"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hemlock: "corrupting the morals of the youth, and teaching strange gods." Feeling the virtue of his teaching, he was unwilling as Socrates to abandon the field. In Samson he thought he recognized twin gifts: a spark of a genius too rare to be allowed to flicker out, and a potentiality for constructive work among his own people, which needed for its perfecting only education and experience. Having aroused a soul's restiveness in the boy, he felt a direct responsibility for it and him, to which he added a deep personal regard. Though the kinsmen ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the guard house," the Lieutenant said with a flicker of a, smile. "The old man has been regularly camping out there since he learned that his ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... faint rustle, the swinging to and fro of the curtain door, and the man stood before her. Not a sound broke the stillness, not a movement caused a flicker to the name of the shaded hanging lamp, which, just above the girl's head, threw down the light on the radiance of her hair, and the wonder of her body which the diaphanous garment ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... yellow windows shadows drink hot tea. Yearning people sway on a hardened pond Workers find a soft woman's corpse. Glowing blue snows cast a howling darkness. On high poles a scarecrow, implored, hangs. Stores flicker dimly through frosted windows, In front of which human bodies move like ghosts. Students carve a frozen girl. How lovely, the crystalline winter evening burning! A platinum moon now streams through a gap in the houses. Next to green ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... without,—so still within;— It had been a sin To drop a pin— So intense is silence after a din, It seem'd like Death's rehearsal! To stir the air no eddy came; And the taper burnt with as still a flame, As to flicker had been a burning shame, In ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... besides smoke makes itself visible, as also audible. Here and there flames flicker up, with a sharp crackling noise, which continues. The one is not flashes from the guns, nor the other a snapping ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the reply. "Extinguish the flicker, and wait for the general war-dance. It will take place in a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... of a second. With the stronger light there is a more rapid and a greater loss of the initial intensity of the impression or effect of stimulus, and though each successive effect remains as long, or longer, in dwindling intensity, you get want of continuity, or "flicker."] ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... sitting in a chair, with his back to the light, sate a very old thin man, with a frosty beard, clad in a loose grey gown. Over the fireplace hung a large rusty sword; the room was very clean and cool, and the sunlight danced on the ceiling, with the flicker of ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... could make out a thin gleaming of wires—a jury-rigged safety field. Within the flimsy-looking protective cage was a double bank of instruments, some of them alive with the flicker and glow of lights. Those must be the very expensive and difficult-to-build items Maulbow had brought out from the Hub. Beside them stood the machine, squat and ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and discolored. A piece of equipment ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... away from apprehensiveness she moved quickly to the kitchen door and into the dimly-lighted dowdy passage-way. Somewhere beyond the gas flicker and the hat-stand lay—what? With all her determination she pushed forward, almost running to the door. Her hand hovered over the little knob of the lock: only horror of a renewal of that dreadful sound prompted her to open the door quickly. She peered into the darkness, faintly silhouetted against ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... a flicker of a smile in his wife's eye. As for him, he was aghast—but whether at the awful possibility of a reformed humanity that would not enable him to get anybody to toss bricks for him, or at my impudence, I ...
— The Road • Jack London
... effort to bear my misfortunes like a man, and, folding my arms, I sat down on a chest to abide my fate, whatever that might be, with as much composure as I could command, when half—a—dozen cockroaches flew flicker ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... away, confessing presently that she had a headache and would like to go upstairs to bed; and when she kissed President's cheek, I saw aversion written in every line of her shrinking figure. Yet opposite to him sat Sally, who was a Bland and a Fairfax, and not a tremor, not the flicker of an eyelash, disturbed her friendly and charming expression. What was the secret of that exquisite patience, that perfect courtesy, which was confirmed by the heart, not by the lips? Did the hidden ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the chords begin to tinkle Quicker, And your feet they flash and flicker— Twinkle!— Flash and flutter to a tricksy Fickle meter; And you foot it like ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... yet in the mouth of the youth, when something seemed to twinkle and flicker among the trees, in advance of the point where he had turned aside from the path. A second look allowed that two Indian warriors were returning along ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... hardly remain for me (who am really getting to be a frosty bachelor, with another white hair, every week or so, in my mustache), there can hardly flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth, as that which I remember, the next day, at Blithedale. It was a wood fire, in the parlor of an old farmhouse, on an April afternoon, but with the fitful gusts of a wintry snowstorm roaring in the ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there every evening, on the high veranda overlooking it, watching the dim outlines of the steep hills on the other shore, the flicker of the lights on the island, where there was a boat-house, and listening to the call of the boatmen through the mist. The mist came as certainly as night, whitened by moonshine or starshine. The tin water-pipes ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... with excited hurrying passengers. Soon he heard the great door clang shut, and saw the red light flicker on, warning of the take-off. He felt a slow surge of pressure as the ship arose from the ground, and his chair creaked ominously with the extra weight. He became fearful that it might collapse, and he strained ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... perhaps a flicker of admiration. "You are decisive. You have many good qualities, Georg Brende. I wonder if you have ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... appearances in mighty tides ebb and flow, chained to the wheels of moons beyond our ken. Appearances are ghosts. Life is ghost land, where appearances change, transfuse, permeate each the other and all the others, that are, that are not, that always flicker, fade, and pass, only to come again as new appearances, as other appearances. You are such an appearance, composed of countless appearances out of the past. All an appearance can know is mirage. You know mirages of desire. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... curiosity the child's avid curiosity for the supernatural alight in her face. In the wood a breath of wind stirred the leaves; the shadows and the fretted lights shifted and swung; all was vague movement and change. Was it a bough that bent and sprang back or a flicker of draperies, dim and green, shrouding a tenuous form that passed like a smoke-wreath? She stared with wide eyes, and it seemed to her that for an instant she saw the figure turn and the pallor of a face, with a mist of hair about it, sway towards her. There was an impression of eyes, large ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... was a smuggler; others, even, that he was a wrecker. True it was that often strange lights were seen to flicker outside ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... again. The heat stood still and played over the ground, sparkling, with indolent voluptuousness and soft movements like the fish in the stream. Far inland it quivered above the rocks that bounded the view, in a restless flicker of bluish white; below lay the fields beneath the broiling sun, with the pollen from the rye drifting over them like smoke. Up above the clover-field stood the cows of Stone Farm in long rows, their heads hanging heavily down, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and to disclaim any idea of belonging to the humdrum little circle which exaggerated its own importance. He persuaded himself that he must pay Miss Prince's guest an early visit. It was very exciting and interesting altogether; and as he watched the flicker of light in our heroine's hair as she sat on the straight sofa in her aunt's parlor on the Sunday evening, a feeling of great delight stole over him. He had known many nice girls in his lifetime, but there was something uncommonly interesting about Miss ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... flicker of matches as they were applied to the fuses, and then a splutter of sparks. An instant later it seemed as if the whole heavens had been ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... Princess clamoured for the promised game at once, and soon the flicker from the flaming bow lighted up the darkened nursery as, around the witchlike caldron, they watched their opportunity to snatch the lucky raisin. The room rang so loudly with fun and laughter that even the King himself, big of head ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... He could not see them drown before his eyes. Yet—yet, if he were to leave Hibbert, what would happen to him? It was true that he had opened his eyes and spoken, but perhaps that was only the last feeble flicker of the candle. Paul's hand went quickly to the boy's heart. It was still beating, though feebly. Again his eyes went to where Baldry and Plunger were making a desperate fight for life. Three lives were trembling in ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... and glowed in the rubies, the Bishop conceived the whimsical fancy that the Knight might well be some splendid archangel, come down to force the Convent gates and carry off a nun to heaven. And the Knight, watching the leaping flame flicker on the Bishop's crimson robes and silvery hair, saw the lenient smile upon the saintly face and took courage as he realised how kindly was the heart, filled with most human sympathy, which beat beneath the cross of gold ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... arches converged towards it. It was garlanded from top to bottom with their roses and their leaves, all worked in pink and lilac shells, interspersed with small pieces of shining amber and polished malachite. The flicker of the lamp he carried, made it glisten like a mass of jewel-work, and, absorbed in his close examination of this unique specimen of ancient art, Sir Philip did not at once perceive that another light beside his own glimmered from ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... hand, and retired noiselessly. When she had gone, Thelma opened her eyes and lay broad awake looking at the flicker of rosy light flung on the ceiling from the little suspended lamp in her oratory. All snow and darkness at the Altenfjord! How strange the picture seemed! She thought of her mother's sepulchre,—how cold and dreary it must be,—she could see in fancy the long pendent icicles fringing ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... time to see the flicker of amusement sponged from his face. It stirred vague anger in her. "He ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... some exaggeration, an actual phase of Miss Le Mesurier's character, she must have been driven to make the first advance towards his acquaintance by a motive of unusual urgency. The notion, however, did but flash and flicker out. He had no mental picture of the girl to fix her within his view; he knew not, in fact, whether she was girl or woman. She was to him just an abstraction, and Drake was seldom inclined for the study of abstractions. His curiosity might, perhaps, have been stronger had Mallinson ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... bareheaded, and wore a short-sleeved, collarless gown of summer design, but she carried herself with a leisurely and careless grace which made evident the fact that she was accustomed to these moments of uproar. As she neared the tent, however, I detected a faint flicker of amusement in the ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... to a flicker of myriad lights. The sound was a roaring now—like the surf on the reefs in the hurricane month; or the thunder of maddened steers above him across this flowery sea meadow. Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? Tedge shrank under the lilies—perhaps they could protect ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... from it. There was blood spattered over the print. Hurriedly he thrust it aside and rang for a fresh galley. But the red spots rose between his eyes and the work, like an accusation, like a prophecy. Of a sudden he beheld this great engine of print which had been, first, the caprice of his last flicker of irresponsible and headlong youth, then the very mould in which his eager and ambitious manhood was to form and fulfill itself—he beheld this vast mechanism blazingly illumined as with some inner fire, and now become a terrific genius, potent beyond the powers of humanity, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... glorious hair. Wide-eyed and silent, as the train came near, she moved along by the moat to meet the procession at the drawbridge, not understanding yet, but not letting one movement of the men, one flicker of the lights, one quaver of the deep chant, escape her reeling senses. Then all at once she was aware that Gilbert walked bareheaded before the bier, half wrapped in a long black cloak that swept the greensward behind him. As ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... it shall shut out. We may raise our thresholds, build up a bulwark of indifference to a whole class of excitations, shut our mental doors, and pull down the shades; or we may lower the thresholds so that the slightest flicker of an idea or the smallest pin-prick of a sensation finds ready access to ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... looked on as at a play; but even he felt a slackening of the pulse as he listened. And with the Reverend Frederick it was different. He was not framed for danger. When the smoking glare of the links which the ringleaders carried began to dance and flicker on the opposite houses, he looked about him with a wild eye, and had already taken two steps towards the door, when ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... window, where the flicker of the flame was reflected through the smoke that was now pouring out and blackening the old woodwork, a glimpse of a child's face had been seen, and Raspall was already in the roadway wringing his hands ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps up a running comment of remarks and laughter at all around her, and the unspeakable solemnity of old Father Abraham's face is lit up, now and then, with the flicker of a resistless smile. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Ruth half hid a pale yellow bud in her heavy, low-coiled hair, the gravity of her mien seemed to deepen. This was partially the result of her father's expressive countenance and voice. If he had smiled, it had been such a faint flicker that it was forgotten in the look of repression that had followed. In the afternoon he had spoken a few disturbing words ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... one now read Mrs. Radcliffe, or am I the only wanderer in her windy corridors, listening timidly to groans and hollow voices, and shielding the flame of a lamp, which, I fear, will presently flicker out, and leave me in darkness? People know the name of "The Mysteries of Udolpho;" they know that boys would say to Thackeray, at school, "Old fellow, draw us Vivaldi in the Inquisition." But have they penetrated into the chill galleries of the Castle ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... and he started back, but did not begin to breathe freely till the angle of the rock wall was passed and they found themselves again in silence, just too as another candle began to flicker. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... hadn't. He opened it carefully, still with a lingering suggestion of the panic. If he had been a hero of romance, he reasoned, with a dawning grin, that box would have held exactly one match; and he would have had to light that one very slowly and carefully. Then, at the last instant, the feeble flicker would have gone out, leaving it up to him to invent some ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... water had washed down into the hold through the broken cargo hatch and the gaps where the runaway gun had torn other fittings away. The carpenter sounded the well and solemnly stared at the wetted rod by the flicker of his horn lantern. The ship was settling. It was his doleful surmise that she leaked where the pounding spars overside had started the butts. It was man the pumps to keep the old hooker afloat and Captain Wellsby ordered his ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... it all when she went to bed; she had got used to her big shadowy room by this time; she lay wide awake watching the fire-light flicker and dance on the walls; how odd that people who loved each other so much should misunderstand each other so strangely; of course Crystal loved this grand-looking Raby, and yet of her own accord she was hiding ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bird flies up before you, showing a flash of white on his rump, you may know him for the flicker, the most unwoodpecker-like of his family. He is more or less deserting the tree-climbing method for ground feeding, and if you watch him you will see many habits which his new mode of life ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... could assassinate the fierce princess at a blow, if he struck her in the throat; and he had raised the weapon, when the panther, surfeited perhaps with his caresses, threw herself gracefully at his feet, glancing up at him with a look in which, despite her natural ferocity, a flicker of kindness could be seen. The poor Provencal, frustrated for the moment, ate his dates as he leaned against a palm-tree, casting from time to time an interrogating eye across the desert in the hope of discerning rescue from afar, and then lowering it upon his terrible ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... smile. The expression of his face barely changed. Just for a second I thought I saw a flicker of amused approval pass over the corners of his eyes ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the Seasons. The Dimbula heard the Majestic say, "Hmph!" and the Paris grunted, "How!" and the Touraine said, "Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the Servia said "Haw!" and the Kaiser and the Werkendam said, "Hoch!" Dutch fashion—and ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flanked on each side by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter, On the neighbouring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night, Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over the tops of houses and down into the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... and 186.—M. ——It is a fact now popularly known, that when mines which have been long closed are opened, one of two things takes place; either the torches are extinguished and the men fall first into a swoor and soon die; or, if the air is inflammable, a little flame is seen to flicker round the lamp, which spreads and multiplies till the conflagration becomes general, is followed by an explosion, and kill all ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the dark?' Ellis answered, 'But we are not,' and then added in a voice of wonder, 'I thought the lamp was lit and that I was sitting up, and I find I am in the dark and lying down.' I had seen a flicker of light over the ceiling, but had thought it a reflection from some light outside the house, which may have ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... his fireside gazing in among the massive coals, and absorbing their glow into those cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them in by-gone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire- gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a calm surprise draw slowly ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quickly down the hill towards the river. I knew not how near the Danes might be, but I thought little of them, until suddenly through the dusk I saw a red point of fire flicker and broaden out into flame on a hilltop eastward, where I knew a beacon fire was piled against need. And then from every point along the Stour valley beacon after beacon flashed out in answer, until all the countryside ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... trouble at Linda's house; trouble so terrible that Harriet's unexpected arrival caused no comment, caused no more than a weary flicker of Linda's heavy eyes. Pip, the adored first- born son, lay dangerously ill, and the whole household moved on tiptoe, heartsick with dread. Fred, a white and unshaven Fred, was home in the cold gray midday; the telephone was muted, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... have nothing at all to do, Or, at least, not now, neither I nor you; Though some day or other, possibly We may see it closer, both you and I; Let us visit the nearest altar first, Whence the yellow fires flicker and burst, Like the flames from molten ore that spring; We may stand in the pale of the outer ring, But forbear to trespass within the inner, Lest the sins of the past should find out the sinner. [They approach the first altar, and stand within the outer circle which ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in the ambulance, going without lights, up the zigzags of the hill to the battle front of Verdun. The white clay of the road was sloppy and the car wobbled and skidded along and we passed scores of other vehicles going up and coming down—with not a flicker of light on any of them. The Red Cross on our ambulance gave us the right of way over everything but ammunition trucks, so we sped forward rapidly. It was revitalment time. Hundreds of motor trucks and horsecarts laden with munitions, food, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... monsters were driven into the last stockade, and the big drop gate, made of tree trunks lashed together, jarred down behind them, Kala Nag, at the word of command, would go into that flaring, trumpeting pandemonium (generally at night, when the flicker of the torches made it difficult to judge distances), and, picking out the biggest and wildest tusker of the mob, would hammer him and hustle him into quiet while the men on the backs of the other elephants roped and ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... touching last-flicker of Etiquette; which sinks not here, in the Cimmerian World-wreckage, without a sign, as the house-cricket might still chirp in the pealing of a Trump of Doom. "Monsieur," said some Master of Ceremonies (one hopes it might be de Breze), as Lafayette, in these fearful moments, was ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... at the cloth of the girl's gown, and was startled to find the same rich creamy-coffee tint in its silky folds; yet she did not show by so much as a flicker of an eyelash that she was passing under the keenest inspection. She toyed with the salted almonds beside her plate and held the heavy silver fork as firmly as if she were talking about the discovery of the north pole. Her voice was steady and natural as ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... nor did his eyelids flicker. He was used to the proximity of foes, and the distant report did not cause his heart to miss a single beat. Instead, he felt a sort of dry amusement that they should be so near and yet know it not. How Tandakora would have rejoiced if there had been a whisper ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... able to see so far, except in the light of day. Under them was a plain. They could make out forests, lone trees that stood up like shadows out of the snow, a stream—still unfrozen—shimmering like glass with the flicker of firelight on it. Toward this stream Baree led the way. He no longer thought of Nepeese, and he whined with pent-up happiness as he stopped halfway down and turned to muzzle Maheegun. He wanted to roll in the snow and frisk about with his ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... man looked away from the instrument into Quest's face. There was a momentary flicker of something that might have passed for ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... last flicker, spluttered, and went out. Someone, it must have been Merik, came into the room and sat down on the bench. He puffed at his pipe, and for an instant lighted up a dark cheek with a patch on it. Yergunov's throat was irritated by the horrible fumes of ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... cats'-eyes in honor of the cat-headed deity of the Pagans, Mrs. Greyson?" Rangely asked, as she paused near his chair, watching a burner which seemed disposed to flicker. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... every soul in it,—so tranquil it seems, so cool, so careless, so morrowless. I cannot see the faces of that luxurious society, but there I imagine is the local albino, and a certain blind man, who resorts thither much by day, and makes a strange kind of jest of his own, with a flicker of humor upon his sightless face, and a faith that others less unkindly treated by nature will be able to see the point apparently not always discernible to himself. Late at night I have a fancy that the darkness puts him ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... heard that voice before; it was associated in his mind with a slouched hat and shadowy cloak; and by the fast-fading flicker of the firelight, he saw that both were here. The speaker wan Count L'Estrange; the figure beside him, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... unreal in itself, served to make all things dim and unreal. He did not know whether he was asleep or awake, so strange was life, so vivid were his dreams. Mummie, Uncle John, the baby, Toby himself came with a flicker of the veil and disappeared vaguely without cause. It would happen that Toby would be speaking to Uncle John, and suddenly he would find himself looking into the large eyes of the baby, turned stupidly ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... unjustifiable conclusion that the campaign was closing, and that in the course of about another fortnight some of us would be on our homeward way. They forgot that after a candle has burned down into its socket it may still flare and flicker wearisomely long before it finally goes out. War lights just such a candle, and no extinguisher has yet been patented for the instant quenching of its flame just when our personal convenience chances to clamour for such quenching. Indeed, the "flare and flicker" period ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... you tremble that day?" she said, with the flicker of a smile about her lovely mouth: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... clustering candles, Broom and laburnum, untold torches of tremulous gold! Therefore gold-gather again from the honeyed heath and the bean field, Snatching no instant of ease, bright, multitudinous bees! Therefore, ye butterflies, float and flicker from garden to green field, Flicker and float and stay, ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... no end of good luck in you, Will-o'-the-wisp, with a flicker of Puck in you, Wild as a bull-pup, and all of his pluck in you— Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see! Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity, Nose that turns up without any vulgarity, Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty— Whoop, you're ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... rigid as a mask of clay—only his regular breathing gave evidence of life. Manella's pitiful gazing on this ruin of the man to whom she had devoted her heart and soul, her tender sorrow, her yearning beauty, might have almost moved a stone image to a thrill of response,—but not a flicker of expression appeared on the frozen features of that terrible fallen pillar of human self-sufficiency. Standing beside the bed with Manella was Marco Ardini, intensely watchful and eager to note even a quiver of the flesh or the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... in the darkness, but it may possibly flicker out. Meanwhile, please send by messenger, to await return at Baker Street, a complete list of all foreign spies or international agents known to be in England, with ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... furnace door. A bright glow filled the fire-box: he could hear a stir and singing in the boiler, and the rustle of warm pipes that chuckled quietly through winter nights of storm. Over the coals hovered a magic evasive flicker, the very soul of fire. It was a Pentecostal flame, perfect and heavenly in tint, the essence of pure colour, a ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... child wearily coiled herself up for sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to or from ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... fishermen pulled steadily still, and their companions in the stern of each boat kept the line tighter, and just as they were now getting closer the mackerel showed again, making the water flicker as if a violent storm of rain ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... was still pitch dark, except for the flicker of the veiled lamp; and the continual roaring and oscillation testified to the unrelaxed velocity of the train. He sat upright in a panic, for he had been tormented by the most uneasy dreams; it was some ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glittering morn Their misty meadows flicker nigh, No singing with the spray is borne, All that is ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... centissimi, sprawling in the unstinted sunshine, were nearer the essential truth. They were the profound, because the practical philosophers! Therefore let us gamble, gamble, gamble, be the stake small or great, as long as the merest flicker of life, or fraction of uttermost farthing, is left! And so, when Destournelle took up his lament again, she listened to him, for the moment, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Bill," he said, with an amiable grin. Then, as only a flicker of a smile from the others answered him, and Bill ignored his charge altogether, he hurried on, "You're helpin' that misguided feller to a dose of lead he'll never have time to digest. If ever Zip runs foul of James, he'll blow him to hell as sure—as ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... little stand under the mirror, which catches now and then a flicker of the fire light, and makes it play, as if in wanton, upon the ceiling, lies that big book, reverenced of your New England parents—the Family Bible. It is a ponderous, square volume, with heavy silver clasps, that you have often pressed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in fact adorned with fair examples of the painter's art, mostly scriptural in subject, but some inspired with the devout Pantheism in which all creeds are reconciled. All were alike invisible to the Pontiff, who, with the dim flicker of his lamp, could no more discern Judaea wed with Egypt on the frescoed ceiling than, with the human limitation of his faculties, he could foresee that the ill-reputed rooms would one day harbour a portion of the Vatican Library, so greatly enriched by himself. Nothing but sinister ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... their laughter in the face of the sun: the mood of nature was in harmony with her own, and she felt no need to discover any higher import in its merriment. How could she, when she sought no higher import in her own—had not as yet once suspected that every human gladness—even to the most transient flicker of delight—is the reflex—from a potsherd it may be—but of an eternal sun of joy?—Stay, let me pick up the gem: every faintest glimmer, all that is not utter darkness, is from the shining face of the Father ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... German fleet would be crippled and not destroyed. The English fleet would retain its proportionate strength. No French advance into Germany would be successful, no German advance into France is likely. The war would languish for lack of funds, through sheer inanition it would flicker out, and the money of the world would flow into the treasuries of America. Russia would not be fighting for her living. With her it could be at best but a half-hearted war. She would do her duty to the alliance. Nothing ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he would gaze out of the window; and he gazed oftenest when a freight train hid the beauties of outside nature. The dun sides of freight cars make out of a window a passable mirror. Twice, in those dim and confused glimpses, he caught just a flicker of her eye across her book, as though, she, on ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... built. He had crouched over it for a half-hour, blowing it, coaxing it, wheedling it. There were few twigs or sticks at this height. He was very cold. His heavy sweater was in the pack on the horse's back. Finally he was rewarded with a feeble flicker, a tiny tongue of flame. He rose from his knees and passed his hand over his forehead with a gesture of utter weariness and despair. And then he stared, transfixed. For on the plateau above him rose a great shaft of fire. The kind of fire that only Pete, the most expert among guides, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... refuse your request. How can I? Believing, with you, that your wealth is a Divine trust, I regard your appeal as a call from God Himself. Besides, you could not have demanded from me a more congenial service. You shall have all the help I can give; and between us," he added, with a reviving flicker of his previous facetiousness, "we shall ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... from the cabin they heard loud voices, and caught the flicker of several blazing torches ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... the fern. You cannot watch your own effigy growing out of the white trunk, and the trunk beginning to stand forth from the rest of the wood, and the whole picture getting dappled over with the flecks of sun that slip through the leaves overhead, and, as a wind goes by and sets the trees a-talking, flicker hither and thither like butterflies of light. But you know it is going forward; and, out of emulation with the painter, get ready your own palette, and lay out the colour for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the sea. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had come, as suddenly as the flow of water is stopped by the turning of a tap; and for about a quarter of an hour nothing further happened. Then the sheet lightning began to quiver and flicker among the clouds once more; and presently the pall immediately overhead was rent apart by a terrific flash of sun-bright lightning that struck straight down and seemed to hit the water only a few yards from the brig. Simultaneously with the flash came a crackling ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sat, Watching the flicker of a fire Were the Colonel played the outdoor host In brave old hall of ancient Night. But ever the dame grew shyer and shyer, Seeming with private grief engrossed— Grief far from Mosby, housed ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes; and the Duchess deliberately courted us ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... girls and teachers, whilst his artless companions were innocently—the Court will pardon me for introducing what I am credibly informed is the local expression—'doing gooseberry'?" The tremulous flicker of a smile passed over the faces of the listening crowd, and the Colonel slightly winced. But he recovered himself ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... eyes did not flicker as he answered steadily: "Surely you cannot think that I would have so much as mentioned my ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... like a purse seine, and hauled it out into the shallows of a small beach. They stood in the shallow water with sea boots on and forked the salmon into their rowboats and laid the rowboats alongside the Blackbird to deliver,—all in the dark without a lantern flicker, with muffled oarlocks and hushed voices. Three times ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... after him. When I heard of this I went to pay him a visit, and instead of the dying man I expected to see, I found a young, rather thin-looking lad, but bright and full of life. The doctor says it is the last flicker of the lamp. The young cleric was nursed by his mother, who, upon seeing me, overwhelmed me with a shower of gratitude copious enough to drown ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... A flicker of amusement showed in Colwyn's eyes. Really the superintendent was easily drawn, for an East Anglian countryman. "After all, it is only Sir Henry Durwood's opinion that Ronald intended violence at the Grand," he said. "Sir Henry did ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Second Nurse; but later in the evening she brought the purse, and set it on the table where the patient's eyes might rest on it. For aught she could detect, they expressed no thanks, gave no flicker of recognition. But the child had been watching them too, and was quicker—by ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... meeting broke up, and the torchlight grew dimmer, and died away as it had come in a red flicker on the roof, and the footsteps sounded fainter as they went up the passage, until the vault was left to the dead men and me. Yet for a very long time—it seemed hours—after all had gone I could hear a murmur of distant voices, and knew that some were talking at the end of the passage, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... lanterns. For a moment the two parties stood staring at each other; then followed a wild and savage scene. With shouts and oaths and battle-cries they fought furiously. The massive, oaken tables were overthrown, by the red flicker of the pole-borne lanterns men grappled and fell and slew each other upon the floor. A priest struck down a yeoman with a brazen crucifix, and next moment himself was brained ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... tea-pot as she shook out the last bit of leaf from the canister. The canister was no longer hers, neither the tea-pot, nor even the battered old pewter spoon with which she tapped the bottom of the tin to dislodge the last flicker of tea-leaf dust. The three had been sold at auction that day in response to the auctioneer's inquiry, "What am I bid ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... the implements of labor, in the dingy werkstube in Johannis Strasse; lighted by the single flicker of an oil lamp, with the workboard for a writing-desk, let me endeavour to collect some few scattered details about the German workmen ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... he raised himself in the bed and looked straight at Miss Turner. And as he met the kindly glance of her keen, true eyes, a quick smile parted his lips and shone like a flicker of pale sunlight all ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... The faintest flicker of light stirred in the blue English eyes. Ardswell had been walking from turbine to turbine. "Ripping!" he said. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... brightening the encompassing gloom. Let them not be wrapped in their own selfishness or sorrow, but let their voice be filled with hope and love. For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother, and the signals will never flicker. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... flicker of the gaslight Margar lay in unearthly beauty, the shadow of her dark eyelashes touching her cheek, a smile lingering on her baby mouth. She had been such a happy baby; Martie had loved to rumple and kiss the aureole of bright hair that framed the ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... evening patrol hurried out of the police-station with important coughings and reiterated orders; and a live charcoal ball in the cup of a wayside carter's hookah glowed red while Kim's eye mechanically watched the last flicker of the sun on the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the place of central interest, he moved more warily too. The ground was very bad; he had never walked in such slush. Once and again he tripped; once he came down upon his face. The boom of the waters was now very near; he could see nothing but the flicker of the lanterns, but he felt the near rush of the stream, and presently was at its very edge. Startled by the nearness of his escape, for he had almost lost his footing by his sudden halt, he started back, looked again at ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... was warm and we sat on a bench under the broad roof of the platform. I did my best to take her mind away from the dread which possessed her, but it was a wretched hour for both of us. Then we saw the flicker of lights down the track, and toward us came a small army of labourers who had been clearing the roadbed between us ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... stroke of midnight a cry went up from the registrars. At 12:01 under the dim flicker of coal-oil lanterns and torches hung on posts or set on barrels and boxes, that most famous of ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... lightning quivered like a blood of fire. The shadow of their wings fell upon the mountain and the plains, and beneath their wings was silence. Slowly the sun sank, and the shapes of cloud gathered together like a host at the word of its captain, and the flicker of the lightning was as the flash of the spears of a host. I looked, and my heart grew afraid. The lightning died away, the silence deepened and deepened till I could hear it, no leaf moved, no bird called, the world seemed dead—I alone lived in ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... I used to wake up to the fact, day after day, with a trembling dismay. Now it is not like that. I can give no account of what I do. The smallest things about me seem to take up my mind. I can sit for an hour by the hearth, neither reading nor thinking, just watching the flame flicker over the coals, or the red heart of the fire eating its way upwards and outwards. I can sit on a sunshiny morning in the garden, merely watching with a strange intentness what goes on about me, the uncrumpling leaf, the snowdrop pushing from the ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... come to me," he assured her. "I have long desired to revenge myself upon your impudent mistress. Often she has made sport of me with her tricking shadows. Often she has even dared to make my own form flicker and dance before me—not as it is—indeed, but twisted and misshapen to please her own mischievous fancy." His eyes glinted with malice, and Black Shadow was well pleased to find him so willing ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... that ran through it where the grayling did swim; In the shallows it sparkled, in the deeps it was dim, When the race was first run it had nearly drowned Jim, And now the bright irons of twenty-four horses Were to flicker its ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... a little company of our acquaintances seated together at the triangular foremost table. A more forlorn party, in more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion here in the ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and round and tossed the shadows in masses. The air was hot, but it struck a ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... isn't possible you won't come back," she cried, and he was happy to see a flicker of alarm in her eyes. "What—what could happen to ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... on the chair remained motionless. No flicker of intelligence or interest disturbed the calm of his features. It was a silence almost unnatural. "I have brought the Duchesse here," Peter continued, "to tell you the truth as to ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did not think of that. He was not listening. He was seeing, not the picture she painted but that which she made, there in the sunshine. She was whiter than ever. Deep shadows were under her eyes. But the eyes themselves were very steady, her voice never quavered, nor did the smile flicker. Where did she get her spirit, this slender fragile girl who seemed so in need of ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... had certainly betokened fear, brought to Lorenzi's lips the flicker of a contemptuous smile. Casanova was able to repress all sign of his rising anger, for he knew that had he given way to it he might have ruined his design. Taking the key with a nod, he merely said: "No doubt that means Yes. In an hour from now—an hour will suffice for your ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler |
