"Prismatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drive as they neared the north-west and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June sunshine—the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cluster of grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... any? No doubt. I am growing weary, weary of all this music, opiate music, prismatic music, "dreary music"—as Schumann himself called his early stuff—and the somber peristaltic music of his "lonesome, latter years." Schumann is now for the very young, for the self-illuded. We care more—being sturdy realists—for architecture today. These crepuscular ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the glittering, prismatic thing known as Society. She knew that Peter Coleman's and Emily Saunders' reverence for it was quite the weakest thing in their respective characters. She knew that Ella's boasted family was no better ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... exempt from sorrow and pain; the poet, least of all, would choose to be translated, even if he might, to some enchanted region remote from all the mingled experiences of humanity; it is the common lot of destiny, with its prismatic blending of failure and success, of purpose and achievement, of hope and defeat, of love and sorrow, out of which the poet draws his song. ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... two mountains was the great plateau itself. The question, then, was to find a way up, and to conquer this last obstruction in the easiest manner. In the radiantly clear air we could see the smallest details with our excellent prismatic glasses, and make our calculations with great confidence. It would be possible to clamber up Don Pedro himself; we had done things as difficult before. But here the side of the mountain was fairly steep, and full of big crevasses and a fearful quantity ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... watched its lustre, which seemed to him to grow greater day by day, as if it imbibed the sunlight into it. Never was there anything so bright as this. It changed its hue, too, gradually, being now a rich purple, now a crimson, now a violet, now a blue; going through all these prismatic colors without losing any of its brilliance, and never was there such a hue as the sunlight took in falling through it and resting on his floor. And strange and beautiful it was, too, to look through this medium at the outer world, and see how it was glorified ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shot forth sheets of flame. Dirigible and plane were hidden in an ugly swirl of yellowish smoke, rolling out into a purple cloud that spread into prismatic mist over the descent of cavorting human bodies and broken machinery and twisted braces, flying pieces of tattered or burning cloth. David has taken Goliath down with him in a ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... our Ruhmkorff's coil, increased tenfold by the myriad of prismatic masses of rock, sent its jets of fire in every direction, and I could fancy myself traveling through a huge hollow diamond, the rays of which ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the monastery of Vurkano. The building has a magnificent situation, on a terrace between Mount Evan and Mount Ithome, overlooking both the upper and lower plains of the Pamisos—a glorious spread of landscape, green with spring, and touched by the sun with the airiest prismatic tints through breaks of heavy rain-clouds. Inside the courts is an old Byzantine chapel, with fleurs-de-lis on the decorations, showing that it dates from the time of the Latin princes. The monks received us very cordially, gave us a clean, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... the impatient imagination a building, a dome of crystal, across the translucent surface of which flushes of the most glorious and pure prismatic colours pass and fade and change. In the centre of this transparent chameleon-tinted dome is a circular white marble basin filled with some clear, mobile, amber liquid, and in this plunge and float strange beings. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the sun, they were covered with jewels. If you looked toward the sun it was all crystal whiteness, a perfect fairy-land. Then the nights were moonlight, and that was a great beauty, the moon giving us the same prismatic effect. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was a dreamer, and while the young woman talked, he had seen them both in diminishing perspective, passing sociably across the plains, over the mountains, into the desert, to where California edged with a prismatic gleam the verge of the world. They were to go riding, and talking on, their acquaintance ripening gradually and delightfully, while the enormous panorama of the continent unrolled behind them. And it might end in ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... EMERSION. The prismatic space or solid raised out on the weather side by the inclination of the ship. In astronomy it signifies the re-appearance of a celestial object after ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... occupied a definite place among the shadows. Trennahan flung back the curtains and opened the window, closing the lower inside blinds. A cloud hurried across the face of the sun, as if light had no place in that ghastly room. About the limp body and sprawling hands clung the delicate prismatic tapestry of the spiders. It was rent in twain, and it quivered, and threatened to drop and trail upon the floor. The little weavers were racing about, full of anger and consternation, bent on repair. A number had already gathered up the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... half stealthy, half comical, as he saw the unusual vivacity of the reigning beauty when in his immediate society. Her voice took instinctively a softer and more musical tone; she showered her glances upon him, dazzling and prismatic as the rays from her diamonds; she seemed determined to captivate him without the tedious process of a siege. And, in truth, he must have been an unimpressible man that could steel himself against the influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... an elongation of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed, The Death's—headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar, at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia of death which it wears upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... historical and scientific point of view, the whole country lying about the basanite roots of Snaefell is most interesting. At the feet of its southern slopes are to be seen wonderful ranges of columnar basalt, prismatic caverns, ancient craters, and specimens of almost every formation that can result from the agency of subterranean fires; while each glen, and bay, and headland, in the neighbourhood, teems with traditionary lore. On the north-western side of the mountain ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... ten pounds, in perfectly clean Bank notes; certain receipts for Bank of England stock; an old horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an oyster-shell. From the circumstance of the latter article having been much polished, and displaying prismatic colours on the inside, I conclude that Mr. Barkis had some general ideas about pearls, which never resolved themselves ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... study. His thoughts were the seed corn of systems. His pupils were the teachers of centuries. Each bump of his brain was the nucleus of a philosophical school. Hardly had he left the world, than the strong and simple light he shed was scattered in various hues by the prismatic minds that had surrounded him or that succeeded him; and in almost every case,—as so often happens when the strands of the solar beam are brilliantly ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... anything else; and "La Dame Blanche," a triptych of rhythmical flow, spreads a dainty, silky, sheen of white, whispering, glistening, softly falling water over a slightly shelving width of rock, touched here and there with prismatic color and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... also in quartz of nearly every colour and appearance, saccharoidal, crystalline, nay, even in clear glass-like six-sided prismatic crystals, and associated with silver, copper, lead, arsenic, iron as sulphide, oxide, carbonate, and tungstate, antimony, bismuth, nickel, zinc, lead, and other metals in one form or another; in slate, quartzite, mica schist, granite, diorite, porphyry, felsite, calcite, dolomite, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he drew a small case from his breast and opened it. Heavens! How the mild lamplight was shivered into a thousand prismatic arrows as it fell upon a vast rose-diamond that glittered in the case! I was no judge of diamonds, but I saw at a glance that this was a gem of rare size and purity. I looked at Simon with wonder and—must I confess it?—with envy. How could he have obtained this ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... embroidered bag. 'That must be from Hilas or Bunar, and Hurree Babu spoke truth. By Jove! It is a fine haul. I wish Hurree could know ... The rest must go out of the window.' He fingered a superb prismatic compass and the shiny top of a theodolite. But after all, a Sahib cannot very well steal, and the things might be inconvenient evidence later. He sorted out every scrap of manuscript, every map, and the native letters. They made one softish ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... to you how many subjects for the highest order of poetry lie unnoticed all about us? Take that chandelier, for example, the prismatic drops of which are dull in the shade, but sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow in the gaslight. Might not those hidden splendors be compared to that genius whose brilliancy is alone ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Ormond. I am a worshipper of hard facts and however hideous they may be I prefer them to the prismatic colours of romance." ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... haw, etc., is placed at the inner angle of the eye, whence it extends over the eyeball to relieve it from foreign bodies which may fall upon it. It has for its framework a fibro-cartilage, irregular in shape, thick, nearly prismatic at its base, and thin anteriorly where it is covered by the conjunctiva; behind, it is loosely attached to ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... banks of the rain-wet sky there indeed now was flung the bow of promise. But this titanic land did all things gigantically. This was no mere prismatic arch bridging the clouds. The colors all were there, yes, and of an unspeakable brilliance and individual distinctness in the scale; but they lay like a vast painted mist, a mural of some celestial artist flung en masse against the curtain of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... expected to find at a depth of two or three feet, such water to be first filtered and then boiled before use. And while the digging was proceeding, Earle and Dick took up a position on the summit of a low knoll a few yards away, and examined their surroundings through their prismatic glasses. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... glassy and had a look of greater transparency, as if it had been fused at an exceptionally high temperature; and the crystals of alum, sulphur, and other minerals with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colours. In some places the transparency was complete, and beneath it might easily be seen the long streaks of that fibrous kind of lava, connected with a superstition of the natives, which is known ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... be proof against bad luck," she said, as she undid the case, and drew out a prismatic compass. She adjusted the eye-piece, in which was a slit and a glass prism and lifted the sight-vane, down the centre of which a horsehair stretched perpendicularly to the card of the compass. Putting ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and the like. In these cases it is substituted for the needle. In like manner for calculating cross profiles by graphical methods, for reading parallel divisions, for estimating areas, or revising maps, a finely divided prismatic ivory rule, c, can be placed under the glass, B, and will do good service. In this case the plane of the lens must be perpendicular to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... Oslers, of Broad Street, have attained a very high reputation for their cut and ornamental, as well as the ordinary, articles of flint glass. The have been especially successful in producing fine effects from prismatic arrangements. Their gigantic chandeliers of great size, made for Ibrahim Pacha, and the Nepalese Prince, were the steps by which they achieved the lofty crystal fountain, of an entirely original design, which forms one of the most novel and effective ornaments of the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... had figged himself out, more majorum, in the full Highland costume. I never saw Rob Roy on the stage look half so dignified or ferocious. He glittered from head to foot with dirk, pistol, and skean-dhu; and at least a hundredweight of cairngorms cast a prismatic glory around his person. I ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... carpet usually covered the floor of the long, tunnel-like cabin. Down the center were ranged the tables, about which, thrice a day, the hungry passengers gathered to be fed, while from the ceiling depended chandeliers, from which hung prismatic pendants, tinkling pleasantly as the boat vibrated with the throb of her engines. At one end of the main saloon was the ladies' cabin, discreetly cut off by crimson curtains; at the other, the bar, which, in a period when copious libations of alcoholic ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... vertical tubes run the rows of little locomotive oars, or combs, as they have been called, from which these animals derive their name of Ctenophorae. The rapid motion of these flappers causes the decomposition of the rays of light along the surface of the body, producing the most striking prismatic effect; and it is no exaggeration to say that no jewel is brighter than these Ctenophorae as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... walls of the sharp, irregular declivity reflected many cold, prismatic lights, and down, far down where the eye could no longer distinguish shapes and outlines, there lay a shadow like steam from some vast, subterranean cauldron, blue, dense, impenetrable. It fascinated Pearl and she stood there trying to ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... light from behind fell upon them. A maid was lighting the gas in the drawing-room. Mostyn saw the cut-glass pendants of the crystal chandelier blaze in prismatic splendor. His mind was far from the lined countenance before him. He was heavy with indecision. His sister's confident derision clung to him like a menace from ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... dense that the objects are seen, like Captain Scoresby's ship, snatched up into the regions of the air, thirty or forty feet above the level of the sea; and in cloudy weather, nearer to the surface, bordered with vivid prismatic colours. Sometimes colonades of temples and churches, with cross-crowned spires, are all represented as floating on the sea, and by a sudden change of representation, the pillars are curved into arcades, and the crosses are bent into crescents, and all the edifices ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... vine-hung gallery; to lift the great latch of the low Gothic door and to enter the rich and sumptuous interior, where the light came, as in cathedral aisles, only through the jewels of fourteenth-century glass; to close the door; to sit beneath the prismatic shower, ensconced in a nest of old tapestried cushions, and to let the eye wander over the wealth of carvings, of ceramics, of Spanish and Normandy trousseaux chests, on the collection of antique chairs, Dutch porcelains, and priceless ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... did not think it so simple, but he did not protest. All went out. The weather had become very fine. The sun was rising from the sea's horizon, and touched with golden spangles the prismatic rugosities of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... so much as look surprised; considered merely as reclining figures, and as pieces of effect in half light, they have once been fine. The landscape, which represents the slope of a woody hill, has a very grand and far-away look. Behind it is a great space of streaky sky, almost prismatic in color, rosy and golden clouds covering up its blue, and some fine vigorous trees thrown against it; painted in about ten minutes each, however, by curly touches of the brush, and looking rather more ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and smoke shot upward. The pale morning sky turned black, rent with darting crimson tongues and lit with prismatic stars. Other explosions followed in rapid succession, some coming down the light morning wind from a long distance. Blasts of heat swept audibly through the long ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... away, having slightly varied our course so that the sun was once more entirely hidden behind the centre of the earth, we saw its atmosphere completely illuminated, all around it, with prismatic lights, like a gigantic rainbow in the form of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... recall a more beautiful sunset than the one of current date. Merely to behold the orb of day descending beyond the western horizon in all its magnificence of prismatic colouring was sufficient to awaken within one's bosom the desire ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Hand-Rails; with a new method of Sawing the Twist Part of any Hand-Rail square from the face of the plank, and to a parallel width. Also, a new method of forming the Easings of the Rail by a gauge; preceded by some necessary Problems in Practical Geometry, with the Sections of Prismatic Solids. Illustrated by 29 plates. By R.A. CUPPER, Architect, author of "The Practical Stair-Builder's ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... of a ridge slightly elevated above the general level of the neighbouring fields. The stone itself consists of a massive unhewn block of the secondary greenstone-trap of the district, many large boulders of which lie in the bed of the neighbouring river. In form it is somewhat prismatic, or irregularly triangular, with its angles very rounded. This large monolith is nearly twelve feet in circumference, about four feet five inches in width, and three feet three inches in thickness. Its height above ground is about four feet and a half. The Honourable Mrs. Ramsay of Barnton, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... horn of Africa the units of value which are used as money are salt, metal, skins, cotton, glass, tobacco, wax, coffee beans, and korarima. Cattle and slaves are also used as units of value from time to time amongst the Oromo. Salt is used as money in prismatic pieces, twenty-two centimeters long and three centimeters to five millimeters broad at the bottom, which weigh from seven hundred and fifty grams to one and one half kilograms each. It is carried ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... table at the front of the shop, Roger's bulletin board under the electric light, and one or two nondescript customers gleaning along the shelves. Then something bounded violently under the third button of his shirt. There she was! In the bright, prismatic little circle of the lenses he could see Titania. Heavenly creature, in her white V-necked blouse and brown skirt, there she was looking at a book. He saw her put out one arm and caught the twinkle of her wrist-watch. In the startling familiarity of the magnifying glass he ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... chef d'oeuvre!" He seized her hands. "Think of it! You standing under a great shaft of sun, nude, exalted, your hands and eyes lifted. About you gold, pouring down in cataracts, indistinguishable from the sunlight—a background of prismatic fire—and your hair lifting into it like ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... invested! 'With Thee'—then I am constantly in the presence of a sovereign Law and its Giver; 'with Thee'—then all my actions are registered and weighed yonder; 'with Thee'—then 'Thou, God, seest me.' Brethren! it is the prismatic halo and ring of eternity round this poor glass of time that gives it all its dignity, all its meaning. The lives that are lived before God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... impulses of complete honesty, "before we were married, while we were engaged, we had an impracticable romantic attraction for each other. I know that I thought of you all the time, day and night; and, just because you existed, the whole world was full of prismatic colors; it was as though an orchestra were playing continually and I were floating on the finest music. You were like a figure in heaven that drew me ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... personal belongings, and bearing a blanket, waterproof sheet, three days' rations of biscuits and preserved meat, together with an emergency ration in a sealed tin, and (for those with rifles) 200 rounds of ammunition. Officers carried revolvers, field glasses, prismatic compass, and various other extras. They were also allowed to place their valises on the train but, according to rumour, it was doubtful if they would ever ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... like curtains of gauze, too thin to dim the general brightness, yet dense enough to invest the whole scene with a silver robe of mystery, and to refract the light and compel it to shine in great circles of prismatic colours! And everything—from the nature of the materials of which the gay scenery is composed—either white or blue, varying in all gradations from the fairest snow to the deepest azure, save where the rainbow's delicate hues are allowed to intermingle ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... appear round the angle of the church—for there is a funeral at that hour; and their torches flaring with the breeze that is now springing up, cast an awful and almost magical light on the dark gray walls of the edifice, the strange effect being enhanced by the prismatic reflection of the lurid blaze from the stained glass of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... giving out any variety, and yet all equally true; hence it is that the skies, for example, of Claude, Salvator Rosa, and Gaspar Poussin are universally subordinate to the general effect of the picture. These men, living in Italy, were quite aware of the various prismatic effects observable in sunset, but were also convinced of the necessity of making the sky subservient, at least conducive to, the breadth and harmony of the picture. It may be said that Titian and Tintoret embodied the deep and intense blues of the Venetian atmosphere, but we may ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... God, the Life in God, the Lord in God, the Holy Procedure, inhabited the dome, which, burning in magnificence primeval, and revolving in prismatic and undulatory spiral, appeared, and was the pavilion of the Spirit: In glory inexhaustible and inconceivable, in movement spherical, unfolded in ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... could continuously bear. "One cannot always think of it—one must not!" he would say to himself impatiently. And then he would offer himself eagerly to the mere sensuous impressions of the Cathedral—its beauty, its cool prismatic spaces, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lords of the creation, the poet's eyes consequently became "blue," and his hair "auburn." Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator; and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he was exhibiting to us a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... picturesque variety, be the most attractive. The palm, perhaps, would be given to the fish-mongers, with their exuberant exhibitions, grouped with skill, startling often with strange forms, dazzling with prismatic tints, and breathing the invigorating redolence of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... does one and the same mirror seem now to withdraw the image into its depths, now to extrude it forth to view? Why do concave mirrors when held at right angles to the rays of the sun kindle tinder set opposite them? What is the cause of the prismatic colours of the rainbow, or of the appearance in heaven of two rival images of the sun, with sundry other phenomena treated in a monumental volume by Archimedes of Syracuse, a man who showed extraordinary and unique subtlety in ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... ray, divided into its seven primary colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, said, "If you will form a mnemonic word of the first letters of each of these words, you will be able, without further effort, to remember the order of the prismatic colors the rest of your lives," and he accordingly wrote upon the board and pronounced the uncouth and almost unpronounceable word, Vibgyor, which probably not one of us has ever forgotten. An ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the attention of all men until 1865 A.D. The answer came from the diagonal joints themselves, on discovering that the stone between them was opposite to the butt end of the portcullis of the first ascending passage, or to the hole whence the prismatic stone of concealment through 3000 years had dropped out almost before Al Mamoun's eyes. Here, therefore, was a secret sign in the pavement of the entrance-passage, appreciable only to a careful eye and a measurement by angle, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... cargo of roses; but the wonder of it all was, that the whole design was lit up by electricity. Electric sparkles, like drops of dew, shone on the leaves of the flowers; the gondola was lit from end to end with electric stars, which were reflected with prismatic brilliancy in the crystal below; the gondolier's long pole glittered with what appeared to be drops of water tinged by the moonlight, but which was really an electric wire, and in his cap flashed an electric diamond. The whole ornament scintillated and glowed like a marvellous piece ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... happened that in some of the Italian pictures I have seen in England, I have often been struck by what appeared to me a violence in the colouring, and a sharp decision in the outline, o'erstepping the modesty of nature—that is, of English nature: but there is in this climate a prismatic splendour of tint, a glorious all-embracing light, a vivid distinctness of outline, something in the reality more gorgeous, glowing, and luxuriant, than poetry could dare to ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... receded, the upland air began to sparkle with a myriad prismatic needles that glittered from the wings of flies and beetles, and from dewdrops on patches of turf still as grey as hoarfrost in the shadow on the edge of a wood, and from wayside hollies whose leaf-points were all starred in silver. The blue bow overhead was stainless, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... de Malesherbes, and lastly, to approach a most amiable queen and a most upright king, without believing ourselves about to enter upon a kind of golden era of which preceding centuries afforded no idea. . . . We were bewildered by the prismatic hues of fresh ideas and doctrines, radiant with hopes, ardently aglow for every sort of reputation, enthusiastic for all talents and beguiled by every seductive dream of a philosophy that was about to secure the happiness of the human species. Far ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... an appointment for eight o'clock, near the Kiosk. It is ten past eight. I go out. The passage, the court,—by night all these familiar things surround me even while they hide themselves. A vague light still hovers in the sky. Crillon's prismatic shop gleams like a garnet in the bosom of the night, behind the riotous disorder of his buckets. There I can see Crillon,—he never seems to stop,—filing something, examining his work close to a candle which flutters like a butterfly ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... A flash of prismatic color had caught the girl's eye, and, one transparent structure thus revealed to her sight, there had burst into view a city of crystal. Low buildings of hexagonal shape, arranged in irregularly variant hexagonal patterns, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... description, abused me for putting Newton's head into my picture,—"a fellow," said he, "who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank "Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics." It was delightful to see the good-humour of Wordsworth in giving in to all our frolics without affectation and laughing as heartily as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and grew, and glittered every day with fresh prismatic radiance; while Hypatia sat at home, with a heavy heart, writing her ode to Venus Urania, and submitting to Orestes's ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of producing a whole ball-room from the form of one lady visitor. Not one, but twenty-five thousand Robert Bruces inspired the Scottish spider to that homely instance of perseverance, which served for an example for a king. As he hangs his drapery from one cornice to another, the prismatic scenes that come before him serve to lengthen that life which might seem to be cut off before its time. It is not one, but twenty-five thousand brooms which advance to destroy his airy home; to invade his household gods, and bring to the ground that row of bluebottles which his magnifying ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the chisel to the aisles of a cathedral. Where the light happened to fall upon these the effect was bewilderingly beautiful, the rays being reflected and refracted from and through the crystals of which they were composed until they shone and sparkled like columns of prismatic fire. ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... and Queen of Spain. A brief survey of this first island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... curtain and looked forth into the night, a magic night, soft and wonderful, infinitely peaceful. A full moon shone high in the sky with an immense arc of light around it, many-rayed, faintly prismatic. There was the scent of coming rain in the air, but no clouds were visible. The stars were dim and remote, almost quenched in that flood ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... regard to order; some with Gothic gables, some round, some acutely angular, and all very rudely and roughly constructed, even the perpendicular lines being irregular. The walls are whitewashed, and in many places stained with age. The roofs are for the most part of earthen tiles, imburnt with strong prismatic colors, and shining like the inner surfaces of abalone shells. The domes are white, green, red, and yellow, and each church has a number of gilded or striped cupolas, rising irregularly from the roofs, shaped ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... itself was deliciously familiar to him; crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt picture frames and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies and theater-tickets he had strutted across that erstwhile magic threshold and fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... seemed to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pavement a long way below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident occasioned above his head. Once only he became dimly conscious of a quivering network of prismatic flashes, which he could not see through, and a booming throb in his ears, which made him murmur dazedly: "Wirra, I thought I'd got beyond hearin' of them drums." In another moment: "What's took me?" he said, with a start. But the depths he sank among ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... Meredith, whose eyes, Though oft with vapours shadow'd over, Can catch the sunlight from the skies And flash it down on lass and lover; Tell us of Life, and Love's young dream, Show the prismatic soul of Woman, Bring back the Light, whose morning beam First made ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... orange, and garnet, upon the sea. It is as if an aurora had fallen from Arctic skies, living, changeful, evanescent, athwart sea, plain, and mountain. Here is sore temptation for the colorist; more, perhaps, than by the wealth and combination of tints, he is affected by their celestial quality. All is prismatic, or like those hues produced by the interference of rays of light as seen in the colors of stars. Gorgeous as are these phenomena, they are also as transitory; and although the scene is repeated, it is with such subtile and such great changes as to remove it from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating, some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the little book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have not read the obituaries of all the others, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in the afternoon sunlight, shimmering in its glory of prismatic colours, on one side reflecting the rocks and the pines that lined the shore and the great peaks that stood further back, and the other lapping the grasses and reeds that edged its waters and joined it to the prairie. A gentle breeze now and then breathed across the lake, breaking into myriad ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... carelessly heaped piles of light, soft, fleecy, snow-white cotton wool, over the eastern edge of which the sun was just rising into view, while his brilliant, lance-like beams darted and played over and through the piles of vapour in a glory of prismatic colour that beggared description. The beauty and glory of the scene consisted indeed solely in the shimmering and shifting play of every conceivable shade and tone of richest and purest and most brilliant colour; and its most charming ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... express, 305 And value books, as women men, for Dress: Their praise is still—the Style is excellent: The Sense, they humbly take upon content. Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found, 310 False Eloquence, like the prismatic glass, Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place; The face of Nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay: But true expression, like th' unchanging Sun, 315 Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, It gilds all objects, but it alters none. ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... if once the brave, kind eyes of his old friend should meet his own, concealment would be no longer possible; yet, for the sake of that promise he had sworn in the past night, it must be maintained at every hazard, every cost. Vacantly he sat and watched the play of the sunshine in the prismatic water of the courtyard fountain, and the splashing, and the pluming, and the murmuring of the doves and pigeons on its edge. He felt meshed in a net from which there was no escape—none—unless, on his homeward passage, a thrust of Arab steel ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... sea-ice, the ice of a glacier is a marvel of prismatic colour and glassy brilliance. This is more noticeable near the surface when the sun is shining. Deep down in a shaft, or in an ice-cavern, the sapphire reflection gives to the human face quite ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... and brought them all to within a sixth of the distance. After amusing myself for some time in watching them, I swept the glasses farther on. Still the same animals grazing on the hills and in the hollows. I continued to look, and to look again, until even the powerful prismatic glasses failed to show things big enough to distinguish. At the limit of extreme vision I could still make out game, and yet more game. And as I took my glasses from my eyes, and realized how small a portion of this great land-sea I had ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... throws a single ray, separated from the rest,—red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Power of penetrating into Space by Telescopes, with a comparative Determination of the Extent of that Power in Natural Vision, and in Telescopes of various Sizes and Constructions; illustrated by select Observations.—Investigation of the Powers of the Prismatic Colours to heat and illuminate Objects; with Remarks that prove the different Refrangibility of radiant Heat; to which is added an Inquiry into the Method of viewing the Sun advantageously with Telescopes of large Apertures and high magnifying Powers.—Experiments on the Refrangibility of ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... twenty-four hours before had been really nearer to the end of all things than her aged husband. The Young Doctor knew all too well what the curious, throbbing light in her eyes meant. He knew that the gay and splendid Orlando Guise had made the sun for this prismatic radiance, and that the story of her life, which Louise had wished to tell him yesterday, would never now be told—for she would have no desire to tell it. The old vague misery, the ancient veiled torture, was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tangles of gold and green; here and there from great open squares and branch-shadowed gardens gleamed the stone face of an obelisk, or the white column of a fountain; while over all things streamed the long prismatic rays flung forth from the revolving lights in the Twelve Towers of the Sacred Temple, like flaming spears ranged lengthwise against the limitless depth of the midnight horizon. With straining necks, tossed manes, and foam flying from their nostrils, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... moment do not suffice the eager illustrator. The passing word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry, "Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance and smile. But the voluptuous music is no more striking ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... his pessimistic peroration, his visage of an urbane, successful man full of complicated satisfactions and regrets. Behind him the staircase was suddenly bathed in sunshine; all the panes of stained glass became sparkling and rich; and a sheaf of prismatic rays stretched down, through the gloom of the hall, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... positions of two prominent objects whose position is marked upon an ordnance map of the neighbourhood, or they may be flagstaffs specially set up and noted on the map; and let C represent the boat from which the bearings of A and B are taken by a prismatic compass, which is marked from 0 to 360. Let the magnetic variation be N. 15 W., and the observed bearings A 290, B 320, then the position stands as in Fig. 38, or, correcting for magnetic variation, as ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... No. Pyrotechnist. For the choicest piece in urban gardens, where Catharine-wheels on festival nights spurt sidereal spray, and rockets shot into gold-riddled skies fall back in prismatic showers, is less ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... wonders whether the mansions in heaven will be draped in such brightness; and so to the last the gentle, bright, rainbow lady remained surrounded by kind and smiling faces, by pictures, by flowers, and with the light of her favourite prismatic colours shining round about the couch on which ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... sure—the moon door, which is clearly operated by the action of moon rays upon some unknown element or combination and the crystals through which the moon rays pour down upon the pool their prismatic columns, are humanly made mechanisms. So long as they are humanly made, and so long as it is this flood of moonlight from which the Dweller draws its power of materialization, the Dweller itself, if not the product of the human mind, is at ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Princess Christian in turquoise blue; and the Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia wore a magnificent robe of pink satin trimmed with sable, with a tiara of diamonds and a stomacher of diamonds and emeralds. From the neck and forehead of the Queen of Roumania flashed a thousand prismatic hues; and the Green Vault of Dresden sent some of its most precious treasures to keep company with the fair Queen of Saxony in adding brilliance ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... course through labyrinths of reef-channels. So swiftly and deftly is the little craft impelled to right and left, that one could almost believe it sees its own way and moves by its own intelligence. And again we pass by extraordinary islets of prismatic rock whose sides, just below the water-line, are heavily mossed with seaweed. The polygonal masses composing these shapes are called by the fishermen 'tortoise-shell stones.' There is a legend ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... attachment to the piano and he can adjust it to get the air of his choice without having to ask any one to play for him. In the drawing-room an electric fountain may be playing, its jets reflecting the prismatic colors of the rainbow as the waters fall in iridescent sparkle among the lights. Such a fountain is composed of a small electric motor and a centrifugal pump, the latter being placed in the interior of a basin and connected directly to the motor shaft. The pump receives ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... of prismatic light and shade, of gay and joyous life. Here Tiberius had his summer palace, and it was from these shores that he sent the historic letter which revolutionized the life of Sejanus. The letter—verbosa et grandis epistola—is still vivid ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... that the country shall be surveyed by Turkish officers, and a map constructed upon their observations. Its accuracy will be somewhat doubtful, if we may judge from the crude manner in which they set to work. The only instruments employed were prismatic compasses, with which they jotted down angles at all the salient points, an orderly dragoon counting his horse's paces in the intervening time, which was occasionally as much as twenty minutes. Passing these I reach ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... The prose light of common day is breaking into prismatic rays. Into the dusty highway of Ancient History all at once sweeps the pageantry of Mythology. Philemon bends above old Baucis at the High School gate, though hitherto they have been sycamores. Olympus is just beyond the clouds. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... I said, "and I'll point out the spot where I'm working. It's about eighty yards away from Bosche. If we work out the exact degree by the map of the 'blow,' I can obtain the right direction by prismatic compass, and a few minutes before 'time' lift the camera up and cover the spot direct. It'll save exposing myself unnecessarily above the parapet to obtain the right point of view." The point of view was accordingly settled. It was 124 deg. from ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... drew near. The fire was darting in a thousand bright flashes, through the black mass that had just been cast upon it, shooting out here and there a gleam of gold on the polished blackness of the stove, and curling up in little prismatic eddies around the tea-kettle as she placed it on the grate. The lamp, clean and bright as crystal could be made, was urged to a more brilliant flame by the point of her scissors, and then with another glance at the clock, the pretty housekeeper sat down in her chair again, and with one ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens |
