"Dimly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laughed with thinly veiled contempt, and then had pitied. It was as though the man who sat that night alone on the Divide had, out of the very bitterness of his experience, called forth from within himself a strength of which, until then, he had been only dimly conscious. There was now, in his face and bearing, courage and decision and purpose, and with it all a glint of that same humor that had made him so bitterly mock himself. The Dean's philosophy touching the possibilities of the man who laughs when he is hurt ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... and indifferent, which could possibly have any bearing on the subject— and what fact might not possibly have some bearing?—well, something, as against the nothing that had been made out hitherto, might by some faint far-away possibility be one day dimly seem. It was only what he had seen in South America that made all this occur to him. He had never seen anything about descent with modification in any book, nor heard any one talk about it as having been put forward by other people; if he had, he would, of course, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... into the Nature of Civil and Military Subordination;" another into "the System of Military Defence." It was during these labours I beheld this inquirer, of a tender frame, emaciated, and study-worn, with hollow eyes, where the mind dimly shone like a lamp in a tomb. With keen ardour he opened a new plan of biographical politics. When, by one who wished the author was in better condition, the dangers of excess in study were brought to his recollection, he smiled, and, with ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... free nations there, with our help, have been drawing together in defense of their free institutions. In so doing, they have laid the foundations of a unity that will endure as a major creative force beyond the exigencies of this period of history. We may, at this close range, be but dimly aware of the creative surge this movement represents, but I believe it to be of historic importance. I believe its benefits will survive long after communist tyranny is ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... searching eyes of Ashton-Kirk caught a sort of glow upon the grass at one side; he moved in that direction and the others followed him. At the second floor a light flickered dimly in a window; it was a wavering, uncertain sort of thing, and Bat Scanlon recognized ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... for the stranger, opening with a latch-key a door at the further end of the dark passage, ushered them into a dimly lighted room, where about a dozen men were seated round ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... our men have suffered, fought, and died. And we who can but dimly see the end Are guarded by their spirits glorified, Who help us on our way, while they ascend. They are not dead—they are not dead, I say, These men ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... as Tony thought. He was in the Robinson parlor, sitting with Miss Bright before the flickering log fire, which dimly lit the long, low room with its rag carpet and old-fashioned furniture. They were talking over their friendship, and she was flattering him upon his superiority to those country greenhorns who lived up here; she always knew he had city blood in him. ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... as his world dissolved around him. He could hear, dimly, the voice of the blue-clad Union officer as he read off the death warrant for Xedii. And ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... centre of its floor pierced by the black hole leading down to the next and lowest level, was lighted dimly by lamps and candles standing upon shelves which jutted from the earthen walls. From all the galleries radiating from it, files of men, staggering under weighted baskets, kept coming to be relieved of their loads by ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... find the carriage ready for him. Two tallow dips burning dimly in the big, old-fashioned lamps on either side of the driver's seat were the admiration of the boys who lighted them. The Colonel ordered them to "blow them thar candles out," saying that they only blinded him. The real reason was ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... upstairs, and the men, after the claret had gone round, followed them. And now it seemed to this rude Highlander that he was only going from wonder to wonder. Half-way up the narrow staircase was a large recess dimly lit by the sunlight falling through stained glass, and there was a small fountain playing in the middle of this grotto and all around was a wilderness of ferns dripping with the spray, while at the entrance two stone figures held up magical globes on which the springing and falling ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... shoulder, and strolled in the direction of the meadows beyond the haunted Poplar Spring at the end of the lawn. It was a rimy October morning, and the sun rising slowly above the shadowy aspens in the graveyard, shone dimly through the transparent silver veil that hung over the landscape. The leaves, still russet and veined with purple on the boughs overhead, lay in brown wind-rifts along the drive, where they had been blown during ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... unworthy priest in the Spanish Cloister to the very human, kindly Pope in "The Bean Feast." And from all these it is far down the ages to the evangelical parish priest of The Inn Album, that "purblind honest drudge," who, the deeper to impress his flock, painted heaven dimly but "made hell distinct." There are many artists, many musicians. There are poets from Aprile in Paracelsus, and the troubadours Eglamour and Sordello, to Keats and Shelley. The extremes of social life are given. There are the street-girls in Pippa Passes and there are kings ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... democratic township seemed now like a dream to him. All his interests centred in the free forest, where he had grown to manhood. Now and again a longing would come upon him to see something of the great, tumultuous, seething world of whose existence he was dimly aware. There were times in the long winter evenings when he and his brother, the old father, and the brother's wife would sit round the stove after the children had been put to bed, talking of the past and the future. Then old Angell ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... words, Melody, but the sense of them. I was strangely surprised; and being young and eager, the thought came upon me for the first time that this thing was really possible; and with the thought came the longing, and a sense which I had only felt dimly before, and never let speak plain to me, as it were. I suppose every young man feels the desire to go somewhere else than the place where he has always abided. The world may be small and wretched, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... chiefs of Lochlin's[4] echoing woods. Tall as the stag of Morven, moved stately before them the King.[5] His shining shield is on his side, like a flame on the heath at night; when the world is silent and dark, and the traveler sees some ghost sporting in the beam. Dimly gleam the hills around, and show indistinctly their oaks. A blast from the troubled ocean removed the settled mist. The sons of Erin appear, like a ridge of rocks on the coast; when mariners, on shores unknown are ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was honest and straight himself, and could not understand duplicity. Louisa's conduct was incomprehensible to him. What should he do now? Should he be true to one so false? This question began dimly to struggle to obtain an answer in his mind. He had scarcely begun to face it, when a knock at the door, and the shrill voice of his landlady calling out, "I have got a letter for you, Mr. Hardy, you are in favor with the ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... misquoting the entomological authority of the recent "Sunday Supplement"; but his friend on the other side of the fence was inattentive to the lecture. Noble's mind was occupied with a wonder; he had realized, though dimly, that here was he, trying to make starry Julia the subject of a conversation with a person who had the dear privilege of being closely related to her—and preferred to talk ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... girls' profuse adieux, and then the hush of vacancy fell on the wide halls and airy rooms of the great house. That evening, with slow steps, he came down the staircase. In the twilight of the parlors showed dimly outlined a drift of woman's drapery, and the piano was murmuring inarticulately. Outside, on the broad stone doorstep, showed another drift, resolving itself into the muslins of Miss Nelly Morris, springing up with glad words of welcome as his unsteady ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... any yearning left for the good and the exalted. But his heart did heave mightily beneath the mass of corruption that his own parents had heaped above it, and he felt it gradually loosening, so that the Sun of righteousness gleamed upon it, though dimly. It was something to have even that faint light to show him the loathsomeness of his condition, and it helped him wonderfully in his efforts to cast the burden wholly from him. It was no mystery to him that "Christian" felt such a relief when ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... of London" introduces us to two scenes of a dismal and terrible character in the etching entitled Xit Wedded to the Scavenger's Daughter, the artist carries us to a gloomy torture chamber, dimly lighted by a solitary lantern. On the framework of the rack sits the dwarf Xit, his limbs compressed in the grip of the frightful instrument called the "Scavenger's daughter," while Simon Renard, scarcely able to repress a smile, interrogates the comical little figure at his leisure. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Dimly she heard the words, but she could not respond to them. She was shivering, shivering with a violence that she was ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... announced M. Guillaume, slowly raising the barrel of his revolver, and taking aim at the Captain. For the candle still burnt, although dimly and fitfully, and still there was light to guide ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... He that made us provided everything for our mode of living; I have seen this all along, it has brought me up and I am not tired of it, and for you, the white man, everything has been made for your maintenance, and now that you come and stand on this our earth (ground) I do not understand; I see dimly to-day what you are doing, and I find fault with a portion of it; that is why I stand back; I would have been glad if every white man of every denomination were now present to hear what I say; through what you have done you have cheated ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... went by, and all was silent. Hope died within her. Daylight streamed dimly into the narrow casement of her cell. Soon the measured step of the abbess fell upon her ear as she advanced up the long gallery, striking upon the door of each cell as she approached, and uttering in a solemn voice, 'Let us bless the Lord.' ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... mother-love ineffable; the strange splendour of the dreams haunting her adolescence—pageants of bravery and the glitter of the cross, altars of self-denial and pure intent, service and sacrifice and the scorn of wrong; and sometimes, seen dimly with enraptured eyes through dissolving mists—the man! glimmering for an instant, then fading, resolved into the starry void ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... authorities,—all anxious, zealous, engaged,—for what? To save a fellow-man from bondage? No; anxious and zealous lest he might escape; full of zeal to deliver him over to slavery. The poor man's anxious eyes follow vainly the busy course of affairs, from which he dimly learns that he is to be sacrificed—on the altar of the Union; and that his heart-break and anguish, and the tears of his wife, and the desolation of his children are, in the eyes of these well-informed men, only the bleat of a sacrifice, bound ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness; we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... falling in the afternoon. By the next morning the tiny house was buried to the window sashes. Looking out, there could be seen but an indistinct slanting white wall, scarcely ten feet away: a screen through which the sunlight filtered dimly, like the solemn haze of a church. The earth was not silent, now. The falling of the sleet and snow was as the striking of fine shot, and the sound of the wind a steady unceasing moan, resembling the sigh of a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the barriers frequently placed by the political and fashionable life of the great world between married people, she believed him slightly indisposed, nervous more than anything else; and had so little suspicion of a catastrophe that at the very hour when the doctors were mounting the great, dimly lit staircase at the other end of the palace, her private apartments were being lit up for a girls' dance, one of those bals blancs which the ingenuity of the idle world had begun ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... unerring instinct of the faithful mule, his steps were often arrested by the roar of the avalanche and he gazed appalled upon its resistless rush, as rocks, and trees, and earth, and snow, and ice, swept by him with awful and resistless desolation, far down into the dimly discerned torrents which rushed beneath his feet. At God's bidding the avalanche fell. No precaution could save the traveler who was in its path. He was instantly borne to destruction, and buried where ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Hugh Mainwaring, in the dimly-lighted veranda, bade his guests good-night, he grasped the hand of his namesake and said, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Texan and Mr. Pond remained still on their horses, she rode on, leading one pack-horse, toward a growth of trees seen dimly ahead. ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... tore at the end of his rope, clinging desperately, trying at every solid tree to stop the career of his runaway, but in every instance being forced by the danger of jamming his hands to let go. Again he lost his derby. The landscape was a blur. Dimly he made out the howls of laughter as the outfit passed a group of rivermen. Then abruptly a ravine yawned before him, and he let go just in time to save himself a fall. The wanigan, trailing her rope, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... him, but said "Hello" to Dan and "Good-evening" to Biddy. Conly, his trusted, discreet cashier, was at his desk, and the office was dimly lit with a ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... and head under the red fluid mud and we just saved it and no more. Afterwards the officer's horse fell with him so that he bruised his head on a stone. My companion injured one knee against a tree. Some of the men also fell and were injured. The horses breathed heavily. Somewhere dimly and gloomily a crow cawed. Later the road became worse still. The trail followed through the same miry swamp but everywhere the road was blocked with fallen tree trunks. The horses, jumping over the trunks, would land in an ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... city on the inconstant billows dancing,"—as there is between ten minutes of happiness and ten minutes by the clock. Everybody remembers the story of the little Montague who was stolen and sold to the chimney-sweep: how he could dimly remember lying in a beautiful chamber; how he carried with him in all his drudgery the vision of a fair, sad mother's face that sought him everywhere in vain; how he threw himself one day, all sooty as he was from his toil, on a rich bed and fell asleep, and how a kind person woke him, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... children knew this much, that old Grandpapa had been Doctor Mark Carew of Allonby Edge, and when he died his two sons succeeded to his practice as partners. In time the young doctors married, and the elder children remembered dimly that the Tile House and the White House had been like one home ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... dimly perceive the increasingly important and far-reaching consequences of the law we have just stated. We faintly catch still more fugitive glimpses of mechanical effects, glimpses suggested by man's complex actions, no longer merely by his gestures. We instinctively feel that ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... distraction. Drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... party soon floated out on to the waters of the new-found river. They rowed up the river until they reached the hill that Phillip, at a distance, had christened Richmond Hill. On traversing a reach of the stream, the main range, that as yet they had only dimly seen in the distance, suddenly loomed ahead of them, frowning in rugged grandeur close upon them, as it seemed. Struck with admiration and astonishment at this unexpected revelation of the deep ravines and stern and gloomy gorges that scored its front, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... shines faint and dimly, here; Light is not half so long, nor half so clear: But, oh! when every day was yours and mine, How early up! what ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... of our cottage. HE was there as usual. Mrs. Porterfield was not present. The candle was burning dimly. He sat upon the sofa. Julia was seated upon chair at a little distance. Her features wore an expression of exceeding gravity. His were pale and sad, but his eyes burnt with an eager intensity that ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... particular delight. Though it was poorly paved, and dimly lighted at night, it was a scene of great fascination. It was the great promenade. Omnibuses, cabs, hacks, trucks rolled through it all day long. There were footmen in livery; luxury was displayed in the equipages. There were crowds of foreigners; and ragged boys and girls who sold matches ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... capitals of the cloisters—certainly much later—a peculiarly hard stone has been chosen, and, notwithstanding, the precision and expressive vigour of these artists is clearly shown. But the great portal, a stupendous work of art, as we still dimly perceive it to be, wrought nearly a thousand years ago in this sheltered nook of the Pyrenees, lingers in the memory. Also, like so many other things in the far Past, its crumbling outlines scatter much ancient dust over what we vainly ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... shades and threw the shutters open. Moonlight filled the room dimly and fell upon the bronze image, sitting as expressionless as ever, immovable. Hortense's heart failed her. Nothing, she felt, would ever bring words to the closed lips or a flutter to the heavy eyelids. However, there was nothing to ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... irregular shape, it branched and twisted into numerous alleys and chambers through the chalk. In it lived representatives of the Artillery, Royal Engineers, New Zealand Tunnellers, the whole of B Company, parts of Headquarters, the Doctor's personnel, and my own Company Headquarters. The cave was dimly lit by a few candles. Throughout the day and night there were perpetual comings and goings, and it was common to see men, dazzled by the outside sun, come stumbling down the stairs and tread unseeing on the prostrate forms of those asleep below. The bare chalk was floor, bed, and bench ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Dimly visible in a recess of the black-oak bureau was Kali, goddess of Desire, and near her, in a narrow cupboard, the light impinged upon a white, smooth piece of stone which was attached to a wooden frame. It was the emblem ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... pretty certain that he left Europe behind him; only quite recently, indeed, have we realized that we were affected by what he brought with him in the way of morals and traditions, and only now are we beginning dimly to realize that what goes on on the other side of the world can be any affair of ours. The famous query of a certain American statesmen, "What has America to do with abroad?" probably represented at bottom the feelings of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising fog towards the fort, not a hundred yards away,—O glorious sight!—we dimly saw that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... characteristics of the road although he had not passed over it for many years. He was like a stranger returning to the island after a dimly remembered visit. Farther on the road forked; one branch leading to Valldemosa and the other to Soller... Ah! Soller... Scenes of his boyhood rushed through his memory! Every year, in a carriage like this, the Febrer family used to journey ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... stars some few, but single most, And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, Or glancing on each other cheerful looks, Like separated stars with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the river to the great cliffs opposite the town, one discerns dimly, carved on the face of the rock, the wonder of the region, a colossal Buddha more than three hundred feet in height, sitting serenely with his hands on his knees, and his feet, or what ought to be his feet, laved by the rushing water of the Ta Fo Rapid. As the tale runs, this was ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... way down between the smooth rock walls, bracing himself with back and knees. Within a few seconds he had reached the bottom, some ten feet below. It was a sloping, uneven floor of earth, lighted dimly from above and from the south, where the ledge shelved off down the hillside. The dirt was black and damp, undisturbed for years save by the feeble pushing of some pale, seedling plant. Jeremy groped aimlessly at first, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... in the old stubborn wave, his thick lashes on his cheek. His skin was as clean and clear as a little boy's; he looked a little boy, sleeping there. She leaned over him and he stirred and sighed happily, as if dimly aware of her nearness. She tried to speak to him, to say—"Jimsy!" but she found she could not manage it, even in a whisper. So she sat down beside him and ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... lost. The researcher is more memorable than the researched. The crowd stood admiring the mist and the dim outlines of the trees seen through it, when one of their number advanced to explore the phenomenon, and with fresh admiration all eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. It is astonishing with how little co-operation of the societies the past is remembered. Its story has indeed had another muse than has been assigned it. There is a good instance of the manner in which all history began, in Alwakidis' ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... found no answer to these questions. He went home sobered and thoughtful, dimly conscious that he had brushed past the mystery of a great character, whom, in spite of all, he ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish. As years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable veil, he acquired a name throughout the New England churches, and they called him Father Hooper. Nearly all ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... ten minutes later two slender figures appeared dimly out of the north. They approached timidly, stopping often and looking first this way and then that and always listening. When they arrived opposite the mill Bridge saw them and gave a low whistle. Immediately the two passed through the fence and ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... end of the dimly-lighted room stood the constables, on either side of an aged couple of vagabonds. The old man was arrayed in a long coat which nearly reached the ground, leaving only a glimpse of a stained and weather-beaten pair of pantaloons and striped parti-coloured stockings beneath. The ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... "'I dimly see My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother Conjectures of the features of her child Ere it ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... of concurrence, for he dimly realised the significance of his companion's speech. It is results which count in that country, where the one thing demanded is practical efficiency, and the man of simple, steadfast purpose usually goes the farthest. Hawtrey had graces ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... torch, I held it high and followed two paces behind the others as they advanced towards the pig-pen. We had not progressed twenty yards, however—luckily for us, as it turned out—when there issued through the roof of the pen a great dark body, dimly seen by the light ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... to fire first. There was need of it, too, for he could dimly make out two men, near the extreme head of the train, who were firing rapidly and firing their weapons in a fashion that drove up spurts of dirt all about ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... to Pierre like the light of the rising moon which breaks dimly through the window and makes all the objects in a room grotesquely large and blackly shadowed. Many a time his eyes opened, and he saw nothing, but when he did see and hear it ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... unprotected. The question now was, which would succeed in driving his adversary from these defences, almost within a few yards of each other, and from behind which crackled the musketry. Never was sight more curious. On the low line of these works, dimly seen in the thicket, rested the muzzles spouting flame; from the depths rose cheers; charges were made and repulsed, the lines scarcely seeing each other; men fell and writhed, and died unseen—their bodies lost in the bushes, their death-groans drowned in the steady, continuous, ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... around in roaring eddies, as the ocean wave Draws the raging storm and breaks against a rocky cave. Yet amid this frenzied tumult children often come, Decked in flowers, singing of a half-forgotten home. Soon the darkness round them changes to a vivid glare,— Dimly in the center I descry a lonely pair; Ah, two women,—stern the one and gloomy as the night,— And the other gentle, like the evening in its flight. How familiar to my eyes the two lone figures seemed! With her ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... the black face thus flashed upon me shocked me profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one. The facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth as I had ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were blood-shot at the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... pictures and shelves, bright and beautiful objects were staring from every corner. The reddish light of the lamp filled one with melancholy. Twilight wrapped everything in the room, and only here and there the gold of the frames, or the white spots of marble flashed dimly. Heavy fabrics were motionlessly hanging before the doors. All this embarrassed and almost choked Foma; he felt as though he had lost his way. He was sorry for the woman. But ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... voice brought him peace. And Cigarette sung on, only moving to reach him some fresh touch of ice, while time traveled on, and the first afternoon shadows crept across the bare floor. Every now and then, dimly through the openings of the windows, came a distant roll of drums, a burst of military music, an echo of the laughter of a crowd; and then her head went up eagerly, an impatient shade swept ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... made a mistake; she heard some whispering. She sprang to her feet and looked through the cracks of the hut. A cart had stopped at the end of the field, and by the pale light from the stars she could dimly see the form of a man or woman throwing out baskets to two others, who carried them into the field. This was Monneau's lot. What did it mean at such an hour? Had Monneau come so late to ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... bear the last and heaviest stroke at the hands of retributive justice, should, rightly bearing it, bring salvation both to himself and to his race? Behind the coarse and illiterate presentiment of the chap-book, Julius began dimly to apprehend a somewhat majestic moral and spiritual tragedy, a tragedy of vicarious suffering crowned by triumphant emancipation. Thus has God, as he reflected with a self-condemnatory emotion of humility, chosen the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... out, that she carried a spoonful of negro blood in her veins. Richards worked at these details a good while, and in the end he thought he remembered things concerning them which must have gotten mislaid in his memory through long neglect. He seemed to dimly remember that it was he that found out about the negro blood; that it was he that told the village; that the village told Goodson where they got it; that he thus saved Goodson from marrying the tainted girl; that he had done him this great service "without ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... There, in the dimly lighted, lofty hall, he poured out all that had been in his heart since he had known her, and won from her in return a whisper that emboldened him to draw the yielding form toward him and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... vast shapes—huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... companionship in a mirror, especially to a woman; that the reflection of oneself is an emboldening presence, a personality which is better than the actuality of an unvalued stranger. Certainly, when Stephen closed the door and stood in the wainscoted passage, which was only dimly lit by the high window at either end, her courage seemed ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... she was in the Salle Henri II., the room where poor Henry the Fourth was killed! But how changed it was—the pictures were all gone, the walls were hung with the tapestry she had wished she could see there, and the room was but dimly lighted by a lamp hanging from the centre of the roof. Sylvia did not feel in any way surprised at the transformation—but she looked about her with great interest and curiosity. Suddenly a slight ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... opened into the living-room or, rather, kitchen, which was dimly lighted by a small paraffin lamp on the table, where were also some tea-cups and saucers, each of a different pattern, and the remains of a loaf of bread. The wallpaper was old and discoloured; a few almanacs and unframed prints were fixed ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... visiter—but the figure of a fair boy, who seemed to be garmented in rays of mild and tempered glory, which beamed palely from his slender form, like the faint light of the declining moon, and rendered the objects which were nearest to him dimly and indistinctly visible. The spirit stood at some short distance from the side of the bed. Certain that his own faculties were not deceiving him, but suspecting that he might be imposed upon by the ingenuity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... before, when this love was a kind of mystery to him and he would not own, even to himself, that he loved, and when he was persuaded that one could love only once; now he knew he was in love and was glad of it, and knew dimly what this love consisted of and what it might lead to, though he sought to conceal it even from himself. In Nekhludoff, as in every man, there were two beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for him self which should tend towards the ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... loving her husband, if Raven expected it of her. None of these things were formulated in her mind. They were only shadowy impulses, like the forces of nature, persuading, impelling her. She had no words; she had scarcely, as to the abstractions she dimly felt and never saw, any reasoned thought. But she did have an unrecognized life of the emotions, and this ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... a tiny creature, exquisitely proportioned; fair, like her father, yet in essence a replica of her mother, with the same wing-like brows and dark limpid eyes. Dimly jealous of Tara, she was the only one of the three who relished the presence of the intruder and wished strange boys oftener ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... I remember dimly, if, indeed, I remember aright, that in some of those dark prophetic pages of Scripture, that seem of cloudy purple and dusky gold, there is a passage in which the seer beholds a violent dream of wheels. Perhaps this was indeed ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... forever yearns For the thing that's flying. Everywhere he turns, Men to dust are drying, — Dust that wanders, eying (With eyes that hardly glow) New faces, dimly spying For ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... at me kind of dimly, and I'll be shot if two tears didn't well up in his eyes and run down his cheeks. "I've come to ask you," he said slowly and brokenly, "to ask you—if you won't intercede with Gorgett for me; to ask you if you won't beg him to—to grant ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... lookt unto the Maid, something dimly, because of the way that I did be; and I perceived in a moment that Mine Own did weep as she walked; but the less with pain than with the strange anguish of Memory, that doth have in it Tenderness and Sorrow ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... they came to a fairly broad staircase, leading to the third floor, thence along a hall dimly lighted to a narrow winding stair, that brought the two of them to a round platform of stone with rooms on three sides. This place was badly lit by a tallow candle, held by a miner's holder, stuck ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... lights and the faces and the music was drowned by the beating of her own arteries. She saw only the blue eyes that flashed above her, felt only the warmth of that throbbing hand which held hers and which the blood of his heart fed. Dimly, as in a dream, she saw the drooping shoulders, high white forehead and tight, cynical mouth of the man she was to marry in December. For an hour she had been crowding back the memory of that ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... walk away towards Berkeley Square. He had soon followed, but had never overtaken Mr. Bonteen. When reaching the Square he had crossed over to the fountain standing there on the south side, and from thence had taken the shortest way up Bruton Street. He had seen Mr. Bonteen for the last time dimly, by the gaslight, at the corner of the Square. As far as he could remember, he himself had at the moment passed the fountain. He had not heard the sound of any struggle, or of words, round the corner towards Piccadilly. By the time that Mr. Bonteen would have reached the head of the steps ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Mal Shaff. But he staggered to his feet to meet the charge of the ancient enemy and a grim song, a death chant immeasurably old, suddenly and dimly remembered from out of the mists of countless millenniums, was on his lips as he swung a pile-driver blow into the suddenly astonished ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... half a century after serfdom was established. Much of its popularity and life was due to the enslavement of the mass of the people. The slave was proud of having a different faith from his master; and slavery is always a propitious soil for the growth of sects. This nation of serfs dimly felt the Raskol to be an assertion of religious liberty and self-respect against master, Church and government; and these were symbolized by the beard and the peculiar sign of the cross. The Raskol offered to all the oppressed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... thereby adding fierceness to the competition, insuring an increase in the purchasing power of the dollars of those who held the labor market, while they correspondingly decreased the possibilities for earning the dollars they must have in order to live; to perceive dimly in their desperation, that congestion of the labor market speedily affected all markets; that an overstocked labor market always meant a decrease of wages, which in turn, caused a corresponding shrinkage in the number of purchasers ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... strange that the democratic cause made headway in England after this fell event. Probably its details were but dimly known to the poor, who were at this time the victims of a bad harvest and severe dearth. The months of September and October were marked by heavy and persistent rains. The Marquis of Buckingham on 23rd September wrote at Stowe to his brother, Lord Grenville, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... framed face, whose outlines I could only dimly see in the faint light of the street lamp, leaned toward me. The same small hand nervously reached out, as though ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... the green and fretted gravestone, dimly aware that his heart was beating with an unusual effort. He felt ill and weak. He leant his hand on the stone and lifted himself on to the low wooden seat nearby. He drew off his glove and thrust his bare hand under his waistcoat, with his mouth a little ajar, and his eyes fixed on the dark square ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... again, I'll bet you," he said, when I had unchained the door and we stood in the dimly lighted hall. "This is the third time this month that he has locked me ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... things as a cross dog, a tramp, and a blacksnake in the orchard she had faced bravely, but her terror of the dark was indefinite and unendurable. She opened her eyes, shut them, and opened them again, looking for something dreadful. The furniture was shapeless, the bedclothes dimly white, and each time she looked it was darker. She did not know what she expected, and to see nothing was almost worse. A carriage going down the road comforted her as long as she could hear it, but it left a thicker silence. She pressed her lids ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... those remote days of darkness, that the Great Dispenser of all light, and truth, imparted His gifts alike to all; and there were others, but for our purpose, these names must forever stand as exponents of that higher and better life that was pent up within the Negro's breast, as a dimly-lighted torch, enshrouded under the mantle of slavery, which needed only the removal of the garment to be clearly seen; and thus, surrounded by the igniting influences of the atmosphere of liberty, would burst forth into all the effulgency ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... towards this corner of the place, dimly lighted by the reflection of a distant street lamp, that the gamin ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... as keenly sensitive to the beauty of romance as any human being, but there was a great deal that was called romantic in American life in 1884-1885 that was not so. Romance became a roseate mist, through which old and young saw the obligations of life but dimly. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the dragoman and the unaccountably intelligent person hastily gathered his chattels. Stepping out into a black street and moving to the edge of black water and embarking in a black boat filled with soldiers whose rifles dimly shone, was as impressive to Coleman as if, really, it had been the first start. He had endured many starts, it was true, but the latest one always touched ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... West Coast? I'll see what I can do . . ." He interrupted me a little scornfully. "What difference would it make?" . . . I felt at once convinced that he was right. It would make no difference; it was not relief he wanted; I seemed to perceive dimly that what he wanted, what he was, as it were, waiting for, was something not easy to define—something in the nature of an opportunity. I had given him many opportunities, but they had been merely opportunities to earn his bread. Yet what more could any man do? The position struck me ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... from the moment she had read those words in her grandfather's will until this present moment, she had kept thought back. In the numbness which immediately followed the first shock, this was not so difficult. She had heard all Sandy Wilson's words, but had only dimly followed out their meaning. He wanted to meet her on the morrow. She had promised to meet him, as she would have promised also to do anything else, however preposterous, at that moment. Then she had felt a desire, more from the force of habit than from any stronger motive, to go home. She had been ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... discourse that it had taken to scarcely placing one leg before the other). Unfortunately, Selifan could not clearly remember whether two turnings had been passed or three. Indeed, on collecting his faculties, and dimly recalling the lie of the road, he became filled with a shrewd suspicion that A VERY LARGE NUMBER of turnings had been passed. But since, at moments which call for a hasty decision, a Russian is quick to discover what may conceivably be the best course to take, our coachman put away from ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of the woman on the couch seemed to move. Instead of the filmy draperies torn by his own hand, she wore the habiliments of poverty and looked at him out of a face of plebeian prettiness; a face of dimly confused features. The apparition rose and stood waveringly upright. "You murdered me, too!" it said in a voice of vague simplicity. Eben Tollman tried ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Dido now, fresh from the iron bane, 450 Went wandering in the mighty wood: and when the Trojan man First dimly knew her standing by amid the glimmer wan —E'en as in earliest of the month one sees the moon arise, Or seems to see her at the least in cloudy drift of skies— He spake, and let the tears fall down by all love's sweetness stirred: "Unhappy Dido, was it true, that bitter following ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... overhanging cliff, where I could still watch the coming storm upon the sea. A murmur of voices presently attracted my attention. I then observed that the passage ended in a kind of open grotto, where I could dimly discern the little figures of several children, who, separated from their nurses in the sudden onset of the storm, had taken refuge there. As the gloom deepened they became silent again, until the stillness was broken by a familiar voice. There was no mistaking it.—It was Sarah ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... And, amazed, it said, "Here is a man who forty years ago lived in the midst of our present life and wrote about it." They saw the wild, loud complexity of their world expressed in his verse; and yet were dimly conscious, to their consolation, that he was aware of a central peace where the noise was quieted and the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... lineage of Abraham and David, empowered to deliver them from personal and national burdens, and to vanquish their enemies. The actuality of the Messiah's status as the chosen Son of God, who was with the Father from the beginning, a Being of preexistent power and glory, was but dimly perceived, if conceived at all, by the people in general; and although to prophets specially commissioned in the authorities and privileges of the Holy Priesthood, revelation of the great truth was given,[15] ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... The lamp burnt dimly and the fire went completely out. Hilda presently fell asleep in the darkness, and now a moonbeam shining into the drawing room and falling across her tired face made it look white and unearthly, almost like ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... shadows behind Weston's chair, there slowly appeared a dark, cloaked form. A black-draped, hooded figure, that moved slowly toward them. A tall, big figure that seemed to loom out of the darkness, and then the hood fell back a little, a white ghostly face appeared dimly and a slowly raised hand pointed ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... fair, the bright illumination in the distance, the twinkling lights in the fore-ground, dimly revealing dusky figures cowering round their fires, and the dark depths of the wood beyond, with now and then a gleam of moonshine streaming on its tangled paths, made up a landscape roll of scenic effects. Getting deeper and deeper into the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... now and the fire cast weird, uncanny shadows on the dimly-lighted interior walls of the wigwam. The Indians sitting around it in their peculiar dress seemed like unreal inhabitants of some spirit world. Bob's coming to himself in this place and amongst these people appealed to him as miraculous—supernatural. He could not understand ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... thing that strikes us, standing on the verge of this new region, opening out dimly but gloriously before our eyes, is one great fact which is plain to all; which is greater than all England's concessions to Ireland, more fruitful of happy consequences, not alone to the latter country itself, but to the world at ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... instructed—letting my glance finally fall in the most casual manner where he indicated. But as I did so my heart gave a great bound. Could that be Mademoiselle Pelagie? The pose of the head, the dark eyes seen dimly through the lace veil, the little ringlets in the neck, were hers; but after a moment I convinced myself that it was only a chance resemblance. I had left Mademoiselle Pelagie in Kentucky not three weeks before, with no intention of coming to Washington, but of going direct to New ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... which the lad pointed, I was able to descry just dimly a motionless something lying in the pathway, about ten yards from the mouth of the cavern, while something else, still more dimly visible, but recognisable as a little crowd of men, appeared about twice as far away, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery he would parade before a mirror in his room or lie stretched in satin along his window-seat looking down on the yard and realizing dimly this clamor, breathless and immediate, in which it seemed he was never ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... resting, and the Captain was enjoying his smoke. Old Clump, too, having finished his tea and swept out Juno's kitchen, loitered toward us with his comforter—the pipe—and edged up respectfully within hearing of our conversation. So we boys leaned on our elbows, looking out at the dimly defined water, sometimes lighted in streaks by gleams of phosphorescence where shoals of fish were jumping; or, stretched on our backs, we watched the shooting-stars hurrying with speed quick as thought from ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the far country in which he had been dwelling, for a little space, he looked into a long face, with eyes set close and a curved nose. He was dimly conscious that it was a familiar countenance, but he could not yet remember where he had seen it before, because he could not concentrate his thoughts. His head was heavy and aching. He knew that he lived, but he did not ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... frank in its sensuality and its sensuousness, under the guidance of a young man to whom her half-formed intelligence was a most diverting toy—Sophia felt mysteriously uncomfortable, disturbed by sinister, flitting phantoms of ideas which she only dimly apprehended. Her eyes fell. Gerald laughed self-consciously. She would not eat any ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... recollections may not go back to pre-railway days, the conditions under which we travelled in my youth would be thought intolerable now. No sleeping- or dining-cars, long night-journeys in unheated, dimly lit carriages devoid of any kind of convenience, and sea-passages in small, ill-equipped steamers. All these were accepted as a matter of course, and as ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... feet away from the Peary, on the side opposite to the one Ken Torrance had approached, a dimly discernible object lay in the mud. In miniature, it resembled the submarine: a cigar-shaped steel shell, held down to the sea-bottom by ropes bound over it. Cutting edges of steel had been fastened ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... front of Pearlie's house was guarded by a row of big trees that cast kindly shadows. The strolling couples used to step gratefully into the embrace of these shadows, and from them into other embraces. Pearlie, sitting on the porch, could see them dimly, although they could not see her. She could not help remarking that these strolling couples were strangely lacking in sprightly conversation. Their remarks were but fragmentary, disjointed affairs, spoken in low tones with a queer, tremulous note in ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... puckered with an unnormal tension while the rest of his face held its death frost. Slowly, slowly, unnaturally—as though energized by some hyper-rational power—his lips and tongue moved. The words he spoke were clear. "I am in a ... a ... tunnel," he said. "It is lighted, dimly, but there is nothing for me to see." Blue veins showed through the flesh of his cheeks like watermarks ...
— There is a Reaper ... • Charles V. De Vet
... you to use the snuffers, and to teach the people to hold the snuff-dishes right (Acts 20:20,21; 2 Tim 4:2). We must often be snuffed with these snuffers, or our light will burn but dimly, our candle will also waste. Pray, therefore, O men of God, look diligently to your people. Snuff them as you see there is need; but touch not their snuff with your white fingers; a little smutch on YOU will be seen a great way. Remember also ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... word "renaissance" has grown to cover a vaguer period, and there has been a constant tendency to push the date of its beginning ever backward, as we detect more and more the dimly dawning light amid the darkness of earlier ages. Of late, writers have fallen into the way of calling Dante the "morning star of the Renaissance"; and the period of the great poet's work, the first decade of the fourteenth century, has certainly the advantage of being characterized by three ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the front windows could the members of the party dimly see one another. They had withdrawn so far at sight of the approach of the man on guard that the light ill served them. Mike stealthily retreated to the open door leading into the hall. Neither of his comrades heard him, and he groped along the passage, with hands outstretched ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... possible; thus, if an exclamation will suggest his meaning, he substitutes this for a whole sentence." In climbing an antique tower we may obtain striking flashes of prospect through the slits and eyelet-holes which dimly illuminate the winding stair, but to combine these into an intelligible landscape is not always easy. Browning's errors of style are in part attributable to his unhappy application of a passage in a letter of Caroline Fox which a friend had shown him. She stated that her acquaintance ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... were still turned toward the ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more definitely suffering. She was mistaken: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... mist fell again and in it, dimly, I thought I saw—well, never mind who or what I saw. Then ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard |
