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Illuminating   /ɪlˈumənˌeɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Illuminating

adjective
1.
Tending to increase knowledge or dissipate ignorance.  Synonyms: enlightening, informative.  "An illuminating lecture"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Illuminating" Quotes from Famous Books



... illuminating conversation the Princess and Joan could do nothing else but gaze from one man to the other in mute surprise, and Joan was grieved beyond measure that Felix should treat Alec's father with such scant courtesy. Even while they were making for the steps of the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... books above noticed may be easily seen even by the casual visitor. The late librarian, Henry Octavius Coxe, devised the happy plan of exhibiting under a glass case a chronological series of manuscripts written by English scribes, so as to exhibit the progress of the arts of calligraphy and illuminating in England. This case is in the north wing, at the further end from the entrance door. Among the selections for this series occur Alfred's gift-book to Worcester, the "Codex Vossianus," the "Cdmon," and a fourth book, one ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... world—that is, into southwestern Japan—Izanami purified himself by bathing in a stream. While washing himself,[5] many kami were borne from the rinsings of his person, one of them, from the left eye (the left in Japanese is always the honorable side), being the far-shining or heaven-illuminating kami, whose name, Amateras[)u], or Heaven-shiner, is usually translated "The Sun-goddess." This personage is the centre of the system of Shint[o]. The creation of gods by a process of cleansing has had a powerful effect on the Japanese, who usually associate ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... from the source should reach without loss the body to be heated; from there, and from nowhere else, it should be radiated. It is, of course, out of the question to reach this theoretical result, but it is possible by a proper construction of the illuminating device to approximate it more ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... working: there is a life of monotony for your own souls, and of misguiding for those of others. And, on the other side, is open to your choice the life of the crowned spirit, moving as a light in creation— discovering always—illuminating always, gaining every hour in strength, yet bowed down every hour into deeper humility; sure of being right in its aim, sure of being irresistible in its progress; happy in what it has securely done—happier in ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... into Bolingbroke's error of excessive egotism. Standing before the superstructure of theology, he carefully surveyed every part of it, and deemed no theme too lofty for his reasonings, and no mystery beyond the reach of his illuminating torch. He lamented the absence of progress in the understanding of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact. But this difficulty did not impede him from an attempted solution. He thought himself performing a great ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... 1906-1907, a very exhaustive and illuminating investigation was made under the general supervision of Dr. Wallin, one of the most eminent authorities on the relationship of the physical and the mental in the work of our schools. Dr. Wallin called to his ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... light of the living is the sunshine that streams on those who thus live, because they live in Him who not only pours His light upon their hearts, but, by pouring it, turns themselves into 'light in the Lord.' We, too, may have the brightness of His face irradiating our faces and illuminating our paths, as with the beneficence of a better sunshine. The Psalmist points us the way thus to walk in light. He vows that, because his heart is full of the great mercies of his delivering God, he will order all his active life as under ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the ghostly light through the other slept upon a bed, falling between the heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man. But how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... not the panorama which the Emperor unfolded in Paris. He reached St. Cloud quietly on the evening of July twenty-seventh. The people of Paris learned the news incidentally, and burst into spontaneous rejoicings, illuminating the city, and sending addresses in which the terms of adulation were exhausted. Napoleon was no longer an actor in merely human history: he was a man of the heroic age; he was beyond admiration; nothing but love could rise to his lofty place. On August sixteenth ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... a gamin? She remembered the old tale of the maiden wedded to the beautiful and strange elf-king. Was the legend symbolic of that mysterious thread—call it genius or what you will—that runs its erratic course through humanity's woof, marring yet illuminating the staid design, never straightened with its fellow-threads, never tied, and never to be followed to its source? With the feeling of having for an instant held in her hand the key to the riddle of his nature, Mary went to Stefan and ran her ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... of the desolation that pervades polar regions, the resources are considerable and have attracted much commercial activity. For many years whale oil was about the only illuminating oil used by most of the world, and the chief supply was obtained from the whales slaughtered in north ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... of that whaling metropolis were slow to believe that their monopoly could ever be threatened by newer sources of illumination; but gas had become available in the cities, and coal-oil and petroleum were now added to the list of illuminating materials. The American whaling fleet, which at the time of Edison's birth mustered over seven hundred sail, had dwindled probably to a bare tenth when he took up the problem of illumination; and the competition ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... her, much to her surprise. She felt she had undergone so much, and they were still in the very state she had left them. She blurted out her triumphant account of the new Doris, almost forgetting Geraldine, and to their excited questionings and comments she flashed illuminating replies, making them see the very figure in the muffled cloak with the courageous expression on its ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... of the kitchen hung a lantern which had once been used for illuminating purposes outside the mansion. It contained a piece of tin which acted as a reflector; and Peter, who had never yet had the pleasure of seeing it lit, had amused himself that very morning by putting in the candles for which it was prepared, and informed Aunt ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... earnest and dogmatic, seeing human nature from a doctrinal platform, not working and thinking with it; and secondly the poetic type, of which Dante is the noblest example, perfectly clear and definite in inward and outward vision, and illuminating all that it touches with an indescribable ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... lady's-maid because of these piquant peculiarities; but in our case the circumstances were extraordinary. I have explained them fully to Himself in my letters, and Francesca too has written pages of illuminating detail ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Charley, in his illuminating way, explained that he went into the side show, and the man coaxed him to shake the dice. He shook and came within one every time he shook of winning the capital prize. He left the game, was induced ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... greatest poet may not plead his privilege, what is left to Wordsworth is enough to justify his fame. Even where his genius is wrapped in clouds, the unconquerable lightning of imagination struggles through, flashing out unexpected vistas, and illuminating the humdrum pathway of our daily thought with a radiance of momentary consciousness that seems like a revelation. If it be the most delightful function of the poet to set our lives to music, yet perhaps he will be even more sure of our maturer gratitude if he do his part ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... Wilderness had made its attack upon the mind of the unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. For he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to the effect that several Indians had "seen the Wendigo" along the shores of Fifty Island Water in the "fall" of last year, and that this was the true reason ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... happened was a red flash in the air about two hundred yards away, and a pinging noise as bits of shrapnel shot into the ground round about. One of my men, S—— (the poor chap was killed next day), called to me: "Look at that fire in Sailly, sir!" I turned round and saw a great yellow flare illuminating the sky in the direction of Sailly, the fiery end of some barn or farm-building, where a high explosive had found ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing

... to subjugate the other.... It seemed to the onlookers that they were witnessing an intense struggle between two very strong natures separated by a deep, a fathomless gulf; that a veil, dark as night, hanging between them had been rent asunder, giving passage to an illuminating flash; that this luminous ray carried with it all the revelations and the key to the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... has gathered some oranges, and is trying to play at cup and ball with them on his nose, while his friend, Monsieur du Tremblay, jealous of his success, talks of illuminating the trees with bowls of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... of some ancient temple, tinted with numberless delicate hues, the extreme points of the stalactites glittering like bright gems as they were reached by the reflected rays of the sun, which penetrated far down into the depths beneath, illuminating every object below its glassy surface. So beautifully clear was the water, that when the party in the boat looked over the sides, they could see right down to the bottom of the cavern, which appeared to consist ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... and the Garrawalt, the streams at my feet, do not run; that the winds do not sigh amid the gorges of these blue hills; that the sun does not kindle the peaks of Loch-na-Gar; tell me my heart does not beat, and I will believe you; but do not tell me the Bible is not divine. I have found its truth illuminating my footsteps; its consolations sustaining my heart. May my tongue cleave to my mouth's roof and my right hand forget its cunning, if I every deny what is my deepest inner experience, that this blessed book is the book of God.'"—"Church Before the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... light was also found to have the peculiar property of penetrating into the molecules of bodies, illuminating them and, enabling the eye to determine as to their structure. The production of beautiful spectres, prismatic colors of gorgeous hues, and the most remarkable system of rings, has followed the discovery, and important results are expected from the continuation of the researches. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... the day when the plan of the Government was first made known to them, or on the day when the late Parliament was dissolved, because they do not go on week after week, hallooing, and holding meetings, and marching about with flags, and making bonfires, and illuminating their houses, we are again told that there is a reaction. To such a degree can men be deceived by their wishes, in spite of their own recent experience. Sir, there is no reaction; and there will ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... writer of Russia." That is Turgenev's estimate of Tolstoy. "A second Shakespeare!" was Flaubert's enthusiastic outburst. The Frenchman's comparison is not wholly illuminating. The one point of resemblance between the two authors is simply in the tremendous magnitude of their genius. Each is a Colossus. Each creates a whole world of characters, from kings and princes and ladies to servants and maids and peasants. But how vastly divergent the angle of approach! ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... Cardinal Newman, in an illuminating passage of his Apologia, explains how he made for himself images of personified nations, and hints that behind his belief in the real existence of such images was his sense of the convenience of creating ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... products of combustion by means of a flue. Coal stoves should never be installed inside the house. It has been done successfully by some amateurs, but the danger of coal gas being driven back into the house by a down draft in the chimney is too great a risk. Coal gas and illuminating gas are two ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... documents which make us aware of this situation, so general then, but so strongly in contrast with modern methods, three explicit statements by Heywood are so illuminating that they deserve quotation. One occurs in the preface to his Rape ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... enclosing in his network of questions. And she had seen him look at Robin when he had passed or spoken to them. An illuminating flash brought back to her that he had cleverly found out from her when they were to walk together, and where they were to go. She had not been quick enough to detect this before, but she saw it now. Girls who looked ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... German rifle fire, and it became a very persistent joke in the trenches. But nearly all agree that German artillery is "hell let loose." That is what the enemy intended it to be, but they did not reckon upon the terrors of Hades making so small an impression upon the British soldier. There is an illuminating passage in an official statement ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... fascinating syrens, exclaims, "We have lost our hold on this man! He is no longer ours!" Religion welcomes her new adherent; she beckons him to turn his steps into a new,—a pleasanter path; and God himself looks down from heaven with complacency and love, illuminating his track by the light of his countenance, marking the first step he takes in religion, and supporting him by the staff of his grace,—the aid of his ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... that was almost akin to moral sense, a rare enough bird in Naples. He said to himself that Emilio was a wicked old man, "un vecchio briccone." The delights of sin were the prerogative of youth. Abruptly this illuminating fact swam, like a new comet, within the ken of the Marchesino. He towered towards the heights of virtuous indignation. As he lay upon his fevered pillow, drinking a tisane prepared by his anxious mamma, he ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... for my special delectation a doggerel ballad of his own composition. The hero was myself and there was a glowing anticipation of the arrival of a heroine. And as I listened my interest would wax intense at the picture of this world-charming bride illuminating the lap of the future in which she sat enthroned. The list of the jewellery with which she was bedecked from head to foot, and the unheard of splendour of the preparations for the bridal, might have ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... the lads were in their gay uniforms! It was the first time they had all been together, and the bright sunshine illuminating their ranks, and reflecting from the polished surfaces of the engines, ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster

... 2: After the interposed body has passed by, the transparent body remains in the same position and relation as regards the illuminating body, and so the shadow passes at once. But when the sin is past, the soul does not remain in the same relation to God: and so there is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... of war may be of interest at this time. Some one has called attention to the illuminating discourse between Micromegas, gigantic dweller on one of the planets revolving about Sirius, and a company of our philosophers, as reported in the seventh chapter of the amusing fantasy bearing the name ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... appeal. Courant went after her and brought her back. When they returned to the fire the old man, who was busy with the cooking, looked up to speak but instead gazed in silence, caught by something unusual in their aspect, revivifying, illuminating, like the radiance of an inner glow. It glorified the squalor of their clothing, the drawn fatigue of their faces. It gave them the fleeting glamour of spiritual beauty that comes to those in whom being has reached its highest expression, the perfect moment of completion ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... the room around, and the kneeling lady, sunk with majesty too in her white flowing robes, (for she had not on a hoop,) spreading the dark, though not dirty, floor, and illuminating that horrid corner; her linen beyond imagination white, considering that she had not been undressed every since she had been here; I thought my concern would have choked me. Something rose in my throat, I know not what, which made me, for a moment, guggle, as it were, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... words of entreaty and encouragement gushed from him in a crystal stream with looks and tones of more than mortal charity. Men might well doubt was this a man, or was it Christianity speaking? Christianity, born in a stable, was she there, illuminating a jail? For now for a moment or two the sacred orator was more than mortal; so high above earth was his theme, so great his swelling words. He rose, he dilated to heroic size, he flamed with sacred fire. His face shone like an angel's, and no silver trumpet or ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... intelligence. The two little boys appeared suddenly at her elbows. "Shall we take the plates and get the strawberries, Mummy?" they asked simultaneously. Then one of the neat maids in the background had to be called up and instructed in undertones, and Mr. Direck saw that for the present Robinson's illuminating experience was not for her ears. A little baffled, but quite understanding how things were, he turned to his ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... of bricklaying and carrying pig-iron have been selected as instances of the procedure of Scientific Management, because they reveal one of its most illuminating qualities. Scientific Management makes an art of all work. It gives the most primitive manual task its right dignity, and turns knowledge, science, and the powers of direction from the position of tyrants of labor ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... government came to be what they are, how we ourselves came to be what we are, must learn Sanskrit, and must study Vedic Sanskrit. But I do believe that not to know what a study of Sanskrit, and particularly a study of the Veda, has already done for illuminating the darkest passages in the history of the human mind, of that mind on which we ourselves are feeding and living, is a misfortune, or, at all events, a loss, just as I should count it a loss to have passed through life ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... 'Ah! we know all about YOU, and you'll overdo it some day;' and to inform Mr Mortimer Lightwood and friends, that he would attend them immediately. Then, he finished ruling the work he had in hand (it might have been illuminating a missal, he was so calm), in a very neat and methodical manner, showing not the slightest consciousness of the woman who was banging herself with increased violence, and shrieking most terrifically for some ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... the illuminating light upon a perplexed and problematic past. Moses, when he fled from Egypt, thought that his life's work was rent in twain. He had believed that his brethren would have seen that it was God's purpose to use him as the deliverer. For the sake of being such, he had surrendered the court and its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... precisely confirmed by an observation made at Highgate. Mr. R. Hodgson described the appearance seen by him as that "of a very brilliant star of light, much brighter than the sun's surface, most dazzling to the protected eye, illuminating the upper edges of the adjacent spots and streaks, not unlike in effect the edging of the clouds ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... point. There is the mnemic theory, recently brought before us by the republication of Butler's most interesting and suggestive work with its translations of Hering's original paper and Von Hartmann's discourse and its very illuminating introduction by Professor Hartog.[5] ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... the dark place by the window where he had hovered. The light poured over him, illuminating every cranny of his skin; but not a muscle of his face moved as he sat looking ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... subject to fear in a matter of this kind, I should not be here at all. Besides, the house is very cheerfully lighted. I see you have chosen a crimson light for illuminating the study." ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... remarkable faith and courage—of a sort! Archdeacon Verity had carefully planned this visit for his son, although it obliged the young man to leave home two days earlier than he need otherwise have done. It was illuminating to note how the father brought all the resources of a fine presence, an important manner and full-toned archidiaconal voice to bear upon proving the expediency of the young man visiting this particular relation, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... did from the original line of investigation he had taken up. Friends warned him against what appeared to be a scattering of his energies. If he devoted himself to that morphology of the Invertebrates in which his new and illuminating conceptions had promptly earned the Royal Medal, he would easily be the first in his field. But what he did was in great part of set purpose. He was no mere collector of specimens, no mere describer ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... emphasize the importance of coal in modern civilization. Aside from its use as fuel, upon which civilization is dependent, coal is a source of an endless variety of valuable products. It is the source of our illuminating gas, and ammonia is one of the products of the gas manufacture. From the coal also comes coal tar, the material from which such a long series of valuable materials, as aniline colours, carbolic acid, etc, is derived. The list of products which we owe ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... in the west. When she reached the top of the hill, she could see him, gently sinking, as it were, into the sea, illuminating the horizon and the ocean in a flood of splendour. As it disappeared, the Hanois ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... and trance-prophesying bard; it was no wonder that Ruskin became like one of the hermits of old, who retreated from the world to return upon it with stormy messages of awakening and flashes of truth more impressive, more illuminating than the logic of schoolmen and the state-craft ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... of the Empire ... and the character and ideals of the collective organization as a whole, as these stand before the world at the beginning of the twentieth century, are discussed by Mr. Holland in a vein of modest conviction, and withal of illuminating criticism, supported by apt quotation and example, which is ...
— Mr. Edward Arnold's New and Popular Books, December, 1901 • Edward Arnold

... Holgate," I answered. "It's his affair, or he thinks it is. He has taken it on himself." I made my way to the electric-light knobs. "As it seems to be getting dark," I said, not without irony, "I will take the liberty of illuminating." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... magnificent influence is not difficult to discover: his philosophy deals in a grand, illuminating way with all that is of profoundest importance in human life. There is no material the universe offers for man's life but Spinoza seeks to understand and explain its rational function and utility. For Spinoza set before himself the hard task of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... with which Murdock was now associated,—and as much as from 4000L. to 5000L. of capital were invested in the new works. The new method of lighting speedily became popular amongst manufacturers, from its superior safety, cheapness, and illuminating power. The mills of Phillips and Lee of Manchester were fitted up in 1805; and those of Burley and Kennedy, also of Manchester, and of Messrs. Gott, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... the simpler exercises of the sensory apparatus through a variety of divisions to inner imitations and social play. The biological, aesthetic, ethical, and pedagogical standpoints receive much attention from the investigator. While this book is an illuminating contribution to scientific literature, it is of eminently practical value. Its illustrations and lessons will be studied and applied by educators, and the importance of this original presentation ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... Mr. Britt was not revealing any emotions that Vaniman found illuminating in regard to his ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... conversation wandered at will over the events of the past two months. However, as all roads lead to Rome, so all subjects led to Beatrix. When they came around to her in their discussion, Thayer invariably changed the subject; yet even a few words on a constantly recurring theme can end by illuminating that theme perfectly, provided only that it recurs often enough. By the time Thayer was dressing for the concert, that night, he was in full possession of all Bobby Dane's facts concerning his cousin, and he was convinced that all ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... not to injure itself by injuring the child. Thousands of children are now being subjected to conditions in school far more injurious than the factory and shop conditions against which the national and state child labor committees have aroused universal indignation. Two illuminating studies of school buildings in New York City were made last year by the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children, and later by the Board of Education. Similar studies should be made of every schoolroom. Whereas our discussions of buildings ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... of the fourth century B.C., devoted himself to elucidating and illuminating the teaching of Lao Tzu. His work, which has survived to the present day, will shortly occupy our attention. For the moment it is only necessary to say that it contains many of the Master's traditional sayings, but never once mentions ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... were written adequately for his understanding of this problem signed off with the trite explanation that they lived happily ever afterwards but did not say a darned thing about how they went about it. The slightly lurid books that he'd bought, delivered in plain wrappers, gave some very illuminating descriptions of the art or act, but the affair opened with the scene all set and the principal characters both ready, willing, and able. There was no conversational road map that showed the way that led two people from a calm and unemotional discussion into an area ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... serious study of the country, which she had heretofore absorbed with her avid mental conduits, and read innumerable newspapers, magazines, elucidating literature of all sorts, besides the best histories of the nation and the illuminating biographies of its distinguished men in politics and the arts. She was deeply responsive to the freedom of the individual in this great whirling heterogeneous land, and as her duties at any time were the reverse of onerous, it was imperative ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton

... (no Mars or Jupiter or moon till morning.) On the edge of the river, many lamps twinkling—with two or three huge chimneys, a couple of miles up, belching forth molten, steady flames, volcano-like, illuminating all around—and sometimes an electric or calcium, its Dante-Inferno gleams, in far shafts, terrible, ghastly-powerful. Of later May nights, crossing, I like to watch the fishermen's little buoy-lights—so pretty, so dreamy—like corpse candles—undulating delicate and lonesome on the surface of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... Brahma, saying,—"Who are these two that leave the place without worshipping thee? Tell us, O Grandsire, who are they?" Thus asked, Brahma said, "These two, endued with ascetic merit, blazing with effulgence and beauty, illuminating both the earth and the heaven, possessed of great might, and pervading and surpassing all, are Nara and Narayana, dwelling now in the region of Brahman having arrived from the other world. Endued with great might and prowess, they shine in consequence of their own asceticism. By their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... particular mode and the precise period of relieving himself from the unwarrantable interference which threatened to defeat his plans. The luxury of feeling that he had his man in his power was its own reward. One who watches in the dark, outside, while his enemy, in utter unconsciousness, is illuminating his apartment and himself so that every movement of his head and every button on his coat can be seen and counted, experiences a peculiar kind of pleasure, if he holds a loaded rifle in his hand, which he naturally hates to bring to its climax ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of 128 more, contained in the collection of another Venetian, the Abate Canonici. In the interval such diverse benefactors as Laud and Cromwell had enriched it with some very notable gifts. The pedigree of one of Laud's MSS. may be familiar, but is too illuminating to be omitted. It is a seventh-century copy of the Acts of the Apostles in Greek and Latin. The earliest home to which we can trace it is Sardinia; a document connected with that island is written on a fly-leaf. Then we find indisputable evidence that Bede, writing ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... my visit on the previous evening. He said "We were out there with the shells falling round us, and who should come up but the Canon, and the first thing the old beggar said was, 'Boys, what a lovely night it is.'" The men roared at the idea. It was always illuminating to get a chance of seeing yourself as ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... by the fear that she would falter at the crucial moment and that her half-guarded defences would go down before the assault. She knew his strength far better than she knew his weakness. She had had an illuminating example of his power. Was she any stronger now than on that never-to-be-forgotten night?...She put off ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... extraordinarily wonderful and delicious to her that Harry of these had none. In an age much given to easy freedom of language it will not be appreciated, it perhaps will cause the pair of them to be sneered at, but it demands mention as illuminating a characteristic of hers (and of his), that she had, for instance, especial delight in the fact that Harry never even swore. The impossible test in the matter of self-command is when a man hits his thumb ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... "Illuminating the manuscripts of a mass. Look." And he displayed the exquisite border to the music, the latter written with equal precision and neatness. "This will be alive when I am not even dust. No one will know that I did it; but I like the thought that it ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... and agreeable in this country to bury undeserved want in dungeons than to renounce unnecessary and useless show to relieve it. In the evening the remembrance of these sixty thousand livres of the poor Chevalier deprived me of all pleasure in beholding the sixty thousand lamps decorating and illuminating ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the dewy freshness of one of those gorgeous days which seem to cast an illuminating charm over everything. Even old Elsie's stern features relaxed somewhat under the balmy influences of sun and sky, and Agnes's young, pale face was lit up with a brighter color than for many a day before. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... she marry Conquest? He was shouldering his way through the crowds when the question made itself heard, with a curious illuminating force that suggested its own answer. He was walking, partly to work off the tension of the strain under which these few days were passing, and partly because he had got the idea that he was being shadowed. He had no profound objection to that, though he would have preferred to give himself ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... from the earth. (See Nicholson's "Encyclopedia", article Light.) That which appears only like a thin and silvery cloud streaking the heaven is in effect composed of innumerable clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating numbers of planets that revolve around them. Millions and millions of suns are ranged around us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm, regular, and harmonious, all keeping ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... have spoken of you as my heart's kinsman and friend. You will find the Princess Cz. possessed of a rare and fine understanding, the most charming figure in society, and a kindly and enthusiastic worshipper of Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, and, above all this, the illuminating faith of the Catholic Church reflected ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... enlightened, so neither now that it was, had it any, to be enlightened. For neither could its formless estate be pleasing unto Thee, unless it became light, and that not by existing simply, but by beholding the illuminating light, and cleaving to it; so that, that it lived, and lived happily, it owes to nothing but Thy grace, being turned by a better change unto That which cannot be changed into worse or better; which Thou alone art, because Thou alone simply art; unto ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... they rest; they have serene insight Of the illuminating dawn to be: Mary's sweet Star dispels for them the night, The proper darkness ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... high that its carved ceiling refused itself to exact scrutiny—travelled, with the wistful, cold curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time. Light, unaccompanied by the prejudice of human eyes, made strange revelation of incongruities, as though illuminating the dispassionate ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... For a detailed and illuminating study of this symphony and of Schumann's style in general see the last essay in Preludes and Studies by W.J. Henderson. Another excellent essay may be found in Studies in Modern Music by ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... hill in the October dusk, had a glimpse of him as the stage pulled up at the gate of the Stuffed Animal House, and the doctor's face grew dully red. He had not seen Helena since that black, illuminating night; he had not seen Dr, Lavendar; he had scarcely seen his own wife. He devoted himself to his patients, who, it appeared, lived back among the hills. At any rate, he was away from home from morning until night. William had many things ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... his nose violently, snapped his gold snuff-box, and waddled to the window, where, below, in the early dusk, torches and rush-lights burned, illuminating the cavalry horses tethered along their picket-rope, and the trooper on guard, pacing his beat, musket shining in the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... writers knew Lincoln intimately. Their book is the result of unreserved association. There is no attempt to portray the man as other than he really was, and on this account their frank testimony must be accepted, and their biography must take permanent rank as the best and most illuminating study of Lincoln's character and personality. Their story, simply told, relieved by characteristic anecdotes, and vivid with local color, will be found a ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... This illuminating conversation had one effect on Colonel Seth Pennington. It decided him to make haste slowly; so without taking the trouble to make the acquaintance of John Cardigan, he returned to Detroit, there to await the next move in this gigantic game ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... From 1876 to 1913 Mr. Punch's cartoons on the Near East are one continuous and illuminating commentary on Lord Salisbury's historic admission that we had "backed the wrong horse," culminating in the cartoon "Armageddon: a Diversion" in December, 1912, when Turkey says "Good! If only all these other Christian nations get at one another's throats I may have a dog's ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... more wood, explaining to Salmon P. and the others, who also moved back, that it was for illuminating purposes—those two candles burning down low, each between three nails in a little slab of wood—those two had been kept for Christmas, and were the last ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... rifle and artillery. But our men had seen the dead faces of their leaders and comrades, and they were frantic, desperate. They charged like madmen. Nothing could hold them. Our wedge swept steadily forward, and the guns sputtered from the front and rear and sides, flashing and illuminating the night like a ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... ornamentation of the Louse. Everywhere—on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them—appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over again and again, in a great variety of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... The small yellow circle held his gaze, and as if fascinated he watched it moving along the road, now shining on the silver grains in a ring of sand, now glancing back from the standing water in a wheelrut, and now illuminating a mossy stone or a weed upon the roadside. It was the one bright thing in a universe of blackness, until, as he came suddenly upon an elevation, the trees parted and he saw the windows of his home glowing upon the night. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... illuminating threat, "I shall be deadly to you," uttered in the midst of amorous cooings and murmurings, and we catch a glimpse of the demoniac depth of this woman's nature. Bjoernson's "Mary Stuart" weeps more than once; nay, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... followed by night; but day is not the cause of night; both are successive effects of a common cause, the periodical passage of the spectator into and out of the earth's shadow, consequent on the earth's rotation, and on the illuminating property of the sun. If, therefore, day is ever produced by a different cause or set of causes from this, day will not, or at least may not, be followed by night. On the sun's own surface, for instance, this may ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Tony's affairs when Robin came to claim her for a dance. He, too, seemed rather preoccupied and distrait, and as they swung out into the room together Ann cast about in her mind for some explanation of his unwonted gloom. A minute later she caught an illuminating glimpse of Cara, sitting alone by the big fire which still smouldered redly at the far end of the room, and a queer little smile of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... the illuminating fact that, with one single exception—and that an example eminent in English affairs, but certainly not to be followed in Irish—every great English ruler and monarch governed Ireland under a distinct Irish Home Rule Parliament up to the year 1800. ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... seen from this how important it is for the besieged to possess at this stage of events an effective means of lighting up the external country. Later on, such means will be of utility to them in the night-firing of long-range rifled guns, as well as for preventing surprises, and also for illuminating the breach and the ditches at the time of an assault, and the entire field of battle at the time ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... them in the same way as, without his speaking, one looks at and can enjoy the face of a friend. I feel towards them when I look at them in the shelves,—well, as if they were feeling towards me just as I am feeling towards them." And he had added this touch, which is perhaps more illuminating. "The other day some one had had out one of my books and returned it upside down. I swear it was as grotesque and painful to me to see it upside down as if I had come into the room and found my brother standing on his head against the wall, fastened there. At least I couldn't ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... without approving of his character. It was on that account, I strongly suspect, that he seized with avidity upon the theory of poetical genius being allied to madness, which he got hold of in some idiotic book everybody was reading a few years ago. It struck him as being truth itself— illuminating like the sun. He adopted it devoutly. He bored me with it sometimes. Once, just to shut him up, I asked quietly if this theory which he regarded as so incontrovertible did not cause him some uneasiness about his wife and the dear girls? He transfixed me with a pitying stare and requested ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... spidery head-rigging, a jib-boom splintered and a foretopmast dragged down. If Captain Mayo had been in any doubt as to the details of the disasters he would have received full information from the illuminating profanity of the victims. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... great transparent dome hung the flaming disk of Jupiter, so oppressively near that it seemed about to crash onto the asteroid. Its rays poured in a ruddy flood over the settlement, clearly illuminating each detail; and comparatively close against the face of the mighty planet they could see the whitish globe of Satellite III. It offered the nearest haven. They might arrive famished, but in the power-equipped space-suits ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... great resurrection. Ask John what it is and, with his mystical spirit, he says that it is being born again. See the variety that comes from vitality—no stiff methods, no stiff routine of experience, but throbbing through the whole book the good news of an illuminating, liberating, transforming experience ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... the use of any form of illuminating gas, since all produce asphyxiation. Accordingly, all gas fixtures of the house should be regularly inspected to see that there is no escape of the subtile, destructive fluid. The odor of escaping gas which is so unpleasant is really a blessing, in that it informs the householder of ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... man himself asked questions, and then called Mr. Minor into consultation, and Mr. Minor asked more. The answers they received were not illuminating, but in the end the transaction ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... perfectly free from bacteria and full of all life-giving properties. A company had been organized to supply the houses of the rich with his cold, pure air for so much a thousand feet, as long ago illuminating gas was furnished. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... light was coming from the woman herself—or from her clothing. The dress she wore was a satinlike sheath that glowed with an aura even brighter than the room. Her blonde hair picked up the radiance and glowed, too, illuminating a face that was at once regal, inviting and passionate. It was, Forrester thought, a hell of a ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... made relative to various other aspects of the life of my subjects. Such, for example, are my notes on the use of the hands, the instincts, the emotions, and the natural aptitudes of individuals. It is, indeed, impossible to observe any of the primates without noting most interesting and illuminating activities. And although the major portion of my time was spent in hard and monotonous work with my experimental apparatus, I found time each day to get into intimate touch with the free activities of my subjects and to observe their social relations and varied expressions of individuality. ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... with the unity, for unity can assert itself and work only through the control of a multiplicity of elements. The analogy between the unity of the work of art and the unity of the organism is still the most accurate and illuminating. For, like the work of art, the body is a self-sufficient and distinctive whole, whose unified life depends upon the functioning of many members, which, for their part, are dead ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... round moon was perched high in a star-studded heaven, fairly illuminating a muddy street and the low-thatched roofs of nearby dwellings. A horse whinnied and stamped in the enclosure, and from a distance rose the moody growl of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... was a red flash, and, before it had completely ceased illuminating the night the white spot was changed into crimson. Some of the officers, returning from a party at the Beach of the Flamingoes, happened to be drawing near the ship in one of her cutters. They saw the flash, and the bounding body it revealed. In a moment the topman was dragged ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... her right which Father Massias already occupied. Her eyes were dazzled by the splendour of the Grotto; it seemed to her as if a hundred thousand tapers were burning there behind the railing, filling the low entrance with the glow of a furnace and illuminating, as with star rays, the statue of the Virgin, which stood, higher up, at the edge of a narrow ogive-like cavity. And for her, apart from that glorious apparition, nothing existed there, neither the crutches with which a part of the vault ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... had been, to say the least, highly illuminating, and I had learnt several facts of which I had been in ignorance. But this fixed assertion that she knew nothing of the elusive Frenchman aroused ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... Following his illuminating interview with Pablo and Loustalot, John Parker returned to a chair on the porch patio, lighted a fresh cigar, and gave himself up to contemplating the tangle in his hitherto well-laid plans. An orderly and methodical man always, it ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... golden gleam on the tops of the trees which grew towards the upper parts of the dingle; but lower down, all was gloom and twilight—yet, when I first sat down on my stone, the sun was right above the dingle, illuminating all its depths by the rays which it cast perpendicularly down—so I must have sat a long, long time upon my stone. And now, once more, I rested my head upon my hand, but almost instantly lifted it again in a kind of fear, and began looking ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... representing that Consul General Wildman, of Hongkong, had informed them that United States goods would be admitted free of duty in Manila, that acting on this they had purchased a cargo of American illuminating oil in Hongkong, and that the payment of the heavy duty on it ($30 per ton, or about 8c per gallon) would ruin them. On consulting Lieutenant Colonel Crowder, Judge Advocate of the Eighth Army Corps, he pointed out the language of paragraph 5 of General Merritt's proclamation, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... light brought to view every detail of it. It was not the light of the sun, with his dazzling shafts of brightness and the splendour of his rays; nor was it the pale and uncertain shimmer of the moonbeams, the dim reflection of a nobler body of light. No; the illuminating power of this light, its trembling diffusiveness, its bright, clear whiteness, and its low temperature, showed that it must be of electric origin. It was like an aurora borealis, a continuous cosmical phenomenon, filling a cavern of sufficient ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... its greatness, in its suffering, in its humiliation, in its strength, in its glorious consequences. How is it possible we should ever be conformed to such a wonder of love and power? And yet, here is the great Apostle, in one of those beautiful and illuminating references to his own experience which always seem to bring his messages right home to us, setting forth this very conformity as the end of all his labours, and the purpose in all his struggles. "What things were gain to me," he says, "those I counted loss ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth

... cannot teach the public what the drama is till they show them precisely what the photoplay is and is not. Just as the university has departments of both History and English teaching in amity, each one illuminating the work of the other, so these two forms should live in each other's sight in fine and friendly contrast. At present they are in ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... herself: 'Can this strange passion be the messenger of Eros?' A form rose before her mind like unto Chios. The great clouds rolled up from the west, the lightnings flashed across the sky, illuminating for a moment the great white marble Temple with its roof of cedar and its plates of gold. The frightened, shivering girl drew her garments tightly around her and hid ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... the statement that Sloanes were Sloanes might not be very illuminating, but she understood. Every village has such a family; good, honest, respectable people they may be, but SLOANES they are and must ever remain, though they speak with the tongues ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... already sufficiently forcible. We sometimes encounter extravagant varieties of type, humorously intended, but the use of which seems a game hardly worth Mr. Reade's candle, which certainly possesses enough illuminating power of its own, without seeking additional refulgence by such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... invention, and which is much admired. He introduced a figure of St Thomas seated, from life; I say from life because the friars of the place brought a portrait of him from the abbey of Fossanuova, where he had died in 1323. St Thomas is seated in the air with some books in his hand, illuminating with their rays and splendour the Christian people; kneeling below him are a large number of doctors and clerks of every condition, bishops, cardinals and popes, including the portrait of Pope Urban VI. Under the saint's feet are Sabellius, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... and retired into the other room to talk it all over with many pipes. Greene questioned his friend very closely, but without illuminating result, since questions ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... narrow peristyle. As the young man walked toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of the building, but from the lower openings, on the side where the ground sloped steeply down to the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars, illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement door, and showing, under an adjoining shed, a line of sleighs ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... strangely enough, came to Robert as a kind of relief. It broke through a tension of brain which of late had become an oppression. And for both him and Catherine these dark times had moments of intensest joy, points of white light illuminating heaven and earth. There were cloudy nights—wet, stormy January nights—when sometimes it happened to them to come back both together from the hamlet, Robert carrying a lantern, Catherine clothed in waterproof from head to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Illuminating" :   informative, unenlightening



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