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Nimbus   Listen
noun
Nimbus  n.  (pl. L. nimbi, E. nimbuses)  
1.
(Fine Arts) A circle, or disk, or any indication of radiant light around the heads of divinities, saints, and sovereigns, upon medals, pictures, etc.; a halo. See Aureola, and Glory, n., 5. Note: "The nimbus is of pagan origin." "As an attribute of power, the nimbus is often seen attached to the heads of evil spirits."
2.
(Meteor.) A rain cloud; one of the four principal varieties of clouds. See Cloud.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nimbus" Quotes from Famous Books



... kindled flickered and wavered, a red spot on the duskier shore, with a yellow nimbus in which they saw him move here and there, and sit down at last with his back to a log and his ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... successful experiment had, as it chanced, been conducted under Mr. Gray's personal and ardent supervision. He had overseen the flying of the kites, the impudent invasion of the upper depths when a button was touched, and then he had seen the white cumulus clouds gather and become nimbus, followed by a brief rainfall upon a hot and yellow land. He had felt as Moses may have felt when he smote the rock, as De Lesseps may have felt when he brought the seas together. He thought one of the man-helping problems of the ages ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... with a delicate veil of mist softening all outlines. How the river dances and sparkles; how the new leaves of all the trees shine under the sun; the air has a soft lustre; there is a haze, it is not blue, but a kind of shining, diffused nimbus. No clouds, the sky a bluish white, very soft and delicate. It is the nuptial day of the season; the sun fairly takes the earth to be his own, for better or for worse, on such a day, and what marriages there are going on all ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... halt, and fling up his arms, as if apostrophizing Heaven, as if asking a question of the stars that twinkled in the wide-flung nimbus of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... who have peered across glaring sands, and his black eyebrows united above his aquiline nose. The qualities that made him her antithesis redoubled his worth; and the prestige of romance clung round his head like a nimbus. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... than have been raised to the richest Bishopric in England. And yet, with this exultation, there was a spirit of deep melancholy pervading his countenance, as well as his discourses, that seemed to imply a sense of danger. The nimbus of the saint in his eyes was associated with the crown of martyrdom. He seemed to look forward to a fatal termination of his ministry, as the most and proper conclusion ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... potatoes, the temperature would at once begin to rise, and the later in the season, the faster it would go up. I repeat that a cellar filled with potatoes will have a much higher temperature than the same cellar would have if empty. This I have learned as Nimbus learned tobacco growing—"by 'sposure." I hope I won't be asked "why." I don't know. The reason is unimportant. The remedy is the thing. The only help for it that I know of is to give the cellar plenty ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... he might suspect of the heinous crimes of idleness or "cribbing"—both unforgivable offences in his calendar—that the aforesaid gown, I recollect, seemed frequently to float over his head—forming in conjunction with his square college cap, alias "mortar board," a regular "nimbus," like that surrounding the heads of the saints ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... sun filled air with gold; Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled, And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare, Forming about her head a nimbus rare. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... and, a little beyond, he pulled his travelling cap over his ears, and settled down to slumber. I sat wide awake beside him. The spring night had a touch of chill in it, and the breath of our horses, streaming back upon the lamps of the caleche, kept a constant nimbus between me and the postillions. Above it, and over the black spires of the poplar avenues, the regiments of stars moved in parade. My gaze went up to the ensign of their noiseless evolutions, to the pole-star, and to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... equipped with special apparatus for the maintenance of its right to live. By the expansion and partial closing of the valves it swims or is propelled with a curiously energetic, fussy, mechanical action, while the ever-active pink rays—a living, nimbus—beat rhythmically, imperiously waving ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... perchance, the historian accepted from remote antiquity the accounts of great deeds and striking events, as they were told at the camp fires of the Hebrew nomads, or in the merry makings of the Palestinian villages, with an ever growing nimbus of the marvelous gathering around them; and if thus impossible marvels are reported to us soberly, are we to be compelled to accept them uncritically or reject the Bible altogether? The Bible itself points us to the interpretation of such legends We have some histories ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... with purple nimbus, towering in gloomy magnificence aloft, but fined to nothingness on the horizon. The sun saw his chance, and took it. As the storm-cloud was borne a trifle upwards, he flashed ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... that she had grown up in the house of the man who had written these lines intensified the glow of her nimbus ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... generally speaking, the greatest have been for collections formed and dispersed without any view to profit, where the state of the market has accidentally favoured the owner, or there was some nimbus round the name. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... compartment, a figure of the Blessed Virgin, seated on a carved throne, holding a fleur-de-lis in her right hand, and supporting with her left the Infant Saviour upon her knee. The Holy Child is distinguished by a cruciform nimbus, while that of the Virgin is a plain circle. The Child is raising the right hand in benediction, and holds in the left an orb. The vesica is bordered with a double dotted line, containing the salutation: "Ave: Maria: gracia: plena: ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... originally a sort of nimbus of a larger order, surrounding the entire figure, instead of merely the head. It was oval in shape, like the ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... lunette.—The Theotokos, in the attitude of prayer, with the Holy Child, in a nimbus, on her breast; ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... a marvelous womanhood, sat before him like an embodied spirit. Her beauty of soul shone out in gorgeous luxuriance, and seemed to him to envelop her in a sheen of radiance. The brilliant sunshine glanced sparkling from her glossy hair into a nimbus of light about her head. Her rich complexion was but faintly suggestive to him of a Latin origin. Her oval face and regular features might have indicated any of the ruddier branches of the so-called Aryan stock. But his thought was not dwelling on these things now. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... crowd of men kneeling at this same boy's feet, kissing them, kissing his hands, his garments, the very earth he stood upon, worshipping him, while above the altar the kingly young face looked on with the nimbus of light like a halo above it. If he dared speak his mind now, he felt he could have endured it better. But being ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... flashed in and out of the sunshine; and he took note of the radiant nimbus above her head each time the sunshine touched ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... building of the church, which was erected in the thirteenth century. On one of the corbels (the nearest to the altar, and therefore in the most honourable place) there is a lamb bearing a flag. The lamb has a nimbus {279} round its head, and the staff of the flag terminates in a cross like the head of a processional cross. The device, I have reason to think, was the badge of the knights of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, who had a preceptory in this neighbourhood ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various

... discovery. There was a downy shadow upon his upper lip. What he had just found out was that this down could be seen projecting beyond the line of his lip, like a tiny nimbus. It could be ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... of lightning accompanied the priest's last words and the crash of the thunder came almost simultaneously. The obscurity was momentarily increasing, and the gigantic, nimbus cloud-band now reached far beyond the zenith, its slate-blue edges contrasting vividly with the green-and-saffron tints of the narrow strip of clear sky that still remained visible. And in another moment that, too, had ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... her friend, Flip made her way with unerring woodcraft down the ravine. The sound of voices and even the tumult of the storm became fainter, an acrid smell of burning green wood smarted Lance's lips and eyes; in the midst of the darkness beneath him gradually a faint, gigantic nimbus like a lurid eye glowed and sank, quivered and faded with the spent breath of the gale as it penetrated their retreat. "The pit," whispered Flip; "it's safe on the other side," she added, cautiously skirting the orbit of the great eye, and leading him to a sheltered nest of bark and sawdust. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... lives, made beautiful and sweet By self-devotion and by self-restraint, Whose pleasure is to run without complaint On unknown errands of the Paraclete, Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet, Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint Around the shining forehead of the saint, And are in their completeness incomplete! In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower, The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,— ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... not become visible for several seconds; Gerald's nerves crisped with apprehension. The apparition was an incandescent chariot; in it sat Karospina, and beside him—oh! the agony of her lover—Mila Georgovics. As the fiery horses swooped down, he could see her face in a radiant nimbus of meteors, which encircled the equipage. Karospina proudly directed its course over the azure route, and once he passed Gerald at a dangerously ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... as she gazed. They seemed to be really in the grotto of some nymph who had fled the instant she saw her privacy invaded, or veiled the immortal mystery and loveliness of her charms in some mesh of the glimmering nimbus that baffled and entangled the sight. Save one or two stifled cries of rapture from Virginia and Carl, not a syllable was uttered: perfect stillness prevailed, until Penn said, in ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... hangs one of the few Zurbarans of the gallery,—also a gloomy and terrible work. A monk kneels in shadows which, by the masterly chiaroscuro of this ascetic artist, are made to look darker than blackness. Before him in a luminous nimbus that burns its way through the dark, is the image of the crucified Saviour, head downwards. So remarkable is the vigor of the drawing and the power of light in this picture that you can imagine you see the resplendent crucifix suddenly ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... nebulosity, rack; cirrus, cat's-tail, mare's-tail; cumulus, stratus, nimbus; cirro-cumulus, cirro-stratus, cumulo-stratus; storm scud, wane cloud; tarnish, blemish; eclipse, obscurity. Associated Words: nephology, meteorology, nubiferous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... weaker mental fibre. It was not that we yearned after these strange instruments in themselves; Edward, indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of his squirrel's cage, and for personal use, when a superior eye was grim on him, borrowed Harold's or mine, indifferently; but the nimbus of distinction that clung to them—that we coveted exceedingly. What more, indeed, was there to ascend to, before the remote, but still possible, razor ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... somebody said Guido was a dreamy name, as if it belonged to one who was full of faith. Those golden curls shaking about his head as he ran and filling the air with radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or circlet of glory. So they called him St. Guido, and a very, very wild ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... at her back her exclamation told them that she had heard. She stood in the unbroken sweep of her Court gown. Her slim hands gripped the ermine which fell from her shoulders to the floor and slowly crushed it between clenched fingers. About her head the light touched her hair into a soft nimbus. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... pardon, or a fete, or a first communion, we never knew. But the town of St. Lo is ever gloriously lighted, for us, with a nimbus of young heads, such as encircled ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... drags at the tough air, and how her throat resents the sting of the large percentage of sulphur monoxide it contains. The gas-jet is on at the full—or rather the tap is, for the fish-tail burner doesn't realise its ideal. It sputters in its lurid nimbus—gets bronchitis on its own account, tries to cough its tubes clear and fails. Sally and her mother sit on in the darkness, and talk about it, shirking the coming suffocation of their old friend, and praying that his sleep may last ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... blaring of the band as it had saluted her trembling, bowing figure in the box—finally would prove too strong for her. He, too, had come in for some of the applause, a sort of inverted glory which like a frosty nimbus envelopes the head of the librettist. Now he recalled all this and rejoiced that his charge was safely ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... seconds Clancy is invisible, the sulphurous smoke forming a nimbus around him. When it ascends, he is seen prostrate upon the earth; the blood gushing from a wound in his breast, and spurting over ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... air and water.] Bubble [Cloud.] — N. bubble, foam, froth, head, spume, lather, suds, spray, surf, yeast, barm^, spindrift. cloud, vapor, fog, mist, haze, steam, geyser; scud, messenger, rack, nimbus; cumulus, woolpack^, cirrus, stratus; cirrostratus, cumulostratus; cirrocumulus; mackerel sky, mare's tale, dirty sky; curl cloud; frost smoke; thunderhead. [Science of clouds] nephelognosy^; nephograph^, nephology^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... light. By it I marked the Admiral, upright where he could best command the whole. He had lashed himself there, for the ship tossed excessively. His great figure stood; his white, blowing hair, in that strange light, made for him a nimbus. It was strange, how the light seemed to seize that and his brow and his gray-blue eyes. Below the eyes his lips moved. He was shouting encouragement, but only the intention could be heard. The intention was heard. He looked what he was, something ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... sentiment in which there was a thread of moral tinsel, as there was in the Southern idea of chivalry; but he felt ashamed of his own poverty, the positive flatness of his situation, when he thought of the gilded nimbus that surrounded the protegee of Mrs. Burrage. This shame was possible to him even while he was conscious of what a mean business it was to practise upon human imbecility, how much better it was ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... behind him, and from the footboard, strong lights played full and flary upon his twitching, aching eyelids; and finally, towards dawn, with every nerve behind his eyes taut with pain and strain, awakening unrefreshed to consciousness of that nimbus of unrelieved false glare which encircled him, and the stench of melted tallow and the stale reek of burned kerosene foul in his nose. That, now, had been the hardest of all to endure. Endured ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... the wealthy and the work-girl to a baffling level, in a blue serge costume of severe cut; a plain white linen coat-collar and a small hat, which covered, but did not hide, a mass of hair which, against the slanting sunlight at her back, lent the illusion of a golden nimbus about her head. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... prosperous, as we may have been, with nothing to complain of as to our success or our situation—how many of us have been disposed to repeat that lament of AEneas where he was continually baffled in holding closer conversation with his goddess-mother who was always carried off in a nimbus or her accents lost in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... proclamation of the Lamb of God, and Peter's quotation of this very prophecy, and the continual recurrence in the Apocalypse of the name of The Lamb as the title of honour of 'Him who sitteth on the throne.' A kind of nimbus or aureole shines round the humble figure as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... She was aware only of a certain metallic cadence which beat cruelly upon her nerves. Silence had followed, but not of the same sort as before. As though seeking complete withdrawal, Evelyn turned her eyes out of the window. A wayfarer, head down, was struggling through the nimbus of watery electric light; a horse-drawn vehicle was plodding by. Colcord's voice brought her back; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... neglected stone which marked her resting-place, and was bending in the sunset light to examine it, when the rustle of a woman's skirts attracted my attention, and I perceived advancing toward me a young girl in a nimbus of rosy light which seemed to lift her from the ground and give to her delicate figure and strangely illumined head an ethereal aspect which her pure features and tender bearing did not belie. In her arms she carried a ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... glistening, strange and eerie; the South Sea, savage and tempestuous, blowing a fitful blast. The lesser waters have a lighter quality. The hair of the sea-spirits suggests seaweed and coral. From the mouths of of the sea-chargers jets of water rise to meet the nimbus and rainbows of the semi-spherical downpour of the ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... under the moon, we rose at 5 A.M. and loaded the camels. It was a raw morning. A large nimbus rising from the east obscured the sun, the line of blue sea was raised like a ridge by refraction, and the hills, towards which we were journeying, now showed distinct falls and folds. Troops of Dera or gazelles, herding like ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... of our Blessed Lord, used in Church decorations. The lamb is the chief emblem of our Saviour who was called by St. John Baptist, "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." The lamb is represented with a nimbus or glory of four rays, one partly concealed by the head. The rays are marks of divinity and belong only to our Lord. The lamb bearing a flag or banner signifies Victory, and is an emblem of the Resurrection. This symbolism is ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... from the hamlets and fields of the pious Mary. That is what is intended! Then they will hurry off to the Bishop with the great news and to crown one marvel with another, the reversion will be secured of a martyr's nimbus. And this is what all this zeal is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a blue nimbus of crackling flame, his skin blackening, charred. He was dead in an instant. A second pillar of flame bloomed next to the car, and a choking scream was cut off at the moment it ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... crosier, or the sword; above all, no circle round the head, until—the figure standing out at last and seeming to represent, as near as may be, the true pastor or warrior it claims to represent—the moment arrives when I say, "Yes, I have done all I can,—now he may have his nimbus!" ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... glow of that great love, this death Would melt away like a fantastic cloud; I should no more shrink from it than from the breath That makes in the frosty air a nimbus-shroud; Thou, Love, hast conquered death, and I aloud Should triumph over him, with thy saintly crowd, That where the Lamb ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... had danced many a time before his shrine, had no objection whatever to the godlet, except only when he neglected to appear Olympianly, as divinity should, with a nimbus of rentrolls ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... according to the classification of Luke Howard. They contemplated those which spread out like manes, those which resemble islands, and those which might be taken for mountains of snow—trying to distinguish the nimbus from the cirrus and the stratus from the cumulus. The shapes had altered even before they had ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... Oval: St. Bartholomew, with nimbus, lifting up the right hand in benediction, in the left hand a long cross. The saint is half length on the section of a church, with round-headed arches, and two ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... place was the indefinite continuation of the opposite shore down toward the nether world. One seemed to be in an enchanted land, and to breathe all day the atmosphere of fable and romance. Not a smoke, but a kind of shining nimbus filled all the spaces. The vessels would drift by as if in mid-air with all their sails set. The gypsy blood in one, as Lowell calls it, could hardly stay between four walls and see such days go by. Living in tents, in groves ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... every serious man was surrounded by a "nimbus" of infallibility; no one had ever enlightened me on the fact that serious-minded men had themselves once been young, and had learned the student jargon of Heidelberg; that this director himself, after a noisy youth, had arrived at the idea that every young man has malicious propensities, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... one—a true hero of a novel. The foreign appearance of this Tchernoff made a great impression upon him—his dishevelled beard, and oily locks, his spectacles upon a large nose that seemed deformed by a dagger-thrust. There emanated from him, like an invisible nimbus, an odor of cheap ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... are transposed, their attitudes become intelligible. S. John is inculcating a message inscribed in his open book, while the monk is displaying his humble answer on his own page. The use in it of the term servus suggests that he is a Servite, though the want of the nimbus precludes the idea that he is one of the founders. It is probable that he is S. Filipo Benizzi, who, though considered as a saint from the time of his death, was not canonised ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... [Footnote: Saint Guido was a fanciful name given to the little boy because his shock of golden curls looked like the nimbus around a saint's head.] ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and down the lane till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the bunches of grass and so pulled himself up. There was a footpath on the top which went straight in between fir-trees, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... whatever art, must maintain his own circle of serene air, shutting out from it the flat reverberations of common life; but if he fail to live generously toward his fellows,—if he cannot make the light of every day supply the nimbus in which he hopes to appear shining to posterity,—then he will fall into the treacherous pit of selfishness where Septimius's soul lies smothered. But this set of meanings runs imperceptibly into others, for the book is much like the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... grave, yet with something blithe and unperturbed in his bearing that, as she stood waiting for what he might say to her, seemed the very nimbus of chivalry. He was splendid to look at, too, tall and strong with clear kind eyes and clear ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... through witticism or story; but this creative mood is intermittent and spasmodic. Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done in the lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the mind in the second stage is associated with ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... of space complain? No, as Nature had given them the splendid spectacle of a cosmic meteor shining by formidable expansion, as this incomparable display of fireworks, which no Ruggieri could imitate, had lighted for a few seconds the invisible nimbus of the moon. During that rapid peep, continents, seas, and forests had appeared to them. Then the atmosphere did give there its life-giving particles? Questions still not solved, eternally asked by ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... eyes that looked at the anvil as if it was the horizon of the world. He had got a horse-shoe in his tongs when I entered. Notwithstanding the fire that glowed on the hearth, and the sparks that flew like a nimbus in eruption from about his person, the place looked very dark to me entering from the glorious blaze of the almost noontide sun, and felt cool after the deep lane through which I had come, and which had seemed a very reservoir of sunbeams. I could see ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... scraping sound on the outside of his cabin, and a dark shadow eclipsed the faint nimbus of light which the foggy night sent through his porthole. On the deck directly over his head three dark figures sat in deck chairs, while a fourth paced the deck, his cigar glowing like the tail lamp ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... no more keep it from shining than I could the sun. The next thing was, that I began to think of one I had loved, then of another and another and another—then of all together whom ever I had loved, one after another, then all together. And the light that went out from me was as a nimbus infolding every one in the speechlessness of my love. But lo! then, the light staid not there, but, leaving them not, went on beyond them, reaching and infolding every one of those also, whom, after the manner of men, I had on earth merely known and ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... I still sat there, the door was very gently opened, and I beheld Giuliana standing before me. She detached from the black background of the passage, and the light of my three-beaked lamp set her ruddy hair aglow so that it seemed there was a luminous nimbus all about her head. For a moment this gave colour to my fancy that I beheld a vision evoked by the too great intentness of my thoughts. The pale face seemed so transparent, the white robe was almost diaphanous, and the great dark eyes looked so sad and wistful. Only in the vivid ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... Nux vomica. Nil desperandum. Nihil fit!" said the Boy enthusiastically. The Philosopher gazed at the Child. A strange presence seemed to transfuse and possess him. Over the brow of the Boy glittered the pale nimbus of the Student. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... neglectful ancestors; and it is a fault that none need really blush for in the present. For such as they there still remains the example of the turnpike-loving clerk, with all its golden possibilities. Denied the great delight of driving a locomotive, or a fire-engine — whirled along in a glorious nimbus of smoke-pant, spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar — what bliss to the palefaced quilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge and Chelsea! to drive a four-horsed Jersey-car to Kew at sixpence a head! Though turnpikes be things of the past, there are still tolls to be ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... one occasion, Miss Eliza had found among the toilet treasures of Adele a little lithographic print of the Virgin, with the Christ's head surrounded by a nimbus of glory, and in her chilling way had sneered at it as a heathen vanity, the poor child had burst into tears, and carried the treasure to her bosom to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... Edward Braydon, either, but the face of a middle-aged lady with startled eyes widely staring, with a mouth just dropping ajar as sudden horror relaxed her jaw muscles, and with a head of grey hair haloed about by a sort of nimbus effect of curl papers. What the strange lady saw—well, what the strange lady saw may best perhaps be gauged by what she did, and that was instantly to slam and bolt the door and then to utter a succession of calliopelike shrieks, which echoed through the house ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... crackle of a match from the shadowed corner. The keen, gnarled young face sprang from the darkness, vivid and softened with a strange triumph, then receded behind an imperfect circle, clouded the next instant by a nimbus of smoke. The ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... young and girlish speech. It was delivered with tremendous sincerity. Yet it did not matter much what she said, for what counted was that Lydia's contralto voice was very young and rich, that her golden hair was like a nimbus about her head, that her lips were red and sweet, that her cheeks were vivid and that her eyes were very ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... I was lying on my bed with my face in the pillow. I wasn't crying—I couldn't cry. There was just a dreadful dull ache in everything. Sara sat down on the rocker in front of the window and the sunset light came in behind her and made a sort of nimbus round her head, like a motherly saint's in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... It is possible that they may be layers of clouds because the upper portions of terrestrial clouds where they are illuminated by the sun appear white. But various observations lead us to think that we are dealing rather with a thin veil of fog instead of a true nimbus cloud, carrying storms and rain. Indeed, it may be merely a temporary condensation of vapor under the form of dew or ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... seventeen years old. Her name was Fiammetta. Even in Florence it was said that to the north, amid the wilderness of cypress-trees, there dwelt a maiden whose beauty surrounded her with golden rays like a nimbus." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... climax of her own devising. He was willing to be led. The climax turned out to be a dinner. Anne had long ago discovered the secret influence of a fine dinner on the politics of the world. The halo of a saint pales before the golden nimbus which well-fed guests see radiating from their hostess after dinner. A good man may possess a few robust virtues, but the dinner-giver has them all. Therefore, the manager of the alliance gathered about her table one memorable evening the leaders whose good opinion ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... at the moment was practically perfect—the small head tilted a little on the long round throat, while the slanting rays of the sun turned the dusky hair into a shadowy, gold-flecked nimbus. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... bright and isolated ring-plain named Kepler, after the celebrated astronomer. This is some twenty-two miles in diameter and surrounded by very bright streaks of light, extending in some directions over seventy miles, the whole nimbus of light covering an area of nearly ten thousand square miles. These really are streaks, not ridges, for, as you will see, nearly all the surface surrounding this formation ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... sentiments; Mrs Browning gave away her imagination to popular movements; she was also naturally a hero-worshipper; she hoped more enthusiastically than he was wont to do; she was more readily depressed; the word "liberty" for her had an aureole or a nimbus which glorified all its humbler and more prosaic meanings. Browning, although in this year 1847 he made a move towards an appointment as secretary to a mission to the Vatican, at heart cared little for men in groups or societies; ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... middle age, Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin, in the cloister of Saint Mark's at Florence. In some strange halo of a moon Jesus and the Virgin Mother are seated, clad in mystical white raiment, half shroud, half priestly linen. Jesus, with rosy nimbus and the long pale hair—tanquam lana alba et tanquam nix—of the figure in the Apocalypse, with slender finger-tips is setting a crown of pearl on the head of Mary, who, [205] corpse- like in her refinement, is bending forward to receive it, the light lying ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... merely preparatory, a blood-warming, so to say; the real thing now took place. He stood up on his hind legs and shot into the air, alighting on his four feet as if to pierce the earth. He whirled like a howling dervish, grunting, snorting—unseeing, and almost unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He came to earth with a thud, his legs whirling ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... years by destroyers and "restorers" alike. The subjects chosen by the painter in St. Mary's Church are peculiar and strangely grouped. The centre of the group is a "Majesty," the conventional representation of the second coming of Christ. The head of the Christ has its nimbus; that He is "in his glory" you can see by the mantle of royal purple, and "the holy angels with Him" are represented by two little cramped figures, set apart to make room for other drawings. Altogether there are six medallions besides the "Majesty," and there are also ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... a queer look about the place, though. You know how a terrestrial city sprawls out, a nimbus of suburbs, a ring of residential sections, factory districts, parks, highways. There was none of that here; the city rose out of the desert as abruptly as a cliff. Only a few little sand mounds marked the division, and then the ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... grasping them sullenly. She walks well on her bare, filthy feet. Her hands and arms are no longer flesh colour, but resemble weather-roughened hide, ingrained with dirt. Around the tangle of her hair cotton threads and bits of lint make a sort of aureole. (Her nimbus of labour, if you will!) There is nothing saint-like in that face, nor in the loose-lipped mouth, whence exudes a black stain of snuff as between her lips she turns the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... days in the pack. It was bitterly cold in the crow's-nest however much one put on then, and water skies often turned out to be nimbus clouds after we had laboured and cannoned towards them. The light, too, tired and strained one's eyes far more than on ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... ornamented with antique marble, and its stones know more than we concerning the ages that are past. There is the statue of Jupiter, which has been converted into St Peter, by adding the nimbus to the head. The general expression of this temple perfectly characterises the mixture of gloomy tenets with brilliant ceremonies; a depth of sadness in ideas, but the softness and vivacity of the south in external ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... glory of which he had, all his life, seen his master, Ursus, bow himself down in fear—that prodigious pinnacle was under his feet. He was in that place, so dark and yet so dazzling in England. Old peak of the feudal mountain, looked up to for six centuries by Europe and by history! Terrible nimbus of a world of shadow! He had entered into the brightness of its glory, and his ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... that at this moment are to me Dearer than words on paper, shall depart, And be no more the warder of my heart, Whereof again myself shall hold the key; And be no more, what now you seem to be, The sun, from which all excellencies start In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart Of moonlight, even, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... shoulders, and back; a cloud with a brightness on its surface made by the freer outer hairs, a fit setting and crown for a countenance of such rare changeful loveliness. In the shade, viewed closely, the general colour appeared a slate, deepening in places to purple; but even in the shade the nimbus of free flossy hairs half veiled the darker tints with a downy pallor; and at a distance of a few yards it gave the whole hair a vague, misty appearance. In the sunlight the colour varied more, looking now dark, sometimes intensely black, now of a light uncertain ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... A NIMBUS of mystery clung to the professor the first two days of his stay. His arrival, late one afternoon, in the sewing-machine man's buggy, was as unexplained as it was unexpected; and when he was shown to the little ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... was a battle. No soldiers, no guns, in sight; only against masses of autumn green a diaphanous, man-made nimbus which was raining steel hail. Ten miles of this, one would say; and under it lines of men in blue coats and red trousers and green uniforms hugging the earth, as unseen as a battalion of ants at work in the tall grass. Even if a charge swept across a field ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... you might find a little ball of crushed rose-petals there when you opened it. It would be a pity to shut out so much loveliness by switching on the electricity, so when Nick came he found Angela, a tall, slim black figure, with a faint gold nimbus round its head, silhouetted against a background of flaming sky. Standing as she did with her back to the window, he could hardly see her face, but the sunset streamed full into his as he crossed the room, holding ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... traditions of a defeated race, and the legends have not yet been wrought into undying verse. Erin's songs of battle could only recount weary successions of Flodden Fields, with never a Bannockburn and its nimbus of victory; for, as Ossian says of his countrymen, "they went forth to the war, but they always fell"; but somewhere in the green isle is an unborn poet who will put all this mystery, beauty, passion, romance, and sadness, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... paces from "Titian's Mistress." Compare the two women, study closely the two pictures, and you will understand the difference between the two brains. Rembrandt's ideal, sought as in a dream with closed eyes, is Light: the nimbus around objects, the phosphorescence that comes against a black background. It is something fugitive and uncertain, formed of lineaments scarce perceptible, ready to disappear before the eye has fixed them, ephemeral and dazzling. To arrest the vision, to set it on the canvas, ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... niches, with a half-niche at each end. Four of these niches are pierced for windows, which have trefoils with pointed heads, though the trefoil heads of the niches themselves are round at the top. The three intervening niches contain figures. All these nine figures have a nimbus; and as these, with the three under the crosses, make up twelve, it is assumed that they represent the Apostles. The six smaller statues, just above, are said to be kings; the twelve below, benefactors. There are thus thirty statues in all, and most were no ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... looking at Helen Darley with a kind of tender admiration. She was such a picture of the martyr by the slow social combustive process, that it almost seemed to him he could see a pale lambent nimbus round ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Dove is over His head. S. John Baptist is standing on the bank, and pouring water on His head, or perhaps only holding out his hand to touch it. On the opposite side is another figure in a white dress, hiding his face. All the three figures have the nimbus. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... beyond the Lancers' horses. Again and again,—it looked as if he could not miss them; but the horses only twitched their tails, as if he were a new kind of fly. The 4.7 crashed hoarsely back, and a black nimbus flung up far above the trees on the mountain. And still the steady tack and tap—from the right among the Devons and Liverpools, from the right centre, where the Leicesters were, from the left centre, among the 60th, and the extreme ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... me lak you don't nebber go on er deep-sea v'yge whar you gets de genuwine joe-flogger, an' de plum-duff, an' sich like," said Nimbus, the yacht's cook. "Ef ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... and dips at last, and vanishes up the grateful flue. At such times, when a five-year-old, what a haven every boy has found between the old grandfather's knees! Look back in fancy at the faces blending there—the old man's and the boy's—and, with the nimbus of the smoke-wreaths round the brows, the gilding of the firelight on cheek and chin, and the rapt and far-off gazings of the eyes of both, why, but for the silver tinsel of the beard of one and the dusky elf-locks of the other, the faces seem ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... at all heights in the air, but that they have, on the contrary, a most decided tendency to form at three definite levels. The mean summer level of these three stories of clouds at Upsala has been found to be as follows: low clouds—stratus, cumulus, cumulo-nimbus, 2,000-6,000 feet; middle clouds—strato-cirrus and cumulo-cirrus, 12,900-15,000 feet; high clouds—cirrus, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... the hall and a face of twenty years, surrounded by a nimbus of abundant, fluffy brown hair, abruptly made its appearance. De Gery looked at M. Joyeuse with an ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... admit that her theology was both scanty and confused, that her influence was not of the most elevating nature, and that those who doubted her personal piety might have something to say in excuse of their uncharitableness; but she spoke in the might of the matrimonial nimbus around her head, and her claims were undisputed in Glaston. There was a propriety, springing from quite another source, however, in the rector's turning his footsteps first toward the Manor House, where she resided. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... To Tucker and herself the coarse fare was unbearable even after the custom of fifteen years, and time had not lessened the surprise with which they watched the young man's healthful enjoyment of his food. Even Lila, whose glowing face in its nimbus of curls lent an almost festive air to her end of the white pine board, ate with a heartiness which Cynthia, with her outgrown standard for her sex, could not but find a trifle vulgar. The elder sister had ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... VII., who was quartered in the Pavilion of Flora, led the life of an anchorite, with all the modesty and piety of an old monk, fasting every day as in his convent, and edifying even the impious by the nimbus that shone around his pale and mystic face. It was impossible to approach this worthy Vicar of Christ without a filial feeling of tenderness. The crimes of the French Revolution—the massacre or the execution of the priests, the profanation of the altars, the persecutions and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod, letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew a nimbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced and gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and in and out ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... Rigaud Hill, as the sun wheeled higher, till at last, in mid-sky, it flung rays that trembled on the cross, and gradually revealed the holy sign outlined in upright and arms. Mini shivered with an awe of expectation; but no nimbus was disclosed which his imagination could shape to glorious significance. Yet he went rapturously onward, firm in the belief that up there he must see Angelique ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... enigma, breathes with a respiration large, tranquil, and profound, like that of the ocean, and hovers serene and boundless like the blue heaven! Visits from the muse, Urania, who traces around the foreheads of those she loves the phosphorescent nimbus of contemplative power, and who pours into their hearts the tranquil intoxication, if not the authority of genius, moments of irresistible intuition in which a man feels himself great like the universe and calm like a god! From the celestial spheres ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... She thought, standing before her little mirror, that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her lips together, as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke in a thin line. She smoked very hard, so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. She hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one; perhaps, also, if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding the thing between her first and second fingers, and found that easier ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the height only a cutting wind, and little enlightenment as to the true course. North and east all nimbus still. A brace of sun-dogs following the pale God of Day across the narrow field of primrose that bordered the dun-coloured west. There would be more snow to-morrow, and meanwhile the wind was rising again. Yes, sir, it was ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... the child was as other children: about its head was neither nimbus nor material crown; its lips opened not in speech; if it heard their expressions of joy, their invocations, their prayers, it made no sign whatever, but, baby-like, looked longer at the flame in ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... has been to the present time the Old Testament in its existing tradition. This Form will certainly decidedly alter considerably with the discovery of inscriptions and excavations; there is nothing harmful in that, it is even no harm if the nimbus of the Chosen People loses much thereby. The kernel and substance remain always the same—God, namely, and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... heroic death, and in the halls of Harvard a tablet has been placed in his honor. Charles Shier is a name which ought to be as proudly remembered in Michigan and in Ann Arbor as is that of Charles Lowell in Massachusetts and in Cambridge. But fate, in its irony, has decreed that the nimbus which surrounds the brow of a nation's heroes shall be reserved for the few whom she selects as types, and these more often than otherwise idealized types chosen by chance or by accident. These alone may wear the laurel ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... by the way, to find olives so high!—in the receding waters the vagrant raven cheerfully picking out the eye of a defunct pterodactyl. The heavy clouds rolling off the sodden world—they must have indeed been heavy clouds, nimbus of the first water—as they had raised the world's water-level 250 feet per day during "the flood" ... surely a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... dozen times on bare toes at the top of the stairs, spinning until her silken skirts expanded in a nimbus, then danced down-stairs into Tess's arms, where she clung, panting ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... them by the persecuting Jews and Romans, reacted on their brethren to give profounder firmness and new intensity to their faith in a glorious life beyond the grave. The Christians thrown into the amphitheatre to the lions calmly kneeled in prayer, and to the superstitious bystanders a bright nimbus seemed to play around their brows and heaven to be opened above. As they perished at the stake, amidst brutal jeers and shrivelling flames, serenely maintaining their profession, and calling on Christ, over the lurid vista of smoke ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... in wider spheres Even as the infinite years of the past melt in the infinite future years. Each new delight of sense, Each hope, each love, each fear, Widens, relumes and recreates each sphere, From a new ring and nimbus of pre-eminence. I am the Sphere without circumference: I only and for ever comprehend All others that within me meet and blend. Death is but the blinding kiss Of two finite infinities; Two finite infinite orbs The splendour ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... little velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and violet-powder enveloping them as they passed before vulgar mortals, these rapacious and insolent courtiers were the impersonation of extortion and oppression to the Parisian populace. They were supposed, not unjustly, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... left, and he wished she hadn't. After she was gone he supposed that he ought to have asked for those references, if only because she would think him so unbusiness-like not to, but he could as soon have insisted on references from a saint in a nimbus as ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... they had come. From the top of a hill they saw Madrid in the twilight, covered with fog; and in the streets newly opened between the sides of sand, the lights of the gas-lamps sparkled in a nimbus ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... an excess of dramatic action in the lifted right leg of Eve, and too much of pantomimic language in the expressive hands of Eve and her Creator. The robe, again, in its voluminous and snaky coils, and the triangular nimbus of the Deity, convey an effect of heaviness rather than of majesty. Yet we feel, while studying this composition, that it is a noble and original attempt, falling but little short of supreme accomplishment. Without this antecedent sketch, Michael ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... grand dark hour before she blooms into motherhood. When she knew the truth, she resolved to tell Eustace, and she came into his room softly, with shining eyes. He was sitting reading the Financial News in a nimbus of cigarette smoke, secretly glorying in his momentary immunity from the prison rules of the fantastic. Winifred's entry was as that of a warder. He sprang ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... or perseverance of contest. I recollect no mediaeval demon who shows as much insulting, resisting, or contending power as Bunyan's Apollyon. They can only cheat, undermine, and mock; never overthrow. Judas, as we should naturally anticipate, has not in this scene the nimbus of an Apostle; yet we shall find it restored to him in the next design. We shall discover the reason of this only by a careful consideration of ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... random with the musicians. The latter, paying more attention to where they stepped than to their instruments, played a rather discordant march. Guns, meanwhile, continued to blaze away. The wild cheering for San Bernardo and his sisters went on; and, framed in a red nimbus of torch-light, greeted at every street-corner by a new fusillade, the image sailed along over that sea of heads, pelted by the rain, which, in the light of the candles, looked like a maze of transparent ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... dots of men strung along the crest, in others digging new trenches, in messengers and officers on the move, in clumps of reserves behind a hillock or in a valley. Though bursting shrapnel jackets whipped out the same kind of puffs as always from a flashing center which spread into nimbus radiant in the sunlight and the high explosives sent up the same spouts of black smoke as if a stick of dynamite had burst in a coal box, the shell fire seemed different; it had a quality of action and adventure in comparison ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... began to breathe stertorously. Even Ida started at that. She glanced nervously towards the bed. Little Evelyn, in her night-gown, her black fleece of hair fluffing around her face like a nimbus of shadow, came and ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... even some that are profusely spotted all over, the markings consist only of darker or lighter brownish-pink shades. Occasionally a few, almost black, twisted lines are intermingled with the other markings, and in these cases the lines are frequently surrounded by a reddish-purple nimbus. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... clouds on each day of the year. I noticed that the letter "N" occupied a suspiciously large percentage of the space on the chart, and when I asked him for the meaning of this he said that "N"—which in meteorological abbreviation means Nimbus—stood for "None" (in Portuguese Nao). And he thought that he must be right because it was ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... who knew how to embody in themselves the emotions and the desires of the masses—we may think of Jeanne d'Arc, Mahomet, Peter the Great, Napoleon I—were surrounded with a nimbus by the more or less blind belief of the people in their genius; this frequently acted with suggestive power upon the surrounding company which it carried away with a magic force to its leaders, and supported and aided the mission historically ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... the nuns; such dear little nuns (nuns always go straight to the heart of an old priest-hater and conspirator against the Pope, you know), dressed in brown robes and close, white caps, with an immense round straw-hat flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters of the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little way inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees. Your protegee has already half set the convent, the village, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... fancied that those persons who passed him cheerfully on their way to friends and friendly hearths shrank from him into the mists as they went by. Lucian imagined that the fire of his torment and anguish must in some way glow visibly about him; he moved, perhaps, in a nimbus that proclaimed the blackness and the flames within. He knew, of course, that in misery he had grown delirious, that the well-coated, smooth-hatted personages who loomed out of the fog upon him were in reality shuddering only with cold, but in spite of common sense he still conceived that he saw ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... clouds, and there wasn't anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down, and the sky was simply up. Joe looked down and saw a faint spot of racing brightness with a hint of colors around it. It was the sort of nimbus that substitutes for a shadow when a plane is high enough above the clouds. It raced madly over the irregular upper surface of the cloud layer. The plane flew and flew. Nothing happened at all. This was two hours from the field from which it had taken off with the pilot gyro cases ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... ranks of townspeople; cheers, the pealing music of the bells, the thunderous shock of the guns grew to a swimming, dreamy sound, through which the flag fluttered on high, crowned with the golden nimbus of the sun! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... plume, of complex rays more or less beautifully coloured. A worm which occasionally swims like a water snake, and again reposes inertly on the sand, as does the beche-de-mer, sets off its brown naked body with a red nimbus—a flexible living ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... could not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But an incorruptible beauty in the woman's character claimed to plead for her memory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by a sinner's death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply perceive the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to be still not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind: 'Earth makes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... exaggerated by the shadows, sat Lampron engraving, solitary, motionless, beneath the light of a lamp. His back was toward me. The lamp's rays threw a strong light on his delicate hand, on the workmanlike pose of his head, which it surrounded with a nimbus, and on a painting—a woman's head—which he was copying. He looked superb like that, and I thought how doubly tempted Rembrandt would have been by the deep significance as well as by ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... spiritual blue around that woman's head! And see that ugly muddy red around that man passing her! Here comes an intellectual giant—see that beautiful golden yellow around his head, like a nimbus! But I don't exactly like that shade of red around his body—and there is too marked an absence of blue in his aura! He lacks harmonious development. Do you notice those great clouds of semi-luminous substance, which are slowly floating ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... the orb shone in all her splendor amid innumerable constellations, whose purity could not be troubled by her rays. On the disc, the plains were already returning to the dark tint which is seen from the earth. The other part of the nimbus remained brilliant, and in the midst of this general brilliancy Tycho shone prominently like ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... on one leg, and smiling, and waving his arms, and causing the ample folds and sleeves of his smock to flutter until he seemed to be moving in the midst of a nimbus, Nilushka would sing in a halting whisper the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... not particularly well acquainted with London, but he had a rough idea of direction. The fog was thick, but he could see the blurred nimbus of a street lamp, and was midway between two of these when he heard ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... The nimbus or nightcap again appears as in the Ridley specimen, but, whatever it be, the teeth are undoubtedly the ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... bank of French-grey clouds, here and there sun-gilt and wind-bleached. We saw the 'Pike' bury itself under the blue horizon, at first cloaked in its wintry ermines and then capped with fleecy white nimbus, which ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... the removal of these relics the lid of a third oak coffin was revealed, in a very advanced state of decay. This innermost coffin was covered over its entire surface with carvings of human figures, the heads surrounded by a nimbus. When this coffin was removed the skeleton was exposed to view, wrapped in coverings, the outer of which had been of linen. The robes beneath were much decayed, and only portions of them could be preserved. On the breast of the body, among the robes, a comb was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... night. Oneiros standing next was a youth whose eyes smiled as though they beheld visions that were welcome to him; in his hand, amongst the white roses, he held a black wand of sorcery, and around his bended head there hovered a dim silvery nimbus. Thanatos alone was a man fully grown; and on his calm and colourless face there were blended an unutterable sadness, and an unspeakable peace; his eyes were fathomless, far-reaching, heavy laden with thought, as ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... and all slept under its roof. Bunks had been constructed, forming a double tier around three sides of the room. For the first time since coming ashore we retired to sleep in blankets; fur sleeping-bags had been previously used. That night the sky which had been clear for a fortnight banked up with nimbus cloud, and Murphy, who was sleeping under a gap in the roof, woke up next morning to find over him a fine counterpane of snow. He ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... their foreign debts, how can the vanquished clear the vast indemnity asked? Each passing day demonstrates more clearly the misunderstanding of the indemnity. The non-experts have not learned financial technics, but common sense tells them that the golden nimbus which has been trailed before their eyes is only a thick cloud of smoke that is ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... Nickel nikelo. Nickname moknomo. Nicotine nikotino. Niece nevino. Niggard avarulo. Nigh proksima. Nigh (time) baldauxa. Night nokto. Nightly nokta. Night, by nokte. Nightingale najtingalo. Night-watch nokta patrolo. Nightmare terursongxo. Nimble vigla. Nimbus glorkrono. Nine naux. Ninny simplanimulo. Nip pincxi. Nippers prenileto. Nitre salpetro. Nobility nobelaro. Noble nobla. Nobleman nobelo. Nobleness nobleco. Nobody neniu. Nocturnal nokta. Nocuous pereiga. Nod (beckon) signodoni. No ne. No one neniu. Noise ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes



Words linked to "Nimbus" :   glory, corona, gloriole, light, aura, aureole, rain cloud, nimbus cloud, halo, lightness



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