"Transparency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of sweat that arose from her continuous struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. Thirty- eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did not look twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a girl, with all the delicate, fine-pored and thin transparency of the skin of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... least part of the edition—all for aught I know—is printed on wood; that is, on paper made from wood-pulp. It has a rough surface; and when held before a candle is of very unequal transparency. There is in it a reprint of the works on the earth and moon. The discourse on the possibility of going to the moon, in this and the edition of 1640, is incorporated: but from the account in the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Raine, Vpon thy panting Breast depending, Shall seeme as they were still descending, 240 And as thy breath doth come and goe, So seeming still to ebbe and flow: With Amber Bracelets cut like Bees, Whose strange transparency who sees, With Silke small as the Spiders Twist Doubled so oft about thy Wrist, Would surely thinke aliue they were, From Lillies gathering hony there. Thy Buskins Ivory, caru'd like Shels Of Scallope, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... universal lull. Moonlight and the first timid tremblings of the dawn were by this time blending; and the blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet of our own horses,— which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little disturbance,—there was no sound abroad. In the clouds and on the earth prevailed the same majestic peace; and, in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... I know more about you than you can possibly conceive, and to me you're transparency itself. But you see that I can't accept ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... merely aspects—those points in which all human nature, great or little, finds what it has in common, and directly shows itself up. The natural strength of such literature will, of course, be in the line of its tendencies; in transparency, variety, and directness. To the unembarrassing matter, the unembarrassed style! Steele is, perhaps, the most impulsive writer of the school [12] to which he belongs; he abounds in felicities of impulse. Yet who can help feeling that his style is regular because the matter ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... from Milan, Italy, are considered the best, on account of their transparency and exceeding strength. Most frequently each string is made up of two or three separate strands, twisted together with the utmost care. But there is another use of the greatest value, and that is as a thread for sewing up wounds in internal surgery, because, being of animal matter, the thread will, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... inspired Fra Giovanni; the same gentle and contemplative expression which irradiates the features of the elect is again visible in our painter's figures. In the colouring of both, vivacity is combined with softness, and vigour of chiaro-scuro goes together with transparency of tint. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... with an unusual brilliancy, and the atmosphere had that peculiar crystalline transparency which kills space and brings distant objects close to one's feet. Where then was the terrible white messenger? Why must my head be muffled like a mummy? Why must I keep my mouth shut, while the curiosity mill within me was working overtime grinding ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... profusion of new and wonderful flowers of every conceivable tint that everywhere met the eye, which so powerfully fascinated the beholder; it was the wonderful, exquisite blue colour of the water in the basin itself, which, although of crystalline transparency, receives its marvellous colouring through some freak of sky reflection penetrating through the branches of the overhanging trees. The effect of this wonderful colouring must be seen to be appreciated. And it is seen and admired every day by enthusiastic ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... to the opera often of evenings—to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the German towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and knits stockings on the one side, over against the bourgeoisie on the other; and His Transparency the Duke and his Transparent family, all very fat and good-natured, come and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit is full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-coloured mustachios, and twopence a day on full pay. Here it was that Emmy found ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this wise she made him sit at the window during the cool hours of morning. He would now attempt to take a few steps, leaning the while on the furniture. A rosy tint appeared upon his cheeks, and his hands began to lose their waxy transparency. But, while he thus regained health, his senses remained in a state of stupor which reduced him to the vegetative life of some poor creature born only the day before. Indeed, he was nothing but a plant; his sole perception was ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... was crowded to the doors. Walls, windows, ceiling, had melted into transparency to let in the light of stars; and, caught like gold-fish in the great network of the rays, shone familiar outlines everywhere—Jimbo, Monkey, Jinny, the Sweep, the Tramp, the Gypsy, the Laugher up against the cupboard, the Gardener by the window where the flower-pots stood, the Woman ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the thorax; but the lungs had not that appearance of accumulation of blood, in particular spots, which is commonly observed in cases of organic disease of the heart. The only very remarkable morbid appearance about the heart was in the aorta, and its valves. The valves had lost their transparency, and were considerably thickened in various spots. The inner surface of the aorta, for about an inch from its commencement, was elevated and thickened, and the external surface singularly roughened and verrucated. This appearance was so peculiar, ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... up by these deposits are exquisite specimens of Nature's work and are filled with water of wonderful transparency; while the variety of forms of these receptacles and their charming colors fascinate ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... simplicity that was exceedingly interesting. If they were under conviction of sin, that found immediate and unrestrained utterance. If they thought they were forgiven, that, too, at once found expression. There was a wonderful transparency of spirit that revealed each varying aspect of their feelings, and withal a tendency to undue excitement that needed careful handling. Indeed, it was found necessary to watch their social meetings very closely, and sometimes to direct ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... fibres. This fibrous construction became still more distinct to the light by adding some caustic alcali to the water; as the adhering mucus was first eroded, and the hair-like fibres remained floating in the vessel. Nor does the degree of transparency of the retina invalidate this evidence of its fibrous structure, since Leeuwenhoek has shewn, that the crystalline humour itself consists of fibres. Arc. Nat. V. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... personages carried in his right hand a sword; the second, two golden keys; the third, a pair of scales; the fourth, a spade: and, in order to aid sluggish minds which would not have seen clearly through the transparency of these attributes, there was to be read, in large, black letters, on the hem of the robe of brocade, MY NAME IS NOBILITY; on the hem of the silken robe, MY NAME IS CLERGY; on the hem of the woolen robe, MY NAME IS MERCHANDISE; ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... thoughts away from the speaker and herself, and fixed them on his future work and its results. It is in such moments of abstraction—of self-forgetfulness, when one's mind is dwelling on life's purposes and aims—that the spirit shines through the face, as through a transparency, and the true character is seen. Lottie saw Hemstead's face grow so noble and manly, so free from every trace of the meanness of egotism and selfishness, that in the depths of her soul she respected him as she had never any man before. Instinctively she placed Julian ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... transparence, transparency; clarity; translucence, translucency; diaphaneity^; lucidity, pellucidity^, limpidity; fluorescence; transillumination, translumination^. transparent medium, glass, crystal, lymph, vitrite^, water. V. be transparent &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the skins of the larger antelopes—that of the tetel is considered the most valuable for this purpose. The hide of the wild ass is the finest of all leather, and is so close in the grain that before tanning, when dry and hardened in the sun, it resembles horn in transparency. I have made excellent mocassins with this skin, which are admirable if ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... enhanced lustre to this wondrous carnation, known but to auburn-headed beauties, was the deep purple of her, humid lips,—the roseate transparency of her small ears, of her dilated nostrils, and her nails, as bright and glossy, as if they had been varnished. In every spot, indeed, where her pure arterial blood, full of animation and heat, could make ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... husband had built, and scented with a withered apple or two from the pyrus japonica that grew outside the house; the picture of the prize ox over the chimney-piece, which Mr Pontifex himself had painted; the transparency of the man coming to show light to a coach upon a snowy night, also by Mr Pontifex; the little old man and little old woman who told the weather; the china shepherd and shepherdess; the jars of feathery flowering grasses ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... is shining bright again. The storm is over; you come out. My God, the joyous sparkle of everything! the fresh, limpid air, the scent of raspberries and mushrooms! And then the evening comes on. There is the blaze of fire glowing and covering half the sky. The sun sets: the air near has a peculiar transparency as of crystal; over the distance lies a soft, warm-looking haze; with the dew a crimson light is shed on the fields, lately plunged in floods of limpid gold; from trees and bushes and high stacks of hay run long shadows.... The sun ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... landscape gains in purity, and, what sounds unbelievable, in tenderness. Nor does it lose in grandeur. Looking up the valley of the Morteratsch that morning, the glaciers were distinguishable in hues of green and sapphire through their veil of snow; and the highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethystine light beneath a blue sky traced with filaments of windy cloud. Some storm must have disturbed the atmosphere in Italy, for fan-shaped mists frothed out around the sun, and curled themselves above the mountains in fine feathery wreaths, melting imperceptibly into air, until, when ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... and interesting experiment; it has this very important limitation—that it is always epithelium with which it has to do, whereas in Wolff's experiment the regeneration takes place from mesoblastic tissue. The cause of the transparency may be a chemical reaction—it depends a good deal upon our definition of that phrase. Is protoplasm a chemical compound? Some have considered it so, and spoken of its marvellously complicated molecule. Of course it is made up of carbon, hydrogen, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... stepped across the boat, stooped a minute, and then also took an oar. How perfect he was, as he stood there that moment!—perfect like a statue, I mean,—so slender, so clean-limbed, his dark face pale to transparency in the green light that filtered through the draw! and then a ray from the sunset came creeping over the edge of the high fields and smote his eyes sidelong so that they glowed like jewels, and he with his oar planted firmly hung there bending far ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the silence that followed, a blue-bottle fly buzzed rowdily against an adjacent window-pane, with occasional loud bumps against the glass tokening that he too had his tragedy, a prisoner pent by baffling transparency from the bright world that blazed ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... this misconception with regard to her daughter's feelings, and she felt much anxiety as to the result of her acquaintance with the young clergyman. The remarkable transparency of Edith's character rendered it easy for a parent's eye to discover the deep impression that Roger's fascinating manners, and rare accomplishments, had made both on her fancy and her heart; and it was equally easy to perceive that his affections were entirely gained, and that he was not ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... phenomenon of FROSTED TREES, the most astonishing and brilliant that I ever remember to have noticed. The previous storm and mist had thickly covered every exposed object,—the loftiest trees, the minutest blade, hill and dale, with the icy garment. This transparency was most perfect, defining every form and ramification into exact models of the entire ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the horn, after being flattened by heat, and having its transparency improved by oil, is split into thin layers, and forms a substitute for glass, in lanterns of the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... Isabel in the little upstairs parlour, or her bedroom, and question her minutely about her ways and ideas; and she would look at her silently for a minute or two together; and then suddenly laugh and kiss her—Isabel's transparency was almost as great a riddle to her as her own obscurity to Isabel. And sometimes she would throw herself on Isabel's bed, and lie there with her arms behind her head, to the deplorable ruin of her ruff; with her buckled feet twitching and tapping; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... legs and thighs, where the resistance to pressure is considerable, the tendency to transparency in the skin not obvious, and where the alteration of posture occasions but little alteration in the state of distension, the cure ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... the windows is so well wrought and so delicate as to have the transparency of crystal. In the rear of the body of the palace there are large buildings containing several apartments, where is deposited the private property of the monarch, or his treasure in gold and silver bullion, precious stones, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... or atmosphere of the mind, that carried him back to his childhood. He felt in the midst of the old days again at once, when he was not looking at Boase, who was grown very old, his once rather square face and blunt features having taken on a transparency of texture that was in itself ageing, while his hair, sparse about the big brow, was a creamy white like froth. Boase called to Ishmael, recognising his step, to take off his wet things in the hall, for it was raining hard, with that whole-hearted rain of the West which when it ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... muddy water of a torrent which has ravaged the plains, coming to rest, and diffusing itself over some low grounds out of its course, deposits there the slime it has taken up, and, resuming its wonted transparency, reflects, with its own shores, the verdure of the earth and the light of heaven. Thus does solitude recruit the powers of the body as well as those of the mind. It is among hermits that are found the men ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... at four, and came that afternoon to Lyons, still along the Rhone. Either the waters of this river assume a transparency in winter which they lose in summer, or I was mistaken in thinking them transparent on our former journey. They are now turbid; but the hue does not suggest the idea of a running mud-puddle, as the water of the Tiber does. No streams, however, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not be in the same predicament? Think of it! A young woman beautiful beyond my feeble powers of description; her eyes of a heavenly blue; her luxuriant hair like a mass of spun gold; her complexion matched to the tint and transparency of the blush rose—and such a throat! From it came a voice as musical as the unguided waters when Winter rushes down the hills in search of Spring. Never you mind, that's the way I felt about it, and, if you had been in my place, you'd ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... elbow and saw before me the shadowy figure of a woman. At once I recognised Clarimonde. She carried in her hand a small lamp of the shape of those which are placed in tombs, and the light of it gave to her tapering fingers a rosy transparency which, with gradually fainter tints, prolonged itself till it was lost in the milky whiteness of her naked arm. The only garment she had on was the linen shroud which covered her on her death-bed, and she tried to hold up its folds ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... by a wall of rock scarcely a foot wide. This partition does not rise above the surface of the soil, but descends into the earth; the water boils slowly, and has an equable, moderate discharge. The beauty of these springs consists in their remarkable transparency. All the varied forms and caves, the projecting peaks, and edges of rock, are visible far down, until the eye is lost in the depths of darkness. But the greatest beauty of the spring is the splendid colouring proceeding from the rock; it is of the tenderest, ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... seemed like a great basket of roses when all her friends assembled there, seated on low chairs in unstudied attitudes: the white rose of the group was Mademoiselle d'Etaples, a specimen of pale and pensive beauty, frail almost to transparency; the Rose of Bengal was the charming Colette Odinska, a girl of Polish race, but born in Paris; the dark-red rose was Isabelle Ray-Belle she was called triumphantly—whose dimpled cheeks flushed scarlet for almost any cause, some said for very coquetry. Then ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... partly worked into dresses. Ready made dresses of this kind differed greatly from the dresses made in Greece of the imported raw silk. The Isle of Kos was the first seat of silk manufacture, where silk dresses were produced rivaling in transparency the above-mentioned. These diaphanous dresses, clinging close to the body, and allowing the color of the skin and the veins to be seen, have been frequently imitated with astonishing skill by Greek sculptors and painters. We only remind the reader of the beautifully ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... energetic speech with a peroration of great brilliancy, in which Richard and Harry were exhibited like a transparency in the bright colors of Youth, and Hope, and Passion, and finally sat down amidst what would have been a burst of applause but for the harsh voice of the usher nipping it in the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... valve-like obstruction of a bronchus are those of an acute obstructive emphysema (Fig. 74), namely, 1. Greater transparency on the obstructed side (Iglauer). 2. Displacement of the heart to the free side (Iglauer). 3. Depression and flattening of the dome of the diaphragm on the invaded side (Iglauer). 4. Limitation of the diaphragmatic excursion on the ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... arms. There is a strong human, yet spiritualized expression upon the face. The drapery is gracefully arranged, not folded like mummy cloths; and the color is strong and liberally laid on, without any attempt, however, at transparency of shadow. There is little indication of the technical glories of succeeding centuries. Perhaps the best part of the picture is in the lower margin. Here are four heads of saints, painted with a breadth and energy absolutely startling, when one recollects by whom and when they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the hue of a smoked primrose; against it is dimly visible an irregular and picturesque outline, probably of a range of mountains, some rocky and pyramidal, others horizontally banked. Altogether, a mystery replete with grandeur in the effect—none of your Southern transparency leaving nothing for the imagination. Seriously, it's laughable that human beings should congregate so as to produce these effects, and that we among others should by preference be among the congregators. Your day at Napoule is like something in ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... home. His serenity is vast and enviable. But I cannot shake from my eyes that vision of him when life forsook his veins, and his mouth slacked, and his eyelids closed, while his face took on the white transparency of death. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... been dried alive, the globules of the blood were not decomposed, but simply collected in the capillary vessels of the skin and subjacent tissues where they still preserved their proper color, and could be seen more easily than otherwise, on account of the semi-transparency of ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... man who has an inconsistent wife, or the husband who is minotaurized are simply husbands as they appear in Moliere. Well, then, O goddess of modern taste, do not these expressions seem to you characterized by a transparency chaste enough for anybody?" ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... and the palaces, Corinne conducted Oswald to the villa Mellini, a solitary garden, without any other ornament than its magnificent trees. From here is seen, at a distance, the chain of the Appenines; the transparency of the air colours these mountains and throws them forward in the perspective, giving them a most picturesque appearance. Oswald and Corinne remained in this spot to enjoy the charms of the sky and the tranquillity of nature. It is impossible to form an idea of this singular tranquillity ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... do objects in water seem nearer than those in air?" Gilbert explains this as follows: "Nothing appears distant, except as perceived through an extensive intervening medium. But our judgment is largely guided by the transparency of this medium, since the medium itself is not perceived with much accuracy, except when it is transparent. Accordingly, as the lucidity of air is greater than that of water, an object looks more distant through ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... The structure of the organism is simple, consisting of an external and internal surface between which there is a space, the body cavity; daphneae are transparent and can be studied under the microscope while living. Metschnikoff observed that certain of them in the aquarium gradually lost their transparency and died, and examining these he found they were attacked by a species of fungus having long, thin spores. These spores were taken into the intestine with other food; they penetrated the thin wall of the intestine, passed into the body cavity, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... full sight, rising over the spires of the city and the groves of the Cascine. Every evening I see them through the soft, delicately-colored haze of an Italian sunset, looking as if they had caught something of the transparency of the sky, and appearing like mountains of fairy-land, instead of the bleak and barren ridges of rock which they really are. The weather since my arrival in Tuscany has been continually serene, the sky ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... gem of glass does not reflect any light from its hinder surface, unless that surface is inclined in an angle of 41 degrees. Hence the diamond reflects half as much more light as a factitious gem in similar circumstances; to which must be added its great transparency, and the excellent polish it is capable of. The diamond had nevertheless been placed at the head of crystals or precious stones by the mineralogists, till Bergman ranged it of late in the combustible class of bodies, because ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... is a dull climate. The sea sends us rain on three sides: the winds break loose over the country even on the finest days; the ground exhales vapors that darken the horizon; for several months the air has no transparency. You should see the winter. There are days when you would say it would never be fine again: the darkness seems to come from above like the light; the north-east wind brings us the icy air from the North Pole, and lashes ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... master—dear little father, is given to devouring himself." It was already late when Lavretzky set out on the return journey. The sounds of the preceding day took possession of him, the image of Liza arose in his soul in all its gentle transparency; he melted at the thought that she loved him,—and drove up to his little town-house in a composed and happy frame ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... much more distinct, and it lifted the paper weight, as Henry had three weeks before. Charley was so sure that it was Henry Vail himself that he began to get up to shake hands with his friend, but the perfect transparency of the apparition checked him, and he hid his face in his hands a moment, in a terror that he could no longer conceal ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... within the cornea begins to disappear within a week or 10 days, the eye becomes clearer and regains its transparency, until it eventually is fully restored. In unfavorable cases blood vessels form and are seen to traverse the affected part from periphery to center, vision becomes entirely lost, and permanent opacity (albugo or leucoma) remains. When it arises from constitutional causes recurrence ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... grassy sod newly flooded. About half the water came from springs in the immediate vicinity, and the rest from a very pure lake half a mile distant. The water derived from the lake was thoroughly aerated by its passage over a steep rocky bed. The transparency of the water in the pond was so great that a pin could be seen at the depth of ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... in a photographic camera is perfect lenses. They should be achromatic, and the utmost transparency should be obtained; and under the closest inspection of the glass not the slightest wavy appearance, or dark spot should be detected; and a curvature which as much as possible prevents spherical aberration should be secured. The effect produced by this ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... I said very gently; "that is just what they cannot do;" and I looked at the swelling neck with the faint blue veins visible in its transparency, and thought, "You must be my own, or I must cease to see you, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... anchor sure and steadfast, which enabled me thus to go from her clay, just cold, to aid a passing spirit in obtaining like precious faith with hers, and the same inheritance. My motive in thus lifting a little of the veil, or in placing a light behind the transparency, of my private feelings, I trust will be seen to be, that I may comfort others with the comfort wherewith I ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... imprisonment, as gracefully as if he entered a drawing-room, he took his stand in a firm but easy attitude. His appearance was equally removed from bravado and fear. His features, usually placid and pale, had a rigid clearness about them that day we can never forget. They seemed, from their transparency and firmness, like some wondrous imagination of the artist's chisel, in which the marble, fancying itself human, had begun to breathe. The eye was calm and bright—the mouth, the feature round which danger loves to play, though ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... illustrated she knew nothing about; but her eyes danced with joy and overran with tears of childish merriment. But in all this luxury of fun, whether by pen or pencil, no word, idea, image, or delineation obscures the transparency of innocence, or leaves the shadow of a stain upon the purest mind. To be at the same time so comic and so chaste is not only a moral beauty, but a literary wonder. It is hard to deal with the oddities of humor, however carefully, without casual slips that may offend or shame the reverential ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... king of light. Like him, great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear tones of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,—remember that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept diminishing little by little, I was able to cast strong shadows deepening almost to blackness. The shadows of ordinary painters are not of the same texture as their tones of light. They are wood, brass, iron, anything you please except flesh in shadow. ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... driven by a laughing boy of about seven, in tan overalls and brass buttons. The small driver caught my attention at once: he was a beautiful child, and, although he showed traces of recent severe illness, his skin had now the clear transparency of health. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... If we compare this painting with other Biblical subjects executed at a later date, we see how much Watts' work has gained since then. The almost smooth texture and the dark shadows of the Manchester picture have given way to ruggedness and transparency. Still, "The Good Samaritan" is simple and excellent in ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... clear that the bottom could be seen at all times, the white coral rock greatly assisting the transparency. From Douglas Channel, through which the boat had passed, the chart indicated that it was twenty miles to the point where the skipper desired to land, and it was nearly eleven o'clock when the Eleuthera ran into the little bay, extending over a mile into the island, and ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... considering everything, it was the hardest individual task essayed in New York during the first year of the war. Need I add that it was a failure—a total failure? As he stood forth fully and comprehensively revealed by the light of the adjacent transparency, Mr. Cassidy's squint of suspicion widened into a pop-eyed stare of ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward the docks. They bore torches, which illuminated fitfully their flushed, impassioned faces. Here and there one carried a transparency described, "The Chinese ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... decay, the result of an evil life, was distinctly marked in his faded face. The dull, yellow tint of the complexion, the tarnished dimness of the large blue eyes, the discontented droop of the lips, the languor of the attitude, the pallid transparency of the wasted hands, all told of a life worn threadbare, energies exhausted, chances thrown away, a mind abandoned ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... year was unusually mild. She was just sixteen years of age, and until now she had been glad to welcome with her eyes alone the growing green again of the Clos-Marie under the April sunshine. The shooting out of the tender leaves, the transparency of the warm evenings, and all the reviving odours of the earth had simply amused her heretofore. But this year, at the first bud, her heart seemed to beat more quickly. As the grass grew higher and the wind brought ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... with the smiling farewell of the sun. The hills of Visens upon this side were empurpled, and shewed like a promontory of coral, in front of the stagnant lake of the ether, which was bright with a sapphire-like transparency. But, on the east, in front of you, the horizon again spread out to the very point of intersection of the seven valleys. The castle which had formerly guarded them still stood with its keep, its lofty walls, its black outlines—the outlines of a fierce ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... seek: they obtrude themselves; they monopolize your attention; they blunt your sense of the shy, half- revealed intelligences about you. I want for companion a dog or a boy, or a person who has the virtues of dogs and boys,— transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open sense, and a nameless quality that is akin to trees and growths and the inarticulate forces of nature. With him you are alone, and yet have company; you are free; you feel no disturbing element; the influences of nature stream through ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... she had driven Pedro and Don Jose. But though she told the story with composure, even with a certain vivacity and charm, as she might have narrated it to a small and intimate audience in any safe drawing-room, her self-control was a transparency through which he saw her anxiety manoeuvering, in spite of his promise, to keep ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Bohemian supply is best known, having furnished a host of small stones which have usually been rose cut for cluster work or made into beads. The Bohemian garnets are of the pyrope or fire-red type. Relatively few large stones of sufficient transparency for cutting are produced in the Bohemian mines. The so-called "Cape rubies" of the diamond mines of South Africa are pyrope garnets and some large and fine ones are found. The "Arizona rubies" are pyrope garnets, and while seldom of notable size, some are ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... sat there, in the golden radiance of the summer noon, she presented an almost faultless specimen of a type of beauty that is rarely found nowaday, that has always been peculiar, and bids fair to become extinct. A complexion of dazzling whiteness and transparency, rendered more intensely pure by contrast with luxuriant silky hair of the deepest black,—and large superbly shaped eyes of clear, dark steel blue, almost violet in hue,—with delicately arched brows and very long lashes of that purplish black tint which ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... you use, you ought to use some other substance: it can be only affectation, and desire to display your skill, that lead you to employ a refractory substance, and therefore your art will all be base. Glass, for instance, is eminently, in its nature, transparent. If you don't want transparency, let the glass alone. Do not try to make a window look like an opaque picture, but take an opaque ground to begin with. Again, marble is eminently a solid and massive substance. Unless you want mass and solidity, don't work in marble. If you wish for lightness, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... will to everybody else who knows or cares," he said; "I mean chiefly Laura's tremendous desirability. Her beauty would go for something anywhere, but I don't want to insist on that. What marks her even more is the wonderful purity and transparency of her mind; one doesn't find it often now, women's souls are so clouded with knowledge. I think that sort of thing appeals especially to me because my own design isn't in the least esoteric. I'm only a man. Then she was so ludicrously out of ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... something odd about the window of the front door. Properly speaking, when the passage was dark, the window should have shown clear against the light of the lamp outside, with its broad framework marking upon this transparency the four arms of a cross. Now it showed a darkness, a queer shadowy patch on the pane under the left arm ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... common, if mystic malady, a broken heart. Her health, always delicate, because always preyed upon by a nervous, irritable, and feverish spirit, had been gradually and invisibly undermined, even before Ernest confessed his love. In the singular lustre of those large-pupilled eyes—in the luxuriant transparency of that glorious bloom,—the experienced might long since have traced the seeds which cradled death. In the night when her restless and maddened heart so imprudently drove her forth to forestall the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flasks, without corks, having a little oil at top. It is not deemed the worse for having been opened a day or two before; and they expose it to the hot sun, and all kinds of weather, without hesitation. Certain it is, this treatment has little or no effect upon its taste, flavour, and transparency. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... absent from his latest work. Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances is that of Rossetti. In the course of the House of Life, the dark curtain of the exotic mood, with its strange odours and glimpses, its fallen light, its fevered sense, is raised at intervals upon a sonnet of pure transparency and delicate sweetness, as though the weary, voluptuous soul, in its restless passage among perfumed chambers, looked out suddenly from a window upon some forest glade, full of cool winds and winter sunshine, and stood silent ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... coloured textiles, Sir G. Birdwood says: "All violent contrasts are avoided. The richest colours are used, but are so arranged as to produce the effect of a neutral bloom, which tones down every detail almost to the softness and transparency of the atmosphere." He says that in their apparel both the colouring and the ornaments are adapted to the effect which the fabrics will produce when worn and in motion. "It is only through generations of patient practice that men attain to ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... of water-colour sketches of the old castles of the neighbourhood, and a very elaborate set of drawings of what are known as the Runic obelisks of Ross: he had made some first attempts, too, in oil-painting; but though his drawing was, as usual, correct, there was a deadness and want of transparency about his colouring, which characterized all his after attempts in the same department, and which was, I suspect, the result of some such deficiency in his perceptions of the harmonies of colour as that which, in another department of sense, made me so insensible ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... miles with him on four Motor Tours says, though everybody, everywhere, pressmen included, were of necessity impressed with his sincerity and transparency, they could see that he had all the time only one object in view, the glory of God and the Salvation ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... upon the glass-panes at her side. The windows gradually became more and more difficult to see through; each time she looked it had grown a shade darker, until at length the pure glass had changed, to her unmitigated satisfaction, in hue from clear transparency to green, and ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... frying, keep pouring some of the fat over them with a spoon; when the yelk just begins to look white, which it will in about a couple of minutes, they are done enough; the white must not lose its transparency, but the yelk be seen blushing through it: if they are done nicely, they will look as white and delicate as if they had been poached; take them up with a tin slice, drain the fat from them, trim them neatly, and send them up ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... not done yet. But it is what we call rough plate. That's the kind that is used where light and not transparency is needed. You often see it in office doors or in skylights of buildings. To get the beautiful polished plate glass that you are talking about this rough plate must be polished over and over again. But before ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... upon the bottom of the stream, scarcely distinguishable in color or appearance from the sand which constitutes its bed. Nature seems to aid and abet its falsehood by the very form which has been assigned to it. And so also the gift of transparency helps the chameleon in seeming to be a part of the green plant, or the brown bark, upon which it lies. And Professor Drummond, in his interesting account of his African travels, describes certain insects which render themselves ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... listener who was interested in things familiar to her—Zura chattered away, of her friends and her pleasures, and though many of her words were in an unknown tongue, the picture she unconsciously drew of herself was as clear as transparency. It was an unguided, undisciplined life, big with possibilities for love or hate that even now was wavering in the balance ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... exasperating twenty minutes while the car got righted. From our street, in a blue transparent sky, so high up that it seemed part of the transparency, we saw a Taube hanging over Ghent. People came out of their houses and watched it with interest and a kind of ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... vegetables, should not come to this region, till the subject of diet be better understood; that of fruit, too, there is little yet, even at the best hotel tables; that the prairie chickens require no praise from me, and that the trout and white-fish are worthy the transparency of the lake waters. ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... though he had been made of glass. This was so surprising in itself that when Davy presently discovered that he was made of beautiful, clear lemon candy, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, as explaining his transparency. He was neatly dressed in a sort of tunic of writing-paper, with a cocked hat of the same material, and he had under his arm a large book, with the words "HOLE-KEEPER'S VACUUM" printed on the cover. This curious-looking creature was standing before an extremely high wall, with his ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... felt was evidently intended to arrest her arm, and she slowly withdrew it. Then the figure, from whom she could not detach her eyes, and who appeared more protecting than menacing, took the glass, and walking towards the night-light held it up, as if to test its transparency. This did not seem sufficient; the man, or rather the ghost—for he trod so softly that no sound was heard—then poured out about a spoonful into the glass, and drank it. Valentine witnessed this scene with a sentiment of stupefaction. Every minute she ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at whose door we alighted for a moment to obtain a particular point of view, told us that at sunset the mountain assumed a peculiar transparency, with most mysterious hues of blue and purple; so that she had seen irreligious natures, frivolous and light, when suddenly called out to look, stand petrified, or rather exalted above themselves, and irresistibly turning their faces, their thoughts, their breathings of adoration ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... held the eyes of all the revellers was an exquisitely slender, girlish figure amid the broken crust of the pie. The figure was draped with spangled black gauze, through which the girl's marble white limbs gleamed like ivory seen through gauze of gossamer transparency. She rose from her crouching posture like a wood nymph startled by a satyr, glanced from one side to the other, and stepped timidly ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... and blue pompons; bright blue blouses dashed with white, and white leather belts, and red zouave knickerbockers. Their torches were encased in fantastic glass lanterns alternately red, white, and blue. On the occasion of their first parade, when they drew up before the house to receive their transparency, adorned on one side with a villainous portrait of myself superscribed by the motto, "Our Fathers Fought For Freedom, We Are Fighting For The Right," and on the other a cut depicting the rival candidate up to his armpits in the bog of Civil Service Reform, described as "Spinney's ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... that the remote ever seems so close, and then with an effect which is sharp and hard as well as clear; here the clearness is soft; nothing cuts or glitters, seen through that magic distance; the air has not only a new transparency so that you can see farther into it than elsewhere, but a new quality, like some crystal of an unknown water, so that to see into it is greater glory." Speaking of the ranges and promontories of sterile limestone, the same writer observes that their colours are as austere and delicate as ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Lenox answered, smiling at the characteristic suggestion. Yet his eyes, half-blinded with snow-glare, peered anxiously southward, and detected a change; a faint hint of transparency, as though light were ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... waters of the lake we went, scanning the painted shores with their dwindling remnants of forest. There is something inspiring about the profundity of transparency in these lakes, where they are 15 feet deep their bottoms are no more obscured than in an ordinary eastern brook at 6 inches. On looking down into the far-below world, one gets the sensation of flight as one skims overhead ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Stamboul; the pillars at the entrance of the baptistery were part of the booty of Arre; while there are three red flagstones on which Barbarossa knelt to do reverence to St. Peter, in the person of the Pope. The guide held a lighted taper on one side of the column, that we might observe its glowing transparency. I could well enter into the feeling of noble triumph which must have animated those great and powerful Doges of past times, in thus being able to beautify their own Christian temple in Venice at the expense of the unbelieving, barbarous Turk, whose usurpation ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux |
