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Ripple   /rˈɪpəl/   Listen
Ripple

noun
1.
A small wave on the surface of a liquid.  Synonyms: riffle, rippling, wavelet.
2.
(electronics) an oscillation of small amplitude imposed on top of a steady value.



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"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the ripple of the flowing water the weeping of Cucuduri, and throws three small fish to him. If he should not do this, he would catch nothing. Cucuduri would throw stones into the water and drive the fish off, or he would even throw stones ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... over now, as she lay wakeful in bed, mixed up with the "forever—ever," and the dropping tinkle of that lovely trembling ripple of accompaniment, until the late moon got round to the south and slanted in between the white dimity curtains, and set a glimmering ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... city is not felt in the same degree in all parts of it. There are places from which all circulation seems shut out, and where the rapid stream of life hardly shows a ripple. Quiet houses are there, only separated from the noisy street by the thickness of a wall. They seem to be many miles from the heated movement of life, and their inhabitants complacently gaze from their windows with the same unconcern as they would look ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... important event, which at another time would have caused the boys to throw their hats into the air with glee, did not seem to create a ripple of applause among the three young chaps. Carson was threatened with a terrible disaster, the greatest in all her history, and even these boys could experience something of the sensation of awe that had begun to pass ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... Rachel made herself ready before lunch, to which she came down looking quite lovely, in blue as joyous as the sky's, to find her husband as fully prepared, and not less becomingly attired, in a gray frock-coat without a ripple on its surface. They looked critically at each other for an instant, and then Steel said something pleasant, to which Rachel made practically no reply. They ate their lunch in a silence broken good-naturedly at intervals from one end of the table only. Then the Woodgates ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... around her knees, and watching the grass ebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, "O Spring!" and Maurice, listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping in the shallows around the sandbar, and flowing—flowing—like Life, and Time, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of her voice. "The notes are like wings," he said; "give us ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... The sumptuous ripple and gleam of the young man's faultless coat, registered upon Banneker's subconscious memory as it had fallen at his feet, recalled ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... sigh, and that painful dizziness passed off in some degree. All she wanted was air, she thought, if there had been any air to be got that sultry night. She rose from the sofa presently, and went out upon the balcony. Below her was the river; not a ripple upon the water, not a breath stirring the rushes on the banks. Between the balcony and the river there was a broad battlemented walk, and in the embrasures where cannon had once been there were great stone vases of geraniums and dwarf roses, which seemed ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... of it cuts and the blade doesn't. You muddle yourself by not knowing what you mean by a word, and send out your unanswered riddles and rebuses to clear up other people's difficulties. It always seems to me that talk is a ripple and thought is a ground swell. A string of words, that mean pretty much anything, helps you in a certain sense to get hold of a thought, just as a string of syllables that mean nothing helps you to a word; ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... very beautiful," fell like a pleasant ripple upon the ear of Jeanette Roland, as she approached the altar, beneath her wreath of orange blossoms, while her bridal veil floated like a cloud of lovely mist from her fair young head. The vows were spoken, the bridal ring placed upon her finger, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... 4 p.m. till long after sunset, you may see the Shirazi taking his rest, undisturbed save for the ripple of running water, the sighing of the breeze through the branches, and croon of the pigeons overhead. Now and again the tinkle of caravan-bells breaks in upon his meditations, or the click-click of the attendant's sandals as he crosses the tiled ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... down, the sails every now and then giving sullen flaps against the masts, while the ship rolled slowly—so slowly as scarcely to allow the movement to be perceptible—from side to side. The ocean was as smooth as the smoothest mirror, not a ripple, not the slightest cat's-paw being perceptible on it. Instead, however, of its usual green colour, it had become of a dead leaden hue, the whole arch of heaven being also spread with a dark grey ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston

... oranges and greens and blues and purples to the solitary star above the opaline peak, he had wanted to wait and see—what? He did not know. It had always seemed, if he watched, the primrose veil would lift and release some phantom with noiseless tread on a ripple of night wind. In his lonely vigils he used to listen for all the little bells of the nodding purple heather to begin ringing some sort of pixie music, or for the flaming tongues of the painter's flower to take voice in some chorus ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... ripening cornfields lead the way Upon the awful Sabbath day, His sermons were the healthful talk That shorter made the mountain-walk, His wayside texts were flowers and birds, Where mingled with his gracious words The rustle of the tamarisk-tree And ripple-wash of Galilee." ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... yards of us upon the port bow. Two men were sitting on her bulwarks, but neither of them cast an eye upon the little rod that clove the water so close to them. It was an ideal day for submarine action, with enough ripple upon the surface to make us difficult to detect, and yet smooth enough to give me a clear view. Each of my three periscopes had an angle of sixty degrees so that between them I commanded a complete semi-circle of the horizon. Two British cruisers were steaming north from the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the yelp of the damned, must be a charming picture for the eye of a delicate and beautiful second wife: one who loves to look on green meadows and glorious landscapes; one who has always wakened with a song and a ripple of laughter that fell on her father's heart like shower of sunshine in the somber green of ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... tides there was some depth of water below, in a winding central channel. In the evening how black that channel must be! how solemn the whole place! Now the low sun was shining in, lighting up every point, and disclosing all the hollows, and just catching a ripple now and then, which, in its turn, made a ripple of light on the roof; and, far in, there was an opening—a gaping chink in the side of the cave—which gave admission ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... of the summer before. "On the next Tuesday," writes Mr. Stanton, "we reached the spot where President Brown lost his life. What a change in the waters! What was then a roaring torrent, now, with the water some nine feet lower, seemed from the shore like the gentle ripple upon the quiet lake. We found, however, in going through it with our boats, there was the same swift current, the same huge eddy, and between them the same whirlpool, with its ever-changing circles. Marble Canon seemed destined to give us trouble. On January 1st, our photographer, Mr. Nims, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... with a gentle gliding impact that hardly did more than ripple the surface, and a cheer broke from the boys as they perceived how perfectly the new ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... film, though this is not at first easy to recognise. As pointed out in View No. 1, there is little in common between our sense of sight and hearing; but the chirp of birds, the hum of bees, the rustle of wind in the leaves, the ripple of a stream, the distant sound of sheep bells, and lowing of cattle form a background of sound which may be coaxed to approach you; the only knowledge you have of such sounds is their impression or image on the flat tympanum of your ear; they have no other existence ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... A ripple of expectancy again broke forth. Two had died; the next must be the one for whom they waited. All strained their necks in eagerness to catch the first glimpse as he should be led forth, and this was the sight for ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... him narrowly as he took his letters. Perhaps their subconscious minds (according to her dear friend's theory) held communication, but only the faintest unintelligible ripple of that ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... lying. Very little was said during most of the way, except some subdued exclamations of delight as they passed out from the deep shadow of the overhanging rocks into the broad river, which glittered in the moonlight like a sheet of dazzling silver, roughened by the slightest ripple, and past point after point of luxuriant foliage, looking dream-like and unreal in the light that silvered ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... hopelessly becalmed off Thomas's Point. Not a ripple could be seen down the Chesapeake, and the locusts and pines along the shore were shuddering uncomfortably with the heat of a July afternoon, hidden halfway to their tops in the summer haze. What was to be done? Five miles from home in a large sloop ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... very great, for many of the captured blockade-runners were used as transports and dispatch vessels. Shaping our course for Beaufort, and slowing down, as we were in no haste to get there, we passed several vessels, showing United States colors to them all. Just as we were crossing through the ripple of shallow water off the "tail" of the shoals, we dipped our colors to a sloop of war which passed three or four miles to the south of us. The courtesy was promptly responded to; but I have no doubt her captain thought ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... gather the beautiful blooms, that nested so cosily on the cool waters, too fond of their cradle to ever want to creep, or walk upon their slender green limbs. They just rocked there, with every tiny ripple of the water, and only woke up to see the warm sunlight bleaching their dainty, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope

... A little ripple of approval went round in half-breathed syllables, but Margaret gave no time for any restlessness to start. She spoke at once, in her pleasantest partnership tone, such as she had used to Bud when she asked him to help her build her bookcase. So she spoke now to that school, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... and happy. The change in her mode of living from the supreme luxury of the Hawley-Crowles mansion to the common comforts of the home where now she dwelt so simply with the Beaubien, seemed not to have caused even a ripple in the full current of her joy. Her life was a symphony of thanksgiving; an antiphony, in which all Nature voiced its responses to her in a diapason, full, rich, and harmonious. Often that autumn she might have been seen standing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... if we agree to mean by tendency an incipient change in any direction." And when we enquire as to the nature of this "continual flux" of which the positive and integral thing we have come to call the soul is but a ripple, or swirling whirlpool of centripetal ripples, the answer which Bergson gives is definite enough. "We approach a duration which strains, contracts, and intensifies itself more and more; at the limit would be eternity. No longer conceptual eternity, which is an eternity of death, but ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... hands pressed against her breast, her eyes filled with fear, she was watching in fascinated horror a thin ripple of phosphorescence that moved leisurely and steadily ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... in this section of Sargol—the highest elevations being rounded hills tightly clothed with the same ten-foot grass which covered the plains. From the Queen's observation ports, one could watch the constant ripple of the grass so that the planet appeared to be largely clothed in a shimmering, flowing carpet. To the west were the seas—stretches of shallow water so cut up by strings of islands that they more resembled a series of salty lakes. And it was what was to be found in those seas which had lured ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... on a summer day in the everlasting quietness, unbroken even by a wandering wind or the ripple of a stream, some inkling of that old Roman life, always at its best in such country places as this, comes to you, yes, from the time when Juno was yet a little maid among the mossy fountains and the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... and philosophising. How fresh and young, yet how wondrously old! Babble such as this fell from a child's lips thousands of years ago, in the morning of the world; it sounded on through the ages, infinitely reproduced; eternally a new beginning; the same music of earliest human speech, the same ripple of innocent laughter, renewed from generation to generation. But he, listening, had not the merry, fearless pride of fathers in an earlier day. Upon him lay the burden of all time; he must needs ponder anxiously on his child's heritage, use his weary ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... had failed to dispose of. The President's first duty was to issue a second proclamation, recalling the previous one which had sent to sea every American ship in port. They could all come back, if they would, to be made fast again at their wharves, till the recurrent tides at last should ripple in and out of their open seams, and their yards and masts drop piecemeal upon the rotting decks. But many never came back, preferring rather the risk of being sunk or burned at sea, which happened to not a few, or of capture and confiscation ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... the verge which divides the sublime from the ridiculous. No wonder that, on the night the play was first acted, Mertoun's song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, caused a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant auditory. It is with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint from that of Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballards, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... were seated, Dexter talked freely, while Hendrickson sat, for the most part silent, but, as Jessie felt, closely observant. Light and playful were the subjects introduced by Mr. Dexter, and his remarks caused a perpetual ripple of smiles to sparkle over the countenance of Miss Loring. But whenever Mr. Hendrickson spoke to her, the smiles faded, and she turned upon him a face so changed in expression that he felt a chill pervade his feelings. She did not mean to look grave; she did not repress the ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... rose higher and higher, chased by the shadows; and then, after lingering for a moment on their crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed away, and the whole became sombre and grey. The sea-gull sprang upwards from where he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly away to his lodge in his deep-sea stack; the dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and more frequent stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice; the pigeons came whizzing downwards from the uplands and the opposite land, and disappeared amid the gloom of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... when she was taken one day to the house of Paul Scarron, the crippled poet, whose satires and burlesques kept Paris in a ripple of merriment, and to whom the child's poverty and friendless position made as powerful an appeal as her budding beauty and her modesty. It was a very tender heart that beat in the pain-racked, paralysed body of the "father of French burlesque"; ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... the tree, I see it ripple up and wink; And I can hear it saying on, "And do you think? And do ...
— Under the Tree • Elizabeth Madox Roberts

... laughing ripple shoreward flew, To kiss the shining pebbles; Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue Defiance ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... brought back to himself, however, by a sudden little ripple of quick feminine laughter. Aghast, he dropped the manuscript among the chessmen and stared in bewilderment round the room. It was as empty and as still as ever. Again he stretched his hand out to the romance, and again came that roguish burst of merriment. He ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... extra ripple of the waters at New Orleans brings them over the banks and floods the streets, but the ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... feet of line without fear of being thwarted by the brush; then into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... given it birth! It was written to beguile tedious time. Winds, as they played through groves that surround her aged father's retired and humble dwelling, sweet songsters, as they caroled from spray to spray, and the ripple of the Androscoggin, as it glided past, to her ear, were nature's sweet minstrels, that cheered her heart in solitude and inspired her, too, to attempt the artless ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower

... a sunless, dreary, cold-winded desert, he was evermore confronted, in all his resolves after betterment, by the knowledge that with the first eager mouthful of the strange element, a rosy dawn would begin to flush the sky, a mist of green to cover the arid waste, a wind of song to ripple the air, and at length the misery of the day would vanish utterly, and the night throb with dreams. For George was by nature no common man. At heart he was a poet—weak enough, but capable of endless delight. The time had been when now and then he read a good ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... was left to watch his master's clothes while bathing. Presently he was seen to be doing everything in his power to attract attention, by barking and running excitedly backwards and forwards on the shore. An advancing ripple was then discerned on the smooth surface of the lake, and the next instant the meaning of this flashed home. A crocodile had got between the swimmer and the landing-place, and was coming out to seize ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... where it ends, is the magnificent facade of the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, the most perfect of all the Roman temples. There are six splendid Corinthian columns in front and two at the sides, each composed of a single block of green ripple-marked Cipollino marble, about forty-six feet in height and five feet in diameter, with bases and capitals of marble, originally white, but now rusty and discoloured by age; all beautifully proportioned and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... sandstone of the Vindhya range; and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe, nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off, beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no other substance to be seen between the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... firmly-knit length of figure on the sloping ground near by, and flung aside his cap; thus revealing more clearly the rugged contour of his head, and the black hair whose obstinate ripple no amount of brushing could subdue. With leisurely deliberation he filled his pipe, and surrendered himself to the enchantment of the hour, before it slipped from him into the region of accomplished ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... his back. The southerly breeze had struck Nepenthe on its morning ripple over the Tyrrhenian, setting things astir; it searched a passage through those mighty canes which sprouted in a dank hollow where the rains of winter commingled their waters. The leaves grew vocal with a sound like the splash of a rivulet. Often had he listened joyfully ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... sceptre for centuries kept, Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept: Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown, Far from Aberffraw's halls and Eryri ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... Commodore came to the wind as sharp and suddenly as if he had anchored; but on a second look, I saw his sheets were let fly, haulyards let go, and apparently all was confusion on board of her. I ran to the side and looked over. The long hearing dark blue swell had changed into a light green hissing ripple. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus Calisto and Melibaea (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, Celestine. True, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... He pointed to a ripple on the water caused by the ugly snout of one of the creatures referred to. It seemed by the activity of its movements to be already ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... had become, Gaston had not lost cognizance of the spot whither they were to direct their course; and one by one the strong swimmers plunged into the sullen waters without causing so much as a ripple or plash, which might betray their movements to suspicious ears upon the battlements (if indeed any sort of watch were kept, which appeared doubtful). They swam with that perfect silence possible only to those who are thoroughly at home in the water, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... gargling your supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... overpowering serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a "majestical countenance," as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his voice began ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... once said, 'If all that Christ said and did were written in books, the world could not contain them. This is an exageration, (a ripple of laughter dances over the congregation), having a great meaning, however." * * * * "David gives us only his intense life." (The audience smile). (11:35). The preacher becoming dramatic in gesticulation and ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... single- arched bridge takes a long stride over the Grannoch lane, there was now a great black pot a-swing above a blinking pale fire of peats and fir-branches, and a couple of great tubs set close together on stones which he had not seen before. There was, too, a ripple of girls' laughter, which sent a strange stirring of excitement along the nerves of the young man. He gathered his books to move away; but on second thoughts, looking through the long, swaying tendrils of the broom under which he sat, he resolved to remain. After all, the girls might ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... One side of the gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and clinging to the other side, are patches of moist and half-melted snow, and on all sides you hear the drip of falling moisture and the ripple of little streams of water which are running away to swell the creeks and ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... however, my dear children, that he should die not the death of a man, but that of the reptile which he was, for even as I closed upon him he sank of a sudden with a gurgling sound, and the green marsh scum met above his head. No ripple was there and no splash to mark the spot. It was sudden and silent, as though some strange monster of the marshes had seized him and dragged him down into the depths. As I stood with upraised sword still gazing ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... dull—it is as if the view was dead or imprisoned—walled up by wood and hill, and wanting that living ripple, heaving and struggling.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity of the scene; almost every breath of wind had fallen, scarcely a ripple tinkled against the copper sheathing, as the solitary little schooner glided along at the rate of half a knot or so an hour, and the only sound we heard was the distant wash of waters, but whether on a great shore, or along a belt of solid ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... satisfaction sensibly increased, therefore, as she stole along the land, toward the angle mentioned, without a sound audible but the gentle gurgling of the water, stirred by the stem, and which sounded like the ripple of the gentlest wave, as it washes the shingle ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... started, six strong—four whites, and Cato, and Ferdinand—well armed, and with a good supply of provisions. The sun was already very hot, and the water smooth as glass, save where the prow of the boat broke the still surface into a tiny ripple, which continued plainly visible half a mile astern. I find it difficult to bring before the reader the thousand curious objects that met us on our way. The sullen crocodile basking in the sun, sank noiselessly; a splash would ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... body was tensed for the deadly spring that would bring him down upon my throat. I saw a ripple of galvanizing energy race through his hands; then I managed an outcry. At the same instant he ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce

... no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and within a certain ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... The night was beautiful and starlight, and, our repast over, the awning was removed, and we sat out enjoying our cigars in the cool night breeze blowing in fresh and strong from the sea. The quiet ripple of the waves as they broke on the sandy beach had a soothing effect very favourable to reflection (and baccy), and the lights of the little fishing village twinkling at the foot of the black and rugged peak of Santubong—which ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... luxurious rest, with the body completely relaxed, but with the senses alert. The wind ceased to blow, and the rain came down straight with an even beat that was not unmusical. No other sound was heard in the forest, as the ripple of the river at the edges was merged into it. Henry began to feel the desire for sleep by and by, and, laying the paddle across the boat in such a way that it sheltered his face, he closed his eyes. In five minutes he would have ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... front seat, and Charley rowed him over as if he were afraid of making a ripple on the water. He and Jeff were almost holding their breath with excitement over what their fat friend meant ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... small arched feet, she tapped the floor in exact time to the music for a few moments, then glided dreamily along the sala, her willowy body falling in lovely lines, unfolding every detail of El Son, unheeding the low ripple of approval. Then, dropping her gown, she spun the length of the room like a white cloud caught in a cyclone; her garments whirred, her heels clicked, her motion grew faster and swifter, until the spectators panted for breath. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... from a green, shelving bank, and shoved her off with the long sticks we carried. The wind caught her sail and drove her forward in fine style; she made a great ripple as she went. Once she caught in a drowned bush; but the current swung her clear, and she cut across the course of the brook like a Falmouth Packet. Hugh and I ran along the causeway, and over the bridge, to catch her on the other side. We ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... Lilias," on the other hand, the author avails herself of all the agreeable traditions of English fiction: there are warm and well-lighted rooms, well-to-do people, regular meals, afternoon tea, plenty of bread-and-butter, and a gentle ripple of friendly, soft-voiced conversation. This may not be original or exciting, but, after a good deal of crude sensation through some thousand and odd pages, "ways of pleasantness and paths of peace" are refreshing to the critic, who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... work is easy enough, always providing you bide your time, and no big wind from the east or south comes up while you're making the trip from one inlet to another. Sometimes, I'm told, the sea is like glass, with hardly a ripple." ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea In ripple or ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... off the whole point of Gallipoli, so far up the Dardanelles, and round the west coast. The air vibrates, and the roaring echoes all round never cease. And over all is a brilliant, scorching sun, the air otherwise a dead calm, and not a ripple on the Aegean. In spite of this calm a terrific day is in progress for the Turk and us, but we hope to make a great advance before night towards the capture of the forts at the Narrows. All round where I sit the ground is ploughed ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... water through a banian-like colonnade of mighty trunks and hanging vines, the pearly moss tempering the light like jalousies, summer seems but a relative idea. Fly-catchers flit back and forth, barn-swallows and sand-martins skim the lake, and an occasional splash or ripple at our feet shows that humbler life is getting astir. The highest life, or what modest man calls such, we have all to ourselves. Yet not quite; for there is visible yonder, beneath the outer tip of a live-oak which we have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... Before long half the sky was overspread. Evidently motive power lay in the cloud itself, for there was not a breath of wind. Absolute calm reigned in the atmosphere; not a leaf stirred on the tree, not a ripple disturbed the surface of the water. There seemed to be scarcely any air even, as though some vast pneumatic machine had rarefied it. The entire atmosphere was charged to the utmost with electricity, the presence of which sent a thrill ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... sort of a looking individual it is who has crossed America awheel, and furthermore proposes to accomplish the greater feat of the circumlocution of the globe. A small sea of hats is enthusiastically waved aloft; a ripple of applause escapes from five hundred English throats as I mount my glistening bicycle; and, with the assistance of a few policemen, the twenty-five Liverpool cyclers who have assembled to accompany me out, extricate ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... towering with dazzling brilliancy in the deep blue atmosphere; and now muttering peals of thunder were faintly heard rolling behind the mountains. The river, hitherto still and glassy, reflecting pictures of the sky and land, now showed a dark ripple at a distance, as the breeze came creeping up it. The fish-hawks wheeled and screamed, and sought their nests on the high dry trees; the crows flew clamorously to the crevices of the rocks, and all nature seemed conscious of the approaching thunder gust. The clouds now rolled ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... leads, sure-footed as a cat, toward the nearest window in the dome which would look down into the hall below. This he gained in safety, and found that it had been left half open, for ventilation. He leaned over the ledge, gazing downward; and a ripple of music from hidden players rose to him above a ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... was hardly out of his lips when he disappeared, and the princess heard a rustle and saw a ripple on the water; and in the faint moonlight she beheld a snake swimming into the river. Soon it disappeared and she was left alone. In vain she waited with beating heart for something to happen, and for the prince to come ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... emphatic to a man who carried in his memory those bosses of hill, pearly where the waters have washed the sides, pale golden buff where a little sere grass covers the rounded top; those great cracks and chasms, with the white road snaking along the narrow table-land and the wide valleys; and the ripple of far-off mountain chains, strong and restrained in curves, exquisite in tints, like the dry white and purpled hemlock, and the dusty lilac scabius, which seem to flower alone in that arid and ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... sublimity of Quebec. The fine mountain that forms the background to the city, the Island of St. Helens in front, and the junction of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa—which run side by side, their respective boundaries only marked by a long ripple of white foam, and the darker blue tint of the former river—constitute the most remarkable features in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... beings are here, and forest-trees are in America. Hedges, too, and the rich, rich verdure of England; and villages full of picturesque old houses, thatched, and ivied, or perhaps overrun with roses,—and a stately mansion in the Elizabethan style; and a quiet stream, gliding onward without a ripple from its own motion, but rippled by a large fish darting across it; and over all this scene a gentle, friendly sunshine, not ardent enough to crisp a single leaf or blade of grass. Nor must the village church be forgotten, with its square, battlemented tower, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... near a river Where the darkened waters quiver. Where the ripple we can hear Bursting on the pebbly shore, Making music soft and clear For ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... property with the trees may be kept unbroken, should the purchaser desire, we will sell lots 8 to 21 inclusive in one batch! How much am I offered?" "One hundred thousand dollars," quietly responded Mr. Potter. A ripple of excitement ran through the crowd, and the bid was quickly run up to $120,000 by speculators. "One hundred and twenty-five thousand," said Mr. Potter. Then there were several thousand dollar ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... way of answer, turned half away, and gave a little nervous laugh. "I don't know how long you been heah, you been heah so long; mos' forty years, I reckon." This sally called from her companions a little ripple of amusement. ...
— P'laski's Tunament - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... of a prince-consort rarely disorganises a monarchy. Queen Santa had appointed as /mayordomo/ of the ranch a trusty subject, named Ramsay, who had been one of her father's faithful vassals. And there was scarcely a ripple on the Nopalito ranch save when the gulf-breeze created undulations in the grass of ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... shut tight upon his wrist. There—there it was. It began again, his invocation was answered. Far off there, the ripple formed again upon the still, black pool of the night. No sound, no sight; vibration merely, appreciable by some sublimated faculty of the mind as yet unnamed. Rigid, his nerves taut, motionless, prone ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... the fact that many of life's grimmest battles and deepest tragedies scarce ripple the surface of trivial things? We are always rubbing elbows with the big issues and never knowing anything about it. Certainly no one at the Double Cross guessed what was always in the mind of the foreman. Jim thought he was "sore" because of Dick. ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... the Carnival as it used to be have heard a whole city laugh, and the memory is worth having, for it is like no other. The sound used to flow along in great waves, following the sights that passed, and swelling with them to a peal that was like a cheer, and ebbing then to a steady, even ripple of enjoyment that never ceased till it rose again in sheer joy of something new to see. Nothing can give an idea of the picture in times when Rome was still Roman; no power of description can call up ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... hair lighted the world beneath with sunset. Then, shading her white brow with one hand, she bent, and with the other hand dipped in the sea, she sent a wave rolling at us. Straight out of the horizon it sped—a ripple that grew to a wave, then to a furious breaker which caught us up in a whirl of foam, bearing us onward, faster, faster, swiftly flying through leagues of spray until consciousness ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... garden-seat, lo! all the west was on fire, the mountains in the south had grown dark on their eastern side, and the plain of the sea was like a lake of blood, with the heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown large and solemn and distant. There was scarcely a ripple around the rocks at their feet to break the stillness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... there on that plateau, I didn't find any man at all," I ventured faint-heartedly, but with a ripple of my risibles; the last in ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... along in November and December recorded the political ripple of the contest, but the fight was a dead affair, and nobody enthused. The play came to a tame ending when Beardslee nominated Stanton for the Speaker's job and got the Chairmanship of the important Committee on Ways and Means for being good, or taking program, ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... grass turned green and the flowers began to blossom and nod, and the corn-stalks lifted up their heads and waved new tassels, and the wheat sprang up, and the trees put out fresh leaves, and the birds sang, and the little dried-up brooks began to run and ripple over stones. And Mother Ceres, sitting and looking out over the dry brown world, suddenly saw a green glow over everything and she stood up, very angry, and said: 'Does the earth disobey me? I said that if the earth should ever grow green again, it should be along the path by ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... a delightful meal, full of the familiar gossip of the artistes' room, and the news of old friends, and fervent discussions on matters musical and artistic, with running through it all a ripple of humour and the cheery atmosphere of camaraderie and good-fellowship. When it was over, the three drew cosily together round the fire in Ralph's den. Nan sank into her chair with a ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... like that. It doesn't begin to act until you do something to it. The impulse to ripple is in the quiet lake all the time, but it doesn't ripple until you throw the stone in it. The sound quality is in the drum, but you don't hear it until you hit the drum with a stick. So you've got to put into the ether something that disturbs the electricity in it, something that stirs it up, ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman

... civilization, the smoother its speech. Age refines the vowels and makes the consonants suave. They spoke easily, not hastily, but as oil flows, continuously and without ripple. The younger voice was deep, soft enough to have been wooing and as ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... night before by several men in the next room, who shouted and sang until early morning. During the evening he went out upon deck, well forward, as he wished to be alone, and away from the men who were drinking and gambling in other parts of the steamer. It was a beautiful evening, with scarcely a ripple disturbing the surface of the water. The air was mild, and when the sun went down, the moon rose big and cheery above the dense dark forest away to the right. Reynolds thought over the conversation he had heard between ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... assassination attempt was made against President SHEVARDNADZE by supporters of the late former president Zviad GAMSAKHURDIA. In October 1998, a disaffected military officer led a failed mutiny in western Georgia; the armed forces continue to feel the ripple effect of the uprising. Georgia faces parliamentary elections this fall, and presidential elections next spring. After two years of robust growth, the economy, hurt by the financial crisis in Russia, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... A ripple came down from the east. The sound of its lap-lap-lap under the boat stole on one's ears sleepily, but it roused Uncle Jake to quick action. "Do 'ee see thees little cockle on the water?" he said. "Do 'ee feel the life o'it in the boat? Must get out of thees yer, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... see The visible god approach, with step divine; And Agni's boon was this, that he would come Whenever Nala called—for everywhere Hutasa shineth, and all worlds are his; Yama gave skill in cookery, steadfastness In virtue; and Varuna, King of Floods, Bade all the waters ripple at his call. These boons the high gods doubled by the gift Of bright wreaths wove with magic blooms of heaven; And those bestowed, ascended to their seats. Also with wonder and with joy returned The Rajas and the Maharajas all, Full of the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... just under the surface, appeared the glittering outlines of a great fish. It moved leisurely, its projecting fin making a silver ripple. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... personalities known only to the initiated with a restrained gayety which often broke down into a charming shyness, which was ready to be scared away in a moment by a tone—too serious or too polemical—which jarred with the general key of the conversation, which never imposed itself, and was like the ripple on a summer sea. But the summer sea has its depths, and this modest gayety was the mark of an intimate and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... high seas. I often cogitate over what accident must have befallen Jacob Canfield. He left the shore one morning when it was as mild and fair as the brightest June day that ever dawned, and it was pleasant and calm all day. The sun went down as serenely as it rose, and not a ripple was on the sea—yes, it was a mild, lovely October day, from sunrise to sunset. Jake was seen to go out in his boat, but neither Jake nor the boat was ever seen afterward. I tell you I've never made up my mind as to ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey

... day long, just as the birds sing for joy, but, being partly human, he needed an instrument, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore of the island of an evening, practising the sough of the wind and the ripple of the water, and catching handfuls of the shine of the moon, and he put them all in his pipe and played them so beautifully that even the birds were deceived, and they would say to each other, 'Was that a fish leaping ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!' 'Well ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for the next race ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... poet who has the joyous art of sending a ripple of mirth across the faces of the Anglo-Saxon world recognizes this fact in a cheerful poem, called "The Morning Visit," and to which I gladly refer any of my readers who would like to know from the lips of Oliver Wendell Holmes what manner of delightful patient he must ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... and pushed his boat slowly in on the gravel, a low pr-r-r and a sibilant ripple of water caused him to look behind. A high-bowed, shining mahogany cruiser, seventy feet or more over all, rounded the point and headed into the bay. The smooth sea parted with a whistling sound where her brass-shod ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... I was, it was some time before I could manage to go to sleep. I lay looking up at the dark sky—out of which thousands of bright stars shone forth—and listening to the ripple of the water against the bows of the canoe. At length the sound lulled me to sleep, though I felt conscious that Arthur had covered me up with a piece of matting. It seemed but a moment afterwards ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... sea which trembles.—Ver. 136. The ripple, or shudder, which runs along the surface of the sea, when a breath of wind is stirring in a calm, is very beautifully described here, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... it? Why does the great wind stir the deep waters? It does but ripple the shallow pool as it passes, for shallowness can but ripple and throw up shadows. We cannot tell, but this we know—that deep things only can be deeply moved. It is the penalty of depth and greatness; it is the price they pay for the divine privilege of suffering ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... excellent water-supply from the hills, but there is a very grave danger to the health of all the people who use the Allegheny river as a water-supply. It is in the debris above the viaduct, which is full of decomposing animal matter. Every ripple of water that passes through or under it carries the germs ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... ripple. "We didn't find Francis Edward David till the middle of December, and it's now the third week in January. I don't think we've let much grass grow under ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... Mr. Heatherbloom. A cold smile like a faint ripple on a mountain lake swept his lips. "Now we shall ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... A ripple showed on the surface of the water. Eric could not have told it from the roughness of a breaking wave, but before ever the outlines of a rising head were seen, the Eel sprang into the sea. Two of those long, sinuous strokes of his brought him almost ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which since sunrise had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... Froude were exceedingly interesting; but every day he began them with the words "Ladies and gentlemen,'' in the most comical falsetto imaginable,— a sort of Lord Dundreary manner,—so that, sitting beside him, I always noticed a ripple of laughter run- ning over the whole audience, which instantly disappeared as he settled into his work. He had a way of giving color to his lectures by citing bits of humorous history. Thus it was that he threw a vivid light on the horrors of civil war in Ireland ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... evidence of feeding and escape channels of the kind which would be necessary in case the solutions were introduced long afterward, and often a minute participation of the copper minerals in the minor structures of bedding, false-bedding, and ripple-marks, which would be difficult to explain as ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... shrubbery he came out to meet her, giving her his hand with a frank, easy air and a pleasant smile. His smile was as bright as the ripple of the sea, and his eye would then gleam, and the slightest sparkle of his white teeth would be seen between his lips, and the dimple of his chin would show itself deeper than at other times. "It is very good of you. I thought you'd come. John ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea, In ripple or in shade. 455 ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the ripple of the water among the grass and pebbles; the tongue and lips of the lake are lapping and whispering all along. It is the merest poetry; but you are so ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... for, and it was with unbelieving wonder, and delight, that I came suddenly upon the shore of the sea. A little while, and its gentle billows were flowing beneath the hoofs of my beast, but the hearing of the ripple was not enough communion, and the seeing of the blue Propontis was not to know and possess it—I must needs plunge into its depth and quench my longing love in the palpable waves; and so when old Moostapha (defender against demons) looked round for his charge, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake



Words linked to "Ripple" :   fold up, moving ridge, electronics, ripple-grass, rippling, sound, oscillation, fold, turn up, flow, vibration, wave, go, babble, flux



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