"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shame, surprise, wonder, and joy filled her heart too full and made a few happy tears drop on the hands so worn with hard work, when they ached to be holding a pen and trying to record the fancies that sung in her brain as ceaselessly as the soft sough of the pines or the ripple of the brook murmured in her ear when she sat here alone. She could not express the vague longings that stirred in her soul; she could only feel and dimly strive to understand and utter them, with no thought of fame or fortune,—for she was a humble creature, and never knew that the hardships ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... evening, from every village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for the most part—that particular, yet indefinite class of people, who call themselves "gentlemen," and are called by everybody else "persons." They ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the Hallams. After a thousand years of stagnation one ought to welcome a ripple of life. A Methodist isn't asleep. I have often felt inclined to drop into their chapel as I passed it. I wonder how it would feel to be awake soul ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... become progressively more infrequent. You have slipped down into a merely animal stratum of existence; you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 75 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... of satisfying the very private curiosity of a well-known and munificent politician, had described another party that had made a wide ripple of comment and envious criticism among the shades. It had been planned by a swell of old Rome, faithful in every detail to the best traditions of orgies; and Stepan's companion, a French girl of the Maison Doree, had opened the eyes ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... only a blurred record with the most instantaneous apparatus. What remains of the vision of that long succession of streets called by successive names from Knightsbridge to Ludgate Hill is the rush of a human torrent, in which you are scarcely more aware of the single life than of any given ripple in a river. Men, women, children form the torrent, but each has been lost to himself in order to give it the collective immensity which abides in ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... had created the ripple of admiration on his passage to this room, now approached. His motions were exact and incredibly swift. It was his duty to remove full spools and replace them by empty ones, and he did this duty for sixteen spinning frames. Seeing the "new hand's" astonishment at his deftness he became reckless ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... so, often,' said the dismal man, without noticing the action. 'The calm, cool water seems to me to murmur an invitation to repose and rest. A bound, a splash, a brief struggle; there is an eddy for an instant, it gradually subsides into a gentle ripple; the waters have closed above your head, and the world has closed upon your miseries and misfortunes for ever.' The sunken eye of the dismal man flashed brightly as he spoke, but the momentary ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... hair stirred upon my scalp, as I stood there staring—so strange was the sight, so dire the fears it wakened. I looked right and left; the ground was so hard, it told no story. I stood and listened till my ears ached, but the night was hollow about me like an empty church; not even a ripple stirred upon the shore; it seemed you might have heard a pin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be thankful you were not pulled in. I have been in a state of fear ever since we commenced fishing. You move round in this canoe as though it were a raft. Let me paddle out to that little ripple and try once there; then we will stop. I ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... very great height, upon all other perturbation. When we have seen Him from whose sight the heavens and the earth flee away, there is nothing, in either the heavens or the earth, that can produce a single ripple upon the surface of our souls. This is true, even of the unregenerate mind. The fear in this instance is a servile one,—it is not filial and affectionate,—and yet it serves to protect the subject of it from all other feelings ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... she archly. "Fi donc, Gaston! Your evil ways have taught you as little gallantry as dissimulation." And her merry ripple of laughter showed me how in six words I had betrayed that which I had been at such pains ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... all the west was on fire, the mountains in the south had grown dark on their eastern side, and the plain of the sea was like a lake of blood, with the heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown large and solemn and distant. There was scarcely a ripple around the rocks at their feet to break the stillness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Beecher never sends an audience away half satisfied; for he has constantly grown with the growth of his splendid opportunity. How attentive the great assembly, and how quickly responsive to the points he makes! That occasional ripple of laughter,—it is not from any want of seriousness in the speaker, in the subject, or in the congregation, nor is it a Rowland Hill eccentricity. It is simply that it has pleased Heaven to endow this genial soul with a quick perception of the likeness there is between things unlike; ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... from out the water sprung A rounded arm, on which they saw As high the lotus buds among It rose, the bracelet white, with awe. Then a wide ripple tost and swung The blossoms on that liquid plain, And lo! the arm so fair and young Sank in the waters down again. They bowed before the mystic Power, And as they home returned in thought, Each took from thence a lotus flower In memory of the ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... an hour, feeling hot and ashamed and troubled with perplexing thoughts, and listening to the jingle of money in the adjoining room, mingled with the ripple of laughter and sometimes the exchange of angry words. At length the agent came back, saying, "Vell, vat can I do ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Advocate was in prison, and the earth seemed to have closed over him. Hardly a ripple of indignation was perceptible on the calm surface of affairs, although in the States-General as in the States of Holland his absence seemed to have reduced both ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... summer; the sun had set above an hour before, leaving behind him in the west one vast arch of rich and burnished gold, stretching along the whole horizon, and tipping all the summits of the heavy rolling sea, as it rolled on, unbroken by foam or ripple, in vast moving mountains, from the far coast of Labrador. We were already in blue water, though the bold cliffs that were to form our departing point were but a few miles to leeward. There lay the lofty bluff of Old Kinsale, whose crest, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... by the little table that fronted the open window and rested his head on his hands. It was early spring; the snow was gone; dazzling sunshine bathed the prairies in the distance, and near at hand were the twitter of birds and the ripple of water. It was a day to ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... Moses Grinnell’s house, corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, was the only establishment of its kind in America, and the one restaurant in New York where ladies could be taken to dine. In those tranquil days when dinner parties were few and dances a rarity, theatre-going was the one ripple on the quiet stream of home life. Wallack’s, at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Broadway, Booth’s in Twenty-third Street, and Fechter’s in Fourteenth Street were the homes of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... there were daily bulletins of her condition published always in more and more remote corners of the paper, until the little ripple that had been made in the stream of life passed; and no further mention was made of the matter save occasionally when they sent for some famous specialist: when they took her to the shore to try what sea air might do; or when ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... two ambitious fishermen pushed off in the bark canoe. Ethan held the paddle, for he was a master-hand at this sort of work, and could propel such a light running boat with the deftness of an Adirondack guide, hardly a ripple being stirred, with the paddle never once ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... support their public credit a little longer at home, and to amuse and divide, if possible, our people in America." But even for this purpose they came too late, and stirred no other response than a ripple of sarcastic triumph over such an act of humiliation, which was aggravated by being rejected ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... eastward and westward. In calm weather you may behold the long prospects of riven rock, in their finest combination, from a boat. At such times, you may row into vast caverns, always filled by the sea, and only to be approached when the waves ripple as calmly as the waters of a lake. Then, you may see the naturally arched roof high above you, adorned in the loveliest manner by marine plants waving to and fro gently in the wind. Rocky walls are at each side of you, variegated in dark red and dark green colours—now ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... in truth a noble dignity of outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky—the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore a short skirt of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... sea was calm, and there was a lull in the breeze. Not a ripple broke the motionless surface of ocean on which the setting sun shed its golden light. Blue near the coast and mingled with the evening mist, the sea was scarlet everywhere else and deepened into ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... certain localities of the new red sandstone, in the Valley of the Connecticut, numerous tridactyl markings have been occasionally observed on the surface of the slabs of stone when split asunder, in like manner as the ripple-marks appear on the successive layers of sandstone in Tilgate Forest. Some remarkably distinct impressions of this kind, at Turner's Falls (Massachusetts), happening to attract the attention of Dr. James Deane, of Greenfield, that sagacious observer was struck with their resemblance to the foot-marks ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... repeated, still in the dream that was made of music and moonlight, the ripple of the sea and the stirring of something new in her nature of which all these sweet and beautiful things seemed part. "Love! I never thought this could happen ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... very early that year, and although it was not yet May, the green tassels were on the maples and the wild flowers made the ground gay in places. All around the clearing ran a ripple of bird song. The sunshine was 15 dreamy, the wind ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... probably suspect the true nature of their escape and take to the river in pursuit; and, as the Indians, in case of discovery, could easily overtake and recapture them, they must necessarily be saved by fortune and stratagem. Though scarce a ripple was heard, the shadowy form of the boat shot swiftly under the hanging trees and round the projecting points of the bank, like some serpent gliding noiselessly over ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... I hoped I might fare better. But evidently I had been born under an unlucky star. The "Aunt Anne" incident proved to be only the first playful ripple which heralded the incoming ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... only moments passed in that silence, whose speech was the soft ripple of the sea on the sand? Neither could have answered the question. At length said Malcolm, "I think of changing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the far North, whence he follows the mountains down to Carolina, and he is chiefly seen when he visits the Eastern States in the winter—hence his name. But few who see him then have heard his ripple-song—one of the sweetest bits of our ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... on toward the southwest. The next day came a dead calm. Each vessel floated on the glassy sea, "like a painted ship on a painted ocean." Thus they moved along, day after day, encountering calms, when not a ripple was to be seen on the mirrored expanse, and fresh breezes, which tossed the ocean in billowy foam, and storms which threatened to tear ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... once sprang aloft the clustered pillars of the nave, grow in rich profusion hardy yellow flowers. The sharp sea winds have eaten into the stone in many places, reducing it to an apparent honeycomb. No ripple of gentle streamlet falls on the ear; no luxuriant foliage offers its pleasant shade; no ivy drapery, stirred by the summer breeze, floats from the decaying walls; but instead of these gentle attractions, which Tinter and Bolton and Valle Crucis ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... delighted by the fine prospect, Ree ran down the hill, across the clearing and to the summit of the knoll or bluff. The ripple and splash of the river, the bright sunshine and his discovery of this ideal spot ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... word betwixt them, deep and deeper into the wild until the moon was down and darkness shut them in; wherefore Jocelyn drew rein and sat a while to listen. He heard the good steed, deep-breathing, snuff at dewy grass; a stir and rustle all about him; the drowsy call of a bird afar; the soft ripple of water hard by and, over all, the deep hush of the wild-wood. Then upon ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... seemed to exasperate her. He knew it by the quiver that ran through her like the premonitory ripple on smooth water before the coming of the wind. She turned about on him ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... never! Who was to know? In the risks of a life like mine, I might never come back—never set eyes again upon the sister that would have given her life for mine! Never watch the stars glitter through the forest-oak branches, or hear the little creek ripple over the slate bar ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... out another vent, springs the Flora River, whose waters ripple over limestone bars in miniature cascades, from pool to pool, like pigmy reproductions of the lost terraces of New Zealand. Follow the edge of the great tableland around, and amongst the deep seams ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... So did Tom. But when they got to the edge of the brook the only sign of her was an increasing ripple on the surface of a little pool. The stream was not so deep but that the bottom could be studied. And yet they saw nothing of her. Evidently she had the enchanted gift ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... it, or a fish rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these lines true; the whole value of your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... rich as when the year was young. The villa of white marble was built on a gentle rising knoll, prettily wooded, at the foot of which running through a glade was a tiny streamlet clear as crystal, which with its ripple and the singing of the birds lent music to the air. On the highest garden site was built a tower from whence an extensive view of the city is gained, with its spires and palaces, together with the violet sea, and the ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... attached to the glebe-house of the Protestant pastor of the parish, the eye rested upon a pond as smooth as a mirror, except where an occasional swan, as it floated onwards without any apparent effort, left here and there a slight quivering ripple behind it. Farther down, springing from between two clumps of trees, might be seen the span of a light and elegant arch, from under which the river gently wound away to the right; and beyond this, on the left, about a hundred yards from the bank, rose up the slender ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... A ripple of excitement was caused in the dining-room when Mr. Deacon was divined to usher some one to the parlour. Mr. Deacon would speak with this visitor in a few moments, and now returned to his table. It was notable how slight a thing would ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... A ripple of merriment ran through the crowd, breaking in many places into ostentatious guffaws. To those who knew the underside of those meetings, the mild request appeared so ineffectual as to be merely ridiculous. The honorable chairman, on the stage, hid ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... successors, suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus Calisto and Melibaea (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, Celestine. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... swiftly across the glassy surface of the bay, propelled by six stalwart oarsmen each, a little jet of phosphorescent water spouting up under their sharp stems, a long ripple spreading out and undulating away on either side of them, and half a dozen tiny whirlpools of liquid fire swirling in the wake of each as their crews strained at the stout ash oars until they bent again. The night had grown ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... stripes. Patches of clear white sand were seen here and there for the floor, with dark hollows and recesses, beneath overhanging masses and ledges. All those, seen through the clear crystal water, the ripple of which gave motion and quick play of light and shadow to the whole, formed a scene of the rarest beauty, and left nothing to be desired by the eye, either in elegance of form or brilliancy and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... that many of the gentle and pure-souled people who read this amiable writer go on their way through his pages without discerning this quiver, this ripple, this vibration, of "miching mallecho." On softly-stepping feline feet, the great sleek panther of psychological curiosity glides into very perverse, very dubious paths. The exquisite tenuity and flexibility of his style, light as the flutter of a feather through the air, enable him to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... apex of the little cove, moving so cautiously that not a ripple of the water revealed my progress, and feeling for each inch of way like a blind man along city streets, when my knee suddenly struck some obstacle, and seeking to learn what it might be, I muttered a silent prayer of thanksgiving as I touched the unmistakable sides ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... towards his station, we noticed some hundreds of pigeons fly down from the forest, settle on the margin of the water, and drink with apparent enjoyment. The harbour at this spot was almost land-locked, the water as smooth as glass without the faintest ripple, and the birds were consequently enabled to drink without wetting their plumage. My companion, who had lived many years in New Britain, told me that this drinking of sea-water was common alike to both cockatoos and pigeons, and that on some occasions ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... er steal My best "goggle-eye!"—but you Can't lay hands on joys I feel Nibblin' like they ust to do! So, in memory, to-day Same old ripple lips away At my cork and saggin' line, Up and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... bathed in a tranquil beauty. The days flowed by like a river beneath the moon—each ripple caught the brightness and passed it on. She began to take a renewed interest in her familiar round of duties. The tasks which had once seemed colourless and irksome had now a kind of sacrificial sweetness, a symbolic meaning into which she alone ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... me, and I stood and smoked upon it, listening to the ripple of the half-golden, half-shadowy water, watching the revolutions of the green old wheel. I had laid out my plan of action. On my return to the inn I would insist on an interview with Miss Falconer, and would tell her that either she must return with me to Paris or that the police of Bleau—I ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... kept, Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept: Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown, Far from Aberffraw's ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... a ripple on the ocean. The Huascar was nearest the shore, less than a mile from where I stood. The Shah was over a mile distant seaward. A signal flashed from the Shah and the Amythist steamed toward the Huascar. The Amythist was a wooden corvette, equipped with twin screws. The Shah ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... He hesitated for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back against the door. Then he marched, upright and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached the gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something moved near him. "Stop a bit," said a Voice, and Adye stopped dead and his hand ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... moon and the peaceful ripple of the waves seem to say to us various things of an ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... solitary cloud grows dark and wide, While distant thunder rumbles in the air, A fitful ripple breaks the river's tide— The lazy cattle are no longer there, But homeward come in long procession slow, With many a bleat and many a ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... are in Spain, on a July night of the same summer, the air being hot and heavy. In the darkness the ripple of the river Tormes can be heard over the ford, which is near the foreground of ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... predecessor, and towering with dazzling brilliancy in the deep blue atmosphere; and now muttering peals of thunder were faintly heard rolling behind the mountains. The river, hitherto still and glassy, reflecting pictures of the sky and land, now showed a dark ripple at a distance, as the breeze came creeping up it. The fish-hawks wheeled and screamed, and sought their nests on the high dry trees; the crows flew clamorously to the crevices of the rocks, and all nature seemed conscious of the approaching thunder gust. The clouds now rolled in volumes over the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... all deserted and the derricks all are still, And the wind across the anchorage comes singing sad and shrill, And the lighted lanthorns gleaming where the ships at anchor ride Cast their quivering long reflections down the ripple of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... ruins, the river flowed between walls not over four hundred and fifty feet apart at the top. The current was about three miles an hour, with scarcely a ripple, though it appeared much swifter because of the nearness of the cliffs. At the end of seven miles of winding canyon, there came a sharp turn to the east, which brought into view, at the other end, another ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... territory. In February 1998 an assassination attempt was made against President SHEVARDNADZE by supporters of the late former president Zviad GAMSAKHURDIA. In October 1998, a disaffected military officer led a failed mutiny in western Georgia; the armed forces continue to feel the ripple effect of the uprising. Georgia faces parliamentary elections this fall, and presidential elections next spring. After two years of robust growth, the economy, hurt by the financial crisis in Russia, slowed ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... After a good night he found a pleasant exhilaration in the freshness of the early air. The sea was a more vivid blue, the sky more brilliant, than on most days, the trade wind was fresh, and there was a ripple on the lagoon as the breeze brushed over it like velvet brushed the wrong way. He felt himself stronger and younger. He entered upon the day's work with zest. After luncheon he slept again, and as evening drew on he had the bay saddled and sauntered through the bush. He seemed ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... star—a spark of crimson fire, and vanished. As if he had sunk in a pool of air, and made it overflow, a gentle ripple of wind blew from the sunset over the grass. They could see the grass bending and swaying and bathing in its coolness before it came to them. It blew on their faces at length, and whispered something they could not understand, making ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... straight forward, a more scientific move, which opened up an avenue for himself through his line of Panthans, as well as announcing to the players and spectators that he intended having a hand in the fighting himself even before the exigencies of the game forced it upon him. The move elicited a ripple of applause from those sections of seats reserved for the common warriors and their women, showing perhaps that U-Dor was none too popular with these, and, too, it had its effect upon the morale of Gahan's ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sat beside the river Long ago, my Love and I, Where the willows droop and quiver 'Twixt the water and the sky. We were wrapped in fragrant shadow, 'Twas the quiet vesper time, And the bells across the meadows Mingled with the ripple's chime. With no thought of ill betiding, "Thus," we said, "life's years shall be For us twain a river gliding To a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... Then callers put a stop to the chat. Then the colonel himself came home to his cosey quarters, and silence had settled down over the beautiful plain. The lights were dimmed in the barracks; the sentries paced their measured rounds; from the verandas of the hotel came the ripple of murmured words and soft laughter, and a tinkle of banjo and guitar. At the gate the colonel exchanged good-night greetings with a happy-faced, motherly looking woman whom Bonner had noticed overwhelmed with pride and emotion during the ceremonies in the morning. He did not at first ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... rather secret. Joanna lost the thread of Mrs. Southland's reminiscences of her last dairy-girl, and she watched Ellen, watched her hands, watched the shrug of her shoulders under her gown—the girl's whole body seemed to be moving, not restlessly or jerkily, but with a queer soft ripple. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the successive shores of a receding ocean, are believed by others to be the inequalities on the bottom of a shallow sea. Not only, however, does the general character of these successive terraces suggest the idea that they must have been shores, but the ripple-marks upon them are as distinct as upon any modern beach. The regular rise and fall of the water is registered there in waving, undulating lines as clearly as on the sand-beaches of Newport or Nahant; and we can see on any one of those ancient shores the track ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... him. "Sit down, Alfred," she commanded him, and in her pronunciation of his name I noticed for the first time the ripple of a French "r." Possibly her manner of speaking his name was a form of endearment. "All in good time, you shall hear about it directly. Now, we are all very hungry and waiting for you." And without the least hint of a pause she turned to me and glided ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... taken complete possession of the body as well as the limbs, and a strange ripple ran ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... had crept up over their feet while they were speaking. It was coming in at a great rate, but there were no waves to splash them, only a sort of gentle heave and ripple that brought it on insensibly, so that it had lapped up to the cliff behind them before they suspected it. Beth shivered ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... retorted she, with a ripple of dangerous laughter. "I will carry the comparison no farther. Still, I wager, Chevalier, that the game is not worth ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mist hung all around; sky and sea were of a delicate blurred blue-grey, the former mottled in places. The sun was not visible, but its light lay in one long gleaming line out on the level water; beyond, all was vapour-veiled. There were no breakers; now and then a larger ripple than usual splashed on the beach, and that was the only sound the sea gave. It was full tide; the water at the foot of the cliffs was of a wonderful green, pellucid, delicate, through which the chalk was visible, with dark masses of weed ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... once said, 'If all that Christ said and did were written in books, the world could not contain them. This is an exageration, (a ripple of laughter dances over the congregation), having a great meaning, however." * * * * "David gives us only his intense life." (The audience smile). (11:35). The preacher becoming dramatic in gesticulation and oratorical in delivery, walks back and forth upon the elevated platform. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... then up to their shoulders, and then I saw it rise up to the black rim of Jack's hat. But they never wavered; and the two heads went straight on, straight on, till they were under, and there was just a ripple in the moonlight where Jack ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Wave (noun), billow, breaker, swell, ripple, undulation. Wave (verb), brandish, flourish, flaunt, wigwag. Weariness, languor, lassitude, enervation, exhaustion. Wearisome, tiresome, irksome, tedious, humdrum. Wet (adjective), humid, moist, damp, dank, sodden, soggy. Wet (verb), moisten, dampen, soak, imbrue, saturate, drench Whim, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... with a pretty companion to pass the golden hours of a spring afternoon. The freshness of the face at his side, reflecting the freshness of the season, suggested dapplings of sunlight through new leaves, the sound of a brook in the grass, the ripple ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... minutes they walked on slowly, the little laughing brook beside them seeming to rise like a thunder-voice upon the dead silence. Olive listened to every ripple, that fell as it were like the boom of an engulphing wave. Nothing else she heard, or felt, or thought, until ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... close to his ear; and, for a second he felt her slim young hands on his shoulders—lightly—the very ghost of contact. That was all. He waited a hundred years. Then another. Then, his weapons levelled, listening, he cast a quick glance backward. At the foot of the Pulpit a dark ripple lapped the rock. Nothing there now; nothing in Isla Water save far in the stars' lustre the shadowy boat ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... a glorious day, whose sunshine might have found its way even into his black heart. Oh! how soft, and mellow, and pure, the hurricane of the last night had left it! Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath to ripple the water, or to wave the long trailing locks of the hoary willows, which nodded ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... rosy dawn ushered in the morning on which the great and all-absorbing event was to take place. A clear sky, a sea so calm that scarce a ripple was to be seen, every sail spread to its utmost capacity, and the mellow tints of the rising sun playing over and investing them with a majesty of outline at once grand and imposing. And yet the massive hull scarce moved, so gentle was the breeze ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... West the sun was sinking low as Stephen Frenelle stood on the shore looking out over his newly rafted logs. Not a ripple disturbed the surface of the noble river, or the waters of the little creek lying between its semi-wooded banks. It was a balmy spring evening when the whole world seemed at peace. On a night such as this new ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... which is indeed part of the same physical film, though this is not at first easy to recognise. As pointed out in View No. 1, there is little in common between our sense of sight and hearing; but the chirp of birds, the hum of bees, the rustle of wind in the leaves, the ripple of a stream, the distant sound of sheep bells, and lowing of cattle form a background of sound which may be coaxed to approach you; the only knowledge you have of such sounds is their impression or image on the ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... table by Messer Fifanti, I took the chair he offered me beside his lady, and presently came the old servant whom already I had seen, bearing meat for me. I was hungry, and I fell to with zest, what time a pleasant ripple of talk ran round the board. Facing me sat my cousin, and I never observed until my hunger was become less clamorous with what an insistence he regarded me. At last, however, our eyes met across the board. He smiled that crooked, somewhat unpleasant ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... brink of the river, she sat on a log, and impatiently pulled off the little cap she wore. The skies were gray, heavy, overcast, with an occasional wind-rift in the clouds that only revealed new depths of grayness behind; the tideless waters murmured a faint ripple against the logs and jutting beams of the breakwater, and were answered by the crescendo wail of the dried reeds on the other bank,—reeds that rustled and moaned among themselves for the golden days ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... the three, she suddenly broke into a little ripple of laughter, and, upon being questioned severely as to the reason of such unseemly mirth, she said, gaily, "I was just wondering what poor Phil will do with three girls, and one his ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... embellished by vases and peacocks quaintly cut in the style of a bygone age; and for chief glory of all, the bright blue river, which made the principal boundary of the place, washing the edge of the wide sloping lawn, and making perpetual music on a summer day with its joyous ripple. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... said she, and went off into another ripple of pretty contralto laughter. There is a soft, deep, rich laugh, which some women have, that is the sweetest ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... a ripple on the surface. But anon a belated ice floe comes down the main channel and shows how swiftly the waters are flowing now that they once more move "unvexed to the sea." There are still some masses hugging ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... numbed the sensibilities while we held our life unuttered within us, hesitating to unveil its secrets with the modesty of the young girl before the husband she loves. An hour passed. I was sitting on the brick balustrade when the sound of her footsteps blending with the undulating ripple of her flowing gown stirred the calm air of the night. These are sensations to ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... weed-choked, under white hawthorn hedges, and beneath the great roots of oak and elm, shall we pick out full many a goodly trout. There, in yon stop-hole underneath that tree, not ten feet broad or twenty long, where just enough water trickles through the hatches to make a ripple, are a brace of noble fish, no doubt; and one of them you may be sure of, if you will go the proper way to work, and fish scientifically with the brace of flies I have put on for you—a governor and a black alder. In the first ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... fore and was standing shoulder to shoulder with the foreman of Running Water. He heard a ripple of laughter, and looked up to see Stella ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... of May. The weather was intensely hot, and these rustic bowers were found to be refreshingly cool and grateful. The name of this friendly chief was Casquin. Here the army remained for three days, without a ripple of unfriendly feeling arising between the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... broken by the ripple of the burn over its pebbles deep below, and the cry of the night-bird upon the steep rock whereon the historic old castle was built. By a path known to her she descended swiftly, and away into the park by yet another path, used almost exclusively by the servants and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... Tyrrel lay on his breast near the Buck-stane, his eye on the horse-road which winded down the valley, and his ear alertly awake to every sound which mingled with the passing breeze, or with the ripple of the brook. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and reached for the bacon. "We ain't been followed up with stampedes so far," he pointed out. "Burro Lode never caused a ripple in the Bend, you recollect. And I'll tell a sinful world ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... room and the parlor. Making known the wish of the Society, they escorted him to the meeting in the other part of the building. He was greeted by smiling faces, nods of encouragement, and just a faint ripple of applause, that sprung from a desire on the part of the young people to let him know that they were glad to bid him welcome, and ready to give him ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... not loudly. They were prone to gather in little familiar groups and discuss in a whisper how Terry had risen and spoken before them. Now and then someone, for the sake of politeness, strove to open a general theme of conversation, but it died away like a ripple on a placid pond. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple of the measure. CONINGTON. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Idolatry! you cannot find any more gross, any more cruel, on the broad earth, than within the area of a mile around this pulpit. Dark minds from which God is obscured; deluded souls, whose fetish is the dice-box or the bottle; apathetic spirits, steeped in sensual abomination, unmoved by a moral ripple, soaking in the slump of animal vitality. False gods, more hideous, more awful, than Moloch or Baal; worshipped with shrieks, worshipped with curses, with the hearth-stone for the bloody altar, and the drunken husband for the immolating priest, and women and children for ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... came the sound of wood knocking against wood, of exclamations of annoyance or triumph as the game proceeded, and every now and then a ripple of prolonged laughter, girlish, fresh, pure as the fragrant air, clear as the last notes of the cuckoo before he speaks his final ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... sort of endless ripple, now telling of water-weeds and bank-flowers and birds, now lingering pleasantly over some of the traditions and old-world lore of which the Thames furnishes ...
— M. P.'s in Session - From Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Portrait Gallery • Harry Furniss
... before. "On the next Tuesday," writes Mr. Stanton, "we reached the spot where President Brown lost his life. What a change in the waters! What was then a roaring torrent, now, with the water some nine feet lower, seemed from the shore like the gentle ripple upon the quiet lake. We found, however, in going through it with our boats, there was the same swift current, the same huge eddy, and between them the same whirlpool, with its ever-changing circles. Marble Canon seemed ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... as he improvised, the noisy group would fall silent. At such moments, Samson would ride out on the waves of melody, and see again the velvet softness of the mountain night, with stars hanging intimately close, and hear the ripple of Misery and a voice for ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... teeth sat the boat-steerer, grasping the steering oar firmly with both hands, his restless eyes on the alert—a glance at the schooner ahead, as we rose on a sea, another at the mainsheet, and then one astern where the dark ripple of the wind on the water told him of a coming puff or a large white-cap that threatened to overwhelm us. The waves were holding high carnival, performing the strangest antics, as with wild glee they danced along ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... magic splendor and the lake was without a ripple as the two long, dark canoes glided silently over the water toward the opposite shore. The doctor's house, which was a summer cottage, stood close to the beach, and a light on the side where his office was assured them that he was at home. Gladys started them off, and the beautiful strains ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... a pistol at odd hours in the backyard of the Institute was a phenomenon more than sufficiently remarkable to be talked about in Rockland. The viscous intelligence of a country-village is not easily stirred by the winds which ripple the fluent thought of great cities, but it holds every straw and entangles every insect that lights upon it. It soon became rumored in the town that the young master was a wonderful shot with the pistol. Some said he could hit a fo'pence-ha'penny at three rod; some, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to Doctor —— with pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have made an admirable poem, for the interest would have been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much out of breath to be capable of laughter. In like manner few persons except the Browning enthusiast, who is not responsible ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... I have before said, was unmusical though effective; but her laugh was deliciously sweet, especially when it was restrained to a mere ripple, as now. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... lips to cry, "Now, Dave, pull!" but he could not speak, only watch the thin, keen, yellow man, whose eye glittered beneath his rough hairy cap as he slowly tightened the line, drawing it up till it was above the surface of the water, which began to ripple and play about it in long waves running off in different directions. There was so great a length that it was impossible to draw it tight without moving the spreader poles; and as the lads both thought of what the consequences would be if the ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... royalties, and others. They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... mighty steam-ship foundering, Down the monstrous vision sank; And the ripple, slowly rolling, Plashed and played ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... those entering were standing, irresolute, undecided which way to turn; but abruptly enough the glimmer of candlelight must have been noticed. Kirkwood heard a hushed exclamation, a quick clatter of high heels on the parquetry, pattering feet on the stairs, all but drowned by swish and ripple of silken skirts; and a woman stood at the head of the flight—to the American an apparition profoundly amazing as she paused, the light from the floor casting odd, theatric shadows beneath her eyes and over her brows, edging her eyes themselves ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... pebble at the bottom showed as distinctly as if held in the open hand. We had all seen clear water before, but, as a severe but unscholarly sufferer once said of his rheumatism, "never such as these." The day being perfect, no breeze stirring, and the Lake without a ripple, the gravelly bottom continued visible when we had steamed out to a point where the water reached a depth of eighty feet. Two gentlemen on board who had made a leisurely trip round the world and were now on their way home to England, remarked ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... afraid of losing it; each morning it shone upon her, with the same blue sky, the same smile, the same sweet words. That clear, still lake was unruffled by any breeze, even a zephyr; she would fain have seen a ripple on its glassy surface. Her desire had something so infantine about it that it ought to be excused; but society is not more indulgent than the God of Genesis. Madame de Vandenesse, having now become intelligently clever, was aware that such sentiments were not permissible, and she ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... he led them round a high rough rock, to where the calm waves of the sea ran up into a little bay, upon the white sand of which only a gentle ripple broke with a very pleasant sound. This bay was full of boats, small painted boats, with just room in each for one person, with a small rudder to guide them at the stern, and a little sail as white as snow, ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... one small ripple in the strenuous world. The lady who had written the twelve-page letter ten months before sent him another of eight pages, analysing all the motives that were leading her back to him—should she come?—now that he was ill and alone. Much might yet be retrieved, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... before which winds the valley of the Black with miles of placid stream in view. Quite different is this from White river, which is ever hurrying, rushing along. The Black flows within its grassy banks for long distances with scarcely a ripple; then a whirling rapid is passed, beyond which glides another long ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... among the dripping boughs, leaving a diamond on each sprouting bud where next year's leaf is hid; by the moorland river, on bright December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... took in at a glance the rich Southern landscape. Immediately below him, and sloping in well kept terraces to the banks of the Coosa, was a trim garden, filled with flowers, among which, in fine bloom, were numerous varieties of the rose. The sluggish waters of the Coosa flowed without a ripple between its well wooded banks, the trees on opposite sides often interlocking their branches. Beyond the river was a wilderness of forest; the slaves were going to their labor in the cotton fields, singing and chatting gaily ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... difficult task of getting the felucca under way single-handed—in the event of all things conspiring to render such a decided step justifiable—and sculling so gently that I scarcely raised a ripple on the highly phosphorescent water, I at length glided quietly up alongside the felucca and, taking the end of the boat's painter with me, climbed in over the vessel's low bulwarks, passed the dinghy astern, made her fast, and forthwith proceeded to ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... now, as she lay wakeful in bed, mixed up with the "forever—ever," and the dropping tinkle of that lovely trembling ripple of accompaniment, until the late moon got round to the south and slanted in between the white dimity curtains, and set a glimmering ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... his zeal in the performance of his office, his obliviousness to the imperial presence, caused a ripple ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... had appeared, the water was pale, smooth, and phosphorescent, and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballads, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... on his pipe. Chapel was over. The organist was prancing through the voluntary, and the first ripple of boys had already reached Dunwood House. In a few minutes the masters would be here too, and Ansell, who was becoming ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... stared at him. Not a hand was lifted in applause. Slowly the big, awkward man slouched back across the platform and sank into his seat, and yet there was no sound of approval, of recognition from the audience; only a long sigh ran like a ripple on an ocean through rank after rank. In Lincoln's heart a throb of pain answered it. His speech had been, as he feared it would be, a failure. As he gazed steadily at these his countrymen who would ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews |
