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More "Spark" Quotes from Famous Books



... spire across it without spanning the chasm,—that idea, I say, is pretty nearly worn out. Now when a civilization or a civilized custom falls into senile dementia, there is commonly a judgment ripe for it, and it comes as plagues come, from a breath,—as fires come, from a spark. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... valve connected with a galvanized tank, with a pressure gauge on top, and pulled back a lever. Instantly, a hissing sound filled the air. Then, with a dexterous movement, Peggy threw in the spark and turned on the gasoline which the spark would ignite, thereby causing an explosion in the cylinders. But first the compressed air had started the motor turning over. At the right moment Peggy switched on the power and cut off the air. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... woman, who, to the rest of the world, and in every other part of her life, appeared so cold and inanimate. On a very few occasions her character, before her marriage, had, "when much enforced, given out a hasty spark, and straight was cold again;" but now she permitted the steady flame to burn without restraint. Duty and passion had now the same object. Before marriage, her attachment had been suppressed, even at the hazard of her life; she had no idea that the private demonstrations of unbounded ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... the first spark of spirit from her. The deep eyes flashed. "I'm not in the habit ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... Piazza through the Porta del Popolo, the only way by which strangers used to approach Rome from the north. It was indeed a more suitable entrance into the Eternal City than the present one; for no human being, with a spark of imagination, would care to obtain his first view of the city of his dreams from the outside of a great bustling railway station. But the Porta del Popolo had annoyances of its own that seemed hardly less incongruous. One had to ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... there no romance here? Listen! We came to anchor over night in a quiet nook where the cliffs and the clouds overshadowed us. Everything was of the vaguest description, without form and void. There seemed to be one hut on shore, with the spark of a light in it—a cannery of course. Canoes were drifting to and fro like motes in the darkness, tipped with a phosphorescent rim. Indian voices hailed us out of the ominous silence; Indian dogs muttered under their breath, yelping in a whisper which was mocked by Indian papooses, who ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... of details, and hurries the reader's mind on with his own, through all necessary facts and figures, directly to the object. The present report cannot but shame a mean spirit out of any person with a spark of manliness in him. We wish its accomplished author all success in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... justice, mercy, and decency, and given himself up to his flesh—his animal nature, till the man in him is dead, and only the brute remains. Mind, I do not say that we are right in calling any human being a brute, for no one, I believe, is sunk so low, but there is some spark of humanity, some spark of what St. Paul calls "the spirit," left in him, which may be fanned into a flame and conquer, and raise and save the man at last—unless he be a mere idiot—or that most unhappy and brutal of ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... throughout Europe, the most noteworthy appearing in England. In 1853 was issued an anonymous work having as its title A Brief and Complete Refutation of the Anti-Scriptural Theory of Geologists: the author having revived an old idea, and put a spark of life into it—this idea being that "all the organisms found in the depths of the earth were made on the first of the six creative days, as models for the plants and animals to be created on the third, fifth, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... range was drawn in elusive snowy suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley, and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... going to prevent him," exclaimed Jane bitterly. "Everybody knows what Judson Parker is. He'd do ANYTHING for money. He hasn't a SPARK of public spirit or ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... friendly hands of Miss Ord to the most cordial ones of Mrs. Garrick,(252) who frankly embraced me, saying, "Do I see you, once more, before I die, my tear little spark? for your father is my flame, all my life, and you are a little ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... action; even if they speak freely, they say little which is of value on the printed page. One may live with a regimental mess for months, running into years, as I did with the Leicestershires' subalterns, and hear little that is illuminating, till some electric spark may start a fire of living reminiscence. But from many of my comrades, at one time and another, I have picked up a fact. I am especially indebted to Captain J.O.C. Hasted, D.S.O., for permission to use his lecture on ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... assent by way of emphasizing the subject, when the khan is explaining about the Ameer, or Allah, or kismet. Mahmoud Tusuph Khan himself comes to the garden in the cool of the evening, and for half an hour occupies bungalow No. 2. He betrays a spark of Oriental vanity by having an attendant follow behind, bearing a huge and wonderful sun-shade, into the make-up of which peacock feathers and other gorgeous material largely enters. Noticing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... variant of Nightingale. The accidental retention of particles and articles is also effective, e.g. Delmar, Delamere, Delapole, impress more than Mears and Pool, and Larpent (Fr. I'arpent), Lemaitre, and Lestrange more than Acres, Masters, and Strange. There are few names of less heroic sound than Spark and Codlin, yet the former is sometimes a contraction of the picturesque Sparrow-hawk, used as a personal name by the Anglo-Saxons, while the latter can be traced back via the earlier forms Quodling (still found), Querdling, Querdelyoun to ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... warriors cut him to bits with the fiendish skill, that mutilated without bringing unconsciousness, had no terrors for him. He was inured to suffering and to the sight of blood and to cruel death; but the desire to live was no less strong within him, and until the last spark of life should flicker and go out, his whole being would remain quick with hope and determination. Let them relax their watchfulness but for an instant, he knew that his cunning mind and giant muscles would find a way to ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Lincoln stayed at half steam. On the offchance that the animal might be found in these waterways, a thousand methods were used to spark its interest or rouse it from its apathy. Enormous sides of bacon were trailed in our wake, to the great satisfaction, I must say, of assorted sharks. While the Abraham Lincoln heaved to, its longboats radiated in every direction around it ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... to God," piously subjoins Al-Makkari, "that the Moslems had then extinguished at once the sparkles of a fire destined to consume their whole dominion in those parts! But they said—'What are thirty barbarians, perched on a rock? they must inevitably die!'" The spark, which contained the germ of the future independence of Spain, was thus suffered to remain and spread, while the swords of the Moslems were occupied in France; and its growth was further favoured by the anarchy and civil dissensions which broke out among the conquerors. While ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... Mrs. Fry succeeded with the women by means of her care for the children. Low as they were in sin, every spark of maternal affection had not fled, and they craved for their little ones a better chance than they had possessed themselves. To a suggestion by Mrs. Fry that a school should be formed for the benefit of their little ones they eagerly acceded. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... to the point of weakness. He had seen her endure unprovoked anger and undeserved rebuke from her mother, and intolerable slights from Tom, that would surely have aroused retaliation had there been a spark of combativeness in her gentle heart. That she was tender and loving could be seen in every glance of her eyes, in every feature of her face, in every tone of her soft, musical voice. Surely, thought Williams, the girl could not kill a mouse. Where, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... It is twenty-one feet in length and has a five-and-a-half-foot beam, the design being what is known as a compromise stern. The motor is a double-cylinder two-cycle one, of ten horsepower. It has a float-feed carburetor, mechanical oiler, and the ignition system is the jump-spark—the best for this style of motor. The boat will make ten miles an hour, with twelve in, and, of course, more than that with a lighter load. A good deal will depend on the way the ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton

... to see his name there on the stone! Yet I did not weep. I was dry-eyed and cold. What a strange thing is life! To think that this man who was so clever, so witty, should die an idiot! He passed his days doing like this with his fingers. Not a spark of reason remained. It is all over. I shall have Rachel at my benefit; I shall play with her that chestnut "Iphigenie". We shall make money, but I don't care. Besides, I'm sure she wouldn't play Rodogune! I will also play, if you will ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... that cut him down from the tree this morning, and if it was not, why do I need you now? Is my shame not enough in your eyes but that you must taunt me further? Do my innocent children want to look upon the faces of those who robbed them of a father? If there is a spark of manhood left in one of you, show it by leaving me alone! And you other scum, never fear but that you will clutter hell in reward for last night's work. Begone, and leave me with ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... tonic," Selingman declared. "It would sweep out your Radical Government. It would bring the classes back to power. It would kindle in the spirits of your coming generation the spark of that patriotism which is, alas! just now a very feeble flame. What do you think? You agree ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... convey in mere words. Soldiers of every nationality are treated by the expert and world famed in medicine. Human wrecks, victims of shot and shell, are repaired and rebuilt. It matters little whether a man is friend or foe, as long as a spark of life is there, he is picked tenderly from the trench and everything known to medical science done to ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... torrent of this battery of malevolence stung to life within me a spark of nobleness, and I said aloud, "Well, if he is a better man, let him ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... last night melted in daylight to an almost ludicrous nothingness and self-confidence reigned; so that he declared the world a super-excellent place, snapping his fingers at problems and mysteries. A spark of curiosity pricked him still, it is true, concerning the origin of certain undeniably queer aural phenomena. He meant to satisfy that curiosity presently; but the subject must be approached with tact. He must wait ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... trace of economic origin while it lasted. Its true quality was moral, devout, ecstatic; it culminated, to change the figure, in a supreme discharge of moral electricity, almost fatal to the nation. The crack of that great spark emptied the jar; the American people forgot all about their pledges and pruderies during the four years of Civil War. The Good Templars, indeed, were never heard of again, and with them into memory went many other singular virtuosi of virtue—for ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... men best qualified to raise the veil under which truth lies concealed from vulgar gaze, are precisely the men who fear to do it. Oh, shame upon ye self-styled philosophers, who in your closets laugh at 'our holy religion,' and in your churches do it reverence. Were your bosoms warmed by one spark of generous wisdom, silence on the question of religion would be broken, the multitude cease to believe, and ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... But before now a spark from Spain had set the Continent ablaze. The past had bequeathed some questions which, awkwardly handled, might cause explosions elsewhere, and it was well to know the character of those who had the key to the powder magazine. More than once Morier was approached on the delicate question of the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... Instead of arranging the embers in the grate in such a way as to prevent their falling off, and thus allowing the fire to die out in its proper place, they are frequently taken off and laid on the hearth, where, should there be wood-work underneath, it becomes scorched, and the slightest spark falling through a joint in the ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... that he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my esteem as a one-time servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I would willingly save him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore me. But as for any answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark. Tell him to go find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry for the moon as seek to win ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... observed again, but the weather was cloudy, so that I could make nothing out distinctly. In the afternoon, Wylie shot three teal, of which there were numbers on the lake. At night, our baggage and clothes had nearly all been destroyed by fire, a spark having been carried by the wind to the tarpaulin which covered them, and which, as it had been but newly tarred, was soon in a blaze. I was fortunate enough, however, to observe the accident in time ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... question of superiority has ever risen, or at least has ever been agitated by reflecting men, who for one moment considered the manner in which our race is propagated in the world. Nothing ever rises above its own nature. A spark, however high it may rise, however brilliantly it may shine in the blue ethereal, can never become a star. It ever remains but a spark, and so the offspring of a woman cannot, in its nature, rise above its origin. A man can never become superior in nature to his mother, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... sadness in its tone which seems to characterise the human voice when heard in the midst of the lonely ocean on a night of darkness and calm. There followed a slight scuffling of feet, another subdued murmur of voices, a pause of a few moments, then the sharp clink of flint and steel, a tiny spark of light, and finally the mellow glow of a ship's ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... that accompanied the act made the color deepen again in Mrs. Snowdon's cheek, and lit a spark in her softened eyes. Her lips curled and her voice was sweetly sarcastic as she answered, "Yes, it is charming to devote one's life to these dear invalids, and find one's reward in their gratitude. Youth, beauty, ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard

... rays then," continued the hollow droning of the man who had been hanged, "which, as the scientist had explained to me while in prison, acting upon the contents of the syringes, by that time scattered through my whole body, was to renew the spark of life within the dead thing hanging there. Through a tube, and by means of a valve entering the glass vase in the top, the scientist then admitted a dense white gas. So thick was it that in a moment or two my body's transparent ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... when there were again the glow and glare of a moral sense in the first stages of ignition on the enormity of slave institutions. The act of South Carolina in making it illegal to teach a colored person to read and write struck this spark from his pen: "There is something unspeakably pitiable and alarming," he writes in the Philanthropist, "in the state of that society where it is deemed necessary, for self-preservation, to seal up the mind and debase the intellect of man to brutal incapacity.... ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... genuine, must, therefore, be natural. It should be no exotic, no foreign graft, as it is often regarded, but the normal outgrowth of our native instincts. Evolution does not banish revelation from our belief. Recognizing in man's spirit a spark of the divine energy, "individuated to the power of self-consciousness and recognition of God," as Le Conte aptly phrases it; tracing the development of the spirit-embryo through all geologic time till it came to birth and independent life in man, and humanity recognized itself as a child ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... pressure under which the gas is stored exceeds two atmospheres absolute (roughly 30 lb. per square inch). It decomposes, be it carefully understood, in the complete absence of air, directly the smallest spark of red-hot material or of electricity, or directly a gentle shock, such as that of a fall or blow on the vessel holding it, is applied to any volume of acetylene existing at a temperature exceeding 780 deg. or at a gross pressure of 30 lb. per square inch; ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... in the Tank involuntarily applauded: becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... as yet scarcely noticed the room in which she was. At length she surveyed it; its poverty brought tears in her eyes. There had been a fire, but the last spark was dead. ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... his continual conflict. With such rest indulging, he girded his loins with roughest hair-cloth, the which had been dipped in cold water; lest haply the law of the flesh, warring in his members against the law of the Spirit, should excite any spark of the old leaven. Thus did Saint Patrick with spare and meagre food, and with the coarsest clothing, offer himself a holy and living sacrifice, acceptable unto God; nor suffered he the enemy to touch in him the walls of Jerusalem, but he inflicted ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... to plead further! She knew now too well that his love for her was indeed dead and buried. Had a spark of it yet lived in his heart, suspicion could have found no place. Gone now was all pride, all control; at his feet she threw herself, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... heart-whole, I believe, and, though young still for this sort of thing, we can be gently shaping matters for them, since no one knows how soon the moment may come. My faith it is like living in a powder mill to be among a lot of young folks nowadays! All looks as calm as possible till a sudden spark produces an explosion, and heaven only knows where we find ourselves after ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... background Delaine waited, grudgingly expectant, for the turn of Elizabeth's head, and the spark of consciousness passing between the two faces which he had learnt to watch. It came—a flash of some high sympathy—involuntary, lasting but a moment. Then ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... he was disappointed to lose the more important part of his audience—when there was a little scream, and poor Harriet Jameson was all in a blaze. She wore a white muslin dress, and somehow it had caught—I suppose from a spark; she had been sitting near the hearth, though we had thought the fire was out. Harry Liscom made one spring for her when he saw what had happened; but he had not been very near her, and a woman was before him. She caught up the braided ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... little before his death, finding the decays of nature increase every day, and his final dissolution approach, he called together all his children, to the number of eighteen, and summoned as many of his subjects as were within a convenient distance, being willing that the last spark of his life should go out in the service of his people; this summons was obeyed with heavy hearts by his loving subjects, and, at the day and place appointed, a ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... the Princess said, "since fire Leaps into flame when the wind fans the spark, Be this too spoken, that ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... creation, this favourite of heaven, and of allotting to him his interior qualities by means of his exterior appearance. Men of his character so frequently deceive themselves, that it is impossible to say whether some remaining spark of understanding had whispered to him that this new delusion would give a fresh polish to the old one; and that more pious souls would come to him than ever, in order to be told so many wondrous things about their faces. As he had only ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... As Wilder speaks, a spark is seen to shoot out from one of the circling cavaliers, which rising rocket-like into the air, comes in ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... and my silk dress that I have brought to show your parents. Merci!" she retorted, with a dangerous spark in her little eyes. "You think one is made of money, eh? You will soon find yourself mistaken, my friend. I would give you to understand——". She checked herself suddenly. "Monseigneur"—she turned to me with a resumption of the gracious ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... wet as those of the hermit. So were those of the professor. Luckily Moses carried the old-fashioned flint and steel, with which, and a small piece of tinder, a spark was at last kindled, but as they were about to apply it to a handful of dry bamboo scrapings, an extra spirt of rain extinguished it. For an hour and more they made ineffectual attempts to strike a light. Even the cessation of the rain was of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... humility, shown in the petty matters of everyday home-life; and that he who cannot rule his own household can never rule the Church of God. And so it befell, that amid the little cross-blasts of home squabbles the sacred spark was fast going out. The poems written after he settled at Penalva are marked by a less definite purpose, by a lower tone of feeling: not, perhaps, by a lower moral tone; but simply by less of any moral tone at all. They are more and more full of merely sensuous beauty, mere word-painting, mere ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... may become known. The vast mass of mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort, by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a thousand with a spark of independence. One in ten thousand perhaps—I speak roughly, approximately—is born with some independence, and with still greater independence one in a hundred thousand. The man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... and sat back on her heels, breathless with surprise and dismay. Yes! dismay; extraordinary though it might appear, no spark of joy or expectation lightened the shocked confusion of her mind. We can never succeed in turning back the wheels of time so as to take up a position as it would have been if the disturbing element had not occurred. The holiday visit to ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... quick-glancing o'er the park Attracts each light gay meteor of a spark, Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke, As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock; Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task, With Sappho fragrant at an evening masque: So morning insects that in muck begun, Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... casting a look of fond affection at the child. The heart of the mutineer was at that moment softened by parental feelings, and he blew the priming off the touch-hole of the gun, lest an accidental spark should risk the life of his child, who was now aft with ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... many a wind had beat upon his heart, Of grief and frustrate hope full many a wind, And rains full many, but no rains could damp The fuel that was stored within; which lay Unlighted, waiting for the tinder-touch, Until a chance spark fall'n from Lucia's eyes Kindled the fuel, and the fire was love: Not such as rises blown upon the wind, Goaded to flame by gusts of phantasy, But still, and needing no replenishment, Unquenchable, that would not be ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... silence. She then began to play with Fernanda's clove, pulling the petals, whilst darting frequent glances at the count, who stood confused, not knowing what to say, nor where to look. At last their eyes met with a smile. There was a spark of malice in hers, and in the sudden scornful gesture with which she threw the flower she held in her ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... was the most miserable of human beings. In old times he would have been exposed as soon as he came into the world; and to expose him would have been a kindness. From his birth a blight was on his body and on his mind. With difficulty his almost imperceptible spark of life had been screened and fanned into a dim and flickering flame. His childhood, except when he could be rocked and sung into sickly sleep, was one long piteous wail. Until he was ten years old his days were passed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... baggy overalls over the blue flannel suit which he still wore when flying, Carl was directing Martin Dockerill in changing his spark-plugs, which were fouled. About him, the aviators were having their machines packed, laughing, playing tricks on one another—boys who were virile men; mechanics in denim who stammered to the reporters, "Oh, well, I don't know——" yet who were for the time more celebrated than Roosevelt ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... slow. When this spirit first dawned, it might probably have been easily checked; but it is scarcely within the reach of human ken, at this moment, to say when, where, or how it will terminate. There are combustibles in every state, to which a spark ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... to be counselled out of his intention. When he was out in the square with Phineas he expressed great anger against Mr. Low. "He don't know what patriotism means," said the law scrivener. "And then he talks to me about notoriety! It has always been the same way with 'em. If a man shows a spark of public feeling, it's all hambition. I don't want no notoriety. I wants to earn my bread peaceable, and to be let alone when I'm about my own business. I pays rates for the police to look after rogues, not to haul folks about and lock 'em up for days ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... folks'll come to see the grave of old Swift, the great man's schoolmaster. Ye'll be an inventor yet, lad, a benefactor to your kind, and an honor to your country. I'm not raising false hopes in ye, without observing your qualities. You've the quick eye, the slow patience, and the inventive spark. You can find your own tools and all, and don't stop where other folk leaves off: witness yon bluebells ye took to make skies with! But, bless the lad, he's not heeding me! Is it the bit of garden you're looking at? Come out then." And, putting the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... in a temper to-night!" said the spark in a low voice. "Been drinking, I reckon! But it's time for ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... once to affirm. And friend, the very devils, both for the knowledge of sin, and also for the knowledge of God's eternal power and Godhead, have more experience than all the unregenerate men in the world; and yet have not the least spark of the Spirit of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... for revolution. The social discontent resulting from the war has reached an acute stage. Only a spark is needed. It remains for us to decide whether to permit Russia to bring about the explosion or—bring it about ourselves. The soviet movement is irresistible, it will sweep England eventually as it has swept Russia, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... Pepper, affecting a nonchalant tone, and arranging his cravat before the glass,—"nay, as you will. Ned Pepper requires no man's companionship against his liking; and if the noble spark of ambition be not in your bosom, 't is no use spending my breath in blowing at what only existed in my too flattering opinion of your qualities. So then, you propose to return to MacGrawler (the scurvy old cheat!), and pass the inglorious remainder ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... know Lucretia. There are many girls, indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing spark, with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those; she has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she has the mind and will of a queen,—old Queen ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... itself, Gorgonius like a he-goat. There is no mean. There are some who would not keep company with a lady, unless her modest garment perfectly conceal her feet. Another, again, will only have such as take their station in a filthy brothel. When a certain noted spark came out of a stew, the divine Cato [greeted] him with this sentence: "Proceed (says he) in your virtuous course. For, when once foul lust has inflamed the veins, it is right for young fellows to ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... was as a spark that fired a train. Instantly the hardy hillmen of Urbino were in arms to reconquer Guidobaldo's duchy for him. Stronghold after stronghold fell into their hands, until they were in Urbino itself. They made short work of the capital's scanty defenders, flung Cesare's governor into prison, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... desire of a young man for a young woman, as well as of the reverse instance, I am not now speaking, for of such tendresses I am wary, seeing that I have been too unhappy in my life to have been able ever to see in such affection a single spark of truth, but rather a lying pretence in which sensuality, connubial relations, money, and the wish to bind hands or to unloose them have rendered feeling such a complex affair as to defy analysis. Rather am I speaking ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... of all his tale of ships AEneas gained, 170 And there, by mighty love of land the Trojans sore constrained, Leap off-board straight, and gain the gift of that so longed-for sand, And lay their limbs with salt sea fouled adown upon the strand: And first Achates smote alive the spark from out the flint, And caught the fire in tinder-leaves, and never gift did stint Of feeding dry; and flame enow in kindled stuff he woke; Then Ceres' body spoilt with sea, and Ceres' arms they took, And sped the matter ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... his prayer he strove to comfort Agnes. The moment he did so the cold magistracy of the prayer ceased, and his voice began to tremble, and there ran between the ecclesiastic and his parishioner the electric spark of mutual grief ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... make her jump,' he says, you press down on that with your foot, and you shove the spark back.' ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... exclaimed, "she won't go! The batteries are off and there's something wrong with the carbureter, and the spark-plug is twisted, and the delivery is all to the bad. Perhaps Major Ross can bring new parts ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... critic-folk, deep read in books, might scoff at the very suggestion of a ploughman turning poet, but he recognised also that they might be wrong. It was not by dint of Greek that Parnassus was to be climbed. 'Ae spark o' Nature's fire' was the one thing needful for poetry that was to ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... questions, she only smiled, and took obediently the remainder of the potion that Pete poured from his flask and heated in the tin-cup among the embers. On her wakening again it was seen that the fever was broken. But life in her was only a tiny flame, at times the merest spark that every gust of wind through the cavern threatened to extinguish. Hour after hour Haig and the Indian watched it, the one in such anguish as the repentant murderer suffers as he kneels over the poor victim of his rage, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... de Vega; and it was Shakespeare who created the English drama. He possessed a fertile and powerful genius, that had within its scope both the normal and the sublime; but he ignored rules entirely, and had not the smallest spark of good taste. It is a risky thing to say, but true nevertheless—this author has ruined the English drama. In these monstrous farces of his, called tragedies, there are scenes so beautiful, fragments so impressive and terrible, that the pieces have always been played with immense success. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... it is or used to be customary to kindle bonfires on high places on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent, and the day is therefore popularly known as Spark Sunday. The custom prevailed, for example, throughout the canton of Lucerne. Boys went about from house to house begging for wood and straw, then piled the fuel on a conspicuous mountain or hill round about a pole, which bore a straw effigy called ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... of my mouth when Mr. Perryman rose from his chair like a man in wrath. Inadvertently I had used an expression which acted like a spark upon gunpowder. Intending to praise his idol, I had for some obscure reason wounded the passionate old man in the most sensitive nerve of his being. I sat amazed, not understanding what I had done, and even now I do not pretend to understand it wholly. But this is what happened. ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... We went every morning to some church rich in pictures, returning at noon for breakfast. After breakfast, we went into the country, or to sit and read under the trees near San Pietro. Thus I read Nicolo di' Lapi, a book unenlivened by a spark of genius, but interesting, to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... murderers—devout Pharisee and conservative Sadducee, Roman politician and false friend, bawling rabble and undiscriminating soldiery, the host of indifferent or approving faces of the public behind them—they seem strangely familiar to us. They have been, they are still, alive by turns in us. The harmless spark of electricity that greets the touch of one's hand on a metal knob on a winter's day is one with the bolt of lightning that wrecks a giant oak. The selfish impulse, the narrow prejudice, the ignorant suspicion, the callous ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... reacted within the limits of a sister State. Already nullification calls upon its twelve thousand bayonets; friend is rising against friend, and brother against brother, under the banner of Carolina on the one side, of the Union on the other; the inflammable materials are ready, the spark approaches, the explosion may soon take place, and the genius of liberty, rising in anguish from the bloodstained fields of Carolina, spread her pinions, and wing her way forever from a world, on one side of whose waters despotism reigns triumphant, and, upon the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the municipal officers, in their arm-chairs at the town-hall, sit over a mine which may explode at any time. To-morrow, perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the suburbs, or some incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will furnish the spark.—No other defense against the populace is at hand than the sentimental proclamations of the National Assembly, the useless presence of troops who stand by and look on, and the uncertain help of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... to them as energy from the cables was transformed to a tangible thing—a vast bulk of gas, of hydrogen and oxygen that had once been water, and the pressure of the gas made a roaring inferno of the exhausts. A spark plug ignited it, and the heat of combustion added pressure to pressure, while the quivering, invisible live steam poured forth to change to vaporous clouds that filled ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... in her eyes to all the treasures of the world, was not taken in her trap, but continued to ride the high horse with his hand on his hips. This disdain of her passion irritated Madame to the heart, which by this spark was set in flame. If you doubt this, it is because you know nothing of the profession of the Madame Imperia, who by reason of it might be compared to a chimney, in which a great number of fires have been lighted, which had filled it with soot; in this state a match was sufficient ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... too slow. When this spirit first dawned it might probably have been easily checked, but it is scarcely within the reach of human ken, at this moment, to say when, where, or how it will terminate. There are combustibles in every State to which a spark might set fire. In bewailing, which I have often done with the keenest sorrow, the death of our much-lamented friend, General Greene, I have accompanied my regrets of late with a query, whether he would not have preferred such an exit ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... laughter. At last, sobering up somewhat as he realized that his behavior was rude, to put it mildly, Chris stopped and caught his breath, shaken only now and again by a diminishing paroxysm. Seeing the spark of bad temper in the red face of the enormous woman, Chris decided to pour oil on the ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... tinder box I had, but no wood. Then it occurred to me that I had stuck a needle in my clothes, so I took the needle and split it in pieces, and lit it, then laid myself down by the fire and went to sleep. But ill-luck still pursued me. While I was sleeping a spark from the fire lighted on the hair, which was burnt up in a moment. In despair I threw myself on the ground, and instantly sank in it as far as my waist. I struggled to get out, but only fell in further; so I ran to the house, seized a spade, dug myself out, and took home the holy water. ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various

... Hull, we couldn't," said Captain Al-Amin with restrained patience. "That would strip the threads. If the electrical contact were made at the same time, the high-pressure oxygen-hydrogen flow would spark off, and we'd get a big explosion that would wreck everything—including us." Then he muttered to himself: "I still don't see ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett

... food and ask no questions about the universe in which it is served to them. We want to know about life's origin and meaning and destiny. We cannot keep our questions at home. We cannot stop thinking. If this universe is fundamentally physical, if the only spark of spiritual life which it ever knew is the fitful flame of our own unsteady souls, if it came from dust and to dust will return, leaving behind no recollection of the human labour, sacrifice and aspiration which for a little time it unconsciously enshrined, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... on, and dwelt upon all this, and there was not as much as a spark of bitterness or malice ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... His Terran mind strove to give name to that which was nameless. Perhaps it was that spark of memory and consciousness which gave him that instant of "Seeing." Was it a throne? And on it a shimmering figure? He was ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... himself with that, and Agatha grew more resolute. There was not a spark of imagination in him, scarcely even a spark of the passion which, if it had been strong enough, might have swept her away in spite of her shrinking. He was a man of comely presence, whimsical, and quick, as she remembered, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... only too clearly that, in the present temper of men's minds, the faintest spark could light fires of riot and murder that might leave but a heap of ashes and corpses for the Carthaginian to gain. Taking advantage of the momentary lull, he said in ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... the apartment. His fancy immediately pictured to itself, a person bearing a lamp. It seemed to come from behind. He was in the act of turning to examine the visitant, when his right arm received a blow from a heavy club. At the same instant, a very bright spark was seen to light upon his clothes. In a moment, the whole was reduced to ashes. This was the sum of the information which he chose to give. There was somewhat in his manner that indicated an imperfect tale. My uncle was inclined ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... violence of his behaviour seemed to kindle for the moment a spark of manly feeling, if such there were, in the breasts ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... cheerful sound: no flowers of love, of hope, or joy spring up near it, or they bloom only to wither in a moment. Our poet's verse does not put a spirit of youth in every thing, but a spirit of fear, despondency, and decay: it is not an electric spark to kindle or expand, but acts like the torpedo's touch to deaden or contract. It lends no dazzling tints to fancy, it aids no soothing feelings in the heart, it gladdens no prospect, it stirs no wish; in its view the current ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... the same enlightening and invigorating quality. He did not fumble among dreary details, but saw swiftly into the essence of things, so that he smiled as he sate. A book would, on such occasions, touch into life a whole train of pretty thoughts, as a spark leaps along a scattered line of gunpowder. A few remembered lines of poetry, a few notes played by unseen hands on a musical instrument, from a window that he passed in the street, would give a sense of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 200—hot as h-ll! I have seen four thousand men at a time cooking for the whole army as much as twenty or thirty thousand pounds of steaks at a time, all hissing and frying at a time—just about noon, of course, you know—not a spark of fire! Some of the soldiers who had been brought up as glass-blowers at Leith swore they never saw such heat. I used to go to leeward of them for a whiff, and think of old England! Ay! that's the country, after all, where a man may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... precipitated?—my plans. We were saved, the two of us together. And then was started that scandalous report of the woman on the yacht." Again the laughter sounded in his voice. "You see, mon ami, how small a spark can start a conflagration. In self-defence I had to invent something, and I invented it quickly. I said she was Larpent's daughter. I wonder if you would have thought of that. You'd have done it ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... delivered his Catholic Majesty, King Philip the Fourth, in a condition utterly deplored by most, though with a little spark of hope in some, even physicians, upon a lightening that showed itself before death as it proved, his Majesty giving up the ghost this morning between four and five of the clock, witnessed immediately by all the bells in the town; this being somewhat ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... once to show him to his room. He looked round the vast hall, which, when he had before known it, was ever filled with signs of life, and felt at once that it was empty and deserted. It struck him as intolerably cold, and he saw that the huge fireplace was without a spark of fire. Dinner, the servant said, was prepared for half-past seven. Would Mr. Finn wish to dress? Of course he wished to dress. And as it was already past seven he hurried up stairs to his room. Here again everything was cold and wretched. There was no ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... fire has dropped its spark In Hafiz' heart before: The wild-grown tulip's mark Branded of old ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... who first applied the spark that fired Carlyle's ambition; it was from her that he got the germ of those talents which have ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... writer says, "Shakspeare had not a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama. In one of his monstrous farces, to which he has given the name of Tragedies, we find the jokes of the Roman shoemakers and cobblers introduced in the same scene with the orations of Brutus and Antony." (See Voltaire's Essays on Tragedy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... well-disciplined Gertrude! But had her heart really felt a spark of love for the man of whom she spoke, how much would prudent, sensible, high-minded considerations have weighed with her? ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... number of persons of intelligence and cultivation, one of whom had but recently witnessed in Paris some highly interesting experiments with the electro-magnet, the object of which was to prove how readily the electric spark could be obtained from the magnet, and the rapidity with which it could be disseminated. To most of the passengers this relation was deeply interesting, but to all save one it was merely the recital of a curious experiment. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... drops were seen to stand upon the bark, As juice is sweated by the sapling-spray, New-severed, when it yields to flame and spark, Sometime in vain kept back and held at bay. And next the voice began: "My story dark, Forced by thy courteous deed, I shall display; — What once I was — by whom, through magic lore, Changed to a myrtle on ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... for Clarissa Lovel had been interested in Geraldine Challoner, and she was not in the faintest degree interested in Miss Granger. The cold and shining surface of that young lady's character emitted no galvanic spark. It was impossible to deny that she was wise and accomplished; that she did everything well that she attempted; that, although obviously conscious of her own supreme advantages as the heiress to a great fortune, she was benignly indulgent to the less blessed among her sex,—it ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... she told herself that she had been—and as a consequence, she was wretchedly ill at ease. Her distress was in marked contrast with the man's self-possession, which amounted almost to indifference. There was no spark visible of the fire which had flashed earlier in the day. It was as though he had steeled himself to ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... think that young spark will be coming after City maidens again. Well, it has been a narrow escape for her. It would have broken the Captain's heart if she had gone in that way. What strange things women are! I have always thought Mistress Nellie as sensible a girl as one would want to see. Given a little over-much, ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... star. It was truly, as Dean Stanley called it, "the Gospel of the age." Its story spread, and with it spread renewed patience and hope. It doubtless fed the forces of that glorious revolt that shortly thereafter burst forth under the heroic Maccabees. Thus it kept alive the vital spark in the nation, through a crucial hour, that else might have gone out before it had given birth to Christianity. Noble as the book of Daniel is in many ways, especially as the real father of "the philosophy of history," ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... a strong man might have brained an ox. Every evil passion which curses the race of men had left its imprint upon his lowering countenance. Yet for a moment, when his gaze rested upon the girl, it was as though some spark of her loveliness drove the villainy from his face. He was hardly so tall as she who stood beside him watching me, the semblance of a mocking sneer about her lips. Looking past them both I could see what manner of place it was. A smoky oil-lamp sputtered in ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... "Wasp," with her ill-fated crew thus re-enforced, passed forever from the sight of man. What was her course after leaving the "Adonis," none may ever know. Whether some chance spark, touching the deadly stores of her magazine, sent vessel and crew to a sudden but merciful death; or whether, after gallantly battling with some fierce tropical hurricane, she drifted about the trackless ocean a helpless hulk, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... the aspiration valves, ignited the divine spark plugs, and whiz! went their motor-meters in a whirring, ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... Stanza della Segnatura. But, fool that I was, I fancied my luck could not desert me, and painted only when it pleased me, ran my horses at all the races in Italy, and played the dandy, the spendthrift, and the roistering spark, until his Holiness in disgust turned me from the Vatican, and called Raphael to take my place, bidding him erase the little work I had done ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... his way? he wondered. Which direction ought he to take? He was still hesitating when some twenty paces away he suddenly saw a bright spark, the gleam of a lucifer. Guillaume was lighting a candle. Pierre recognised his broad shoulders, and from that moment he simply had to follow the flickering light along a walled and vaulted subterranean gallery. It seemed to be interminable ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... A gun flew to pieces with a thunderous detonation. The truck crashed. It was interesting to Lockley that automobile engines invariably went dead at about the time that explosives went off. The fact was, of course, that ionized air is more or less conductive. In an ion cloud the spark plugs shorted and did not fire ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... accustomed to severe restraints; they walked hither and thither, with pallid faces, groaning and searching everywhere for somewhat to eat; and they in whom the pangs of hunger had not extinguished every spark of modesty went and hid themselves in the most secret places, and gnawed their hearts in silence, preferring to die of want rather than beg in public. Children still in the cradle, unable to get milk, were exposed at the cross-roads, crying in vain ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... influencing the latter powerfully enough in this way to divide it, and since his time Messrs. Grove and Quet have studied the effect under different conditions. In 1859, I myself undertook numerous researches on this subject, and experimented on the induction spark of the Ruhmkorff coil, the results of these researches having been published in the last two editions of my notes on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... old gentleman, I must own," replied M'Intyre, "and I am enraged at myself when I chance to offend him; but then his eternal harangues upon topics not worth the spark of a flinthis investigations about invalided pots and pans and tobacco-stoppers past serviceall these things put me out of patience. I have something of Hotspur in ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... yet not meaningless, defiance of a softer mood, and of his power to induce it in her, acted as a spark to Quisante's ardour. It was just the opposition that he had wanted to rescue him from awkwardness. He recovered the splendid intensity which had marked his declaration on Duty Hill. If he did not succeed in changing her feelings, at least he set her wondering why they did not ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... in this wise: The shell, S, is removed. Then a disk of steatite affixed to an insulating handle is rubbed for a few instants with a fox's "brush," and held near J until a spark occurs. Then the apparatus is grasped by the support, F, and an elder-pith ball suspended by a flaxen thread from a good conducting support is brought near J. The ball will be quickly repelled, and care must be taken that it does not come into contact ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... your mother, if she was a fool when she married him, was a wise woman when she died. Parson or not, he will never go where she is. Well, it's sad, but you'll be well out of this cold house, where there's so much praying but not a spark ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... with flowers her cork-tree bark, And lighted its helm with a glow-worm's spark; Then Love, when he saw his bark fly past, Said, 'Lingering Time will soon ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... things. While comparisons in these respects may be interesting and borrowings sometimes possible, lending the older mind life and the younger mind wisdom, such intercourse has hardly the value of spontaneous sympathy, in which the spark of mutual intelligence flies, as it should, almost without words. Contagion is the only source of valid mind-reading: you must imitate to understand, and where the plasticity of two minds is not similar their mutual interpretations are necessarily false. They idealise ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... tawny with gold, her eyes with purple were dark, Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... ignorant and poor, and to throw ourselves upon God for all, recognizing our own worthlessness, and that we have no right to anything. It is in this nothingness that we recover something of life—the divine spark is there at the bottom of it. Resignation comes to us, and, in believing love, we reconquer the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Vesuvius, it burns away in my thoughts, beside the roaring waters of Niagara, and not a splash of the water extinguishes a spark of the fire; but there they go on, tumbling and flaming night and day, each in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... light up to now, it was at this point she was to light her candle and place it on the floor, so that in returning she should not miss the staircase and get a fall. She had promised to do this, and was only too happy to see a spark of light scintillate into ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... progress than their neighbours. The progress made by those nations in which Protestantism, though not finally successful, yet maintained a long struggle, and left permanent traces, has generally been considerable. But when we come to the Catholic Land, to the part of Europe in which the first spark of reformation was trodden out as soon as it appeared, and from which proceeded the impulse which drove Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very slow progress, and on the whole a retrogression. Compare Denmark and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and made several violent pulls at the line, under the impression that something had bitten. Suddenly his rod, stout as it was, bent with the immense muscular force applied to it, and a small goldeye, about three or four inches long, flashed like an electric spark from the water, and fell with bursting force on the rocks behind, at the very feet of a small Indian boy, who sat, nearly in a state of nature, watching our movements from among the bushes. The little captive was of a bright silvery colour, with a golden eye, and is an excellent fish for ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... sympathetic, but in her eyes there glanced not the faintest spark of mercy. I sat for a moment stunned and helpless, and ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... if to show his readiness to pull round. Meantime I heard a click. A feeble gleam fell on his misty hands under the black halo of the hat rim. Again the flint and blade clicked, and a large red spark winked rapidly in the bows. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... Brush Piling. Slash Burning. Fire Lines. Spark Arrestors. Patrol. Associate Effort. Young ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... a perfect monarch, would be the state of highest felicity! First an impossible thing is asked; and next impossible consequences deduced. One tyrant generates a nation of tyrants. His own mistakes communicate themselves east, west, north, and south; and what appeared to be but a spark becomes a conflagration. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... Langenzunge! he hardly had nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain's chemical revolving disk. This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric spark passes through it, is changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk started on that fatal despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his spirit-lamp blew up,—as the ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... said demurely, as he picked himself up in great surprise—drawing a step away, and looking at him with wide-open eyes, to which the little fright of seeing him fall, and the spark of malice that took pleasure in it, had given sudden brilliancy. Jock was so much astonished that he uttered no reproach, but went on by her side, after a moment, pondering. He could not see how any offence ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... had been uttered, nor did Chartersea so much as refer to his Covent Garden experience. At length, when some half dozen of the wine was gone, and the big oak clock had struck two, the talk lapsed. It was Charles Fox, of course, who threw the spark into the powder box. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... authority with regard to the management of his household, he, the said Hastings, did, in the said minute, endeavor to excite the spirit of the British nation, severely animadverting on such offences, making use of the following terms: "If there be a spark of generous virtue in the breasts of any of my countrymen who shall be the readers of this compilation, this letter" (a letter of complaint from the Nabob) "shall stand for an instrument to awaken it to the call of vengeance against so flagitious an abuse of authority ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... dead corpses, but I will examine each if there be any spark of life remaining. Go ye into the houses, and if there be any sound persons within, bid them, in the name of humanity and their own safety, come forth and help to bury their brethren. If they are suffered to lie here longer, every soul in this ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... A spark came into Calvin's brown eyes. "Help you!" he repeated. "What's the matter? Ain't you old enough to speak ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... he wanted to follow. And so the slip of paper went back into his pocket-book, tucked in carefully, though he knew every word that was on it; and he sat down again, and remained, thinking and wondering, until the fire had ceased to show even a spark of red, and the chill of the room sent him shivering to bed, to dream ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... by societies. He charged Fox with being the only person who saw no danger in the writings and doctrines so widely promulgated; proclaimed him a friend, if not an advocate, of Paine and his doctrines; and asserted that such conduct could not be reconciled with any spark of patriotism. Fox indignantly rejoined, and disclaimed all sympathy with Paine. At the same time, he avowed that he saw no danger in his writings and doctrines, or of any other writer of his class, because the good sense and constitutional spirit of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... spark which became a fire in the breast of Mills. What he saw and what he heard, during those southern tours, made him a willing martyr for the sake of Africa's sons and daughters. Their degradation made him ready to endure all things ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker

... in consequence of Henri having omitted to replace the stopper of his powder-horn, and when, in his anxiety for Joe, he fired at random amongst the Indians, despite Dick's entreaties to wait, a spark communicated with the powder-horn and blew him up. Dick and Crusoe were only a little singed, but the former was not disposed to quarrel with an accident which had sent their enemies so ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... left for him was to live his life as it was, minus one spark of brightness. Certainly he didn't feel like singing, but whining was no earthly good. And since he could not sing, and would not whine, silence alone was left him. He would work as best he could till the year was out. He had no intention of ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... an offering at your shrine, Have sung this hymn, and here entreat One spark of your diviner heat To light upon a ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... one another!... A hand stretched out in the hour of my agony makes me feel that I am not a branch torn from the tree, but a living part of it; we save each other. I give my strength, which would be nothing if it were not taken. Truth alone is like a spark struck from a stone; dry, harsh, ephemeral. Will it die out? No, for it has kindled another soul, and a new star has risen ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... the revolutionary storm, now sweeping the globe, will be upon us, and happy if we make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our land. From the present state of things in Europe and America, the day which begins our combustion must be near at hand; and only a single spark is wanting to make that day to-morrow. If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves, but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... he refreshed himself unto the labor of his continual conflict. With such rest indulging, he girded his loins with roughest hair-cloth, the which had been dipped in cold water; lest haply the law of the flesh, warring in his members against the law of the Spirit, should excite any spark of the old leaven. Thus did Saint Patrick with spare and meagre food, and with the coarsest clothing, offer himself a holy and living sacrifice, acceptable unto God; nor suffered he the enemy to touch in him the walls ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... Indeed, Colonel, I thought you did, by your taking fire so quickly. I am glad to hear you say you did not. How soon a little spark kindles into a flame; especially when it meets with such ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... periods of his life an admiral, a theologian, a critic, a metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to England than he began to spread ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Elie Magus had refused to see him. But La Cibot extinguished the spark of distrust that gleamed in the lawyer's eyes by informing him that Elie Magus had returned from a journey, and that she would arrange for an interview in Pons' rooms and for the valuation of the property; for the day ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... ear-rings, and scarlet caps adorn the sleek black heads of the elder girls. An al fresco picnic party from the hills occupies a green mound, and boils a kettle on sticks of flaming bamboo, though a stray spark might easily burn down the entire campong. A great part of Celebes is uninhabited and uncultivated, but the tribes of the interior, warlike and treacherous, have never been completely subjugated. The slave trade flourishes among ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same look in her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Hoyle, or whatever else his name was, here broke off from his miserable words, and, forgetting all about my presence, set his gloomy eyes on the ground. Lightly he might try to speak, but there was no lightness in his mind, and no spark of light in his poor dead soul. Being so young, and unacquainted with the turns of life-worn mind, I was afraid to say a word except to myself, and to myself I only said, "The man is mad, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... of the miser on the bed, Levi hastened back to assist in saving the house. His post was in the midst of danger, and he went up on the roof. A plentiful supply of water soon drowned out the fire, and before the engine arrived the last spark ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... him again, still reading—Swedenborg this time—with most of the old things about him, including the Duck-billed Platypus; for nobody, apparently, had shown sufficient interest in them. The shop, therefore, was as I have always known it. There was a spark of a summer's day of 1914 still burning in the heart of a necromancer's crystal ball on the upper shelf ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... not lift it if I could; The little flame, though faint and dim As glow-worm spark in lonely wood, Shining where no man calls it good, May one day light the path ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... and cobweb dungeons, by loving a maid who is gentle and pure. So it shall be enough if he will go down to the Hudson and seize a drop from the bow of mist that a sturgeon leaves when he makes his leap; and after, to kindle his darkened flame-wood lamp at a meteor spark. The fairy bows, and without a word slowly descends the rocky steep, for his wing is soiled and has lost its power; but once at the river, he tugs amain at a mussel shell till he has it afloat; then, leaping ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... which he could hardly close, was on one side. Miss Baker told George afterwards that the left side was altogether motionless. George certainly would not have known his uncle—not at the first glance. But yet there was a spark left in those eyes, of the old fire; such a spark as had never gleamed upon him from any other human head. That look of sharpness, which nothing could quench, was still there. It was not the love of lucre which was to be read in those eyes, so much as the possessor's power of acquiring it. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... 'em in fact, Frank," replied the other, in what seemed to be a surprised tone. "But what does that matter, when neither of us can find any fire around? I sniffed and sniffed, but although I just turned my eyes in every direction not even a tiny spark could I see. And that happened ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... which Charles Edward was exposed in France, the hopelessness of his cause, and the indifference generally shown to him by the continental courts, which so much preyed on his mind as finally to stifle every spark of his former character, so that he gave himself up to a listless indifference, which terminated in his becoming a sot during the latter years of his life. On turning round to the Prince, who had been listening to these ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... Faith, so pale and so pretty, a trifle sad, a trifle that her conscience would brew for her, whether or no. Yet, after all, there was an odd expression in Mr. Gabriel's face, an eager, restless expectation; and if his lids were lowered, it was only to hide the spark that flushed and quenched in his eye ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... had been used to the cosy fire, began to shake and freeze when the ice filled her whole inside. Her teeth were chattering while she looked about to see if she could discover a little fire anywhere. But nobody ever brought any burning spark near her. She suffered the bitterest hunger besides, because she had been used to quite different nourishment from fat morsels roasting in her insides. Now she had to swallow little lumps of ice and nothing else. She was not a bit pleased with shining outside ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri

... again I filled his glass, and always, mechanically, he emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He did not eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture certain. But better anything than this passive, meek, ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... hour, not clear to my mind. I think my mother-in-law must have helped me, without meaning to do it. She came into the room with an erect head and a cold eye; she said, with an unmerciful emphasis on the word, "If you mean to go, Valeria, the carriage is here." Any woman with a spark of spirit in her would have "meant" it under those circumstances. I ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... strain of arms about her neck was Carinthia's welcome from Mrs. Wythan lying along the couch in her boudoir; an established invalid, who yearned sanely to life, and caught a spark of it from the guest eyed tenderly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Johnson is left, without a scrap of comfort, a word of consolation, a spark of sympathy; and yet he had given to that Iphigenia of his the best that was in him to give. Had his publisher sold ten thousand copies of it, how Thompson would have admired it! how he would have pressed the poet in his arms, and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... pieces which they were once wont to ponder daily, that whatever later teachers may have done in definitely shaping opinion, in giving specific form to sentiment, and in subjecting impulse to rational discipline, here was the friendly fire-bearer who first conveyed the Promethean spark, here the prophet who first ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... said, steadily; and then a spark glinted in her leaf-brown eye: "Folks that have means, and yet would let that poor unfortunate be taken to the Farm—I wouldn't expect no ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... only I exprest, (No spark of envy harbours in my breast) That, when confusion o'er the country reigns, To you alone this happy state remains. Here I, though faint myself, must drive my goats, Far from their ancient fields and humble cots. This scarce I lead, who left on yonder rock Two tender kids, the hopes of all the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... warm, Harry," said Mrs. Castleton, "you had better go in the dancing-room—there is not a spark of fire there." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... and Washington was great; but there was more behind—more than your school teaching ever led you to suspect, if your schooling was like mine. I imagined England as being just one whole unit of fury and tyranny directed against us and determined to stamp out the spark of liberty we had kindled. No such thing! England was violently divided in sentiment about us. Two parties, almost as opposed as our North and South have been—only it was not sectional in England—held very different views about liberty and ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... glad you told me, Miguel. I only stole the spark plugs from that eight cylinder touring car. Lucky thing the hounds know me. They like to et me up ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... morning, as we were at breakfast, a great big splendid Manton car—my car—came whisking up the drive and stopped in front of the house, and the expert—they had thrown him in for a week for nothing—him and an odometer and an ammeter, and a new kind of French spark-plug they wanted me to try—and a gasoline tester —the Mantons are such nice people to deal with in all those little ways—and the expert sent in word: would Miss Hardy come out and see her new car? And, of course, Miss Hardy, went out, and Mr. Hardy went out, ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... it to remorseless fire! Watch till the last faint spark expire; Then strew its ashes on the wind, Nor leave one ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Voltaire into transports of joy. He declared the event to be the most wonderful and important that ages had recorded in the annals of science, as it demonstrated the fact of man living after the fashion of beasts, without the least spark of civilization, and without speech; thereby forming a species of a nature having more in common with monkeys than with men, and presenting the regular degree, or intermediate class, between the homo civilis ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... Hester Stebbins, the spark of fire which is she. The storms have not broken over her head. She will laugh and make poetry of her laughter. If before she met you she wept, that, too, will help the smiling. There is laughter which is the echo of a Miserere ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... terrible, but lovely, in order to be loved. Man must seem, not mean and poor, but noble and beautiful, before we can love him. This idea of the good does not appear in Buddhism, says M. Saint-Hilaire. Not a spark of this divine flame—that which to see and show has given immortal glory to Plato and to Socrates—has descended on Sakya-muni. The notion of rewards, substituted for that of the infinite beauty, has perverted everything ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry and half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. He pulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a means of stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung and convulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next day to replace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... this question of superiority has ever risen, or at least has ever been agitated by reflecting men, who for one moment considered the manner in which our race is propagated in the world. Nothing ever rises above its own nature. A spark, however high it may rise, however brilliantly it may shine in the blue ethereal, can never become a star. It ever remains but a spark, and so the offspring of a woman cannot, in its nature, rise above its origin. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... that deadly stillness in the little valley. No glimmer of light came from the cleft in the rocks. He entered and called, but no answer came back. Then, with flint, steel, and the dry grass which he used for tinder, he struck a spark, and blew it into a blaze. The old hermit, his white hair dabbled with crimson, lay sprawling across the floor. The broken crucifix, with which his head had been beaten in, lay in splinters across him. Simon had dropped on his knees beside him, straightening his contorted limbs, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... keeping his soldiers out of sight as much as possible without relaxing his grip on the community. He did this, he said, to reduce the chances of friction between his men and the people; for friction might mean a spark and a spark might mean a conflagration, and that would mean another and greater Louvain. We could easily understand that small things might readily grow into great and serious troubles. Even the most docile-minded man would be apt to resent in the wearer of a hated uniform what he might excuse as ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... a hard block of wood, commence drilling violently with a stick, by rolling it between the palms of the hand. Each one catches it in turn from the other, without allowing the motion to stop, until smoke, and at last, a spark of fire is seen, and caught in a piece of punk, whereat there is great rejoicing among the bystanders. When this fire is kindled, the kettle is again placed over the fire, and refilled ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... always writing about. If you say you love him, I know I shall do something desperate;" and he looked as if he would keep his word, as he clenched his hands with a wrathful spark in his eyes. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... picture, making it a thing of life, moving him to sympathy and fellowship. Some of these people, to be sure, were stunted and dulled to a sordid ugliness of soul and body—but on the other hand, some of them were young, and had the light of hope in their hearts, and the spark of rebellion. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... starts up from his targe In high relief; and, I deny it not, I shuddered, seeing how, upon the rim, It made a mighty circle round the shield— No sorry craftsman he, who wrought that work And clamped it all around the buckler's edge! The form was Typhon: from his glowing throat Rolled lurid smoke, spark-litten, kin of fire! The flattened edge-work, circling round the whole, Made strong support for coiling snakes that grew Erect above the concave of the shield: Loud rang the warrior's voice; inspired for war, He raves to slay, as doth a Bacchanal, His ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... he was again summoned to attend the council-house, being informed that his fate was decided. Upon entering, he was greeted with a savage scowl, which, if he had still cherished a spark of hope, would have completely extinguished it. Simon Girty threw a blanket upon the floor, and harshly ordered him to take a seat upon it. The order was not immediately complied with, and Girty impatiently seizing his arm, jerked him roughly upon the blanket, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely shell held no spark of life. But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands, and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... which was difficult and ardent, we will remember nothing, except the mischance that befell a certain 'Marquis de Talleyrand' and his men, in the trenches, one night. Night of the 8th-9th May, by carelessness of somebody, a spark got into the Marquis's powder, two powder-barrels that there were; and, with horrible crash, sent eighty men, Marquis Talleyrand and Engineer Du Mazis among them, aloft into the other world; raining down their limbs into the covered ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... fiddlestick! You don't know Lucretia. There are many girls, indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing spark, with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those; she has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she has the mind and will of a queen,—old ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... like a sunbeam true enough," he said. "I don't know, it always comes when I immerse any living thing. Perhaps," he continued, smiling, "perhaps it is the vital spark of the creature escaping to the source from whence ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... thus spoke, he raised his hand out of old habit acquired in preaching, and a ray from the after-glow of the sunken sun lit up the jewel in the apostolic ring he wore, warming its pale green lustre to a dim violet spark as of living fire. His fine features were for a moment warm with fervour and feeling,—then,—suddenly, he thought of the great world outside all creeds,—of the millions and millions of human beings who neither know nor accept Christ,—of the Oriental races with their intricate and beautiful ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... "for this man to remember what he hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is the good Lizio?—where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin di Fosco finds ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... only in its pathos. It seems to show that, though he knew not how, still he held by the hope that somehow God would not forget His promise. Out of his very despair, his faith struck, out of the flint of the hard command, a little spark which served to give some flicker of light amid the darkness. His answer to his boy does not make his sacrifice less, but his faith more. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives a somewhat different turn to his hopes, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... retention of particles and articles is also effective, e.g. Delmar, Delamere, Delapole, impress more than Mears and Pool, and Larpent (Fr. I'arpent), Lemaitre, and Lestrange more than Acres, Masters, and Strange. There are few names of less heroic sound than Spark and Codlin, yet the former is sometimes a contraction of the picturesque Sparrow-hawk, used as a personal name by the Anglo-Saxons, while the latter can be traced back via the earlier forms Quodling (still found), Querdling, Querdelyoun ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... bells clanging, lights flashing, and crowds pushing and shouting, as she ran up—a little gray figure, with the lantern-spark glimmering like any tiny glow-worm astray in a ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... exaltation, slow-rumbling London—all the West and the war as we had thought of it for months was, so to speak, on the other side of the earth. We were on the edge of the East now, rolling down into the Balkans, into that tangle of races and revenges out of which the first spark of the war ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... of life is dimmed and dark; Hope's flame is dwindled to a spark; But, though I live thus dyingly,— My heart, my Love, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... continued without listening to him, "you must never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... of Tentyra with that of the emperor. He was a man who united all those qualities of prudent forethought, with prompt execution and attention to business, which was so necessary in controlling the irritable Alexandrians, who were liable to be fired into rebellion by the smallest spark. Justice was administered fairly; the great were not allowed to tyrannise over the poor, nor the people to meet in tumultuous mobs; and the legions were regularly paid, so that they had no ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... found herself. Grim enough by daylight, it was now doubly so; for the blackness seemed like something tangible, some shapeless monster which was gathering itself together, and shrinking back, inch by inch, as the little spark of light moved forward. The gaunt beams, the jagged bits of iron, bent and twisted into fantastic shapes, stretched and thrust themselves from every side, and again the girl fancied them fleshless arms reaching out to clutch her. But hark! was that a sound,—a faint sound from the farthest ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... down its defences and self-interest too, the bane of all sincerity. What though you and I can talk plainly with each other to-day? Others will address themselves not to us but to our fortunes. To persuade an emperor what he ought to do is a laborious task: any one can flatter him without a spark of sincerity. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... whose eye, quick-glancing o'er the park Attracts each light gay meteor of a spark, Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke, As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock; Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task, With Sappho fragrant at an evening masque: So morning insects that in muck begun, Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... no less of censure when merited than of praise where praise is due; entering, almost without the help of language from me, into my inmost thoughts; assisting me, if I may so speak, to comprehend myself; and raising to a steadfast and bright flame the spark that my wayward fancy, left to itself, would have instantaneously ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... check me and at the same time satisfy me, I have no doubt; but then I was always fortunate in my friends. Wisdom and patience in plenty were spent on me, and I was instructed and inspired and comforted. Of course my wisest teacher was not able to tell me how the original spark of life was kindled, nor to point out, on the starry map of heaven, my future abode. The bread of absolute knowledge I do not hope to taste in this life. But all creation was remodelled on a grander scale by the utterances of my teachers; and my problems, though they deepened ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... the jolly picnic And the crew of the red Noah's Ark. I'll whistle and sing like a bird in the spring, While the red flames gleam and spark." ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory

... opinion over the conduct of public affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age—all that is or has been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either in Europe or in the New World, may be traced to the spark left burning upon our ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... that month, continues, with little interruption, throughout the full season. The immense mass of vegetation with which the fertile soil loads itself during the summer is suddenly withered, and the whole earth is covered with combustible materials. A single spark of fire falling anywhere upon these plains at such a time, instantly kindles a blaze that spreads on every side, and continues its destructive course as long as it finds fuel, these fires sweeping on with a rapidity which ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... minute description of these feasts and jousts, but we may reasonably conclude that to the loyal imagination of his eulogist Philip is indebted for most of these knightly trophies. It was the universal opinion of unprejudiced cotemporaries, that he was without a spark of enterprise. He was even censured for a culpable want of ambition, and for being inferior to his father in this respect, as if the love of encroaching on his neighbor's dominions, and a disposition to foreign. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the spark bravely to the match. The spark—a feeble spark, first principle of a conflagration—shone in the darkness like a fire-fly, then was deadened against the match which it inflamed. Porthos enlivened the flame with his ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... him solemnly and waddled on, while Vane stood for a moment looking after her. Assuredly this common old woman possessed in her some spark of the understanding which is almost Divine. . . . And Vane, with a quick flash of insight, saw the proud planting of the pin on Rumfold Hall—a strategic advance, but the casualty list had never been ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... theatre,—its lights extinguished, The music silent, and the actors gone; And I alone sit musing on the scenes That once have been. I am so old that Death Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down, And my last spark of life will be extinguished. Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair! So near to death, and yet so far ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... husky and low and trembling, but his eye and his grasp firm. "I have assured you that environment, education, art, can supplement nature and heredity. They have done so with you. You are your father's child. You received from your mother only the vital spark, only this beauty, this fatal beauty. If you inherited all that the Rayniers ever had, then I love, I love, I love all that the Rayniers ever were, for I love you. I have your love, Helena, and I will never let you go." While speaking he had touched the bell at his hand, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... was willing to believe, that they misrepresented Christianity, they awoke all his old feelings of instinctive repulsion, and overclouded his discrimination. Almost as little could he endure the unnature as the untruth of what he heard. It had no ring of reality, no spark of divine fire, no appealing radiance of common sense, little of any verity at all. There was in it, as nearly as possible, nothing at all to mediate between mind and mind, between truth and belief, between God and his children. The clergyman was not a hypocrite—far ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... no selfish joy; nor doth he desire to rejoice in himself, but longeth to be blessed in God as the highest good. He ascribeth good to none save to God only, the Fountain whence all good proceedeth, and the End, the Peace, the joy of all Saints. Oh, he who hath but a spark of true charity, hath verily learned that all worldly things ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis

... was ready, and on such occasions the devil is never far away with the spark. The Sunday after the sermon, Francis de Bard, the aforesaid Lombard, and other foreign merchants, happened to be in the King's Gallery at Greenwich Palace, and were laughing and boasting over Bard's intrigue with the citizen's wife. Sir Thomas Palmer, to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... of course that Peggy went; believing on her side, poor dear, that it might for future relations give her the pull of Maria. This represents, really, I think, the one spark of guile in Peggy's breast: the smart of a small grievance suffered at her sister's hands in the dim long-ago. Maria slapped her face, or ate up her chocolates, or smeared her copy-book, or something of that ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... puts out the conflagration in one place, it is alight in two other places; directly he gives in to the fire and cuts off what is on fire from a large building, the building itself is alight at both ends. These separate fires may be few, but they are burning with a flame which, however small a spark it starts from, never ceases till it has set the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... two souls have somewhere been acquainted In former beings, or, struck out together, One spark to Africk flew, and one ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... animation and attraction lie, you will find that it is because every sentence and every line report things seen. He does not, like the Realist, try to get a specious lifelikeness by heaping up banal and commonplace facts; he selects. His imagination reminds one of the traveling spark which used to run along the great chandelier in the theatre, and light each jet, so that its passage seemed a flight from point to point of brilliance. Wherever he focuses his ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... body, the good ship most considerately avoided. As for the small ones, which had no names on them, if she struck one, it glanced off of her like a red-gold spark. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... gone to London, and the first tiny spark of discontent had visited Effie's heart. She would be so lonely without her brother. It was so fine for him to go out into life, her own horizon seemed so narrow. Then Dorothy came, and they had made friends, and Dorothy told her what some women ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... impatiently for an immediate causus belli, Wenceslas had hit upon poor, isolated, little Simiti as the point of ignition, and the pitting of its struggling priest against Don Mario as the method of exciting the necessary spark. He could not know that Wenceslas had represented to the Departmental Governor in Cartagena that an obscure Cura in far-off Simiti, an exile from the Vatican, and the author of a violent diatribe against papal authority, was the nucleus about which anticlerical sentiment was crystallizing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... you was his extreme readiness in conversation. He gave the electric spark whenever you put your knuckle to him. The first time I called on him in his house at Putney, I found him sipping claret. We talked of a certain dull fellow whose wealth made him prominent at that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... to the stove and found the fire out; the occupations as well as the excitement of the morning had made Johnson forget his customary duty. The doctor tried to rekindle the fire, but there was not even a spark ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... to look on their afflictions. Sidewalk venders cluster about you. And if you are smoking the spark of your cigar inevitably draws a full delegation of those moldy old whiskerados who follow the profession of collecting butts and quids. They hover about you, watchful as chicken hawks; and their bleary eyes envy you for each puff you take, until ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... possession of power without a due sense of its corresponding responsibilities; a community in which the passion for war may easily be excited as the fancied means by which its greatness may be convincingly exhibited, and its ambitions gratified. . . . Some chance spark may fire the prairie." ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... docile under such a rule; and, among her champions of freedom, none have been braver than those who have sprung from the ranks of her ministry, as the fate of Roger Williams had already proved. In such a community, before the ecclesiastical power had been solidified by time, only a spark was needed to kindle a conflagration, and that spark ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... attempt it, and may I succeed in fanning into a flame any spark of patriotism that may still linger ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... that if its circuit be suddenly broken, it refuses to stop quite suddenly, and bursts through the introduced insulating partition with violence and heat. It is this ram or impetus of the electric current which causes the spark seen on breaking a circuit; and the more sudden the breakage, the more violent is the spark apt to be. We shall understand them better directly; meanwhile they appear to be direct consequences of the inertia of electricity; and certainly if electricity were a fluid possessing inertia ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... last saw your sail, sir, for long before it was dark the boat went out of sight. But just as I'd give up all hope of seeing it again, we saw your fire like a spark on shore, ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn

... your door, and you know it," Wingate replied. "It has taken me a good many years to pay my debt to the dead. I did my best to kill you, but without a weapon you were a hard man to shake the last spark of life out of.—There, I am tired of this. I have let you talk. I have answered your useless questions. Be so good as to ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... understand—well, the less said of them the better. They serve, that is all. Then there are the gods of Egypt, as to which I made inquiry, and of them I will say this: that beneath the grotesque cloak of their worship seems to shine some spark of a holy fire. Next come the gods of the Phoenicians, the fathers of a hideous creed. After them the flame worshippers and other kindred religions of the East. There remain the Jews, whose doctrine seems to me ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... ferocity of spitting, howling rage was new. They answered that challenge from the camp, streaking out from under his hands. Yet both animals skidded to a stop before they passed the first dome and were lost in the gloom. A spark glowed for an instant to his right; Thorvald was ready to go, so Shann had no time to try and recall ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... the Duke produced his calfskin vest. There was not a coat between them to save the dignity of their profession at the boss lady's board. Taterleg's green-velvet waistcoat had suffered damage during the winter when a spark from his pipe burned a hole in it as big as a dollar. He held it up and looked at it, concluding in the end that ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... incalculable are the consequences which sometimes follow from human actions."[A] Our historian has accompanied this by giving the very feelings of Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works of John Huss; we see the spark of creation caught at the moment: a striking influence of the generation of character! Thus a father-spirit has many sons; and several of the great revolutions in the history of man have been carried on by that secret creation of minds ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... and blazed and wept. Now, be it known, what Mr. Harley told her seared like hot iron; what he asked of kindness to Storri and cruelty to Richard cut like a knife; and yet there was never tear nor spark to show throughout. She waited cold and white and steady. Dorothy was convinced of her father's danger without knowing its cause or what form it might take; and she filled up with a resolution to do whatever she could, saving only the acceptance ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... were caused by an uncontrollable look of disappointment. But it was not the proposal: no; but the change of manner that struck her. The quiet indifferent voice was like water quenching a struggling spark, but in a moment she recovered her powers. 'Beneath him! Oh, no. I told you we were humbled. I always longed for his independence, and I am glad that he should ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that our Saviour was "the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power," we go on to consider the purpose for which he came on earth, and all that he did and suffered for us; surely if we have a spark of ingenuousness left within us, we shall condemn ourselves as guilty of the blackest ingratitude, in rarely noticing, or coldly turning away, on whatever shallow pretences, from the contemplation of these miracles of mercy. For those baser minds however on which fear alone ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... Ronald said. "I have no reason for feeling one spark of regret at what has befallen him. He was the cruel persecutor of my parents, and did his best to get me removed. There is but one obstacle now to obtaining my father's release, and as he is neither a relation nor an old man I shall be able ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... was very much like in, for the same enemy, the darkness, was here also. The next moment, however, came a great gladness—a fire-fly, which had wandered in from the garden. She saw the tiny spark in the distance. With slow pulsing ebb and throb of light, it came pushing itself through the air, drawing nearer and nearer, with that motion which more resembles swimming than flying, and the light seemed the source of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... "Why, bless my shoe laces, Tom! how are you? I'm real glad to see you. Bless my eyeglasses, but I am! I just returned from a little western trip, and I thought I'd ran over and see how you are. I came in my car—had two blowouts on the way, too. Bless my spark plug, but the kind of tires one gets now-a-days are a disgrace! However, I'm here, and your father has just told me about you going to Philadelphia in your monoplane, to help a fellow-inventor with his airship. It's ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton

... exhibits itself in many a prayer-meeting and camp-meeting of modern days. For our own part, we hold it better to have even transient upliftings of the nobler and more devout element of man's nature than never to have any at all, and that he who goes on in worldly and sordid courses, without ever a spark of religious enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration, is less of a man than he who sometimes soars heavenward, though his wings be weak and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... the twin charts Correy had indicated. In the center of each the red spark that represented the Ertak glowed like a coal of fire; all around were the green pinpricks of light that showed the position of other bodies around us. The Kabit, while comparatively close, was just barely visible; her bulk was so small that it only faintly activated the super-radio reflex plates ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... fire from end to end; Now ashes, save the tip that holds a spark! Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself A little where the fire was: thus I urge The soul that served me, till it task once more What ashes of my brain have kept their shape, And these make effort on the last o' the flesh, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... pudding, and without which the plums, however delightful, could hardly stick together. Though the great majority of people talk commonplaces, their banalities are by no means always the kind that help. Muir's particular way of opening open doors, flogging dead horses, and genially enjoying any spark of fun in his friends, coupled with his good looks and pleasant, hearty disposition, made him a most useful and welcome guest, as a sort of super. He was quite decorative, and could be turned on to talk newspaper politics to dull men, pretty platitudes to plain women; to make ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... hide Under these words, like embers, every spark Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark The grave is yawning;—as its roof shall cover My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, So let oblivion hide this grief. Julian ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... with English steel, and the wide sea foamed with English keels, and the air was full of the blaze of the living and the ghosts of the mighty dead. And down in Nick's plucky young English heart there came a spark like that which burns in the soul of a mariner when for the first time an unknown ocean ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... thing, never experienced the Spirit, the same spirit that was able magically to waft me from a wintry Lyme Street to the South Seas, the energizing, electrifying Spirit of true achievement, of life, of God himself. Little by little its flames were smothered until in manhood there seemed no spark of it left alive. Many years were to pass ere it was to revive again, as by a miracle. I travelled. Awakening at dawn, I saw, framed in a port-hole, rose-red Seriphos set in a living blue that paled the sapphire; the seas Ulysses had sailed, and the company ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye; never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram. Mrs. Tristram's glance at her husband had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile. "You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a ...
— The American • Henry James

... held a spark of hostility as she leaned forward. The word had already been passed among the faithful that this young man was not taking ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... raised his hand to her, or gone beyond verbal abuse; now, however, his temper became violent and brutal. All sense of shame—every pretext for decency—all notions of self-respect, were gone, and nothing was left to sustain or check him. He could not look in upon himself and find one spark of decent pride, or a single principle left that contained the germ of his redemption. He now gave himself over as utterly lost, and consequently felt no scruple to stoop to any act, no matter how ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... that the Great Bear is mother to all the Slavs. There will, of course, be jockeying for position, bluff, bravado, and all the rest of it; but France is bound to act with Russia, and with all that explosive hanging around it will be strange if some spark doesn't fall ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... I was told that it was countenanced by those who of all Men ought to pay the most sacred Regard to the Law. Are we arrivd to such a Pitch of Levity & Dissipation as that the Idea of feasting shall extinguish every Spark of publick Virtue, and frustrate the Design of the most noble and useful Institution. I hope not. Shall we not again see that Sobriety of Manners, that Temperance, Frugality, Fortitude and other manly Virtues wch were once the Glory and Strength of my much lov'd native ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... high idea I had form'd of the man whom Emily Montague could love. I will own to you, that I thought it impossible for her to be pleased with meer beauty; and I cannot even now change my opinion; I shall find some latent fire, some hidden spark, when we ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... plodded on, despised by the rich, hated by the poor, spurned by both. He had driven hard bargains that she might drive her carriage; he had turned his wretched debtors houseless into the streets that she might be covered. With every spark of love in his heart, with every instinct of tenderness in his soul, he had bowed down and worshiped her. She had him all: he would set to work anew, were it needful, for her sake; he would go in rags for her; he would starve for her; and this was his reward!—his happiness filched ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... 'God bless you, Missus, I is quite appy now. I is a leetle too young for dat spark, for I is cuttin' a new set o' teeth now, and ab suffered from teethin' most amazin', but I will make him a lubin' wife. Don't be shy, Mr Plue,' said she, and she up wid one ob her crutches and gub him a poke in de ribs dat made him grunt like a ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... earth; or indeed, whilst my hand is in, I charge it with full pay. And I strictly enjoin upon my trustees and executors, but especially upon the man in the moon, if his unsocial lip has left him one spark of gentlemanly feeling, that he and they shall construe all claims liberally; nay, with that riotous liberality which is safe and becoming, when applied to a fund so inexhaustible. Yes, reader, my fund will be inexhaustible, because the period of its growth will be measured ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... aspiration, Of feeling, poetry—of godlike spark Of all that appertains to my big nose, (He turns him by the shoulders, suiting the action to the word): As. . .what my boot will ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... handsome face. Though its prevailing characteristic was the easy amiability of one who has known little of opposition or dislike, there was no lack of steel in the blue eyes or of iron in the square chin; now and then a spark betrayed them, thrilling ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... the hare, "take care, and do not open the canister where there is a fire in the room, or a candle, because a spark may blow you up just when you are ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... be so near, to mark The locket rise and sink upon her breast; The shadow of the lashes lieth dark Upon her cheek. O fleeting time, O rest! A slant ray finds the gold, and with a spark And flash it answers, now shall be the best. Her eyes she raises, sets their light on mine, They do ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... dream. In the council chamber he lounged in his chair with his eyes upon nothing and apparently hearing nothing. But the slow shifting of the spark in his sleepy eyes indicated to those who observed closely that he heard but kept his own counsel. If Meneptah spoke to him he but seconded Har-hat's suggestions. But once again the observant ones noted that the fan-bearer did not ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... quinsy was gone; for the Captain had anecdotes suited to all times and seasons—he only wanted listeners, and off he went like an alarum. Sunday put him in mind of that day twelvemonths; and that day put him in mind of Richard Spark, of the Native Infantry; Rich. Spark put him in mind of how they got that Hindoo millionaire, Makemuchjee Catch-muchjee, into a Christian church, by walking him between them, in a state of ether; how he (the Hindoo) was mollified by the sermon, and went home—melted ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... light thus provided Dolph attached the light wires so that the electric spark would be communicated to each stick in this "mine." This was done by looping a circuit wire around each separate stick, and connecting the wire with each detonating cap. The dynamite, frozen on the snow crust, had thawed again at ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock

... beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him! But they were far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was black and bottomless; they would fade away into the mists of the past once more. Their voices would die, and never again would he hear them—and so the last faint spark of manhood in ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... and with unconstrained candor could say openly and plainly that I, the artist, hated from the bottom of my heart this hypocritical world which pretended to be interested in art and culture; when I could say to it that not one drop of artist's blood flowed in all its veins, that it had not one spark of manly culture or manly beauty,—then for the first time in my life I felt myself completely free, happy, and joyous, although I sometimes did not know where to conceal myself the next day that I might still breathe ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... passed; an hour, while the watchers waited at the bedside of Po Lun. Gradually his respiration waned. Several times the nurse called the physician, thinking death had come. But a spark still lingered, growing fainter with the minutes till a mist upon a mirror was the only sign that ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... diabolically. Blenham had been right and Steve had had ample time to admit the fact utterly and completely; now there was a ringing note in his voice, the effect of which, falling upon his grandfather's ears, might be likened with no great stretch of imagination to that of a spark in a ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... where all life seems extinguished. They are but their own shadows and a perpetual outcry against the reverses of Fate or the relaxation of human energy, which proved unable to carry on the aspirations of preceding generations. Fortunately Amsterdam escaped this disgrace, because its spark of life never quite died out; the burning vigour of its inhabitants, which was instrumental in raising the town's prosperity in the seventeenth century, may seem a high-flaming fire compared to the peaceful existence of its rich population ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt

... First it was a fox which came and barked at my ear and woke me to a pitch-black night, with scarcely a star showing. The next time it was nothing but a wandering hill-wind, but as I sat up and listened I thought I saw a spark of light near the edge of the sea. It was only for a second, but it disquieted me. I got out and climbed on the top of the rock, but all was still save for the gentle lap of the tide and the croak of some night bird among the crags. The third time I was suddenly ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... alone, applied the spark bravely to the match. The spark—a feeble spark, first principle of conflagration—shone in the darkness like a glow-worm, then was deadened against the match which it set fire to, Porthos enlivening the flame with his breath. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... action that, but for it, would have remained dormant. As comets are sometimes revealed by eclipses, so heroes are brought to light by sudden calamity. It seems as if, in certain cases, genius, like iron struck by the flint, needed the sharp and sudden blow of adversity to bring out the divine spark. There are natures which blossom and ripen amidst trials, which would only wither and decay in an ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... had done one thing; it had started his companions into action, and they, too, waded with the stream pressing them along, till away in the distance they caught sight of the light Gwyn bore, shining like a faint spark in the darkness or reflected in a pale shimmering ray ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... I answered for myself, others remained unsolved for many months, until I had opportunity to avail myself of knowledge more profound than my own. Easy enough to guess that the hidden deposits of the mountain had yielded oil which needed only a spark from a piece of flint to fire it; and any one who knows anything of the geological formation of the Andes will not wonder at their supply ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... "things were washed, up," servant and mistress began to smarten themselves, and disappearing into their bedrooms, emerged at four, to make preparations for tea, the meal most enjoyed in all Cowfold. If any spark of wit slept in any Cowfoldian male or female, it appeared then. No invitations to dinner were ever heard of; but tea was the opportunity for hospitality, especially amongst women. The minister, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not an individual with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... I said to the two [ruffians] Gog and Magog, 'for God's sake take some pity on me, I have still a spark of life left; when I die, do with me what you please; the dead are in the hands of the living; [372] but tell me what has happened to me; why have I been wounded, and who are you? pray explain thus much to me.' They then having taken ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... of human sympathy had melted those stony hearts. A thousand strong men were thrilled with the touch of sympathy, and once more the sacred fountain of tears was unsealed. These convicts were men, after all, and deep down under the rubbish of their natures there was still burning the spark of a humanity not yet extinct. It was wonderful to see the softened expression of their faces. Yes, they were men, after all, responding to the voice of sympathy, which had been but too strange to many of them all their evil lives. Many of them had ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... jolly picnic And the crew of the red Noah's Ark. I'll whistle and sing like a bird in the spring, While the red flames gleam and spark." ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory

... my life, the lips of Death Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath; Naught shall revive thy vanished spark . . . Love, must I ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu

... how I should like to look back! That's the worst o' being a swaddy on dooty. Your soul even don't seem to be your own. Never mind; orders is orders, and I'm straight for them rocks; but natur's natur', even if it's in a savage nigger with a firework-spark gun and a long knife. If those chaps don't come sneaking after us for a shot as soon as they've seen us on the move, I'm ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... pots would be empty, and famine would be in the land, although the farms and butchers' shops were still well stocked. The general community would be like an automobile when the magneto fails. Everything would be there and in order, except for the spark of credit ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... weakness. We use them in the interest of procrastination—that we may put off the parting day with something our conscience, or our taste, or both, disapprove. By them we appoint a time when we shall say to the divine spark within our breasts, you may flame out into our daily life. By them we give a respite which alas, often ends in a commutation of sentence and oftener still in a full pardon and ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... face of the skipper became darker, and there was a spark in his eyes. This was unfair. "But dammit, man, you don't mean to say the owners are right? Do these chaps know any more? Look at old Rumface, old Billy Higgs. Got enough women to make him hate going into any port. Can't be happy ashore unless he's too drunk to know one ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... to Atjeh, where there was war; but the vessel ran on a sandbank, and we had to land in Delli. We had earned a little money, and had bought a gun from some Selangore traders; only one gun, which was fired by the spark of a stone; Matara carried it. We landed. Many white men lived there, planting tobacco on conquered plains, and Matara . . . But no matter. He saw him! . . . The Dutchman! . . . At last! . . . We crept and watched. Two nights and a day we watched. He had a house—a ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... beneath the cross, see! prostrate fall The mummeries that long enthralled our isle; So perish error! and wide over all Let reason, truth, religion ever smile: And let not man, vain, impious man defile The spark heaven lighted in the human breast; Let no enthusiastic rage, no sophist's wile Lull the poor victim into careless rest, Since the pure gospel page can teach him to ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various

... Mr Lumsden, Aquhorthies; and his brother, Mr Lumsden, Eggie; Mr Milne, Fornet; Mr Mitchell, Fiddesbeg; Mr Stoddart, Cultercullen; Deacon Milne, and Deacon Spark, took the lead; and to these gentlemen the credit is due for being the first to introduce a proper and profitable system of feeding cattle in Aberdeenshire. More attention was also paid to the breeding department. James Anderson, Pitcarry, was the first man who shipped a beast ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... the top of his bent. Perhaps he and Kate would laugh over it together before the day was done. Rose clenched her hands, and her eyes flashed at the thought. Back came the colour to her cheeks, back the light to her eyes; anger for the moment quenched every spark of love. Some of the old Danton pluck was in her, after all. No despair now, no lying on sofa cushions any more in ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... dull and bleak next day, and Glory was tired. The fierce little spark of energy seemed ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... this point the meeting could not be pronounced a success. Crowds were there, and the people were waiting to be caught on fire; but the right spark had not been struck. It only wanted a little to rouse the whole audience to white heat; the train was laid, the powder was set, but no one seemed able to ignite the match. People looked at one another doubtfully. ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... crowd you, but I want you to keep your mouth closed as far as I am concerned. If you try to circulate any more lies about me, I shall forget that you are a whining cur, without a spark of courage in your whole body, and I shall give ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... at your shrine, Have sung this hymn, and here entreat One spark of your diviner heat To light ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... Cicero nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns: and what is more astonishing he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator: he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam and an argument ad hominem consisted; and when he went up along with me to enter my name at Jesus ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... seem to show that, where men and women engage in the same field of activity, their work is, by a natural division, not competitive or antagonistic, but complementary. Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very first spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that ever occurred in this country, the shirt-waist makers' strike, was kindled by an offensive ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... Nor yet at eve his note suspended, Nor yet when eventide was ended, Began to feel, as well he might, The keen demands of appetite; When looking eagerly around, He spied far off, upon the ground, A something shining in the dark, And knew the Glowworm by his spark; So, stooping down from hawthorn top, He thought to put him in his crop. The worm, aware of his intent, Harangued him thus, right eloquent: 'Did you admire my lamp,' quoth he, 'As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song: For 'twas ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... to the wall, with their load, rolling a man before them. And they all pulled and tugged and pushed and some leaned heavily upon others and all looked death squarely in the face and no man whimpered. The panic was gone; the divine spark that rests in every human soul was burning, and life was little and cheap in their eyes, compared with the chance they had to give it ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... lumps of offal, floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-broth—over the slow sullen rows of oily ripple which were dying away into the darkness far beyond, sending up, as they stirred, hot breaths of miasma—the only sign that a spark of humanity, after years of foul life, had quenched itself at last in that foul death. I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up at me through the slimy water; but no, it was ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... wisdom kept for others' use, Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 350 His purse or knowledge all men's, like the sea. Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might (With pauses broken, while the fitful spark He blew more hotly rounded on the dark To hint his features with a Rembrandt light) Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more Whom he had seen, or knew from others' sight, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... 24th.—Your correspondent is the coolest fellow I ever heard of. He not only proposes to complete Macaulay's 'Lays' by some new ones, but to re-edit and correct the original Lays, which, he says, 'are very irregular.' His own verses have not a spark of poetry or fire in them; they are mere trash, and he ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... before the fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round of the stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right across my path. In all these days, I never knew her to display the least spark of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing her copious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and broken hoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself. These, I think, were ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... truth, and submitting to the conscious triumph? Give her her part of vanity, of youth, of desire to rule and be admired. Meanwhile Mr. Clive's drawings have been crackling in the fireplace at her feet, and the last spark of that combustion ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... law,[143] 220 He arm'd dead friends, to vengeance true, To abuse the man they never knew. Examine strictly all mankind, Most characters are mix'd, we find; And Vice and Virtue take their turn In the same breast to beat and burn. Our priest was an exception here, Nor did one spark of grace appear, Not one dull, dim spark in his soul; Vice, glorious Vice, possess'd the whole, 230 And, in her service truly warm, He was in sin most uniform. Injurious Satire! own at least One snivelling virtue in the priest, One snivelling virtue, which is ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... ever been a great mystery in electrical science. Magnetic currents are known to act upon bodies in close proximity without the intervention of a spark, and to indue such bodies with magnetic force. This action, called induction, has been supposed to be limited to short distances. This we believe to be erroneous. In order that the inductive process take place, it is ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age—all that is or has been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either in Europe or in the New World, may be traced to the spark left burning upon our shores by these ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... Recovering a spark of the old audacity which her prettiness used to justify, she laughed: "No, you won't. We shall want to talk—and talk. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... principle; enthusiasm is a feeling. The one is a spark of a sanguine temperament and overheated imagination. The other, a sacred flame kindled at God's altar, and burning in God's shrine."—(Vaughan.) Such was the holy, heavenly zeal of our Great Exemplar! His were no transient outbursts of ardor, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... little from the tree and then flies away. Did you see the big, bright spark that flew ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... was the spark which exploded the magazine. Instantly every white man ran for his gun, and the Blackfeet did the same. A few seconds after they wheeled about and the ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... in the restaurant, too, that not a spark of her old feeling remained. For the friend of her childhood, Vladimir Mihalovitch, or simply Volodya, with whom only the day before she had been madly, miserably in love, she now felt nothing but ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... after him, "the train is laid; the spark has been applied; the explosion will soon follow. The hour is fast approaching when I shall behold this accursed house shaken to dust, and when my long-delayed vengeance will be gratified. In that hope I am content to drag on the brief remnant of my days. Meanwhile, I ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... had been nibbled by some giant mouse, she crept through it, and found herself in an enormous hall, as big as if the late Mr. Martin, R.A., had been the architect. She could not have seen the other end of it at all, except for the great fire that was burning there, diminished to a spark in the distance. Towards this fire she ran as fast as she could, and was not far from it when something fell before her with a great clatter, over which she tumbled, and went rolling on the floor. She was not much hurt, however, and got up in a moment. Then she saw that she ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... responded the other, rummaging in a stern locker and producing the garment in question. In another moment he had it over the engine, protecting the spark plugs and the high-tension wires from the rain and spray. But the wind was too high to permit of the covering remaining unfastened, and with a ball of marlin the young engineer lashed the improvised motor cover ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... exhausted, when the most daring shrink from further sacrifice, when the desire of self-preservation infects the stoutest veterans, and the will of the mass opposes a tacit resistance to all further effort. "Then," says Clausewitz, "the spark in the breast of the commander must rekindle hope in the hearts of his men, and so long as he is equal to this he remains their master. When his influence ceases, and his own spirit is no longer strong enough to revive the spirit of others, the masses, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... coming suddenly upon them as a "rushing mighty wind," without sound or sign, save in the bending of heads, the breaking of hearts, the streaming tears, and the adoring responses of the people. Then, believers have caught the spark of sanctifying fire from God Himself, and declared it; then, men have been endued with the gift of tongues, and spoken with apostolic power; then, sinners, drawn into the place by the peculiar attractions of the occasion, have felt ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... engaging in a Puritan service with a few of the chosen ones, who would not join in what they deemed the Popish ceremonies of the church in the valley. These stern dissenters from the reformed religion were keeping alive that spark which, fanned into a flame some fifty years later, was to sweep through the land and devastate churches, and destroy every outward sign in crucifix, and pictured saint in fair carved niche, and image ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... parting breath; But beauty, with that fearful bloom, That hue which haunts it to the tomb: Expression's last receding ray, A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of feeling past away! Spark of that flame—perchance of Heavenly birth, Which gleams, but warms no more ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... faint color was growing,—gaze wandering at random out over a dreary wilderness of flat rectangular roofs, livid in the moonlight, broken by long, straight clefts of darkness in whose depths lights gleamed faintly. Far in the south the sky came down purple and black to the horizon, where a silver spark glittered like a low-swung star: ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... from side to side like a creature hunted. Clasping the cloak to her quivering bosom she approached the candle slowly, stealthily. Her steps faltered. She hesitated. She stooped forward—another glance over her shoulder, and blowing with feeble breath, the spark went out. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... purposes in the manufacture of a large variety of electrical equipment. The highest grades are employed particularly in making condensers for magnetos of automobile and airplane engines and for radio equipment, and in the manufacture of spark plugs for high tension gas engines. Sheet mica is also used in considerable amounts for glazing, for heat insulation, and as phonograph diaphragms. Ground mica is used in pipe and boiler coverings, as an insulator, in patent roofing, and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... lost!—blessed father, sich a night! Oh! my, my! Well, well; sit near the spark o' fire, sich as it is; but, indeed, it's little you'll benefit by ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... tell you of this friend. He found me happiest of the happy; fortune and honour crowned me; and love and peace lived in my heart. One spark of folly lurked there; That too he found; and by deceitful breath, blew it to flames that have consumed me. This ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... Superintendent and I waited on horseback in parley with old Crowfoot till the buckboard was over the hill. Such a half hour I never expect to see again. I felt like a man standing over an open keg of gunpowder with a lighted match. Any moment a spark might fall, and then good-bye. And it is this same nerve of his that holds down these camps along this line. Here we are with twenty-five men from Laggan to Beaver keeping order among twenty-five hundred railroad navvies, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... victim, thou unerring Artemis? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark, Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel births of wonder? Not one spark Of pity in that steel-grey glance which gleamed At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen From thy proud presence: well may'st thou be queen Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit For happy marriage ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... Therefore at stated times with due solemnity he produced it anew by friction or the flint, or else was careful to keep one fire constantly alive. These not unwise precautions soon fell to mere superstitions. If the Aztec priest at the stated time failed to obtain a spark from his pieces of wood, if the sacred fire by chance became extinguished, the end of the world or the destruction of mankind was apprehended. "You know it was a saying among our ancestors," said an Iroquois chief in 1753, "that when the fire at Onondaga goes out, we shall no longer be a ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... dress itself, light rustling noises full of enchantment; he could even feel her movements as she breathed; with the gentle stir thus imparted to her form and to her draperies, it seemed to Raphael that all her being was suddenly communicated to him in an electric spark. The lace and tulle that caressed him imparted the delicious warmth of her bare, white shoulders. By a freak in the ordering of things, these two creatures, kept apart by social conventions, with the abysses of death between them, breathed ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... sixth he was so far recovered that he could walk with the assistance of a cane, and he celebrated the event by telling his servant to hold a lighted cigar in his fingers at the distance of fifty paces, and from it he shot the ashes so deftly that the bullet scarcely raised a spark of fire. ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold

... notified of the verdict of the Council and the words of Tarum the sense of the inevitable returned, extinguishing the spark of rebellion that had been kindled by his passion for Bakuma. To Bakahenzie, or to the wizards separately, or collectively, he had had the strength to voice his own desires, but to the veritable voice of Tarum was no resistance ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... her knees and arranged her fire-making apparatus, the bow, the socket and the drill. Then, while she drew the bow steadily and slowly, making the drill revolve in the socket which was full of punk, Bessie brought small, dry sticks and a few leaves, so that when the spark came in the punk, it would have fuel upon ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... met death. But no one even in that place of mourning could answer the question that the child heard in the bells. And yet that divine spark of heroism that burns unseen in every heart however high, however low—that must be the faltering, uncertain light which points us to the truth across the veil through the mists ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... best sense—full of sympathy, full of observation and quick understanding of others' needs and thoughts and feelings; absolutely sincere, of a constant and even temper, and a cheerfulness that never failed—the result of her splendid health; without caprice, without a spark of vanity, without selfishness of any kind—generous, open-handed, charitable to a fault; always taking the large and generous view of everything and everybody; a little impulsive perhaps, but not often having to regret her impulses; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... wholesome dread of such things himself. But the fear of fourteen, in a great strong body and no heavenly spark of imagination, is not to be compared with the fear of eight and a mind that could quiver like a harp even at its own imaginings. And, to compass his ends, he would blunt his already dull feelings and turn ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... light from the sinking sun was gone. Waring's hands came away from the opened shirt shudderingly. He wiped his hands on the sand, and, rising, ran back to Dex. He returned with a whiskey flask. Pat was of tough fiber and tremendous vitality. If the spark were still unquenched, if it could be called back even for a breath, that which Waring knew, yet wanted to confirm beyond all doubt, might be given in a word. He raised Pat's head, and barely tilted the flask. The spirit of the mortally ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... What I want to ask you is—can't you, for her sake, quite apart from your own feelings—give in about it?" So spoke Sir Basil, sitting in the moonlight, the spark of his cigar waning as, in the long pause that followed, he held it, forgotten, in an expectant, arrested hand. Her voice had helped and followed him with such gentleness, such understanding that, though ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... that we found that passage perfectly clear, and wider as we proceeded. This we did slowly, keeping the lead going constantly. The first mate reported the needle of the compass working curiously, dipping down hard, and sparking—something he had never seen. Captain Burrows only said: 'Let her spark!' ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... apprentices of an after day, seized an English ship containing arms and supplies, lying in the bay, marched to the Church of Saint Nicholas, took the Confederate oath, and shut Willoughby up in the citadel. Clanrickarde hastened to extinguish this spark of resistance, and induced the townsmen to capitulate on his personal guarantee. But Willoughby, on the arrival of reinforcements, under the fanatical Lord Forbes, at once set the truce made by Clanrickarde at defiance, burned the suburbs, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... city. Here Vesta was served by six virgins of free birth, whose duty it was to keep the fire always blazing on the altar. If by accident the fire went out, it must be relighted from a "pure flame," either by striking a spark with flint or by rubbing together two dry sticks. Such methods of kindling fire were those familiar to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... often unobserved sensations and the certainties which taste, smell, and touch give me, I should be obliged to take my conception of the universe wholly from others. I should lack the alchemy by which I now infuse into my world light, colour, and the Protean spark. The sensuous reality which interthreads and supports all the gropings of my imagination would be shattered. The solid earth would melt from under my feet and disperse itself in space. The objects dear to my hands would become formless, dead things, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... form my daily allowance. I had tried every method known to the resourceful flat-dweller of modern times to get cool and to stay so, but alas, it was impossible. Even the radiators, which all winter long had never once given forth a spark of heat, now hissed to the touch of my moistened finger. Enough cooling drinks to float an ocean greyhound had passed into my inner man, with no other result than to make me perspire more profusely than ever, and in so far as sensations ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... with peculiar unction the following anecdote of this spark. The first time he went over to pick up curiosities at Paris, it happened that he met, in the course of his traffickings, a certain brother bookseller of Edinburgh, as unlike him as one man could well be to another—a grave, dry Presbyterian, rigid in all his notions ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... the functions of the clutch, carburetor, valves, magneto, spark plug, differential cam shaft, and different speed gears, and be able to explain difference between a ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... you have no such debt of bitterness against him as I have. I cannot advise you—I would not dare. But if there is a spark of soul left in the man, such love as yours must fan it into warmth. If you have the ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and the dark tardy when he marched up the street. It was a gantlet of eyes and whispers. He felt inane to an imbecility. The whole village was eying the boss on his way to spark a stenog. His little love-affair was as clandestine as Lady Godiva's ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... His perfect beauty, His perfect obedience; but again, and yet again, were they opened to express the pleasure of the Highest in this lowly Man. Now, not only are they closed in silence, but a horror seems to enwrap all creation. The sun, obscured by no earth-born cloud, gives out no spark nor ray of light; and in that solemn darkness every voice is strangely hushed. From nine till noon the air was filled with revilings and reproaches—all leveled at the one sinless Sufferer; but now, ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... found an elm root that was very dry. He dug a hole in it and put a stick in and rubbed it. Then smoke came. He smelled it. Then the people smelled it and came near. Others helped him to rub. At last a spark came. They blew this into a flame. Thus fire came to warm the people ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown

... over the horizon, and were reflected in a deeper hue on the calm surface of the sea, with a perfectness and grandeur that I never remember to have witnessed before. Not a ship was in sight; but out on the extreme line of the wilderness of grey waters there shone one red, fiery spark—the beacon of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Before us, the green fields of Looe Island rose high out of the ocean—here, partaking the red light on the clouds; there, half lost in cold shadow. Closer yet, on the mainland, a few cattle were feeding quietly on a long strip of meadow bordering ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... war. I think that both parties are in the wrong—Russia in making unjust demands, Turkey in resisting a reasonable settlement. War is quite on the cards, but I still persist in thinking it will be averted, unless some accidental spark fires the train.'[31] ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... made your acquaintance with this letter already, in my thirty-second chapter. I had said those foolish words to Oscar (as you will find in my record of the time), under the influence of a natural indignation, which any other woman with a spark of spirit in her would have felt in my place. Instead of personally remonstrating with me, Oscar had (as usual) gone home, and written me a letter of expostulation. Having, on my side, had time to cool—and feeling the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... stragglers setting strongly toward the south. Then out from among them, into the field by the roadside, cantered a little man on a black horse, and from the ranks of his own cavalry arose a cry of "Sheridan!" Through all the ranks the message flashed, and, as if it had been charged by the electric spark, set every man on his feet and made his heart once more ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... Miss Wodehouse, with tears. As for Lucy, she did not quite know what her sister said. She only felt that it was cruel to stop her, and look at her, and talk to her; and there woke up in her mind a fierce sudden spark of resistance ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... things. So he becomes aware of a Cosmos,—a universal order of beauty and of love. He becomes aware of it only as he becomes voluntarily and consciously a part of it. Only through the fidelity of his moral life does he feel beneath his feet a sure foundation. Only as his soul glows a spark of love does it recognize the celestial ether in which it is ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... at the factory. On the 5th of November 1914 he mounted in an experimental B.E. 2c machine to a height of about eight hundred feet. Exactly what happened will never be known; the petrol vapour must have been ignited by a spark; the machine burst into flames, and after drifting aimlessly for a time, fell on Laffan's Plain. The death of such men as Charles Rolls and Edward Busk was a part of the heavy price that had to be paid for victory; before victory was in sight. There was no other way; the work that they ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... knew well that he loved her fervently and that to lose her would wellnigh break his heart. Could she say the word and be free? Surely, as this man's wife there would be no serfdom; and, yet, could she wed a man for whom she felt no spark ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... by we saw a little spark far ahead of us like a star. The smell of fresh wood smoke and stale damp fire came to our nostrils. We gained the star and found it to be a log smouldering; and up the hill other stars red as blood. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... "A little spark may make muckle wark." It is perfectly wonderful what great events spring out of trifles, or what seem to common eyes but trifles. I do not allude to the nine days' deadly sickness, that was the legacy of every one that ate his segar, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... study, to treasure my youth and strength as a means of sustaining my intellectual effort; that, in order to preach the beauty of goodness, I ought to lead a blameless life; that I ought to keep alive that glowing affection, a spark of which I may sometimes communicate to others; to study children, the people, and the poor, and to write for their benefit; to let no ignoble word fall from my pen, to sacrifice all my inclinations to the common welfare, never to lose heart, never to strive for approval, to hope for nothing and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... that falls short of such affection is something other than charity, no matter how many tags and labels it may wear. If I beheld a brute strike down an aged parent, I would not for a moment think that affection was behind that blow; and I could not conceive how there could be a spark of filial love in that son's heart until he had atoned for his crime. Now love is not one thing when directed towards God, and another where ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... enthusiasm for the Emperor Napoleon, and feared to see their country devastated by war. The grand duchy of Warsaw, ceded in 1807 to the King of Saxony under the Treaty of Tilsit, was the only province of the ancient Poland which retained a spark of national spirit and was somewhat attached to France, but what was the use of this little state to the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... John went to his mother's bedside, and saw that this was indeed true. His mother lay as one dead. A faint spark of recognition showed in her fast dimming eyes as he approached but other signs of ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... clamor of the metropolis, into which he was flung pell-mell, altogether stupefied him. With a vacant air he regarded the Pandemonium, and a petrifaction of his inner being seemed to take place. He became "a barrel with a stave missing." No spark of animation visited his eye. Only one thought survived in his brain, and one desire pulsed in his heart: to save money enough for himself and family to hurry back to his native village. Blind and dead to everything, he moved about with a dumb, lacerating pain in his heart,—he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... The better part of her woman's nature saw it. Such a man might, years ago, not now, have changed her nature, and made the issue of her life so different, even after her cruel abandonment. She had a dim feeling of this, and she would like now to stand well with him. The spark of truth and honor that was left in her was elicited by his presence. It was this influence that governed her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that she had not been destined in the first place for the throne of France, and that this want of forethought had injured her education; then, feeling a spark of courage in her heart, she said that the late Queen had more than once confided to her that the Court of France was disorderly in its fashions, because it was never the princesses who gave it its tone ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... commits a like Crime, and so a third with the same Consequence. I would fain ask any reasonable Man whether this Lad, in the Simplicity of his native Innocence, full of Shame, and capable of any Impression from that Grace of Soul, was not fitter for any Purpose in this Life, than after that Spark of Virtue is extinguished in him, tho' he is able to write twenty ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... opposite political camps, and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a manufactured reaction. Dissenters and Anglicans united, not to lead the way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen, not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble colours ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... your shrine, Have sung this hymn, and here entreat One spark of your diviner heat To light ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... traces of them had to be removed before noon. When the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act, and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire. Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes except murder. Next a basket of new fruits was ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... shroud: Ye heavenly bodies glory to be bright, And are esteemed as ye are rich in light; But here on earth is taught a different way, Since under this low roof the Highest lay. Jerusalem erects her stately towers, Displays her windows and adorns her bowers; Yet there thou must not cast a trembling spark, Let Herod's palace still continue dark; Each school and synagogue thy force repels, There pride enthroned in misty error dwells; The temple, where the priests maintain their quire, Shall taste no beam of thy celestial fire, While this weak cottage all thy splendor ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... dictate; but the cost of human life which Napoleon's ambition demanded had begun, ere this time, to be seriously thought of in France. He, meanwhile, prepared, without further delay, to extinguish the feeble spark of resistance which still lingered in a few garrisons of the Prussian Monarchy, beyond the Oder: and to meet, before they could reach the soil of Germany, those Russian legions which were now advancing, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... had come in a few minutes before. He was leaning against the doorpost, attired in a cool suit of white linen, his hands in his pockets, the expression of his handsome darkling young face a most curious one. He was staring at his father steadily, his fine eyes wide open holding a spark of inward rage, his nostrils dilated and quivering. He seemed bent upon making the orator meet his glance, but the orator showed no desire to do so. He gave his sole attention to his glass of water. To this clever, elderly Southern matron ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of the electric spark they tell us life is extinguished almost without a quiver of pain. But, however this may be in natural things, we know the Holy Spirit can touch with celestial fire the surrendered thing, and slay it in a moment, after it is really yielded up to the sentence of death. That is our business, ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... were typical of Fitch's correspondence with everyone who took him seriously. He went to every pains to explain himself, and no man more gratefully acknowledged earnest attention. It was his quickness to detect in others the spark of creative appreciation that made him answer letters to perfect strangers, giving them advice as to playwriting. "I like the tone of that man's note," he once said to me. "I'll send for him; he ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch

... and Agatha grew more resolute. There was not a spark of imagination in him, scarcely even a spark of the passion which, if it had been strong enough, might have swept her away in spite of her shrinking. He was a man of comely presence, whimsical, and quick, as she remembered, at light badinage, but when there was a crisis to be grappled ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... present. When this solution is concentrated by evaporation and cooled down, about five-sixths of the chlorate of potash crystallizes out. It is purified by redissolving and crystallization, and is sold either in the state of crystals or finely ground. During these operations care must be taken lest a spark should produce the inflammation of the chlorate on contact with any organic substance. Large quantities of potassium chlorate exposed to strong heat in contact with the wood of casks or the timber of a roof ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... abruptly, swinging round on his heel and showing the first spark of animation he had as yet ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... ('idda),[121] after which Majnun hastens to embrace his beloved. Overpowered by the violence of their emotions, both are for a space silent; at length Layla addresses Majnun in tender accents; but when he finds voice to reply it is evident that the reaction has completely extinguished the last spark of reason: Majnun is now a hopeless maniac, and he rushes from the arms of Layla and seeks the desert once more. Layla never recovered from the shock occasioned by this discovery. She pined away, and with her last breath desired ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... very slow. So slow that they began to fear it had gone out—so slow that the daylight had time to disappear and the moon to commence her softly solemn journey across the dark sky—so slow that Stalker began seriously to think of sending a man to stir up the spark, though he thought there might be difficulty in finding a volunteer for the dangerous job—so slow that a certain reckless little boy came galloping towards the fortress on a tall horse with a led pony plunging by ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... not be so friendly." But when a swift glance around revealed that Mrs. Jocelyn was looking at her husband in perplexity, that Mildred was not even trying to conceal her vexation and amazement, and that Belle had stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to prevent laughter, a spark of anger glittered in his eyes. His first thought was that Mr. Jocelyn was indulging in unexpected irony at his expense, and the ready youth whose social habits had inured him to much chaffing was able to reply, although a little ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... answered other men's arguments, never with warmth or heat. But he was exceedingly tenacious of his own opinion. He was, in the things he stood for, as unyielding as flint and true as steel. But his flint or steel never struck out a spark by collision with any other. He spoke very rarely in debate in general; only when his official place on his committee, or something which concerned his own constituents especially, made speaking absolutely imperative. Then he gave his opinion as a judge gives it, or as a delegate to some great ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... their old allegiance, and thus it is that over a broad land composed of all nations, sects, and creeds there reigns one grand homogeneity and a single patriotic impulse of faith and destiny. Few there are of Americans who can to-day trace even the faintest spark of their lineage to an English or even a Norman source. Yet the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon is the presiding genius of our destiny. Its spirit is the spirit of our law, and its religion is the evangel of our ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... place, the minutest details of that strange fountain, and of the scene about it, are as definitely before me as if I had been there but yesterday. I am not going to inflict them all upon my reader, yet would do so without a spark of compunction, if by such means I could dim the all too vivid remembrance. The experiences that befell me by this fountain have shaken painfully the confidence I once enjoyed as to the fulness of my knowledge ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... shyness or imbecility. But—he could not get engaged to Muriel Coppin. That was reserved for Roland Bleke, the nut, the dasher, the young man of affairs. It was all very well being able to tell a spark-plug from a commutator at sight, but when it came to a contest in an affair of the heart with a man like Roland, Albert was in his proper place, third at ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... almost to her knees, her bared arms quivering in a very palsy. They tried to comfort her, tried to put their arms about her, both of them crying too. At the touch of their arms stealing about her hunched shoulders she straightened, showing a spark of the spirit with which they were more familiar. She wrenched her body free of them and pointed a tremulous finger at the door. The two sisters stole out, feeling terribly guilty ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... us, his musket in his hand, through tedious, sleepless nights, his imagination furrowed by the keen chisel of every passion; let his wife and his children become exposed to the most dreadful hazards of death; let the existence of his property depend on a single spark, blown by the breath of an enemy; let him tremble with us in our fields, shudder at the rustling of every leaf; let his heart, the seat of the most affecting passions, be powerfully wrung by hearing the melancholy end ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... Miss Percy," broke in a stridulous voice. "He was devoured with ennui, to say nothing of shyness, until he summoned up courage to talk to her, and then he seemed to me quite like any ordinary young spark. I don't know that he quite forgot to be a poet," she concluded with some gallantry, for she had taken a great fancy to Anne and was determined to marry her brilliantly, "but he certainly ceased for a few moments to look like a God-forsaken ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... persuade himself to indulge in those reveries of election and impeccability, which had now saturated his Lady's mind. He felt himself to be an accountable being, not a collection of animated atoms associated by chance, which, when the vital spark was extinguished, would crumble into dust without record or responsibility. He knew he was a sinner by choice, who had abused his free-will; not a passive vessel of wrath, pre-destined to destruction. No inflating ebullition of enthusiasm told him he was become one of those favourites ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... darkness, the same desolate emotion, had Heinrich's words breathed into Otto's soul; therefore he sank like the traveller to the earth: but as the traveller's whole soul rivets itself by the eye upon the first spark which glimmers, to kindle again the torch which is to lead him forth from this grave, so did Otto attach himself to the first awakening thought of help. "Wilhelm? his soul is noble and good, him will I initiate into my painful secret, which chance had ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... true and perfect charity seeks himself in nothing, but desires only the glory of God. He envies no one, because he loves no joy of his own, nor cares to rejoice in himself; but wishes, above all good things, to find felicity in God. Whoever has a spark of true charity feels at once that all earthly things ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... teeth in a soundless snarl of its narrow, pointed muzzle, and surveyed the Child with the cruellest little eyes that he had ever even imagined. The savage eyes stared him full in the face, a red light like a deep-buried spark coming into them, till he thought the creature was going to spring at his throat. Then gradually the spark died out, as the little furry reassured itself. The triangular face turned aside. The working, restless nose sniffed sharply, catching ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... "That the spark that would fire the mine might be in that pretty little beribboned roll of foolscap," said Risley, laughing. "Well, it was a very creditable production, and it was written with the energy of conviction. The Czar and that little school-girl would not live long in one country, if she ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Munsey is a spoiled fish, then," said Hilda. "Don't you remember, Prue, how Will Munsey heaped on the lovering at first? It was four inches deep—lovey this and dovey that till it fairly cloyed one. But the fire went out long ago. There's no spark or sparking on that ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... and roar of cities, Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River, Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, But to hide a wounded pride as well. To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds— I, gifted with tongues ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... and wilfully remain so. There exists in every state a number of people unprotected by vaccination, and among these single cases of smallpox appear. The unprotected individuals gradually increase in number, forming an inflammable material awaiting the spark or infection which produces a conflagration in the one case and an epidemic in ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... conduct of her son and her own hopeless condition seemed to awaken in her mind. The quarrel, in a word, between the emperor and his mother grew more and more inveterate and hopeless every day. At length he shunned her entirely, and finally, every remaining spark of filial duty having become extinguished, he began to meditate some secret plan of removing her ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... spirit here. For once, in describing the battle and fall of Patroclus, Goethe seems to have caught a spark of Homeric inspiration, and the lines ring out as clearly as the stroke of the hammer on the anvil. There is no rhyme in the original, which, we confess, appears to us a fault; more especially as the rhythm is that of the ordinary ballad. We have, therefore, ventured to supply it, with as little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... was that they had done and were doing. And, for the natural man, it would have been comparatively easy to forgive such injuries on that account. "I forgive them," such a man might have said from his cross, "because there is just a glimmer of knowledge left; there is just one spark in their hearts that still does me justice, and for the sake of that I can try, at least, to put away my resentment and ask ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... stanchions of the awning could not be grasped with the hand, and where the decks were not screened by it, the pitch boiledout from the seams. The swell rolled in from the offing in long shining undulations, like a sea of quicksilver, whilst every now and then a flying fish would spark out from the unruffled bosom of the heaving water, and shoot away like a silver arrow, until it dropped with a flash into the sea again. There was not a cloud in the heavens, but a quivering blue haze hung over the land, through ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... interested her, and the natural consequence was a desire, scarcely observed by herself, of obtaining the esteem of a person she admired. The remembrance of better days was rendered more lively; and the sentiments then acquired appearing less romantic than they had for a long period, a spark of hope roused her mind to ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... Holmes met some cordial greeting at every turn. What a just, clever fellow he was! people said: one of those men improved by success: just to the defrauding of himself: saw the true worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn't one spark of self-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes was popular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... miniature he had given her on his departure. He turned from the perusal of the letter with a deadly chill at his heart: he crushed it in his hand, and threw it on the blazing logs upon the hearth, holding it down with the tongs until every fiery spark had disappeared, then watched the blackened flakes as they flew one by one up the chimney; and when the last had disappeared he dashed the tears from his eyes, and, to the great surprise and consternation of Dulac, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... Bachicao, who was no less cruel than the lieutenant-general Carvajal, or even more so if possible; being at the same time exceedingly addicted to cursing and blasphemy, and among all his vices not a single spark of virtue could be found to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... witnessed and shared on behalf of American freedom; the unreflecting hopes of a blind emulation were already agitating many a mind. "In all states," said Washington, "there are inflammable materials which a single spark may kindle." In 1783, on the morrow of the American war, the inflammable materials everywhere accumulated in France were already providing means for that immense conflagration in the midst of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... at me. I know you think I'm abominably vain, but I'm not. There really isn't one spark of vanity in me. And I'm never a bit grudging about paying compliments to other girls when they deserve them. I'm so glad I know you folks. I came up on Saturday and I've nearly died of homesickness ever since. It's a horrible feeling, isn't it? In Bolingbroke ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... always to be avoided is monotony in colour. Who can not recall barren rooms, without a spark of attraction despite priceless treasures, dispersed in a meaningless way? That sort of setting puts a blight on any gathering. "Well," you will ask, "given the task of converting such a sterile ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... moment I saw you, and that passion has never decayed; not your coldness, nor even enjoyment itself, has been able to extinguish it; it still continues in its first force, and yet it has not been in my power to kindle in your breast any spark of love for me, and now I find you fear you have an inclination for another; and who is he, Madam, this happy man that gives you such apprehensions? How long has he charmed you? What has he done to charm you? ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette

... last the cup of joy was full again—and that same night it overflowed. For as Tom Slade sat at the wireless table, while his new companion slept in his berth near by, there jumped before his eyes a blue, dazzling spark which told him that some one, somewhere, had something to say to him across the water and through the ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... Diane held a spark of hostility as she leaned forward. The word had already been passed among the faithful that this young man was not taking the right point ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... you once loved your son,' said he; 'loved him better than anything in this world; if one spark of affection for him remains, hear him now, and forgive him, if he pass the bounds—bounds he never passed before of filial duty. Mother, in compliance with your wishes my father left Ireland—left his home, his duties, his friends, his ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... our neighbourhood, to make us more and more careful every year; and, as I have said, amongst our precautions, was that of keeping as little wool as possible in the shed. Most flock-owners waited until the shearing should be quite over before they carted the wool away; but in that case, a spark from a pipe, a match carelessly dropped in a tussock outside, when a nor'-wester was blowing,—and the slight wooden building would be blazing like a torch, and your year's ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... the fact; the fact itself pressed too hard upon him. While the match was still burning he mechanically noticed the Jew's face, as it leaned over the paper near his own—not a handsome face, but gentle and noble in its expression. Then the match went out; it dropped from his hand, a tiny spark, into the grass, and for a moment illuminated the blades among which ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... explode notwithstanding his efforts to effect it. Upon this, I hastened to the front, where I found the individual in question kneeling upon the ground, and endeavoring, as far as punch would permit him, to kindle a flame at the portfire. Before I could interfere, the spark had caught; a loud, hissing noise followed; the different magazines successively became ignited, and at length the fire ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Jose Maria was at last shot by one of them, whom he was endeavouring to arrest. The civil guard prevents brigandage from reaching any great height in normal times, but in 1905 a bandit of the old stamp, popularly known as "El Vivillo" (the Vital Spark), haunted ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... learned that he had inherited the living because he was his father's second son. Some poor clergyman had been keeping it ready for him for the last fifteen years and had to turn out as soon as this young spark could be made ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... times and oft. There was nothing novel, therefore, in the hatching out of this particular scheme. But for a paltry detail it would never have attained notoriety. We never blazon our failures—why should we? The one spark of original thought that enlightened the prosaic plans of the undertaking was this: The promoters wanted quality in the eggs of their hens as well as quantity. Quantity rests with the hen, but quality—like ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... then what I had but vaguely understood before, that there is a hunger that is worse than that which starves the body and gets into the newspapers. All children love beauty and beautiful things. It is the spark of the divine nature that is in them and justifies itself! To that ideal their souls grow. When they cry out for it they are trying to tell us in the only way they can that if we let the slum starve the ideal, with its dirt and its ugliness and its hard-trodden ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... relations with both friends and enemies abroad, and surely no member of the Cabinet occupies such a position of grave responsibilities, for a false step upon his part, the revelation of a secret policy, of an unfriendly attitude maintained injudiciously, may at any moment cause the spark in the ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... in every ocean, and some live in the very deepest parts. In those black depths the little waving "bait" would not be seen. So it is made to shine, like a bluish spark moving to and fro over the cold black slime of ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... to be disputed that the old often appear dull-witted, but I cannot believe in a real darkening of the reason, which is a bright spark of the Divine, and even in madness the negation of reason is only external and apparent. A deaf man playing on an instrument out of tune may strike the right notes, and be inwardly persuaded that his execution is faultless, while all around him hear nothing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... rail when he saw, some distance to starboard as it seemed, and well forward of the ship, an infinitesimal bluish brown spark. How he happened to notice it he did not know. "Once a scout, always a scout," perhaps. In any event, it was only by fixing his eyes intently upon it that he could keep it in sight. And even so, he lost it after a few seconds. He tried to find it again, but quite in vain. It had been ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... from all over the land; but the period of my connection with the college was really a golden period in its history. Never were its chairs held by more distinguished occupants. The president of the college was Dr. Carnahan, who, although without a spark of genius, was yet a man of huge common sense, kindness of heart and excellent executive ability. In the chair of the vice-president sat dear old "Uncle Johnny" McLean, the best-loved man that ever trod the streets of Princeton. He was ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... fierce contention, just as if two drunken rustics were fighting in a tavern about a glass of beer, or two idiots about a bit of bread; of the shame and scandal for the Gospel; and of the triumph of their enemies and the devil, who would rejoice to see this little spark kindle into a conflagration. If either of the two, instead of using force, would declare himself content with what was just and right, whether it were his own Elector or the Duke, Luther for his part would assist him with his prayers, and he might then trust himself with confidence against ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... shells were already in the water and the electric spark of excitement had flashed from end to end of that long line of gayly bedecked expectant yachts and launches, as down to them floated the strains of the Yale boating song as it is never sung at any other time, and thousands of eager eyes were peering along the course watching for the first ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... at the baby.—"Ah! too much, too much!" said she. "Queen Lura, a butterfly can eat honey only; let us have a higher life for the Princess of Larrierepensee. Maya, I give thee for a birth-gift another crown. Receive the Spark!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... greatest ruffians I have ever seen. They had been for so many years in contact with misery in its worst shape that the last spark of human feeling had died out in their callous hearts. Instead of showing compassion or pity for their prisoners, many of them innocent victims of a low treachery, they added to their misery by the harshness and cruelty of their conduct. Had a chief received at last a small sum of money from ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... longed to shake her fist at him, to fling her scorn in his face, to revenge herself on him for having humiliated her thus. But she felt that at the very first words she would burst into tears. A last spark of pride, all that remained of the handsome, dashing Lida, deterred her. In a tone of such intense scorn that it surprised herself as much as ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... machine, giving an eighteen inch spark. It was set in motion by a lever fitted into the table, which I could easily reach from where I sat. As I spoke the visitor was treated to a little exhibition of electricity. The change in his bearing was amusing. He shook with terror. He ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... contended that there might be a superior intelligence, which, contrary to human intelligence, goes from the general to the particular; and Goethe thought—he proved, I might say—that in man too some of this divine intelligence can operate and shine, if only in isolated sparks. It was a spark of this kind which, first at Padua on the sight of a fanpalm-tree, then again, on the eve of his departure from Palermo, during a walk in the public garden amid the Southern vegetation, revealed to him the law of the metamorphosis of plants. He found an analogy between the different parts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... retired by the bed-side of my dear lamb, endeavoring to feel after resignation, I gave her up as fully as human nature, through divine aid, was capable of. Then it sprang in my heart, Where is the man that can offer up an Isaac? He shall go for me, and I will send him. There seems a spark of hope that even now, when the knife is lifted up, the voice may yet be heard,—"Lay not thy hand upon the lad, for now I ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... man, who he denominates as "common clays": "Yet we are all common clays! There are long clays and short clays, coarse clays and refined clays, and the latter are pretty scarce, that's a fact. To follow out the simile, life is the tobacco with which we are loaded, and when the vital spark is applied we live; when that tobacco is exhausted we die, the essence of our life ascending from the lukewarm clay when the last fibre burns out, as a curl of smoke from the ashes in the bowl of the pipe, and mingling ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... Bawd having made an End, and put to Silence all the other Boasts, there was a young Prodigal Spark that had wasted a fair Estate in being a Customer to her House, thought he had now a fit opportunity to put her in Mind of his own Merits, ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... and in a position to make good his claim with three stalwart brothers to back him. All these young men had died prematurely. Their only descendant was Henry VI., and that meagre and wretched representative of the ambitious Henry V. had had no spark of the character of his father and uncles. The one vigorous element in his life was his wife, Margaret of Anjou, who diligently exerted herself to keep her husband on his throne. In vain were her efforts. By 1467, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... of her eyes the tiniest spark flashed out at him—a hint of defiance for somebody, perhaps for Major Belwether who had taken considerable pains to enlighten her as to Siward's condition the night before; perhaps also for Quarrier, who had naturally expected to act as her gun-bearer ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... prosperity at the expense of him who had so helped him rise. If John had been less noble than he was, and his friendship for Jesus less loyal, such words from his followers would have embittered him. There are people who do irreparable hurt by such flattering sympathy. A spark of envy is often fanned into a disastrous flame by friends who come with such appeals to the evil that is in ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... is useful but dangerous. A spark from it might set a house on fire. We ought to be very careful about it. Children ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various

... a slang tone,—"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an occasion,—a spark for the explosive materials collected behind the orchestra. But it would take a volume of no ordinary size, however laconically the sense were expressed, if it were meant to instance the effects, and unfold ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... you too much. I am too selfish to act as I ought to! Thyrza! That you can be my wife still, when no spark of hope was left to ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... vessel neared the western horizon, it seemed as if sea and sky were on fire. Sadly the gods watched the glowing ship and its precious freight, until suddenly it plunged into the waves and disappeared; nor did they turn aside and return to Asgard until the last spark of light had vanished, and the world, in token of mourning for Balder the good, was enveloped ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... tell you what, young gentlemen," he remarked, when, ascending, he showed his honest face again, thrust in a log of wood, and exhibited an armful of shavings, "I'm agreeable to anything but gunpowder, or that there spark as comes cantering out o' your engine with a crack. No, Miss Gladys, ex-cuse me, I don't give up these here shavings till I ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... and it's twisted. Did I not tell ye, when ye wad take away the boy Harry Bertram, in spite of my prayers,—did I not say he would come back when he had dree'd his weird in foreign land till his twenty-first year?—Did I not say the auld fire would burn down to a spark, but wad ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... after nick—nick—nick came the sound of a flint against a steel: tiny bright scintillations glistened in the black darkness, and soon there was a faint glow as the convict began to blow one spark which had fallen upon the wood Nic held. Then the spark grew brighter and brighter, and at last shed a faint luminous glow sufficient to make darkness visible; and this was increased by the convict taking the piece of wood and waving ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... oh (with joy), at last she will go! There's a spark from the bloomin' machine, She's going like fire, when bang goes a tyre And we'll start when ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... in sooth, my young spark from the country! Ah, it is a fine habit, that of early rising. I practised it once myself, so I speak with authority. But what would you in this Babylon? And, i' faith, what is there to do before ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Clowes and Yvonne Bendish, and Lawrence, as he strolled back with Isabel to the garden gate, had an uneasy suspicion that the episode of the honeysuckle had been overseen. Laura was graver than usual, while Yvonne had a sardonic spark in her eye. "I'm afraid it's no use waiting any ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... don't touch them!" called Mr. Brown. "He has fixed the dry batteries in the toys to a spark coil, which makes the current stronger, and he's giving shocks that way. Aren't you?" he ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... mistaking it this time, and a simultaneous exclamation burst from all on deck. From out the gloom which hung over the horizon rose a column of flame that lighted up the night for an instant, and then sunk, leaving a dull red spark ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... about the social system. They had a 'discussion crowd' and the point of abolishing the clubs was brought up by some one—everybody there leaped at it—it had been in each one's mind, more or less, and it just needed a spark to bring it out." ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... could sight and fire, the chase was ended. That erect, magnificent figure, towering over the fallen man, collapsed all at once. It fell together into a mere heap of hide and antlers. The light in the eyes went out, as a spark that is trodden, and the laboured breathing stopped in mid-breath. The fallen hunter sprang up, rushed forward with a shout, and drew his knife across the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... It gets loose at times with the best of us—it runs wild and plays dreadful havoc with those who are not the best; there is always in you the baser self—always the dry torches of evil passions which a spark may kindle—always the moral weaknesses and lusts, half-sleeping, which some stronger blast of temptation may awaken and bring out; and if you wish to escape the evil and hold fast to the good, you will commit your way unto the Lord, and put on the Christian armour, and strengthen ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... Miriam Strange as he had just been singing, he would have leaped to his feet and wrung the man's hand till it ached. It surprised him, therefore, it disappointed him, that Conquest should sit unmoved, unless the spark-like twinkle of his little eyes could be taken ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... to drive thoughts of Olga from his mind; but the terrible flame of passion which had grown from the tiny, buried spark of boy love that lurked in his heart, under the sinister suggestion of Millar, tortured him. He could hardly keep himself from rushing off to Olga's house, in advance of the ball, to beg her not to proceed with her design of bringing him and Elsa together; to tell ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... living and simple faith, but partially connected with the dominant church, were never from Celtic times entirely wanting in Britain; and it may have been that, through Richard Rolle and a few other hermits, the feeble spark in the smoking wick continued to smoulder on till it was blown into a flame by Wycliffe. At any rate it was blown into a flame by him and his poor priests; and from their time witness after witness arose to contend for the right of the laity to read the Word of God, and to maintain that ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... went quietly to work and whittled some long splinters, on which he stuck the fish and set them to roasting. True, they got badly scorched and dreadfully smoked, but that was not all that happened. A spark flying out caught Prudy's gingham dress, and set it in flames ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... as if things were going to be on a grander scale all round. Here was a young foreman or manager in charge of the carting work; a lordly young spark he was, and grumbled at not getting horses enough, for all that there were not so many loads ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... its horrible occupant, who stood, grim and stark, with his black shrivelled face towards the door. The form was lifeless and inert, but it seemed to Smith as he gazed that there still lingered a lurid spark of vitality, some faint sign of consciousness in the little eyes which lurked in the depths of the hollow sockets. So astounded and shaken was he that he had forgotten his errand, and was still staring at ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... "ordinary," but was eager to pay them homage, minister to their comfort, or afford them amusement. They were thus happily pursuing their voyage when the commander, one pleasant evening, having entertained the general with various sea stories, was approached by one of his officers, who reported that Spark Island had been sighted from aloft. This news sent a thrill of joy into the hearts of all on board, for Spark Island lay ten leagues off the coast of Kalorama. Every eye was now fixed in the direction indicated, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... ballast coils that Henderson had used with the long waves from lightning flashes, and he leaned over and connected the heavy spiral of closely wound wire, throwing it into his circuit. Instantly the telephones spoke so loud that he could hear the shrill cry of the spark even from where the receivers lay beside him on the table. Quickly fastening them to his ears he listened. The sound was clear, sharp, and metallic, and vastly higher in pitch than a ship's call. It ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... and all Van de Weyer has told us n'est pas rassurant. With such an extraordinary man as Louis Napoleon, one can never be for one instant safe. It makes me very melancholy; I love peace and quiet—in fact, I hate politics and turmoil, and I grieve to think that a spark may plunge us into the midst of war. Still I think that may be avoided. Any attempt on Belgium would be casus belli for us; that you may rely upon. Invasion I am not afraid of, but the spirit ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... morning, "Rico won't come to-day! Rico won't come to-day!" and scarcely ceased until the evening; and the second day it was the same, but on the third,—he was tired out by that time, and seemed like a little heap of straw, that the least spark could have reduced ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... of all reason;" a dictum which might admit of some ridicule. Armed with law, he committed acts of injustice; for in how many cases, passion mixing itself with law, summum jus becomes summa injuria. Official violence brutalised, and political ambition extinguished, every spark of nature in this great lawyer, when he struck at his victims, public or domestic. His solitary knowledge, perhaps, had deadened his judgment in other studies; and yet his narrow spirit could shrink with jealousy at the celebrity obtained by more liberal pursuits than his own. The errors ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... fixing his eyes on the carpet, and speaking in a low tone, "the few gasps that agitate the bosom here? If that were all, it were of but little more consequence than any other sigh. But this is only the beginning. It is the lighting of the spark that shall blaze a glorious star, or burn a lurid conflagration for ever." He stopped; he raised his eyes to the face of Faith, whose own were fastened on him, and gazed fondly on her; his features ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... staff duties of quartermaster and commissary, his experience did not kindle in him any new love for his profession, nor any ardor of military glory. He had not revealed the possession of extraordinary talent, nor any spark of genius. He accounted the period of great value to him in his later life, but his heart was never enlisted in the cause for which the war was made. His letters home declared this. When he came to write his memoirs, speaking of the annexation of Texas, he said: "For myself I was bitterly opposed ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... eternal life.[24] The mysteries promised a blessed immortality to their initiates, and claimed to reveal to them infallible means of effecting their salvation. According to a generally accepted symbol, the spirit animating man was a spark, detached from the fires shining in the ether; it partook of their divinity and so, it was believed, had descended to the earth to undergo a trial. It ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... about your darkened shadow world, bound by the laws of sight and sense, but keeping always in our hearts the secrets of Audela and the secret of our manner of returning thither. Sometimes, too, for the sport's sake, we imprison in earthen figures a spark of the true life of Audela: and then you little persons, that have no authentic life, but only the flickering of a vexed shadow to sustain you in brief fretfulness, say it is very pretty; and you negligently applaud us as the most ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... I'll tell you of this friend. He found me happiest of the happy; fortune and honour crowned me; and love and peace lived in my heart. One spark of folly lurked there; That too he found; and by deceitful breath, blew it to flames that have consumed me. This friend ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... Hungarian girl opened her mouth as if to speak, then she shut it again. An indescribable expression was on her pretty, peasant face, the face of a down-trodden race, who yet retained in spirit a spark of rebellion and resentment. Marie, in her ragged blouse, with her countenance of inscrutable silence, standing behind her mistress's chair, surveying the denuded table, was the embodiment of a folk-lore song. She had been in America only a ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... were dead, excepting that there is a very little warmth just where the back of the skull joins the neck. Yet there is enough left to reanimate the whole being in a little time, so that life goes on as before. So in Rome's darkest and most dead days, the Capitol has always held within it a spark of vitality, ready to break out with ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... eyes; and for an hour after that, as he plodded onward, he mumbled things which neither Kazan nor any other living thing could have understood. But whatever delirium found its way into his voice, the fighting spark in his brain remained sane. The igloo and the starving woman whom Blake had abandoned formed the one living picture which he did not for a moment forget. He must find the igloo, and the igloo was close to the ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... Forget a single epithet and substitute another, and the result is certain disaster. He has the perfection of the phrase—and there it ends. I cannot remember a single line of Calverley's that contains a spark of human feeling. Mr. Birrell himself has observed that Calverley is just a bit inhuman. But the cause of it does not seem to have occurred to him. Nor does the biography explain it. If we are to believe the common report of all who knew Calverley, he was a man of simple mind and sincere, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... that window, Roland," she said; "see you amongst the several lights which begin to kindle, and to glimmer palely through the gray of the evening from the village of Kinross-seest thou, I say, one solitary spark apart from the others, and nearer it seems to the verge of the water?—It is no brighter at this distance than the torch of the poor glowworm, and yet, my good youth, that light is more dear to Mary Stuart, than every star that twinkles in the blue vault of heaven. By that ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... were made by the high garden wall, and the fourth and innermost by the house. Thus the whole length of the house fronted him, and it struck him as very singular that neither in the lower nor the upper windows was there anywhere a spark of light, nor was there any sound but the tossing of the branches and the wail of the wind among the chimneys. Not even a dog barked or rattled a chain, and from no chimney breathed a wisp of smoke. The house in the gloom of that melancholy evening had a singular ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost. Though a small particular may appear trifling to some, it will be relished by others; while every little spark adds something to the general blaze: and to please the true, candid, warm admirers of Johnson, and in any degree increase the splendour of his reputation, I bid defiance to the shafts of ridicule, or even of malignity. Showers of them have been ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Robert could not repress a shudder of horror. A slaver and he a prisoner on board her! He might be gone a year or more. Never was a lad in worse case, but somewhere in him was a spark of hope that refused to be extinguished. He gave a more imperious summons than ever to his will, and it returned ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... The lane, which was composed of dwellings of the lowest order, tenanted by the most abject profligates, was dark as midnight; for the tall dingy buildings absolutely intercepted every ray of light that proceeded from the murky sky, and there was not a spark in any of the sordid casements, nor any votive lamp in that foul alley. The only glimpse of casual illumination, and that too barely serving to render the darkness and the filth perceptible, was the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... occasion as sufficient." The players having withdrawn, the judges, sergeants, benchers, and other dignitaries, danced 'round about the coal fire;' that is to say, they danced round about a stove in which there was not a single spark of fire. The congregation of many hundreds of persons, in a hall which had not comfortable room for half the number, rendered the air so oppressively hot that the master of the revels wisely resolved to lead his troop of revellers round an empty grate. The chronicler of this ridiculous ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... another woman is to be won in five minutes. It is not to be supposed that Mrs Dobbs Broughton had ever been won by any one except Mr Dobbs Broughton. At least, let it not be supposed that she had ever acknowledged a spark of love for Conway Dalymple. But nevertheless there was enough of jealousy in her present mood to make her think poorly of Miss Van Siever's capacity for standing a siege against the artist's eloquence. Otherwise, having left the two together with the object which she had acknowledged to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... engine of destruction was a fuse. The rain had drenched it and quenched its spark of fire, doubtless at some break in the fiber, since fuse is supposedly water-proof. Nothing but the thunder-storm had availed to save his life. He had walked into a trap, like a trusting animal, and chance alone had intervened to ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... opinion were blocked up. Books were still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... trials that remain: I trace them the vein and the other vein That meet on thy brow and part again, Making our rapid mystic mark; And I bid my people prove and probe Each eye's profound and glorious globe Till they detect the kindred spark In those depths so dear and dark, 580 Like the spots that snap and burst and flee, Circling over the midnight sea. And on that round young cheek of thine I make them recognize the tinge, As when of ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... the Peishwa is that he is a man without a spark of good feeling; that he has neither conscience nor gratitude, and would betray his own brother, if he thought that he would obtain any advantage by so doing. He is a born schemer, and his sole idea of politics is to play off one faction against another. I would rather take the ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... read as a popular and powerful book of devotion. His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the gospel; his satire is sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of human life; and many of his portraits are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he finds a spark of piety in his reader's mind, he will soon kindle it to a flame; and a philosopher must allow that he exposes, with equal severity and truth, the strange contradiction between the faith and practice of the Christian world. Under the names of Flavia and Miranda he has admirably described ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... of the fifteenth century, was not an unimportant event. The mere substitution of the Academic for the Peripatetic philosophy would indeed have done little good. But anything was better than the old habit of unreasoning servility. It was something to have a choice of tyrants. "A spark of freedom," as Gibbon has justly remarked, "was produced by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... put out the fire, every spark, and took the burro and horse trail, to the rescue again. We must pretend that this was only a ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... of the whole City, or, at least, as far as the Bridge and Parts adjacent. Let his Thoughts proceed to examine, why, or how, in that precipitate Fall, not one Nail, nor one Piece of Iron, in that large Fabrick, should afford one little Spark to enflame that Mass of sulphurous Matter it was loaded with; and if he is at a loss to find a Providence, I fear his Friends will be more at a loss to find his Understanding. But the Battle of Landen happening while our ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... jade, your escapade, And, lo! your wounded shoulders show it! No manly spark left such a mark— Leastwise he surely ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... bringing up others of a strangely confusing nature, but at last, just when he was ready to confess to this fresh trouble, he came upon candle and tinder-box, over which his trembling fingers played for some minutes before the welcome spark appeared in the tinder and suffered itself to be blown up into a glow instead ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... a pair of good-lookin' blue eyes opened agin on this world, Arvilly had got the pretty little girl all washed and comforted, and a piller under his head; and the minute his blue eyes opened a spark flew out of 'em right from that piller that kindled up a simultanous one in the cool gray ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... other, pressing down his key. The blue spark leaped out for a long moment, but Mart was careful not to break it, and with a satisfied nod he threw off the current. The Seamew's wireless, in spite of a year of disuse, was in splendid shape; like other ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... the tiny spark seemed to increase, not only in size, but intensity; and, before many minutes had elapsed, it proclaimed itself no longer a mere spark, but a blaze of light, with its own luminous halo around it. The ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... concentrated by evaporation and cooled down, about five-sixths of the chlorate of potash crystallizes out. It is purified by redissolving and crystallization, and is sold either in the state of crystals or finely ground. During these operations care must be taken lest a spark should produce the inflammation of the chlorate on contact with any organic substance. Large quantities of potassium chlorate exposed to strong heat in contact with the wood of casks or the timber of a roof have produced violent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... a spark through a barrel of gunpowder. Like wildfire it flew about the church that the Duke's party and the Parson had quarrelled, and this was a public protest. Whig and Tory settled that with one scrape of the feet, and Major Dyngwall ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in a way to make you feel that you have received a favor. She kept reminding me that it was my business to wait on her: if these things were paid for in cash, I should want high wages, for the duties are far from light. But I can stand it: within the bosom of Robert T. glows a spark of warm and pure philanthropy. When I see my fellow-creatures in need, and this good right arm refuses to extend its friendly aid, may my hand cleave to the roof of my mouth—O well, you know what I mean. I used to retire to my meagre and philosophic cot-bedstead ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... have been very insulting to our officers, calling to them that very shortly they will give us battle. My best information is that they have fully determined to attack both outside and within the city before our additional troops arrive, and the least spark may ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... purporting to be a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of the chief pleasures which has graced my later years. In the last fifteen years she has been, out of my family, my most chosen friend. She is a ray of light to me, from which I can always strike a spark by thinking of her. I do not know that I should please her or do any good by naming her. But not to allude to her in these pages would amount almost to a falsehood. I could not write truly of myself without saying that such a friend had been vouchsafed to me. I trust she may live to read ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... to my father since. God forgive me!" she cried, "but I have despised him from that hour. When I knew that he had plotted to sell me to that detestable brute, working upon me to save his honour, of which he has not the smallest spark; that he had recognized and denied you, friendless before our house, and sent you into the darkness at Vauxhall to be murdered, then he was no father of mine. I would that you might know what my mother has suffered from such a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... characteristic love of small things, the germination of great truths; it pays a compliment to humanity by asserting the value of every opinion, it demonstrates that even in so sordid a thing as a police court there is a spiritual spark; in a word, it is an attempt to see God, not on the hill-tops or in the valleys, but in the back streets ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... to do this; that they sometimes do not is a matter which I will not now go into, suffice it for my purpose if I admit that Mr Hardy can do this. In Farmer Oak there is nothing to object to; the conception is logical, the execution is trustworthy; he has legs, arms, and a heart; but the vital spark that should make him of our flesh and of our soul is wanting, it is dead water that the sunlight never touches. The heroine is still more dim, she is stuffy, she is like tow; the rich farmer is a figure ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... for a moment think that his words would so touch his uncle. He had spoken from his own stand-point, with thought of himself alone, and would have been amazed indeed could he have known what a steady flame within his uncle's mind his little spark ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... the Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age—all that is or has been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either in Europe or in the New World, may be traced to the spark left burning upon our shores by ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... that the sword is broken, Our sword, that was halfway drawn? Is it so, that the light was a spark, That the bird we hailed as the lark Sang in her sleep in the dark, And the song we took for a token Bore false witness ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... does," said Meldon. "That won't matter. What I have got to take care about is that he doesn't catch sight of either Miss King or Simpkins. I don't know whether you quite realise, Major, that as long as that judge is in Ballymoy we are living on the edge of a volcano. The smallest spark might set the thing off and cause ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... quick glance at the girl Lodusky. She leaned against the wall just as she had done before; she was as cool as ever, though the spark which hinted at exultation still shone steadily in ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... they always met as if they had parted only the night before. There was neither shyness nor forwardness in Dawtie. Perhaps a livelier rose might tinge her sweet round cheek when she saw Andrew; perhaps a brighter spark shone in the pupil of Andrew's eye; but they met as calmly as two prophets in the secret of the universe, neither anxious nor eager. The old relation between them was the more potent that it made so little ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... in Jim's condition of mind this yielding of her lips and her whispers of love had really been a mistake. Not only had she made the situation perilously sweet for herself, but in Jim's case she had added the spark to the powder. She realized her blunder when it was too late. And the fact that she did not regret it very much, and seemed to have lost herself in a defiant, reckless spell, warned her again that she, too, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... not proved how feebly words essay To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight— His changing cheek—his sinking heart confess ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... first, though not a spark survive, Some careful hand may teach to burn; The last, alas! can ne'er survive; No touch can bid its ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... have genius. The contrary is of course probable, but it is not demonstrated. If you have, the world wants you more than you want it. It not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of genius that shows itself among us; there is not a bull-calf in our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one, among his friends and no takers, that he is the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... also in the fact, generally admitted by the inhabitants of the northern regions, that, when the auroras appear low, a crackling is heard similar to that of the electric spark. The Greenlanders think that the souls of the dead are then striking against each other in the air. M. Ramm, Inspector of Forests in Norway, wrote to M. Hansteen, in 1825, that he had heard the noise, which always coincided with the appearance of the luminous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... The spark the Grecian from Olympus caught, Left not a loftier trace; The daring of the sculptor's hand has wrought A soul in that sweet face! He won as well the sacred fire from heaven. God-sent, not stolen down, And no Promethean doom for him is given, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... Julius. The lapses of the virtuous may make, indirectly, for good. And your instinct, after all, was both the healthy and the artistic one. Velasquez ought to have been incapable of putting his talent to such vile uses, and the first comer with a spark of true philanthropy in him ought to have knocked that poor ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... had married this woman by force, and that she had once wished of her own accord to marry Starling. And now she walked with him; she wore a gown he must have brought; she had forgiven him. A hot spark ran from my heart to my brain. I turned and started ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... astonishment—almost consternation—she could think of nothing else. He would not buy it for her. He thought her too silly to trust. But, if it were Robin's—it would be hers also. A girl couldn't turn her own mother into the street. Amid the folds of her narrow being hid just one spark of shrewdness which came to life where she ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... was broached, and much of the powder scattered about. After the boats had disappeared, the pirates were retiring from the fort, when Tompion's gallant attack on the mistico called them back, and it was at this time that a spark from the lantern of a man, sent for a further supply of powder, fell among the scattered grains, and produced the conflagration I have before spoken of. As the flames burst forth, and burnt with terrific energy, Zappa flew towards the building, in vain ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... multiply, and replenish the earth? upon One who declared it to be a legitimate source of joy to every mother that a child was born to the world? upon One whose love to all whom He has made is to our love as the light of the mighty sun to a fire-fly's spark wandering in darkness?" ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... cause why the stars fall from heaven, he answered: "That it is but our opinion; for if one star fall, it is the great judgment of God upon us, as a forewarning of some great thing to come: for when we think that a star falleth, it is but as a spark that issueth from a candle or flame of fire; for if it were a substantial thing, we should not so soon lose the sight of them as we do. But likewise if so be that we see as it were a stream of fire fall from the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... 16," shouted the Warder to the Duke; "lend a hand here on the road; look alive, now." The old man went toward the wall, as if nothing could surprise him, no indignity arouse a spark of resentment. He tried to hurry to win the Warder's approbation; but in doing so he stumbled in climbing the low wall, upon which he turned to the officer with a ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... keep a silence so inhuman; But seek some other hand to close your eyes. Tho' but a spark of life remains within you, My soul shall go before you to the Shades. A thousand roads are always open thither; Pain'd at your want of confidence, I'll choose The shortest. Cruel one, when has my faith Deceived you! Think how in my arms you ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... faint heart beat quick. A spark of her mistress's spirit flew up into her eyes as she ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... in force two hundred pounds of the common gunpowder. At one end of the machine is fastened an invisible clock-work meant to regulate the time of the explosion, which time may be fixed from one minute to thirty-six hours. The spark is produced by means of a steel needle which gives a spark at the touch-hole, and communicates thereby the fire to the ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky

... or reason in his fancies, they would not give way so easily; but it is all talk, all extravagant notions—here one day, gone the next. Not a spark of ambition!' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... banish your image from my heart than I would to deliberately still its pulses. Never, never—such an attempt, such an act, if successful, would be a murder of the affections. No. Lucy, whilst one spark of mortal life is alive in my body, whilst memory can remember the dreams of only the preceding moment, whilst a single faculty of heart or intellect remains by which your image can be preserved, I shall cling to that image as the shipwrecked sailor ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... high, and a very handsome man to boot; but his advantages were purely physical; not a spark of genius animated his fine features and commanding figure, and he was battling for a moderate share of provincial celebrity, when Mrs. Piozzi fell in with him at Bath. It has been rumoured in Flintshire that she wished to marry him, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... in the moral as well as the material order are of a nature to make us hate existence. "Then I loathed life."[122] Indeed, the so-called moral order which, were it, in theory, what it is asserted to be in truth, might reconcile us to our lot and kindle a spark of hope in the human breast, is but the embodiment of rank immorality. "All things come alike to all indiscriminately; the one fate overtaketh the upright man and the miscreant, the clean and the unclean, him who sacrifices and him ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... marry come up! [Sir J. Hooker jestingly congratulated him on taking up botany in his old age.] I should like to know of a younger spark. The first time I heard myself called "the old gentleman" was years ago when we were in South Devon. A half-drunken Devonian had made himself very offensive, in the compartment in which my wife and I were travelling, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... I, and these One essence I believe, so one and trine, They bear conjunction both with sunt and est. With the profound conjunction and divine, Which now I touch upon, doth stamp my mind Ofttimes the doctrine evangelical. This the beginning is, this is the spark Which afterwards dilates to vivid flame, And, like a star in heaven, is sparkling in me." Even as a lord, who hears what pleases him, His servant straight embraces, giving thanks For the good news, as soon as he is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... to which her husband had alluded. She recovered her self-possession on Mountjoy's appearance, with the ease of a mistress of her art. "Pardon me," she said, holding up her book with one hand, and tapping it indicatively with the other: "Shakespeare carries me out of myself. A spark of the poet's fire burns in the poet's humble servant. May I hope that I have made myself understood? You look as if you ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... one night when it was dark, She blew up such a tiny spark That all the town was bothered; From it she raised such flame and smoke That many in great terror woke, ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various

... front of her—the tall Adele Rossignol with her red hair and her coarse good looks and her sapphire dress, and the hard-featured, sallow maid. The maid was carrying Celia's white coat. They did not mean to murder her, then. They meant to take her away, and even then a spark of hope lit up in the girl's bosom. For even with her illusions crushed she still clung to life with all the passion of ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... day the tesserae were verified with greater care than usual; and what was more, the centurion Scevinus, a strict soldier, devoted soul and body to Caesar, recognized Vinicius. But evidently in his iron-clad breast there glimmered yet some spark of pity for misfortunes. Instead of striking his spear in token of alarm, he led Vinicius aside ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... thee, then, even if it displease," cried Amine; and she rose, her cheek glowing, her eyes spark ling, her beautiful form dilated. "I am a daughter of Granada; I am the beloved of a king; I will be true to my birth and to my fortunes. Boabdil el Chico, the last of a line of heroes, shake off these gloomy fantasies—these doubts and dreams that ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... because I, for my poor part, feel that there are few things which we, all of us, people and ministers, need more than to catch some of the infection of this courageous confidence, and to be fired with some spark of Paul's enthusiasm for, and glorying in, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... him in unseen without and unnoticed within, for the Colonel and Master Freake were again at their arguments of state, hammer and tongs, and they minded the click of the door behind them no more than the crack of a spark at their feet. Indeed the Colonel said "Pish!" with great vehemence, and Master Freake's "My dear sir!" had a shake of pepper in it. As for me, I like a man who, when he gets into a thing, gets into ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... shop with a German name over the door should be pillaged. Their verdict was, in effect, "Serve God right, for creating the Germans!" The incident would have been impossible in a country where the Church was as powerful as the Church of England, had it had at the same time a spark of catholic as distinguished from tribal religion in it. As it is, the thing occurred; and as far as I have observed, the only people who gasped were the Freethinkers. Thus we see that even among men who make a profession of religion ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw

... cynic he is a satirist as much as Pope or Dryden, but the most kindly satirist who ever wrote. His thrusts are keen and yet there is always a humorous laugh behind, and never a spark of malice or uncharitableness. Thackeray bore no hatred in his heart towards any man. He could not bear to give pain, and as he grew older his satire became more gentle even than at first, and he regretted some of his earlier and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... depended the wires that were attached to the receiving and sending apparatus. These wires were on a reel, and would he uncoiled as the balloon arose. The earth-end would be attached to the telephone receivers and to the apparatus, consisting of a spark-gap wheel and other instruments designed to send into space the electrical impulses that could be broken up into dots, dashes and spaces, spelling out words according to the Morse or ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... smile, nor tell me what's amiss? Have I been cold to hug thee, too remiss, Too temperate in embracing? Tell me, has desire To-thee-ward died in the embers, and no fire Left in the raked-up ashes, as a mark To testify the glowing of a spark? I must confess I left thee, and appeal 'Twas done by me more to increase my zeal, And double my affection[]; as do those Whose love grows more inflamed by being froze. But to forsake thee, [] could ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... curious reactions and evasions, by distastes and prejudices and unintended hints of the past. The girl was proudly incapable of jealousy and, because he was extremely jealous, this virtue piqued him. He told her recondite incidents of his own life on purpose to arouse some spark of it, but to no avail. She possessed him now—nor did she desire ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... by informing Miss Penny, Mr. Graeme, that this meeting is purely accidental? I caught a spark in her eye and I know what it means. Had you the very slightest idea that we ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... terms so as not too greatly to hurt his feelings, had made constant appeal for the past fifteen years. Hitherto he had hidden all signs of humorous titillation behind his impassive mask. To-night, a spark of sentiment had been the match to explode the mine of his mirth. It was a serious position. Here had I been wasting on him half a lifetime's choicest objurgations. What was I to do in the future ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... beauty and truth and love is all that is most vital to the soul, all that feeds it and gives it power; if aught be lacking, it is the eye to see and the heart to understand. Grain, fruit and vegetable, wool, silk and cotton, gold, silver and iron, steam and electricity,—were not all, like the spark, within arm's reach of savage man? The slow material progress of mankind through ages is paralleled by the slow growth of the individual soul in laying hold of and putting to use the resources of spiritual strength that are nigh unto it. The service of man to man in the ways of the spirit is, in ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... in the costume of the period, for which we can always refer to contemporary numbers of "Punch," the fact that I was for the most part walking sedately either with my mother or my aunt, or even with my sister and her governess, caused the spark of my vision that they were armed for conquest, or at the least for adventure, more expansively to glow. I am not sure whether as a general thing they honoured me at such instants with a sign of recognition; but I recover in especial the sense ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... seeing a soul saved. They have spent years in study; but they have not spent a day, much less ten days, fasting and praying and waiting upon God for His anointing that should fill them with heavenly wisdom and power for their work. They are like a great gun loaded and primed, but without a spark of fire to turn the powder and ball ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... the shapes of tables and chairs—hunger and fancy!"—"My talents and superiority," he continues, "made me for ever at the head in my routine of study, though utterly without the desire to be so; without a spark of ambition; and as to emulation, it had no meaning for me; but the difference between me and my form-fellows, in our lessons and exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between me and them in the wide, wild, wilderness ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... into which all will ultimately be absorbed. "As milk changes to curd, and water to ice, so is Brahma variously transformed and diversified, without aid of exterior means of any sort." The human soul, according to the Vedas, is a portion of the supreme ruler, as a spark ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... shining brightest when fanned most by the tempest, and standing out as a bulwark which Delmar, with all her relentless battering, could not surmount. Time upon time Delmar pounded dangerously near Elliott's goal yet each time the Elliott spark of resistance was somehow equal to the occasion with Tim Mooney's toe doing Herculean work toward driving the invaders well back into their own territory from whence they were forced to begin all ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... that Oor faithers didna ken, For ae way foond in "Buchan," noo The doctors gie us ten; But I hope to a' the Pooers abune Auld Death may be owre thrang To come an' smoor my vital spark Wi' ang-bang-pang. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie

... and, carrying out the same bold idea of liberty, he continues, "It is time to act;" or, in the language of the Know Nothing salutation, "It is time for work;" for "what signifies self, if a single spark of that genius of liberty worthy of the past, can be bequeathed unquenchably to the future?" In the language of a ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... advance the business in hand. Towards the end of the fourth act, however, we approach the climax, and matters begin to move. Alexis' marriage being now imminent, Silvia thinks she can venture at least to give her lover some spark of hope by narrating her story under fictitious names. This she does, making use of the transparent anagrams Isulia and Sirthis[256]. As Silvia ends her tale Montanus rushes in, determined to be revenged for the favour ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Minutes grew. With every passing minute the threat weighed heavier and heavier, until it seemed, at last, that only the smallest spark was needed to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... the ship were held back for cargo I would have a whole week at a time, and in this way I saw a deal of my sister-in-law, Sarah. She was a fine tall woman, black and quick and fierce, with a proud way of carrying her head, and a glint from her eye like a spark from a flint. But when little Mary was there I had never a thought of her, and that I swear as I ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle

... flower. And surely if changes like these may occur, Ye men who have reason, how could ye demur At change in superior orders of nature? And least in a species so sure to create your Felicity (if it is not the reverse: In such an event she is rather a curse). No one, that possesses a spark of the human, Would think of opposing the progress of woman; But all would be happy when one of her kind A sphere more refined and exalted should find— Should gracefully 'merge from a chrysalis state, To bask in the light of a loftier fate. But (those hateful digressions, I heartily ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... touch one of her pig-tails I'll up and tell right out how I found you snivelling in the ma'sh like a great baby. So now!" and Ben emphasized his threat with a blow of the suspended rail which splashed the water over poor Sam, quenching his last spark of resistance. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... his gallant steed bestrode, And forth upon his way he rode, As spark flies from a brand; Upon his crest he bare a tower, And therein stuck a lily flower: Save him from ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... appreciated, and the admonition of the Wise Man more extensively heeded, what a change would be effected in human life! How many of its keenest sufferings would be annihilated! The spark which kindles many great fires would be withheld; and, great as are the evils and sufferings caused by war, they are not as great, probably, as those originating in impatience and want of temper. The fretfulness of human life, it seems not hard to believe, is a greater evil, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... of Satan," he said, "to drive us to despondency, so as to choke out the God-spark in us. Your sin is great, but your Father in Heaven awaits you, and will rejoice as a King rejoices over a princess redeemed from captivity. Every soul is a whole Bible in itself. Yours contains Sarah ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... beneficent vital-spark every body, but a lawyer, is in search; and it is what every body, but a lawyer, is delighted to find. No wonder therefore that a lawyer should meet discomfiture, and confusion, when he pretends to discuss the abstract ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at frequent intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the bows and go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a shower of brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old Father Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and a great clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... infused the colonel with the strength of a lion went out like a spark, and as quickly. Umballa rolled from his paralyzed fingers and lay on the floor, gasping and sobbing. Hare fell back against the pillar, groaning. The cessation of dynamic nerve force filled him with racking ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... to the hospital to inquire from the lady superior how the poor idiot is, who has taken such a prominent part in the bloody drama at Valpinson. His mental condition remains unchanged since he has been examined by experts. The spark of intelligence which the crime had elicited seems to be extinguished entirely and forever. It is impossible to obtain a word from him. He is, however, not locked up. Inoffensive and gentle, like a poor animal that has lost its master, he wanders mournfully through the courts and gardens ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... self-sufficient German could not see was plain to Jane Clayton—that the sympathies of Obergatz' native soldiers lay with the villagers and that all were so heartily sickened by his abuse that it needed now but the slightest spark to detonate the mine of revenge and hatred that the pig-headed Hun had been assiduously fabricating beneath his ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... battle he had no equal, with the possible exception of "Stonewall" Jackson. In this respect he to my mind more nearly resembled John Churchill, the great duke of Marlborough, than any other historical character of modern times of whom I have any knowledge. If he had not the spark of genius, he came very near to having it. This is a personal judgment put down here, the writer trusts, with becoming modesty and with no desire to put himself forward as ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... see you so pack up and come down with Dr. Gregory, if the least spark of regard for me is slumbering in your breast. Mamma and Florence are writing to beg you but though an insignificant member of the family, considering that instead of being 'next to head', only little Edith prevents my being ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... your mother keep her if she's so cross?" inquired Molly, leaning forward to blow the last spark which still lingered ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... men, on the morning of the 19th, lost their lives by a very melancholy accident. They were cutting up a captured ammunition-waggon for firewood, when one of their swords striking against a nail, sent a spark among the powder. When I looked in the direction of the explosion, I saw the two poor fellows about twenty or thirty feet up in the air. On falling to the ground, though lying on their backs or bellies, some extraordinary effort of nature, caused by the agony of the moment, made them spring ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... idioms of person or race and is universally acceptable in form and essence. Such is the intrinsic nature of the process, and the historical circumstances of its beginnings make it clear. It was the quick mind of the Greek which acted as the spark to fire the trains of thought and observation which had been accumulating for ages through the agency of the priests in Egypt and Babylonia. The Greeks lived and travelled between the two centres, and their ...
— Progress and History • Various

... that way entered into him, came so close, possessed him so completely, that he could not hold back those words about them. A spirit quite beyond his control had moved him to that little toast. After that, something—perhaps a spark from the nerve of those men of whom he had spoken—brought his mind firmly into possession of the feeling that everything was all right. It was not that he argued himself out of his fears, but rather that something brought the assurance of its being ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... He was beginning to doubt, if, after all, Fargeas intended to attempt the experiment. He longed, with keen desire, to speak to Marsa; to know if his look, his breath, like a puff of wind over dying ashes, would not rekindle a spark of life in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... was informed that either at Deckendorf or Filtzhofen there was a barrel containing 20,000 florins, concealed at the house of an apothecary. Impelled by the desire of booty, Trenck hastened to the place, with a candle in his hand, searching everywhere, and, in his hurry, dropped a spark into a quantity of gunpowder, by the explosion of which he was dreadfully scorched. They carried him off, but the scars and the gunpowder with which his skin was blackened ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... he intended to place before her. Would she accept it? And—what then? The long days of work, unlit by any hope of the future. The process of building, building, which all men desire, without that spark of delight which inspires the desire. Just the drudgery of it. The resulting wealth and commercial power of it maybe, but not one moment of the joy with which only two days before he had regarded the ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... which had been nibbled by some giant mouse, she crept through it, and found herself in an enormous hall. She could not have seen the other end of it at all, except for the great fire that was burning there, diminished to a spark in the distance. Towards this fire she ran as fast as she could, and was not far from it when something fell before her with a great clatter, over which she tumbled, and went rolling on the floor. She was not much hurt however, and ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald

... suddenly cut down. Just such is Man, who vaunts himself to-day, Decking himself in all his best array; But in the midst of all his bravery Death rounds him in the ear, "Friend, thou must die." Or like a shadow in a sunny day, Which in a moment vanishes away; Or like a smile or spark,—such is the span Of life allowed this microcosm, Man. Cease then vain man to boast; for this is true, Thy brightest glory's as the morning dew, Which disappears when first the rising sun Displays his beams ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... classification of faculties in which the Victorine School almost revelled, and to concentrate his attention on the union of the soul with God. And therefore in his more developed teaching,[13] the "spark" which is the point of contact between the soul and its Maker is something higher than the faculties, being "uncreated." He seems to waver about identifying the "spark" with the "active reason," but inclines on the whole to regard ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... gray form to throw In a sliver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark— Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... said Mrs. Luttrell. "He stood in your place. If you had a spark of proper pride in you, you would know that he was your enemy, and you will feel ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... intense darkness, feeling with outstretched hands. The first object encountered was a rough table, the surface of which I explored, discovering thereon a candlestick with flint and steel beside it. With relief I struck a spark, and a yellow ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... estimate, and thought I could pull you through by a slight majority. Now, it's different. While you may lose some votes from the 'near-silk stocking' class, yet for every vote so lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the fans ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... of Bonaparte, no such vast forces had been under arms. To command these required not only the divine military spark, but hardly-acquired experience. And the mimic war which the elements of European army life always affords had been wanting to educate our generals. It is not wonderful, then, that two years of fruitless campaigning was needed to teach our leaders how to utilize on such difficult terrain ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... the carburetor rubbing on the spark plugs," she said plaintively, "I'd get the Doric in spite of everything. Did you ever see such blue eyes ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... anything about chemistry—volatile essences, noxious drugs, subtle poisons? I do." (Here Tom Ryfe observed his ally turn pale.) "Permit me to remark, sir, that if you don't, you are like a school-boy carrying a pocketful of squibs and crackers on the fifth of November, unconscious that a single spark may blow him into the Christmas holidays before he can say 'knife!' Let me see those lozenges, sir—let me have them in my hand; I'll tell you in five seconds what they're made of, and how, and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat; And slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; And love is love, in ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... present, but it is only, perhaps, because we are too remote and unimportant to waste a thought about. Happy insignificance! As one of the little means of supporting existence in so remote a spot, and keeping alive, at the same time, the spark of literary excitement, I began, in December, a manuscript jeu d'esprit newspaper, to be put in covers and sent from house to house, with the perhaps too ambitious cognomen ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... The spark which lit up his genius could not live in that goodness which constituted the groundwork of his nature, but in passion, called forth by the sight of great misfortunes, great faults, great crimes, in fact, by the sight of all which attracted ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... eloquence which on this occasion flashed forth from the coarse and unlettered Henry, as the spark-of fire from the flint, continued to distinguished him both as a Member of the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg, and afterwards as a member of Congress. He took from the first a bold and active part against the pretensions of the mother country; indeed Mr. Jefferson goes so far ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... In the days of danger from her own people which had followed the disastrous Japanese war, Russia had courted her subject nations by granting them every species of favor. Now with her returning strength she recommenced her unyielding purpose of "Russianizing" them. Finland was deprived of the last spark of independence; so that her own chief champions said of her sadly in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... to explain. In five minutes he and the captain were head over heels in spark plugs and batteries and valves and cylinders. Mr. Black endeavored to help out with quotations from his experience as a motorist, but his suggestions, not being of a nautical nature, were ignored for the most part. After a time he lost interest and settled back ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... an End, and put to Silence all the other Boasts, there was a young Prodigal Spark that had wasted a fair Estate in being a Customer to her House, thought he had now a fit opportunity to put her in Mind of his own Merits, and therefore ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... Her person, though not strikingly handsome, was pleasing, and her temper and disposition appeared to be perfectly amiable. He began therefore to pay her very serious attention, but here again poor Lionel had only to lament his mistake. He found Claribel quite as untutored as her cousins, without a spark more desire of improvement. He was not likely to meet with a repulse from so gentle a creature, but the acquiescence with which she received his assiduities seemed more the result of habitual passiveness than of reciprocal attachment. She betrayed ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown

... or two before Melanie moved or gave any symptoms of recovering from her fainting fit, and during those minutes the lips of Raoul had been pressed so often and so warmly to those of the fair insensible, that had any spark of perception remained to her, the fond and lingering pressure could not have failed to call the "purple light of love," to her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... entirely for men, I should think when it was proposed to women they would feel, at least, some spark of the old spirit of races allied to our own. "If he is to be my bridegroom and lord" cries Brunhilda, [Footnote: See the Nibelungen Lays.] "he must first be able to pass through fire and water." "I will serve ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... performance drew many people to church. The singers were undeniably the great attraction, and they knew it; consequently I was somewhat in their power, and had to submit to various anthems and pieces, such as "Vital Spark." "Angels Ever Bright and Fair," and others, not altogether to my taste, but which they evidently performed to ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... four commonsense fundamentals: continued reduction of the growth in Federal spending; preserving the individual and business tax reductions that will stimulate saving and investment; removing unnecessary Federal regulations to spark productivity; and maintaining a healthy dollar and a stable monetary policy, the latter a responsibility of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... at all times of the year and in all weathers, an abundant, practically a boundless, supply of electricity. It has never yet happened to him to send his collector up to even so low a height as four hundred feet without getting a spark in his discharge-box at the earth. He has discovered, however, that the greater the amount of moisture in the air, the greater is the height to which he must send the collector before getting the first spark. There is no doubt that large quantities of electricity ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... Frobisher knew what it was. Far away, on the edge of the horizon, appeared a small spark of light which shot rapidly up into the sky, where it hung for a few seconds and then burst into a mushroom-shaped cluster of red stars that gradually floated downward again, fading from view ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... unjust? Which arises from those African wars, that relate to the present subject? The African princes, corrupted by the merchants of Europe, seek every opportunity of quarrelling with one another. Every spark is blown into a flame; and war is undertaken from no other consideration, than that of procuring slaves: while the Europeans, on the other hand, happy in the quarrels which they have thus excited, supply them with arms and ammunition for the accomplishment ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... the lover, lights its beacon "like a spark fallen from the full moon"; but "presently the light grows feebler, and fades to a discreet nightlight, while all around the host of nocturnal creatures, delayed in their affairs, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... in that 'refuge.' It was just like being in jail. We were locked up and guarded like prisoners. Even then, if I could have liked the other boys it might have been all right. But they were mostly street-boys of the worst kind—lying, and sneaking, and cowardly, without one spark of manhood or one idea of square dealing and fair play. There was only one thing I did like, and that was the books. Oh, I did lots of reading, I tell you! But that could n't make up for the rest. I wanted the freedom and the sunlight ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... it loomed, a cratered, jagged globe of desolation indescribable; of sheer, bitter cold incarnate and palpable; of stark, sharp contrasts. Gigantic craters, in whose yawning depths no spark of warmth had been generated for countless cycles of time, were surrounded by vast plains eroded to the dead level of a windless sea. Every lofty object cast a sharply outlined shade of impenetrable blackness, beside which the weak light of the sun became a dazzling glare. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... word, sir," said Kennedy, his features working sympathetically. "To-night at eight I will go on watch with you. By the way, leave me those A. Spark notes." ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... so clever as need be, and she listened with a face that didn't show a spark of the thought behind it. But he failed to move her an inch, because, unknown to him, she'd got a fine trump card up ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... powder gives a flash about one ten-thousandth of a second in duration, but that is by no means the speed limit of the film. The only trouble is enough light and sufficient shutter speed. Pictures have been taken by means of spark photography with an exposure of less than one three-millionth of a second. The whole secret of this machine lies in the shutter. This big disc with the slots in the edge is set up before the lens and run at such a speed that half a million slots per second pass before the lens. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... elisions of the West, his speech had a dignity that suggested breeding. It was quite likely he was not a gentleman, according to the code in which she had been brought up, but it was equally sure there burned in him that dynamic spark of self-respect which is at the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... all that sorrow could To ease her woes give utterance, loud had wail'd In wild lament; all spark of reason fled, Her bosom tearing, through the world she roam'd. And now his limbs inanimate she sought; Then for his whiten'd bones: his bones she found, On banks far distant from his home inhum'd. Prone on his tomb her form she ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... not. With good economy, He fills his garish day with business, And posts his ledger, satisfied, at ev'n. Out on you! You are all alike—you, too. O were my sister here! She's wise—than I Far cleverer! Yet, too, when in her breast The spark of will and resolution falls, She flashes out in flames, like unto mine. Were she a man, she'd be a hero. Ye Before her courage and her gaze should flinch. Now let me sleep until she comes, for I Myself am but the dreaming ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... read Cicero nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns: and what is more astonishing he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator: he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam and ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... iron rivet that he drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow over ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... sheet mica is for insulating purposes in the manufacture of a large variety of electrical equipment. The highest grades are employed particularly in making condensers for magnetos of automobile and airplane engines and for radio equipment, and in the manufacture of spark plugs for high tension gas engines. Sheet mica is also used in considerable amounts for glazing, for heat insulation, and as phonograph diaphragms. Ground mica is used in pipe and boiler coverings, as an insulator, in patent roofing, and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... to a settlement of these poor refugees without a feeling of pity for the sufferings they have endured; and this spark of pity quickly warms and kindles into indignation when we think of the story of hapless Acadia—the grievous wrong done those simple-minded, harmless, honest people, by the rapacious, free-booting adventurers ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... know that, in casting about impatiently for an immediate causus belli, Wenceslas had hit upon poor, isolated, little Simiti as the point of ignition, and the pitting of its struggling priest against Don Mario as the method of exciting the necessary spark. He could not know that Wenceslas had represented to the Departmental Governor in Cartagena that an obscure Cura in far-off Simiti, an exile from the Vatican, and the author of a violent diatribe against papal authority, was the nucleus about which anticlerical sentiment ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of vice is trodden, at least once a week, by the same class of young men. The merchants' clerks are certainly creatures of no imagination, or they would have struck out some new way of going to the devil; they evidently have not a spark of what an eminent Irish lawyer called "the poetry of wickedness;" they uniformly begin with plundering the money drawer, and ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... his deliberate sanction to this unchristian and barbarous policy. Yet Father Meehan writes: 'But no; not even the dint of that manifesto, with the ring of true steel in its every line, could strike a spark out of their hearts, for they ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... and the loathsomeness of their many foul scandals among them; but they go a further length, to pass as severe a sentence on their duties and ordinances as God hath done, Isa. i. and lxvi. The Spirit convinceth according to scripture's light, and not according to the dark spark of nature's light; and so that which nature would have busked(306) itself with as its ornament, that which they had covered themselves with as their garment, the duties they had spread, as robes of righteousness, over their sins to hide them; all this now goeth under the name of filthiness and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... she can do that in a way to make you feel that you have received a favor. She kept reminding me that it was my business to wait on her: if these things were paid for in cash, I should want high wages, for the duties are far from light. But I can stand it: within the bosom of Robert T. glows a spark of warm and pure philanthropy. When I see my fellow-creatures in need, and this good right arm refuses to extend its friendly aid, may my hand cleave to the roof of my mouth—O well, you know what I mean. I used to retire to my meagre and philosophic cot-bedstead with aching ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... thing to a man who stood before some blades of copper pushing at them with a wooden stick, while above his head fat sparks leaped the gap between two brassy spheres. As if to complete this illustration for a bronze-age edition of "First Steps in Electricity" another cable twisted up from the spark gap and vanished out a small window. The entire thing might have been labeled "How to Generate A Radio Signal in the Crudest Manner." As Jason reached this conclusion in the smallest fraction of a second, and at almost ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... putting questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine, the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race; remains fast by the soul and sees ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... he sheathed his hanger, and grasped his cudgel. Meanwhile the people of the house being alarmed, one of my female cousins opened a window, and asked what was the matter. "The matter!" answered the lieutenant; "no great matter, young woman; I have business with the old gentleman, and this spark, belike, won't allow me to come alongside of him," that's all. After a few minutes pause we were admitted, and conducted to my grandfather's chamber through a lane of my relations, who honoured me with very significant ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... ought to exist in every village. Prompt action would often arrest the serious proportions of a fire. It would be a good thing if some substitute could be found for the wooden tiles used for roofing; in course of time they become like tinder, and a spark will fire the roof. The houses in Hungary are not, as a rule, constructed of wood, as in Upper Austria and Styria, nor are they nearly so picturesque as in that part of the world. In some Hungarian villages ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... had evidently taken no end of pains with his book, and done it gallantly well, too, making the thing hum: and I could not conceive why he should have been at that trouble—unless it were for the same reason that I built the palace, because some spark bites a man, and he would be like—but that is all vanity, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... main-spring of his actions. He had loved and mistrusted, had betrayed and destroyed the victim of his jealous regard; yet his hatred remained unextinguished—his revenge ungratified. The malice of envy and the gnawings of disappointed vanity were now concealed beneath the sullen apathy of age; but the spark slumbered in the grey ashes, although the heart had out-lived its fires. To make his character more intelligible it will be necessary to trace his history from the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... In the course of a recent correspondence with Mr. Stickney, I asked him if he recalled this incident. Under date of May 20, 1905, he wrote me from Sarasota, Florida: "The maple sugar incident had almost faded from my memory, but like a spark of fire smouldering under rubbish it needed but a breath to make it live, and I recall my reflections, after my astonishment, that you did so many quaint things, that it was quite in accordance with them that you should produce maple ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... desire—became the one thought of a life. Then, in the quiet silent night, while the full moon was shining, the Dryad saw a spark fly out of the moon's disc, and fall like a shooting star. And before the tree, whose leaves waved to and fro as if they were stirred by a tempest, stood a noble, mighty, and grand figure. In tones that were at once rich and strong, like the trumpet ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... the repeated applications made to him for help to save alive those honest producers of his wealth. The noble example of Lord Derby and other proprietors in Lancashire failed to kindle in his heart a spark of humanity, not to speak of generous emulation. The sum of 3,000 l. was raised in Lisburn, and by friends in Great Britain and America, which was expended in saving the people from going en masse to the workhouse. Behold a contrast! While the great ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... yellow wall, the delicate moulding of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration, not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact, the whole appearance of this wide dull tract seems eminently adapted to sepulchral piles. It is most melancholy, most funereal; and even that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... wireless telegraphy. The sending of a message across the garden in far-away Italy was a simple matter—the depressed key completed the electric circuit created by a strong battery through the induction coil and made a spark jump between the two brass knobs, which in turn started the ether vibrating at the rate of three or four hundred million times a minute from the tin box on top of a pole. The vibrations in the ether circled wider and wider, as the circular waves spread from the spot ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... Tailor: Mr. Dishart never got the length of the pulpit. He fell in a swound on the vestry floor. What caused it? Oh, nothing but the heat. Thrums is so dry that one spark would set it ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... leaning forward more than one-third of a cubit, which alone is the greatest and most insupportable fault committed by vulgar commonplace pretenders. Concerning the arms, they say that these are both stretched out without one touch of grace or one real spark of artistic talents, just as if you had never seen a naked model. Again, the right leg of Hercules and that of Cacus have got one mass of flesh between them, so that if they were to be separated, not only one of them, but both together, would be left without a ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... Admiral Nelson, after slightly mentioning the reception with which he had thus been honoured, particularly by their Sicilian majesties, he makes use of these modest and pious expressions—"You will not, my lord, I trust, think that one spark of vanity induces me to mention the most distinguished reception that ever, I believe, fell to the lot of a human being; but, that it is a measure of justice due to his Sicilian majesty and the nation. God knows, my heart is amongst ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... flames increased the warmth to such a degree that those who were the nearest shifted their position. The warrior who was on his feet stepped forward a single pace, and was still standing in his idle fashion with his hands half folded behind him, when a spark flew outward with a snap, and dropped down the neck of the unsuspicious red man. When he felt the burn, like the thrust of a big needle, he sprang several feet in the air, and began frantically clutching at the tormenting ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... it your hand that cut him down from the tree this morning, and if it was not, why do I need you now? Is my shame not enough in your eyes but that you must taunt me further? Do my innocent children want to look upon the faces of those who robbed them of a father? If there is a spark of manhood left in one of you, show it by leaving me alone! And you other scum, never fear but that you will clutter hell in reward for last night's work. Begone, and leave me ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... faint and hoarser,—his grasp was childish weak,— His eyes put on a dying look—he sighed and ceased to speak: His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled,— The soldier of the Legion, in a foreign land—was dead! And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strewn; Yea, calmly ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... the middle of the causeway. The lane, which was composed of dwellings of the lowest order, tenanted by the most abject profligates, was dark as midnight; for the tall dingy buildings absolutely intercepted every ray of light that proceeded from the murky sky, and there was not a spark in any of the sordid casements, nor any votive lamp in that foul alley. The only glimpse of casual illumination, and that too barely serving to render the darkness and the filth perceptible, was the faint streak ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... worldly wisdom kept for others' use, Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 350 His purse or knowledge all men's, like the sea. Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might (With pauses broken, while the fitful spark He blew more hotly rounded on the dark To hint his features with a Rembrandt light) Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more Whom he had seen, or knew from others' sight, And make them men to me as ne'er before: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... sunbeams which covered the early mythic houses. He and his assistants stand near the hut shaking rattles and singing a brief song to Qastcej[)i]ni, at the conclusion of which the patient is released. The initial spark of the fire used at these ceremonies and for all religious purposes is obtained by friction, and is regarded as essentially different from fire produced by flint and steel or otherwise, because the first spark ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... himself on the leeward side, he thought he saw something gleam, far out across the wrathful night. A wavering red spark— He brushed a stiffened hand across his eyes, wondering if the madness of wind and water had struck through into his own skull. A gust of ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson

... sublime research, philosophy May measure out the ocean deep, may count The sands or the sun's rays—but God! for Thee There is no weight nor measure:—none can mount Up to Thy mysteries; Reason's brightest spark, Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark: And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, Even like ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at frequent intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the bows and go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a shower of brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old Father Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and a great clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... noon he was fighting with his back against the wall. In Workingman's Hall he was making his last fierce fight to hold from crumbling the resolution of the strikers who still stood by their guns.... He threw the fire of his soul into their dull, phlegmatic faces. It struck no answering spark. Never before had he spoken to men without a consciousness of his powers, without pose, without dramatics. Now he was himself, and more dramatic, more compelling than ever before. ... He pleaded, begged, flayed his audience, but it did ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... into everything, I would go into the traghetti, which have their manners and their morals, and which used to have their piety. This piety was always a madonnina, the protectress of the passage—a quaint figure of the Virgin with the red spark of a lamp at her feet. The lamps appear for the most part to have gone out, and the images doubtless have been sold for bric-a- brac. The ferrymen, for aught I know, are converted to Nihilism—a faith consistent happily with a good stroke of business. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... surmounted by a statue—still showed signs of the fire, which, in 210 B.C., would have destroyed it but for thirteen slaves, who won their liberty by checking the blaze. Tradition had it that here the holy Numa had built the hut which contained the hearth-fire of Rome,—the divine spark which now shed its radiance over the nations. Back of the Temple was the House of the Vestals, a structure with a plain exterior, differing little from the ordinary private dwellings. Here Drusus had his litter ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... wagon behind him, his new suit was rumpled into many wrinkles and marked by dust and grass stains; his flame-coloured tie was twisted under one ear; his new straw hat was mashed quite out of shape; and in his eyes was a light that sundry citizens, on meeting him, could only interpret to be a spark struck from inner ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... frantic winds reached down the big schoolhouse chimney and drew up a spark of fire from the furnace in the basement. They lodged it where it would do the most harm, and, in a short time, the janitor was running with a white face to the principal's office. As quietly as possible each teacher was called out ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger

... was that the boy had overheard one or other of the Koshare's intimate conversations. But how came it that the Koshare knew about Okoya's aversion toward them? Who could have told them? Only his mother knew the secret! Had she, perhaps, she—The thought was like a spark which glowed for a while, grew to a flame, flared and flickered unsteadily within his heart, then began to shrink. No, no; it was impossible! it could not be! His mother would never betray her child! The flame died out, the spark remained fast ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... the heart of India, a mortal so far favored as never to have worn the abominable European costume—those hideous habits, and frightful hats, which render the men so ridiculous, so ugly, that in truth there is not a single good quality to be discovered in them, nor one spark of what can either captivate or attract! There comes to me at last a handsome young prince from the East, where the men are clothed in silk and cashmere. Most assuredly I'll not miss this rare and unique opportunity of exposing myself to a very serious and formidable temptation! ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... reduced to simple laws the complicated motions of the planets he cried out in ecstacy: "O God! now think I Thy thoughts after Thee!" Thus when a great writer of old time has been vouchsafed a spark of the divine fire we may think his divine thoughts after him by re-reading. And Shakespeare tells us in that deathless speech of Portia's, that since mercy is God's attribute we may by exercising it become like God. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... more grieved than surprised at the language she heard Major Bridgenorth use, and reasonably concluded that the society and circumstances in which he might lately have been engaged, had blown into a flame the spark of eccentricity which always smouldered in his bosom. This was the more probable, considering that he was melancholy by constitution and descent—that he had been unfortunate in several particulars—and that no passion is more easily nursed by indulgence, than the species of enthusiasm of which ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... original. The world is the ring of his spells, And the play of his miracles. As he giveth to all to drink, Thus or thus they are and think. With one drop sheds form and feature; With the next a special nature; The third adds heat's indulgent spark; The fourth gives light which eats the dark; Into the fifth himself he flings, And conscious Law is King of kings. As the bee through the garden ranges, From world to world the godhead changes; As the sheep go feeding in the waste, From form to form He ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... said and done. All this does not suit an English gentleman. You think differently; or perhaps you do not care whether it does or not. I admit I can't hold forth as you do; nor string a lot of fine words together. I am only an old nincompoop compared to a clever young spark like you. But I request you to keep off these topics in the company I like to see round my table. They don't like Jacobins, you ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... hearing what I said, exclaimed, "Massa, me got light, nebber fear!" Groping about, he soon found two pieces of dry wood, and fashioning them with his knife, he began to rub one against the other in a way which at length produced a bright spark. I had a handful of leaves ready, and we had quickly a capital fire blazing up just inside the cave. How grateful we ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... generally met without a third. However many weeks might have passed, they always met as if they had parted only the night before. There was neither shyness nor forwardness in Dawtie. Perhaps a livelier rose might tinge her sweet round cheek when she saw Andrew; perhaps a brighter spark shone in the pupil of Andrew's eye; but they met as calmly as two prophets in the secret of the universe, neither anxious nor eager. The old relation between them was the more potent that it made ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... to Van, were blended in grayish streaks, on either side, as his gaze was fastened on the vanishing car ahead. He shoved up his spark, gave her all the gas, froze to the wheel like a man of steel—and swooped like a ground-skimming ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... Mr. Kennedy was destroying some tanglefoot fly paper that had been used by burning same near the building, and the wind had blown a spark into a rat hole and the draft brought the fire up inside the studding and was hard to get at, but was put out by the chemicals and no ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... took fodder for the horses, then tossed upon the grass a bag of meal, a piece of bacon, and a frying-pan. The boy collected the dry wood with which the earth was strewn, then struck flint and steel, guarded the spark within the tinder, fanned the flame, and with a sigh of satisfaction stood back from the leaping fire. His father tossed him a bucket, and with it swinging from his hand, he made through the wood towards a music of water. Goldenrod and farewell-summer and the red plumes of the sumach lined his ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... played upon his life. We first meet with it in connection with the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and his habit of inward conversation with himself, made possible by means of the Logos, "the reasonable spark in man, common to him with the gods." "There could be no inward conversation with oneself such as this, unless there were indeed some one else aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one's disposition of oneself." This, in a dim way, seemed a fundamental necessity of experience—one ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its dullest mood, ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most neglected was that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... over Lucy's arrival at Lord Mauleverer's house; we must pass over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was consigned to dust with which, could it have retained yet one spark of its haughty spirit, it would have refused to blend its atoms. She had loved the deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... awful!" he exclaimed. "Haven't you a spark of manhood left? no brains? no bowels? nothing ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... clans he usually has either to pass through the territory of an enemy or to run the risk of meeting one at his destination. This does not mean that he will be attacked then and there, for he is on his guard, but it must be remembered that he is in Manboland and that a mere spark may start a conflagration. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... idea occurred to him. The magazine had not been drowned. Should it not be done, all on board might be blown to destruction. It was a work of awful danger, for a spark might fly in before the powder was destroyed, and produce the dreaded catastrophe. He gave the necessary orders, and then devoted himself to other endeavours to save the lives of some of those on board. That all could be saved, he ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... of himself the professor's straight mouth curved a little. A spark of pride glowed in his cool eyes as he bent them upon the smiling face of his friend. Yet his tone was mocking as he said, "Then it is the fountain of youth? One is never too ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... the worlds have ceased to roll, When the long light has ceased to quiver When we have reached our final goal And stand beside the Living River, This vital spark — this loving soul, Must last for ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... Afar, a tiny spark glimmered from some watchman's box, which seemed to stand on the edge of the world. Akakiy Akakievitch's cheerfulness diminished at this point in a marked degree. He entered the square, not without an involuntary ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little leathern case containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands. If this tinder does not readily catch, a small quantity of the white floss of the seed of the ground willow is laid above the moss. As soon as a spark has caught, it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when, the pointed end of a piece of oiled wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame, the whole process having occupied perhaps ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... lightning-winged, bears the news far and wide. By the evening Pere Francois and Armand Valois return. In a few hours Natalie de Santos turns backward. The swift wheels speeding down the Truckee are slower than the electric spark bearing to the ex-queen of the El Dorado, the wife of a day, the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... These books seemed to him in nowise raised above the common; they were to be enjoyed in some measure, but they evoked no high commendation; and the contemporary critic never suspected that these unpretending volumes, unlike the most of their competitors in public favor, contained the vital spark which alone bestows enduring life. He failed wholly to guess that these books had in them the elements of the universal and the permanent—just as he was unable to perceive that the more obviously literary, rhetorical, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... from that period the conduct of Mrs. Meeker toward her daughter was much less indifferent, not to say harsh, than it had previously been. Harriet was, in a way, connected with her last recollection of Augustus. And this spark of a mother's tenderness did, to an extent, spread a diffusing warmth over ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... "Not one spark," said Charles. "If I ever am a man again, I shall ask Mary Corby to marry me. I ought to have done so sooner, perhaps. But I love your wife, Welter, in a way; and I should grieve at her death, for I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... solar spectrum some hundreds of the dark lines are known to correspond with the spectrum of iron. This correspondence is exhibited in a vivid manner when, by a suitable contrivance, the light of an electric spark from poles of iron is examined in the spectroscope side by side with the solar spectrum. The iron lines in the sun are identical in position with the lines in the spectrum of glowing iron vapour. But the spectrum of iron, as here described, consists ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... body of the rash man if he was unable to answer the questions of this last sentinel. These rigorous precautions were rendered necessary by the vicinity of these terrible powder magazines, which a single spark might blow up, and with it the town, the fleet, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... too good for me, too orthodox, too strait-laced," exclaimed the Russian one day in his quiet, jeering way. "Or it may be that I am not good enough for them. Any way, we do not coalesce. Rather are we like flint and steel, and eliminate a spark whenever we come in contact. They look upon me as a pagan, and hold me in horror. I look upon three-fourths of them as Pharisees, and hold them in contempt. Good people there are among them no doubt; people ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... to object to the unreasoning ambitions, the fluctuations of desire, the hopes and fears of youth. In fact (ll. 16-30), he counts these very aspirations toward the impossible, this very state of mental and spiritual unrest and doubt, a proof of the spark of divinity which separates men from beasts and allies them to God. It is a characteristic Browning doctrine that conflict, struggle, the pangs and throes of learning, are the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... pay the interest of the mortgage—if I can't take care of you all by some kind of work, I will marry him. But if you have a spark of love for me, save, economize, try to think of some ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... words! David's face got as red as though it had been rubbed with red pepper and saltpetre both. The flame of it seemed to kindle some faint spark of spirit in him. He picked up the middling, and as he looked her squarely in the eye, with a humorous light in his, he nodded at the pieces of bacon ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... echoing him, and now and then coming the deep rumble of expostulations from the parson's great chest, and Ralph Drake's peals of horse-laughter, and I was left to consider what a tinder-box this Colony of Virginia was, and how ready to leap to flame at a spark even when seemingly most at peace, and to regard with more and more anxiety Mary Cavendish's part in ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... noted, are gravest when alone, and they are wise, for the world has too much gravity for us to go about it with a long face, making matters worse. Let each of us be the centre of his own gravity. Maggie Delafield had, perhaps, that spark in the brain for which we have but an ugly word. We call it "pluck." And by it we are enabled to win a losing game—and, harder still, to lose a losing ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... order of the young sprouts, and reinterred the aged beans. This was one of his many blunders. However, we have nothing to do with his gardening. We have said he was innocent as a lamb, but he was by no means so pacific; on the contrary, his temper was as inflammable as gun cotton—the slightest spark would set it in ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... Ronk, lay hold quick, and break this fellow's clasp," he cried, briefly. "The girl retains a spark of life yet, but the man's arms fairly ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... returned Dick, with suppressed emotion, "that no Redskin shall cross this threshold as long as we three men have a spark ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... Steal to thy grave undress'd, to meditate On our sad loss, accompanied by none, An obscure mourner that would weep alone. So, when the world's great luminary sets, Some scarce known star into the zenith gets, Twinkles and curls, a weak but willing spark, As glow-worms here do glitter in the dark. Yet, since the dimmest flame that kindles there An humble love unto the light doth bear, And true devotion from an hermit's cell Will Heav'n's kind King as soon reach and as well, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... lingered in hope and in doubt, While her form it grew wasted and thin; But the last dying spark of existence went out. As the oysters were just ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... most thirsty-looking level, the low brushwood on which cracked and snapped as we walked through it, with a brittle dryness that testified how perfectly parched-up was everything. A single spark would instantly have wrapped the whole face of the country in one sheet of fire. Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes they were loaded ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... lips to utter the words which would have ended everything between them. His eyes met hers and the words slipped back into his throat. The spark of manhood that was left in him revolted against this wanton assault upon the pure soul that looked ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... stay, by the thatch having, through long exposure to a torrid sun, become like tinder. The roofs became ignited without any visible cause except the intense solar rays, and excited terror in the minds of the inhabitants, as the slightest spark carried by the wind would have set the whole town in a blaze. There is not a single inscription on stone visible in Massangano. If destroyed to-morrow, no one could tell where it and most Portuguese interior villages stood, any more than we can do those ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... controlled herself. The first vehemence of her pride and anger was over now. She had discovered that the dawning inclination on which she had bestowed a few dreamings and sighings, trying, in foolish girlish fashion, to fan a chance tinder-spark into the holy altar-fire of a woman's first love—had gone out in darkness, and that her free heart lay quiet, in a sort of twilight shade, waiting for its destiny; nor for the last few days had she even thought ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... Diligence is as necessary to the author as to the grocer, the solicitor, the dentist, the barrister, the soldier. Nothing but nature can give the aptitude; diligence must improve it, and experience may direct it. It is not enough to wait for the spark from heaven to fall; the spark must be caught, and tended, and cherished. A man must labour till he finds his vein, and himself. Again, if literature is an art, it is also a profession. A man's very first duty is to support himself and those, if any, who are dependent on him. If he cannot ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... all nature condemns so unholy an alliance. Until then let it be the stage; only I ask you to strive for the very best it offers. Have confidence in yourself, little girl, in your ability, your power, your spark of genius touched by suffering. Every hour you pass now in hideous, misshapen melodrama is worse than wasted. You have that within you well worthy of better setting, nobler environment, and you wrong yourself to remain content with less. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... the days o' delight we hae seen, When the flame o' the spirit would spark in the e'en; Then I say, as in sorrow I think on ye a', Where will I find hearts like the hearts ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and a being, moreover, who had set no very high ideals before his eyes, was not, as we have seen, destitute of the quality of sympathy, nor could he entirely obliterate from his memory a time when he himself had been fired by a spark of ambition, and had recognised a longing to accomplish something great. True, the spark had been but a feeble one at best, and the unceasing demands upon his powers to supply the bare necessaries of life, occasioned ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham









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