"Beholder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... South Dakota. Emerging again to broad daylight, we bent our steps southward to that portion of the building, where the silver model of the Horticultural Hall and the miniature Capitol of the Country compelled the admiration of the beholder. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Rhine. The Cathedral of Cologne is the most splendid structure of the kind in Europe, and Jerome and Clotelle viewed with interest the beautiful arches and columns of this stupendous building, which strikes with awe the beholder, as he gazes at its unequalled splendor, surrounded, as it is, by villas, cottages, and palace-like mansions, with the enchanting Rhine winding through the ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... something not themselves, and to see whether they could not understand a little of the true purport of that mystery which we call life upon earth." It was perfectly natural, as well as perfectly right, that as the beholder caught a glance of the Infinite Beyond, the image impressed itself upon his sensorium, as would be the case from looking at the sun, and he would as a result perceive that Infinite in all that he looked upon. Thus to the Sanskrit-speaking Aryan, as to the enlightened ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... produces a good deal of surprise in the mind of an American to see on the sign of a tradesman from Belgium the familiar name of Cox spelled "Kockx;" and the Norwegian patronymic Trondhjemer ("Drontheimer"), though a very mild specimen of the language, has a formidable aspect to the general beholder. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... slightly withered but still sappy. It should be mentioned that he had a dimple in his cheek which flashed unexpectedly when he smiled. It gave him a roguish—almost boyish—effect most appealing to the beholder. Especially the feminine beholder. Much of his spoiling at the hands of Ma Minick had doubtless been due to this mere ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions, which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was attained. Such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I watched unpacking the cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in the sunset light, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... oaken table where he was engaged in writing. His form, which was of middle height, was wrapped in a comfortable dressing-gown of green silk, trimmed with black fur, which showed here and there a few worn-out, defective spots. A small green velvet cap, the shape of which reminded the beholder of the cap of the learned Melancthon, covered his expansive, intellectual forehead, which was shaded by sparse ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder have only touched the life of which they are part. What must they mean to the native-born? There was a prairie-bred girl on the train, coming back after a year on the Continent, for whom the pine-belted hills, with real mountains behind, the solemn loops ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... attractive, curiously self-possessed, strikingly suggestive in her pale and beautiful countenance, and in an alternating sleepiness and glinting in her eyes; strikingly suggestive of, well, strikingly suggestive according to the predilictions and the principles of the beholder. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... that appeared of endless duration, the two ambassadors re-entered Rome. Neither of them spoke as they hurriedly passed through the ranks of the people; but their looks of terror and despair were all-eloquent to every beholder—their mission had failed. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... support incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; so I saw These fashion'd, when I noted ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Coggswell fountain is probably the most eccentric squirt, and one which at once rivets the eye of the beholder. I do not know who designed it, but am told that it was modeled by a young man who attended the codfish autopsy at the market daytimes and gave ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... from a smaller fountain of silk to a less height than her companion. She was fat to such a degree, that the bodice of her dress seemed ready to burst with the excessive pressure beneath, immediately suggesting to every beholder the obvious humanity of enlarging it, by taking only a small portion from the superfluous silk below. She was quite pretty, and very healthy, and had a smile lurking on her lips, and in the corners of her small blue eyes, and in the dimples of her round, red cheeks, and in the curved crease which ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... must have, at a very early date, sought for gold. Owing to their weight, the gravel of tin-stone would remain behind with the gold when it was washed. "In process of time its real nature might have been revealed by accident; and, before the eye of the astonished beholder, the dull stone, flung into the fire, became transfigured into the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Raphael and Michael Angelo. The plan was changed repeatedly, but in its final form the building is a Latin cross surmounted by a great dome, one hundred and thirty-eight feet in diameter. The dimensions and proportions of this greatest of all churches never fail to impress the beholder with ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... yet a little while, and he was still a man, and had eyes and apprehension; yet a little longer, and with a last sordid piece of pageantry, he would cease to be. And here, in the meantime, with a trait of human nature that caught at the beholder's breath, he was tending a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enough of the weird and the horrible to transfix the attention and make the beholder realize the force of the temptation that assails Macbeth. Charles Lamb truly observes that Middleton's witches "can harm the body," but Shakespeare's "have power ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... some shape must be evolved. Shall it be one of beauty, or of deformity; an angel, or a devil? Will you shape it into a statue of beauty which will enchant the world, or will you call out a hideous image which will demoralize every beholder? ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... foliage and full verdure, every shrub in flower; and when the river, swelled with a waste of waters from the mountains from which it derives its source, pours down in a tumultuous torrent, that equally charms and astonishes the beholder. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... us, the spectacle of a great visible manifestation of GOD. It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation. The glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he gazes, he looks, he fixes his eyes upon something before him; he does not merely ruminate within, but his whole mind is carried out towards and upon a great representation. And thus Heaven specially appears in Scripture as the sphere of perfected sight, where the faculty ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... a bonfire, late in the evenings, and carry about bundles of reeds fast tied and fired; these being dry, will last long, and flame better than a torch, and be a pleasing divertive prospect to the distant beholder; a stranger would go near to imagine the whole country was on fire."[515] Another writer says of the South of Ireland: "On Midsummer's Eve, every eminence, near which is a habitation, blazes with bonfires; and round these they ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Highest and whitest of all, stood the peak of the Jungfrau, which seemed near him, though it rose afar off from the bosom of the Lauterbrunner Thal. There it stood, holy and high and pure, the bride of heaven, all veiled and clothed in white, and lifted the thoughts of the beholder heavenward. O, he little thought then, as he gazed at it with longing and delight, how soon a form was to arise in his own soul, as holy, and high, and pure as this, and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvas touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet has added black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight upon the eye of the beholder." This is called dissociation of tones; and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? We paint nature, not ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... first day had passed, and the second, and the third. They then came to a high hill, at which they looked, and lo, upon it was a horseman of brass, on the top of whose spear was a wide and glistening head that almost deprived the beholder of sight, and on it was inscribed, O thou who comest unto me, if thou know not the way that leadeth to the City of Brass, rub the hand of the horseman, and he will turn, and then will stop, and in whatsoever direction he stoppeth, thither proceed, without fear ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... remark secondly that conscience makes the way of transgressors hard; for every act of pleasure, every act of guilt his conscience smites him. The last of his stay on earth will appear horrible to the beholder. Sometimes, however, he will be stayed in his guilt. A death in a family of some favorite object, or be attacked by some disease himself, is brought to the portals of the grave. Then for a little time, perhaps, he is stayed in his wickedness, but ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... York; though, on recollection, I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a description, or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inanimate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of its own,—a creation which man did not build, though in some way or other it is connected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... yours becomes you not; It shall be shaved before you're a day older: Why do you wear it? Oh! I had forgot— Pray don't you think the weather here is colder? How do I look? You shan't stir from this spot In that queer dress, for fear that some beholder Should find you out, and make the story known. How short your hair is! Lord! how grey ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... living reality. It is certain that American audiences, even while giving their admiration, withhold their belief. They go to see Othello, that they may shudder luxuriously at the sight of so much suffering; for it is the moral suffering of the Moor that most impresses an intelligent beholder, but it is doubtful whether Americans or English, who have not lived in Southern or Eastern lands, are capable of appreciating that the character is drawn ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of the Pasig, looking towards the sea. [42] It is a hot, dried-up place, full of monasteries, convents, barracks, and government buildings. Safety, not appearance, was the object of its builders. It reminds the beholder of a Spanish provincial town, and is, next to Goa, the oldest city in the Indies. Foreigners reside on the northern bank of the river; in Binondo, the headquarters of wholesale and retail commerce, or in the pleasant suburban villages, which blend into a considerable ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... of the ante-bellum South, then Tradition had reported falsely. No plush rockers of the newest patent; no chenille curtains; no art chromos; no hat-racks, not even an imitation bronze mantle clock guarded by its mailed warrior. Such clocks as there were left only honest distress in the mind of the beholder,—tall, outlandish old things ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to his knees, and driven him to the haven of her breast; the yearning to soothe, and give, and content;—all these were blended into a look of such exquisite sweetness, that it brought tears to the eyes of the beholder. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... "my princely brother is indeed mighty with the brand and battle-axe, but your Grace is taller by half the head,—and, peradventure, of even a more stalwart build; but that mere strength in your Highness is not that gift of God which strikes the beholder most." ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thoroughfare, and so we were not forbidden; but even so, we always ask permission before we walk down it. Such an ordinary, commonplace street it looks to you; there is no architectural grandeur to awe the beholder, and impress him with the majesty of Brahmanhood; and yet that street, and every street like it, is a very Petra to us, for it is walled round by walls higher and stronger than the temple walls round which ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... have painted this terrible picture the most terrible perhaps which Raemaekers has ever done and yet the simplest. That he should have dared to leave almost everything to the imagination of the beholder is evidence of the wonderful power which he exercises over the mind of the people. Each of us knows what is in that goods-van and we shudder at its hideous hidden freight, fearing lest it may be disclosed before our eyes. Wisdom is but another name for supreme ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... to a certain extent that the cataract muffled its own voice, but the earth trembled. The gorge below offered a superb prospect. After the invariable flatness and tameness of the shores above, the sudden cleft in the world impressed the beholder stunningly. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... was very sensitive to its associations with the toils and triumphs of mankind. Born beside the Thames, he grew up among boats and fraternized with sailors all his life. It was impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the Temeraire's approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter; and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this Fighting Temeraire is his ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... rather above the common size, his frame was robust, and his constitution vigorous—capable of enduring great fatigue, and requiring a considerable degree of exercise for the preservation of his health. His exterior created in the beholder the idea of strength, united with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... seen in every part of creation, and especially in the different kinds of birds. The beauty displayed in their graceful forms and varied colors strikes every beholder, while the adaptation of their organs for the purposes of flight, their peculiar habits and modes of living, are a constant source of admiration to the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... it to him, but before it could be arranged, he could no longer swallow, and the affection of the brain was fast blocking up the senses, so that blindness and deafness came on, and passed into that insensibility in which the last struggles of life are, as they tell us, rather agonising to the beholder than to the sufferer. It was at sundown at last that the mightiest and gentlest spirit I ever knew was ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the services of the evening, and brighter eyes than a city assembly could boast, flashed in the lamp-light. The garlands were more beautiful in this subdued light than they had been in the glare of day, and their richness was like a magic spell of beauty to enthrall the senses of the beholder. Clara and I were seated in one of the pews directly in front of the altar, occasionally looking back to see the new arrivals, and return the greetings of friends from other villages. Suddenly the organ swelled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... tall, one of those cool, gray-eyed, ivory-skinned brunettes who always remind the beholder of white lilies blooming in the dark. Her lips were full, faintly pinkly purple, and affirmative, not beseeching. She stood with one hand upon the knob behind her, bent a little forward, the skirt of her white dress blown by the wind ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... these acts of courtesy, his graceful manner, expressive features, and dignity of deportment, made a singular contrast with the coarseness and meanness of his dress. Montrose possessed that sort of form and face, in which the beholder, at the first glance, sees nothing extraordinary, but of which the interest becomes more impressive the longer we gaze upon them. His stature was very little above the middle size, but in person he was uncommonly ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing of interest to him in Cheapside, and so, in spite of its memories of Richard Whittington and Robert Herrick, he hurried out of it. He turned into St. Paul's Churchyard, eager to see the Cathedral, but as he did so, his heart fell. The Eastern end of the Cathedral does not impress the beholder. John ought to have seen St. Paul's first from Ludgate Hill, but, coming on it from Cheapside, he could not get a proper view of it. He had expected to turn a corner and see before him, immense and wonderful, the great church, rich in tradition and dignity, rearing itself ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... habits provided for them. Likewise, they were curiously swathed in shawls and scarfs of various make and texture, and might be considered representatives of any age, past, present, or future, to which the beholder might take a fancy. Mr. Stellato had been got into the only article of male attire which the establishment afforded. This was an ancient dressing-gown, very small in the arms, and narrow in the back: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... come all those things, over and above mere subsistence, which astonish the beholder, when he reflects that this colony has been planted little more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... to look at the north where he had been accustomed to see stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who struck his beholder with a veneration like that of a son for his father. He had grey hairs, and a long beard which parted in two down his bosom; and the four southern stars beamed on his face with such lustre, that his aspect was as radiant as if he ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... like a fleecy cloud, now like a gigantic curtain shaken by still more gigantic hands into ponderous folds—all were reflected in the quiet water and from the numerous bergs, great and small, that dotted the surface, till the beholder was at times awe-struck and silent, utterly unable to find words with which ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... the matchless foliage of this enchanting spot, where every form of grace exhaustless nature can display is lavished on the arborial richness of the scene, which, in its unequalled luxuriance, gives to a fanciful beholder the idea that the trees themselves have a conscious pleasure in growing there. Oh! what ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... own devices, the average female has a tendency to "put on her things," and to contrive the same, in a manner that is not conducive to patience in the male beholder. Her besetting iniquity in this particular is a fondness for angles, and she is unwavering in her determination to ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... gaunt and staring, he appealed to the beholder as the most helpless thing which the Creator had clothed in the semblance ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... could have possessed no great architectural beauty, though they may not have lacked a certain grandeur. In the dead level of Babylonia, an elevation even of 100 or 150 feet must have been impressive; and the plain massiveness of the structures no doubt added to their grand effect on the beholder. But there was singularly little in the buildings, architecturally viewed, to please the eye or gratify the sense of beauty. No edifices in the world —not even the Pyramids—are more deficient in external ornament. The buttresses and the air-holes, which alone break ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... bristle-pointed lobes. A simple oval outline would include it all, if you connected the points of the leaf; but how much richer is it than that, with its half-dozen deep scollops, in which the eye and thought of the beholder are embayed! If I were a drawing-master, I would set my pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... do, except in women, they should have been the lords of those they met; but as it was they were simply the representatives of one of the suppressed races which, if they joined hands, could girdle the globe under British rule. Somehow they brought the sense of this home to the beholder, as none of the monuments or memorials of England's imperial glory had done, and then, having fulfilled their office, lost themselves in ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Stephenson's own hand was prepared for every turn of the competition, and surpassed all in power, speed, and general serviceability. To its makers the prize was unhesitatingly awarded, whereupon the hardy engineer amazed every beholder by letting out the last link and dashing past the grandstand at the rate of more than thirty miles an hour. The forced draft, which had made the Killingworth freight engines so successful, coupled with the tubular boiler, formed a combination which won the battle for the locomotive ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... we rambled round the exterior of the ruins; but, as I have said, they are rather bare and meagre in comparison with other abbeys, and I am not sure that the especial care and neatness with which they are preserved does not lessen their effect on the beholder. Neglect, wildness, crumbling walls, the climbing and conquering ivy; masses of stone lying where they fell; trees of old date, growing where the pillars of the aisles used to stand,—these are the best points of ruined abbeys. But, everything ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... radicalness of these differences, which was excessive: the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D——, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document,—these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... may there see the Salamander, several sorts of Barnacles, of Solan-Geese, the Bird of Paradise, such sorts of Snakes, and such Birds'-nests, and of so various forms, and so wonderfully made, as may beget wonder and amusement in any beholder; and so many hundred of other rarities in that collection, as will make the other wonders I spake of, the less incredible; for, you may note, that the waters are Nature's store-house, in which ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... the picture, obviously, is Saint Gaudens's great group, splendid in its golden elegance and doing more for the scene (by thus giving the beholder a point of such dignity for his orientation) than all its other elements together. Strange and seductive for any lover of the reasons of things this inordinate value, on the spot, of dauntless refinement of the Sherman image; the comparative ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... some two hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards in ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of this bodily grace is to prepossess the beholder. First impressions are received through the eye. Before a word is spoken, the pose and carriage convey a significant announcement of character ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Hector backward stepp'd, above the shield He smote him on the breast, below the throat. With whirling motion, circling as it flew, The mass he hurl'd. As by the bolt of Heav'n Uprooted, prostrate lies some forest oak; The sulph'rous vapour taints the air; appall'd, Bereft of strength, the near beholder stands, And awestruck hears the thunder-peal of Jove; So in the dust the might of Hector lay: Dropp'd from his hand the spear; the shield and helm Fell with him; loud his polished armour rang. On rush'd, with joyous shout, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... before you pass the last of the rapids two immense rocks appear, which look like two ancient stately towers of some Gothic potentate, rearing their heads above the surrounding trees. From their situation and their shape, they strike the beholder with an idea of antiquated grandeur, which he will never forget. He may travel far and wide and see nothing like them. The Indians have it that they are the abode of an evil genius, and they pass in the river below, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... was the young prince in the legend or the comedy who loses his heart to the miniature of the out-land princess. Until I knew him better this puzzled me much—the link was so missing between his sensibility and his type. He was of course bewildered by my sketches, which implied in the beholder some sense of intention and quality; but for one of them, a comparative failure, he ended by conceiving a preference so arbitrary and so lively that, taking no second look at the others, he expressed the wish to ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... arrows, knuckle-dusters, life-preservers, Hottentot clubs, Mexican lassoes—now, can you expect me to name the rest? Upon the whole fell a fierce sunlight, which made the blades and the brass butt-plate of the muskets gleam as if all the more to set your flesh creeping. Still, the beholder was soothed a little by the tame air of order and tidiness reigning over the arsenal. Everything was in place, brushed, dusted, labelled, as in a museum; from point to point the eye descried some obliging ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; and Aline was far less able to endure with fortitude the loss of a brooch than she herself to bear the loss of a position the emoluments of which meant the difference between having just enough ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... one Phaenomenon more, which may, if care be used, exhibit to the beholder, as it has divers times to me, an exceeding pleasant, and not less instructive Spectacle; And that is, if curiosity and diligence be used, you may so split this admirable Substance, that you may have pretty large Plates (in companion ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... horizon, is commonly viewed with any attention by a person either walking or on horseback. If such be the case, and the vulture is on the wing at a height of between three and four thousand feet, before it could come within the range of vision, its distance in a straight line from the beholder's eye would be rather more than two British miles. Might it not thus readily be overlooked? When an animal is killed by the sportsman in a lonely valley, may he not all the while be watched from above by the sharp-sighted bird? And will not the manner of its descent proclaim ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... glorious winter day. Denver, standing on her high plateau under a thrilling green-blue sky, is masked in snow and glittering with sunlight. The Capitol building is actually in armor, and throws off the shafts of the sun until the beholder is dazzled and the outlines of the building are lost in a blaze of reflected light. The stone terrace is a white field over which fiery reflections dance, and the trees and bushes are faithfully repeated ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... so gently shines to make romantic a lover's smile! But the reality of the Lunar night is cold beyond human rationality. Cold and darkly silent. Grim desolation. Awesome. Majestic. A frowning majesty that even to the most intrepid human beholder ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the breeze freshened, and brought us within ten miles of the island, by the close of day. St. Thomas is high, and possesses strong features. One landmark is so singular as to strike every beholder most forcibly. It is a rock, apparently not less than five hundred feet high, and shaped like a light-house, towering into the air, about a third of the distance from the southern extremity of the island. We ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... of the authority of abstract imagination, which, depriving his subject of all material or actual being, contemplates it as retaining qualities eternal only—adorned by incorporeal splendor. The eyes of the beholder are supernaturally unsealed: and to this miraculous vision whatever is of the earth vanishes, and all things are seen endowed with an harmonious glory—the garments falling with strange, visionary grace, glowing with indefinite gold—the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... cannot but admire the increasing and wondrous beauty of the southern skies, where new and striking constellations greet the observer. The Southern Cross, above all other groupings, interests the beholder, and he ceases to wonder at the reverence with which the inhabitants of the low latitudes regard it. As an accurate measurer of time, it is also valued by the mariner in the southern hemisphere, who is nightly called to watch on deck, and who thus becomes familiar with the glowing orbs revealed ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... nature, which gratify the senses with their fragrance and magnificence; while the branches of the trees display a brilliant assemblage of the feathered race, whose plumage, "glittering in the sun," dazzles the eye of the beholder with its unmatched loveliness and lustre, and presenting, on the whole, a scene too rich for the pencil to pourtray—too glowing and animated for the feeble pen of mortal to describe with half the energy and beauty which belong to it, and ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... sky swept a rosy pencil of living light; that utterly strange, pure beam whose coming never fails to clutch the throat of the beholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa. For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then arched itself, divided slowly into six shining, rosy bands; began to creep ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... hearts would stop their ebullition. It would be like pouring cold water into a kettle on the fire. It would end its bubbling. Everything has two handles. The aspect of any event depends largely on the beholder's point of view. 'There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?' The answer is often very hard to give; the question is always very ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fence and stop there would be worse than melodramatic. It would be to close the play with a bang, and even a worthy one-act play does not close with a bang. The back of the lot is not the absolute end of the garden-play. Like the stage-play, the garden-play brings its beholder back at the very last, by a sweet reversion, to the point from which it started. The true garden-lover gardens not mainly for the passer-by, but rather for himself and the friends who come to see him. Even when he treads ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... as yet been said, personally, as to our hero himself, and perhaps it may not be necessary to say much. Let us hope that by degrees he may come forth upon the canvas, showing to the beholder the nature of the man inwardly and outwardly. Here it may suffice to say that he was no born heaven's cherub, neither was he a born fallen devil's spirit. Such as his training made him, such he was. He ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... their safety there. Gray Superstition's whisper dread Debarred the spot to vulgar tread; For there, she said, did fays resort, 655 And satyrs hold their silvan court, By moonlight tread their mystic maze, And blast the rash beholder's gaze. ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... us as something unaccountable that Bristol should be such a complete terra incognita to at least a dozen smart-looking individuals, who stamp off the tickets, and chuck the money into a drawer, with an easy negligence very gratifying to the beholder. Remembering the recommendation of the Royal Western Hotel given us by a friend, with the whispered information that the turtle was inimitable, and only three-and-sixpence a basin; we stowed away the greater portion of the party ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... matter of daily experience that two objects situated at different distances seem to a beholder in motion to move relatively to each other. This principle Galileo, in the third of his Dialogues on the Systems of the World,[24] proposed to employ for the determination of stellar parallax; for two stars, lying apparently ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... it is so wide that at a superficial glance the beholder has only a sense of standing on a breezy down, the solitude is rendered yet more solitary by the knowledge that between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those three concentric walls of earth which ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... careful tracing has been made and, I believe, sent home to the Geographical Society. It is in the long corridor beyond this that the "stuck-vats" live—puncheons which hold easily some thousand gallons or so, and are of a solemn rotundity calculated to strike awe into the beholder's heart. Here is white constantia, red constantia, young constantia, middle-aged constantia, and constantia so old as to be a liqueur almost beyond price. When it has been kept all these years, the sweetness by which it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... that made the Tongue, restrain'd Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd; Who made the Hearing, without wrong Did rescue thine from Siren's song. He let thee see the ways of men, Which thou with pencil, not with pen, Careful Beholder, down did'st note, And all their motley actions quote, Thyself unstain'd the while. From look Or gesture reading, more than book, In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, Contented with the Silent Art, Thyself as silent. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... disturbed the eye under this effect of light, and the mount stood vast, dim, golden, magnified and glorified into a fairy palace of romance built by immortal things in a night. Seen thus, it even challenged the beholder's admiration, of which he was at all times sparing. Until that hour, he had found nothing but laughter for this same mount, likening the spectacle of it, with its castle and cottages, now to a senile monarch with moth-eaten ermine about ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... wax-candles, for instance, in their numberless twinkling chandeliers, the raw tranchant colors of the new banners, wreaths, bees, N's, and other emblems dotting the place all over, and incessantly puzzling, or rather BOTHERING the beholder. ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... in the justice of his Son, upon whom God looks, and for whose sake he accepts him. May not a scabbed, mangy man, a man all over-run with blains and blotches, be yet made beautiful to the view of a beholder, through the silken, silver, golden garment that may be put upon him, and may cover all his flesh? Why, the righteousness of Christ is not only unto but upon all them that believe (Rom 3:22). And whoso considers the parable of the wretched infant, shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was meant to afford the highest gratification to the beholder, was the chimney-piece. This spot was crowded to excess in every square inch of its area with ornaments, chiefly of earthenware, miscalled china, and shells. There were great white shells with pink interiors, and small brown ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... soul in heaven being for ever full of love, will for ever be full of praise. Every new sight of grandeur or of beauty, and every new contrivance of the Creator's wisdom or power, will but prompt the beholder to praise the wondrous Creator. Every intellectual height reached in the infinite progress of the soul, onward and upward, must awe it into a profounder sense of the glory of the great Intelligence. Every ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... vegetation is of a primitive delicacy and beauty unequaled elsewhere; the fruits are fabulously abundant and of the most perfect flavor; the water bubbles forth from springs of crystal purity, and the flora is so lovely as to inspire the most indifferent beholder with delight. "It is called the Garden of Cuba," said the American Consul of Cienfuegos, "but many go further, and declare it to be the location of the original Paradise." Certain it is that the few Americans who ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... mere product, of things as a lifeless result, still continued; and the idea of a living creative Nature was in no wise awakened by it. Thus these ideal forms also could be animated by no positive insight into their nature; and if the forms of the Actual were dead for the dead beholder, these were not less so. Were no independent production of the Actual possible, neither would there be of the Ideal. The object of the imitation was changed; the imitation remained. In the place ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... surface. It appeared as if some living creature were about to emerge—the Naiad of the spring, perhaps—in the shape of a beautiful young woman, with a gown of filmy water-moss, a belt of rainbow-drops, and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How would the beholder shiver, pleasantly, yet fearfully, to see her sitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples, and throwing up water, to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her hands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as ...
— The Vision of the Fountain (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... argue on the general question. Those who believe in design, will find it difficult to account for shyness being the most frequent and efficient of all the causes of blushing, as it makes the blusher to suffer and the beholder uncomfortable, without being of the least service to either of them. They will also find it difficult to account for negroes and other dark-coloured races blushing, in whom a change of colour in the skin is scarcely ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... young heart go forth to mingle itself with gladness of nature around her. The universal mother and friend, thus looked directly down upon, seems to assume a smile more directly responsive to the thoughts and emotions in the beholder's mind than when viewed from the general level. The little girl may have had but the faintest intimation of such an interchange; yet, depend upon it, had it not existed, she never would have troubled herself to clamber up the hill, excepting when the ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... Newfoundland, but was rather shorter in the legs, longer in the body, and more powerfully made. Moreover, he was more shaggy, and had a stout, blunt, straightforward appearance, which conveyed to the beholder the idea that he scorned flattery, and would not consent to be petted on any consideration. Indeed this was the case, for he always turned away with quiet contempt from any of the men who attempted to fondle ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... along like running things alive. Like giant stairways the terraces lead up and down the mountain side, and, whether the levels are empty, dirt-colored areas, fresh, green-carpeted stairs, or patches of ripening, yellow grain, the beholder is struck with the beauty of the artificial landscape and marvels at the industry of ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... is as graceful in its developments to the eye of the beholder, as it is cheering to the heart where it resides. There are some who, though not deficient in its more important duties, are but too regardless of those lesser demonstrations of attachment, which are so soothing to the susceptible ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... whole fortune of Tomlinson vanish in a night, even as the golden palace seen in the mirage of a desert sunset may fade before the eyes of the beholder, ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... you examined him, the more his features seemed to breathe vitality and spirit, and the firmer grew the conviction that this was an exceptional being—a rare and strange phenomenon. Once accustomed to his apparent pale and sickly homeliness, the beholder soon saw it transformed into a fascinating beauty such as we admire on the antique Roman cameos and old imperial coins. His classical and regular profile seemed to be modelled after these antique coins; his forehead, framed in on both sides with fine chestnut hair, was high and statuesque. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... neighbor be sharp-sighted. Dickens, for instance, can take a poor condemned wretch, like Fagin, whose emotions neither he nor his reader has experienced, and can paint him in colors that seem made of the soul's own atoms, so that each beholder feels as if he, personally, had been the man. But this bird that hovers and alights beside me, peers up at me, takes its food, then looks again, attitudinizing, jerking, flirting its tail, with a thousand inquisitive and fantastic motions,—although ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and the garment pinches him at the waist; his pantaloons flow forth from the hips, and contract narrowly at the boot, which is square-toed and made too long. The whole effect is something not to be seen elsewhere, and is well calculated to move the beholder to desperation. [Footnote: These exaggerations of the fashions of 1862 have been succeeded by equal travesties of the present modes.] The Venetian fine lady, also, is prone to be superfine. Her dress is as full of color as a Paolo Veronese; in these narrow streets, where it is hard to expand an ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... forehead midway, appearing more for ornament than use. Never did Nature provide a more convenient resting-place for twin-glasses, than the ridge of Miss Thusa's nose, which rose with a sudden, majestic elevation, suggesting the idea of unexpectedness in the mind of the beholder. Every thing was harsh about her face, except the eyes, which had a soft, solemn, misty look, a look of prophecy, mingled with kindness and compassion, as if she pitied the evils her far-reaching vision beheld, but which she had not the power to avert. Those soft, solemn, prophetic ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Over one arm he carried jacket and trousers; in the other hand he bore a pair of shoes and of socks. That the clothing was patched and the shoes looked fit only for a tramp's use did not disguise the meaning of the scene from any beholder, for the news of that Saturday afternoon had traveled through the school ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same series and combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains why the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective stimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations in time, so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which would, ceteris paribus, have been provoked ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... which the Hungarian strain has already done much. The coal-black hair and wild, mutinous eyes set off to perfection the pale face and exquisitely thin lips, the delicate nostrils and beautifully moulded chin. Angel or devil? queries the beholder. Sometimes he is constrained to think that the possessor of such a face has the mingled souls of saint and siren. The light undertone of melancholy which pervades gypsy beauty, gypsy music, gypsy manners, has an extremely remarkable fascination for all who perceive it. Even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various |
