. Land'-mark, an object on land serving as a guide to seamen. Ex-traor'—di-na-ry, wonderful. 9. Whirl'-pool, a gulf in which the water moves round in a circle. Peas'ents, those belonging to the lowest class of tillers of the soil ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... under the delusion of a dream," she said. "Rub your eyes and look carefully! It's your reflection in the mirror." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... with a lithe, silent step, moving from the hips and swinging his shoulders. Before a door marked "Private" he paused. From his waistcoat pocket he took a little silver convex mirror and surveyed himself critically therein. He adjusted his neat tie, replaced the mirror, knocked at the door and entered the room of the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... to the speaker; some looked askance at the Arkansan, who put one forearm meditatively under his coat-tail; some looked through the window over the regions alluded to, and some only changed their pose and looked around for a mirror. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... away life's trivial care, But you straightway steal on me with delight: My purest moments are your mirror fair; My deepest thought finds you ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... we believe, often without clearly understanding, that players are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time, and that the end of playing, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold the mirror up to nature, and to shew the very age and body of the time, ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... that a book of this kind should become the basis of a great literature. Whatever was produced in later times had to submit to be judged by its exalted standard. It became the rule of conduct, the prophetic mirror reflecting the future work of a nation whose fate was inextricably bound up with its own. It is not known how and when the biblical scriptures were welded into one book, a holy canon, but it is probably correct to assume that it was done by the Soferim, the Scribes, between 200 and 150 B.C.E. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... brought in, and Derues was ordered to put them on, which he did readily, affecting much amusement. As he was assisted to disguise himself, he laughed, stroked his chin and assumed mincing airs, carrying effrontery so far as to ask for a mirror. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to these sympathies in which, without any other discipline than that of our daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the Poet principally directs his attention. He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature. And thus the Poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure, which accompanies him through the whole course of his studies, converses with general nature, with affections akin to those, which, through labour and length ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... as the house was far removed from the fort, and no one was near it. A cannon-ball entered the great, broad bay window overlooking the sea, made a wreck of the furniture in the parlor, crashed through the wall, shivering a tall mirror and spreading havoc in ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... commands the Angel of Death, who with matchless legerdemain, keeps the mirror of illusion, unsuspected, before the consumptive's eyes; and, seeing, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... said Galahad, "since ye are of noble birth, see that knighthood be well placed in you, for ye ought to be a mirror unto all chivalry." ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... certainly, dressed twenty centuries ago for the tomb in which it was found, and still faintly lucent with the fashionable unguent of the day, and kept in form by pins of jet. One thinks of the little, slender hands that used to put them there, and of the eyes that confronted themselves in the silver mirror under the warm shadow that the red-gold mass cast upon the white forehead. This sanctuary of the past was the most interesting place in that most interesting city of York, and the day of our first visit a princess of New York sat reading a book in the midst of it, ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... scarce see enough of the men and women we like. And here again that which may be a fault in Catriona is no fault at all in The Memoirs of David Balfour. Though novelists may profess in everything they write to hold a mirror up to life, the reflection must needs be more artificial in a small book than in a large. In the one, for very clearness, they must isolate a few human beings and cut off the currents (so to speak) bearing upon them from ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... calm of solitude, and in the silent slumber of the passions, meditation puts us in presence of ourselves, before our own eyes, by which we see ourselves as in a true mirror. Meditation teaches us to judge without prejudice what we have done and to determine with propriety what we should do, by making the experience of the past our lamp for the future, and by converting past mistakes into practical lessons for ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... forms, but variously, according to the state of mind which a man has formed for himself, either from God or from self. In the sight of the man who has formed the state of his mind from God, the Sacred Scripture is like a mirror in which he sees God, each in his own way. The truths which he learns from the Word and which become a part of him by a life according to them, compose that mirror. The Sacred Scripture is the fulness ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... cloak-room adjoining the Assembly Room; Miss Matty gave a sigh or two to her departed youth, and the remembrance of the last time she had been there, as she adjusted her pretty new cap before the strange, quaint old mirror in the cloak-room. The Assembly Room had been added to the inn, about a hundred years before, by the different county families, who met together there once a month during the winter to dance and play at cards. Many a county beauty had first swung through the minuet that she afterwards danced ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... isn't it, who walks here this night?" she said, linking her arm in mine and leading me to a tall mirror. Then she changed colour a little, took her arm away hastily and walked from the great glass. Kind and friendly as she was, she couldn't quite like to see her own ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... shabbiest,—no aesthetic instinct urged the Kosminskis to overpass the bare necessities of existence, except in dress. The only concessions to art were a crudely-colored Mizrach on the east wall, to indicate the direction towards which the Jew should pray, and the mantelpiece mirror which was bordered with yellow scalloped paper (to save the gilt) and ornamented at each corner with paper roses that bloomed afresh every Passover. And yet Bear Belcovitch had lived in much better style in Poland, possessing ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the knee. But to ask me to worship a stuffed purple robe on a worm-eaten throne! 'Tis an insult to manhood and reason. Hereditary kingship! When you can breed souls as you breed racehorses it will be time to consider that. Stand here by my side before this mirror. Is not that a proud, a royal couple? Did not Nature fashion these two creatures in a holiday mood of joy and intoxication? Vive la Republique and its Queen with ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of walking cases has arrived, is one which should appeal to a painter. Clouds of steam fill the air, and through the fog you perceive a fine melee of figures, some half dressed, some statuesquely nude, towelling themselves or preparing to wash, or shaving at bits of mirror propped on the window-sills. Pink bodies wallow voluptuously in the deep porcelain-ware tubs, which are of the shape and superb dimensions of Egyptian sarcophagi. Sometimes a patient with a wounded arm, unable to help himself, is being soaped and sponged by an orderly; or you may see ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... aborigines," he said. "Give me duplicates, if you will be so generous, but nothing unique, I insist." He finally accepted one gem in the collection,—a towering structure of feathers that formed "a most delightful head-dress, quite irresistibly fascinating," tried it on before a mirror that gave back faithfully the comical reflection, and incidentally delivered a lecture on the head-ornaments of many savage and civilized nations of every age, though not at all in the style of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... had been about to use for cooking was all but dead. She rose and put fresh coals on. There was a small oblong mirror over the mantelpiece; it showed her so ghastly a face that she ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... you are, and do exactly as I bid you." He rose from his seat, groped among the thatch of the hut for a moment, and presently produced a small, circular object about the size of an ordinary coat button. It was as brightly burnished as the surface of a mirror, and he placed it upright on the floor of the hut in such a position that, while itself in deep shadow, it strongly reflected the light which entered through the doorway right into my eyes, dazzling them to such an extent that, for a few moments, I could scarcely bear to look at it. Presently, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... been an hour later when she sprang up and looked anxiously at the darkening windows. She had formed no definite plan, but her dominant impulse was to act before he should have a night to analyse, to settle, to censure. Stopping at the first wall mirror she made a few touches to her hair and searched her face for signs of tears; then passed out, closing the heavy door with a firmness which might have meant all ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Sarah said, and then Daisy did hesitate a moment, and, glancing into a hall mirror, wondered how the face she saw there, and which she knew was beautiful, would look scarred and disfigured as she had ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... see the beauty of their own shadows, and other such profitable mental exercises, Wordsworth has left us a series of studies of the graceful and happy shepherd life of our lake country, which to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet and precious; but they are only so as the mirror of an existent reality in many ways ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... falls on the Saco, the two little hamlets of Edgewood and Riverboro nestle together at the bridge and make one village. The stream is a wonder of beauty just here; a mirror of placid loveliness above the dam, a tawny, roaring wonder at the fall, and a mad, white-flecked torrent as it dashes on its ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was necessary—or even in his grave those faults might have revived in you. Now, I add this, if Charles Haughton—like you, handsome, high-spirited, favoured by men, spoiled by women—if Charles Haughton, on entering life, could have seen, in the mirror I have held up to you, the consequences of pledging the morrow to pay for to-day, Charles Haughton would have been shocked as you are, cured as you will be. Humbled by your own first error, be lenient to all his. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dismissed from her mother's presence, Cleopatra did not go as she had been commanded to her mirror in order to remove the little shadow of down that adorned her upper lip. She retired instead to the library, and ensconcing herself in one of the large leather easy chairs, continued her reading of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Ashley Birks' drawing-room contained some two dozen people, mostly ladies. Two of the gentlemen present are not without interest for us. He whom you observe standing, so to speak, the focus of a concave mirror of three gracious dames, with his back somewhat difficultly bent, as if under ordinary circumstances he would be as upright as any Briton who owes not a penny, with very wholesome cheeks and lips which move in and out as he forms his well-rounded periods, is, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Diane de Poitiers after all," she remarked, peering at herself in the small mirror when her thick locks were smoothed and tied back for the night—"Why should ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... her, almost exactly as she had looked more than two years before, smiling, charming, carefree. She had not, apparently, grown older, those age-long months had not changed her. He rose and regarded his own reflection in the mirror of the bureau. He was surprised, as he was constantly being surprised, to see that he, too, had not changed greatly ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... for I'm not coming. I am very happy here, and so tired of the frivolous life I lead in town, that I have decided to try a better one," and Sophie's mirror reflected a face full of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... roller-coaster swoop of the Avenue, listening to the roll of tired wheels, the faint horns, the loud horns. They know each other now—their hands grip tighter—in the wandering instant the whole background of streets and tall buildings passes like breath from a mirror—for the instant without breath or clamor, they exist together, one being, and the being has neither flesh to use the senses too clumsily, nor human thoughts to rust at the will, but lives with the strength of a thunder ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... banker made a campaign of extreme rabidity. When Debs was managing the big Chicago strike this man wrote a letter to the Mirror in which he advocated Gatling guns for the suppression of Debs and his like. When he wanted to be Comptroller of the Currency under Cleveland he declared in an interview that Cleveland was "the greatest man since Jesus Christ." He denied that he was a National ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 1862, the "Pearl of Orr's Island" is ever new; a book filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew each time one reads them. One sees the "sea like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr's Island," and straightway comes "the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild angry howl of some ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... to value yourself at something nearer your true worth. I see in the mirror as dainty a piece of womanhood as this fair land, with all its treasures of beauty, holds. Hast heard of Trojan Helen, that woman who was a world's desire, whose beauty made men sigh for her until they fell ill with ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... he splashed up and shaved beard away from a tired, red-eyed face in the mirror. Then, he waited. ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system,—a strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... know his ways, the mean wretch!" said I to myself, hastily rubbing my eyes dry, and making up before the mirror in the hat-tree as fierce a face as I could. Then I snatched open the door, and tried to make believe my heart wasn't ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the door, went back, and again stood before the mirror. Some time elapsed as she stood there regarding herself, with strange thoughts passing through her mind. She did not find it necessary, however, to make any alterations in her appearance. She did not change one fold in her attire, or vary one hair of her head from its place. It was as though this ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... vagrant ray of the brilliant sun reached down through a break in the overcast of clouds and touched the shining hull of the Ancient Mariner with a finger of gold. Instantly, the ship shone like the polished mirror ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... said her dutiful daughter, "I'm sure I hope not! Really, I'm very well satisfied with it;" and, getting up and going to the mirror, she set about altering the riband in her hair, humming the while the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... by the fire and moved about her room in an objectless way, touching things uselessly and looking for things which were not lost, which she did not want, but which she could not find. She wished that she had her great jewels. She would have tried them on before the mirror—anything to pass the time. But they were all safely stored in one ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... in great affliction of heart, like a plantain tree severed from its roots. And the colour that was suffusing her face in consequence of the joy she had felt, quickly disappeared, like watery particles on a mirror blown thereon by the breath of the mouth. And hearing these words of Rama, all the monkeys also with Lakshmana became still as dead. Then the divine and pure-souled Brahma of four faces, that Creator of the Universe himself sprung from a lotus, showed himself on his car to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hadn't paid much attention to it. The car was just a common Ford Cruiser of the nondescript steel blue color that was so popular. But Bending had been conscious of its presence for several blocks. He looked carefully in the mirror. ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... time all Europe was aflame with excitement: warriors of noble birth were flocking to serve under the standard of the brother of the King of Spain, who was regarded as the very mirror of chivalry. The following description of Don John, at Naples, is from the pen of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman—that was true, and Vronsky could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his superiors, was free ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... progress down the stream, having the current with us, and entered the lake just as the sun rose above what appeared like a sea horizon, though we knew that the shore was not far off on the opposite side. The calm lake shone like a burnished mirror. The shore we were leaving was tinted with various colours, the higher ground here crowned by groups of spruce-firs, and in other places rocky and barren, but still picturesque ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... a mind is to a river! both may be pure and transparent and lovable, and strong to support and admirable; each may mirror the beauties of earth and sky, and still have a wonderful beauty of its own to delight us; both are always moving onward, bound irresistibly to be absorbed in a great ocean mystery, to be swept away irreclaimably, without hope of return, but leaving memories of themselves in good or evil wrought ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... channels of her yellow blood Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud, Cased like the centipede in saffron mail, Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,— (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace Congenial colours in that soul or face,) Look on her features! and behold her mind As in a mirror of itself defined: Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged There is no trait which might not ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as these tales of Diderot's, was the mirror both of the ordinary practical sentiment and the philosophic theory. A nation pays dearly for one of those outbreaks, when they happen to stamp themselves in a literary form that endures. There are those who hold that Louvet's Faublas is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... use for the purposes of navigation. But Tycho Brahe's sextant proved the forerunner of the modern instrument. The general structure is the same; but the vast improvement of the modern sextant is due, firstly, to the use of the reflecting mirror, and, secondly, to the use of the telescope for accurate sighting. These improvements were due to many scientific men—to William Gascoigne, who first used the telescope, about 1640; to Robert Hooke, who, in 1660, proposed to apply it to the quadrant; to Sir Isaac ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... on its further shores—is like a dream picture. The fair isle floating in its centre is freighted down with oak and arbutus trees standing out in relief against the mountain, and reflected in the mirror-faced waters. The coloured setting of the surroundings is exquisite. The cliffs bristle crest high with rigid firs, the young oak copse is entangled with an undergrowth of guelder rose, and in the sedges near the heron-frequented reeds, white water lilies open their wonderful eyes. Close ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... time the day had advanced as far as eleven, which is a portion of the twenty-four hours when the Mediterranean, in the summer months, is apt to be as smooth as a mirror and as calm as if it never knew a tempest. Throughout the morning there had been some irregularity in the currents of air; the southerly breeze, generally light and frequently fickle, having been even ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature and the lay of the land made suitable—held amid their foliage a few fleecy vapors, born of the waters, which rose like a slender smoke. The surface of the lakelet, clear as a mirror and calm as the sky, reflected the tall green masses of the forest, the tops of which, distinctly defined in the limpid atmosphere, contrasted with the groves below wrapped in their pretty veils. The lakes, separated by broad causeways, were three mirrors showing different reflections, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... could see the way you look when you cry! Sort of streaked. Come here!" She took her by the shoulder and faced her before the mirror. "Did you ever see such a fright? And I was just thinking, before you began, about how pretty you looked. I was, honestly. You could be as pretty as any of the rest of us, if you'd only make up ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Majesty's long explanatory letter, and has taken his leave of us,[35] with tears in his eyes, and I can assure your Majesty that I, too, see with pain the departure of one whom I have been accustomed to consider as the faithful mirror of your feelings, wishes, and views, and whose depth and warmth of heart I esteem no less highly than his high mental gifts. Sympathy with his fate is general here. I entirely recognise in your letter the expression of your ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... having a complete suit of armor made for her at Tours. It was of the finest steel, heavily plated with silver, richly ornamented with engraved designs, and polished like a mirror. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... with a second. Then slowly sank the huge head, and up came the vast flukes in the air, and Leviathan sounded into the ocean depths as the line spun through the stem notch, and the boat sped over the mirror-like sea. In ten minutes she was hidden from view by a point of land, and the last that we on the shore saw was "the dandiest lad that ever stood up in a boat's bow" going aft to the steer-oar, and the old white-headed skipper taking his place to use the deadly lance. And then at the same ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... of catching now and then a drop of spray from, and hearing the thunder of, a cataract, whose free, surging bound is not yet shackled by the tourist's sentimental description; and the novelty of beholding one's image reflected in a liquid mirror whose geographical position is not yet stereotyped on the charts of man. Alas for these maps and charts! Despite the wishes of scientific geographers and the ignorance of unscientific explorers, we think them far too complete already; and we can conceive ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... genuine man-to-man hand shake, and a promise of his return soon, the boy, for the first time in his short life, took stock of the condition of his own body. Slipping out of the big shirt once more, and borrowing Cis's mirror, he contrived, by skewing his head around, chinning first one shoulder, then the other, to get a meager look at his back. He appraised his spindling arms and legs. He thumped ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... her knees among the leaves). Daddy, now I am putting up my hair. I have got such a darling of a mirror. It is such a darling mirror I 've got, Dad. Dad, don't look. I shall tell you about it. It is a little pool of water. I wish we could take it home and hang it up. Of course the moment my hair is up there will be other changes also; for instance, I ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... dining-room were palm trees and other exotics massed in the corners, while the mantels were banked with cut flowers. There were thirty-four plates on the long table, in the centre of which was a plateau mirror, on which were roses and lilies of the valley. On either side of it were tall gilt candelabra bearing eleven wax lights each, and beyond these large gilt epergnes overflowing with Marechal Niel roses. At the end of the mirror were pairs ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... is just a thoughtless girl, that is all; sit her in front of a mirror and compel her to chew gum for one-half hour and watch herself do it, and it will often suffice to cure her. Young ladies should be taught that chewing gum should be done in the bedroom, but never in the living-room or on the streets. It is not only a disgusting habit, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... carved lions I have ever seen, are the two granite ones in the Egyptian room of the British Museum, and yet in them, the lions' manes and beards are represented by rings of solid rock, as smooth as a mirror! ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... to turn from her to hide my anguish. I leaned my elbows on the narrow stone chimney-piece, which, with the grate below and a small mirror above, formed an almost solitary oasis in the four walls of books. In the mirror I saw my face; it was wizened, drawn, old before its time, and merely ugly in its sore distress, merely repulsive in its bloody bandages. And in the mirror also ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... there before the mirror. He put out his tongue as if to examine the state of his health, and suddenly this thought entered his brain after the ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... right. Remember also that whatever is misery to you to read, is still greater misery to me to set down. They have permitted you to see the strange and tragic shapes of life as one sees shadows in a crystal. The head of Medusa that turns living men to stone, you have been allowed to look at in a mirror merely. You yourself have walked free among the flowers. From me the beautiful world of colour and motion has ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... moment before the stimulating advent of the early cup of tea, when divested of our motley we see ourselves in the mirror as, thanks be, others do not, and laying eager hands upon that offspring of charity, the boudoir cap, wonder if it has been in hobnailed boots that the old Father has tramped across our face during the night hours, dragging ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... house—a pretentious abode, with white scroll-work round the eaves and an eruption of bay-windows on all its sides. Mrs. Howard, a plump, voluble dame, met Rilla gushingly and left her in the parlour while she went to call Irene. Rilla threw off her rain-coat and looked at herself critically in the mirror over the mantel. Hair, hat, and dress were satisfactory—nothing there for Miss Irene to make fun of. Rilla remembered how clever and amusing she used to think Irene's biting little comments about other girls. Well, it had come ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Here in a dark and dismal rocky room, Where Heaven's light could scarcely find a way, And where around him lay his books and tools Of hateful magic, littering the floor, Steadfast he looked upon a metal mirror That told the fates to him,—then muttered low: "The time has come! Lo, how my tower entices The guileless lad, who cometh like a child With happy heart, and laughter on his lips. Come, I must work my work by her who sleeps In heavy slumber underneath ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... a compliment," he answered. "If you have looked in your mirror, to-night, you know I ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... once was beauty, once was grace; Grace, that with tenderness and sense combin'd To form that harmony of soul and face, Where beauty shines, the mirror of the mind. Such was the maid, that in the morn of youth, In virgin innocence, in Nature's pride, Blest with each art, that owes its charm to truth, Sunk in her Father's fond embrace, and died. He weeps: O venerate the holy tear! Faith lends ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... .Paris wrapped in night! half nebulous: The moonlight streams o'er the blue-shadowed roofs; A lovely frame for this wild battle-scene; Beneath the vapor's floating scarves, the Seine Trembles, mysterious, like a magic mirror, And, shortly, you shall see what you ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... outbid and overpowered on this ground by illustration in line and colour. In this direction, indeed, lies the danger of extreme Realism. It wages war against Romance, which subsists upon idealistic conceptions of noble thought and action; it pretends to hold up a true mirror to society, because it reflects faithfully and without discrimination, like a photograph, the street, the club, or the drawing-room, and arranges dramatically the commonplace talk of everyday people. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... advertize themselves. Next," she continued, "comes the question of the looking-glass. I have made efforts to use a small miroir de poche, but it is far from adequate. In cases where the backs of the stalls are of a good height, a fair-sized mirror might be fixed high up on the back, with some little contrivance in the way of a curtain which could be drawn over it; and aided by these we might be able to ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... ceremony of the reception of several knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost. Their stratagem met with all the success with which they had flattered themselves. While the procession was passing through the long mirror gallery, the Swiss of the apartments placed them in the first row of spectators, recommending every one to pay all possible attention to the strangers. The latter, however, were imprudent enough to enter the 'oeil-de-boeuf' chamber, where, were Messieurs Cardonne ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and sulky, like a child out of humor. Now the best thing these small ponds can do is to keep perfectly calm and smooth, and not to attempt to show off any airs of their own, but content themselves with serving as a mirror for whatever of beautiful or picturesque there may be in the scenery around them. The hills about Rydal water are not very lofty, but are sufficiently so as objects of every-day view,—objects to live with,—and they are craggier than those we have hitherto seen, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to these conceptions the greatest possible unity combined with the greatest possible extension. Hence arises the natural illusion which induces us to believe that these lines proceed from an object which lies out of the sphere of empirical cognition, just as objects reflected in a mirror appear to be behind it. But this illusion—which we may hinder from imposing upon us—is necessary and unavoidable, if we desire to see, not only those objects which lie before us, but those which are at a great distance behind us; that is to say, when, in the ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... as well as its filling up and coloring, are determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the distended windpipe pressed so against the shirt-button they could not undo it. Then they seized the collar, and, pulling against each other, wrenched the shirt open so powerfully that the button flew into the air, and tinkled against a mirror ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade |
