"Beam of light" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like this before it was broken. Sometimes people say that beautiful polished things are like mirrors, but this sword is like a flame. It burns and twinkles as he holds it and turns it in his hand. I can scarcely see of what shape it is, for now it shines like a straight beam of light, now, as he twists it, there is a flash in a half circle, like a scymitar, and again the point alone gleams out and flashes, as if it would find its own way to the heart of a foe, with no hand to guide it. He swings the sword above his head, as he did the other that the dwarf ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... Virgin is constantly represented in an oval frame, with the child in her arms. In some old missals, in representations of the Annunciation, we see the Virgin standing, with the dove hovering in front above her, and from the dove issues a beam of light, from the end of which, as it touches her stomach, depends an oval containing the ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... axis, it is clear that if the observer is situated in, or nearly in, the plane of the planet's equator, one edge of its disk will be approaching his eye while the opposite edge is retreating, and the lines in the spectrum of a beam of light from the advancing edge will be shifted toward the blue, while those in the spectrum of the light coming from the retreating edge will be shifted toward the red. And, by carefully noting the amount of the shifting, the velocity of the planet's ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... the delicate shades of colour sometimes seen on the inside of an oyster shell. State and explain the appearance presented when a beam of light falls upon a sheet of glass on which very fine equi-distant parallel lines have been scratched ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... inorganic impurity, and finally oxygenated or aerated with air which has undergone a yet more elaborate purification. At every stage in this process, a phial of water is taken out and examined in a dark chamber by means of a beam of light emanating from a powerful electric lamp and concentrated by a huge crystal lens. If this beam detect any perceptible dust or matter capable of scattering the light, the water is pronounced impure and passed through further processes. Only when the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... shall not sit at Sefafioll, neither at morn nor night, as to feel joy in life, if o'er the people plays not the prince's beam of light; if his war-steed runs not under the chieftain hither, to the gold bit accustomed; if in the ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... spiral of trees, wherein one species continually succeeded another, according to the worth and excellence of their fruit. The circumgyration began at a considerable distance from the tree in the midst, and the intervening space was radiant with a beam of light, which caused the trees in the circle to shine with a graduated splendor that was continued from the first to the last. The first trees were the most excellent of all, abounding with the choicest fruits, and were called paradisiacal trees, being such as are never ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... rays. The surface, b, to be tested is now placed so that the reflected image of the same object, whatever it may be, can be observed by the same telescope. It is evident that if the surface be a true plane, its action upon the beam of light that comes from the object will be simply to change its direction, but not disturb or change it any other way, hence the reflected image of the object should be seen by the telescope, a, without in any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... the house, had felt a sudden weakness, and had taken to his chair to recover himself. As was evident from the normal way in which his fingers held his hat, and his hand rested on the chair-arm, death had come as gently as a beam of light. With his stick lying on the table beside him, and his hat on his knee, he was like one who rested a moment before renewing a journey. There could not have been a pang in his passing. He had gone as most men wish to go—in the midst of the business of life, doing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... more time to come to some decision, since I rang and rang in vain. The hall, indeed, was in darkness; but when I peeped through the letter-box I could see a faint beam of light from the back room. That was the room in which Maguire kept his trophies and set his trap. All was quiet in the house: could they have haled the intruder to Vine Street in the short twenty minutes which it had taken me to dress and to drive to the spot? That ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... rendered parallel by passing through a lens; these parallel rays next pass through one or more prisms, and are finally viewed through a small telescope, or they may be intercepted by a photographic plate on which a picture will then be made. If the beam of light passing through the slit has radiated from an incandescent solid or liquid body, or from a gas under high pressure, the coloured band or spectrum is found to contain all the colours indicated on Plate XIII., without any ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... house; at the steps we halted; the place was all alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... till at last I found myself looking into darkness. I got down on my hands and knees and peered over the edge of a ridge of rock. I could see a tiny beam of light away down, and this beam grew and grew as it slowly moved up and up till it became a great triangular ray. It swept slowly along the top of what I now saw was a steep precipice sloping sheer down into blackness below. One step further ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... beam of light, a power Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave, 2885 Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore Which might not be withstood—whence none could save— All who approached their sphere,—like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to his feet again. On and on went he till the little birds flew to their nests, and the brightness died out of the sky, and a darkness fell over the earth. On and on, and on, till at last he saw a beam of light streaming from a house and hastened ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... matter of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's presentment of the man—of that strange soul whom he conceived of as having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently pure, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... glanced out across the sullen waters and the level land. It was beneath this lofty lighthouse they slept, in a clean, bare little inn. Milly, lying in her cushiony bed, could hear the waves grumbling around the rocks, and watch the sweep of that golden beam of light,—speaking to the distant passers-by upon the Atlantic, warning them of the dangers of ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... be possible if light took a curved path instead of a straight one. A better proof, however, may be obtained by making a small hole in the window-shutter, and allowing the sunlight to pass into the darkened room. The beam of light which passes into the room will then be seen to take a straight course, its presence being revealed by the particles of dust ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... is the oscillograph. An oscillograph is composed of a magnetic field formed by direct currents or by a permanent magnet, a turn of wire under mechanical tension in that field, and a mirror borne by the turn of wire, adapted to reflect a beam of light to a photographic film or to a ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... medium, and again from the denser medium into the rare, which refraction Lord Rayleigh considers to effect a retardation equivalent to half a wave length. Lord Rayleigh supported this theory of the formation of Newton's rings by several interesting experiments. A beam of light was intercepted by two of Nicol's prisms, one of which acted as a polarizer and the other as an analyzer of the light, so that no light was able to pass through both on to the screen. Between the two prisms a double refractive lens was now placed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... the knife. It hacked harmlessly into the shark-skin garment of one of the men, and I stabbed out again. Two of the men leaped for my right arm, but the knife found, this time, the throat of the third. My beam of light showed palely red, for a moment, and the body of the Rorn toppled slowly to the bed of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... truly affirm, that although there have been and still are conflicts, the soul is ever conqueror, and that too by very great odds. My doubts and fears are mere flitting shadows; my hope, a strong and unchanging beam of light. The body sometimes slips from beyond my control and trembles, but the soul is at the very same time secure in herself and undaunted. I present the same apparent contradiction that the soldier often does upon the field of battle; he trembles and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... once, as there we sat, we heard A cracking and a riving of the roofs, And rending, and a blast, and overhead Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry. And in the blast there smote along the hall A beam of light seven times more clear than day: And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail All over covered with a luminous cloud. And none might see who bare it, and it past. But every knight beheld his fellow's face As in a glory, and all the knights ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... ne'er smiled, where joy ne'er came, Where Friendship's eye ne'er glistened at the name Of one she loved, where famine and despair Sat silent 'mid the damp and lurid air, The soothing voice is heard; a beam of light Is cast upon their features, sunk and white; 140 With trembling joy they catch the stealing sound; Their famished little ones come smiling round. Sweet Infancy! whom all the world forsook, Thou hast ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... with relation to personal covenanting; and, without the least intimation of the design made to him, printed them in a little pamphlet of 61 pages 12mo, under this title, A clear, attractive, warming beam of light, from Christ, the Sun of light, leading unto himself, &c.——printed at ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... men with respect to government are changing fast in all countries. The revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into men. Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... adherents grew ever more numerous, and that in other respects they were just as well off. Where he himself could not see he was like a lens that collects the half-darkness and gives it out again as a beam of light. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the Fians beheld Oisin mount the fairy steed and hold the maiden in his arms, and ere they could stir or speak she turned her horse's head and shook the ringing bridle and down the forest glade they fled, as a beam of light flies over the land when clouds drive across the sun; and never did the Fianna behold Oisin, son of Finn, on ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... now—in Time's swift flight— The aeroplane itself may be passe, And transportation on a beam of light The natural and the ordinary way. Men may have bodies made of metals cold To match the hearts ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... air-chamber, a small round mirror, having four tiny magnets cemented to its back, is hung, by a single fibre of floss silk no thicker than a spider's line. The mirror is of film glass silvered, the magnets of hair-spring, and both together sometimes weigh only one-tenth of a grain. A beam of light is thrown from a lamp upon the mirror, and reflected by it upon a white screen or scale a few feet distant, where it forms ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Periods of great distress are the times when inspired persons most commonly appear. Thus it came to pass that in the days of the Plague and of the Black Prince the vavasour of Champagne heard a voice coming forth from a beam of light. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... feverish agony until a pale beam of light appeared on the floor below the curtain. This timorous paleness of the distant dawn suddenly brought him peace. He felt the light gliding into the room, when it was still impossible to distinguish it from darkness. Then his fever would die down, his blood would grow calm, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Glare! A strong, broad beam of light, from the stranger's search-lamp, shone across the water, then picked up the "Restless" when the two boats were less than a quarter of a mile apart. The uniforms of Uncle Sam's blinking men must have stood out strongly before the vision of those on ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... hand, but he had evidently so little pleasure in her present, his thoughts were so plainly directed to something else, that now every gleam of pleasure vanished for Susanna from the Christmas joy. When she was alone in her chamber, and saw from her window how a little beam of light proceeded from every cottage in the valley, and she thought how within them were assembled in confidential circles, parents, children, brothers and sisters, and friends, then felt she painfully that she was lonesome in a strange land; and as she remembered how formerly on this evening she ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... am left alive," said Oliver, quietly, and then he turned his head and was in the act of drawing out his little glass to watch the actions of a couple of sun-birds playing merrily about in a narrow sunny beam of light, but he checked himself; half-laughing the while. "Use is second nature," he said, and, leaving his gun with Drew, he went down on hands and knees and crept cautiously along, dislodging beetles, lizards, and more natural ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... long, quiet, blissful moment, she lay smiling at the spot where the sunlight, streaming level through the lace-curtained window, fell on the rose-flowered chintz of the valances. Missy liked those colours very much; then her eyes followed the beam of light to where it spun a prism of fairy colours on the mirror above the high-boy, and she liked that ecstatically. She liked, too, by merely turning her head on the pillow, to glimpse, through the parting of the curtains, the ocean of blue sky with its flying cloud ships, so strange; and to hear the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... door was shut, so that it was impossible for me to go out at it; and the windows, vulgarly called the eyes, were so closely pulled down by the fingers of a nurse, that I could by no means open them. At last I perceived a beam of light glimmering at the top of the house (for such I may call the body I had been inclosed in), whither ascending, I gently let myself down through a kind of chimney, and issued out at ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... door the girl paused and faced the wall. She manipulated a hidden lever and a panel swung open in the wall. She led the way silently into the dark. As the panel closed behind her, a beam of light from an electric torch stabbed the darkness. Down a sloping tunnel they followed her for half a mile. The tunnel turned at right angles and led upward. At length they paused before another door. The girl opened it and they stepped out into the night. As they did so, a dull booming struck ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... slept like the dead, without the slightest disturbance, dreamed a strange dream. It seemed to him that he stood spent and weary in a twilight place—a waste place at the foot of a high hill. At the top of the hill She sat upon a sort of throne, golden in a beam of light from heaven—serene, very beautiful, the end and crown of his weary labors. His feet were set to the ascent of the height whereon she waited, but he was withheld. From the shadows at the hill's foot a voice called to ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... DOUBLE REFRACTION. In Lesson II. we learned what is meant by refraction of light. While glass and a small number of precious stones (diamond, garnet, and spinel) bend light as was illustrated in Fig. 1, practically all the other stones cause a beam of light on entering them to separate, and the path of the light in the stone becomes double, as shown ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... arrived on May 5 which delayed my starting for Vladivostok. If the object at which it aimed could have been secured it would have been a beam of light upon a very sombre subject. I had a lengthy conference with General Knox upon my tour to the Urals and the facts gathered as to the mineral and productive resources of the districts through which I had passed. The London dispatch also occupied our attention, and as the Supreme Governor had fixed ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... If the beam of light falls upon a sheet of paper, or upon a photograph, instead of upon a smooth polished surface, no definite reflected ray will be seen, but a glare will be produced by the scattering of the beam of light. The surface of the paper or photograph is rough, and as a result, it scatters the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... cloud. But here I must guard myself against all misconception as to the use of this term. The 'cloud' here referred to is totally invisible in ordinary daylight. To be seen, it requires to be surrounded by darkness, it only being illuminated by a powerful beam of light. This blue cloud differs in many important particulars from the finest ordinary clouds, and might justly have assigned to it an intermediate position between such clouds and true vapour. With this explanation, the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of his pocket storage-battery lamp and flashed it slowly about the room. It was a sort of library, handsomely furnished. At last the beam of light rested on a huge desk at the opposite end. It seemed to interest Kennedy, and we tiptoed over to it. One after another he opened the drawers. One was locked, and he saved that until ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... A round, white beam of light glowed for an instant—and disappeared. A miscellaneous, lumbering collection of junk and odds and ends blocked the entry, leaving no more space than was sufficient for bare passageway. Jimmie Dale moved cautiously—and once more the flashlight ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... a darling child of four, Like a fair beam of light, The household flower, who filled the ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... crude, as the brightness suffusing it. Her black brows, her reddish-tawny hair and the pure red and white of her complexion defied the searching decomposing radiance: she might have been some fabled creature whose home was in a beam of light. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... A beam of light had appeared on the loftiest spur, standing out at first like a red star in the darkness, then growing intensely brighter, and burning with a steady, vivid light. The effect was weird and powerful. The mountain beneath it was invisible, and it seemed to burn there ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... copper-coloured beam of light came in at the west window, gilding the outlines of the children's heads with red gold, and falling on the wall opposite in a rich, ruddy illumination. Ursula, however, was scarcely conscious of it. She was busy, the end of the day was here, the work ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... and Darkeye spoke to God in name of them all, thanking Him for His goodness, and telling Him their wants. When they rose from their knees, the gold thread shone brilliantly, and, like a beam of light, passed out at the door in the direction of the ferry. During the singing of the verses, Wolf seemed for the first time quite overcome. He bent his head, and covered his face with his hands. He then said, ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod
... was no parade in the grey of dawn. As the first chilly beam of light crept into the room the Subaltern turned in his sleep, and smiled at the complete luxury of prolonged rest. They did not get up till eight, and having dressed, washed, and even shaved, they had what the "hostess" called breakfast. And still nothing happened, no breathless ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... came in sight of Ozias Lamb's shop, its window was throwing a long beam of light across the field creeping with dry grass before the frosty wind. When Jerome opened the door, he started to see Ozias seated upon his bench, his head bowed over and hidden upon his idle hands. Jerome ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mirror. Mounted on the back of the mirror are very small magnets. The mirror is suspended by a fiber of the finest silk. Thus the weakest of currents coming in over the wire serve to deflect the mirror, and a beam of light being directed upon the mirror and reflected by it upon a screen, the slightest movement of the mirror is made visible. If the mirror swings too far its action is deadened by compressing the air in the chamber. The instrument is one of the greatest delicacy. ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... to the door, threw it open and cast the beam of light on to the staircase. Softly he began to descend. Before the study door he paused. There was no sound. He threw open the door, directing ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... a bearing upon theory, to be subsequently mentioned, which renders its simple illustration here desirable. A straight lath (pointing to the figure 5 on the arc in fig. 3) is fixed as an index perpendicular to a small looking-glass (M), capable of rotation. We begin by receiving a beam of light upon the glass which is reflected back along the line of its incidence. The index being then turned, the mirror turns with it, and at each side of the index the incident and the reflected beams (L o, o ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... wings and his own hands reenforcing that impregnable covering over his head and neck, threw all his power into his tail—tightening, with terrific, rippling surges, that already throttling band about the throat of his opponent. Only one result was possible. Soon Zerexi lay quiet, and a violet beam of light flared from a torch at the ringside, bathing both contenders. At the flash the winner disengaged himself from the loser, and stood by until the latter had recovered the use of his paralyzed muscles. The two combatants then touched wing tips in salute and flew away ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light, every shadow. There isn't a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square, nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... and yet she was thankful for the light which had been vouchsafed to her at last. It was but a lantern flash through the darkness, which seemed the more opaque for that one thin beam of light; but it was something, a beginning, a clew. For the rest she was going straight to the man who had kept her so ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... threw up a second bird coming down full speed on his other beam. He had bare time to jink between the two as they whizzed past. One switched on her searchlight and fired a whole salvo at him point blank. The heavy stuff went between his funnels. She must have sighted along her own beam of light, which was about a ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... amused him, and he advanced further into the musty porch hoping to find a bell. But as he did so his ear caught the distant sound of shuffling feet. The shuffle of feet drew nearer and presently a beam of light shone out from under the door. A quavering voice ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... lover, come! Again will I wear Bright gold in my hair, And my eyes shall be bright As the beam of light. Come, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... a beam of light on the top of that mountain it looked like a small neutron-source machine. But it wasn't. It was ...
— Dead World • Jack Douglas
... huge boots, clapped on an oilskin hat and waterproof, and disappeared through a door that led to a lower staircase. Phemie, still at the window, albeit with a newly added sense of self-consciousness, hung out breathlessly. Presently a beam of light from the lower depths of the house shot out into the darkness. It was her father with a bull's-eye lantern. As he held it up and clambered cautiously down the bank, its rays fell upon the turbid rushing stream, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... mechanical theory of the universe. Even the soul or life-principle in living creatures was simply a structure of the finest and roundest (and therefore most nimble) atoms, with which he compared the extremely attenuated dust particles visible in their never-ending {79} dance in a beam of light passed into a darkened room. This structure of exceeding tenuity and nimbleness was the source of the motion characteristic of living creatures, and provided that elastic counteracting force to the inward-pressing nimble air, whereby were produced the phenomena of respiration. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... I climb'd past the spot, something very bright flashed in my eyes and dazzled me, and rubbing them and looking, I saw a great hole in the hill—facing to the sou'-west—in the very place I had search'd for it; and out of this a beam of light glancing. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... brilliantly lighted. Out of this stepped an Arab with a lamp in his hand, and gave us an answering shout We stepped into the light. I don't know which was most surprised, the native at seeing such curious figures staggering under large bags through the mud, or we, at beholding in the beam of light from the shed a magic vignette of palms, Eastern buildings and a large South Western ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... said, believe that our state of society is founded in common-sense, otherwise you will not be struck by the contrasts the Comic Spirit perceives, or have it to look to for your consolation. You will, in fact, be standing in that peculiar oblique beam of light, yourself illuminated to the general eye as the very object of chase and doomed quarry of the thing obscure to you. But to feel its presence and to see it is your assurance that many sane and solid ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
