"Blur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by Gray, the Columbia. Then, before they realize it, comes the danger of going with the current on a river with rapids. The stream sweeps to a torrent, mad and unbridled. The canoe is as a chip in a maelstrom, the precipices racing past in a blur, the Indians hanging frantically to the gunnels, bawling aloud in fear, the terrified voyageurs reaching, . . . grasping, . . . snatching at trees overhanging from the banks. The next instant a rock has banged through bottom, tearing away the stern. The canoe ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him. At intervals he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless drifting blur, there was something spectral and uncanny about it all that made him shudder. Occasionally he caught the twinkle of a light—always far away, apparently—almost in another world; if he heard the tinkle of a sheep's bell, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... look around as he thrust his last cartridge into the rifle. He let it lie beside him for half a minute while he opened and shut his right hand, and then, taking it up quickly, fired. Still there was no blur on the white surface of the card and Gladwyne sharply shut his glasses, while two of the onlookers ran toward the target. They came back in silence and one significantly held up the ace. There were three small holes in ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... behind their blur, didn't answer. Indeed, she could not have defined that sweetly sad glow, now so cruelly crushed, even had ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... away, and he saw that maddening circle with the caracoling steeds. He head the discordant music, the monotonous creak of the machinery, the strident laughter of the excited riders. As first the thing was a blur, a kaleidoscope of whirling colors, into which there presently crept form and order. ... A boy who had cried to get on, and was now crying to get off. ... Old Rube Hobson and his young wife; Rube looking white and scared, partly by the whizzing motion, and partly by the prospect of paying out ten ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mend his wife succeeds As he who knows not what he needs. He much affronts a worth as high As his, and that equality Of spirits in which abide the grace And joy of her subjected place; And does the still growth check and blur Of contraries, confusing her Who better knows what he desires Than he, and to that mark aspires With perfect zeal, and a deep wit Which nothing helps but trusting it. So, loyally o'erlooking all In which love's promise short may fall Of full performance, honour that As won, which aye ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... They had taught him the principles of land-surveying at the agricultural college, and this had made his studies easier. When he came back the moon was getting bright, but the haze had thickened on the low ground and the heights behind had faded to a vague, formless blur. The trail of smoke had vanished, there was no wind, and the smooth swell broke against the bows with a monotonous dull roar as the Rio Negro went on. She was alone on the heaving water and steaming ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... meeting with Maurice, she ate her lunch with a glance every few minutes at her great-uncle Allan on the opposite wall. A very black portrait, it seemed only a meaningless blur till in a certain light the strong face and stern eyes shone out of the surrounding gloom with startling effect. She sometimes wondered rather anxiously if the uncle to whose home-coming she looked forward, could by any possibility be like the person for whom he ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... of Kaskaskia while his sick grandfather slept. The moon was nearly full, but on such a night one forgot there was a moon. The bushes dripped on Jean, and the valley below him was a blur pierced by those rows of lights. A great darkness was coming out of the northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept across the world and ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... thrown golden dust in my eyes, and I am seeing things all wrong. We have anchored for the night.... I am watching the misty green blur, which is all that is left to me of India, grow more and more indistinct as darkness falls. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... blur over the words "wooden-head," as if Hector had known that Margaret would disapprove, and had tried to scratch it out. She wrote all the consolation in her power, and exhorted him to patience, apparently without much effect. She would ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... giving one last violent wave to his handkerchief. And then he put it back in his pocket, because the crowd upon the deck of the departing Liner had now become a mere blur in the distance, and distant blurs seemed to his practical nature unworthy any further outlay of personal energy. "But oh!" he added, as he and Carter turned to quit the dock, "how the family are just agoing to revel in peace ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... was fuller and more rounded, because the man knew he was speaking of his best work. Maisie looked at the blur, and a lunatic desire to laugh caught her by the throat. But for Dick's sake—whatever this mad blankness might mean- -she must make no sign. Her voice choked with hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... As some dim blur of distant music nears The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears To forms of time and apprehensive tune, So, as I lay, full soon Interpretation throve: the bee's fanfare, Through sequent films ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... instrument, and at four o'clock in the morning, who could be there, and except one, who would know its working? With a bound he was by the aerophone and had given the answering signal. Then instantly, as though she were standing at his side in the room, for this machine does not blur the voice or heighten its tone, he ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... "Just now, two things blur the picture; I want to get this speech thing off my hands, and I want to find a resister, a sass-back, a contrary cuss, that will argue back at me. I want to keep him nearby to remind me of old times. Why back two years ago, I used to visit old Polo Garrett, ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... nerves were in a condition similar to that of the small boy when he makes his first speech at school. They had reached the meadow, and were coming up the slow incline. I could see nothing as yet but a straw hat, a white blur beneath it, and a brown travelling suit. Through the wide-open yard gate they rolled. Then those who had been called together to welcome her gave cheer after cheer, and waved their hands and hats ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... craft approached the water closely enough, and at such an angle, that Smith looked eagerly for a reflection. However, the water was exceedingly rough, and only a confused brownish blur could be made out. Once he caught a queer sound above the noise of the water; a shrill hiss, with a harsh whine at the end. "Just like some kind of suction apparatus," as he ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... a dreary white plain, alternating with green belts of woodland, while occasionally the train plunges into dense dark pine forest only to emerge again upon the same eternal "plateau" of silence and snow. Now and again we pass a village, a brown blur on the limitless white, rarely a town, a few wooden houses clustering around a green dome and gilt crosses, but it is all very mournful and depressing, especially to one fresh from Europe. This train has one advantage, there is no rattle or roar about it, as it ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the tragedies and comedies might be simmered down to one thing. Were there biscuits in the basket? But Betty Dalrymple did not laugh; her eyes were like stars on a wintry night; her face was white as paper. It was turned now from the steersman—ahead. She saw the blur before them become a definite line of green; later she made out details, the large heads of small trees. The former looked like big overflowing cabbages; the trunks, beneath, sprawled this way and that, as the vagaries of ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... old roof crashing on a Bishop's tomb, Swarms of men with a thirst for room, And the footsteps blur to a shower, shower, shower, Of men passing—passing—every hour, With arms of power, and legs of power, And power in their strong, hard minds. No need then For the slim bronze men Who beat God's hours: Prime, Tierce, None. Who wants to hear? No one. We will melt ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... dazed and benumbed. When Storri concluded and capped all with his Credit Magellan, capital thirty billions, it was, so far as Mr. Harley is to be considered, like taking a child to sea. In the haze and the blur of it, Mr. Harley could see nothing, say nothing; his impulse was to be alone and collect himself. He felt as might one who has been staring at the sun. Storri's picture of an enterprise so vast that it proposed to set out the world ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Nodding to Joel that the moment had come, as the horse advanced and the enemy came within reach, the singing noose shot out, the wolf arose as if to spring, and the next instant Dog-toe whirled under spur and quirt, leaving only a blur behind as he shot across the corral. Only his rider had seen the noose fall true, the taut rope bespoke its own burden, and there was no time to shout. For an instant, Joel held his breath, only catching a swerve in the oncoming horse, whose rider bore down on the centre ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... roar the engine awoke to life and the propeller spun around, a blur of indistinctness. The motor was working sweetly. Toni throttled down, assured himself that everything was working well, and then, with a wave of his hand toward Jack, began to taxi across the field, to head up into the wind. All aeroplanes are started this way—directly into the wind, to rise ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... which sang dismally around him reminded him with a sickening blur of homesickness of the many pleasant evenings he and Evelyn had spent in their little shack, with the same wind making eerie music in the pipe of the stove. Yesterday and to-day were separated by a gulf ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... the Shasta mark in a booming palace-car cartridge; up the rocky canyon, skimming the foaming river, above the level reaches, above the dashing spray—fine exhilarating translation, yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so much ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... all those years of loving thrift, Nor blame nor discord marred their lot; Each to the lover-life was gift; And each was free from blur or blot That called for silence or ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... drift; He tosses them away, He drives them like spray; He makes them veer and shift Around his blustering path. In clouds blindly whirling, In rings madly swirling, Full of crazy wrath, So furious and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In wild, white mirk. They fill the air with frozen wings And tiny, angry, icy stings; They blind the eyes, and choke the breath, They dance a maddening dance of death Around their work, Sweeping the cover from the hill, Heaping ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Switzerland, Abyssinia, and Nepal; of peninsulas like Korea, Spain, and Scandinavia; and of islands like England and Japan. Today we stand amazed at that strong primordial brand of the Japanese character which nothing can blur or erase. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... sins of impurity, and her understanding of such could scarcely have been expressed save in the general language of her prayers. Guarded jealously at every moment of her life, the world had made no blur on the fair tablet of her mind; her Eden had suffered no invasion. She could only repeat to herself that her heart had gone dreadfully astray in its fondness, and that, whatsoever it cost her, the old hopes, the strength of which was ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... blur of sight and sound Mr. Hepplewhite dimly heard Mr. Tutt addressing the jury and saw them lean forward to catch ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... do," she told herself at last, after standing some moments at the window looking across at the peak through a blur of tears,—"I must brace up and comfort Elsie." But Elsie was not to be comforted all at once, and the wheels of that evening ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... her down the street until her blue dress, with its white trimming became a blur in the shadows. Then he struck out once more ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... undergraduate slang, and to convey to Henry the fact that all the hill-folk were solidly behind him, but he knew better than to come out flat with commiseration. Then, too, Standish was conscious of a vague cloud which had come up to blur their relationship. He didn't suspect for an instant the true cause of it, which was his remark, some months ago, that he wouldn't employ in his office a friend such as Henry; but he felt it, and was keenly concerned about it. Nevertheless, his own unselfish interest never ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... loss was merely a blur. The revelation he had just had of the mad lust for money which had begun to possess all classes was yet so fresh and startling he could form no adequate conception ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... of a rudely pentagonal shape, a prominent angle being directed towards the adjacent star. Finally, an exposure of ten hours made by Barnard with the Willard lens indicated the singular fact that the entire group is embedded in a nebulous matrix, streaky outliers of which blur a wide surface of the celestial vault.[1569] The artist's conviction of the reality of what his picture showed was confirmed by negatives obtained by Bailey at Arequipa in 1897, and by H. C. Wilson at Northfield ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... room presently. Out of one corner of her eye Stella saw Linda looking at her queerly. Charlie had turned to the window, staring at the blue blur of the Lions across ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... groves and the orange gardens were so entirely perfect that I became quite a Pre-Raphaelite, and loathed the ordinary impressionists whose muddly souls and blurred intelligences would have rendered, but by mud and blur, those "golden lamps hung in a green night" that filled me with such joy. The elaborate and exquisite detail of the true Pre-Raphaelite is the compensation they offer us for the absence of motion; literature and motion being the only arts that are ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... Anderson, the good old grandfather revived in his unfortunate, perhaps graceless grandson, reseated himself on the door-step and watched the bulky, receding figure of his visitor through a pleasant blur of tears, which made the broad, rounded shoulders and the halting columns of legs dance. This David Anderson had almost forgotten that there was unpaid kindness in the whole world, and it seemed to him as if he ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a rich contralto voice, that of a boy rather than a man, the slight blur of the South distinguishable even in ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... so vast, their dimensions so great, that even across millions of light years of space they appear as tiny glowing discs with faint, indistinct edges. As the men looked out of the clear lux metal windows, they saw the tiny blur of light on the soft black curtain ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Bloom flori. Blossom flori. Blot makulo. Blotch skabio. Blotting paper sorba papero. Blow (stroke) bato. Blow blovi. Blouse kitelo. Blow (of flowers) ekflori. Bludgeon bastonego. Blue blua. Bluish dubeblua. Blunder erarego. Blunt malakra. Blunt (mannered) malafabla. Blur malpurigi. Blush rugxigxi. Bluster fanfaroni. Boa boao. Boar porkviro. Board (food) nutrado—ajxo. Board (plank) tabulo. Board logxi. Boarder (house) logxanto. Boarder (school) edukato. Boarding school edukejo. Boarding-house logxantejo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... used the same long, sweeping strokes as with Agatha. At each of them a warm current of air seemed to strike me, and to suffuse a thrill and glow all through me from head to foot. My eyes were fixed upon Miss Penclosa's face, but as I gazed the features seemed to blur and to fade away. I was conscious only of her own eyes looking down at me, gray, deep, inscrutable. Larger they grew and larger, until they changed suddenly into two mountain lakes toward which I seemed to be falling with horrible rapidity. ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... made a desperate and quite futile effort to assure him that she was nothing of the sort. But she knew that no more than a blur of sound came from her lips, and even while she strove to make herself intelligible the floating world became a dream, and darkness ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the blur, again, awakening at last with Two-and-Two shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Frankie—we're five hours out, by the chronometers—look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing, before? Stripped down to his shorts, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... of his dream home floating in his mind as he steered the Skylark in her meteoric flight or as he strapped himself into his narrow bed. Now, however, the central figure of the vision, instead of being an indistinct blur, was clear and sharply defined. And for her part, more and more was Margaret drawn to the quiet and unassuming, but utterly dependable and steadfast young inventor, with his wide knowledge and his ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... the gloaming, a wistful, drooping little girl surrendering sweepingly to youthful melancholia. She didn't know just what the matter was; she didn't seek for reasons and explanations; she merely stared at the far-off stars which swam in a blue blur, and felt miserable. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... intent, Will he not wake, and in a desperate rage Post hither, this vile purpose to prevent? This siege that hath engirt his marriage, This blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage, This dying virtue, this surviving shame, Whose crime will ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... too agitated to be able to recognize any particular members of his audience. All the faces were fused into a common blur. Miss Airedale, he knew, was in the organ loft, but he had not seen her since his flight from Atlantic City, for he had removed from the Airedale mansion before her return, and had made himself a bed in the corner of the vestry-room. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... stood, he became conscious that there was a moving blur before him, as if some portion of the general darkness, by some trick of vision, had been rendered more compact and animate. Then he saw that it was a cow, and immediately in the animal's wake appeared another ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... could not fail to excite an interest in visitors. The few lines of writing, commencing with the stirring words: 'Courage, mes compatriotes!' ended with only a part of the subscription. The letters, Robes, were all that were appended, and were followed by a blur of the pen; while the lower part of the paper shewed certain discolorations, as if made by drops of blood. And so this was the last surviving token of the notorious Robespierre! It is somewhat curious, that no historian seems to be aware of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... "Blur an' agers!" exclaimed Neal one day, when half tipsy in the fair, "am I never to get a bit o' figtin'? Is there no cowardly spalpeen to stand afore Neal Malone? Be this an' be that, I'm blue-mowlded for want ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... bohemian, and while he could conform to the conventionalities of society, he was never more pleased than when mixing with the variegated mass of mankind, where vice and virtue predominated without the guilt of hypocrisy to blur and blast the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... asleep they did not know, as the ghost-stories have it, but both were suddenly awakened by a commotion outside. It was intensely dark inside the tent, but as the two sat up they noticed a faint moving blur of light, which made itself just visible ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... to aim at him with the rifle I found that I could see only a blur of sights. Other branches and the tip of a very high pine adjoining made a dark background. I changed my position, working around to where the background was all open sky. It proved to be better. By putting the sights against this open sky I could faintly see the front sight through ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... content to remain where we were. The night had fallen; the streets, as they lost themselves in dim turnings, in mysterious alleyways, and arches that seemed grotesquely high in the vague blur of things, were filled for us with the charm of a new and lovely beauty. At one end the street ended in a towering mass of stone; that doubtless was the cathedral. At the right, the narrow houses dipped suddenly; their roof-lines were lost in vagueness. Between the slit made ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to state a fact, in its whole volume and outline, because, first, they could not comprehend it perfectly, and, second, because their power of expression was limited. The lenses by which they apprehended their facts were not adjusted properly, so they saw every thing with a blur. Definite outlines, cleanly cut edges, exact apprehension of volume and weight, nice measurement of relations, were matters outside of their observation and experience. They had broad minds, but bungling; and their language was no better than their apprehensions—usually ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... consult Prue, and Jessie began to display her purchases before eyes that only saw a blur of shapes and colors, and expatiate upon their beauties to ears that only heard the words—"The splendid cousin is married and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... regret.. quietly he passed the missive to Theos, who took it from his hand with a tremor of something like fear. The delicately traced characters with which it was covered floated for a moment in a faint blur before his eyes,—then they resolved themselves into legible shape and meaning, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... women in my time, so many little nothings. It is hard to remember them all. They have become confused now, and blended into an interesting background, whose elements I can no longer separate. Your pardon, my lady, but I have forgotten, forgotten so completely that even the stairs seem merely a gentle blur." ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... for a moment, staring at the closed door, and then turned back to the writing-table and took the letter to Sheila from beneath the blotting-paper. He read it through and sat staring at it until the writing became a dancing blur.... He got up, carrying the letter in his hand, and went to the door and opened it. He tried to call "Gilbert!" but the name came out in a whisper, and before he could call again, he heard the noise of laughter and then the sound of a young voice singing. Mary was downstairs, teasing Ninian. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... A luminous blur became visible in the nearer sky—moving blobs of silver luminosity in the mud-brown light of the Zed-ray. A hundred or more moving silver blobs. They were taking form. The silvery phosphorescent look faded, became grey-white. Took definite shape. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... a page of Dickens, and has the advantage of being less grotesque, if the sentiment is equally obvious. When Pope has made his hit, he does not blur the effect by trying ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... surely fleet Than the smacks that run from her white-shod feet) And clamours of startled calls arise From bewildered ships that have lost their eyes; The fog horn bellows its deep-mouthed shout, The little lights on the shore blur out And strange, dim shapes pass wistfully With a secret tide to a ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... '"Oh, blur an' agres," says my father, "isn't this a hard case," says he, "that ould villain, lettin' on to be my friend, and to go asleep this way, an' us both in the very room with a sperit," says he. "The crass o' Christ about ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... hanging lifeless at his side, his face expressionless. She felt that she had struck right at his life's vitality—that she had killed him. Yet it was not remorse that blinded her till the white road became a shimmering blur—it was a frightful personal pain which was hers and hers alone. Neither spoke. They passed a crowd of natives returning to the Bazaar. They salaamed, but Nehal Singh made no response, as was his wont. He did not seem to see them. Mechanically he guided his horse through the bowing ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... nothing through the porthole save a dark blur, but he heard the creaking of cordage and the slatting of sails. He did not doubt that the slaver had told the truth when he said the schooner would soon start, and there was no possibility of escaping before then. Nevertheless, ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the man on the couch, and she raised her head. In the half darkness he could not have seen how she was suffering. Her face was only a warm blur to him, vague and sweet and beautiful, with tender eyes. He said: "I think—I'm falling asleep. My head is so very, very queer! What is the matter with my head? Coira, do you think I might be kissed before I go ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... nothing but a blur, but she managed to say, "You must be glad! Come and see my little girl, she is very ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... off at midday, but the Britannia towed us well into the afternoon and did not cast us off until the ocean was wide about us and the land a faint blur on the western horizon. Here, at the moment of leaving the tug, we made our "departure"—that is to say, technically began the voyage, despite the fact that we had already travelled a full twenty-four hours away ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... form of the sleeper and making his red face seem purplish and suffused like the face of one I had once seen dead of strangulation; howbeit, he slept well enough, judging from his lusty snoring. Now presently in the surrounding dark beyond the smouldering fire was a glimmer, a vague blur of sloping, trampled bank backed by misty trees; so came the dawn, very chill and full of eddying mists that crawled phantom-like, filling the little dingle brimful and blotting out the surrounding trees. In a little I arose and, coming ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... biting cold till dawn. Douglas was too weary, too much menaced by the cold, to think coherently; for now, conscious of the depletion of his strength, even his new-found happiness could not blur the fact that he and Judith were playing with death on Black Devil Peak. He kept the fire going and fought the desire to sleep until, far below and to the east, the Indian Range turned black against a crimson sky. Then he awakened Judith. They ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... but a wish to be in bed. The room began to blur. People's faces went out of focus. Her teeth began to chatter. Her jaw worked ridiculously like a riveting-gun. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... time the falling snow was sufficiently dense to blur distant outlines, and an indistinct foggy whiteness took the place of the remaining daylight. Mr. Holt hesitated whether to adopt the safer and more laborious plan of following the windings of the shore, or to strike across boldly, and save a mile of meandering ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... with hazy sun and wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the slumber of the air. Filmy purple mists, that were not vapors but fabrics woven of color, hid in the recesses of the hills. San Francisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her heights. The intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon sailing craft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy tide. Far Tamalpais, barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by the Golden Gate, the latter a pale gold pathway under the westering sun. Beyond, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... The missionaries waited in silence; and my eyes began to blur with tears, though I struggled to choke them back. The corners of my mouth twitched, and my ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... like a furious, rapid stream away from the stern. The houses and trees on the shore seemed to run into each other, and slide out of sight almost before the eye could rest upon them. The water alongside was merely a blue-green blur. Nitocris involuntarily held her breath as though she had been ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... blur marked a high, square window, some seven feet from the floor. There was but one. In all probability the door lay directly opposite. That being true, the natural inclination of a man flying down the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... sent greetings; nothing more is necessary. And now I'll go back to my dogs. Strange! I want to fix my thoughts on death, and nothing comes of it. I see a kind of blur ... and nothing more.' ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the thousand-foot peak of Fernando Noronha was a dark blur on the western horizon. No sail or smudge of smoke broke the remainder of the far-flung circle. The fugitives could breathe freely once more. They were ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... heavy, yet she was certain that it was not the woman's. A blur of voices drifted up to her, the dejected feminine tone and a thin querulous demand, surprise. Taou Yuen turned cold as stone: the sensation of oppressive danger increased until it seemed as if she, and not Nettie ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... talked about Gerald. But that was some six months ago, when things felt easier. Today Gerald was the faintest blur. Fortunately the conversation turned to Mr. Pembroke and to education. Did women lose a lot by not knowing Greek? "A heap," said Rickie, roughly. But modern languages? Thus they got to Germany, which he had visited ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... them up; I couldn't see that we were getting home so fast; but in a minute a cornfield passed like a streak, a piece of woods flew by a dark blur, a bridge never had time to rattle, and we began to rock from side to side a little. Then I gripped the top supports with one hand, the mail with the other, and hung on for dear life. I took one good look ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... an eye for all things, from the baskets of fruit and flowers, messengers with late orders from the stores, repeated farewells, to the squalling babies in the steerage. Even in the impudent shrieking tugboats he found a measure of delight; and the blur on ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of assent. He also sat down. He had a dim impression that he could talk better if he took her hand, but he did not venture to ask for it. He contented himself with fixing his eyes upon as much of her face as he could make out in the dusk, a pale blur in a vague ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... the hairpin mountain turns. Now I am perfectly willing to travel as fast as any one, if necessity demands it, but to tear through a region as beautiful as Venetia at sixty miles an hour, with the incomparable landscape whirling past in a confused blur, like a motion-picture film which is being run too fast because the operator is in a hurry to get home, seems to me as unintelligent as it is unnecessary. Like all Italian drivers, moreover, our chauffeur insisted on keeping his cut-out wide open, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the horizon, and the breakwater, after dashing up one flash of gold, became a blue blur, Gregorio rose to go. As he walked back toward the Penny-farthing Shop he felt angry and unsatisfied. The whole day was wasted. He had done nothing to relieve his wife, nothing to pay off Amos. Madam met him at the door, a flask of wine in her hand. Against his will Gregorio entered her cafe and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... continued stubbornly dark, and by the time Sally gave up trying to determine precisely which window it had been, and turned her gaze seaward again, the boat had vanished. Its lights, at least, were no longer visible, and it was many minutes before the girl succeeded in locating the blur it made on the face of the waters. It seemed to be moving, but the distance was so great that she could not be sure ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... masther is waitin' to spake to ye, an' sint me to tell you to come down to his place in a hurry.'—'An' who the devil is your masther?' says I; 'an' didn't think ye had one, only yourself, an' you so fine.'—'Oh,' says he, 'my masther is the Prence Ragin.'—'Blur an' ouns,' says I; 'tell his honour I'll be wid him in the twinklin' ov a bedpost, the minit I take my face from behind my beard, an' get on my clane flax; but stop a bit,' says I; 'where does the masther live?'—'Down at Carltown Palace,' says he; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... the journey through the traffic-laden streets to the hotel was so vivid a panorama of shifting scenes that, to the unaccustomed eyes of the girls, it seemed like one confused blur. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... window. The square was almost empty once more. The motor-cars still traveling about the streets were going so swiftly they were hardly visible. Their speed seemed to increase steadily. Soon it was almost impossible to distinguish them, and only a grayish blur marked their paths along Fifth Avenue and ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... on deck again twilight had fallen, but far back on the horizon was a tiny blur—the Silver Star. As Jack gazed back at her, she vanished below the horizon as suddenly as an extinguished spark in a piece ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the foulest pen, Or fairest handled by the sons of men. 'Twill also show what is upon it writ, Be it wisely, or nonsense for want of wit, Each blot and blur it also will expose To thy next readers, be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... throat, swerving its charge, and the unicorn plunged past him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from its squeal, and the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the horn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowler like the swift, ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... won't come back ever again?" The meadows swam in a blur before her eyes, and she thought of the purple velvet slippers which ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... winking lights and its moving ferries spilling swaying reflections in the water out of their square reddish-glowing windows. If they had been lucky, they would have seen a liner come in through the Golden Gate, growing from a blur of light to a huge moving brilliance, like the front of a high-class theatre, that towered above the ferry boats. You could often hear the thump of the screw and the swish of the bow cutting the calm baywater, and the sound of a band playing, that came alternately ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... and the merriment struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he danced that he might forget the gray of morning, the black, dead trees, and the grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the breeze like a pendulum. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... shadow, as swift, Attusah is on his feet. At the back of the great niche, so high that none could conceive that it might afford an exit, a fissure lets in a vague dreary blur of light from spaces beyond. Leaping high into the air, the lithe young warrior fixes his fingers on the ledge, crumbling at first, but holding firm under a closer grasp. The elder man, understanding the ruse as if by instinct, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... animal neighed, and Garin, hearing the sound, reined in and peered forward into the gloom, to descry the horse's head and back outlined above the blur of the hedge. His men halted behind him whilst he approached the riderless beast and made—as well as he could in the darkness—an examination of the saddle. One holster he found empty, at which he concluded ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... teacher as clear in definition as a cameo. This teacher may not have been the most scholarly, or the most successful in popular esteem, or even the most handsome, but she had some quality that differentiates her in our thinking from all others. Others may seem but a sort of blur in our memory, but not so this one. She alone ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... hear when a strong man dies of a sudden wound. Somehow the defacement of the portrait was taken by his soul as the final touch of fate, signifying that Alice was forever and completely obliterated from his life. He felt a blur pass over his mind. He tried in vain to recall the face and form so dear to him; he tried to imagine her voice; but the whole universe was a vast hollow silence. For a long while he was cold, staring, rigid; then the inevitable ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... mountain line, being nearer now, had deepened to black, and the Sierra seemed to hang over him, ominously. But the dark summits were still without detail, and midway down, where the solid color broke into deep green verdure and was mottled by patches of dry slabs of rock, there was yet that massive blur which told of distance. Foothills had rolled from the towering slide, and mounds had tumbled from the hills, and a tide of giant pebbles had swept down from the mounds. These rugged boulders had turned the trail, so that the American was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... for an anchorage than we had found that day. We had not camped on the open coast as had been our custom, but in a sun-warmed meadow a few paces inland, where there were birds, and tasseling grasses, and all kinds of glancing lights and odors to steal into a man's blood. I parted the trees. The blur of gray ashes from our fire was undisturbed; our canoes lay, bottom upwards, waiting to have the seams newly pitched, and the cargo was piled, untouched, against a tree. All was as we left it. And there, in the shade of a maple, lay the Englishman, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... explained Ja, "for the Mezops of Luana are always at war with us and would steal them if they found them," he nodded toward an island farther out at sea, and at so great a distance that it seemed but a blur hanging in the distant sky. The upward curve of the surface of Pellucidar was constantly revealing the impossible to the surprised eyes of the outer-earthly. To see land and water curving upward in the distance until it seemed to stand on edge where it melted ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dim moonlight. Scotty carried the power supply on a strap over his shoulder while Rick carried the camera and its attachments. The thing was uncanny, even when its operation was understood. To the naked eye, Dismal was just a vague blur under the trees. But with the infrared searchlight on him, Rick could see him through the telescope as though it were white light. He shot a few feet of film, then took it to the photo lab. He could develop ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... was growing more and more shadowy, becoming a mere blur on the horizon. By nightfall the Mare Nostrum was in front of Cape Palos and he had to sail in the outer waters in order to double it, leaving Cartagena in the distance. From there, he turned his course to the southwest, to the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... I have discovered what some of them believe to be the ordinary waking experience of one who is both deaf and blind. They think that I can know very little about objects even a few feet beyond the reach of my arms. Everything outside of myself, according to them, is a hazy blur. Trees, mountains, cities, the ocean, even the house I live in are but fairy fabrications, misty unrealities. Therefore it is assumed that my dreams should have peculiar interest for the man of science. In some undefined way it is expected that they should ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... in a hurry no longer made the wayside hedges appear aged. The wind was newly arrived from mid-ocean. I met it coming ashore. It knew nothing about us, so far. In the distance, the village with its shipping was a faint blur, already a faded impress on earth, as though more than half forgotten in spite of its important problems. It was hardly more than a discoloration, and suggested nothing of consequence. The sun on the grey rocks was giving a ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... children o'er An oaken floor, New-rinsed with sunshine, or bespread With but the tiny coverlet And pillow for the baby's head; And pray Thou, may The door stand open and the day Send ever in a gentle breeze, With fragrance from the locust-trees, And drowsy moan of doves, and blur Of robin-chirps, and drone of bees, With afterhushes of the stir Of intermingling sounds, and then The good-wife and the smile of her Filling the silences again— The cricket's call, And the wee cot, Dear Lord of all, Deny ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... to San Francisco, where the only memory that remains is that of a confused blur of preparations for leaving—packing, ticket-buying, and melancholy farewells—for the time had come to return to old Scotland to introduce a newly acquired ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Burnett's Mound, and the sweet remembrance of Marjie's last affectionate look made a blur before them. We stood in silence ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... waving wheat And leagues of golden corn The fragrance of the wild-rose bloom And elder-flower is borne; But earth's appealing loveliness We do but half surmise, For oh, the blur of battle-fields Is ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... I had run up in the morning flapped fold against fold, heaving and tossing softly in the dark—against a sky so black with rain clouds that I could see above me only the blur of something in ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... yonder Captain Coffin was waiting in his shore-boat. I listened, minute after minute, on the chance of hearing his hail. A heavy bank of cloud had overcast the moon, and the packet melted from sight in a blur of darkness. Worst of all—worse even than the sting of self-reproach—was the prospect of returning to Stimcoe's and wearing through the night, while out there in the darkness the two men would meet, and all that followed their meeting must ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... in its awful horizon, No blur in the dazzling haze, Save where by the bordering timber The fierce, white heat-waves blaze, And out where the tank-heap rises Or looms when the sunlights wane, Till it seems like a distant mountain Low down on the ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... pushed the hat off her face and stared with exotically slanted black eyes at the shining blur of the dome hundreds of feet above her. She sat up, hugging her ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... do be careful!" I muttered, picking it up, and noticing the great blur it left on the page. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... against the gate for support. Celia's face became a mere blur before his eyes. What had he done—what had he done? For, at that moment, the conviction came with terrible force upon him that he, and he alone, would be responsible for Squire ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... complex of his habits of thought varies with the degree of immediacy, urgency, or exclusiveness with which the individual habitually applies the animistic or anthropomorphic formula in dealing with the facts of his environment. The animistic habit acts in all cases to blur the appreciation of causal sequence; but the earlier, less reflected, less defined animistic sense of propensity may be expected to affect the intellectual processes of the individual in a more pervasive way than the higher ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... There was a blur before the lady's eyes—a buzzing in her ears—and the footfall she had listened for so long was now unheard as it came slowly to her side. But the light touch upon her arm—the well-remembered voice within her ear, calling her "Madam Conway," sent through her an ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... the continued low blur of auto horns from Fifth Avenue, but his own street was silent and he was safe in here from all the threat of life, for there was his door and the long hall and his guardian bedroom—safe, safe! The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the boy slipped into a tangle of brush that marked the upper end of his patch of timber. The bare summit of the ridge stretched away in the half-light to merge in a mysterious blur with the indistinct valley of the Ten Bow. The wind was blowing gently from the ridge and the boy figured that if the wolf pack followed the summit as he hoped, they must pass within twenty yards of him. "If it don't go and cloud up before they get ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... lay between the stage and the boat. The girl's dress remained a spot of cheerful color; her face was a blur. As the watermen swung the bows down-stream, she looked back, lifting an arm spectral in its white sheath. Kirkwood raised ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... was to find himself again within the sheltering arms of the Refuge. That awakening was almost to a full and clear consciousness. It was with no confusion of thought and but little confusion of sight, except for a white mist that seemed to blur the things he saw. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... The day had been a blur! Well, probably all the rest of life would be a blur. Anyway, one could still dine, and he recollected that the puree of tomatoes at last night's dinner had been rather to his liking. He seated himself deliberately at the board, congratulating himself that he would be allowed to go ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... days were rather a blur, as if a man were walking on a red-hot mirror that tipped up and down and tried to take his legs from under him. There was a water-hole a little to the east of the way we had come, and toward that I tried ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Even the stream beyond the laurel shrubberies ran silently. Dimly he made out the garden lying at attention, the flower-beds like folded hands upon its breast; and further off, the big untidy elms in pools of deeper shadow, their outlines blurred as dreams blur the mind. Yet, though he could detect no slightest movement, he was keenly aware that other things beside the stars were looking at him. The night was full of carefully- screened eyes, all fixed upon him. Framed in the lighted window, he was ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the spiritual convictions, the intuitions of our souls, that lie upon their surface like direct reflections from heaven, distinct and beautiful enough for reverent contemplation, but a curious search into whose nature would, at any rate temporarily, blur and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... warm undercurrent of a dream. The dream had come to her many springs ago; and as Flossie grew plumper and rosier it grew plump and rosy too. To be married (to a person hitherto unspecified in fancy, whose features remained a blur or a blank), to be the mistress of a dear little house (the house stood out very clear in Flossie's fancy), and the mother of a dear little girl (a figure ever present to her, complete in socks and shoes and all the delicious details of its dress). Compared with that vision of Flossie's, no ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... standing in the rear car of the Great Northern train. He speaks as though the snow had hidden something priceless. Here is the view: One railway track and a line of staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. To the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses, ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... handrail: all indistinguishable. One step farther down or up, and why? But up is harder. Down! Down to this white blur; ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... took the corner in a blur of lamplight and shadow, tipped over a large stone and disappeared down the high-banked lane, leaving Helen with an impressive, half-alarming memory of the two jolted figures, black, with white ovals for faces, side by side, and Zebedee's spare frame clearing itself, now and ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... world; the canon would sink back into its own night, all its moonlit imageries melting, vanishing. In the hour before dawn Waring would be unable to see anything of the farther wall save a wavering blur. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... over St. Louis newspapers of last week's vintage, and never failing to glance at the death notices. For one week an advertisement under PERSONAL appeared, which every time she encountered it was sure to blur over her vision with ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... of ecstasy or sorrow, a blind outcry of thanksgiving or of bitterness, or they are the clumsy expression of some practical truth, as, the wisdom of acquiescence, and the futility of preoccupation with evil. But taken seriously and literally such statements are simply untrue to the facts and blur our fundamental perceptions. If actually accredited, either would lead to quiescence; if everything were equally good or evil all striving would be meaningless, one might as well jump from a housetop or walk into the fire. But as a matter ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... acquainted with unofficial currents of opinion. He could talk freely to journalists or to merchants, could put them at their ease and get the information which he wanted. His comprehensiveness was remarkable. The strife of politicians in the foreground did not blur the distant landscape. In Russia, behind Balkan intrigues and Black Sea troubles he could see the cloud of danger overhanging the Pamirs. In Spain or Portugal he was watching and forecasting the possibilities of the white races in Africa. So his dispatches, varied and vivacious ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Bar looks, with the loaded coach and the cab going through the central arch, and the blur of the hurrying throng darkening the small lateral ones! A fine old structure,—always reminds a Bostonian of the old arch over which the mysterious Boston Library was said still to linger out its existence late into the present century. But where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various |
