"Spark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things. While comparisons in these respects may be interesting and borrowings sometimes possible, lending the older mind life and the younger mind wisdom, such intercourse has hardly the value of spontaneous sympathy, in which the spark of mutual intelligence flies, as it should, almost without words. Contagion is the only source of valid mind-reading: you must imitate to understand, and where the plasticity of two minds is not similar their mutual interpretations are necessarily false. They idealise ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... tawny with gold, her eyes with purple were dark, Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... ignorant and poor, and to throw ourselves upon God for all, recognizing our own worthlessness, and that we have no right to anything. It is in this nothingness that we recover something of life—the divine spark is there at the bottom of it. Resignation comes to us, and, in believing love, we reconquer the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Vesuvius, it burns away in my thoughts, beside the roaring waters of Niagara, and not a splash of the water extinguishes a spark of the fire; but there they go on, tumbling and flaming night and day, each in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... light up to now, it was at this point she was to light her candle and place it on the floor, so that in returning she should not miss the staircase and get a fall. She had promised to do this, and was only too happy to see a spark of light scintillate into ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... progress than their neighbours. The progress made by those nations in which Protestantism, though not finally successful, yet maintained a long struggle, and left permanent traces, has generally been considerable. But when we come to the Catholic Land, to the part of Europe in which the first spark of reformation was trodden out as soon as it appeared, and from which proceeded the impulse which drove Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very slow progress, and on the whole a retrogression. Compare Denmark and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and made several violent pulls at the line, under the impression that something had bitten. Suddenly his rod, stout as it was, bent with the immense muscular force applied to it, and a small goldeye, about three or four inches long, flashed like an electric spark from the water, and fell with bursting force on the rocks behind, at the very feet of a small Indian boy, who sat, nearly in a state of nature, watching our movements from among the bushes. The little captive was of a bright silvery colour, with a golden eye, and is an excellent fish for ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... sympathetic, but in her eyes there glanced not the faintest spark of mercy. I sat for a moment stunned and helpless, and ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... if to show his readiness to pull round. Meantime I heard a click. A feeble gleam fell on his misty hands under the black halo of the hat rim. Again the flint and blade clicked, and a large red spark winked rapidly in the bows. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Brush Piling. Slash Burning. Fire Lines. Spark Arrestors. Patrol. Associate Effort. Young ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... a perfect monarch, would be the state of highest felicity! First an impossible thing is asked; and next impossible consequences deduced. One tyrant generates a nation of tyrants. His own mistakes communicate themselves east, west, north, and south; and what appeared to be but a spark becomes a conflagration. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Langenzunge! he hardly had nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain's chemical revolving disk. This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric spark passes through it, is changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk started on that fatal despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his spirit-lamp blew up,—as the ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... said demurely, as he picked himself up in great surprise—drawing a step away, and looking at him with wide-open eyes, to which the little fright of seeing him fall, and the spark of malice that took pleasure in it, had given sudden brilliancy. Jock was so much astonished that he uttered no reproach, but went on by her side, after a moment, pondering. He could not see how any offence ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... had been uttered, nor did Chartersea so much as refer to his Covent Garden experience. At length, when some half dozen of the wine was gone, and the big oak clock had struck two, the talk lapsed. It was Charles Fox, of course, who threw the spark into the powder box. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... authority with regard to the management of his household, he, the said Hastings, did, in the said minute, endeavor to excite the spirit of the British nation, severely animadverting on such offences, making use of the following terms: "If there be a spark of generous virtue in the breasts of any of my countrymen who shall be the readers of this compilation, this letter" (a letter of complaint from the Nabob) "shall stand for an instrument to awaken it to the call of vengeance against so flagitious an abuse of authority ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dead corpses, but I will examine each if there be any spark of life remaining. Go ye into the houses, and if there be any sound persons within, bid them, in the name of humanity and their own safety, come forth and help to bury their brethren. If they are suffered to lie here longer, every soul in this ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... A spark came into Calvin's brown eyes. "Help you!" he repeated. "What's the matter? Ain't you old enough to speak ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... he wanted to follow. And so the slip of paper went back into his pocket-book, tucked in carefully, though he knew every word that was on it; and he sat down again, and remained, thinking and wondering, until the fire had ceased to show even a spark of red, and the chill of the room sent him shivering to bed, to dream ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... by societies. He charged Fox with being the only person who saw no danger in the writings and doctrines so widely promulgated; proclaimed him a friend, if not an advocate, of Paine and his doctrines; and asserted that such conduct could not be reconciled with any spark of patriotism. Fox indignantly rejoined, and disclaimed all sympathy with Paine. At the same time, he avowed that he saw no danger in his writings and doctrines, or of any other writer of his class, because the good sense and constitutional spirit of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... spark which became a fire in the breast of Mills. What he saw and what he heard, during those southern tours, made him a willing martyr for the sake of Africa's sons and daughters. Their degradation made him ready to endure all things ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... in consequence of Henri having omitted to replace the stopper of his powder-horn, and when, in his anxiety for Joe, he fired at random amongst the Indians, despite Dick's entreaties to wait, a spark communicated with the powder-horn and blew him up. Dick and Crusoe were only a little singed, but the former was not disposed to quarrel with an accident which had sent their enemies so ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... left for him was to live his life as it was, minus one spark of brightness. Certainly he didn't feel like singing, but whining was no earthly good. And since he could not sing, and would not whine, silence alone was left him. He would work as best he could till the year was out. He had no intention of ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... an offering at your shrine, Have sung this hymn, and here entreat One spark of your diviner heat To light upon a ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... one another!... A hand stretched out in the hour of my agony makes me feel that I am not a branch torn from the tree, but a living part of it; we save each other. I give my strength, which would be nothing if it were not taken. Truth alone is like a spark struck from a stone; dry, harsh, ephemeral. Will it die out? No, for it has kindled another soul, and a new star has risen ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the revolutionary storm, now sweeping the globe, will be upon us, and happy if we make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our land. From the present state of things in Europe and America, the day which begins our combustion must be near at hand; and only a single spark is wanting to make that day to-morrow. If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves, but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... he refreshed himself unto the labor of his continual conflict. With such rest indulging, he girded his loins with roughest hair-cloth, the which had been dipped in cold water; lest haply the law of the flesh, warring in his members against the law of the Spirit, should excite any spark of the old leaven. Thus did Saint Patrick with spare and meagre food, and with the coarsest clothing, offer himself a holy and living sacrifice, acceptable unto God; nor suffered he the enemy to touch in him the walls ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... Indeed, Colonel, I thought you did, by your taking fire so quickly. I am glad to hear you say you did not. How soon a little spark kindles into a flame; especially when it meets with such ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... periods of his life an admiral, a theologian, a critic, a metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to England than he began to spread ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Elie Magus had refused to see him. But La Cibot extinguished the spark of distrust that gleamed in the lawyer's eyes by informing him that Elie Magus had returned from a journey, and that she would arrange for an interview in Pons' rooms and for the valuation of the property; for the day ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... ear-rings, and scarlet caps adorn the sleek black heads of the elder girls. An al fresco picnic party from the hills occupies a green mound, and boils a kettle on sticks of flaming bamboo, though a stray spark might easily burn down the entire campong. A great part of Celebes is uninhabited and uncultivated, but the tribes of the interior, warlike and treacherous, have never been completely subjugated. The slave trade flourishes among ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same look in her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Hoyle, or whatever else his name was, here broke off from his miserable words, and, forgetting all about my presence, set his gloomy eyes on the ground. Lightly he might try to speak, but there was no lightness in his mind, and no spark of light in his poor dead soul. Being so young, and unacquainted with the turns of life-worn mind, I was afraid to say a word except to myself, and to myself I only said, "The man is mad, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of the miser on the bed, Levi hastened back to assist in saving the house. His post was in the midst of danger, and he went up on the roof. A plentiful supply of water soon drowned out the fire, and before the engine arrived the last spark ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... him again, still reading—Swedenborg this time—with most of the old things about him, including the Duck-billed Platypus; for nobody, apparently, had shown sufficient interest in them. The shop, therefore, was as I have always known it. There was a spark of a summer's day of 1914 still burning in the heart of a necromancer's crystal ball on the upper shelf ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... not lift it if I could; The little flame, though faint and dim As glow-worm spark in lonely wood, Shining where no man calls it good, May one day light the path ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... and cobweb dungeons, by loving a maid who is gentle and pure. So it shall be enough if he will go down to the Hudson and seize a drop from the bow of mist that a sturgeon leaves when he makes his leap; and after, to kindle his darkened flame-wood lamp at a meteor spark. The fairy bows, and without a word slowly descends the rocky steep, for his wing is soiled and has lost its power; but once at the river, he tugs amain at a mussel shell till he has it afloat; then, leaping ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... which he could hardly close, was on one side. Miss Baker told George afterwards that the left side was altogether motionless. George certainly would not have known his uncle—not at the first glance. But yet there was a spark left in those eyes, of the old fire; such a spark as had never gleamed upon him from any other human head. That look of sharpness, which nothing could quench, was still there. It was not the love of lucre which was to be read in those eyes, so much as the possessor's power of acquiring it. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... 'em in fact, Frank," replied the other, in what seemed to be a surprised tone. "But what does that matter, when neither of us can find any fire around? I sniffed and sniffed, but although I just turned my eyes in every direction not even a tiny spark could I see. And that happened ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... which Charles Edward was exposed in France, the hopelessness of his cause, and the indifference generally shown to him by the continental courts, which so much preyed on his mind as finally to stifle every spark of his former character, so that he gave himself up to a listless indifference, which terminated in his becoming a sot during the latter years of his life. On turning round to the Prince, who had been listening to these ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Faith, so pale and so pretty, a trifle sad, a trifle that her conscience would brew for her, whether or no. Yet, after all, there was an odd expression in Mr. Gabriel's face, an eager, restless expectation; and if his lids were lowered, it was only to hide the spark that flushed and quenched in his eye ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... had been used to the cosy fire, began to shake and freeze when the ice filled her whole inside. Her teeth were chattering while she looked about to see if she could discover a little fire anywhere. But nobody ever brought any burning spark near her. She suffered the bitterest hunger besides, because she had been used to quite different nourishment from fat morsels roasting in her insides. Now she had to swallow little lumps of ice and nothing else. She was not a bit pleased with shining outside ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... again I filled his glass, and always, mechanically, he emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He did not eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture certain. But better anything than this passive, meek, ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... hour, not clear to my mind. I think my mother-in-law must have helped me, without meaning to do it. She came into the room with an erect head and a cold eye; she said, with an unmerciful emphasis on the word, "If you mean to go, Valeria, the carriage is here." Any woman with a spark of spirit in her would have "meant" it under those circumstances. I ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... strain of arms about her neck was Carinthia's welcome from Mrs. Wythan lying along the couch in her boudoir; an established invalid, who yearned sanely to life, and caught a spark of it from the guest eyed tenderly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Johnson is left, without a scrap of comfort, a word of consolation, a spark of sympathy; and yet he had given to that Iphigenia of his the best that was in him to give. Had his publisher sold ten thousand copies of it, how Thompson would have admired it! how he would have pressed the poet in his arms, and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... pieces which they were once wont to ponder daily, that whatever later teachers may have done in definitely shaping opinion, in giving specific form to sentiment, and in subjecting impulse to rational discipline, here was the friendly fire-bearer who first conveyed the Promethean spark, here the prophet who first ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... said, steadily; and then a spark glinted in her leaf-brown eye: "Folks that have means, and yet would let that poor unfortunate be taken to the Farm—I wouldn't expect no ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... only I exprest, (No spark of envy harbours in my breast) That, when confusion o'er the country reigns, To you alone this happy state remains. Here I, though faint myself, must drive my goats, Far from their ancient fields and humble cots. This scarce I lead, who left on yonder rock Two tender kids, the hopes of all the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... warm, Harry," said Mrs. Castleton, "you had better go in the dancing-room—there is not a spark of fire there." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and Washington was great; but there was more behind—more than your school teaching ever led you to suspect, if your schooling was like mine. I imagined England as being just one whole unit of fury and tyranny directed against us and determined to stamp out the spark of liberty we had kindled. No such thing! England was violently divided in sentiment about us. Two parties, almost as opposed as our North and South have been—only it was not sectional in England—held very different views about liberty and ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... glad you told me, Miguel. I only stole the spark plugs from that eight cylinder touring car. Lucky thing the hounds know me. They like to et me up ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... morning, as we were at breakfast, a great big splendid Manton car—my car—came whisking up the drive and stopped in front of the house, and the expert—they had thrown him in for a week for nothing—him and an odometer and an ammeter, and a new kind of French spark-plug they wanted me to try—and a gasoline tester —the Mantons are such nice people to deal with in all those little ways—and the expert sent in word: would Miss Hardy come out and see her new car? And, of course, Miss Hardy, went out, and Mr. Hardy went out, ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... it to remorseless fire! Watch till the last faint spark expire; Then strew its ashes on the wind, Nor leave one ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Voltaire into transports of joy. He declared the event to be the most wonderful and important that ages had recorded in the annals of science, as it demonstrated the fact of man living after the fashion of beasts, without the least spark of civilization, and without speech; thereby forming a species of a nature having more in common with monkeys than with men, and presenting the regular degree, or intermediate class, between the homo civilis ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... Hester Stebbins, the spark of fire which is she. The storms have not broken over her head. She will laugh and make poetry of her laughter. If before she met you she wept, that, too, will help the smiling. There is laughter which is the echo of a Miserere ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... terrible, but lovely, in order to be loved. Man must seem, not mean and poor, but noble and beautiful, before we can love him. This idea of the good does not appear in Buddhism, says M. Saint-Hilaire. Not a spark of this divine flame—that which to see and show has given immortal glory to Plato and to Socrates—has descended on Sakya-muni. The notion of rewards, substituted for that of the infinite beauty, has perverted everything ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry and half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. He pulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a means of stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung and convulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next day to replace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... this question of superiority has ever risen, or at least has ever been agitated by reflecting men, who for one moment considered the manner in which our race is propagated in the world. Nothing ever rises above its own nature. A spark, however high it may rise, however brilliantly it may shine in the blue ethereal, can never become a star. It ever remains but a spark, and so the offspring of a woman cannot, in its nature, rise above its origin. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... that deadly stillness in the little valley. No glimmer of light came from the cleft in the rocks. He entered and called, but no answer came back. Then, with flint, steel, and the dry grass which he used for tinder, he struck a spark, and blew it into a blaze. The old hermit, his white hair dabbled with crimson, lay sprawling across the floor. The broken crucifix, with which his head had been beaten in, lay in splinters across him. Simon had dropped on his knees beside him, straightening his contorted limbs, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... keeping his soldiers out of sight as much as possible without relaxing his grip on the community. He did this, he said, to reduce the chances of friction between his men and the people; for friction might mean a spark and a spark might mean a conflagration, and that would mean another and greater Louvain. We could easily understand that small things might readily grow into great and serious troubles. Even the most docile-minded man would be apt to resent in the wearer of a hated uniform what he might excuse as ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a hard block of wood, commence drilling violently with a stick, by rolling it between the palms of the hand. Each one catches it in turn from the other, without allowing the motion to stop, until smoke, and at last, a spark of fire is seen, and caught in a piece of punk, whereat there is great rejoicing among the bystanders. When this fire is kindled, the kettle is again placed over the fire, and refilled ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... always writing about. If you say you love him, I know I shall do something desperate;" and he looked as if he would keep his word, as he clenched his hands with a wrathful spark in his eyes. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... picture, making it a thing of life, moving him to sympathy and fellowship. Some of these people, to be sure, were stunted and dulled to a sordid ugliness of soul and body—but on the other hand, some of them were young, and had the light of hope in their hearts, and the spark of rebellion. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... starts up from his targe In high relief; and, I deny it not, I shuddered, seeing how, upon the rim, It made a mighty circle round the shield— No sorry craftsman he, who wrought that work And clamped it all around the buckler's edge! The form was Typhon: from his glowing throat Rolled lurid smoke, spark-litten, kin of fire! The flattened edge-work, circling round the whole, Made strong support for coiling snakes that grew Erect above the concave of the shield: Loud rang the warrior's voice; inspired for war, He raves to slay, as doth a Bacchanal, His ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... he was again summoned to attend the council-house, being informed that his fate was decided. Upon entering, he was greeted with a savage scowl, which, if he had still cherished a spark of hope, would have completely extinguished it. Simon Girty threw a blanket upon the floor, and harshly ordered him to take a seat upon it. The order was not immediately complied with, and Girty impatiently seizing his arm, jerked him roughly upon the blanket, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely shell held no spark of life. But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands, and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... which was difficult and ardent, we will remember nothing, except the mischance that befell a certain 'Marquis de Talleyrand' and his men, in the trenches, one night. Night of the 8th-9th May, by carelessness of somebody, a spark got into the Marquis's powder, two powder-barrels that there were; and, with horrible crash, sent eighty men, Marquis Talleyrand and Engineer Du Mazis among them, aloft into the other world; raining down their limbs into the covered ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fiddlestick! You don't know Lucretia. There are many girls, indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing spark, with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those; she has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she has the mind and will of a queen,—old ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... like a sunbeam true enough," he said. "I don't know, it always comes when I immerse any living thing. Perhaps," he continued, smiling, "perhaps it is the vital spark of the creature escaping to the source from whence ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... thus spoke, he raised his hand out of old habit acquired in preaching, and a ray from the after-glow of the sunken sun lit up the jewel in the apostolic ring he wore, warming its pale green lustre to a dim violet spark as of living fire. His fine features were for a moment warm with fervour and feeling,—then,—suddenly, he thought of the great world outside all creeds,—of the millions and millions of human beings who neither know nor accept Christ,—of the Oriental races with their intricate and beautiful ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "for this man to remember what he hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is the good Lizio?—where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin di Fosco finds ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... only in its pathos. It seems to show that, though he knew not how, still he held by the hope that somehow God would not forget His promise. Out of his very despair, his faith struck, out of the flint of the hard command, a little spark which served to give some flicker of light amid the darkness. His answer to his boy does not make his sacrifice less, but his faith more. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives a somewhat different turn to his hopes, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... retention of particles and articles is also effective, e.g. Delmar, Delamere, Delapole, impress more than Mears and Pool, and Larpent (Fr. I'arpent), Lemaitre, and Lestrange more than Acres, Masters, and Strange. There are few names of less heroic sound than Spark and Codlin, yet the former is sometimes a contraction of the picturesque Sparrow-hawk, used as a personal name by the Anglo-Saxons, while the latter can be traced back via the earlier forms Quodling (still found), Querdling, Querdelyoun ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... bells clanging, lights flashing, and crowds pushing and shouting, as she ran up—a little gray figure, with the lantern-spark glimmering like any tiny glow-worm astray in a ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... exaltation, slow-rumbling London—all the West and the war as we had thought of it for months was, so to speak, on the other side of the earth. We were on the edge of the East now, rolling down into the Balkans, into that tangle of races and revenges out of which the first spark of the war ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... of life is dimmed and dark; Hope's flame is dwindled to a spark; But, though I live thus dyingly,— My heart, my Love, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... continued without listening to him, "you must never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of Tentyra with that of the emperor. He was a man who united all those qualities of prudent forethought, with prompt execution and attention to business, which was so necessary in controlling the irritable Alexandrians, who were liable to be fired into rebellion by the smallest spark. Justice was administered fairly; the great were not allowed to tyrannise over the poor, nor the people to meet in tumultuous mobs; and the legions were regularly paid, so that they had no ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... found herself. Grim enough by daylight, it was now doubly so; for the blackness seemed like something tangible, some shapeless monster which was gathering itself together, and shrinking back, inch by inch, as the little spark of light moved forward. The gaunt beams, the jagged bits of iron, bent and twisted into fantastic shapes, stretched and thrust themselves from every side, and again the girl fancied them fleshless arms reaching out to clutch her. But hark! was that a sound,—a faint sound from the farthest ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... down its defences and self-interest too, the bane of all sincerity. What though you and I can talk plainly with each other to-day? Others will address themselves not to us but to our fortunes. To persuade an emperor what he ought to do is a laborious task: any one can flatter him without a spark of sincerity. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... whose eye, quick-glancing o'er the park Attracts each light gay meteor of a spark, Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke, As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock; Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task, With Sappho fragrant at an evening masque: So morning insects that in muck begun, Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... no less of censure when merited than of praise where praise is due; entering, almost without the help of language from me, into my inmost thoughts; assisting me, if I may so speak, to comprehend myself; and raising to a steadfast and bright flame the spark that my wayward fancy, left to itself, would have instantaneously ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... check me and at the same time satisfy me, I have no doubt; but then I was always fortunate in my friends. Wisdom and patience in plenty were spent on me, and I was instructed and inspired and comforted. Of course my wisest teacher was not able to tell me how the original spark of life was kindled, nor to point out, on the starry map of heaven, my future abode. The bread of absolute knowledge I do not hope to taste in this life. But all creation was remodelled on a grander scale by the utterances of my teachers; and my problems, though they deepened ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the jolly picnic And the crew of the red Noah's Ark. I'll whistle and sing like a bird in the spring, While the red flames gleam and spark." ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... opinion over the conduct of public affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age—all that is or has been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either in Europe or in the New World, may be traced to the spark left burning upon our ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... that month, continues, with little interruption, throughout the full season. The immense mass of vegetation with which the fertile soil loads itself during the summer is suddenly withered, and the whole earth is covered with combustible materials. A single spark of fire falling anywhere upon these plains at such a time, instantly kindles a blaze that spreads on every side, and continues its destructive course as long as it finds fuel, these fires sweeping on with a rapidity which ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... minute description of these feasts and jousts, but we may reasonably conclude that to the loyal imagination of his eulogist Philip is indebted for most of these knightly trophies. It was the universal opinion of unprejudiced cotemporaries, that he was without a spark of enterprise. He was even censured for a culpable want of ambition, and for being inferior to his father in this respect, as if the love of encroaching on his neighbor's dominions, and a disposition to foreign. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the spark bravely to the match. The spark—a feeble spark, first principle of a conflagration—shone in the darkness like a fire-fly, then was deadened against the match which it inflamed. Porthos enlivened the flame with his ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... him solemnly and waddled on, while Vane stood for a moment looking after her. Assuredly this common old woman possessed in her some spark of the understanding which is almost Divine. . . . And Vane, with a quick flash of insight, saw the proud planting of the pin on Rumfold Hall—a strategic advance, but the casualty list had never been ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... theatre,—its lights extinguished, The music silent, and the actors gone; And I alone sit musing on the scenes That once have been. I am so old that Death Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down, And my last spark of life will be extinguished. Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair! So near to death, and yet so far ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... husky and low and trembling, but his eye and his grasp firm. "I have assured you that environment, education, art, can supplement nature and heredity. They have done so with you. You are your father's child. You received from your mother only the vital spark, only this beauty, this fatal beauty. If you inherited all that the Rayniers ever had, then I love, I love, I love all that the Rayniers ever were, for I love you. I have your love, Helena, and I will never let you go." While speaking he had touched the bell at his hand, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... was willing to believe, that they misrepresented Christianity, they awoke all his old feelings of instinctive repulsion, and overclouded his discrimination. Almost as little could he endure the unnature as the untruth of what he heard. It had no ring of reality, no spark of divine fire, no appealing radiance of common sense, little of any verity at all. There was in it, as nearly as possible, nothing at all to mediate between mind and mind, between truth and belief, between God and his children. The clergyman was not a hypocrite—far ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... no selfish joy; nor doth he desire to rejoice in himself, but longeth to be blessed in God as the highest good. He ascribeth good to none save to God only, the Fountain whence all good proceedeth, and the End, the Peace, the joy of all Saints. Oh, he who hath but a spark of true charity, hath verily learned that all worldly things ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... was ready, and on such occasions the devil is never far away with the spark. The Sunday after the sermon, Francis de Bard, the aforesaid Lombard, and other foreign merchants, happened to be in the King's Gallery at Greenwich Palace, and were laughing and boasting over Bard's intrigue with the citizen's wife. Sir Thomas Palmer, to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of course that Peggy went; believing on her side, poor dear, that it might for future relations give her the pull of Maria. This represents, really, I think, the one spark of guile in Peggy's breast: the smart of a small grievance suffered at her sister's hands in the dim long-ago. Maria slapped her face, or ate up her chocolates, or smeared her copy-book, or something of that ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... puts out the conflagration in one place, it is alight in two other places; directly he gives in to the fire and cuts off what is on fire from a large building, the building itself is alight at both ends. These separate fires may be few, but they are burning with a flame which, however small a spark it starts from, never ceases till it has set the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... two souls have somewhere been acquainted In former beings, or, struck out together, One spark to Africk flew, and one ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... animation and attraction lie, you will find that it is because every sentence and every line report things seen. He does not, like the Realist, try to get a specious lifelikeness by heaping up banal and commonplace facts; he selects. His imagination reminds one of the traveling spark which used to run along the great chandelier in the theatre, and light each jet, so that its passage seemed a flight from point to point of brilliance. Wherever he focuses his ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... body, the good ship most considerately avoided. As for the small ones, which had no names on them, if she struck one, it glanced off of her like a red-gold spark. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... gone to London, and the first tiny spark of discontent had visited Effie's heart. She would be so lonely without her brother. It was so fine for him to go out into life, her own horizon seemed so narrow. Then Dorothy came, and they had made friends, and Dorothy told her what some women ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... impatiently for an immediate causus belli, Wenceslas had hit upon poor, isolated, little Simiti as the point of ignition, and the pitting of its struggling priest against Don Mario as the method of exciting the necessary spark. He could not know that Wenceslas had represented to the Departmental Governor in Cartagena that an obscure Cura in far-off Simiti, an exile from the Vatican, and the author of a violent diatribe against papal authority, was the nucleus about which anticlerical sentiment was crystallizing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... you was his extreme readiness in conversation. He gave the electric spark whenever you put your knuckle to him. The first time I called on him in his house at Putney, I found him sipping claret. We talked of a certain dull fellow whose wealth made him prominent at that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to the stove and found the fire out; the occupations as well as the excitement of the morning had made Johnson forget his customary duty. The doctor tried to rekindle the fire, but there was not even a spark ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... to look on their afflictions. Sidewalk venders cluster about you. And if you are smoking the spark of your cigar inevitably draws a full delegation of those moldy old whiskerados who follow the profession of collecting butts and quids. They hover about you, watchful as chicken hawks; and their bleary eyes envy you for each puff you take, until ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... possession of power without a due sense of its corresponding responsibilities; a community in which the passion for war may easily be excited as the fancied means by which its greatness may be convincingly exhibited, and its ambitions gratified. . . . Some chance spark may fire the prairie." ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... docile under such a rule; and, among her champions of freedom, none have been braver than those who have sprung from the ranks of her ministry, as the fate of Roger Williams had already proved. In such a community, before the ecclesiastical power had been solidified by time, only a spark was needed to kindle a conflagration, and that spark ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... attempt it, and may I succeed in fanning into a flame any spark of patriotism that may still linger ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... that if its circuit be suddenly broken, it refuses to stop quite suddenly, and bursts through the introduced insulating partition with violence and heat. It is this ram or impetus of the electric current which causes the spark seen on breaking a circuit; and the more sudden the breakage, the more violent is the spark apt to be. We shall understand them better directly; meanwhile they appear to be direct consequences of the inertia of electricity; and certainly if electricity were a fluid possessing inertia ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... last saw your sail, sir, for long before it was dark the boat went out of sight. But just as I'd give up all hope of seeing it again, we saw your fire like a spark on shore, ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... your door, and you know it," Wingate replied. "It has taken me a good many years to pay my debt to the dead. I did my best to kill you, but without a weapon you were a hard man to shake the last spark of life out of.—There, I am tired of this. I have let you talk. I have answered your useless questions. Be so good as to ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... understand—well, the less said of them the better. They serve, that is all. Then there are the gods of Egypt, as to which I made inquiry, and of them I will say this: that beneath the grotesque cloak of their worship seems to shine some spark of a holy fire. Next come the gods of the Phoenicians, the fathers of a hideous creed. After them the flame worshippers and other kindred religions of the East. There remain the Jews, whose doctrine seems to me ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... ferocity of spitting, howling rage was new. They answered that challenge from the camp, streaking out from under his hands. Yet both animals skidded to a stop before they passed the first dome and were lost in the gloom. A spark glowed for an instant to his right; Thorvald was ready to go, so Shann had no time to try and recall ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... the Duke produced his calfskin vest. There was not a coat between them to save the dignity of their profession at the boss lady's board. Taterleg's green-velvet waistcoat had suffered damage during the winter when a spark from his pipe burned a hole in it as big as a dollar. He held it up and looked at it, concluding in the end that ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... incalculable are the consequences which sometimes follow from human actions."[A] Our historian has accompanied this by giving the very feelings of Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works of John Huss; we see the spark of creation caught at the moment: a striking influence of the generation of character! Thus a father-spirit has many sons; and several of the great revolutions in the history of man have been carried on by that secret creation of minds ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and blazed and wept. Now, be it known, what Mr. Harley told her seared like hot iron; what he asked of kindness to Storri and cruelty to Richard cut like a knife; and yet there was never tear nor spark to show throughout. She waited cold and white and steady. Dorothy was convinced of her father's danger without knowing its cause or what form it might take; and she filled up with a resolution to do whatever she could, saving only the acceptance ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... were caused by an uncontrollable look of disappointment. But it was not the proposal: no; but the change of manner that struck her. The quiet indifferent voice was like water quenching a struggling spark, but in a moment she recovered her powers. 'Beneath him! Oh, no. I told you we were humbled. I always longed for his independence, and I am glad that he should ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that our Saviour was "the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power," we go on to consider the purpose for which he came on earth, and all that he did and suffered for us; surely if we have a spark of ingenuousness left within us, we shall condemn ourselves as guilty of the blackest ingratitude, in rarely noticing, or coldly turning away, on whatever shallow pretences, from the contemplation of these miracles of mercy. For those baser minds however on which fear alone ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Ronald said. "I have no reason for feeling one spark of regret at what has befallen him. He was the cruel persecutor of my parents, and did his best to get me removed. There is but one obstacle now to obtaining my father's release, and as he is neither a relation nor an old man I shall be able ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... was very much like in, for the same enemy, the darkness, was here also. The next moment, however, came a great gladness—a fire-fly, which had wandered in from the garden. She saw the tiny spark in the distance. With slow pulsing ebb and throb of light, it came pushing itself through the air, drawing nearer and nearer, with that motion which more resembles swimming than flying, and the light seemed the source of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "Why, bless my shoe laces, Tom! how are you? I'm real glad to see you. Bless my eyeglasses, but I am! I just returned from a little western trip, and I thought I'd ran over and see how you are. I came in my car—had two blowouts on the way, too. Bless my spark plug, but the kind of tires one gets now-a-days are a disgrace! However, I'm here, and your father has just told me about you going to Philadelphia in your monoplane, to help a fellow-inventor with his airship. It's ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... exhibits itself in many a prayer-meeting and camp-meeting of modern days. For our own part, we hold it better to have even transient upliftings of the nobler and more devout element of man's nature than never to have any at all, and that he who goes on in worldly and sordid courses, without ever a spark of religious enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration, is less of a man than he who sometimes soars heavenward, though his wings be weak and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the twin charts Correy had indicated. In the center of each the red spark that represented the Ertak glowed like a coal of fire; all around were the green pinpricks of light that showed the position of other bodies around us. The Kabit, while comparatively close, was just barely visible; her bulk was so small that it only faintly activated the super-radio reflex plates ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... fire from end to end; Now ashes, save the tip that holds a spark! Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself A little where the fire was: thus I urge The soul that served me, till it task once more What ashes of my brain have kept their shape, And these make effort on the last o' the flesh, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... pudding, and without which the plums, however delightful, could hardly stick together. Though the great majority of people talk commonplaces, their banalities are by no means always the kind that help. Muir's particular way of opening open doors, flogging dead horses, and genially enjoying any spark of fun in his friends, coupled with his good looks and pleasant, hearty disposition, made him a most useful and welcome guest, as a sort of super. He was quite decorative, and could be turned on to talk newspaper politics to dull men, pretty platitudes to plain women; to make ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... hide Under these words, like embers, every spark Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark The grave is yawning;—as its roof shall cover My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, So let oblivion hide this grief. Julian ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with English steel, and the wide sea foamed with English keels, and the air was full of the blaze of the living and the ghosts of the mighty dead. And down in Nick's plucky young English heart there came a spark like that which burns in the soul of a mariner when for the first time an unknown ocean ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... thing, never experienced the Spirit, the same spirit that was able magically to waft me from a wintry Lyme Street to the South Seas, the energizing, electrifying Spirit of true achievement, of life, of God himself. Little by little its flames were smothered until in manhood there seemed no spark of it left alive. Many years were to pass ere it was to revive again, as by a miracle. I travelled. Awakening at dawn, I saw, framed in a port-hole, rose-red Seriphos set in a living blue that paled the sapphire; the seas Ulysses had sailed, and the company ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye; never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram. Mrs. Tristram's glance at her husband had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile. "You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a ...
— The American • Henry James
... held a spark of hostility as she leaned forward. The word had already been passed among the faithful that this young man was not taking ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... raised his hand to her, or gone beyond verbal abuse; now, however, his temper became violent and brutal. All sense of shame—every pretext for decency—all notions of self-respect, were gone, and nothing was left to sustain or check him. He could not look in upon himself and find one spark of decent pride, or a single principle left that contained the germ of his redemption. He now gave himself over as utterly lost, and consequently felt no scruple to stoop to any act, no matter how ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... that the Great Bear is mother to all the Slavs. There will, of course, be jockeying for position, bluff, bravado, and all the rest of it; but France is bound to act with Russia, and with all that explosive hanging around it will be strange if some spark doesn't fall ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... I was told that it was countenanced by those who of all Men ought to pay the most sacred Regard to the Law. Are we arrivd to such a Pitch of Levity & Dissipation as that the Idea of feasting shall extinguish every Spark of publick Virtue, and frustrate the Design of the most noble and useful Institution. I hope not. Shall we not again see that Sobriety of Manners, that Temperance, Frugality, Fortitude and other manly Virtues wch were once the Glory and Strength of my much lov'd native ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams |
