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Limelight   Listen
noun
limelight, lime light  n.  An intense light produced by heating lime. See Calcium light under Calcium.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Limelight" Quotes from Famous Books



... men's championships, the women were in the limelight for a week. Miss Edith Chesebrough won the finals of the first flight play over Mrs. H. T. Baker. Mixed foursomes, events for professionals, driving, putting, and approaching contests were all included upon the programme, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... from the lethargy of sickness by despair at the thought that the great country he loved was in peril of decay through the selfish and frivolous temper of its ruler. Instead of a Chauvinist manifesto defiantly declaimed under the limelight, there was offered us the quiet pathos of a dying patriot's lament over his beloved country's misfortunes—an oracular warning from a death-stricken tongue, foreshadowing with rare solemnity and dramatic irony the violent doom of the reckless worker of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She, therefore, hit out—to regret ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... if I hadn't got hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and I'll make him another Battistini. See here"—and he turned sharply to Claude—"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why, it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But the baritone part would bear strengthening. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... assumption. Other noble Englishmen of his time, and before his time, had been clear-sighted and had struck hard against the evil tyranny of Spanish dynastic militarism, but no other man before or since was so luminously identified with resistance. He struts upon the stage of battle with the limelight full upon him. The classic writing of the crisis is contained in the Last Fight of the Revenge at Sea of 1591, where the splendid defiance and warning of the Preface are like trumpets blown to the four ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... itself a great change took place. The new sovereign, though he laboured under the greatest possible disadvantages, by his irreproachable behaviour, modesty, tact, and strictly constitutional rule, was able to withdraw the court of Belgrade from the trying limelight to which it had become used. The public finances began to be reorganized, commerce began to improve in spite of endless tariff wars with Austria-Hungary, and attention was again diverted from home to foreign politics. With the gradual spread of education and increase ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... is why I called what I have to say, 'The Man in the Background.' There is no reason why I should shiver and shrink at meeting and explaining my work to my fellows. Every man has his vocation, and some of you in the limelight would cut a sorry figure if the man in the background should fail you at the critical moment. Don't worry about me, Doc. I am all serene. You won't find I possess either nerves or fear. 'Be sure you are right, and then go ahead,' is ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... she had red lips, and a roving eye, and she ran around downtown without a hat more than was strictly necessary. But Undine and Ivy had two subjects in common. They were baseball and love. It is queer how the limelight will ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... adventure," observed Burd. "Maybe the movie people will want her—or the vaudeville managers. They often pick up people like that, who have been in the limelight." ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... boss," he complained as he watched the retreating figure. "He takes the center of the stage until he has told his story, and when my turn comes to get in the limelight he does the disappearing act. That was a pretty good story, but talking of escapes, I can tell you about an escape that is worth talking about. It happened when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a snake show next to a camp meeting down on the Jersey coast. ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... Belgium, her people, and their part in this conflict. Be the reasons what they may, this little land stands in the center of the stage and holds the limelight. Once more David, armed with a sling, has gone up against ten Goliaths. It is an amazing spectacle, this, one of the smallest of the States, battling with the largest of the giants! Belgium has a standing army of 42,000 men, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... replied, as he glanced over the article, "they've been fairly decent, at any rate, in the way they've written it up, though it's not pleasant for you to be thrown into the limelight like this. As for their making known your engagement, it can't be helped now, so there's no use worrying about it. But you mustn't want to be ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... if we get anything on him it's up to us to keep them out of the limelight. It won't be hard. He only went to their house now and again as he went to lots of others. If this Chinese story pans out as promising as it looks, then we can put Lorry wise and tell her to hang out the 'not at home' sign when Mr. Mayer comes around. But we don't want to do that till ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... compelled a change of plans and the seeking of pastures new. Friend Rives knew too much and was himself too well known to be a safe companion in their present location. Rives and he could work together to mutual advantage, beyond doubt; but it would have to be in some new territory where the limelight had never played upon either of ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... haunts the soul in the case of all deliberate and elaborate visits to "beauty spots," even by persons of the most elegant position or the most protected privacy. Specially visiting the Coliseum by moonlight always struck me as being as vulgar as visiting it by limelight. One millionaire standing on the top of Mont Blanc, one millionaire standing in the desert by the Sphinx, one millionaire standing in the middle of Stonehenge, is just as comic as one millionaire is anywhere else; and that is saying a good deal. On the other hand, if the billycock had ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... you your business." He ceased smiling. "Now look here, I don't want any more publicity. If you think you are going to make a funny newspaper story out of me change your mind as quick as you like. I'll never get another job in London as it is. If you drag me any further into the limelight I'll never get another job ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... I was again in the crowded beer hall when Herr Thomas entered. He liked to be in the limelight, and had a most extraordinary manner of apparently addressing his conversation to some selected individual, but carried it on in a tone which could be heard throughout the entire room. The Russian whistle which ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... way forward, pushing toward the open space, upon which a shaft of limelight had been thrown, the better to display the faces and figures of eight Spanish women who, dressed in their national costume, stood preening themselves like vain birds, tossing their heads and showing ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... went away To crouch behind a sheltering Alp, How strong the limelight used to play About your bald, but kingly, scalp! And now, emerging from the shelf (A site where Kings are seldom happy), You must be pleased to find yourself Once more resilient on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various

... when the internal dissensions of Haiti are again thrusting her into the limelight such a book as this of Mr. Steward assumes a peculiar importance. It combines the unusual advantage of being both very readable and at the same time historically dependable. At the outset the author gives a brief sketch of the early ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... said Herman Krech, who never liked to be out of the limelight too long. "It wasn't for money, it wasn't for revenge, it wasn't jealousy; by the time we've eliminated a few more motives we'll have only the correct ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... perhaps, seems strange in a girl as fond of the limelight as I was. I began to re-consider the question. Accidentally, I discovered that he had a wife already. What with one thing and another, I thought it best to write and give him up. He immediately resigned his ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... remember, Agony, that true leadership does not necessarily mean taking the world by storm and being tremendously popular with people. It may sometimes mean retiring to the background and playing a very insignificant part, instead of being always in the limelight. A good leader is first of all a good team worker, one who is willing to suppress her own personal inclinations for the good ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... importance to a presentation at court was a tea at which the tea planter Sir Thomas Lipton was one of the guests. He was not Sir Thomas then, but was very much in the limelight, having contributed twenty-five thousand pounds to the fund collected by the Princess of Wales to feed the poor of London in commemoration ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... mock heroics across the footlights, should be living in days like these, days in which heroism is the common act of every hour. I cannot help wondering what the future generations are going to say of it all; how far-off times are going to judge us; what is going to stand out in the strong limelight of history? I know what I think, but that ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... at a time!" shouted the exultant Andy; who thought things could hardly have been better for him, if they were allowed to pass around that stake with their rival trailing in the rear—for surely she would see him there in the limelight, and he was eager to pick Miss Alice out of those many hundreds gathered to cheer the plucky ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... becoming lighter. 'It cannot be the dawn,' she thought; 'the dawn is hours away; we're in December. Besides, the dawn is grey, and the light is green, a sort of pantomime light,' she said. It seemed to her very like a fairy tale. The giant snoring, and her baby stirring in her cradle with the limelight upon her, or was she dreaming? It might be a dream out of which she could not rouse herself. But the noise she heard was Dick's breathing, and she wished that Ralph would breathe more easily. Ralph, Ralph! No, she was with Dick. Dick, not Ralph, was her husband. It was with a great effort ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... one at that, of a certain dealer display which had attracted great crowds on both sidewalk and street before the dealer's window. The crowd had been drawn by the display of a number of different washing machines grouped around a central machine which was absorbing the "limelight." It had a swinging wringer and the wringer was revolving at so rapid a rate it became plain that any woman who stepped in the way of that particular type of wringer was doomed to a severe blow if not a fall. The idea of the dealer in using such a display was of the "stop-look-listen" variety, ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks

... wood, and prepared to meet them with the bayonet. When first the fierce German searchlights were turned on the British lines a little cockney in the Middlesex Regiment exclaimed to his comrade: "Lord, Bill, it's just like a play, an' us in the limelight"; and as the artillery fusillade passed over their heads, and a great ironical cheer rose from the British trenches, he added: "But it's the Kaiser wot's ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... according to it, they are deluding their customers with false hopes. Bryan says that a combination of free silver, grape juice, and peace will cure all ills, and he gets five hundred dollars a lecture for saying it. Billy Sunday gets thousands of dollars for dragging hell out into the limelight. They are both popular forms of amusement. They divert the mind. Why shouldn't they be paid? There are far worse moving-picture shows than ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... once owned America. But they failed to go on south. So another crop of Americans came into the limelight. If we modern Americans do not go on south we will join the Indians, the ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... itself to the conditions which had existed before its sudden leap into the limelight as a town which did things. The soiree at the Houston House had drifted into the past, and was now substantially established as an epoch in the history of the town. Exuberant joy gave way to dignity and deprecation, ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... with Sheen's eagerness to wipe out the stain on his honour, and the honour of the house. But, like Drummond, he could not help harbouring a suspicion that this was a pose. He felt that Sheen was intoxicated by his imagination. Every one likes to picture himself doing dashing things in the limelight, with an appreciative multitude to applaud. Would this mood stand the ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... think that WINSTON was the first Commended to my gaze, But very soon I found my eyes— Tired by the limelight's blaze— Incapable of following His ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various

... we got all the big newspapers in the country on our side? And aren't the banks in the legislative limelight? They couldn't pull off anything mean on us, because we would keep in touch with our editor friends. If they started firing the boys we could appeal to ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... startling characterization or diabolic joke: "Not to be published until ten (or twenty, or thirty) years after my death." One day I heard him vent his pent-up rage, in bitter and caustic words, upon a certain strenuous, limelight American politician. I could not resist the temptation to ask him if this, too, were going into the Autobiography. "Oh yes," he replied, decisively. "Everything goes in. I make no exceptions. But," he added reflectively, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... feel badly about it," he went on. "It isn't anything which can be adjusted now. They probably meant well enough. We just happen to be in the limelight." ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... homestead which had since become so valuable an asset, he had determined to live with one purpose in view, and that was to expand financially with the toil of his hands and the sweat of his brow, and then, when he had acquired sufficient sinking fund, to emerge suddenly into the limelight of society and shine like a newly polished gem. So he wandered up and down the trail which his own feet and the feet of his cayuse had worn through the woods, up the creek, along the face of the mountains, and away down to ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... defeated Herne yesterday 14 to 4, and thereby leaped into the limelight. It was a surprise to every one, Herne most of all. Owing to the stringent eligibility rules now in force at Wayne, and the barring of the old varsity, nothing was expected of this season's team. Arthurs, the famous coach, has ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... fumigator. This is no reflection on the owner of the suit ... but there are some things we don't talk about. Mr. Fumigator-Wallah is not the least busy of the more retiring members of a war-hospital staff. He is not in the limelight; but you might come to be very sad and sorry if he took it into his head to neglect his unapplauded ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... Ben Hamza took the place of Ahmed, who went to the rear looking rather pleased to get out of the limelight. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made, ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... occasionally he exploded under stress; and when he did so, there was no mincing of words. He knew no fear. Newspaper criticism annoyed him but little; and he had a kind of contempt for the fourth estate as a whole, although he knew how to use it when it suited his purpose. He avoided the limelight, and never courted publicity for himself. Socially he was a princely host; but few knew him intimately, except perhaps ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... men heard Peter's story and changed it a little, and then heard him over again and pronounced him all right, and Peter went back to his hotel room and waited in trepidation for his hour in the limelight. When they took him to court his knees were shaking, but also he had a thrill of real importance, for they had provided him with a body-guard of four big huskies; also he saw two "bulls" whom he recognized in the hallway outside ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... the husk. I want to be the party that pulls the wires and not the figures that dance on the front of the stage. I want things done when I say they shall be done. I want the piper to play when I pass the word. I'm perfectly willing that others should have the honor and the glory and the limelight; but after the play is over I want to be the boy to whom the report is made and who gives directions for the next performance. Is that ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... cut into the 'Nation's Peril' and the 'Cryin' Evil' good and strong—walkin' out from the stinks of the Union Stock Yards, of Chicago, into the limelight of publicity, via the ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... a sign of merit in the Red River jig. A man or woman steps into the limelight and commences to jig, a dark form in moccasins slips up in front of the dancer, and one jigs the other down, amid plaudits for the survivor and jeers for ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... in which the crowd in the chamber universally joined, and which must have rung across Beacon Street to the Common far away. My feeble finger had touched the button which brought this unexpected downpour, and for the moment I was unpleasantly in the limelight. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... had succeeded. Their souls had followed it over the footlights, and, floating in the limelight, shone there awaiting the fulfilment of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... blowpipe, just as, as has been explained in Chapter VI., an ordinary acetylene flame has a higher temperature than a coal-gas flame. It is likely that a blowpipe fed with "Linde-air" (oxygen diluted with less nitrogen than in the atmosphere) and acetylene would give as high a limelight effect as the oxy-hydrogen or ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... about?" demands Eulalia, dancin' kittenish into the limelight. "Rivalry among our gallant knights? Then the Princess Charming ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... understand your question; there are different ways of taking it. Do I think it's important? Is that what you mean? Important certainly to managers and stage-carpenters who want to make money, to ladies and gentlemen who want to produce themselves in public by limelight, and to other ladies and gentlemen who are bored and stupid and don't know what to do with their evening. It's a commercial and social convenience which may be infinitely worked. But important artistically, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... down at the Yard that don't like him," he continued. "They call him 'Sage and Onions'; but most of us who have worked with him swear by Mr. Sage. He's never out for the limelight himself, and he's always willing to give another fellow a leg-up. After all, it's our living," he ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could play nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at the Jollity in June—is raving over still, I believe! Can't give you the exact title of the thing, but 'Darling, Will You Meet Me In The Centre Of The Circle That The Limelight Makes Upon The Floor, Tiddle-e-yum?' would meet the case. We have Musical Comedy now in place of what used to be Burlesque in your London days, Saxham, with a Leading Lady instead of a Principal Boy, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... neither from adulation nor hero-worship. He is a poet, sentimentalist, and evangelist for Greater Germany. His book is a collection of incidents, reflections, and conversations, carefully assorted and arranged, so as to allow the limelight to glare on the statuesque figure of a mighty Germanic hero, fresh from Walhalla—incarnated in ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... girl to her heart as she had Anna E. Dickinson in the past. Rachel, however, had none of Anna's dramatic temperament or love of the limelight, but in her orderly businesslike way was eager to serve Susan, whom she had admired ever since as a child she had heard her speak for woman suffrage in her ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... congratulated him on his approaching marriage with one of the Graces. She talked to the artistes going up to their dressing-rooms, bestowed a smile upon Jimmy, another on the stage-manager, joked with the limelight-men working their apparatus on either side of the stage. The footlights lit up with a row of flames, the storm approached. There was a ringing of electric bells—"Ting! Ting! Ting!"—as in the machine-room of a ship before ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... took to be hymns in its honour. The choruses were choric songs in its praise. The electric lights, it said, were magic torches lighted for its sake, and it was so charmed with the footlights that the children could hardly persuade it to sit still. But when the limelight was shown it could contain its approval no longer. It flapped its golden wings, and cried in a voice that could be heard all over ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... dubious table d'hotes, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his hall-bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the great city of razzle-dazzle, and to him one evening in the limelight made ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand denouements. Sufficient unto each "turn" is the evil thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne may have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound the moment they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic bicyclist ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... happy, too; and when Jack the Giant-killer changed to Jack in the Beanstalk, and when in the Transformation Scene a real beanstalk grew and unfolded its leaves, and each leaf revealed a fairy seated, with the limelight flashing on star and jewelled wand, the longing became unbearable. The scene passed in a minute. The clown and pantaloon came on, and presently Sir Harry saw Taffy's shoulders shaking, and set it down to laughter ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the equally florid-minded Regnault, hastily sketched in some of the theatrical frescoes in the "Chapel of the Eucharist," and a misguided personage named Orsel, splashed out the gaudy decorations of the "Chapel of the Virgin." The whole edifice glares at the spectator like a badly-managed limelight, and the tricky, glittering, tawdry effect blisters one's very soul. But here may be seen many little select groups out of the hell of Paris,—fresh from the burning as it were, and smelling of the brimstone,—demons who enjoy their demonism,—satyrs, concerning ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... each side, helped Ada into the cab. Her feet scraped helplessly over the flagged pavement her head lolled on her shoulder, and the baleful white gleam of the huge electric lamps fell like limelight on her face contracted ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... around carrying with him a big chunk of London fog does himself harm. If the sun does not wish to shine upon him—if he is having a little run of hard luck—he should turn on himself, even with the greatest effort, a little limelight. He should carry a small sunshine generator in his pocket always. The salesman who approaches his customer with a frown or a blank look upon his face, is doomed right at the start to do no business. His countenance should be as bright as a ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson

... of the rodeo by election, was in charge. He was an expert handler of cattle, one of the best in the country. It was his nature to seek the limelight, though it must be said for him that he rose to his responsibilities. The owners knew that when he was running the round-up few cattle would slip through the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... by entering the ring of political conflict again; the chances for personal loss were great. His enemies, his critics, and his political adversaries would have it that he was eaten up with ambition, that he came back from his African and European trip eager to thrust himself again into the limelight of national political life and to demand for himself again a great political prize. But his friends, his associates, and those who, knowing him at close range, understood him, realized that this was no picture of the truth. He accepted what ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... touched by this political agitation. The peasantry knew little or nothing of its existence. The land-owners feared it, for, having themselves for the most part kept aloof from modern education, and shrinking instinctively from the limelight of political controversies and such electioneering competitions as they had already been drawn into for municipal and local government purposes, they felt themselves hopelessly handicapped in a struggle that threatened their traditional prestige and authority ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... course, had tasted the limelight. All the world considered him the greatest scientist of all time—except, of course, the people who knew something about science. But the first actual voyagers in space had become immediately greater heroes than himself. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins



Words linked to "Limelight" :   prominence, calcium light, spotlight, theater light, glare, lamp



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