"Vividness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... One idea, full of peril, holds him fast, and he cries out in agony at it, but is impotent to free himself ('Must I remember?' 'Let me not think on't'). And when, with the fading of his passion, the vividness of this idea abates, it does so only to leave behind a boundless weariness and a ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... in no wise contradict a phenomenon recently discussed by McDougall,[3] wherein eye-movements revive sensations which had already faded. Thus an eye-movement will bring back an after-image which was no longer visible. This return to vividness takes place after the movement has been completed, and there is no contention that the image is seen just ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... beautiful. In that climate which produces bigness in everything, they grow to heroic size. And as a result of a life, inevitably open-air in an atmosphere always fog-touched, they have eyes of a notable limpidity and complexions of a striking vividness. To walk through that limited area which is the city's heart—especially when the theatres are letting out—is to come on beauty not in one pretty girl at a time, nor in pairs and trios, nor by scores and dozens; ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... "prose-idyll," and took it for granted that it was a real picture of English life. Despite all the machinery of Mr. Jenkinson's schemes, who could doubt it? Again and again there are recurrent strokes of such vividness and naturalness that we yield altogether to the necromancer. Look at this perfect picture—of human emotion and outside nature—put in in a few sentences. The old clergyman, after being in search of his daughter, has found her, and is now—having left her in an inn—returning ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... I could think of anything else. Even now, long years after the terrible drama, I was witness of, and partly an actor in, is often passed in review before the eye of memory; and its horrid scenes appear to me with all the painful vividness of reality. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... significance of material gained by observation. In America especially we accord attention and regard to the reports and accounts made by men who have done things, the men who have experienced the adventures they relate. There is such a vividness, a reality, a conviction about these personal utterances that we must listen respectfully and applaud sincerely. Magazines and newspapers offer hundreds of such articles for avid readers. Hundreds of books each year are ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... two or three groups of ladies receiving friends in different parts of the room. At the window a girl's figure silhouetted itself against the keen light, and as he advanced into the room, peering about, it turned with a certain vividness that seemed familiar. This young lady, whoever she was, had the advantage of Dan in seeing him with the light on his face, and he was still in the dark about her, when she advanced swiftly upon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... vigorous and lively, and more especially if he can be made repeatedly to reiterate the same idea in his mind at intervals, he will on that account, retain it much more tenaciously, and will have it at the command of the will more readily. Hence the vividness with which the scenes and the circumstances of youth arise upon the mind, and the tenacity with which the memory holds them. These scenes were of daily occurrence; and the small number of remarkable circumstances connected with childhood and youth having few rivals to compete with them in attracting ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... they seem a part of that antenatal mystery out of which we sprang. When they speak of their old love-stories, it is as though we were reading Homer. It sounds so long ago. We are surprised at the vividness with which they recall happenings and personalities, past and gone before, as they tell us, we were born. Before we were born! Yes! They belong to that mysterious epoch of time—"before we were born"; and unless we have a taste for history, or are drawn close to them ...
— Different Girls • Various
... the matter, or overlay it with some self-pleasing quirks of peculiarity. Instead of this, the artist must lose himself, his personal aims, interests, passions, and preferences, in the enthusiasm and inspiration of his work, in the strength, vividness, and beauty of his ideas and perceptions, and must give his whole mind and soul to the task of working these out into expression. To this end, his mind must live in constant loving sympathy and intercourse with Nature; he ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... suffering in the same way at this same moment, and suffering more perhaps than I; and why cannot I bear it as well as she? These pains are good for me. I might almost say that they were welcome; for they serve to bring out before me with the greater vividness her patience and all her other graces. It is only when we suffer ourselves, that we feel really the true nature of all the high qualities which are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... unintelligible utterance in African dialect with emphatic gesture, his liberty loving soul on fire, while burning words strove for expression, described his action on the memorable night of his emancipation, with such vividness, power, and pathos that the audience seemed to see every act of the drama and feel the pulsation of his great heart. Through an interpreter he afterwards narrated his manner of taking the vessel, and how it happened ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... becomes poor. We very often cover the life of our Lord with so much imaginative reverence that we sometimes lose the hard angles of the facts of it. Now, I want you to realise it, and you may put it into as modern English as you like, for it will help the vividness of the conception, which is a simple, prosaic fact, that Jesus Christ was, in the broadest meaning of the word, a pauper; not indeed with the sodden poverty that you can see in our slums, but still in a very real sense of the word. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the intruder. Don Giovanni hesitates to draw against so old a man, but the Commandant will not parley. They fight. At first the attacks and defences are deliberate (the music depicts it all with wonderful vividness), but at the last it is thrust and parry, thrust and parry, swiftly, mercilessly. The Commandant is no match for his powerful young opponent, and falls, dying. A few broken ejaculations, and all is ended. The orchestra ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hellish game; and the terror of war gripped one's heartstrings that night. The momentary flash of the exploding shells lighted up the faces of the men with ghastly vividness, some grinding out curses then groping blindly on. I was glad when the journey was ended, and I turned into a dug-out in the village to rest ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... shall be given to him in his own tongue; and, having been intent upon getting at the drift of the testimony, mark how dexterously the interpreter brings gesture and action into play, wherever the narration involves unusual incident or startling episode, provoking their use! What a reality and vividness does he not throw, in this way, into the whole thing! It records, truly, a triumph of mimetic skill. Again, the opportune gesture used by the Indian in enforcing his speaking must seem so patent, in the light of the after-revelation ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... The shoreless river was, however, populous with craft of all rigs, for this is the highway to the great interior, and some of them were bound to Cuyab, 2,600 miles in the heart of the continent. During the night a ship on fire in the offing lit up with great vividness the silent waste of waters, and as the flames leaped up the rigging, the sight was very grand. Owing to calms and light winds, our passage was a slow one, and I was not sorry when at last I could say good-bye to the Italians and their ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... phase of this general tendency. It is exemplified by the touches with which he elaborates the simile of the eagle in Ode v., and that of the storm-tossed mariners in Ode xii. This full development of simile is Homeric in manner, but not Homeric in motive: Homer's aim is vividness; Bacchylides is rather intent on the decorative value of the details themselves. There are occasional flashes of brilliancy in his imagery, when it is lit up by his keen sense of beauty or splendour in external nature. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... remembrance of her former dream returned to her with singular vividness and remarkable force, and she felt her lonely isolation greatly. Accordingly, having at once lighted a lamp on the hall table—during which act the loud knock was repeated with vigour—she took the precaution ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... party connected therewith, or hearing kindred sounds, or by those more hidden spiritual influences less understood that at times cause to form in order and pass in review before the mind all the leading and exciting incidents of past life, these events and scenes are again displayed with all the vividness and strength of first impression. These thoughts were suggested to the writer upon meeting Lieutenant H. M. Neil of the Eleventh Ohio Battery at the meeting of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee at St. Louis, ...
— A Battery at Close Quarters - A Paper Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, - October 6, 1909 • Henry M. Neil
... strongly affected by German literature, especially by Richter and Goethe, wrote in his earlier days a Life of Schiller. He wrote later a history of the French Revolution, in which the scenes of that tragic epoch are depicted with dramatic vividness; and a copious History of Frederick the Great. Among the most characteristic of his writings are his Heroes and Hero-Worship; the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," in which is poured out his contempt of democracy; and the Life ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... dwell on the vividness and beauty of that metaphor. These encircling flames will consume all antagonism, and defy all approach. But let me remind you that the conditional promise was intended for Judaea and Jerusalem, and was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... he thought. "She 's vivid, but she is n't obvious. It's a vividness that is all reserves—that hints, but does n't tell. It's the vividness of the South, of the Italy that produced her,—'Italy, whose work still serves the world for miracle.' She's vivid, but not in primary colours. I defy you, for example, to find the word for her—the word ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... soon recovered from their fright and began to reappear at the doors of the houses, from which now also came the men and women of the settlement. In a few moments we were surrounded by a circle of human beings at once so repulsive and so pitiable that its graphic vividness ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... of the voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon he has described with terrifying vividness; {185a} how the engines broke down and the vessel was being driven on to Cape Finisterre; how all hope had been abandoned, and the Captain had told the passengers of their impending fate; how the wind suddenly "VEERED RIGHT ABOUT, and pushed us from the horrible coast faster than it ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... he had expressed his composition. What he had not revealed—that very vividness of sense of what was right (and what was wrong) in his conduct forbidding it—was the corroding struggle to preserve the path of his duty. Because of that struggle he kept locked the refuge that Nona was to him in his dismays. He would have no meetings ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... just this one picture," he would say, "it will only take a few minutes. I want you to see this. It is a great work and something may happen. I may forget to bring you again." Then we would walk in and out of the cold and gloom of the church after having stared the picture into vividness. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... were yellowing beneath the autumn sky. Her sensitive perception of beauty and grandeur was so much greater than her power of grasping and comprehending them, that her poor little mind became oppressed and bewildered by the disproportion between the vividness with which she received new impressions, and her ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... fellow-citizens of Chicago, and it occurred to me that their losses, sufferings, and fortitude might teach lessons after the echoes of the appalling event had died away in the press; and that even the lurid and destructive flames might reveal with greater vividness the need and ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... broad sparkling white beach of sand curving round its blue sea-mirror, and studded thickly with gold and silver shells. She saw the boat of Captain Kittridge upon the stocks, and his tar-kettle with the smouldering fires flickering under it; but, as often happens in dreams, a certain rainbow vividness and clearness invested everything, and she and Sally were jumping for joy at the beautiful things ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... conscious that they must seem shadowy. I have been able to invest them with none of those characteristics which make the persons of a book exist with a real life of their own; and, wondering if the fault is mine, I rack my brains to remember idiosyncrasies which might lend them vividness. I feel that by dwelling on some trick of speech or some queer habit I should be able to give them a significance peculiar to themselves. As they stand they are like the figures in an old tapestry; ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... thirty pages of extracts, mainly from vivid, first-hand accounts of the persons, events, and institutions discussed in his manual. In this way the statements in the text-book may be amplified and given added interest and vividness. He has drawn upon the greatest variety of material, much of which has never before found its way ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of flowers, or the fresh face of a young girl, takes on a sort of magic and supernatural beauty if we regard it mechanically while listening to music." The intensity of concentration caused by the unity of form fuses with this suggested vividness of feeling from content and material, and the whole is felt as intensity of aesthetic emotion. The Sistine Madonna would not strike so deep in feeling were it less crystalline in its unity, less trance-like in its repose, and so less ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Paulina was one of the strangest episodes of the whole strange experience. Things she had said during our extraordinary talk, things I had hardly heard at the time, came back to me with singular vividness and a fuller meaning. I hadn't any longer the cold consolation of believing in my own perspicacity: I saw that her insight had been deeper and keener ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... story-teller or made a brother author green with envy. I can see him now, as I watched him that night, flinging to and fro with his quick, nervous stride, while he sketched the new story—bit by bit, and often the wrong bit foremost; but all with his own flashing vividness, which makes me so sorry—so sorry whenever I think of it. At moments he would stand still before the chair on which I sat intent, and beat one hand upon the other, and look down at me with a grand, wondering ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... was rather a difficult situation for both sides, and that the Fleming aunts and uncles and cousins had something to put up with, as well as Ally. But that Ally was the most to be pitied there was also no denying, for she could remember with unfading vividness being the centre of love, the one special darling in one home, and now she hadn't even one home, and was nobody's darling. As she lay there on the bed shaken by her sobs, she pictured to herself, as she ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... overshadowed by the terror of God's wrath for what she considered her unbelief. A few extracts will give a good idea of Mr. Prince's impassioned, pathetic, and even dramatic style, and his apparently "trifling details" add vividness to the picture. His son besought him to dispense with the custom of a funeral oration in his case; but the feelings of the father were sacrificed to what he considered his duty to the youth of his congregation on the occasion of his ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... for us by his skill. By his magic, the moon throws her light far out of the picture, and the crimson of the summer night absolutely glimmers on the beholder's face. Or we might indicate a poet-painter, whose song has the vividness of picture, and whose canvas is peopled with angels, fairies, and water sprites, done to the ethereal life, because he saw them face to face in his poetic mood. Or we might bow before an artist, who has wrought too sincerely, too ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... people, and then catch one of them and imagine that we have done something, that we have guarded ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of us. Have we not sent him from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government?" Thus thought Nekhludoff with unusual clearness and vividness, sitting in his high-backed chair next to the colonel, and listening to the different intonations of the advocates', prosecutor's, and president's voices, and looking at their self-confident gestures. "And how much and what hard effort this pretence ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... been seen before or since. The outward form of the verse and the style of diction are no doubt after the manner of his two forerunners whom he so much admired, Ramsay and Fergusson; but the play of soul and power of expression, the natural grace with which they rise and fall, the vividness of every image, (p. 024) and transparent truthfulness of every sentiment, are all his own. If there is any exception to be made to this estimate, it is in the grudge which here and there peeps out against those whom ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... histories among the English community. It is already so long ago since we lived in that lovely place, that events, trials, joys, and the usual vicissitudes of life, are wrapt in that mellowing haze of the past, which, while it dims the vividness of feeling, throws a robe of charity over all, and perhaps causes actors and actions to assume a more true proportion to one another than when we walked amongst them. I have, however, not depended on memory alone for the records of twenty years, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... brought up to go into the business, and now, at the last moment, he was undeceived, and ordered off to a new life, from which every instinct of his being shrank afraid. He was cursed with an imagination in excess of his brains, and in the haze of the future he saw two pictures with uncanny vividness—himself in bleak lodgings raising his head from Virgil, to wonder what they were doing at home to-night; and, contrasted with that loneliness, the others, his cronies, laughing along the country roads beneath the glimmer of the stars. They would be ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... see. I have traversed, for the seeming length of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon—their churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight—a map-like distinctness of trace—and a day-light vividness of vision, that was all but being awake.—I have formerly travelled among the Westmoreland fells—my highest Alps,—but they are objects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recognition; and I have again and again awoke with ineffectual ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the chin. The abundance of character and dignity in the beauty which yet to-night was so young and glowing—the rich arresting note of the voice—the inimitable carriage of the head—Wharton realised them all at the moment with peculiar vividness, because he felt them in some sort as additions to his own personal wealth. To-night she was in his ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are, of course, those autumn flowerings of sentiment alluded to in Madame de Hauterive's letter. They are blossomings sometimes sweeter than those of summer, thanks to the very scorching of summer's suns; or else touched with an austere vividness by the first frosts, like the late china roses, which are streaked, where they open, with a vermillion unparalleled in their earlier sisters. Compare with this all that is implied in Swinburne's line, "the month of the long decline of roses." ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... into his flowing consciousness the flashing face of Ellen Jorth, the way she had looked at him, the things she had said. "Reckon I was a fool," he soliloquized, with an acute sense of humiliation. "She never saw how much in earnest I was." And Jean began to remember the circumstances with a vividness that ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read; it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's "Commentaries." We require life in history, and it is for their vividness that the writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "Life of Charles XII." and the "Thirty Years' War" are still classics. Neander has written one of the most searching and recondite ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... merry jangle of bells in the air, an all-pervading sense of jester's noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal colors; the streets swarm with humanity,—humanity in all shapes, manners, forms,—laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a mass of men and women and children, as varied and as assorted in their several individual peculiarities as ever a crowd that gathered ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... represent, which, after all, is no great loss. The only thing respectable about them is their venerable antiquity. A startling contrast is produced by the copies of them made by the students. If the colours in the old pictures are faded, in the modern ones they blaze with a superfluity of vividness; red, yellow, green, etc., are there in all their force; such a thing as mixing, softening, or blending them, has evidently never been thought of. Even at the present moment, I really am at a loss to determine whether the worthy students intended to found a new school for colouring, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... watching with quiet satisfaction the gambols of the second generation they have seen arise. What tales could they not tell, those wrinkled and feeble old men! What visions of Marengo and Austerlitz and Borodino shift still with a fiery vividness through their fading memories! Some may have left a limb on the Lybian desert; and the sabre of the Cossack may have scarred the brows of others. They witnessed the rising and setting of that great meteor, which ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... moments infinitely trivial in themselves, that yet are cardinal in a man's life. It came to me with extreme vividness that it wasn't so much that I had got hold of something as that something had got hold of me. I distinctly recall the rebound of my mind. Whatever happened in this Parliament, I at least would attempt something. "By God!" I said, "I won't be overwhelmed. I am here to do something, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... present they burn, absent they desire, by day they follow their loves about, by night they serenade them, sober call for them, and drunken sing about them. And he who said that poetic fancies, owing to their vividness, were dreams of people awake, would have more truly spoken so of the fancies of lovers, who, as if their loves were present, converse with them, greet them, chide them. For sight seems to paint all other fancies on a wet ground, so soon do they fade and recede from the memory, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Pathfinder. People had begun to think of him as a controversialist, acute, keen, and persevering, occupied with his personal wrongs and schemes of attack and defence. They were startled from this estimate of his character by the moral duty of that glorious work—I must so call it; by the vividness and force of its delineations, by the unspoiled love of nature apparent in every page, and by the fresh and warm emotions which everywhere gave life to the narrative and the dialogue. Cooper was now in his fifty-first year, but nothing which he ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... of converting Goodson, and laboured at it as much as—he was going to say three months; but upon closer examination it shrunk to a month, then to a week, then to a day, then to nothing. Yes, he remembered now, and with unwelcome vividness, that Goodson had told him to go to thunder and mind his own business—HE wasn't hankering ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in the strict sense of the word in this particular reappearance of Samuel Pickwick and Samuel Weller. In the original Pickwick Papers Dickens had with quite remarkable delicacy and vividness contrived to suggest a certain fundamental sturdiness and spirit in that corpulent and complacent old gentleman. Mr. Pickwick was a mild man, a respectable man, a placid man; but he was very decidedly a man. He could denounce his enemies and ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... the Arch of the Setting Sun are two long, colorful panels by Frank Vincent Du Mond, inspired by the historical background of the West. They have refreshing vividness of color, clear precision of draughtsmanship and a bright enthusiasm for their subject. With a narrative quality unusual in a mural they commemorate the adventurous spirit that led a stable civilization in the march across ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... of glass, semi-opaque with dirt, occupied the space of the outer wall, and the glare from the dazzling snow outside brought out the whole interior with a sort of brutal vividness. A number of water-stained shelves; a few shallow boxes disintegrating and distributing their contents of earth over the floor; one or two crisp, brown, desiccated plant-stalks: such was the interior of this apartment ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... him, a little startled at his directly addressing her, not hearing a word of what he said in the vividness of her first-hand impression of his personality, his brilliant blue eyes, his full, very red lips, his boldly handsome face and carriage, his air of confidence. In spite of his verbal agreement with her opinion, his look crossed hers dashingly, like a challenge, a novelty in the amicable ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... promised to write. But she felt, when she had left him, as though she had just been released from prison. To live with him, to give him the right to claw at her with those desiccated hands—she imagined it with a vividness which shocked her, all the while she was listening ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the bloody Colonel, and the unscrupulous Judge—wise old Uncle Venner—and inappeasable Ned Higgins—are all made to occupy the place on the canvas which shows the lights and shades of their character in the most impressive contrast, and contributes to the wonderful vividness and harmony of the grand historical picture. On the whole, we regard "The House of the Seven Gables," though it exhibits no single scenes that may not be matched in depth and pathos by some of Mr. Hawthorne's previous creations, as unsurpassed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the Life:—"It is strange as I transcribe the words, with what wonderful vividness they bring back the very spot on which we stood when he said he meant to make it the scene of the opening of this story—Cooling Castle ruins and the desolate Church, lying out among the marshes seven miles from ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... poor that his people were the only white family in their street. He never remembered any white children—but there were inevitably a dozen pickaninnies streaming in his trail, passionate admirers whom he kept in tow by the vividness of his imagination and the amount of trouble he was always getting them in and out of. And it seemed that this association diverted a rather unusual musical gift into ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... we refer to the manner and degree in which light is reflected from the surface of a material. Surfaces of the same material, but of varying degrees of smoothness would, of course, vary in the vividness of their luster, but the type of variation that may be made use of to help distinguish gems, depends upon the character of the material more than upon the degree of smoothness of its surface. Just as silk has so typical ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... the scene in the store recurred with a vividness which counting a flock of sheep as they went over a stile or any other trick for outwitting insomnia could not drive from her mind. Then Pete Leddy's final look of defiance and Jack Wingfield's attitude in answer rose out of the pantomime in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... picture of those early conditions with the startling vividness and truth of a great novel, which, in effect, it was. It was not accurate history, even of the author's own adventures. It was true in its aspects, rather than in its details. The greater artist disregards the truth of detail to render more strikingly a phase or a condition, to produce an atmosphere, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... writing may have been as early as 1611. It is based on a story in Painter's "Palace of Pleasure," translated from the Italian novelist, Bandello; and it is entirely possible that it has a foundation in fact. In any case, it portrays with a terrible vividness one side of the court life of the Italian Renaissance; and its picture of the fierce quest of pleasure, the recklessness of crime, and the worldliness of the great princes of the Church finds only too ready corroboration in the annals of ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... upon images is hardly indifferent. We have to distinguish the time necessary for the construction of an image, and the time during which an image lasts with uniform vividness. Maudsley believes the first question difficult to answer. He leans on Darwin, who points out that musicians play as quickly as they can apprehend the notes. The question will affect the lawyer in so far as it is necessary to determine whether, after some time, an image ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... against a russet background of beeches; everywhere the leaves seemed to have donned their brightest and gayest tints, as if bidding a last good-by before they fell from the trees. The undergrowth was gorgeous: bramble, elder, honeysuckle, briony, rowan, and alder vied with one another in the vividness of their crimson and orange, while the bracken was a sea of pale gold. There were all sorts of delightful things to be found—acorns lay so plentifully in the pathway that the girls could not help scrunching them underfoot. A few were already sending out ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... flush had faded, but the sky shone a transcendent green. The air was very clear; every wavy line of bluff was picked out in a wonderful deep blue. Muriel thought she had never seen such strength and vividness of color. Then she glanced round the long car. It was comfortable except for the jolting; the silvery gray of its cane-backed seats contrasted with the paneling of deep brown. The big lamps and metal fittings gleamed with nickel. All the girl saw connected her with luxurious ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... years he sat still, motionless, silent, while thought succeeded thought, and passion passion, with indescribable rapidity and vividness. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the actual and imminent peril of my position I had no thought. When at last it occurred to me I felt it as a welcome relief, and stepping silently back into the shadow retraced my course without having awakened a soul. The vividness with which I can now recall that scene is to me one ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... shall take great pleasure in relating to you the entire experience when we have time. Perhaps I will write it out for you. I have been stirred as I never expected to be, but I assure you I have brought back my whole heart to you. Only," I added, as a sudden flash of memory startled me with its vividness, "I should like to hear that voice ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... and a sound basis for just and unselfish human relations in the great industries, and particularly in the machinery industries. The war has brought out all three of these needs with terrible force and vividness. Somehow they must be met, if the white race is to succeed in "the pursuit of happiness," or even to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... of detail with an artist's touch, drawing pictures of life that glowed and burned with light and color, injecting movement so that his listeners surged along with him on the flood of rough eloquence, enthusiasm, and power. At times he shocked them with the vividness of the narrative and his terms of speech, but beauty always followed fast upon the heels of violence, and tragedy was relieved by humor, by interpretations of the strange twists and quirks ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the result of unintermitted trouble and varied modes of working. He was quite as much a talker as a writer, and beat out his thoughts into shape in talking. In the essay on Friendship he describes the process with a vividness which tells ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... since there exists a multitude of symbolical actions, in regard to which it is undeniable, and universally admitted, that they took place internally only. For the inward action, being narrated and committed to writing, retained the advantage of vividness and impressiveness over the naked representation of the same truth. Sometimes, in the case of actions concentrated into a single moment, this advantage may be still further increased by the inward transaction being represented outwardly also. But, here, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... first intention, into the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at length complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with a thousand tender memories, every one appeared to know by heart, displaying, in all the vividness of a picture for the eye, the mournful figure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistently turned—a figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich tincture in his garment, all that was deep-felt and impassioned in ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... cavalry had never been properly appreciated, and for this reason he took up his pen in its defense. He narrates the daring deeds of our Light Dragoons, their brilliant achievements during the first three eventful years of the war; and his own personal experiences are pictured with a vividness of color and an enthusiasm of manner which carry the reader straight to the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... soul, while the latter's good angel stands beside him to counsel and assist. For the strife is in this instance between the Chela's will and his carnal nature, and Karma forbids that any angel or Guru should interfere until the result is known. With the vividness of poetic fancy Bulwer Lytton has idealized it for us in his "Zanoni," a work which will ever be prized by the occultist while in his "Strange Story" he has with equal power shown the black side of occult research and its deadly perils. Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a "psychic ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... reached the old familiar wood by a much more direct trail than he had followed when a boy. He halted his pony at last by the great boulder where Tige lay buried. The tragedy of his grief on that long-ago morning when he had touched the stiffened body of his old friend came back to him with such vividness that, in spite of "Time's long caressing hand," he could not "smile beholding it." He hitched his horse close by with a sense of the old dog's nearness and protection, for he meant to camp on that spot ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... original nucleus. So the perfect epigram, at which Pope is constantly aiming, should be the quintessence of a whole volume of reflection. Such literary cookery, however, implies not only labour, but an unwearied vividness of thought and feeling. The poet must put his soul into the work as well as his artistic power. Thus, if we may take Pope's most vigorous expressions as an indication of his strongest convictions, and check their ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... sleep; the sight and thought of dear Leo lying there so ill had but added fuel to the fire of my unrest. My wearied body and overstrained mind awakened all my imagination into preternatural activity. Ideas, visions, almost inspirations, floated before it with startling vividness. Most of them were grotesque enough, some were ghastly, some recalled thoughts and sensations that had for years been buried in the debris of my past life. But, behind and above them all, hovered the shape of that awful ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... moralists is that all these stimulating pictures and suggestions are not given by him in illustration of a general proposition. They have never been through the mill of generalization in his own mind. He himself could not have told you their logical bearing on one another. They have all the vividness of disconnected fragments of life, and yet they all throw light on one another, like the facets of a jewel. But whatever cause it was that led him to adopt his method of writing, it is certain that he succeeded in delivering himself of his thought with an initial velocity and carrying ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... perhaps as much as was meant by the Greek theoria; and it is indeed a very noble exercise of the souls of men, and one by which they are peculiarly distinguished from the anima of lower creatures, which cannot, I think, be proved to have any capacity of contemplation at all, but only a restless vividness of perception and conception, the "fancy" of Hooker (Eccl. Pol. Book i. Chap. vi. 2). And yet this dwelling upon them comes not up to that which I wish to express by the word theoria, unless it be accompanied by full perception ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... and that I was powerless to move a finger in his aid. As with a sort of second sight, I saw out of the room in which I was, into another, in which Paul was crouching on the floor, covering his face with his hands, and shrieking. The vision came again and again with a degree of vividness of which I cannot give the least conception. At last the horror, and the reality of it, goaded me to frenzy. 'Paul! Paul!' I screamed. As soon as I found my voice, the vision faded. Once more I understood that, as a matter of simple ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... symbolic, as functional, for illustration of the idea, as either of them, while her image had seemed susceptible of a livelier and "prettier" concretion. I had desired for her, I remember, all manageable vividness—so ineluctable had it long appeared to "do the actress," to touch the theatre, to meet that connexion somehow or other, in any free plunge of the speculative fork into the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... are fulfilled again when the relics of these opinions, and the memories of the mythical events believed in accordance with such opinions, are still operative in the mind, though no longer with the vividness of primitive times; when some of them still hold together, but for the most part they are decaying and falling to pieces, and are only like the faded rags of a once splendid robe which a child may gather round its puny form ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... pictorial brilliancy of the scenes give it a power which is rare indeed in an historical novel. It has not the great and full knowledge of Romola, much less the consummate style and setting of Esmond; but it has a vividness, a rapidity, a definiteness which completely enthral the imagination and stamp its scenes on the memory. It is that rare thing, an historical romance which does not drag. It is not one of those romances of which we fail to understand the incidents, and often forget what it is that the personages ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Carlyle's fiercer and more serious passages a fiery glow of enthusiasm or indignation, in his lighter ones a quaint felicity of unexpected humor, in his expositions a vividness of presentment, in his arguments a sledge-hammer force, all of which are not to be found together anywhere else, and none of which is to be found anywhere in quite the same form. And despite the savagery, both of his indignation and ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... to the truth will be that every one finds himself interesting, and some people have so keen an interest in themselves that it becomes a passion, clamorous to be gratified. Now as Bacon tells us, "Writing maketh an exact man," and the writing of diaries reduces to the keenest vividness our own impressions of experience and thoughts about things. Pepys was, above all other men, interested in himself. He was intensely in love with himself. The beautiful, jealous, troublesome, and yet inevitable Mrs. Pepys was but second in her husband's affections ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. This first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, during which Mrs. Grose's dazed blink across to where I pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation then of the manner ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... and metaphysics, but with every deduction Dante remains the first of descriptive as well as moral poets. His verse is as various as the feeling it conveys; now it has the terseness and edge of steel, and now palpitates with iridescent softness like the breast of a dove. In vividness he is without a rival. He drags back by its tangled locks the unwilling head of some petty traitor of an Italian provincial town, lets the fire glare on the sullen face for a moment, and it sears itself into the memory forever. He shows us an angel ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... for some people to explain than the contrast between the relation which Jesus Christ bears to the present age, and the relation which all other great names in the past—philosophers, poets, guides of men—bear to it. There is nothing in the world the least like the vividness, the freshness, the closeness, of the personal relation which thousands and thousands of people, with common sense in their heads, bear to that Man who died nineteen hundred years ago. All others pass, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Drukker's diary. On each of these nights, while Carse watched it in a dream, an identical murder was committed somewhere in the city and the man whom he recognized as the murderer was Emil Drukker. It was as if Carse's dreams, projected into reality by the sheer vividness of the diary, had resurrected Emil Drukker from his grave and set him free to ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... so Carlyle taught English people to read German literature. He steeped himself so thoroughly in German that he himself came to write English, if I may so express it, with a German accent. Carlyle's style is harsh and rugged. It has a vividness and picturesqueness all his own, but when Carlyle began to write people cared neither for his style nor for his subjects. He found publishers hard to persuade, and life ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... completed a large picture representing the battle of Zuellichau, in 1759, where the Germans under General Wedel were defeated by the Russians under Soltikoff. The work is highly praised, and its author even compared with Horace Vernet for vividness of narrative, truth in detail, and force and harmony ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... to the occasion. His varying emotions manifested themselves with peculiar vividness during the reading of the letter by his tearful wife. At the outset he was frankly humble and contrite; he felt bitterly aggrieved over the unhappy position in which they innocently had placed their cherished idol. Then came the deep breath ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The vividness of his account pleased her, and at the end she was permitting him to drink her health, when they were interrupted by an exclamation, and saw de Grancey pointing to the table. A surprise of an ingenious nature was occurring before their eyes. The artificial hoar frost which gave such beauty to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... that ovarannotation would turn a straightforward and interesting narrative into a mere excuse for a nautical dictionary, and quite defeat the purpose of the book. The author's technical vocabulary, even when most bewildering, serves to give force and the vividness of local color to his descriptions. To pause in the midst of a storm at sea for comment and definition would result merely in checking the movement of the story and putting ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... have been robbed, and "Standard Oil" and the "System" break and fall like trees before the gale, I doubt, even if Henry H. Rogers be brought face to face with ruin, that he will feel half the pain I shall, for I know that the picture of that memorable night will surely come back to me with all the vividness of reality. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... his only answer, but presently he conceived a mental image which was remarkable for its vividness. But the image was of nothing he had ever seen before—of thousands upon thousands of miniature beings, utterly alien to man; they resembled amphibious insects, with thin, elongated heads, large eyes, and antennae set upon a scaled, four-legged body, with rudimentary beetle-like ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... as a worm upon his cheek; it corroded his natural sleep; it blackened the colour of his thoughts; it shut out, as with an impenetrable wall, the wholesome energies and enjoyments and objects of living men; and, taking from him all the vividness of the present, all the tenderness of the past, constrained his heart to dwell forever and forever amidst the dim and shadowy chimeras of a future he was ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the building in rivers of hellfire. On the facade that faced the river the black line of the mansard was profiled distinctly against the ruddy sky, amid the red tongues that rose to lick its base, while colonnades, entablatures, friezes, carvings, all stood out with startling vividness in the blinding, shimmering glow. So great was the energy of the fire, so terrible its propulsive force, that the colossal structure was in some sort raised bodily from the earth, trembling and rumbling ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... poem, which makes a profound impression on an imaginative mind; but it is most difficult to teach. This is because of its very simplicity. The teacher must try to put himself into the attitude of a child and read the poem several times until the vividness of the pictures and the beauty of the language have captivated his imagination. Then he must attempt to put his pupils into the same frame of mind. At this point it is helpful to discuss the differences between prose and ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... at the knowledge that she still loved him, this woman who had thrown him over so heartlessly; she still loved him, though it was too late. The faint scent of the lilies which her note-paper always carried brought back the memory of her with painful vividness. Before he was conscious of it, Jimmy had lifted the letter to ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... had been awakened in him by the spirits brought with it a pleasant restlessness. He felt that he must go again to his little room upstairs, and take out the deeds and read them over. The sight of them would give an increased reality and vividness to his anticipations. Besides, too, it was just barely possible that there might be some word, some expression which he could change, and which should increase their value. To sit still, poring over the catalogue in ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters astonished cries ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... nor the year it was that his hair and beard whitened, nor when the hollows deepened to stay beneath his eyes. All I remember for certain was the changeless spirit of him, and the unconquerable courage he showed about getting ready to put off his mortality and the definite curious vividness with which ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... close and hot and like a prison the long, narrow streets seemed to her! How weary the street-noises made her! It was foolish, she knew, and so she told herself often, to vex herself with idle fancies. But sometimes there came back to her, with a vividness which for the moment was like reality, the memory of familiar sights and sounds. Sometimes it was the wind waving the trees, or the ripple of the brook over the stepping-stones; sometimes it was the bleating of the young lambs in the pastures far-away. She caught glimpses of familiar faces ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... life inclines us at least to some appreciation of the principle laid down by Baron von Huegel in "Eternal Life"—namely, that "souls who live an heroic spiritual life within great religious traditions and institutions, attain to a rare volume and vividness of religious insight, conviction and reality"[122]—seldom within reach of the contemplative, however ardent, who ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... Or we may refer to the description of the preparations for the tournament and of the tournament itself in the "Knight's Tale," or to the thoroughly Dutch picture of a disturbance in a farm-yard in the "Nun's Priest's." The vividness with which Chaucer describes scenes and events as if he had them before his own eyes, was no doubt, in the first instance, a result of his own imaginative temperament; but one would probably not go wrong in attributing the fulness of ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... universe. The most mystifying thing in inorganic nature is electricity,—that disembodied energy that slumbers in the ultimate particles of matter, unseen, unfelt, unknown, till it suddenly leaps forth with such terrible vividness and power on the face of the storm, or till we summon it through the transformation of some other form of energy. A still higher and more inscrutable mystery is life, that something which clothes itself in each infinitely varied and beautiful as well as unbeautiful form of ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... yet how forcible, Borrow's descriptions are. As to incident, one often, as before, suspects him of romancing, and it stands to reason that his dialogue, written long after the event, must be full of the "cocked-hat-and-cane" style of narrative. But his description, while it has all the vividness, has also all the faithfulness and sobriety of the best landscape-painting. See a place which Kingsley or Mr. Ruskin, or some other master of our decorative school, has described—much more one which has fallen into the hands of the small fry of their imitators—and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... alive, expectant quality, Mark reflected, that revealed that Allison Clyde was neither wife nor mother. She had turned, no doubt, to other interests with her unquenchable vividness, and so could still look out upon the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... event. As a man whose days were filled with the work attendant upon the exercise of a profession from which can be withheld few secrets, and to which most mysteries explain themselves, his brain was the recording machine of impressions which might have stimulated to vividness of imagination a man duller than himself, and roused to feeling one of far ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... by a practical mystic, one who was able to describe with peculiar accuracy and vividness the physical and psychological sensations accompanying mystical initiation. The Cloud of Unknowing is an application in simple English of the Dionysian teaching of concentration joined to the practice of contemplation taught by Richard of St Victor, and it describes very clearly the preliminary ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... desist till time should have, in some degree, assuaged the poignancy of her feelings. 'That,' cried she, embracing me, I can never be! Never, never will that horrid circumstance of my life lose its vividness in my recollection. What agony, to have seen those faithful servants tied before us on the carriage, like common criminals! All, all may be attributed to the King's goodness of heart, which produces want of courage, nay, even timidity, in the most ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... say, this roused me to instant vividness of thought. Till this moment I had almost forgotten Amante; now I planned with feverish rapidity how I could give her a warning not to return; or rather, I should say, I tried to plan, for all my projects were utterly futile, as I might have seen from the first. I could ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... critics may give of Poe and his writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness of details. He loves mystery and terror,—not the fancies and fears of a child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote from ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they live in is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... messenger, an appearance as if he knew more than others, which awed and confused both Philip and herself. Amine wept not, but she covered her face with her hands as Philip, with no steady pace, walked up and down the small room. Again, with all the vividness of colouring, did the scenes half forgotten recur to his memory. Again did he penetrate the fatal chamber—again was it obscure. The embroidery lay at his feet, and once more he started as when the letter appeared ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were happening in the living room. Janet Raymond, flushing so that her sunburned face outdid her red hair for vividness, was slowly leaving the room also. Through a window opening upon the wide front porch Dundee saw the girl take her position against a pillar, then—a thing she had not done before very probably—press her handkerchief to ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... with the toiling masses. But it was a democracy of the brain, I should fancy, rather than of the heart. As I read the book, twelve years ago, its tendency puzzled me considerably, remembering, as I did, with the greatest vividness, the fastidious and elegant personality of the author. I found it difficult to believe that he was in earnest. The book seemed to me to betray the whimsical sans-culottism of a man of pleasure ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... statesman, men of letters, theatrical people, or those whose birth and fortune—rather, perhaps, than their virtues or talents—have caused them to be conspicuous in society at home or abroad. Nature having endowed me with a strong memory, I can recall with all their original vividness scenes that took place fifty years ago, and distinctly recollect the face, walk, and voice, as well as the dress and general manner, of everyone whom I have known. I have frequently repeated to my friends ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... did sleep; and it may be that his dreams went on, and grew vivid, and perhaps became truer in proportion to their vividness. When he awoke he had a perception, an intuition, that he had been dreaming about the cabinet, which, in his sleeping imagination, had again assumed the magnitude and proportions of a stately mansion, even ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... observant mind. Its rich, deep, perfect splendor is a constant surprise. One steps from his hotel, not thinking of the Lake—the blue of it rises through the trees, over the rocks, everywhere, with startling vividness. Surely never before was so large and wonderful a lake of inky blue, sapphire blue, ultra-marine, amethystine richness spread out for man's enjoyment. And while the summer months show this in all its smooth placidity and quietude, there seems to be a deeper blue, a richer shade take possession ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... darted to the feast—the starlings alight among the plumes of the laburnum, interrogating in acidulous tones, their black, burnished, iridescent feathers and flame-hued eyes making a picture of rare vividness ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of Nature; the joys and sorrows of Humanity; the romance of History and imaginative Legend; the buoyancy of sunshine and wind; the mysteriousness of enchanted woods; all these he translated with inimitable vividness into music. He could suggest with as definite and unmistakable a musical atmosphere, the simple beauty of a little wild flower, as the might of the sea; as well the fanciful and imaginative scenes of fairy tale as the wild and lonely ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... described as an 'American Spurgeon.' None of our great English speakers is less of an orator. Dr. Talmage is a great speaker, but his power as an orator is not by any means that of a Gladstone or a Bright. It lies more in the matter than in the manner, in his wonderful imagery, the vividness with which he conjures up a picture before the congregation. He is a great artist in words. Dr. Talmage affects nothing; he is naturalness itself in the pulpit, and the manner of his speech suggests that he is angry with his ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... fitful light among the tree-depths, at one moment opening vast shadowy vistas into the forest, at the next dying downward and leaving it all in sombre mystery? It came to me that night with the wonderful vividness of a ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... overtook her again. He took her two limp hands in his and kissed them, moved by a new and overpowering emotion. With startling vividness he realised the whole stupendous thing, what she had done, what she had risked and suffered. Even that stupid incident of what the servant-girl had told about seeing her with Holliday in his car became clear ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... a slight scintillation, whilst the uninjured parts were obscured. When the insect was decapitated the rings remained uninterruptedly bright, but not so brilliant as before: local irritation with a needle always increased the vividness of the light. The rings in one instance retained their luminous property nearly twenty-four hours after the death of the insect. From these facts it would appear probable, that the animal has only the power of concealing ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Arctic venturing is presented in this story with new vividness. It deals with skilobning in the north of Scotland, deer-hunting in Norway, sealing in the Arctic Seas, bear-stalking on the ice-floes, the hardships of a journey across Greenland, and a successful voyage to the back of the North Pole. ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... say that the vividness of that self-possession for a spring annihilated time. It was not a fortnight since the blow had come of the 15th Corps breaking before Metz, and the stunning fall of Namur. But to the mind of the People it was already a hundred years, and conversely ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... gave this explanation: Mr. Pole, a grain merchant of Bristol, had developed some sort of clairvoyant power, or at all events he had dreamed several times with great vividness the location of the true Grail. Another dreamer, a Dr. Goodchild, of Bath, was mixed up in the matter, and between them this peculiar vessel, which was not a cup, or a goblet, or any of the traditional things, had been discovered. Mr. Pole seemed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... unnatural dawn crept about him: there was the muffled clatter of horses' hoofs in the dust outside; a locomotive whistled in a far universal key. Savina slowly became visible; asleep, her personality, her vividness, were gone; she was as featureless, as pallid, as a nameless marble of remote Greece. There were marks across her feet where the mules chafed her; the mules themselves were lying on the bare floor. He saw his clothes, the familiar habit of the day, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... unforgettable scene. It suddenly glows and flushes, and its effect in the story is profound. A passing glimpse of this kind is caught, say, by Anna in her hungry desperation, by Levin as he wanders and speculates; and immediately their experience is the fuller by an eloquent memory. The vividness of the small scene becomes a part of them, for us who read; it is something added to our impression of their reality. And so the half-page is not a diversion or an interlude; it speeds the story by augmenting the tone and the value of the lives that we are ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... iris bestrides the moist green hill which rises by the side of the fall; and, as the spray is whirled up in greater or less abundance, it perpetually and rapidly changes its colours, now disappearing altogether, and now beaming with the utmost vividness. The man told me that at night the moon forms a white rainbow on the hill. There is a delicious but dangerous coolness all about the cascade. All the scenery about is as beautiful as possible. Just above the great fall is the Velinus tearing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... half-dumb with misery, skirting the central tragedy, or plunged deep into the thick of it, passers-by who put themselves off with a glance at the surface of a thing, and another or two who dive to the heart of it. And they all come out with a certain Shakespearian fulness, vividness, directness. Above all, they are every one of them men and women, with free play of human life in limb and feature, as in an antique sculpture. So much of modern art, in poetry as in painting, runs to mere drapery. "I grant," said Lessing, "that ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... victoria and an animal of proud action, with a lustrous coat of bay. He wore a ring of joyous bells; he had, indeed, not a headstall of such gay colors as some others; but you cannot have everything, and his driver was of a mental vividness which compensated for all the color wanting in his horse's headstall, and of a personal attraction which made us ambitious for his company on any terms. He quickly reduced us from our vain supposition ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Jefferson affected to sneer at it, as exhibited by Patrick Henry; but take away eloquence from his own writings and they would be commonplace. All productions of the human intellect are soon forgotten unless infused with sentiments which reach the heart, or excite attention by vividness of description, or the brilliancy which comes from art or imagination or passion. Who reads a prosaic novel, or a history of dry details, if ever so accurate? How few can listen with interest to a speech of statistical information, if ever so useful,—unless illuminated by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented with the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions by minute analysis, our editorial office compels us to give some attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the Homeric question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief period, to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... there. The luxurious people of Damascus exclude all sunshine from their bazaars by awnings of thick mat, whenever vine-trellises or vaulted roofs do not render this precaution unnecessary. The effects of this pleasant gloom, the cool currents of air created by the narrow streets, the vividness of the bazaars, the variety and beauty of the Oriental dress, the fragrant smell of the spice-shops, the tinkle of the brass cups of the sherbet seller—all this affords a pleasant but bewildering change from the silent desert ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... cast in the form of a dialogue. Among the ancients the dialogue was a common rhetorical device, especially in the presentation of abstruse subjects. The introduction of characters to conduct the discussion gave vividness and clearness to the unfolding of the argument, as well as a kind of dramatic interest to the production. In the Cato Maior[26] and the Laelius, as generally, Cicero followed the plan of Aristotle's dialogues (now lost) rather than that ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... roads, already beginning to freeze, the baby cold and hungry, and so tired. I turned hurriedly from the window and knelt to say my prayers, a new element entering into my petitions. Forgetting the stereotyped phrases, I remembered with peculiar vividness the impetuous prayer uttered by Mr. Lathrop at Mrs. Blake's funeral, and I too tried to bring comfort to another by prayer. There was such help in the thought that God never forgets us. I so soon forgot amid the pleasures of home-coming ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... constantly at work. In this climate the process of decomposition goes on so rapidly, that, unless the specimens are attended to at once, they are lost; and the paintings must be made while they are quite fresh, in order to give any idea of their vividness of tint. We therefore left Mr. Agassiz busy with the preparation of his collections, and Mr. Bourkhardt painting, while we went up the lake through a strange, half-aquatic, half-terrestrial region, where the land seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... With passionate vividness he saw the years of his youth and desire slipping away in the round of trivial "jobs" in the city; he saw the slow decay of resolves under the ever increasing demands to "make good" by earning money. And he shrank from it as ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... nereids swinging on the backs of hippocamps, tritons curling their tails and blowing their horns, Cupids fluttering among griffins and chimaeras; a life of laughter and love, which mocked the eye, starting into vividness in one place, dying away in a mere film where the torchlight pressed on too closely in others. All along the walls, below the line of the stuccoes, were excavated shelves, on which stood numbers of small cinerary boxes, each bearing a name. In the middle of the vaulted ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... of the attainment of that ideal, and we must put up with the next best system—one in which the scholar takes a good deal on trust from a teacher, who, knowing the facts by his own knowledge, can describe them with so much vividness as to enable his audience to form competent ideas concerning them. The system which I repudiate is that which allows teachers who have not come into direct contact with the leading facts of a science to pass their ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... countenance struck me at a glance, as the most characteristic that I had ever seen. Fancy may do much, but I thought that I could discover in his physiognomy every quality for which he was distinguished: the pleasantry of the man of the world, the keen observation of the great dramatist, and the vividness and daring of the first-rate orator. His features were fine, but their combination was so powerfully intellectual, that, at the moment when he turned his face to you, you felt that you were looking on a man of the highest order of faculties. None of the leading ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... an opinion," he replied; and in the breezy colloquialism of the expression, no less than in a certain vividness of manner, his isolation from the others became apparent. "My French reading is mostly ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... incentive to righteousness supplied by Paul was more and more subordinated to the comparatively degrading incentive involved in the fear of damnation. There can hardly be a doubt that the definiteness and vividness of the Pauline theory of a future life contributed very largely to the rapid spread of the Christian religion; nor can it be doubted that to the desire to be holy like Jesus, in order to escape death and ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... paper on "The Physics of Arctic Ice," by Dr. Robert Brown of Campster, published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, June, 1870. This article is so remarkable, not only for its sound scientific matter, but for the vividness and poetic beauty of its descriptions, that I must express a hope that the learned author will some day enlarge it, and publish ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... observations made in the course of the expedition, and the descriptions of scenery and incidents of arctic travel. Many of the latter possess considerable literary merit, and all are impressed with the vividness of fresh observation. From the variety of the materials, and the novelty of the scenes and incidents to which they refer, no less than the interest which attaches to all that relates to the probable safety of Sir John Franklin and his companions, the Arctic Miscellanies forms a very ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Where had been his experience? Or where was the indication of that wealth of sensuous emotion which in such a nature as Keats' seems almost to dispense with experience and to give novelty by giving vividness to such passions as are known to all? If Wordsworth were to impress mankind it must be, one might have thought, by travelling out of himself altogether—by revealing some such energy of imagination ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... of loss of self, of being a stranger to herself, and the world in which she moved seemed a vague and shrouded world. It lacked sharpness of definition. Its customary vividness was gone. She had lapses of memory, and was continually finding herself doing unplanned things. Thus, to her astonishment, she came to in the back yard hanging up the week's wash. She had no recollection of having done ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... seizing and fixing in very perfect form what is commonly so inexpressible because so impalpable and evanescent in emotion and expression; a power of catching and rendering the charm of nature with a fidelity and vividness which resemble magic; and lastly, unrivalled skill in choosing, repolishing and remounting the gems which are our common inheritance from the past: these are the gifts which will secure permanence for his work as long as the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson |
