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noun
Flash  n.  (pl. flashes)  
1.
A sudden burst of light; a flood of light instantaneously appearing and disappearing; a momentary blaze; as, a flash of lightning.
2.
A sudden and brilliant burst, as of wit or genius; a momentary brightness or show. "The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind." "No striking sentiment, no flash of fancy."
3.
The time during which a flash is visible; an instant; a very brief period; as, I'll be back in a flash. "The Persians and Macedonians had it for a flash."
4.
A preparation of capsicum, burnt sugar, etc., for coloring and giving a fictitious strength to liquors.
5.
A lamp for providing intense momentary light to take a photograph; as, to take a picture without a flash.
Synonyms: flashbulb, photoflash, flash lamp, flashgun.
6.
Same as flashlight. (informal)
7.
(Journalism) A short news item providing recently received and usually preliminary information about an event that is considered important enough to interrupt normal broadcasting or other news delivery services; also called a news flash or bulletin.
Flash light, or Flashing light, a kind of light shown by lighthouses, produced by the revolution of reflectors, so as to show a flash of light every few seconds, alternating with periods of dimness.
Flash in the pan, the flashing of the priming in the pan of a flintlock musket without discharging the piece; hence, sudden, spasmodic effort that accomplishes nothing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flash" Quotes from Famous Books



... soon occupied by a dusky manola, whose bright nagua, embroidered chemisette, brown ankles, and small blue slippers, drew my attention. This was all I could see of her, except the occasional flash of a very black eye through the loophole of the rebozo tapado. By degrees, the rebozo became more generous, the loophole expanded, and the outlines of a very pretty and very malicious little face were displayed before me. The end of the scarf was adroitly removed from the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... irresistibly—and impersonally. He was not jealous of Dinwiddie or Osborne (although the black frown on the latter's brow was sufficient evidence of a deeply personal resentment), and although he did not flash Madame Zattiany a meaning glance, might indeed have sat at her board for the first time, he knew that he had never made a better impression. Her eyes, which had been heavy and troubled as they took their seats ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... report, saw the flash of the little weapon, saw the two holes in the carven woodwork, and gained a greater, hysterical courage—the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... pinnacle—the one of military fame—with Gates, Lee, Wayne, Greene and many other distinguished generals at their feet, the other of social prestige the observed of all observers! For a time Arnold's caprices had been looked upon as only the flash and outbreak of that fiery mind which had directed his military genius. He attacked religion; yet in religious circles his name was mentioned with fondness. He lampooned Congress; yet he ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... few seconds of silence that followed, little Otto, in his simple mind, was wondering what all this talk portended. Why had his father come hither to St. Michaelsburg, lighting up the dim silence of the monastery with the flash and ring of his polished armor? Why had he talked about churning butter but now, when all the world knew that the monks of St. Michaelsburg ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... tear-fraught widow and the pallid orphan, closely dogged by Famine and Disease, spring to my sight. That brilliant tiara opens the vista of the rich saloon, and shows the humbled pride of the titled hostess, lying excuses for her absent gems. The flash contents of that bright yellow handkerchief shade forth the felon's bar; the daring burglar eyeing with confidence the counsel learned in the law's defects, fee'd by its produce to defend its quondam owner. The effigies ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... beard. So, before I thought what I was doing, I stepped into the brougham, and put my hand on the door to close it. Then I looked up again, and saw his face, peering in at me through the glass, and that time there couldn't be any mistake. It was! I was going to speak, but he was gone in a flash. I saw him disappearing in the crowd before the shop—slinking, John!—with that dreadfully pathetic air which all beggars have, his shoulders all hunched up, and his head bent, and his hands in his pockets. He was cold, John, I could see that, and, no ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... silence for one brief moment. Then there was a red flash under the apple trees followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. There was another brief moment of silence, and then the young girl sighed softly, leaned forward, ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... 545 Of battle endless into every breast. War won them now, war sweeter now to each Than gales to waft them over ocean home.[18] As when devouring flames some forest seize On the high mountains, splendid from afar 550 The blaze appears, so, moving on the plain, The steel-clad host innumerous flash'd to heaven. And as a multitude of fowls in flocks Assembled various, geese, or cranes, or swans Lithe-neck'd, long hovering o'er Cayster's banks 555 On wanton plumes, successive on the mead Alight at last, and with a clang so loud That all the hollow ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... of dancing forms suddenly arrested: something told him beyond dispute that at the moment he had drawn the hangings aside what were now lovely but motionless statues had sprung each to its pedestal out of the mazes of an intricate dance. Sound and movement had been frozen, in a flash of time, into a crowd of beautiful forms—in stone. No statue but seemed to tremble into immobility as the intruder's gaze turned this way and that no marble face but seemed to be aglow with the music that had died with ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... has offended us by not knowing where Graustark is located on the map," cried the young lady, and he could see the flash of resentment in ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... which is no less visible to us than to him. We are looking on the same map; it will go hard if we cannot follow the demonstration. The longest and most abstruse flight of a philosopher becomes clear and shallow, in the flash of a moment, when we suddenly perceive the aspect and drift of his intention. The longest argument is but a finger pointed; once we get our own finger rightly parallel, and we see what the man meant, whether ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a flash of lightning to me. This friend of mine had pushed his vengeance so far as to pay assassins to deprive me of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... not speak, and for several minutes there was no sound but the sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide. A white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast. Beth watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. A little gray-coated sand bird came tripping over the beach 'peeping' softly to itself, as if enjoying the sun and sea. It came quite close to Beth, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... pace and turned to face them. They stopped cold, however, as a number of quick shots rang out and bullets whistled and zipped around them. Everest turned in his tracks and was off again like a flash, reloading his pistol as he ran. The mob again resumed the pursuit. The logger ran through an open gateway, paused to turn and again fire at his pursuers; then he ran between two frame dwellings to ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... rich and rubied line of petal followed; every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which form it, and flash from it, beneath that errorless hand. The man himself, what he was—not more; but to all conceivable proof of sight—in all aspect of life or thought—not less. He sits alone in his accustomed room, his common work laid ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the still-smoking hole that marked the site of ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael

... of having admitted her into a sort of confidence; but he had scarcely time to regret it before there was a flash of red between the tall potted shrubs that screened an alcove. Dorothea sauntered into view, with Carli Wappinger, bending slightly over her, walking by her side. They were too deep in conversation to know themselves ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... as if—far wandered— The traveller should hear The bird of home, the Koil, With nest-notes rich and clear; And there should come one moment A blessed fleeting dream Of the bees among the mangoes Beside his native stream; So flash those sudden yearnings, That sense of a dearer thing, The love and lack of Radha Upon his soul ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... there right enough," he said. "It's got a funny stumpy end to it, whatever it is, and nips like a crab. Ah, no, you don't!" He pulled his hand out in a flash. "Shove in a book quickly. Now it ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... and, looking a few rods to the right, saw the fox coming right on to us. I had barely time to note the silly and abashed expression that came over him as he saw us in his path, when he was cut down as by a flash of lightning. The rogue did not appear frightened, but ashamed and out of countenance, as one does when some trick has been played upon him, or when detected ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... flash of silvery light that Larry saw the girl against the gloom of the trees. The moaning of the birches and roar of the river drowned the faint sound her footsteps made, and she came upon him so suddenly, statuesque and slender in her trailing ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... door, he opened it and went out into the hall. All was dark and silent. He permitted himself here to flash on his electric torch for a moment, and he saw that the hall was spacious and used as a lounge, for there were several chairs clustered in its centre, opposite the fireplace. There were two or three doors opening from it, and almost opposite where ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... prose to poetry, from La Bruyere to Corneille, who had died in 1684, too late for his fame, in spite of the vigorous returns of genius which still flash forth sometimes in his feeblest works. Throughout the Regency and the Fronde, Corneille had continued to occupy almost alone the great French stage. Rotrou, his sometime rival with his piece of Venceslas, and ever tenderly attached to him, had died, in 1650, at Dreux, of which he was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... be fair, though. The elevator people have put a lot of money—Say, why can't we organize, too?" suggested Motherwell with a flash of inspiration. "We haven't tried that yet. That's constitutional. That's what the livestock breeders ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... stood in front of the spaceport gate for a minute. Over the gate, which was high and pointed and made of some clear colorless material like glass, was a jagged symbol resembling a flash of lightning; the sign, in Lhari language, for the ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... candle wick toppled over on one side in a little pool of molten composition, sputtered for an instant, sent up a blue flash or ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... fine girl," declared Maizie with an ominous flash of her black eyes. "I only wish you and I ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft

... kind. He has been in courts so long as to have conceived a furious disgust at appearances; he will indulge himself with a little cursing and swearing; he will talk with sailors and gypsies, use flash and street ballads; he has stayed indoors till he is deadly sick; he will to the open air, though it rain bullets. He has seen too much of gentlemen of the long robe, until he wishes for cannibals; ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... thing happened at this big borah. A tribe, called Ooboon, were camped at some distance from the other tribes. When any stranger went to their camp, it was noticed that the chief of the Ooboon would come out and flash a light on him, which killed him instantly. And no one knew what this light was, that carried death in its gleam. At last, Wahn the crow, said "I will take my biggest booreen and go and see what this means. You others, do not follow me too closely, for though I have planned how to ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker

... French Town, extreme limits. Kwong indignantly rejected the copper cents, and Rivers flung them into the dust and turned away. Kwong ran after him, expostulating, catching him by the coat sleeve. Rivers turned savagely. The wide road was deserted, and in a flash he brought his heavy blackwood stick across Kwong's face with a terrific blow. The coolie fell sprawling in the dust at his old master's feet, and Rivers, furious, kicked him savagely in the stomach, again and again, until the man lay still and ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... him was ample reward for his casual display of Celtic wit, his knowledge of botany. And suddenly she saw his first real smile—a flash of beautiful white teeth and a wrinkling of the skin around the merry eyes. It came and went like a flicker of lightning; the somber man was an insouciant ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... painted face and dyed hair made Rodd's flesh creep. She seemed to him a symbol of all the evil in the world, decay, disruption, corruption, and with a flash of inspiration he discerned in her the source of all this pitiful tangle of lies. A tender sympathy entirely new to him took possession of his faculties and armed with this he determined that he would not fail in ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... remember after indemnities have been paid, after borders have been re-established and after generations shall have past. The horrors of blazing villages, of violated womanhood, of mutilated childhood, of stark and senseless butcheries, will flash before the minds of French and Belgian men and women when Germany's name shall be mentioned long after ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... peaceful, watching life's turmoil, "Eyes which look heavenward, weeping still we see: God's love with keen flame purges, like the lightning flash, Gold which is purest, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... ain't a silly star," was the way he expressed his feelings as he continued to watch the glimmering object that rose and then grew dim, only to once more flash brightly. "Might be some squatter sittin' alongside his campfire—mebbe a fishing camp, on'y I got an idea the light comes from a big lantern and not a blazing fire. Strikes me it oughter bear watchin' ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... fronti is, I find, a true saying. Who would think, by looking in the king's face, that he had ever committed a murder?" He then enquired after the ghost; but Jones, who intended he should be surprized, gave him no other satisfaction, than, "that he might possibly see him again soon, and in a flash of fire." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... wonderful. The lamps of automobiles would suddenly pierce the blackness, or the blazing doors of a cinema would show in the dark street, the vast crowd pushing, slipping, struggling for a foothold on the muddy stones. In the circle of light cast by the automobiles, out of the mass a single face would flash—a face burned by the sun of the Dardanelles or frost-bitten by the snows of the Balkans. Above it might be the gold visor and scarlet band of a "Brass Hat," staff-officer, the fur kepi of a Serbian refugee, the steel helmet of a French soldier, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... flash there came over him the various stories he had heard of men being lost in these mountains and wandering around for days and weeks until their very reason forsook them. Was he, too, doomed ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... and significant. And it is strange to see the Englishwomen, as they dance with the peasants transfigured with a kind of brilliant surprise. All the while the peasants are very courteous, but quiet. They see the women dilate and flash, they think they have found a footing, they are certain. So the male dancers are quiet, but even grandiloquent, their feet nimble, their bodies wild ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... this statue. Myron's great skill in representing the human figure in excited action is well shown in the quoit-thrower. To make such a figure as this requires great power in a sculptor. No model could constantly repeat this action, and if he could there is but a flash of time in which the artist sees just the position he reproduces. This figure, however, is so true to life that one feels like keeping out of the range of the quoit when it flies (Fig. 22). There are several other existing works attributed to Myron: they are a marble copy ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... chant, but a war-cry, a paean of power. Pagadi stops and raises his hand, and the place is filled with a silence that may be felt. But not for long. The next moment five hundred shields are tossed aloft, five hundred spears flash in the sunshine, and with a sudden roar, forth springs the royal ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... thunder, to children, surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... living, and growing, and feeding, unseen by us, all the black night through; and every phosphoric atom there below is a sign that even in the darkest night there is still the power of light, ready to flash out, wherever and however it is stirred. Does the age seem to you dark? Do you, too, feel as I do at times, the awful sadness of that text,—"The time shall come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Lord, and shall not see it"? ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... it from her and sat down to read it, feeling as he did so unpleasantly heavy, stupid, and stolid in contrast to the flash of her blue eyes and the pale tragedy in her face. It was the first time he had ever felt her inferior. As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... fife and drum, And gleaming pikes and glancing banners: Though the eyes flash, the lips are dumb; To talk in rank would not be manners. Onward they stride, as Britons can; The ladies ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... drudgery; in every household there is sorrow; in every household there is low-thoughted evil. If you come as a prince, with a cheerful, buoyant nature, in the name of God, do not lay aside those royal robes of yours. Let humor bedew duty; let it flash across care. Let gayety take charge of dullness. So employ these qualities that they shall be to life what carbonic acid is to wine, making it ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... Chicago were very civil and, interspersed with flash-lights, I got through the interviews as well as I could. One of the young ladies, following me to the ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... overtaken by this midnight trooper; that the had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... you shouldn't tell me that." Olga spoke with a flash of indignation. "It does matter in ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... prevailing that the Cherokee Indians were murdering the frontier settlers, Marion turned out with his rifle, as a volunteer under governor Lyttleton. The affair, however, proved to be a mere flash in the pan: for the Cherokees finding that things were not exactly in the train they wished, sent on a deputation with their wampum belts and peace-talks to bury the hatchet and brighten the old chain of friendship ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I wish I was the electric fluency,' muttered the bewildered Grinder. 'I'd have a shock at somebody, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... hated the police, and indulged his hatred at every opportunity. His mother was the only being for whom he still cared. It was like a flash of sunshine when his father died. But it came too late to effect any transformation; Ferdinand had long ago begun to look after his mother in his own peculiar way—which was partly due to the conditions of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... O'CONNELL. [With a cold flash of contempt.] That's a petty enough thing now-a-days it seems to me. There are so many clever men ... and they are all so alike ... surely one will ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... speaks those final words in which all the glory and agony of his life—long ago in India and Arabia and Aleppo, and afterwards in Venice, and now in Cyprus—seem to pass before us, like the pictures that flash before the eyes of a drowning man, a triumphant scorn for the fetters of the flesh and the littleness of all the lives that must survive him sweeps our grief away, and when he dies upon a kiss the most painful of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... I do believe Ben took it!" he broke out suddenly; "for when I went to his room this morning to see why he didn't come and do my boots, he shut the drawer in his bureau as quick as a flash, and looked red and queer, for I didn't knock, and sort ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... often baffling to the observer, especially in its restraint. It was only after many years that the present writer found the master-key to Dilke's actions, and it was revealed in a flash at the time of the passing of the South Africa Union Act. The question was the representation of the native population in the Union, and the cognate questions of their treatment and status. Dilke came to see me. He pleaded the native ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... moment he felt an amazement so overwhelming that he seemed half unconscious from the whirling in his brain. Then, as a lightning flash lights up the whole dark heaven in an instant's time, the truth was revealed to him, and, with that consciousness, his arms were tight about her and his kisses ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... all. The poem of Isabella, then, is a perfect treasure-house of graceful and felicitous words and images: almost in every stanza there occurs one of those vivid and picturesque turns of expression, by which the object is made to flash upon the eye of the mind, and which thrill the reader with a sudden delight. This one short poem contains, perhaps, a greater number of happy single expressions which one could quote than all the extant tragedies ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... came to him like a flash, that his was the voice he had heard saying to the other man the words about being at the Arizona at ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... to his own people, or he of the silken flowers and arabesques presented to strangers. Analysis of anything he said would have certified little or nothing in it; but that little or nothing was pleasantly uttered, and served perhaps as well as something cleverer to pass a faint electric flash between common mind and mind. The slouch, the hands-in-pocket mood, the toe-and-heel oscillation upon the hearth-rug—those flying signals that self was at home to nobody but himself, had for the time vanished; desire to please had tied up the black dog in his kennel, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... flash an' the silence hurt a feller's ears. The' was a sloppy, floppin' sound over under the table an' now an' again a low groan. "Fetch the lantern out o' the freight wagon, an' let's chalk up." said a deep, heavy voice. In about a minute ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... found myself comparing him to Tarrano. Tarrano's strong, wiry body. The flash of his eye; his inscrutability, always suggesting menace; the power, the genius of his personality—the force radiating from him which no one could mistake. His intellectual power—his concentration—certainly the equal of this little leader ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... In a flash of consciousness she understood him, and, as it seemed to her, her own nervousness, and all, and everything. And with it came a swift appreciation of all it meant to her and her future. To be always ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... How then was this declaration to be interpreted? People in general construed it into a design to maintain party distinctions, and encourage the whigs to the full exertion of their influence in the elections; into a renunciation of the tories; and as the first flash of that vengeance which afterwards was seen to burst upon the heads of the late ministry. When the earl of Strafford returned from Holland, all his papers were seized by an order from the secretary's office. Mr. Prior was recalled from France, and promised ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... my knees giving way beneath me at each step. He held out his hand to me and he must have noticed the trembling of mine, for I saw a sudden gleam flash into his eyes. We all three sat down on low cane lounges in the vestibule, facing the sea. He complained of feeling very tired, and smoked while he told us of his ride. He had gone as far as Vicomile, where he had ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... half protruding from the chaise, calls loudly on the fugitives to halt, shaking his fist at the smiling face of the Earl, who with one hand waves a graceful adieu, with the other presents a pistol at Mr Child's near leader. A flash, a report, and the horse falls dead. A few minutes later the Earl's chaise is a distant dark speck in a cloud of dust, at which the baffled banker ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... the flash of the restless water The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; Laughing at life and the world they sought her, And out she swung to the silvering bay. Then off they flew on their roystering way, And the keen ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... the lines the enemy swarmed out from their cover, and the head of the reinforcements were pouring out through the house into the battery, when the earth shook, a mighty flash of fire lit the sky; there was a roar like thunder, and most of the retreating party were swept from their feet by the shock, while a shower of stones and timber fell in a wide circle. They were soon up again, ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... intervals, we have a deep and splendid flash of insight, when we can thank God that things have not been as we should have willed and ordered them. We should have lingered, perhaps, in the low rich meadows, the sheltered woodlands of our desire; we should never have set our feet ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... a flash of fire burst out, a few yards in front. His horse fell dead under him and, before he could extricate himself from it, he was surrounded by Austrians. An officer shouted to him to surrender and, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, he at once ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... sable Throne behold, Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old! Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires, As one by one at dread Medea's strain, The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain; As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, Closed one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... voices in mingled shouting, wailing and laughter. I felt that in such surroundings it were not difficult to dumbfound a wandering nomad with miracles, because Nature herself had prepared the setting for it. This thought had scarcely time to flash through my mind before Tushegoun Lama suddenly raised his head, looked ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... rich stuff that shimmered in the light of the candle she carried, and rustled musically as she walked. There was a flash of jewels at her throat and on her hands. She had wrapped a crimson mantle about her head and shoulders. Her eyes were like stars on a summer's night, sparkling with a veiled radiance, and as she stood and looked down ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... scourge themselves into very great Improvements.——But they will find that bodily Exercise touches not the Soul; and consequently that in this whole Course they are like Men out of the way: let them flash on never so fast, they are not at all nearer their Journey's-end: And howsoever they deceive themselves and others, they may as well expect to bring a Cart, as a ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins

... the open window. Looking at her elaborately plaited yellow hair, her thin neck, her delicate fingers just touching the long throat, Alma felt instinct of savagery; in a flash of the primitive mind, she saw herself spring upon her enemy, tear, bite, destroy. The desire still shook her as she stood outside in the corridor, waiting to descend. And in the street she walked like a somnambulist, with wide eyes, straight ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... began To change; her elfin blood in madness ran, Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent, Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent; Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear, 150 Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear. The colours all inflam'd throughout her train, She writh'd about, convuls'd with scarlet pain: A deep volcanian yellow took the place Of all her milder-mooned body's ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... sloping shoulders, and a slim waist. Tall and slender was she in stature, with a face like the egg of a goose. Her eyes so beautiful, with their well-curved eyebrows, possessed in their gaze a bewitching flash. At the very sight of her refined and elegant manners all ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Beth was off like a flash around the corner of the house. She was impatient to see everything in that half hour. She felt that she needed a thousand eyes. The trees bewildered her. There were so many varieties she had never seen before—magnolias with their wonderful glossy foliage; bamboos with their tropical ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... tresses overshadowed her oval face, where a beautiful shaped aquiline nose, and lips of the deepest carnation, contributed to give her countenance an expression of striking brilliancy. Yet there was something stern in the resolute flash of her eye, and the bold curl of her lip. A slight tincture of hauteur was likewise occasionally to be detected, through the affability of manner by which she was characterized; and in the very tone of her voice, even when attuned ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... the snake coil for another strike at Barbara's horse, which had almost reached the place before Eleanor screamed. The whole occurrence was so unexpected and sudden that Barbara had not seen the swift flash of cinnamon-red ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... swept over the plain blinding and smothering assailants and assailed. The smoke of the battle blended with the storm had spread over the contending hosts a sulphurous canopy black as midnight. Even the flash of the guns could hardly be discerned through the gloom. All the day long, and until ten o'clock at night, the battle raged with undiminished fury. One half of the Russian army was now destroyed, and the remainder, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... will be bliss for us, after your unrest and mine; for you if you were obliged to leave here for any reason that may develop," and a look of startled anxiety comes to the lovely face, "but, no; she would never leave him; another flash of thought comes to me, darling, of the 'mysterious conversation' I spoke to you of, but it cannot have had any real meaning. I shall again ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... for a long time through one of the little openings in the bushes, and he believed that they would remain as they were all night, but presently he saw a movement among them, and a little flash of light. He understood it. They were trying to kindle a fire-with flint and steel, under the shelter of the boat. He continued to watch them ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... sketched the stiff and limping figure he had seen. It was over in a flash. He dropped down ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... dismounted than the lightning began to flash and the thunder to roar and I was warned of an approaching storm. A little later the storm burst upon me. And I mounted and rode on through the dark, not knowing whither I went. At last, far past midnight, I saw a speck of light ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... with right, left, right, left, right, side Tom's head. Dere Tom lay, makin' no 'sistance. Everybody am saysin', 'Tom have met he match, him am done.' Both am bleedin' and am awful sight. Well, dat new nigger 'laxes for to git he wind and den Tom, quick like de flash, flips him off and jump to he feet and befo' dat new nigger could git to he feet, Tom kicks him in de stomach, 'gain and 'gain. Dat nigger's body start to quaver and he massa say, 'Dat 'nough.' Dat de clostest Tom ever come to gittin' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... Lindsay alone remain. If you could make it a partie quarree, it would be a comfort indeed. We would beguile our lingering hours with talking over our youthful exploits, our hunts on Peter's Mountain, with a long train of et cetera in addition, and feel, by recollection at least, a momentary flash of youth. Reviewing the course of a long and sufficiently successful life, I find in no portion of it happier moments than those were. I think the old hulk in which you are, is near her wreck, and that like a prudent rat, you should escape in time. However, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... you make of me?" said Sir Piercie Shafton. "I protest, by mine honour, I would abide in this house were I to choose. What! I take no exceptions at the youth for showing a flash of spirit, though the spark may light on mine own head. I honour the lad for it. I protest I will abide here, and he shall aid me in striking down a deer. I must needs be friends with him, and he be such ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... the man. Jenny caught her breath. She half turned away, like a shy horse that fears the friendly hand. He had been sure of her, then. Oh, that was a wretched thought! She was shaken to the heart by such confidence. He had been sure of her! There was a flash of time in which she determined not to go; but it passed with dreadful speed. Too late, now, to draw back. Keith was waiting: he expected her! The tears were in her eyes. She was more unhappy than she had been yet, and her ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... his house," she added; "so send the horsemen back to their post quietly. They will have work to-night; the guns will flash and the swords will glitter ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... and the whole caused to revolve once every minute by means of clockwork. The reflectors on each side of the revolving frame—eight in number—are thus successively directed to every point in the horizon; and the combined result of their rays form a flash of greater or less duration, according to the rapidity of their revolution. In the fixed lights eight lamps and reflectors are used, and are arranged in an octagonal lantern; they do not differ much ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... at the gleam which answered him from a very uncommon eye. It was a temporary flash, however, and quickly veiled, and the tone in which this Dunn now spoke was anything but an ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... at him then, she must have been struck by the strange expression, coupled with a sudden flash, which passed ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... great church yard we are passing through?' 'Stranger,' says I, 'I calculate it's nothing but the mile-stones we are passing so slick.' But I once had a horse, who, I expect, was a deal quicker than that; I once seed a flash of lightning chase him for half an hour round the clearance, and I guess it couldn't ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... reach of land; piled up in terraces, traced here and there with rushing streams, that worked up gold dust alluvian, and seemed to flash over pebbled diamonds. Heliotropes, sun-flowers, marigolds gemmed, or starred the violet meads, and vassal-like, still sunward bowed their heads. The rocks were pierced with grottoes, blazing ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... look foolish. Of course she had a temper, with that colored hair, and she was raging. She looked at me as if she'd like to tear me to pieces. There wasn't anything she could say, however, and not lose her dignity, and I guess she pretty nearly exploded for a minute, and then, in a flash, the joke of it struck her. Her eyes began to dance, and she laughed because she couldn't help it, and I with her. For a whole minute we forgot what a big business we were both after, and acted ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... was a quiet child, And gave my teachers little fash, But as I grew I grew more wild, And hasty as the lightning's flash. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... sudden flash of indignation, which rushed through the veins of an ordinary man like Wildrake, was presently subdued, when confronted with the strong yet stifled emotion displayed by so powerful a character as Cromwell. As the cavalier looked ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... officer, and who, thinking it was his duty to imitate the example of his patron on this occasion, discharged a pistol at the Major, before he had the least intimation of his design. The Hibernian's horse being a common hireling, and unaccustomed to stand fire, no sooner saw the flash of Trebasi's pistol, than, starting aside, he happened to plunge into a hole, and was overturned at the very instant when the hussar's piece went off, so that no damage ensued to his rider, who, pitching on his feet, flew with great nimbleness to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... flash of his keen dark eyes, and drew back with an involuntary shudder. "Happy had it been for me if I had died an infant on my ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... said, "those aasvogels see the flash of the gun, and shy at it like a horse. Baas, you are shooting into their faces, for they all hang with their beaks toward you before they drop. You must get behind them, and fire into their tails, for even an aasvogel ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... See—quick—by that flash, where the bitter foam tosses, The cloud of white faces, in the black open boat, And the wild pleading woman that clasps her dead lover And wraps her loose hair round his ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... either, but somehow that makes me think of sawdust, and from sawdust—say, I had it in a flash. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... angry, Louhi steals from Wainamoinen the sun, moon, and fire, and thus all the homes in Kalevala are cold, dark, and cheerless. Gazing downward, Ukko, king of the heaven, wonders because he sees no light, and sends down a flash of lightning, which, after striking the earth, drops into the sea and is swallowed by a pike. This fiery mouthful, however, proves so uncomfortable, that the fish swims madly around until swallowed by another. Learning that the fire-ball is now in a pike, Wainamoinen fishes until ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... dying flash for the Republic after all. Lambert had escaped from the Tower. It was on the night of April 9, the very day on which Monk was congratulating himself on the engagement of obedience signed by so many of his officers. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... artery and bound it firmly down into place. Then flexing the forearm hard upon it, she bandaged all securely again. Still the wounded man lay unconscious. The girl was terrified. She placed her hand over his heart. It was beating but very faintly. In the agony and terror of the moment as in a flash of light her heart stood suddenly wide open to her, and the thing that for the past months had lain hidden within her deeper than her consciousness, a secret joy and pain, leaped strong and full into the open, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... place. It had never been there. It was a remote star, one of myriads in the constellations at large, the definite groups which occulted in the void before me. Looking at those swiftly moving systems, I watched for the flash of impact; but no great light of collision broke. The groups of lights passed and ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... STRAKER. [with a flash of temper] I'm not playin no fool. [More coolly] Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face. If you ain't spotted that, you don't know much about these sort of things. [Serene again] Ex-cuse me, you know, Mr Tanner; but you asked me as man to man; ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... announcement was made that the United States Ambassador desired to renew his acquaintance with the Princess von Steinheimer. Lord Donal made use of an impatient exclamation more emphatic than he intended to give utterance to, but on looking at his companion in alarm, he saw in her glance a quick flash of gratitude as unmistakable as if she had spoken her thanks. It was quite evident that the girl had no desire to meet his Excellency, which is not to be wondered at, as she had already encountered him three times in her capacity of ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... been made, ladies and gentlemen," she said. And to me: "Thank you. Yes," she continued, with a flash of lucent eyes and a dimpling smile, "Jim has lost his whiskey and has a chance to sober up. He'll have forgotten all about this before we reach Benton. But I ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... stream of Confederates issued from a wood and flung themselves upon the Union flank. Dick was dazed with the suddenness and ferocity with which the two armies had closed in mortal combat. He could see but little. He was half blinded by the smoke, the flash of rifles and cannon and the dust. Officers and men were falling all around him. The numbers were not so great as at Antietam, but it seemed to him that within the contracted area of Perryville the fight was even more fierce and deadly than it had been ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of color beneath the sky: Hats off! ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... weave in her turn. Now Swordswinger steppeth, Now Swiftstroke, now Storm; When they speed the shuttle How spear-heads shall flash! Shields crash, and helmgnawer[84] On harness ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... lever to full power and with a roar which almost deafened us in the small flyer, the ray leaped out to do its deadly work. I watched through a port beside the motor. There was a flash of intense light for an instant and then the motor died away in silence. A path to freedom lay open before us. Jim started one of the stern motors and slowly we forced our way through the hole torn in the living mass. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... been well had Others made with similar Attentiveness—I found that the Arch thereof looked shaky and insecure; moreover, that a Great and Irregular-shaped Cleft or Crack ran, after the fashion of a Lightning-flash in a Painted Sea-scape, athwart the structure thereof from Keystone to Coping. As I was regarding this unpleasing Portent, the Genius told me that this Bridge was at first of sound and scientific construction, but that the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various

... Operative, in one flash of imagination, trying to get through the shield, sweating as he strained helplessly against the force shield, the binder field, the mask, the blindfold—oh, there was no way out for the poor superman, no ...
— Sight Gag • Laurence Mark Janifer

... we to our selves, as if the Deity had made us with a seeming Reluctancy to his own Designs; placing as much Discords in our Minds, as there is Harmony in our Faces. We are a sort of aiery Clouds, whose Lightning flash out one way, and the Thunder another. Our Words and Thoughts can ne'er agree. So this young charming Lady thought her Desires could live in their own longings, like Misers wealth-devouring Eyes; and e'er she consented ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... results are unhealthy and injurious. A true natural and healthy act of sexual intercourse demands the excitement of brain, spinal cord, and every nerve in the body simultaneously, and resembles the lightning flash which restores the equilibrium of electric force ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... "I was in the hospital at the time; I'm only just out; and I saw it myself. The assistant surgeon stops at his bed, where he laid only just breathing like, and says he, 'What man is this? I've seen him before'; and says some one, 'His name is Ireland'; and says the surgeon, like a flash, 'Ireland? Ireland of the —th? Do you know what that is? It is a colored regiment, and this Abolition scoundrel is the captain of it. I knew I had seen him. Here! put him out; let him go and herd with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... trifle inaccurate," the Prince objected, with a sudden flash of his white teeth. "The beauty which is not for him has been many a man's undoing. But seriously, my quarrel with Naida is one of prejudice only. She is the confidante and the inspiration of Matinsky, and though one realises, of course, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Quick as a flash the girl with the dipper filled her palm with water and threw it upward. It spattered into Rhoda's face and she ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr

... Lady of Cyprus, some flush of beauty I pray you devise To flash on our bosoms and, O Aphrodite, rosily gleam on our valorous thighs! Joy will raise up its head through the legions warring and all of the far-serried ranks of mad-love Bristle the earth to the pillared horizon, pointing in vain to the heavens ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... Febrer had seen the Seminary, a long structure with white walls, and windows grilled like a jail. The Little Chaplain, as he thought of it, grew serious, the ivory flash of his smile vanishing from his chocolate-colored face. What a month he had spent there! The professor was driving away the tedium of the vacation by teaching this young peasant, wishing to initiate him into the beauties of Latin letters with the aid of his eloquence and a strap. He wished to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... a brown flash appeared from the garden wall, and Tam was after it at a bound, barking like mad. "It's the rabbit, and he's got him—he's got him!" murmured Jock, bouncing up and down with excitement with Alan still clinging to his coat. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... bawled Horrocks, "temperature near a thousand degrees. If you were dropped into it ... flash into flame like a pinch of gunpowder in a candle. Put your hand out and feel the heat of his breath. Why, even up here I've seen the rain-water boiling off the trucks. And that cone there. It's a damned ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the founts that fall From the high mountain wall, That fall and flash and fleet, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... at his brother, with a perplexed vacuity of eye. This was not at all what he had expected. He thought of Deleah in a flash. If Deleah would marry him and go with ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... aged her. In that moment it was a hard, evil face, and with a pang the elder woman thought of that other face, so like, yet so unlike—the sweet pure face of a girl that had given to a sordid home its one touch of nobility. As under the lightning's flash we see the whole arc of the horizon, so Mrs. Eppington looked and saw her child's life. The gilded, over-furnished room vanished. She and a big-eyed, fair-haired child, the only one of her children she had ever understood, were playing ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... crossing the brook which flows partly over and partly under the road at the horse watering-place, he looked down into the dell among the tangles of birch and the thick viscous foliage of the green-berried elder. There he caught the flash of a light dress, and as he climbed the opposite grassy bank on his way to the village, he saw immediately beneath him the maiden of his dreams and his love-verses. Now she leaped merrily from stone to stone; now she bent stealthily over till her palms came together in ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... Barney stood unmoved, and the hatchet was our only resource. How that mule's eye twinkled as from time to time he cast a backward glance upon the Small Boy wrestling with a dull hatchet and a sturdy young scrub-oak under the pelting rain, amid lightning-flash and thunder-peal, needs a more graphic pen than mine to describe. A better-drenched biped than climbed into the wagon at the close of this episode, or a more thoroughly-satisfied quadruped than jogged along before him, it would be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... officers were about to carry her away to be fined, or worse, amid the jeers of the bystanders, always ready to deal hardly with "the gipsy," at which precise [141] moment the tall Duke Carl, like the flash of a trusty sword, had leapt from the palace stair and caused her to pass on in peace. She had half detected him through his disguise; in due time news of his reappearance had been ceremoniously carried ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... into his sash, and the legs of his oilskins rasping noisily as they rubbed together. The shore was quite dark. Here and there a stove could be seen glowing on the deck of some boat, blinking as the figure of a sailor passed in front of it. The sea was shrouded in deep gloom, marked by an occasional flash of phosphorescence. The surf was trickling in with a barely audible moan. Softened by the distance came the voices of some "cats" singing as they made their way toward the Cabanal and stirred some dog to bark along ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... engraven on my memory. A staff-officer of his Majesty said, "I thought I had lost my finest horse. As I had ridden him on the 5th and wished him to rest, I gave him to my servant to hold by the bridle; and when he left him one moment to attend to his own, the horse was stolen in a flash by a dragoon, who instantly sold him to a dismounted captain, telling him he was a captured horse. I recognized him in the ranks, and claimed him, proving by my saddle-bags and their contents that he was not a horse taken ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... wish is to leave your house," cried Kate, with an angry flash in her deep blue eyes. "You are a cruel, wicked, hypocritical old man. You have deceived me about Mr. Dimsdale. I read it in your son's face, and now I read it in your own. How could you do it—oh, how ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Him the closer we will come to knowing what love is. The nearer we get to Him the nearer we get to its meaning. We will know it as we know Him. When we come into His presence, face to face, its simple full meaning will flash upon us with a ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... beseeching, and no asking—there are no words and no thoughts save those that intrude and flash unwanted over the mind, but a great undivided attention and waiting upon God: God near, yet never touching. This state is no ecstasy, but smooth, silent, high living in which we learn heavenly manners. This is ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley



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