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Twinkling   /twˈɪŋkəlɪŋ/  /twˈɪŋklɪŋ/   Listen
Twinkling

adjective
1.
Shining intermittently with a sparkling light.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books



... apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. How can I bear it; buried here, While overhead the sky grows clear And blue again after the storm? O, multi-colored, multiform, Beloved beauty over me, That I shall never, never see Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... an old creature as Gruffanuff frightened Prince Giglio so, that he ran up to his room, packed his trunks, fetched in a couple of porters, and was off to the diligence office in a twinkling. ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the middle of the undulating plain, with no wood or water in sight; but that was a small matter. In a twinkling all three were out of their saddles, and the guide unstrapped a large bundle from its fastening to the saddle of his pony. This, being unwrapped, disclosed a goodly portion of cooked and tender steak and plenty of well-baked brown bread. Furthermore, there were ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... Whereas Harry was tall, Mr Crank was short and stout; he had a bald head, shining as if it had been carefully polished, a round face, with a florid complexion, and a nose which was allowed by his warmest friends to be a snub; but he had a good mouth, bright blue eyes, often twinkling with humour, which seemed to look through and through those he addressed, while his brow exhibited a considerable amount of intellect. Had not he possessed that, he would not have been at the head of the firm of Crank, Trunnion ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... compared with ascending it. The previous evening a Baptiste Lake hunter, bound for the Landing, set on from our camp at a great rate astride of a couple of logs, which he held together with his legs, and disappeared round the bend below in a twinkling. A priest, too, with a companion, arrived about dusk in a canoe, and set off again, intending to beach at the ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... his eyes twinkling. "I've signed up to coach Great Western next year at ... guess what salary...?" Carl looked about him, cautiously. "I don't want any newspaper guys to hear this—it's ... er ... just something to be kept in the family." Whereupon ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... on the streets than I was impressed by the difference in status effected by my clothes. All servility vanished from the demeanour of the common people with whom I came in contact. Presto! in the twinkling of an eye, so to say, I had become one of them. My frayed and out-at-elbows jacket was the badge and advertisement of my class, which was their class. It made me of like kind, and in place of the fawning and too respectful attention I had hitherto received, I now shared with them a comradeship. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... Rankin sitting upon the wagon seat, smoking impassively as usual; but the Englishman was upon the ground holding the two hounds by the collars. Behind the big compound lenses his eyes were twinkling excitedly, and he ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... Berow had bought a little pig with the money my daughter had paid her in the winter for spinning, and the poor woman kept it like a child, and let it run about her room. This little pig got the mischief, like all the rest, in the twinkling of an eye; and when my daughter was called it grew no better, but also died under her hands; whereupon the poor woman made a great outcry and tore her hair for grief, so that my child was moved to pity her, and promised her another pig next time ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... happy, and all were so fair, That night stole away and the dawn caught them there! Such a scampering never before was seen, As the fairies' flight on that island green. They rushed to the bay with twinkling feet, But vain was their haste, for the moonlight fleet Had passed with the dawn, and never again Were those fairies permitted to traverse the main. But 'mid the groves, when the sun was high, The Indian marked with a worshipping eye, The HUMMING BIRDS, all unknown before, Glancing ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... flag is pretty to look at. Its colors are striking—red, white, and blue, with two or three twinkling stars here and there, but it is ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... never seen anything before in all their lives like that which greeted their eyes. The library was a bower of evergreen and radiance. In the centre was a great tree of crystal and stars which reflected the light of a myriad twinkling candles. It had undoubtedly come from fairy-land, if the place was not fairy-land itself, on the border ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... you, why I was so lenient with your brother and that Jac Hallen when they would have refused me obedience? That is not my way—to be lenient." He said it with a sudden snap of crispness, but his eyes were twinkling. "It was ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... a long mile and a half from Pierre Chouteau's house to Dr. Saugrain's, and it was a frosty December evening. It was only five o'clock, but the stars were out, and through the leafless trees I could see lights twinkling from the houses as I passed. Faster and faster I walked, as my thoughts grew more and more bitter toward mademoiselle, and by the time I had reached the cheery living-room, with its blazing lightwood fire, I was in such a glow from exercise ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... immediately followed by others, and in almost the twinkling of an eye the Carberry blacksmith shop was emptied of its late ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... room and down the stairs in a twinkling. As she set off toward Ruth's at a rapid pace she wondered if there was not some way in which she might capitulate with this strange girl who seemed so determined to blot the pages of her freshman year with unworthy deeds. "I am so disappointed," Grace reflected. "I did wish to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... by, making no comment, his eyes bright and twinkling. Then he suggested that their Majesties, the dolls, had been waiting long on the shelf. Was it not time they ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little

... poked round after more grains, an attention which Billy met with jeers and continued heartless mastication, until the Orpington gave up the quest in disgust, and retired to the limit of his tether. Billy sat quietly, with steadfast glittering eyes twinkling ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. The man is called upon, too probably, to die; but to die at the very moment when, by any momentary collapse, he is self-denounced as a murderer. He had but the twinkling of an eye for his effort, and that effort might, at the best, have been unavailing; but from this shadow of a chance, small or great, how if he has recoiled by a treasonable lachete? The effort might have been without hope; but to have risen to the level of that effort, would have rescued ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... hard, they couldn't get a wink of sleep so long as the storm lasted. But when the third day was nearly over, the wind fell, and all at once it got as still as still could be. Now, they were all so weary with work and the rough weather, they fell fast asleep in the twinkling of an eye; all but the youngest Prince, he could get no rest, and couldn't go off ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... themselves to watch what the little elves would do. About midnight they came in and were going to sit down to their work as usual; but when they saw the clothes lying for them, they laughed and were greatly delighted. Then they dressed themselves in the twinkling of an eye, and danced and capered and sprang about as merry as could be, till at last they danced out at the door and over the green; and the shoemaker saw them no more; but everything went well with him from that time forward, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... no love for the farm, which had belonged to his father; an old flute, on which his father used to play, was more of a treasure to him. Often in summer, as day faded, and the dews of night descended; when the clear lights in the valley were set twinkling one by one, leaving the uplands to the winds and stars, Aaron Bade, perched upon his pasture bars, piped to the faintly glowing sky his awkward thoughts ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan

... brought, but the rope attached to it, and by which we were to be hauled into the shaft, was shorter than we had ordered it. This deficiency probably saved our lives. We had not proceeded far in the boat when I perceived, by the twinkling of the lights in the tunnel, and other indications of inundation, that the waters came in with increased rapidity. I then gave the signal to be hauled into the shaft, and had scarcely done so when I observed the ground above give way, and the water ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... thought but little of my assertion in comparison with the reports of the lookout men. We both returned to the spot from which we had started, and stood intently gazing to windward, until, for my part, I was almost ready to declare upon oath that the atmosphere was full of faint twinkling lights. The impression was beginning to force itself upon me that I had been making a fool of myself, and I was about to say so, when a faint and almost imperceptible sound seemed to float down to us out of the thick folds ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... in the sun, or on a balcony," he was saying, his eyes twinkling. "And pretty gentlemen with long curls and their hats tucked under their arms should be feeding you nightingale tongues, or whatever ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... up to the ceiling, and was out of the smoke-slide through the roof in a twinkling. Tsuna rushed out of the house to shoot her with an arrow, but he saw only a demon far off in the clouds grinning horribly. He noted carefully however that the direction of the imps' flight was to ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... strolled on still with the people.... Suddenly upon the left side of our road, a crackling was heard among the bushes; all of us were alarmed, and in an instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one of the party that was foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling of an eye. The rush of the animal, and the crush of the poor victim's bones in his mouth, and his last cry of distress, 'Ho hai!' involuntarily reechoed by all of us, was over in three seconds; and then I know not what happened till I returned to my senses, when I found myself and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... the true system of the material universe, and so, as it were, changed those twinkling sparks of light into central suns, the rulers of tributary worlds, philosophy apart from faith has been, more or less articulately, scattering the question, at once a fruit and a seed of unbelief, How could the Creator of so vast ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... and this time it was about the stars that could be seen through a slit in the tent, gleaming and sparkling in the dark blue sky. He dreamt that the sun and the moon and eleven of the largest of the twinkling stars came and ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous

... sock-ball," snuffled the boy, and a solitary tear rolled down his snub nose. He flicked it away with his right hand, and this act disclosed to me a great bluish swelling, from under which a bit of eye was twinkling mournfully at me. The boy was hurt; my heart went out to him, for the memory of my own sock-ball and tickley-bender days came ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... Baby will do all the fussy things in travelling—taking the tickets, and counting the luggage, and all that—they're such big men, aren't they?" said Denny, with mischief in her twinkling green eyes. ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth

... but this was no inconvenience to my guide, who moved on, as formerly, with instinctive security of step, so that we soon reached the bottom, and I could see lights twinkling in the cottage which had been my place of refuge on a former occasion. It was not thither, however, that our course was directed. We left the habitation of the laird to the left, and turning down ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... "good-night" with a smile, and, lying down beside him, gazed long and thoughtfully through the trees overhead at the twinkling, tranquil stars. Michel Rollin continued to smoke and meditate for another hour. Then he shook the ashes out of his pipe, heaped fresh logs on the declining fire, and followed his comrades to the land ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... except a little futile skirmishing," the engineer remarked, with twinkling eyes. "When I paid off his mortgage on the land, I advised him that I should use the water: and he threatened to have the water right cancelled. But he backed up on that line when I promised to lodge him in jail for making false affidavits if he tried those tactics. ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any further. In consequence of some advice which I fancied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Bacon's most severe and passionate displeasure, and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a misfortune to which her friends were always particularly liable; but I think that none of them ever loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous, character the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... accurst, that will not Hear, although I roar! Stick! be now, and fail not, What thou wert before! You will joke me? I'll not bear it, No, I swear it! I will catch you; And with axe, if you provoke me, In a twinkling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... through the leaves of the tall palms breathed upon his sun-scorched cheeks. Now and then there was the hum of mosquitoes, but they did not molest him; and as he lay listening to the distant boom of the surf and watched the great twinkling stars he now and then nearly lost consciousness, and the tall columns of the cocoa-nut trees took the shape to him of the supports of the ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... descent, and straightway departed the upper life of fields and larks and sunshine for a new and semi-subterranean one. It was not simply a change of scene; it was a complete change of sphere. The world with its face open to the day in a twinkling had ceased to be, and another world, a world of dark water girt by shadowed walls of rock and trees, had ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... raging ocean wave The gloom o' night is spread, If lemes the twinkling beacon-light, The sailor's heart is glad; In hope he steers, but, 'mid the storm, If sinks the waning ray, Dees a' that hope, an' fails his saul, O'erpress'd wi' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... huge ship rose steadily higher in the air, the long lines of lighted gas-lamps in street after street became visible, until gradually the whole of the great city lay spread out below them like a map, with the thoroughfares indicated by faint twinkling lines of fire. And, as they continued to rise, the various disjointed sounds which, even at that early hour, pervaded the city, began to reach their ears: the rumbling of a wagon or the rattle of a cab over the stone-paved streets, the barking of a dog, the crow of some unnaturally wakeful ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... high above the twinkling watch-fires and the wash of the dark river, there was the stillness of the stars, of the white frost and the bare cliffs. In the northern heavens played a soft light, and now and then a star shot. The man who marked its trail ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... flushed, and her eye gleamed like a gambler's, and she bought away like wildfire. In which sport she caught sight of an old gentleman, with little black eyes that kept twinkling at her. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... walking dictionary of truisms, father! I suppose you mean to take a philosophical view of the misfortune and make the best of it," said Nigel, with what we may style one of his twinkling smiles, for on nearly all occasions that young man's dark, brown eyes twinkled, in spite of him, as vigorously as any "little star" that was ever told in prose or song to do so—and much more expressively, too, because of the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... one arrow was already notched to the string, and another hung loose to the lesser fingers of his string-hand. He raised his right hand, and drew and loosed in a twinkling; the shaft flew close to the Lady's side, and straightway all the wood rung with a huge roar, as the yellow lion turned about to bite at the shaft which had sunk deep into him behind the shoulder, as if a bolt out of the heavens had smitten him. But straightway ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... it, lest the sun should shine too brightly; while the ant came bringing a tiny strawberry, lest she should miss her favorite fruit. The mother gave her good advice, and the papa stood with his head on one side, and his round eyes twinkling with delight, to think that his little ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... summer rain at home with a Burberry well buttoned and an umbrella over one's head; here in Yuen-nan a coat made it too uncomfortable to walk, and the terrific wind would have blown an umbrella from one's grasp in a twinkling. If we are in the home humor, in the summer, we do not mind how drenching the rain is, and we may even take delight in getting our own legs splashed as we glance at the "very touching stockings" and the "very ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... mines of gold. Light was my sleep; my days in transport roll'd: With thoughtless joy I stretch'd along the shore My father's nets, or watched, when from the fold High o'er the cliffs I led my fleecy store, A dizzy depth below! his boat and twinkling oar. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... seized the slack of Thomas's shorts and the boy was heaved up to the muscular shoulder. The two faces were now on the same level and twinkling gray blue eyes were looking into grave ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... should stop twinkling now and then. I can't be on duty, the whole time. Besides, Miss Gannion," he rose from the piano and came forward to her side; "we can't give out, all the time. We must stop occasionally to take something in, else our mental fuel runs ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day, With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow-melting strains their Queen's approach declare: Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay: With arms sublime that float upon the air In gliding state she wins her easy way: O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move The ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... forgiven. Punch oughtn't to jump on strange ladies' laps, whether they are Mohammedans or not. Oh! he is more frightened than hurt. And I," she added, with a twinkling eye, "am more hurt than frightened, because Sir Marcus ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... soon saw that he must give up that, for when he had worked a very short time he had scarcely any room left to stand. So he did what the Princess had taught him, turned the pitchfork round, and worked with the handle, and in the twinkling of an eye the stable was as clean as if it had been scoured. When he had done that, he went back again into the room in which the giant had given him leave to stay, and there he walked backward and forward on the floor, and began to ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... air is still, fresh, and transparent. The night is dark, but one can see the whole village with its white roofs and coils of smoke coming from the chimneys, the trees silvered with hoar frost, the snowdrifts. The whole sky spangled with gay twinkling stars, and the Milky Way is as distinct as though it had been washed and rubbed with snow for a holiday. . ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... was gone! In a flash Ralph comprehended that he was in a bad fix, his usefulness on the scene gone. In a twinkling he had jerked free from the grasp of the man who held him, had sprung to the platform of the oil car and thence to the roof of the next ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman

... know what a glib young chatterbox he is; and, if he has his way, he is to be our errand-boy! Yesterday he challenged Eros—tripped up his heels somehow, and had him on his back in a twinkling; before the applause was over, he had taken the opportunity of a congratulatory hug from Aphrodite to steal her girdle; Zeus had not done laughing before—the sceptre was gone. If the thunderbolt ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... this hour than at any other time, might be called one of the civic voices of the night—has certain urbane suggestions, not unpleasant to those born and bred in large cities. The moon, round and full, gradually usurps the twinkling lights of the city, that one by one seem to fade away and be absorbed in her superior lustre. The distant Mission hills are outlined against the sky, but through one gap the outlying fog which has stealthily invested us seems to have effected a breach, and only waits the co-operation ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... was stronger than his nature, and her mind, untrained though it be, encompassed his mind and could pass over it and beat it down as the wind beats down the tossing seas. All this she learnt in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye: she could not tell how she knew it, but she did know it as surely as she knew that the blue sky stretched overhead, and, what is more—for the moment, at any rate—he knew it too. This strange strong certainty came on her as a shock and a revelation, like the tidings of some great joy ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... been surprisingly rapid in their consumption of the dinner, these later ones were startlingly so. Like grain before a flock of hungry birds, like ice beneath a bonfire, the viands, lavishly provided though they had been, melted away in almost the twinkling of an eye. And it was precisely as the last enormous mouthful of cherry pie vanished down Jiggers Quigg's happy throat ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... waved and danced in the breeze suggested to him the experience which he had had on other walks which he had taken when the stars were shining, and he compares the golden daffodils to the shining, twinkling stars: ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... The twinkling eye, the humorous accent, which had won Piers' affection, soon allayed his disquietude at being in this house. He spoke of his own recent excursion, confessing that he better ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... and he said, "Bring me seven baskets of cotton-bolls," and they brought him seven baskets of cotton-bolls; and he taught the seven maidens to weave a magical fabric from the cotton, and when they had finished it he held it aloft, and the breeze carried it away toward the firmament, and in the twinkling of an eye it was transformed into a beautiful full-orbed moon, and the same breeze caught the remnants of flocculent cotton which the maidens had scattered during their work, and carried them aloft, and they were transformed into bright stars. ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... sweetest call into the hot chases, and even when resting between encounters, spreads his tail, flutters his wings, and erects his crest in a most warlike manner. The little dame was not a whit less vigilant than her spouse. Let but a blackbird pass over and she was off in a twinkling, pursuing him, pouncing down upon him savagely, and all the time uttering her plaintive "pe-o-wee!" till her mate joined her, and made it so uncomfortable for the big foe that he departed, protesting to be sure in vigorous black-birdese, but taking good care to go. So persistent ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... is beautiful. Some of our men are talking in groups on the thresholds of the doors, others, rolled in their blankets, are lying on the ground asleep. In the upper storeys of some of the houses lights are still twinkling through the muslin curtains; lower down all is darkness. Scarcely a sound is to be heard, only now and then the rumble of a heavy cart, or perhaps a cannon in the distance; and nearer to us the sudden noise of a musket that slips from its resting-place on to the pavement. Every hour the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... in. He said that we reminded him of troops of United States cavalry as he had seen them on the alkali plains of New Mexico and Arizona. It was again my duty to station our pickets and out-posts, and as I came back after placing the sentries, the fires were twinkling all over the plaza and throwing grotesque shadows of the men and the mules against the white walls of the houses. It was a most weird ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... one evening, high on the quarter, smoking his pipe, in that calm, contemplative mood which is the smoker's reward for a day of toil,—the little vessel pitching bows under in the long, tremendous swell of the Atlantic, the low drifting fog lurid in the light of the setting sun, but bright stars twinkling out, one by one, overhead, in a sky of Italian clearness and softness,—it all came to him,—that which he had so long, so vainly sought, toiled for, prayed for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... above the forest was all that remained of the sunset when he rose up and took from his coat a silver locket and opened it and held it to the fading light. Presently he closed it again, and walked slowly along the river bank toward the little city twinkling on its hill. He crossed the hooded bridge and climbed the slope, stopping for a moment at a little stationery shop; he passed through the groups which were still loudly discussing this thing he had done, and gained his room and locked the door. Men came to it and knocked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and bright, with twinkling stars which on air-raid nights in London would have caused much perturbation among ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... ether produces. When you direct one of these rays toward a Jovian ship, the ether in the ship is destroyed. No insulation against the cold of space will interfere for the ether penetrates and permeates all substance. The cold of absolute nothingness will destroy all life in the twinkling of an eye and the ship will be reduced to a puff of powder. At such a temperature, even stellanium has less strength ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... summer made a forum of the tavern's side piazza, had been brought in and ranged in a wide semicircle about the stove, marking the formal opening of the winter session. In the central chair sat the large figure of Judge Fulsom, puffing clouds of smoke from a calabash pipe; his twinkling eyes looking forth over his fat, creased cheeks roved impartially about the circle of ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... he eats sparingly of sweets nowadays. Yet, when he and a small boy would clear the table and take the food down cellar, it was no uncommon thing to see them emerge from the stairway, each munching one of those fat cookies, their eyes twinkling at the thought that they had found the forbidden sweets we ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... bed, and when Mammy was drowsing on the doorstep, he raised himself to his knees, and looked through a wide hole in the wall where the chinking had dropped out from between the logs. Through this he could see a strip of sky studded with twinkling stars. One by one he pointed out the magic seven, repeating the charm and ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston

... charming truth, and submitting to the conscious triumph? Give her her part of vanity, of youth, of desire to rule and be admired. Meanwhile Mr. Clive's drawings have been crackling in the fireplace at her feet, and the last spark of that combustion is twinkling out unheeded. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... saw what she had never before seen or imagined—the camps of these teamsters by the roadside; horses and mules staked, or tied to the wagons; the men lying prone upon the earth, wrapped in blankets, their dust-blackened faces turned up to the frosty twinkling stars. Did people really live in that way?—how many superfluous things were there ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... on the many. But no accumulation of insufficiencies will ever make a sufficiency. You may fill the heaven all over with stars, bright and thickly set as those in the whitest spot in the galaxy, and it will be night still. Day needs the sun, and the sun is one, and when it comes the twinkling lights are forgotten. You cannot make up for God by any extended series of creatures, any more than a row of figures that stretched from here to Sirius and back again would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... stared at her over the candle flame. Flesh and blood, vivid, alluring; she was no longer the symbol, therefore she had become, as in the twinkling of an eye, an utter stranger. And this utter stranger ... loved him! He had no reason to doubt McClintock's statement; the Scot had solved the riddle why Ruth Enschede had married Howard Spurlock. All emotions laid hold of him, but none could he stay long enough to analyze it. For a space ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... name—yah, yah,' and he turned his face, wet with merry tears, and distended in an uncommonly broad grin, up to mine. In a moment, however, his eye caught Preston's. His broad visage collapsed, his distended mouth shrank to a very diminutive opening, and his twinkling eyes assumed a peculiarly stolid expression, as he added, in a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... whom they thus lay awake. Utter midnight blackness all around, the profound and impressive stillness made more profound and impressive by the trickling of some current near, the occasional glimpse of some tiny star twinkling among the dark, straggling clouds overhead; such was Elwood Brandon's ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... find that, as the Prince-President of that poor, poetic, impracticable thing, the French Republic, much notice had been taken of him by the English Government;—but "Emperor" was a more respectable title, even worn in this way, snatched in the twinkling of an eye by a political prestidigitateur, and it was of greater worth—it had cost blood. So Napoleon III. was recognized by England, and at last by all great powers—royal and republican. Still, for a while, they showed a wary ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness. It is night, sacred night! the upraised eye views only the starry heaven which manifests itself alone: and the outward beholding is fixed on the sparks twinkling in the awful depth, though suns of other worlds, only to preserve the soul steady and collected in its pure act of inward adoration to the great I AM, and to the filial WORD that re-affirmeth it from eternity to eternity, whose choral echo is ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... to gaze upon a naked man; that the nature of the wolf is such that if the man sees him first, the wolf is deprived of force and vigor, but if the wolf first sees the man, his power of speech will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Furthermore, there were curious ideas current concerning the mystic power of precious stones, and many were the lapidaries which were written for the edification of the credulous world. The diamond was held in somewhat doubtful esteem, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above the Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then in strength, reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us and let us pass. Madonna's lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the harbour-pile. The city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that calm—stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight, till San Giorgio's gun boomed with a flash ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... time, do what I could, I found a tear ready to start. My heart was very untoward, Lucy; and I was guilty of a little female turn. When I found the twinkling of my eyes would not disperse the too ready drop, and felt it stealing down my cheek, I wiped it off— The poor Emily, said I—She will be grieved at parting with you. Emily ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... bridge and looked at the water and the dark masses of the houses on the Latin side, with the twin towers of Notre Dame rising dimly behind them. Ferdinand thought of the Thames at night, with the barges gliding slowly down, and the twinkling of the ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... I had planned my journey with a thought of seeing her at the end, and drowning my sorrows in flirtation; but the Boy knew, and had not forgotten—the little wretch. I saw his thought twinkling in his eyes, as I said debonairly that we might all meet on the Riviera. If I had not sternly removed my gaze, I should probably have burst out laughing, and precipitated a second duel in which I, and not the Boy, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... a senora," translated Dade, his eyes twinkling, "but his rifle; and the ninos are ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... the girl's serious face with twinkling eyes. He liked to embarrass her gravity with his antic speeches, and enjoyed her endeavors to find an earnest meaning in them, and her evident trouble when ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... hear me heaven, to whom I call for right, And you fair twinkling stars that crown the night; And hear me woods, and silence of this place, And ye sad hours that move a sullen pace; Hear me ye shadows that delight to dwell In horrid darkness, and ye powers of Hell, ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... man within sight along that sunny stretch of sand—a small, dark man with a shaggy, speckled beard and quick, twinkling eyes. He was at work upon a tangled length of tarred rope, pulling and twisting with much energy and deftness to straighten out the coil, so that it leaped and writhed in his hands like a ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... in the Island of JAVA, that sitting once in the house of an opulent merchant of Batavia, drinking a cool glass of Madeira after dinner, with the merchant's wife in the room, the lady was, in the twinkling of an eye, reduced to a heap of ashes by a coup de soleil; when the husband observed to his guest, "don't be alarmed—we are accustomed to this;" then rang the bell with great composure, and on the appearance of the servant, coolly said—"Boy—sweep your mistress out, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... kind you are!—I suppose you have heard—and are come to give us joy. This does not seem much like joy, indeed, in me—(twinkling away a tear or two)—but it will be very trying for us to part with her, after having had her so long, and she has a dreadful headache just now, writing all the morning:—such long letters, you know, to be written to Colonel Campbell, and Mrs. Dixon. 'My dear,' said I, 'you will blind yourself'—for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... delights, but nothing astonishes them. That people covered with spangles should dive headlong through the floor; that fairy queens should step out of the trunks of trees; that the poor wood-cutter's cottage should change, in the twinkling of an eye, into a glorious palace or a goblin grotto under the sea, with crimson fountains and golden staircases and silver foliage—all that is a matter of course. This is the kind of world they live in at present. If these things happened at home ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... twinkling lights of the town, and silence fell upon them as they watched them. In another day they would be among the thousands who lived, and laboured, and suffered in it. What awaited them there? Not that they feared the future, or doubted ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... seemed to have abandoned her design of immediately returning home, and was gradually edging nearer the table, with her twinkling ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... who was a man of precision, asked how many steps he was to count before twinkling again. The rosy-cheeked one explained that it didn't matter, you could ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... kill me. So I waited until they were a hundred yards off and then drew a bead on the first. Indians—and, for the matter of that, white men—do not like to ride in on a man who is cool and means shooting, and in a twinkling every man was lying over the side of his horse, and all five had turned and were galloping backwards, having altered their course as quickly ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... wounded man should set her to blushing like a self-conscious fool! Then she remembered how he had held her in his arms, and she grew more self- conscious still. A jolt made her companion moan, and in a twinkling all else was forgotten in the anxiety of getting to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... Grinders, you stop up the Passage of the Voice, and it will be very difficult for you to pronounce this Letter, (r,) is a Voice fluctuating with great swiftness, and is formed, when the more movable part of the Tongue does in the twinkling of an Eye, oftentimes strike upon the Roof of the Mouth, and as often is drawn back again from it; for thus the Voice formed in the Throat, in its pronouncing, flows and ebbs back again, and is uttered, as ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman

... absent for a short time from the drawing-room, returned, beckoned to Amos, and then, gently laying hold of his sister's hand, drew her towards the door. "Come here, just for one minute," he said, with a merry smile twinkling in his eyes. "Father will spare you just for a minute;" and he conducted her out of the room. Oh, what a flood of joy came into her heart with that smile of Walter's. Years had passed since she had rejoiced ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... castle building do not agree. The gold and purple clouds would be black in spite of him, and the aerial structure he essayed to build would pitch and tumble about, for all the world, just like a steamboat in a heavy sea. As often as he got fairly into it, he was violently rolled out, and in a twinkling found himself in his ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... as a happy sigh came through the pines and gently rocked the lanterns. The dim figures of the worshipers moved swiftly about, as delighted as children in the shadow-pictures made by the twinkling lights, eagerly seeking out remote spots that no grave might be without its welcoming gleam. A long line of white-robed dancing girls came swaying by with ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... A full quarter of a mile ahead of them flickered a large fire, with several smaller blazes twinkling here and there about it. Shadowy figures were observed moving back and forth, some with rapid movements, others ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin

... what his words and manner meant, and in a twinkling the thirteen men were in their saddles, and, with their gallant leader at their head, galloped forth off ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... a bland smile as I saw the ragged straw hat with the hair standing out of the top, and the grubby face of Shock looking at me with his eyes twinkling and the skin all round wrinkled, while the rest ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... old graybeard, his bright eyes twinkling merrily as he turned toward the tempting Daemon. "The boys and girls are never so noisy and fretful after receiving my presents, and if I can make them happy for one day in the year I ...
— A Kidnapped Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum

... was still snowy-white with bloom, and the tireless bees still buzzed thick among its boughs,—when Jeanne, standing in the doorway at sunset, saw two riders approaching the inn. At her first glance she recognized Willan Blaycke. Jeanne's mind moved quickly. In the twinkling of an eye she had sprung back into the bar-room, and said to ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... listening—forgive me!" he said one day, when, with a spark of real anger, Julia had begged him to make his calls at the settlement house a little less frequent and less conspicuous. "What was it?" And with twinkling eyes he caught up the hand that lay near him on ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... covered with dew, and Buddy had a second bath before he had gone very far, there was so much water on everything, but he didn't mind that. He looked at the flowers, on every side, and smelled them with his little twinkling nose, and he listened to ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis

... at the Sheriff's castle, and men ran hither and thither upon this business and upon that, while the forge fires of Nottingham glowed red far into the night like twinkling stars, for all the smiths of the town were busy making or mending armor for the Sheriff's troop of escort. For two days this labor lasted, then, on the third, all was ready for the journey. So forth they started in the bright sunlight, from Nottingham Town to Fosse ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... tinkling— His mother look'd from her lattice high; She saw the dews of eve besprinkling The parterre green beneath her eye: She saw the planets faintly twinkling— 'Tis twilight—sure his train is nigh. She could not rest in the garden bower, But gazed through the grate of his steepest tower: Why comes he not—and his steeds are fleet— Nor shrink they from the summer heat? Why sends not the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... the little peace of mind given to us in this world, or at the machine guns for letting with dispatch life out of our bodies. Now-a-days any blear-eyed old witch if only strong enough to turn an insignificant little handle could lay low a hundred young men of twenty in the twinkling ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... repeatedly asked her in a thee-and-thou language highly edifying to aunt Corinne, for certain pickles and jams and stuffed mangoes; and as she brought them one after the other, he helped the children plentifully, twinkling his eyes at them. He was a delicious old fellow; as good in ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Jenkinson's godown?" said Smith, releasing the driver. But the man's terror was too much for him. Throwing the reins on the horse's back, he sprang from his seat and fled, a vision of bare brown legs twinkling amid white ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... showed gaunt against the sky; the stars came out in twinkling myriads and the dash and roar of the river was an accompaniment to their ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... hand's breadth smaller than Clara, but was a little fuller in the face and plumper in the figure. She had light yellow hair, mischievous blue eyes with the light of humor ever twinkling in their depths, and a large, perfectly formed mouth, with that slight upward curve of the corners which goes with a keen appreciation of fun, suggesting even in repose that a latent smile is ever lurking at the edges of the lips. ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... up the steps of the lookout tower, he could detect the twinkling lights from his lady's home gemmed against the background of velvet darkness. Perhaps her fluttering little heart was uneasy about her lover, and she was peering out into the gale. However that may be, he had no difficulty in summoning her to the window when he raised his ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... me, somehow. The creek was beginning to pinch out, this high up the gulch, and a fire would jump it in a twinkling. And if anything should happen to us, down there,—one of us hurt himself, you know, in hurrying,—we should be in a trap as the fire swept across. Out of the timber was ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... singular irregularity in the surface of the wall. About on a level with the window-sill was a niche in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark substance—darker than the bricks—through which shone twinkling ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... of day, we took the route for Senegal. A short while after the wind fell, and we had a dead calm. We endeavoured to row, but our strength was exhausted. A fourth and last distribution was made, and, in the twinkling of an eye, our last resources were consumed. We were forty-two people who had to feed upon six biscuits and about four pints of water, with no hope of a farther supply. Then came the moment for deciding ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... aspect of the picture not without its utility. We must from henceforth remember that our sun is only a star, and not a particularly important star. If the sun and the earth, and all which it contains, were to vanish, the effect in the universe would merely be that a tiny star had ceased its twinkling. Viewed simply as a star, the sun must retire to a position of insignificance in the mighty fabric of the universe. But it is not as a star that we have to deal with the sun. To us his comparative proximity gives him an importance incalculably transcending that ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... was myself, and many a pleasant jaunt have I enjoyed by that same means," said Sandy, with twinkling eyes. "Only you must not attempt it till the moon is full, or the horse might ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine

... should drive into one of the many pitfalls in the shape of big black holes with which the roads in this part of the Transvaal abounded, and a near acquaintance with any one of these would certainly have upset the cart. At last we saw twinkling lights, but we first had to plunge down another river-bed and ascend a precipitous incline up the opposite bank. Our horses were by now very tired, and for one moment it seemed to hang in the balance whether we should roll back into the water or gain the top. The good animals, however, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... innocently dealt by the hand of one of his dearest friends, who had sought to render him a favor. The truth came out too late to influence the decision of the committee; the die was cast, and his whole future was changed in the twinkling of an eye; for what had been to him a joy and an inspiration, he now turned from in despair. He could not, of course, realize at the time that Fate, in dealing him this cruel blow, was dedicating him to a higher destiny. It is doubtful if he ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... don't mean to say you could stand here one hour after I did so?" "Why not?" replied Wilkes; "it is you who would not be alive one instant after." "How so?" inquired Luttrell. "Because," said Wilkes, "I should merely affirm that it was a fabrication, and they would destroy you in the twinkling of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... out, and in a twinkling Diddie, Dumps, and Tot were all wide awake, and climbing over the side of the bed. Then the three little sisters and Dilsey tip-toed all around to everybody's rooms, catching "Chris'mus gif';" but just as they were creeping down stairs to ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... boys in my time; clever, full of address, and not hampered with modesty. Remote rumors, not lightly to be heard, fell on our ears, respecting pranks of his among the nurses' daughters. He had a fair, handsome face, with delicate, aquiline nose, and twinkling eyes. I remember his astonishing me, when I was "a new boy," with sending me for a bottle of water, which he proceeded to pour down the back of G., a grave Deputy Grecian. On the master asking him one day, why he, of all the boys, had given up no exercise (it was a particular exercise ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... seen, On Cytherea's day, With antic Sports and blue-eyed Pleasures Frisking light in frolic measures: Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet; To brisk notes in cadence beating, Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow-melting strains their Queen's approach declare Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay; With arms sublime, that float upon the air, In gliding state she wins her easy way: O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move The bloom of young Desire and purple ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... man was about to pronounce the name which already trembled on his lips when a sudden clamour interrupted the most interesting portion of this conversation. The peasants, followed by the partners, were rushing towards the house, and in the twinkling of an eye the room was filled with the animated and noisy throng. The new-comers wore rich costumes, more or less copies of Stephano's; some carried guitars, others castanets, while most of them leaned upon tall peeled rods, forked at the top, and ornamented with ribbons ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... his foot from the doorsill to the doorstep; slowly, very slowly, his keenly twinkling black gaze travelled over the girl from her face to her feet and up again to finally fasten upon and hold as with a tangible grip her ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... useless, however. Frank had made up his mind, and obstacles only served to cause him to shut his teeth more firmly together and stick to his resolution. And so they spent the night very comfortably, under the twinkling stars. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... we got among low dwellings, some of which had twinkling lights. We entered a dark, narrow passage, smelling powerfully of fried fish and onions. Some one from above said cautiously, "Who ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning

... say this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor shall destruction inherit indestructibleness. [15:51] Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, [15:52]in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead be raised, indestructible, and we shall be changed. [15:53]For this destructible must put on indestructibleness, and this mortal must put on immortality. [15:54]And ...
— The New Testament • Various

... romantic things we did was to take the little railway leading to the top of the Gaisberg, where we spent the night at the little Hotel Gaisbergspilze, and saw Salzburg lying beneath us, twinkling with lights, and making a sight to be remembered for ever. Tucked in among the Salzburg Alps you can see seven little lakes, and the colouring, the dark shadows, and fleecy belts of clouds make it a ravishing view, and full of a tender, poetic melancholy. Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie sat very close ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... at Paris, a young girl, who was washing linen, fell into the Canal St. Martin. Those around called out for help, but none ventured to give it. Just then a young lady elegantly dressed came up and saw the case; in the twinkling of an eye she threw off her hat and shawl, threw herself in, and succeeded in dragging the young girl to the brink, after having sought for her in vain several times under the water. This lady was Mlle. Adele Chevalier, an actress. She was carried, with the girl ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... long shadow. Suddenly, to his astonishment, he found himself once more at the self-same spot whence, but the day just gone, he had set out on his wilder than a wild goose chase; and there was the Manitou waiting for him, who, with a twinkling ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... Bourne smiled his twisted smile and, wheeling his horse, rode away down the glade, his mail glistening in the early light and his lance point winking and twinkling amid ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... hard at Jone, with a little twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat the fishes, what size ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton

... With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dew-drop's sheen, The briar-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... the humorous propensity of men on the range to give nicknames on the principle of contraries, for he was fattest man in Pinal County. Slim was one of those fleshy men who have nerves of steel and muscles of iron. A round, boyish face, twinkling blue eyes, flaming red hair gave him an appearance entirely at variance with his personality. A vein of sentiment made him all the more lovable. His associates—ranchers, men of the plains, soldiers, and the owners and frequenters of the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... search may toss The Minotaur,—but thou and I are free! See where it lies, one dark spot on the breast Of plains far-shining in the long-lost day, Thy glory and our prison! Either hand Crete, with her hoary mountains, olive-clad In twinkling silver, 'twixt the vineyard rows, Divides the glimmering seas. On Ida's top The sun, discovering first an earthly throne, Sits down in splendor: lucent vapors rise From folded glens among the awaking hills, Expand their hovering films, and touch, and spread In airy planes beneath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... was entirely visible. Now, swarming out into the open, came masses of moving figures—fleeing figures. Hazon and Laurence, who each possessed a powerful glass, were able to master the situation in a twinkling. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... in a word, punch, the drink, but "Punch," the wise wag, the genial philosopher, with his brevity of stature, goodly-conditioned paunch, next-to-nothing legs, protuberant back, bill-hook nose, and twinkling eyes,—to speak respectfully, Mr. Punch, attended by the solemnly-sagacious, ubiquitously-versatile "Toby," together with the invisible company of skirmishers of the quill and pencil, producing in his name those ever-welcome sheets, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... around him for some place of rest. His face wore its saddest expression, for his heart was nearly bursting with grief; and, as he rolled along a big stone for his pillow, and laid his weary head upon it, it was watered with his tears. But only the fair moon and the twinkling stars seemed to see his grief; and, as he thought of his loneliness, he heaved a deep sigh, and ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... itself. Clucking and chuckling, they concealed themselves in an undergrowth of coral-strung buck bushes, little scrub cedars, and dried oak leaves, and I could hear them holding a council of war that sounded as if they were to depart forever to parts unknown. In a twinkling of an eye I saw my future fortune literally take wings, and in my extremity ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... I am escorted on to the broad verandah of Hatton and Cookson's factory, and I sit down under a lamp, prepared to contemplate, until dinner time, the wild beauty of the scene. This idea does not get carried out; in the twinkling of an eye I am stung all round the neck, and recognise there are lots too many mosquitoes and sandflies in the scenery to permit of contemplation of any kind. Never have I seen sandflies and mosquitoes in such appalling quantities. With a wild ping of joy ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... a soft hat and loose box dust-coat, with twinkling little eyes and a curling brown beard that covered fully three-fourths of his face, stood ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... the trio were swept slowly down the stream till they had floated almost half a mile from the point where they had entered the water; then they struggled ashore, and, clambering up the bank and crossing the railroad, sought for the farm which they had observed from the hill-top. Twinkling lights in the windows attracted their attention, and within half an hour ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... In the twinkling of an eye he had divested himself of the appearance of a police officer. He took off his stiff cravat and gold spectacles, and removed the close wig from his thick black hair. The official Lecoq had disappeared, leaving in his place the genuine Lecoq whom nobody knew—a handsome young man, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... San Domingo. Seven ringleaders had just been hanged, and five more were in prison under sentence of death. If Bobadilla had not come upon the scene this wholesome lesson might have worked some improvement in affairs.[601] He destroyed its moral in a twinkling. The first day after landing, he read aloud, at the church door, the paper directing him to make inquiries and punish offenders; and forthwith demanded of Diego Columbus that the condemned prisoners ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... the lights and sat out on the little balcony. The moonshine was glorious. So dense was the earth-blackness that the few lights twinkling here and there were more like fallen stars. Presently she heard a sound. It was her father, returning as silently as he could. She heard him fumble among the knickknacks on the mantel, and then go away ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... for her," said Rotha vacantly, her eyes meantime busily traversing the kitchen; they came back to the little housekeeper's face in a twinkling. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine



Words linked to "Twinkling" :   mo, bit, minute, second, moment, bright



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