"Dimly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... above the water's edge, Harold maintained his position; then taking one paddle, while Nelly handled the other, he sent the boat flying away from the shore out into the lake. For a quarter of an hour they paddled straight out. By this time the outline of the shore could be but dimly perceived. Harold doubted whether it would be possible to see the boat from shore, but in order to throw the Indians off the scent, should this be the case, he turned the boat's head to the south and paddled swiftly until it was ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... nigh-black heavens, and in the rarefied air, there was so little diffusion that the corona was readily visible with the aid of a smoked glass. Around the sun, long banners in space, the Zodiacal light gleamed dimly. Here and there some of the brighter stars ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... the Occasion) was far more of a picture than Arethusa had ever known such an ordinary thing as a dining-table to present. And all around the room were more roses, in bowls and tall vases, until it seemed a veritable bower of them, dimly lighted away from the candle glow by shaded sconces ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... he saw the hall, dimly lit and thick with fog. Nothing, of course, was visible—nothing but the hat-stand, the African spears in dark lines upon the wall and the high-backed wooden chair standing grotesquely underneath on the oilcloth floor. For one instant the fog seemed to move and thicken oddly; but he set ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... it, looked over the moonlit sea. He was thinking of ships as his wandering eye roved over the sea spaces, little dreaming of the message that the perfumed breeze was bearing him. The message that had been received and dimly understood by Emmeline. Then he leaned with his back to the rail and his hands in his pockets. He was not thinking now, he ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Teddy lie down for a while to rest. The Venetian shutters were drawn, so that all the room was dimly green, and then mamma and papa went out ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... Little Inkerman was soon followed by that called, par excellence, the battle of Inkerman. The morning of the 5th of November dawned mistily and dimly over the plateau before Sebastopol, and along the dark course of the Tchernaya. The Russians ascended stealthily against the flank of the British. A terrible battle ensued. The English, surprised, fought in their great-coats; although otherwise imperfectly dressed, and some without ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... forms our only fuel. The smoke hovers in volumes over the boiling-house. The pinmen are busy sorting their pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly. Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly the boiling mass of bubbling blue. The clank of the levers resounds through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the huge lever is ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... "And what she would be in health with flesh to cover her bones and colour on her lips and cheeks is now only dimly foreshadowed." ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... commenced falling in the afternoon. By the next morning the tiny house was buried to the window sashes. Looking out, there could be seen but an indistinct slanting white wall, scarcely ten feet away: a screen through which the sunlight filtered dimly, like the solemn haze of a church. The earth was not silent, now. The falling of the sleet and snow was as the striking of fine shot, and the sound of the wind a steady unceasing moan, resembling the sigh of a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... that some one was looking at him which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently, in one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had not distinctly recognized, though he had dimly felt its presence, and saw that Elsie Venner was looking at him as if she saw nothing else but him. He was not a nervous person, like the poor lady-teacher, yet the glitter of the diamond eyes affected him strangely. It seemed to disenchant ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... watched her the remembrance of his first days as Chilcote rose again; the remembrance of how he had been dimly filled with the belief that below her self-possession lay a strength—a depth—uncommon in woman. As he studied her now, the instinctive belief flamed into conviction. "Eve!" he ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... civilized kingdom, Persia, the successor of the Parthian kingdom, but not powerful enough to be a rival,—certainly not in an aggressive contest. But northward and northeast of the Roman boundaries, there stretched "a vague and unexplored waste of barbarism," "a vast, dimly-known chaos of numberless barbarous tongues and savage races." A commotion among these numerous tribes, the uncounted multitudes spreading far into the plain of Central Asia, had begun as early as the days of Julius Caesar. They were made up of three races,—the Teutons, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... barred, and the portero had retired within his "lodge," thus signifying that all the inmates of the dwelling had returned home. If silence denoted sleep, all were asleep; but a ray of light escaping through the silken curtains of a glass door, and falling dimly upon the pavement of the patio, showed that one at least still kept vigil. That light proceeded ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... couple walked upon air, with their heads in the clouds. They were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; they saw all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped in dreams, often they did not hear when they were spoken to; they often did not understand when they heard; they answered confusedly or at random; Sally sold molasses by weight, sugar by the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... slavery and misery. My friends, if this philosophy of history, this theory of human progress, or as I should call it, this Gospel of the Kingdom of God mean anything—does it not mean this? this which our forefathers believed, dimly and inconsistently perhaps, but still believed it, else we had not been here this day—that we are not our own, but the servants of Jesus Christ, and brothers of each other—that the very constitution and ground-law of this human species which has been redeemed by ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... beyond the powers of legitimate speculation. The endeavour to test industrial evolution by reference to the wider movements of human life brings into prominence two great tendencies whose operations, attested not dimly by modern history, are in close accord with the general trend of the development of social and individual life and the relations ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... little things and common words had a significance that I would not have noted ordinarily, and the group before me was not ordinary. Each character took form with an individuality as sharply defined as their figures in the somewhat dimly lighted room, and when I looked without into the deepening June night it seemed an obscure and noble background, making the human life within more real ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... may hope dimly that this will be attained. I suspect a great majority believe it to be impossible, and that the question as to whether life evolved upon this planet, or this planet became infected with life through meteoric dust from some other center, will ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... cross which hung suspended in the air. They all saw it distinctly, but only for a few moments; then the clouds closed and the vision vanished. With new hope the little party rowed toward the spot where they had last seen it, and through the fog they could dimly discern the outlines of the coast—they were nearing land. A little further on, and a village was visible, which gained a more and more familiar aspect as they approached. Night settled down before they reached ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... and, hurriedly taking the direction of St. Mark's, entered a side-door, and stood within its sacred walls. The church was empty and dimly lighted. Antonio knelt down behind one of the pillars, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... stanchly built little hooker still held together, although I knew that her bottom must be stove in like a cracked egg-shell; and presently, when I felt that I could not hold my breath for another second, I found my head once more above water, and saw dimly, close above me, the hole in the deck where the companion cover had once been. Another moment and I had again found footing on the ladder, and, bruised all over and aching in every joint of my body, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... for Mrs. Palmer Pence that the samovar steamed to-day in the dimly lighted studio of Stephen Giles, for her that the candles fluttered within their pink shades, for her that the white peppermints lay in orderly little rows upon the silver tray, for her that young Medora Giles, lately back to her brother from Paris, wore her freshest gown and drew tea with ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the road-way; not above three or four shawl- hooded women cowered out of the little shops with small purchases in their hands; not so many tiny girls with jugs opened the doors of the beer saloons. The butchers' windows were painted with patterns of frost, through which I could dimly see the frozen meats hanging like hideous stalactites from the roof. When I came to the river, I ached in sympathy with the shipping painfully atilt on the rocklike surface of the brine, which broke against the piers, and sprayed itself over them like ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Russian peasant is by nature one of the cheeriest, the noisiest, and lightest-hearted of men is only another proof of the Creator's power; for this dimly lighted "soul" has nothing to cheer him on his forlorn way but the memory of the last indulgence in strong drink and the hope of more to come. He is harassed by a ruthless tax-collector; he is shut off from the world by enormous ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... troop, and by keeping along the cliffs would be able to reach the manse before the soldiers did. He sped forward. Suddenly, as he descended the hill to the road, he became aware of two figures crouching behind the bank which divided the road from the field. He was dimly aware that they were women. He did not look carefully at them. His eyes were fixed on the horsemen against whom he was racing. He gained the edge of the field and sprang upon the bank. He ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... night as by day. All my dreams corresponded exactly with his suggestions; and, when he was absent from me, still his arguments sunk deeper in my heart than even when he was present. I dreamed that night of a great triumph obtained, and, though the whole scene was but dimly and confusedly defined in my vision, yet the overthrow and death of Mr. Blanchard was the first step by which I attained the eminent station I occupied. Thus, by dreaming of the event by night, and discoursing of it by day, it soon became so familiar ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... window flies," her spirit soared towards a great light, dimly discovered at first, but brighter as she came closer to it. To become sensible of oneness with the Divine heart before any sense of separation has been felt, this is surely the most beautiful way for the child ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... picture of primitive defiance in a battle of grown-up men and yet she saw dimly that Rimrock was right in his estimate of Jepson's motives. Jepson did have a way that was subtly provocative and his little eyes were shifty, like a boxer's. As the two men faced each other she could feel the antagonism in every word that they said; and, looking at it as ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... entered the bedroom of Monsieur Rouquin. The window shades were down. The room was quite dark. On the bed was a dimly ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... one of the long passages, but dimly lighted, leading from Mr Stoddart's apartment to the great staircase, I started at a light touch on my arm. It was from ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... up the stair that led from the cellar. At the top was a door, opening on a long passage dimly lighted by a lamp. He told Lina to lie down upon the stair while he went on. At the end of the passage he found a door ajar, and, peering through, saw right into a great stone hall, where a huge fire ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... depressed rural communities abroad. But only in the last few years have we fully realised that they are even more required and are likely to do more good in Ireland than in any other country; for on the psychological side of our work we formerly but dimly saw things which we now ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... the spell of the sea takes hold on you and you lose count of the time and can barely muster up the energy to perform the regular noonday task of putting your watch back half an hour. A passenger remarks that this is Thursday and you wonder dimly ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... closely you look into that phrase, the more you will realise how it covers all the varied processes of the mind. The very first process of the mind is to become aware of an outside world. However dimly at first, we become aware of something outside ourselves—a process generally called perception. I use the more general term "establishing a relation," because that runs through the whole of the mental processes, ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... stories, and books, and poems, the kind that don't harrow people's feelings. I really don't think it is right. Don't you remember Prudence says the parsonage is a place to hide sorrows, not to hang them on the clothesline for every one to see." She looked for a last time over her shoulder. Dimly she saw a small dark cloud,—all that was left of the shadow which had seemed so eager to devour her. Her arms clasped ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... that I can remember my mother, and it seems I must, for very dimly I recollect a young girl who used to sit by the window looking out at the passing vessels. There is a daguerreotype of my mother, and it may be that my recollection of her is builded upon that portrait. She ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Miss Hamilton there alone. The room was only dimly lighted, and she was sitting in a large carved chair beside the fire with an open book in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... through thirty-three unbroken hours of the fearful grind, a shout that ended in a screaming laugh ran through the fire-room. High above the toil-crazed men a door had opened and closed. A form, seen dimly through the smoke and steam, was moving backward down the ladder. Again the door opened; another man came through. Every shovel in the room fell to the steel floor; every man in the room ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... no one came. Then he pushed open the door and entered. An old man sat at a table. The table was covered with great books and many papers. Overhead a lamp burned dimly. ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... required all his energies and attention, and he had scarcely time to look round to see what had become of the Thisbe. When he did so, he could only just see her dimly far away astern. He knew, however, that if possible Headland would follow and endeavour to lend him the ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... the quays, recrossed the bridges, reached the Place de la Concorde, which already no longer wore the same aspect as an hour earlier. The fog was lifting in the direction of the Garde-Meuble and the Greek temple of the Madeleine, allowing to be dimly distinguished here and there the white plume of a jet of water, the arcade of a palace, the upper portion of a statue, the tree-clumps of the Tuileries, grouped in chilly fashion near the gates. The veil, not raised, but broken in places, disclosed ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... men, of hunts and sieges, of mountains where the lion roamed, and of fairy isles where a goddess walked alone. He lived on the marches of the land of fable, when half the Mediterranean was a sea unsailed, when even Italy was as dimly descried as the City of the Sun in Elizabeth's reign. Of all that he knew he sang, but Virgil could only follow and imitate, with a pale antiquarian interest, the things that were alive for Homer. What could Virgil care for a tussle between two stout men-at-arms, for the clash of ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... never wore his shoes out at the heel and the toe, as most men do, more than at the middle. Yet his gait was not altogether awkward, and there was manifest physical power in his step. As he moved along thus, silent and abstracted, his thoughts dimly reflected in his sharp face, men turned to look after him as an object of sympathy as well as curiosity. His melancholy, in the words of Mr. Herndon, 'dripped from him as he walked.' If, however, he met a friend in the street, and was roused by a hearty 'Good-morning, Lincoln!' ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... He only rubbed his eyes with his fists and said again and again that he wanted his mother. He was seated on a small stone pillar, a stalagmite in a limestone cavern, where there were many such pillars and pendants of like material hanging from the roof, all most dimly glimpsed in the torch-light against an infinitude of blackness. The men who had brought him hither, and others whom he had not heretofore seen, were busied about a dismantled stone furnace, gathering up such poor belongings as ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Europeans. When a European landed on these shores we were pretty certain that he left Europe behind him; only quite recently, indeed, have we realized that we were affected by what he brought with him in the way of morals and traditions, and only now are we beginning dimly to realize that what goes on on the other side of the world can be any affair of ours. The famous query of a certain American statesmen, "What has America to do with abroad?" probably represented at bottom the feelings of most ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... The hall light shone dimly into the library, through which Patty could see a brighter light in the smoking-room beyond. She listened a moment, but hearing no voices, concluded she could creep into the library, capture her card, ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... up suddenly and then let herself back slowly into the depths of the chair. Her face turned scarlet and she hoped fervently that if Mr. Tredgold looked at her the earth might open and swallow him up. She began to realize dimly that in the absence of an obliging miracle of that kind there would never be any getting ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... with the rising of the sun, the squadron under oar and sail issued gallantly from its retreat in the Golden Horn, and in order of battle sought the boastful enemy of Plati. The struggle was long and desperate. Its circumstances were dimly under view from the seaward wall in the vicinity of the Seven Towers. A cry of rejoicing from the anxious people at last rose strong enough to shake the turrets massive as they were—"Kyrie Eleison! Kyrie Eleison!" Christ had made his cause victorious. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... it is true, under a pledge of secresy, to individuals for one hundred louis. But his practice itself gave most support to the allegations against him. His patients were received and treated with an air of mystery and studied effect. The apartment, hung on every side with mirrors, was dimly lighted. A profound silence was observed, broken only by strains of music, which occasionally floated through the rooms. The patients were arranged around a large vessel, which contained a heterogeneous mixture of chemical ingredients. With this and with each ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... man looked up with trouble in his eyes. He could see dimly the desk and the window beside which he had sat for so many years, and on the wall a map of the city glowed with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... m afraid," Dr. Mittyford was saying. Through the exquisite haze that now filled the room Mr. Wrenn saw him dimly, as a triangle of shirt-front and two gleaming ellipses for eyes.... His dear friend, the Doc!... As he walked through the room chairs got humorously in his way, but he good-naturedly picked a path among them, and fell asleep in the motor-car. All the ride ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... estimation, is a landmark in music, just as Shakespeare is in literature, as Jesus or Buddha in religion. He is the central figure; all others are but radii emanating from him. To Beethoven was it given to express clearly what the others could but dimly perceive. The relation of men like Bach or Haendel toward Beethoven, Wagner held to be analogous to that of the prophets toward Jesus, namely, one of expectancy. The art reached its culmination in Beethoven. This is Wagner's summary of the significance of Beethoven's work, and he proclaimed it ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... into her open throat, I felt as if the poison had entered my own veins; I could neither speak nor move. But when, an instant later, I met the look which spread suddenly over her face—a look of horror and hatred, accusing horror and unspeakable hatred mingled with what I dimly felt must mean death—an agonised cry burst from my lips, after which, panic-stricken, I flew, as if for life, back by the way I had come, to my own room. This was a great mistake. I should have remained with my aunt and boldly met the results of the tragedy which my folly had ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... land of the sunset, How my heart to thy beauty thrills— Veiled dimly to-day with the shadow Of the greenest of all thy hills! Where daisies lean to the sunshine, And the winds a plowing go, And break into shining furrows The mists in the vale below; Where the willows hang ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... drifts that converge to a meeting-point in the dim past. There is naturally no reason to believe that this earliest "Indo-European" (or "Aryan") prototype which we can in part reconstruct, in part but dimly guess at, is itself other than a single "dialect" of a group that has either become largely extinct or is now further represented by languages too divergent for us, with our limited means, to recognize as ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Over in the west a faint, ghostly gleam of light still lingered, seen dimly through the trees; but it only made the utter blackness of the great forest-shadows more horrible. The huge trunks of the pines and maples towered up, up—they could scarcely see how far, grim, and ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... great German authority on this point, Dr. Lorinzer [Lorinser], as our guide, we see his poet looming dimly through a cloud of incense, which may embalm his memory, but certainly does not improve our eyesight. Indeed, according to him, any appreciation of Calderon is not to be dreamt of by a Protestant". Lectures, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... thought very fine, were the chief architectural ornaments: while the Roman populace pottered about in smocks and corduroys, twisting the tails of Roman calves and inviting each other to beer in musical Wessex. From Rome I drifted on to other cities, dimly heard of—Damascus, Brighton (Aunt Eliza's ideal), Athens, and Glasgow, whose glories the gardener sang; but there was a certain sameness in my conception of all of them: that Wesleyan chapel would keep cropping up everywhere. ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... knowst? There are great truths that pitch their shining tents Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen In the gray dawn, they will be manifest When the light widens into perfect day. A certain man, Copernicus by name, Sometime professor here in Rome, has whispered It is the earth, and not the sun, that moves. What I beheld was only in a dream, Yet dreams sometimes anticipate events, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the time of her recent illness she had been strong, self-confident, almost assured of success. At times she recognized dimly that something was wrong; but she shut her eyes to the unwelcome truth, and determined to succeed. But her sickness and fears at that time, and now a failure that seemed to destroy the ambition of her life, all united in greatly ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the man who has held a good position, secure and honoured, and who falls into the bottomless abyss of crime and detection. Hartley had never considered it before. He was on the side of law and order, and he was incapable of even dimly visualizing any condition of affairs that could force him into illegal action, and yet he felt in the darkness after some comprehension of the mind of the Rector ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... in the opposite direction. As far as they could see they were in a long, desolate valley, a sort of No Man's Land, deathly silent. The eastern sky had cleared somewhat, and they faced a loose rack through which one pale star was dimly visible. ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... beautifully up to me—ALL my losses and misses and exclusions and privation—and do it by having taken all the right notes, apprehended all the right values and enjoyed all the right reactions—meaning by the right ones, those that must have ministered most to interest and emotion; those that I dimly made you out as getting while I flattened my nose against the shop window and you were there within, eating the tarts, shall I say, or handing them over the counter? It's to-day as if you had taken all the trouble ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... its strength against the strength of these who braved its silent threat, seeking to hold them as it held so many others. The men spoke rarely and then in low tones. The baby in the Seer's arms slept. Only Texas, and perhaps his team, knew how they kept the dimly marked trail that led to life. Perhaps ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... listened. There was no sound or motion, save those caused by the storm. The next instant he was climbing the pillar toward the dimly lighted window. The ascent was not so easy as he had pictured it. To his chagrin, he made several unsuccessful efforts before he finally drew himself over the top of the veranda roof, and, lying flat in the snow, slowly recovered the breath ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Dimly she noticed the sign on the door. "You—you mean whatever it is you're taking care of ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... It's going to curl, too," declared the optimistic nurse, holding the child's head against the light, when the faintest of downs could be dimly discerned across the line of the horizon. "He will smile in a moment if you go on talking to him, ma'am. Perhaps you would like to sit down and take ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... circumstances under which they were uttered made them maudlin sentiment rather than a manly pledge. As spoken, they were so ominous that the loving woman might well have trembled and lost her girlish flush. But even through the lurid hopes and vague prospects created by dangerous stimulants, Mr. Jocelyn saw, dimly, the spectre of coming trouble, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... rowed on and on and on. Stars, by which we now held our course, grew bright overhead, and after a time we again saw dimly the shores of the island. We dared not stay at sea in a small open boat without food or water, and the island was our ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... on account of physical weakness, it was often a pain and weariness, there are alleviations which may be more to us than positive pleasures, and scenes to delight the eye that are missed by the wheelman in his haste, or but dimly seen or vaguely surmised in passing—green refreshing nooks and crystal streamlets, and shadowy woodland depths with glimpses of a blue sky beyond—all in the wilderness of the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... felt the miner's hand grip his wrist. The struggle was now for the revolver. Each man strove to turn it against the other's body. The smoke in the hole was clearing. The stranger, lying on his back, was beginning to see dimly. But suddenly he was blinded by a handful of dirt deliberately flung into his eyes by his antagonist. In that moment of shock his grip on the revolver was broken. In the next moment he felt a smashing darkness descend upon his brain, and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I'm tired of being enclosed here. I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it and in it. You think you are better and more fortunate than I, in full health and strength; you are sorry for me—very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably above ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... indeed deeply religious. Unlike so many men who have passed their lives in the East, he never absorbed any Eastern fatalism, nor did the lamp of his faith ever burn dimly because he mixed with men of other and older creeds. The Christian ideal he always considered the highest in the world; but once, when trying to live up to it, he was brought to confusion, though not through any ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... of paddles and voices. It drew nearer. They saw dimly a monstrous canoe filled with giants, who greeted the little folk like friends. "Uch keen, tahmee wejeaok?" "My little brother," said the leader, "where are you going?" "I am lost in the fog," said the poor Indian, very sadly. "Ah, come with us to our camp," said the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... which seemed almost to melt the soul out of me, before I was old enough to understand their words,—the songs of Burns, which had been a household treasure among us,—the enchantments of Scott,—all these dimly returned upon me. It was the result of them all which I felt in nerve ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... black showed best; a low blue vapor slept in the calm over the marshes at their feet; the sea, smooth as glass, reflected the dusk twilight gleam in the north, revealing the narrow sounds and deep mountain-girdled lochs along which we passed; gray crags gleamed dimly on the sight; birch-feathered acclivities presented against sea and sky their rough bristly edges; all was vast, dreamy, obscure, like one of Martin's darker pictures: the land of the seer and the spectre could not have been ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Siward and Sylvia. They had passed the rabbit-brier country scathless, with two black mallard, a jack-snipe, and a rabbit to the credit of their score, and were now advancing through that dimly lit enchanted land of tall grey alders where, in the sudden twilight of the leaves, woodcock after woodcock fluttered upward twittering, only to stop and drop, transformed at the vicious crack of Siward's gun to fluffy balls of feather whirling ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... reception which the last-mentioned gentleman might have secured for him—if, indeed, he was to be received at all. The magical words, Ten Thousand a-year, had not disappeared from the field of his troubled vision; but how faintly and dimly they shone!—like the Pleiades coldly glistening through intervening mists far off—oh! at what a stupendous, immeasurable, and hopeless distance! Imagine those stars gazed at by the anguished and despairing eyes of the bereaved lover, madly believing one of them to contain HER who has just ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... was seeing for the first time in her life what people meant when they threw bricks at papa on election night, or felt the strong necessity of attacking him in the papers. By processes that were less mental than emotional, even physical, she was driven further down a well-trod path and stood dimly confronting the outlines of a vast interrogation.... What particular human worth had she, Cally Heth, that the womanhood of these lower-class sisters should be sapped that she might wear silk next her skin, and be bred to appeal to the highly cultivated tastes ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... bored then, and dimly aware that to be bored was out of harmony with something or other, Helen was on the verge of thinking, but, as I have said, escaped the snare in a very direct and simple fashion: she went fast asleep, and never woke till her maid brought her the cup of kitchen-tea from which ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... a moment and then trotted away. The water supply was contained in a wooden tank set some ten feet above ground, and high beyond that, dimly discernible through the cloud of smoke, the spectral arms of a wind-mill revolved imperturbably. Mr. Brady, followed by the boys, went on around to the further side of the burning building. It was a huge hip-roofed structure. One end, that nearest the house, was already ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sausages in their tight coverings, without a ray of pegtopishness about them, and finished off with a pair of expansive, green cloth shoes, very like Chinese junks, with the sails down. This figure, gliding noiselessly about the dimly lighted rooms, was strongly suggestive of the spirit of a beer barrel mounted on cork-screws, haunting the old hotel in search of its lost mates, emptied and staved in ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... you what I would in this matter; we all see too dimly, as yet, what our great world-duties are, to allow any of us to try to outline their enlarging shadows. But think over what I have said, and as you return to your quiet homes to-night, reflect that their peace was not won for you by your ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... "renaissance" has grown to cover a vaguer period, and there has been a constant tendency to push the date of its beginning ever backward, as we detect more and more the dimly dawning light amid the darkness of earlier ages. Of late, writers have fallen into the way of calling Dante the "morning star of the Renaissance"; and the period of the great poet's work, the first decade ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... occupied in a legal sense, and were deeply reluctant to increase the appearances of crime; but most of them had been extricated from so many grave difficulties in former instances, by the coolness, nerve and readiness of the captain, that a latent ray of hope was perhaps dimly shining in the rude breast of every old sea-dog among them. As a consequence of these several causes, they abandoned their remonstrance, for the moment at least, and made a show of returning to their duty; though it was in a ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... found herself again she dimly saw a couple sauntering along the road, but she hardly noticed their white faces until the little voice of the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in, and the door closed behind her. It was a moment before she could distinguish any object in the dimly lighted cell. Then she saw the square window, the cobwebbed walls, and close at hand a narrow pallet, on which lay a woman in a coarse and soiled night-dress. She was tall and gaunt: one arm was thrown over her head, framing a heavy-jawed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... embodied spirit of her race) stood firmly rooted in all that was static, in all that was obsolete and outgrown in the Virginia of the eighties. Though she felt as yet merely the vague uneasiness with which her mind recoiled from the first stirrings of change, she was beginning dimly to realize that the car of progress would move through the quiet streets before the decade was over. The smoke of factories was already succeeding the smoke of the battlefields, and out of the ashes of a vanquished idealism the spirit of commercial ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the boy perish before his eyes? leave him on the road and fly to the friendly light? The last plan was the sole one left, yet he shrank from it in greater terror than the first. Was that a step that he heard across the road? He held his breath to listen—a form became dimly ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before bed-time, he went to the front door, and looked out into the road, and all around, to see if he could see any thing of Franco. It was rather dark and windy,—though he could see the moon shining dimly through the broken clouds, which were driving across the sky. The roads looked black, as they do about the commencement of a thaw. Presently the moon shone out full through the interstices of the clouds. Jonas took advantage of the opportunity to look all ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... distinction between the mental and the non-mental realms, so prominent during the history of philosophy, was not regarded by these early investigators in the sphere of nature. There was the sentiment, perhaps only dimly experienced, that not only the law, but the substance of the Universe, was one; that mind was everywhere in contact with its own kindred; and that metallic transmutation would, somehow, so to speak, signalise and seal a ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... forward slowly. The fire leaped and flared beneath the widespread branches of a tree. Around it lay a half dozen or so recumbent shapes wrapped in blankets. How many more might be lying beyond the light circle we could not tell. Beyond them we saw dimly the forms of dozing horses. Obeying a signal from the old trapper, we circled the camp until we were on the same side as the animals. They raised their heads and blew softly at us; but we lay still, and shortly ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... officers, for it proved that they were going right; and soon after, this idea was endorsed and there was no more doubt as to their being aiming exactly, for right in front the darkness seemed to be intensified, and the advancing party could dimly see the rugged outline of the ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... broken fount, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver Upon the sighful branches of my mind. Such is; what is to be? The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind? I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds; Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds From the hid battlements of Eternity, Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again; But not ere him who summoneth ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... can I? Wait till we get to Egypt." Right then he had no notion of what he was going to do when he arrived in Egypt. He had not dared to look the proposition squarely in the face. He did not even analyze his feelings. He was dimly conscious that he was pitying Wagg. That ambitious person was in for a grievous disappointment. To be sure, Wagg had insisted on following a current belief and persisted in building his hopes on a fallacy and ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away. One could see the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. Fully clothed, and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... myself into a condition of "passivity." She declared me mediumistic, and said that she doubted whether she would ever be able to get results with me. She stated two or three times that she saw three forms behind me, but dimly, and could not describe them. One was a "mild and gentle lady, with a beautiful hand." To the only person whom I can remember with a markedly beautiful hand, no one would have applied these adjectives. The sitting was ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... organization of material into neatly outlined form was a characteristic as much of the Earth languages as of Terran mentality. Such organization was not a Hirlaji trait apparently, at least not now in the twilight of their civilization. The huge aliens lived dimly through these centuries, dreaming in their own way of the past ... and their ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... a ray of light shot through the blackness of the recess below me, followed by a creaking noise as a part of the floor of the hearth swung slowly upwards, and revealed to my view a dimly-lit, rocky passage below, slanting downwards, and leading, as I could judge by the hollow sound that came through it, towards the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... shade. In unpierced gloom array'd! Oft will daring Fancy stray Far in the central wastes, where Night Divides no cheering hour with Day, And unnamed horrors meet her sight; There thy form she dimly sees, And round the shape unfinish'd throws All her frantic vision shews When numbing fears her spirit freeze— But can mortal voice declare If Fancy paints thee as thou art? Thy aspect may a terror wear Her pencil never shall impart; The eye that once on thee shall gaze, No more its stiffen'd ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... he slept, and then for days and nights, how many he did not know, it seemed to him that he did not wake but dreamed through a changing time when he was dimly aware of contending voices: voices of his believers, the Little Flock, and voices of his unbelievers, the Herd of the Lost, pleading and threatening in the forest round his place of refuge. His followers were trying to bring him food and raiment, and his enemies ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... itself upon Mark Brendon after this stage in his inquiry. A time was coming when the false atmosphere in which he moved would be blown away by a stronger mind and a greater genius than his own; but already he found himself dimly conscious that some fundamental error had launched him along the wrong road—that he was groping in a blind alley and had missed the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... sometimes assumes an expression of beatitude, smiling and looking upwards. As Dunois said of Jeanne when she was recalling her visions, 'miro modo exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.' This ecstasy Madame B. (as Leonie) dimly remembers, averring that 'she has been dazzled BY A LIGHT ON THE LEFT SIDE.' Here apparently we have the best aspect of poor Madame B. revealing itself in a mixture of hysterics and hypnotism, and associating itself with an audible sagacious voice and a dazzling light ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... ecclesiastical historian—against the protests and grumblings of the St. Katherine's Society. It was, however, formally handed over to them, a hundred and forty years later, by Henry the Third. After his death, Queen Eleanor, for some reason, now dimly intelligible, wanted to get the Hospital into her own hands. The Bishop of London took it away from the Priory and transferred it to her. Then, perhaps with the view of preventing any subsequent claim by the Priory, she declared ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... withdrew his hand with a low cry of astonishment and repugnance, must be not far short of as thick as his own body. And the next instant there occurred a sudden rustling that caused the canoe to shake and quiver and the paddles in her to rattle, a huge, dimly-seen shape upraised itself in the canoe, a gust of hot, fetid breath smote Dick in the face, and a loud angry hiss made itself heard even through the heavy ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... night the trumpet rang, And rock and hill replied; And down the glen strange shadows sprang— Mortal and fiend—a wizard gang, Seen dimly, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Wednesday, the 21st of May. The meantime was spent by us in visiting the excavations on the opposite side of the river. In the mound of Koyunjik, we followed our guide through a labyrinth of narrow corridors, lighted dimly by occasional openings in the firm clay overhead. Some of the sculptures were described in Mr. Leyard's volumes; others have been since unearthed, and some most interesting galleries had just been left by the picks of the workmen. Time, at present, does ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... from the room, while she was yet speaking; and flitting along the dimly lighted passages, it disappeared in one of those turnings that led to the more secret ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... were always cracklings and rustlings from its boughs and bushes. But in going the rounds these things went unheard in the noise of one's own footsteps; and one passed the quarters in which comrades were sleeping, and the stables, whose dimly-lighted windows showed small squares in the night, and one could indistinctly hear the rattling of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... into, the mental position of the learned and devout Hindoo who implicitly believes the wild myth related in the text, and sees no incongruity in the congeries of inconsistent ideas which are involved in the story. We may dimly apprehend that Brahma is conceived as a [Greek text], or Architect of the Universe, working in subordination to an impersonal higher power, and not as the infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Creator whom the Hebrews reverenced, but we shall still be a long way from attaining ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... advent of that strange child of promise, who preordained in his own flesh to bear the last and heaviest stroke at the hands of retributive justice, should, rightly bearing it, bring salvation both to himself and to his race? Behind the coarse and illiterate presentiment of the chap-book, Julius began dimly to apprehend a somewhat majestic moral and spiritual tragedy, a tragedy of vicarious suffering crowned by triumphant emancipation. Thus has God, as he reflected with a self-condemnatory emotion of humility, chosen the base things of the world and those which ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... possible expression of gratitude to her, they showed how desirous they were to learn. Those who were present can never forget the scene—a thousand dusky faces, expressive of such fervency and enthusiasm, their large eyes filled with tears, answering to the throbbing heart below, all dimly outlined by the flickering rays of a single lamp. And when it was over, we felt that we could understand our relations to them, and the new duties which this great hour had brought ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... in my mind from an almost babyhood impression to a woman's principle," Leigh declared. "I never thought of telling anybody. But there was another thing that kept me firm that day on the Purple Notches. Years ago, when I was a baby girl, I remember dimly seeing two men in an awful fight one night just at dusk down on the railroad track by Clover Creek in Ohio. I thought one of them was my father. Miss Jane would never tell me anything about it, and made me promise never to speak of it. So I ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... strange forms which, for some reason, appeared to his imagination. Alongside of the strong, handsome Phillip, whom he looked upon as a model, he imagined Kolosoff, naked, his abdomen like a water-melon, bald-headed, and his arms hanging like two cords. He also dimly imagined what the silk-covered shoulders of Sophia Vasilievna would appear like in reality, but the picture was too terrible, and he ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... when suddenly Pancha was aroused by a strange confusion: pistol-shots—screams—a rush of horses' feet—oaths—the clash of steel—and on the causeway, dimly seen in the faint light, a confused mass of men and horses and laden burros were hurrying away before an orderly mass of horsemen riding in upon them from the east. And, before the full meaning of all this was clear to Pancha's mind, came ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... holiness, and quiet beauty about it, that excites the imagination strangely. The little chapel itself has the same touching and impressive character. A solitary lamp, whose glare is tempered by delicately painted glass, hangs before the altar. The light of day enters dimly, yet richly, through crimson curtains, and the silence with which the well-lined doors opened from time to time, admitting a youth of the establishment, who, with noiseless tread, approached the altar, and kneeling, offered a whispered prayer, and retired, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... darkness of calm enduring: the spring, known only as the time of the scythe, and the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. They do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. They understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality, faith—these things they know. To glean their meadows side by side, so happier; to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank unmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... this, we pass gradually into the condition of deep withdrawal variously called Simplicity or Quiet; a state in which the attention is quietly and without effort directed to God, and the whole self as it were held in His presence. This presence is given, dimly or clearly, in intuition. The actual prayer used will probably consist—again to use technical language—of "affective acts and aspirations"; short phrases repeated and held, perhaps expressing penitence, humility, adoration ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... think of something new to do," said Maggie, as she presided at the table—"something real funny;" then, as her eyes fell upon the dark piazza, where a single light was burning dimly, she exclaimed: "Why can't we get up tableaux? There are heaps of the queerest clothes in the big oaken chest in the garret. The servants can be audience, and they need ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... in their comfortable rural homes all unmindful of that other race who toiled here. How well the secrets of the past are guarded! "Try as we might we could not roll hack the flight of time, even by the aid of ancient history, by whose feeble light we were able to see but dimly the outlines of the centuries that lie back of us; beyond is gloom soon lost in night. It is hidden by a present veil that only thickens ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... a shadowy compound that bordered the dusty road for a few yards. A little eddying wind made a mysterious whisper among its thirsty shrubs. The bungalow it surrounded showed dimly in the starlight, a wooden structure with a raised verandah and a flight of steps leading up to it. A light thrown by a red-shaded lamp shone out from one of the rooms, casting a shaft of ruddy brilliance into the night as though it defied the splendour without. It shone ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... shadowed corner of the garden, he trapped her. Plunging his hand into the bag of confetti, which he carried, he leapt, exulting, to his revenge: when a sudden gust of wind passed sibilantly through the palm tops, and glancing upward, Cairn saw that the blue sky was overcast and the stars gleaming dimly, as through a veil. That moment of hesitancy proved fatal to his project, for with a little excited scream the girl dived under his outstretched arm and fled back towards the fountain. He turned to pursue again, when a second puff of wind, ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... had blunted any delicacy upon the score of their marriage; and if the newly-introduced cornet or ensign was not coming forward, as became him, at the end of the requisite number of days, he was sure of receiving a very palpable admonition from Mrs. Dalrymple. Hints, at first dimly shadowed, that Matilda was not in spirits this morning; that Fanny, poor child, had a headache,—directed especially at the culprit in question,—grew gradually into those little motherly fondnesses in mamma, that, like ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... that which papa misses, but I must not desert him; I must pray for him all the time, and work for his conversion; then he will grow to be the sort of man whom papa can like, and everything will be right." And while she said it, she was dimly conscious of a feeling of satisfaction over the thought that she was very young, and that it would be a long, long time yet before anything could be settled; and that, meantime, it certainly was not right for her to have anything to do with Professor Ellis, only to pray for him; and that perhaps ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... saddle-bags, etc. Day hot, night and morning cool; wind, south-east. My sight has been very much impaired during the last month; after sundown, I am in total darkness. Even though the moon is full, and shining bright and clear to the others, to me it is darkness; I can see her dimly, but she gives me no more light than if she had been painted on a piece of canvas. I am now quite incapable of taking observations at night, and I am most thankful this did not happen before I was enabled to reach the ocean, as the most of my observations ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... The rain was but a mere drizzle now. The fury of the storm had passed, and the night was becoming calm. The old house, and the mansion beyond it, which could now be seen dimly back of a fringe of trees, was silent and seemingly deserted, even by the ghost. There were no more queer blue flames, no more ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... rushed back into her cheeks; she held herself erect, transfigured by the emotion that possessed her. Catharine looked at her in doubt—trouble—amazement. And then, her pure sense divined something—dimly—of what the full history of this soul had been; and her heart melted. She put out her hands and drew the speaker down again into the ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... winter's morning, with three inches of snow on the ground, and driving gusts of melting flakes lashing our faces. In utter silence the long lines of horses and cloaked riders filed out through the dimly-lit gateway and into the empty streets, and we were off at last on this long, strange journey to distant Africa. Six crowded weeks were behind us since the disastrous one of Colenso, and with it the news of the formation of ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... seem to do violence to the common experience of minds and of physical things shared by us all, whether we are philosophers or are not. It only tries to make clear what we all know dimly and vaguely. This is, I think, a point in its favor. However, men of great ability and of much learning have inclined to doctrines very different; and we have no right to make up our minds on such a subject ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... handled this performance—some threescore and ten years ago, when a man of middle age. We dimly remember being amused in our astonishment. Now that we are beginning to get a little old, we are, perhaps, growing too fastidious; yet surely it is something very shocking. Portsmouth Poll and Plymouth Sall—sisters originating at Yarmouth—when brought into comparison with Miranda and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... like a startled horse. His friend's profile, seen dimly, had been disconcerting enough. Full face, he was a revolting object. Nothing that Eustace Hignett had encountered in his recent dreams—and they had included such unusual fauna as elephants in top hats and running shorts—had affected ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... had seen so dimly, rose, and came slowly down. He started back, for he found that he confronted—not Nicholas, as he had ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens |
