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Ray of light   /reɪ əv laɪt/   Listen
Ray of light

noun
1.
A column of light (as from a beacon).  Synonyms: beam, beam of light, irradiation, light beam, ray, shaft, shaft of light.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ray of light" Quotes from Famous Books



... begins with the eighth century deserves a longer mention, inadequate though it be; for there was over a great part of Europe in the days of Charles the Great a veritable literary renaissance which broke upon the long period which men have called the dark ages with a ray of light. ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... council closed the Indians filed out of the lodge, and one, a tall old man, fantastically attired in skins, entered the medicine lodge alone, carefully closing the entrance after him to exclude any ray of light. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace

... with many a quaking of the heart I thought there must be above me a full hundred feet of earth, I perceived a flickering ray of light stealing along the floor. It grew more pronounced with each advancing step and soon crimsoned the upper walls. I dropped cautiously upon hands and knees, and crept slowly forward, beside the dancing ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... could not be helped. In the terrible nebulous welter in which his people found themselves, it was not unnatural that each man should grope towards his separate ray of light. The Russian, too, was equally bewildered, and perhaps all this profusion of theories came in both from the same lack of tangibilities. Both peoples ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... turpentine obtained by distillation with water, from American turpentine, has a molecular power of right-handed rotation, while the French oil of turpentine had a left-handed rotation. Oil of lemons rotates a ray of light to the right, but in France a distilled oil of lemons, sold as scouring drops for removing spots of grease, possesses quite the opposite power of rotation, and has lost all the original peculiar flavor of the oil. Oil of lemons combines ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... the green bank opposite this tangle when the low sun behind me shone level into the mass of rock and rough boles and branches, and fixing my eyes on the black centre of the mass I encountered a pair of crimson eyes staring back into mine. A level ray of light had lit up that spot which I had always seen in deep shadow, revealing its secret. After gazing steadily for some time I made out a crow's nest in the dwarf pine top and the vague black forms of three young fully fledged crows sitting or standing in it. The middle bird had the shining ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... far away in the storm and darkness? Why no, of course not. Sallie was only a little child sleeping quietly in her own little room. See, the door was ajar and a ray of light from the lamp in Sallie's room was streaming across the kitchen floor. He must go in and extinguish the light before it awakened the sleeping child. Why had Martha left the lamp burning? Surely she must know it would disturb the child. Well, as soon as he was rested ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... can remember, to this day, with perfect distinctness, how utterly discouraged I became, as day by day went by, and still I had not found a correct result to any one of my sums, nor gained a single ray of light on the subject. Strange as it may seem, I remained for several months in simple addition before I knew how to sum up figures, and then the meaning of addition flashed, in a sudden thought upon my mind, while I was at play. I had ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... wedding-torches were lighted; but, unluckily, no one saw that there was a crack in the door. Then the wedding was held with great pomp, but as the train came from the church, and passed with the torches before the hall, a very small ray of light fell upon the prince. In a moment he disappeared, and when his wife came in and looked for him, she found only a white dove; and it said to her, 'Seven years must I fly up and down over the face of the earth, but every now and then I will let fall a white feather, that will show ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm

... especially the good of the slave, demands such a law, then the question of slavery will be settled. We purpose to show this before we have done with the present discussion. And if, in the prosecution of this inquiry, we should be so fortunate as to throw only one steady ray of light on the great question of slavery, by which the very depths of society have been so fearfully convulsed, we shall be more than rewarded for all the labor which, with no little solicitude, we have felt constrained to bestow upon an attempt ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... a moment, one dim ray of light Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night! Of darkness visible so much be lent, As half to show, half veil the deep intent. Ye Powers! whose mysteries restored I sing, To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing, Suspend a while your force inertly strong, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... King, thinking himself wholly master of the situation, was laughing and jeering at his prisoners when Polychrome, exquisitely beautiful and dancing like a ray of light, ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... burdens. He burdened her with his inflated notions of how burdenless she ought to be. He was admirable, unselfish, devoted; but she felt it was possible to be too admirable, too unselfish, too devoted. In a word Priscilla's mind was in a state of upheaval, and the only ray of light she saw anywhere—and never was ray more watery—was that Tussie, for the moment at least, was content. The attitude of his mother, on the other hand, was distressing and disturbing. There had been no more My dears and other kind ways. She had watched her crying on the stairs ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... the way infernal spirits appear in the light of heaven, while among themselves they appear as men. This is of the Lord's mercy, that they may not appear as loathsome to one another as they appear before the angels. But this appearance is a fallacy, for as soon as any ray of light from heaven is let in, their human forms appear changed into monstrous forms, such as they are in themselves (as has been described above). For in the light of heaven everything appears as it is in itself. For this reason they shun the light of heaven and cast themselves down into their ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... reply. She was wondering drearily what she could find to say when the dreaded interview came about; shrinking from the thought of adding to the mother's pain, feeling a paralysing sense of defeat; yet, at this very moment of humiliation, a ray of light illumined the darkness and showed the reason of ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... however, was now cordially welcomed by these unfortunate ecclesiastics, for such, in fact, the majority of them were. His presence seemed to them like a ray of light from the sun. His good humor, his excellent spirits, which nothing could repress, and his drollery kept them alive, and nothing was so much regretted by them as his temporary absences from time to time; for, in truth, he ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... these opinions to things dependent on the will, and I engage for him that he will be firm and constant, whatever may be the state of things around him. Such as is a dish of water, such is the soul. Such as is the ray of light which falls on the water, such are the appearances. When the water is moved, the ray also seems to be moved, yet it is not moved. And when then a man is seized with giddiness, it is not the arts and the virtues which are confounded, but ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... not a sign of life to be seen, so the tyrant applied himself diligently to pounding on the door with his big fists, until the sound of footsteps within, descending the stairs, showed that he had succeeded in rousing somebody. A ray of light shone through the cracks in the rickety old door, then it was cautiously opened just a little, and an aged, withered crone, striving to protect the flame of her flaring candle from the wind with one skinny hand, and to hold the rags of her most extraordinary undress together with the other, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... had tried his best to avoid suspicion; but as all efforts are ineffectual to exclude every ray of light, she had guessed for some time past that the count nourished in the depths of his heart an affectionate regard ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... some homogeneous immersion medium to the under surface of the glass-slide, s. Let r represent the silvered surface of the glass disk, b, the immersion objective, f, the thin glass cover. It will be easily seen that the ray of light, h, from the mirror or condenser above the stage will enter the slide and thence be refracted to the silvered surface of the illuminator, r, whence it is reflected at a corresponding angle to the object in the focus of the objective. A shield to prevent unnecessary light from entering the objective ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... soon fell, and at the last ray of light the mortar suddenly became an ogre, who threw Dschemila on his back, and carried her off into a desert place, distant a whole month's journey from her native town. Here he shut her into a castle, and told her not to fear, ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... he stepped on tiptoe into the room. No one was to be seen, though a lamp was burning on the table. He crept across to the door of the bedroom, and thought he heard sounds of breathing. As he opened the door, a feeble ray of light streamed through the crevice, and he saw his mother lying in bed, with the faithful cat sitting beside her as her only companion. Puss, recognising the boy, began to purr and wave her tail, but the blind woman seemed to be stupefied by the ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... Besides, she knew what he did not know—that even if he wished to, he could not marry Chiquita. A grim smile flitted across her countenance as the knowledge of this fact flashed through her mind, the only ray of light in the chaos into which she had been plunged by that misguided, luckless decision on her part—her refusal to follow the Captain while ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... fantastic than our grandfathers a hundred years ago would have deemed a statement that at the end of the nineteenth century portraits would be taken by the sun, that audible conversation would be carried on instantaneously across a distance of a thousand miles, that a ray of light could be made the agent for transmitting the human voice across an abyss which no wire had ever spanned, and that by a simple mechanical arrangement, which a man can carry in his hand, it would be possible to reproduce the words, voice, and accent of the ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... completed the family circle. With her came love, joy, hope, and happiness. Her lovely presence gave fresh impulse to every one greeting her arrival. Lady Rosamond felt a ray of light shed upon her as she caressed her true and constant friend. Maude was happier, if possible, in the love of Geoffrey Seymour when listening to the sweet silvery voice of this peerless woman. Fanny was overjoyed on the arrival of Mary Douglas. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... Mildred by securing a man after her own heart. Love for her daughter, far more than ambition, was the main-spring of her motive, and surely her gentle schemes were not deserving of a very harsh judgment. She could not be blamed greatly for looking with wistful eyes on the one ray of light falling on ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... in the morning he went up the hotel stairway, surprised at seeing a ray of light underneath the door of his room. He entered.... She was awaiting him—reading, tranquil and smiling. Her face, refreshed and retouched with juvenile color, did not show the slightest trace of the morning's spasmodic outbreak. She ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... a cold rainy morning; the wind raged; and the very indifferent soles of Herbert's boots absorbed moisture like blotting-paper. Everything was against him. There was not a gleam of hope in the future, not a ray of light. His companions were surly, the manager was venomous, the bitter rain fell on. He was in debt and would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various

... despondent among the naked rowers, eager to get his letters from home. It was his only eagerness, but very dull and listless at that. At night, the islands loomed large and mysterious in the darkness, while now and then a single ray of light from some light house, gleaming from some lost, mysterious island of the southern seas, beamed with a curious constancy. There were dangerous rocks, sunken reefs. And always the soft wind blew, the soft, enervating wind ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... horizon, the halo faded from the shining hair and every ray of light from the childish face. There came in its place that deep, wondering sadness which is more touching than any maturer sorrow,—just as a child's illness melts our hearts more than that of man or woman, it seems so premature and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... complete their discomfiture, Huang T'ien Hua brought to the attack a matchless magical weapon. This was a spike 7 1/2 inches long, enclosed in a silk sheath, and called 'Heart-piercer.' It projected so strong a ray of light that eyes ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... feebly, and he made an effort to crawl out of the hut, and then on and on almost unconsciously until he had dragged himself to where a bright ray of light flashed from the glowing surface of the clear amber water and played upon the great, green, glossy leaves of a banana plant, one from whose greeny-yellow bunch of fruit he had plucked the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... every friend of mankind must look forwards to the termination of this painful suspense, and eagerly as the inquiring mind would hail every ray of light that might assist its view into futurity, it is much to be lamented that the writers on each side of this momentous question still keep far aloof from each other. Their mutual arguments do not meet with a candid examination. The question is not brought ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... how heavenly it was to waken up from all the pain and haziness of the first days, when everything was still dim, uncomfortable, confused. A ray of light pierced the darkness; my heart and soul, my inner self—a self I had never known before—rent the envelope of gloomy suffering, as a flower bursts its sheath at the first warm kiss of the sun, at the moment when the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... in the jungle that the path was entirely overgrown. No ray of light penetrated through the deep foliage. Angelita became frightened. "I'll not go another step if you do not tell me where you are taking me," she said as she stamped her little foot upon ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells

... of a rotten apple will set a man off as on seven-league boots to the valleys of his childhood. The dry rustling of November leaves re-lights the fires of youth. It was only this afternoon that so slight a circumstance as a ray of light flashing in my eye provided me an agreeable and unexpected truantry. It sent me climbing the mountains of the North and in no less company than that of Brunhilda and a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... their things, they set out to walk their different ways. When Dick got home he did not go to bed. He sat in an armchair, considering the events of the evening, and trying to find some way out of the complexity of his thoughts. He was surprised when the morning sun sent a bright ray of light into his room. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... Some struck their tomahawks into the trunks of trees, while others brandished their knives, and uttered direful yells. The young chief stood in silence, with his arms folded on his breast. A small ray of light that fell upon his face exhibited a meditative brow, and features expressing both firmness and determination. He had said that the captive should be regained, and his followers ever and anon regarded his thoughtful attitude with the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... within are like their sire, full of deadly venom." "Woe's me, is't possible," cried I sorrowfully, "that their love wounds?" "'Tis true, the more the pity," said he, "thou art delighted with the way the three beam on their adorers: well, there is in that ray of light many a wondrous charm, it blindens them so that they cannot see the hook; it stupifies them so that they pay no heed to their danger, and consumes them with an insatiate lust for more, even though it be a deadly poison, breeding ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... tragedy; never—or rather, very rarely—is it haunted by the realisation of the despair which is struggling to find peace, some solution of the meaning of it all, struggling to bring back some reasoned hope and gladness, some tiny ray of light in the mental and physical darkness, without which we none of us can believe, we none of us can live. Perhaps they are wise to see so little of the real sorrow which dogs so many lives, but they, nevertheless, are blind in their turn. They are ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... bright side presented by the Negro newspaper. A few days ago while worried and disconsolate over the aspersions heaped upon a defenseless people that floated upon the feotid air from the Alabama Conference, The New York Age came to me, a ray of light in a dungeon of ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... extricate my country from the embarrassments in which it is entangled through want of credit, and to establish a general system of policy which, if pursued, will insure permanent felicity to the commonwealth. I think I see a path, as clear and as direct as a ray of light, which leads to the attainment of that object. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy people. Happily, the present posture of affairs, and the prevailing disposition of my countrymen, promise to cooperate in ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... been engaged in the investigation of a peculiar phenomenon which he calls the "diflection of light." The experiment itself consists in causing a ray of light to fall upon the sharp edge of a knife or on the point of a needle; the ray is thus "diflected" by the edge or point, and becomes prismatic. Lord Brougham, in addition to other curious phenomena, has discovered that the ray, when once diflected, cannot be again diflected ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... last night's attack, and the smoking ruins of Les Augustins beyond. The French army, whom Orleans had been busy all night feeding and encouraging, lay below, not yet apparently moving either for action or retreat. Jeanne plunged among them like a ray of light, D'Aulon carrying her banner; and passing through the ranks, she took up her place on the border of the moat of the boulevard. Her followers rushed after with that elan of desperate and uncalculating valour which was the great power of the French arms. In the midst of ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... a moment motionless, asking himself where he could be; but soon a ray of light which penetrated through the chamber, together with the warm and perfumed air which reached him from the same aperture, the conversation of two of three ladies in language at once respectful and refined, and the word "Majesty" several times repeated, indicated clearly that he was in ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... early your soul has taken to its dressing-gown! What a cowardly part you have played towards real life and nature, with which every healthy and normal man struggles! How soft, how snug, how warm, how comfortable—and how bored you are! Yes, it is deathly boredom, unrelieved by one ray of light, as in solitary confinement; but you try to hide from that enemy, too, you play cards ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... What a grand thing this would be to him who is more bound than those beneath him to regard the honour of our Lord!—for it is kings whom the crowd must follow. To make one step in the propagation of the faith, and to give one ray of light to heretics, I would forfeit a thousand kingdoms. And with good reason: for it is another thing altogether to gain a kingdom that shall never end, because one drop of the water of that kingdom, if the soul but tastes it, renders the things ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... to the window and leant out, as though to discover the exact direction followed by the ray of light. Then he came and lay on ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... awhile where they found a welcome. And it was noticed that always they came to such dwellings as those where the beauty and harmony of the building showed beauty and harmony within. And when they left the house, always there seemed to remain a memory of their presence as a ray of light at sunset leaves a memory of joyous days and a sense of hope for ...
— The Strange Little Girl - A Story for Children • V. M.

... not only see a ray of light thrown on the subject of metempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the curious process by which the intensely realistic mind of antiquity arrived at the notion that men could be transformed into beasts. For the belief that the soul can temporarily quit the body during lifetime ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... long hiss, and a ray of light leaped forth from the valley and began to search the sky with a sort of superhuman thoroughness. The women on the lawn ran away to the shelter of the trees. The short, sharp barking of the guns, the deeper rumble of the bombs that were beginning to fall on the town, ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... man the four moved towards the door, through the keyhole of which a ray of light was stealing from the lamp that had been left ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... was discharged harmlessly into the air. The beach sloped away sharply, and the force of his rush carried them both into three feet of water. They went under. Imbrie dropped his gun, and clung to Stonor with the desperate, instinctive grip of the non-swimmer. Like a ray of light the thought flashed through Stonor's brain: "I have him on equal ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... uses her glass as a prism, and in one little ray of light finds all the colours of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... again, I was entirely afloat, launched on the seas of doubt without chart or compass. The life and well-being of the race seemed to hang on the slender thread of such traditions as were handed down by-ignorant mothers and nurses. One powerful ray of light illuminated the darkness; it was the work of Andrew Combe on "Infancy." He had, evidently watched some of the manifestations of man in the first stages of his development, and could tell, at least, as much of babies as naturalists could of beetles and bees. He ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... sigh, then the noise of a fall, and one of the sentries at the mouth of the cave came rolling to our feet. A random shot had struck him, and as he just fell in, a ray of light which entered the grotto, we were able to see him writhing in the agonies of death. Mademoiselle Zephyrine seized my hands, and I felt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... which they were drawn off, leaving the old channels dry. Imagine one of the narrow, crooked streets in the old part of Boston, spanned by a continuous stone archway from the summits of the buildings on either hand; then close with solid masonry every window and loop-hole by which a ray of light could struggle in, and you have for proportions and sinuosity not a bad semblance of these tunnels, which constitute four fifths of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... except for a long ray of light that struggled in between the heavy door and its casing, but as Stella Donovan stood there in the gloom she was aware that she was not the only occupant of the cell. She crouched back, gripped in the hands of another fear, but the next moment her alarm was lessened somewhat by ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... into familiar relations with her.[280] They came to the village every day, and often several times a day. When she saw them appear in a ray of light coming down from heaven, shining and clad like queens, with golden crowns on their heads, wearing rich and precious jewels, the village maiden crossed herself devoutly and curtsied low.[281] And because they were ladies of good breeding, they returned her salutation. Each one had her own particular ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... sensation produced by the creative power of composition. One evening, as I entered the opera, feeling myself strongly incited and overpowered by my ideas, I put my money again into my pocket, returned to my apartment, locked the door, and, having close drawn all the curtains, that every ray of light might be excluded, I went to bed, abandoning myself entirely to this musical and poetical 'oestrum', and in seven or eight hours rapidly composed the greatest part of an act. I can truly say my love for the Princess of Ferrara (for I was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... Prophet, Christianity is of no avail: if they cannot be saved without, why are not all orthodox? It is a little hard to send a man preaching to Judaea, and leave the rest of the world—Negers and what not—dark as their complexions, without a ray of light for so many years to lead them on high; and who will believe that God will damn men for not knowing what they were never taught? I hope I am sincere; I was so at least on a bed of sickness in a far-distant country, when I had neither friend, nor comforter, nor hope, to sustain me. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... imagination can compass. There was an end to every earthly joy. Cities were bombarded, fields of grain trampled in the mire, villages burned. Famine rioted over its ghastly victims. Hospitals were filled with miserable multitudes, mutilated and with festering wounds, longing for death. Not a ray of light pierced the gloom of this dark, black night of crime and woe. And yet, undeniably, the responsibility before God must rest with the League. Henry IV. was the lawful king of France. The Catholics had ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... listened to Herkimer's story in that gradual thickening depression which the subject of matrimony always let down over them, suddenly brightened visibly. On their faces appeared the look of inward speculation, and then a ray of light. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... tragedy, my boy, that can have no ray of light—and that is that all this blood should have flowed in vain, all these brave men died for nought, that the old curse shall remain, the Union be dismembered into broken sections and on future bloody fields their battles be fought ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications sound like prayers which do not expect to be answered. No one would ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... autumn, during the electric exhibition in that city. One night he went to the tower of the Pennsylvania railroad station and watched the light stationed at the Exhibition building on 32d street. The ray of light when turned at right angles to his direction looked like a silver arrow going through the sky; and when turned on him, he could read the fine print of a railroad time table at arm's length. Flashes from his search light were seen at a distance of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various

... ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... on the towers of Notre-Dame in the far distance. A ray of light from between two clouds tinged them with gold. Her brain was heavy, as though surcharged with all the tumultuous thoughts hurtling within it. It made her suffer; she would fain have concerned herself with the sight of Paris, and have sought to regain her life-peace by turning on that sea of roofs ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... had gone flowingly. It was only when I came to consider the central figures that for many days I spent my strength in vain. You heard my exclamation of delight and astonishment when at last a ray of light pierced the gloom. At no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark as to the general significance of these figures, for I saw at once their resemblance to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. In case you are not minutely acquainted ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... the blackest cloud, still in her heart shone the sure comfort of her hope, and more than hope that in the end God would give her back her husband and her to him unharmed. Yet, which ever way she looked the cloud was very black, and through it she could see no ray of light. ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... separated, unquestionably the outlook was most gloomy. I could not see a ray of light ahead, and without the constant encouragement of my wife, who always insisted that brighter days were in store for us, I might have ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... wondering what the trouble was, and began to twist and shake its whole body. Pinocchio did not stop. Presently the crocodile decided to return to the surface and deposit the marionette upon the bank. Pinocchio desired nothing better. As soon as he saw a ray of light he became very quiet. The crocodile, now that the trouble seemed over, was about to return to its cave, but it had made this plan without consulting our ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini

... to be told—yet in love let us tell thee—that there are a thousand ways of dealing in description with Nature, so as to make her poetical; but sentiment there always must be, else it is stark nought. You may infuse the sentiment by a single touch—by a ray of light no thicker, nor one thousandth part so thick, as the finest needle ever silk-threaded by lady's finger; or you may dance it in with a flutter of sunbeams; or you may splash it in as with a gorgeous cloud-stain stolen from sunset; or you may bathe it in with a shred of the rainbow. Perhaps the highest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... quarters of other midshipmen ten minutes later. True, the electric light in rooms is turned off at taps—-but midshipmen have been known to keep candles hidden, and to be experts in clouding doors and windows so that no ray of light gets through into a corridor ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... It must be their cavalry mostly. I suppose Jeb Stuart is there leading them. At any rate we'll soon know better what's doing. Look there toward the east. Don't you see a ray of light ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the dawn, as he lay wakeful on his bed, a ray of light shone through the bars, the bolts turned softly, and a man came in. It was the good chaplain, led by the same instinct that brings a mother to her sick child's pillow; for long experience as nurse of souls had taught ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... are unacquainted with these things; for, begirt with darkening, crushing influence, they are effectually secluded from even a wandering ray of light on this subject. The avenue through which all information is conveyed at the present day is barred to them. Books are denied to the Catholic laity. You may ask how this is effected in this enlightened and liberal age. The prelates ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... platonic, the crowning characteristic of his present personality, the almost miraculous confirmation of his mystic relationship to the lover of Beatrice and the lover of Laura. And, in the knowledge of what he was to this poor, tormented young wife; in the consciousness of being the only ray of light in this close-shuttered prison—nay, rather bedlam-like existence; in the sense of how completely the happiness of Louise d'Albany depended upon him, whatever there was of generous and dutiful in the selfish and self-willed nature of Alfieri must have become paramount, and enjoined ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... soft pinions, o'er us shine! And we will worship thee, a god divine: The ignis fatuus of all our skies That grandly leads us, vanishes and dies, And we are left to grope in darkness here, Without a ray of light our lives to cheer. Oh, stay! sweet Love's companion, ever stay! And let us hope with love upon our way! We reck not if a phantom thou hast been, And we repent that we have ever seen Thy light on earth to lead us far astray; Forever stay! or ever ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... only a little story, Yet it came like a ray of light; And it gave to the girl who heard it Real ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston

... that fell Upon the ear in childhood's early morn; And wandering thence along the rolling years, I see the shadow of my former self Gliding from childhood up to man's estate. The path of youth winds down through many a vale, And on the brink of many a dread abyss, From out whose darkness comes no ray of light, Save that a phantom dances o'er the gulf, And beckons toward the verge. Again, the path Leads o'er a summit where the sunbeams fall; And thus, in light and shade, sunshine and gloom, Sorrow and joy, this life-path ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... so that a ray of light strikes it in a perpendicular direction, the light is reflected backward along the path by which it came. If, however, the light makes an angle with the mirror, its direction is changed, and it leaves the mirror along a new path. By observation we learn ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... burned, and her heart throbbed faster as she went to the window, to open the blinds, feeling that her reputation was at stake, and that the first ray of light would kindle the faggots. Not a speck of dust, from the ceiling down, would escape Miss Strong's eagle eyes, and oh, how she would talk about it! Well, it was done; she threw them open, and turned around in the calmness of despair. The ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... researches, Professor Bell discovered that not only the selenium cell, but simple discs of wood, glass, metal, ivory, india-rubber, and so on, yielded a distinct note when the intermittent ray of light fell upon them. Crystals of sulphate of copper, chips of pine, and even tobacco-smoke, in a test-tube held before the beam, emitted a musical tone. With a thin disc of vulcanite as receiver, the dark heat rays which pass through an opaque screen were found to yield a note. Even the outer ear ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... maze of her own mind. A hundred thoughts whirled together, and all around them was wrapped the warm, strong feeling of his hand on hers. What did she mean that he would tell her father? There seemed to be a deep, hidden self in her. Up out of these depths came a whisper, like a ray of light, and it said to her that there was more hope for Lin Slone than he had ever had in one of his ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... and properly esteemed himself successful when his work was approved by the wife or the mother. The world around us is full of knowledge. We should so behold it as to be instructed by all that is. The distant star paints its image on our eye with a ray of light sent forth thousands of years ago; yet its lesson is not of itself, but of the universe and its mysteries, and of the Creator out of whose divine hand all things ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... upon her character—upon the blended brightness and deep thought—upon the high-souled emotions and child-like sparkle of her disposition—upon the simplicity and complexity, upon the many-sided splendor of her character, which, like the cut diamond, reflected each ray of light in a thousand varied and dazzling hues. Oh how Mrs. Hazleton hated her—hated, because for the first time she began to fear. He had spoken to her in praise of another woman—with loud encomiums too, with a brightened eye, and a look which told her more ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... Whether the instance be a ray of light or a cannon-ball, the angle of reflection will always be found equal to the angle ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... horses, with another team dimly visible in front of her, until a faint ray of light streamed out into the snow. Then the team stopped, and she had only a hazy recollection of staggering into a lighted room in the homestead and sinking into a chair. What they did with Hastings she did not know, but Mrs. Hastings, who went with her to her room, kissed her before ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... descending into the gloomy pit, with my seven loaves and pitcher of water beside me. Almost before I reached the bottom the stone was rolled into its place above my head, and I was left to my fate. A feeble ray of light shone into the cavern through some chink, and when I had the courage to look about me I could see that I was in a vast vault, bestrewn with bones and bodies of the dead. I even fancied that I heard the expiring sighs of those who, like myself, had come into this dismal ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terror of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which like a sheeted spectre beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... own, but the delegated adaptability of God."—There is a certain position in the Scheme of Things Entire,—a point, with a relation of its own to the rest of the Scheme, to the Universe;— as the red line has a relation of its own to the rest of the spectrum and the ray of light as a whole..... From that point, from that position, there is a work to be done, which can be done from no other. The Lonely Eternal looks out through these eyes, because it must see all things; and there are things no eyes can see but these, no other hands do. This point is an infinitesimal ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... the stick as he concluded, and the boys saw a single ray of light shoot down upon them. All ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... was also a woman of middle age who could not be persuaded to keep her cabin porthole closed at night. Again and again a ray of light was projected through it upon the surface of the water and the quarter- master, whose duty it was to see that no lights were shown, was at his wit's end. His difficulty was the greater because he could speak no English, and she no French. Finally, a passenger took pity on the man, and, as the light ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... to go through history carefully, beginning from the time when Christian Rosenkreuz founded the Rosicrucian Society late in the fourteenth century—you will find on every occasion, towards the close of the century, a new ray of light is shed forth. Towards the close of the last century—I do not mean the one to which we belong, but the century before, the eighteenth—a mighty effort was made, of which the burden fell upon two great personages closely connected with the Lodge, though ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... overwhelmed by darkness. The gas jet, which had hitherto burned with great brightness in the small room, had been turned off from below, and beyond the faint glimmer which found its way through the small window of which I have spoken, not a ray of light now disturbed the heavy gloom ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... water is solid, at another it is fluid, at another it is a visible vapor, at a still higher it is an invisible vapor that burns like a flame. All possible shades of color lurk in a colorless ray of light. A little more or a little less heat makes all the difference between a nebula and a sun, and between a sun and a planet. At one degree of heat the elements are dissociated; at a lower degree they are united. At one ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... called to the attention of simple sounds; though, in reality, all are composed of three, so nicely blended as to appear but as one."—Gardiner's Music of Nature, p. 8. "Every sound is a mixture of three tones; as much as a ray of light is composed of three prismatic colours."—Ib., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... believe, is an instrument which takes a ray of light and proceeds to spread it abroad. At all events, the description seems to suit ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... the misty brain of Isaak Todros passed a ray of light, and he got a glimpse of the terrible truth. Something whispered to him that in the young breasts all the dormant desires and aspirations of which the excommunicated man had been the interpreter, had stirred into life. The young man was, then, not the only ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... sending that reached me last week brought me much that I found pleasant and encouraging in the numbers of the Neue Zeitschrift. I could verily not have imagined that so mild and kindly a ray of light could have been shed over my compositions discussed there, as is given under cipher 8. Let me know who writes under cipher 8—I promise not to divulge the secret—and meanwhile present my as yet unknown reviewer with my sincerest ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... took his needle so bright And threaded its eye with a wee ray of light From the Rhine, sunny Rhine; And, in such a deft way, patched a mirror that day That where it was mended no expert could say— Done so fine 't was ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... to the song each warrior smiting sword on shield in a mighty unison whose high, sonorous note thrilled like the voice of actual war. Steady the strong eyes gleamed out and onward as they rode. From the steel-clad breast of each there shone forward a glancing ray of light, as though it came direct from the heart, untamed even by a thousand years of death. My heart leaped to see them ride, so straight and stern and fearless, so goodly, so glorious to look upon. Came the rattle of chain, the clang of arms, the jangle of belt and ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... how meanly pitiful, is the aftermath of death. Well he remembered how many a night he woke in an agony, thinking of how his father lay in that cold, silent, dust-strewn vault, in the silence and the dark, with never a ray of light or hope or love! Gone, abandoned, forgotten by all, save perhaps one heart which bled . . . He would save little Stephen, if he could, from such a memory. He would not give any reason for refusing ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... open, and now that the curtain was drawn no ray of light escaped from the room to betray the ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... on the lower deck, where not a ray of light could come in, and the place where they locked me in was one of the 'black holes' in which prisoners were confined from one to twenty-eight days on ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... himself. His one profound conclusion was that everything was wrong. Capital was wrong, labor was wrong; the whole basis upon which society is organized was wrong. It was an exceedingly sweeping conclusion, embracing EVERYTHING. He discerned no ray of light. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... the height to which its vault extended, the gloom prevented even an estimate. For not a ray of light found its way through the bark wall. Neither cleft nor fault was there through which the wind or rain could come. Our two Crusoes would therein find themselves in a position to brave with impunity the inclemency of the weather. No ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... Prince, I heard a tumult of voices behind us, some in praise and some in blame of what had been done. We walked on in silence broken only by the measured tramp of the guards. Presently the moon passed behind a cloud and the world was dark. Then from the edge of the cloud sprang out a ray of light that lay straight and narrow above us on the heavens. Seti studied it ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... Perkins experienced that curious feeling that some invisible person was trying to catch his eye. Now, as he turned directly upon Carroll, his glance, passing over his shoulder, followed a broad ray of light spreading from a second-story leaf- framed balcony of the hotel. There was a stir amid the greenery. The face of the Voice appeared, framed in flowers. Its features lighted up with mirth, and the lips formed the ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... blindness, accompanied by excruciating pains. A pimple forms in the eye-ball, and causes an itching, pricking pain, as though needles were continually piercing it. The temporary loss of sight is occasioned by the impossibility of opening the eye-lids for a single moment, the smallest ray of light being absolutely insupportable. The only relief is a poultice of snow, but as that melts away the tortures return. With the exception of twenty men and the guides, who knew how to guard against the calamity, the whole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... one ray of light. It is a very faint ray, but in the absence of all other light it is precious. It is that which is supplied by the prehistoric ruins and the abandoned ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... discussion the high wall of freezing, glaucous, streaming ice touched by a pallid ray of light, and that string of human beings glued to it in echelon, with ill-omened rumblings rising from the yawning depth, together with the curses of the guides and their threats to detach and abandon the travellers. Tartarin, seeing that no argument ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... ready," Kona answered, his black face glistening in the ray of light shed by a single lamp lit by a slave on the opposite side of the court. "We will serve thy cause while we ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... quite dark, and for a few moments the aisles echo only to the dying melody. When, behold, a ray of light is seen, and splendour grows around the stage from hidden candles, and in the glory Gabriel appears upon a higher platform made to look like clouds. The shepherds wake in confusion, striving to shelter ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... And mourn unseen for evils not my own, With restless limbs and throbbing heart complain, Stretch'd on the rack of sentimental pain! 130 —Ah where can Sympathy reflecting find One bright idea to console the mind? One ray of light in this terrene abode To prove to Man ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... the great lace industry known and imported to all the towns engaged in making it. Italy could procure nothing so fine and eminently suitable to the delicate work she made her own as this fine thread, grown in Flanders, and spun in dark, damp rooms, where only a single ray of light was allowed to enter. The thread was so fine, it is said, that it was imperceptible to the naked eye and was manipulated by touch only. The cost of this thread was L240 a pound, and one pound could be made into lace worth L720! Real Flanders lace thread even ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... direct, unconditional emancipation. But neither in Olympus nor in Tartarus, neither in heaven nor in hell, can I find names of prototypes for the official and unofficial body-guard which, commanded by Seward, surrounds and watches Mr. Lincoln, so that no ray of light, no breath of spirit and energy ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... the water a brilliant flash of pink flame leapt up from the eastern fort on the Hillsea Lines, followed by a sharp crash which shook the atmosphere. A thin ray of light fell from the clouds, then came a quick succession of flashes moving in the direction of the great fort on Portsdown, until two rose in quick succession from Portsdown itself, and almost at the same moment another ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... house, seated immoveable before him,—all these conspired to produce a strong impression on his mind. The windows were closed and darkened; a single pane in the upper part of one of them admitted a strong ray of light. My father forgot the strange repute of his sitter in zeal for his art. 'How splendidly the fellow's face is lighted up!' he thought to himself, and set to work with furious eagerness, as though fearful of losing the favourable moment. 'What vigour! what light ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... of these things Bat could guess; some others Ashton-Kirk's hints had partly covered. But the background, the reason for it all, puzzled him. He pondered deeply for a long time, but not a ray of light appeared through the mists that obscured ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... ray of light disappears he is at his easel," said a young student whom a gay escapade had temporarily banished to the fifth floor. "I hear him move now and then and cough. He has a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... ordinary observer, or to attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun; and how it may show us that, even when the opening through which the earth receives light is too small to let us see the Sun himself, the ray of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear with ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... end of the street, the darkness was as it were divided by a ray of light, that neither flickered nor wavered. What a picture it brought at once before her!—the pale, lame grandchild of old Jenny Oram, watching by the dying bed of the only creature that had ever loved her—her poor deaf grandmother. And the girl's great trouble was, that the old woman could neither ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... Where a ray of light can enter the future, a child's hope can find a way—a way that nothing less airy and spiritual can travel. By the time they reached their own door Fleda's spirits were ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... came one ray of light. Stewart had wired from Semmering, urging Peter to come. He would be away for two days. In two days much might happen; Dr. Jennings might come or some one else. In two days some of the restraint would have worn ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... approached the panel, upon one corner of which a ray of light from the altar fell obliquely. Father Ricardo sprinkled it liberally from where he stood on the ground, repeating some formula as he did so, and then mounted a small pair of steps which had been placed there for the purpose, and began to search for the screws. As he ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... a still and frosty evening. As the motor drew up in the walled enclosure before the Tower, the noise of its brakes echoed through the profound silence in which the Tower was wrapped. No sign of life in the dark front; no ray of light ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to add, "their brightness," when as though a sudden ray of light had flashed through them, they gleamed with even more than their ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... morals it is unequal and mixed. It was an age of contrasts, of contrasts in all their crudity, an age of philosophy and fanaticism, of scepticism and strong faith. Everything was at strife and in collision; nothing was blended and united. Everything was in ferment; it was a period of chaos; every ray of light caused a storm. It was not a gentle age, or one we can call an age of light, but an age of struggle and combat. What distinguished Montaigne and made a phenomenon of him was, that in such an age he should have ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various



Words linked to "Ray of light" :   sunray, low beam, light, moonbeam, high beam, moon ray, moon-ray, visible radiation, heat ray, sunbeam, visible light, laser beam



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