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Brightness   /brˈaɪtnəs/   Listen
Brightness

noun
1.
The location of a visual perception along a continuum from black to white.
2.
Intelligence as manifested in being quick and witty.  Synonyms: cleverness, smartness.
3.
The quality of being luminous; emitting or reflecting light.  Synonyms: brightness level, light, luminance, luminosity, luminousness.



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"Brightness" Quotes from Famous Books



... parts, my father being one of them, and everybody else the other. Hence I was led to regard the parties of the latter part, rich or poor, giants or pygmies, as being, after all, of much the same stature and value. The brightness (in the boy's estimation) of the paternal figure rendered distinctions between other brightnesses unimportant. The upshot was, in short, that I inclined to the opinion that while compassion was unquestionably due to other children for not having a father like mine, yet in other respects my ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... Andrew of Scotland claim our attention, after he quitted the brazen pillar, followed by his faithful Squire, Murdoch McAlpine of that ilk. On he travelled eastward, in the face of the rays of the glittering sun, which sparkled on his shield and casque with dazzling brightness, and so astonished all beholders that they fled dismayed before him, till he crossed the wild territories of Russia, and entered the wilder deserts of Siberia. Then, turning north, he found himself in a region where, for many weary months, the sun never rose, and he and the ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... at times driven by the exigencies of our nature to obey! Yes, to cast them off, to have done with the foul and thorny places of the world; and, like to those glittering points above me, to rest on high wrapped for ever in the brightness of our better selves, that even now shines in us as fire faintly shines within those lurid balls, and lay down our littleness in that wide glory of our dreams, that invisible but surrounding Good, from which all truth and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... this commanding effulgence, the calmer beam of Mr. Rodney might naturally pass unnoticed, yet its brightness was clear and sustained. The Rodneys engaged a dwelling of no mean proportion in that favoured district of South Kensington, which was then beginning to assume the high character it has since obtained. Their equipages were distinguished, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... thou perceivest the desire of eternal bliss to be infused into thee from above, and thou wouldst fain go out of the tabernacle of this body, that thou mightest contemplate My brightness without any shadow of change—enlarge thy heart, and receive this holy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... the open door which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there not hang wavering ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... playing upon his sharp sallow features, and his thin lips quivered with an expression of malice, plainly habitual. His nose, like a parrot's beak, had been broken by a blow, which added to its sinister shape; and his small black eyes twinkled with metallic brightness. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... of her hair in the "Pine-Tree State," by the frown of her massive brows in the "Granite" and "Green Mountain," by the glancing brightness of her smile in the "Old Bay," by her lithe grace of limb in "Little Rhoda," and her firm step and erect carriage in the "Land of Steady Habits;" ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various

... and cocked at last, and no quarry left for him to shoot. With a bound he was on the platform; another carried him into the canvas anteroom, a third and a fourth out into the moonlight. It was as bright as noon in a conservatory of smoked glass. And in the tinted brightness one man was already galloping away; but it was Stingaree who danced with one foot only in the stirrup of a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... had to remove her nurse's uniform. And at the same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... Tories? Hold—to the minister I more incline; To serve his cause, O Queen! is serving thine. And see! the very Gazetteers give o'er, Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more. What then remains? Ourself. Still, still remain Cibberian forehead, and Cibberian brain. This brazen brightness, to the 'squire so dear; This polish'd hardness, that reflects the peer: This arch absurd, that wit and fool delights, This mess, toss'd up of Hockley-hole and White's; Where dukes and butchers join ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... Tell me, is this the beginning of some reign of enchantment? The culmination of love's dream? Are we waking or dreaming? Can it be possible, that this glorious moonlight, so auspiciously ushering in our honeymoon, is typical and indicative of its endurance, of its unalloyed brightness?" ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... thread, papers of pins, cards of horn-buttons, and cakes of shaving-soap—and bolts of gaudy riband could be drawn from pepper-boxes and sausage-stuffers. Table-cloths, of cotton or brown linen, were displayed before admiring eyes, which had turned away from all the brightness of new tin plates; and knives and forks, all "warranted pure steel," appealed to tastes, which nothing else could excite. New razors touched the men "in tender places," while shining scissors clipped ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... perceptions. The eye is right as far as it goes, and is not deprived of its due by the eye of the spirit. The latter only allows us to see the things of sense in a higher light. Nothing seen by the eye of sense is denied, but a new brightness, hitherto unseen, radiates from what is seen. And then we know that what we first saw was only a lower reality. We see that still, but it is immersed in something higher, which is spirit. It is now a question of whether we realise and feel what ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... therefore braces for more vigorous, hopeful conflict against it, and that while but for it the answer to the despairing question, Hast Thou made all men in vain? must be either the wailing echo 'In vain,' or the denial that He has made them at all, there is hope and there is power, and there is brightness thrown on the character of God and on the fate of man, by the old belief that God made man upright, and that man made ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... Its brightness, mighty divinity! has a fleeting empire over the day, giving gladness to the fields, color to the flowers, the season of the loves, harmonious hour of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... in the brightness between the two planets has already been alluded to. The surface of Venus is, indeed, about five times as bright as that of Mercury. The actual brightness of Mercury is about equivalent to that of our moon, and astronomers are, therefore, inclined to think that it may resemble her in having ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... brief but hearty expressions of regret at Graham's temporary absence impose upon her. She saw that the former was indeed more than content with her welcome; that while his friendship was a fixed star of the first magnitude, it paled and almost disappeared before the brightness and fulness of her presence. "Nature," indeed, became "radiant" to both "with purple light, the morning and the night ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... untranslatable humour of courage and poverty and its unfathomed epics of past tragedy and triumph—all this glorious confusion of family traits, which, in no exaggerative sense, make the Gentiles come to your light and the folk of the nations to the brightness of your house—is a thing so utterly outside my own temperament that I was formed by nature to admire and not understand it. God made me very simply—as he made a tree or a pig or an oyster: to perform certain functions. The best thing he gave me was a perfect and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about and see; all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see and flow together, and ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appear'd Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess Of glory obscur'd. 804 MILTON: Par. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... stealing up and pouncing upon it. He knew that a little bat, when young enough, was no stronger than a big butterfly, and its blood would be quite good enough to suck. Stealthily he crept down into the brightness of that narrow ray, wondering whether the youngster was too big for him to tackle or not. He made up his mind to have a go at it. In fact, he was just gathering his immense, hairy legs beneath him for ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... brightness, Pierre understood why they had quailed. For the man, though wrecked beyond hope of living, was terrible still. The thick, gray stubble on his face could not hide altogether the hard lines of mouth and jaw, and on the wasted arm the hand was grotesquely huge. It was horror that ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... at the sea-side," said Ruth, speaking very slowly, and looking as if she could hardly understand the idea of such a piece of good fortune coming in her way. "But there," she added with a sigh, as she refolded the letter and put it into her pocket and tried to banish the visions of brightness it had called forth, "of course it is quite out of the question. I couldn't go away now when every one is ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley

... farewell to her who could not see, took his last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... Pomerania was actually refreshing in comparison; with such short nights, too, the morning brings no real coolness, and I could ride or drive about for hours in the mysterious gloaming which hovers at midnight over the surface of the water, if the increasing brightness did not give warning that another day is waiting with its work and care, and that sleep demands its rights beforehand. Since I have had the drosky, in which there is too little room for an interpreter, I am making, to the smirking delight of Dmitri, the coachman, progress in Russian, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... name of Homer; while those of the latter were in the same general way ascribed to Hesiod. The former were the productions of the Ionic and AEolic minstrels in Asia Minor, among whom Homer stood pre-eminent and eclipsed the brightness of the rest: the latter were the compositions of a school of bards in the neighbourhood of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, among whom in like manner Hesiod enjoyed the greatest celebrity. The poems of both schools were composed in the hexameter metre ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... the term used to describe Jehovah's presence. It suggests the brightness of the divine person and character. Glory is associated with God's holiness. (Isaiah 6:1-4) Our Lord Jesus is mentioned as the 'brightness of God's glory'. He is also spoken of as being 'the express image of the Father', and we are told that he is ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... occasionally to take a look astern at our expected enemy. I began to long for daylight, and wished even to see the stranger come up within shot, so that we might ascertain to a certainty her true character. At length a ruddy glow appeared beyond her in the east, gradually increasing in depth and brightness until the whole sky was suffused with an orange tint, and the sun, like a vast ball of fire, rose rapidly above the horizon, forming a glowing background to the sails of our pursuer, who came gliding along over the shining ocean towards us. Already she was almost within ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... footstool, and book were comfortably placed.... About nine o'clock the first gleams of the sun started into the Abbey, and presently travelled down to the peeresses. I had never before seen the full effect of diamonds. As the light travelled, each lady shone out like a rainbow. The brightness, vastness, and dreamy magnificence of the scene produced a strange effect of exhaustion and sleepiness.... The guns told when the Queen set forth, and there was unusual animation. The Gold Sticks flitted about; there was tuning in the ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous

... as we are doing now. She pulled at the sweet rushes and crushed them in her hand. She adds a remembered brightness to this afternoon. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... bowed to the company, and adjusted her eyeglasses. Her jets glittered, her eyes shone with a commanding brightness, and she really looked very imposing. After a few words, which even Flora Clark acknowledged were very well chosen, she read the Governor's letter with great impressiveness. Then she went on to read other letters from people who were noteworthy in some way and had some ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... temperament which seemed woven from the beams of light had led Glaucus into pleasure. He obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the dissipations of his time, than the exhilarating voices of youth and health. He threw the brightness of his nature over every abyss and cavern through which he strayed. His imagination dazzled him, but his heart never was corrupted. Of far more penetration than his companions deemed, he saw that they sought to prey upon his ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone. Shadows of evening fall around us, and the world seems but a dim reflection,—itself a broader shadow. We look forward into the coming, lonely night. The soul withdraws into itself. Then stars arise, and the night ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... frequent and imposing is that which pictures the creation simply as having the earth in the centre, and the sun with his attendants as circulating around it in the brightness of the superior, and the darkness of the infernal, firmament. Souls at death pass down through the west into Amenthe, and are tried. If condemned, they are either sent back to the earth, or confined in the nether space for punishment. If justified, they join ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... through the dwarf pine; From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so lone, From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone, By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free, Thy mountain-born brightness glanced ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the business portion of Pittsburgh is a city, half enchanted, of fire and smoke, inhabited by demons playing with fire, the surrounding portion is also under enchantment, of a different kind, and smiles a land of beauty, brightness, and quiet. The one section might be a picture by Tintoretto, and the other ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Montaigne, whose Essays "make an epoch in literature," by "their influence upon the tastes and opinions of Europe;" whose "school embraces a large proportion of French and English literature;" and of whose "brightness and felicity of genius there can be but one opinion," is disgraced, as the same writer tells us, by "a sceptical bias and great indifference of temperament;" and "has led the way" as an habitual offender, "to the indecency too characteristic of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... happiness, gave him an energy and animation which impressed us with the deepest hopes for his ultimate recovery; and the fatal disease to which he was a prey, nursed the fondness of our hearts by the bloom of cheek, and brightness of eye, with which it veiled its desolating ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... way beneath the shadows of the pine-trees, the sun's fingers darted through the branches and drew a golden pattern on the mossy ground under his feet; the mosquitoes hummed drowsily, the air was full of soft summer warmth and brightness—but Atven's thoughts were far away with the ancient legend ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... talkative and bright. Mrs. Dallas's face took a gleam from the brightness, and even Mr. Dallas roused up to bear his part in the conversation. When supper was done they still sat round the table, lingering in talk. Then, after a slight pause which had set in, Pitt leaned forward a little ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... are all sacred to the Parsee; but fire represents the principle of creation and hence is most sacred. To him fire is the most perfect symbol of deity because of its purity, brightness and incorruptibility. The sacred fire that burns constantly in the Parsee temples is fed with chips of sandalwood. Prayer with the Parsee is obligatory, but it need not be said in the fire temple; the Parsee may pray ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... evil magician in the fairy tales, but most harmless. "Old Sir Thomas Erpingham," I call him, for I am sure a good soft pillow for that good grey head were better than the churlish turf of India. He is very kind, and calls us Sunshine and Brightness, and pays us the most involved Early Victorian compliments, which we, talking and laughing all the time, seldom ever hear, and it is left to kind ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... so fervently, so beseechingly, as she had never yet prayed, that it might be permitted her to gaze in there for one single moment, that she might be allowed to cast but a single glance into the brightness that ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... own home—a handsome and yet shabby brownstone house in the West Fifties—he appeared to better advantage. There was a brightness in his plain face when he looked at his wife, and an adoring response in her glance that after twelve years of married life seemed admirable to Rachael. "Alice" was a word continually on his lips; what Alice said and thought and did was evidently ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... and dispirited as the candles were being lighted in her sitting-room upstairs; but she saw the gleam of them from the garden with no sense of a welcoming brightness. She passed from the garden into the door of the hall which was still dark, as the fire had nearly burned itself out. As she entered the door opposite opened, and once more she saw the silhouette of a man's figure against the lighted passage beyond; and again she stopped frightened, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... came the immediate retribution in kind, which was signalised as such by the divine message—the death of the child 'who was conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity.' But beyond that, look at David's life after his great fall. There was no more brightness in it. His own sin and example of lust loosed the bonds of morality in his household, and his son followed his example and improved upon it. And from that came Absalom's murder of his brother, and from that Absalom's exile, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... blue, and had faded by the progress of time to their present neutral shade. However powerful the science of medicine as wielded by Dr. Alwyn Mosgrave, it had not been strong enough to put flesh upon his bones, or brightness into his face. He had a strangely expressionless, and yet strangely attentive countenance. He had the face of a man who had spent the greater part of his life in listening to other people, and who had parted with his own individuality and his own passions ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... at this stage in my reasoning that I began to see the light. And quickly the light burst upon me with dazzling brightness, illuminating and explaining all that had been weird and uncanny and unnaturally impossible in my dream experiences. In my sleep it was not my wake-a-day personality that took charge of me; it was another and distinct personality, possessing a new and totally ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... the lighted dining-room where Roddy and Mamma waited for him. The callous fire crackled and spurted brightness. The table ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... politics—good government,—only when thumb-screwed by bad legislation. When happy and revelling in plenty, this cunning thrift of politicians is good enough "statesmanship" for pretty much all of us; then we can really admire the brightness of the great "Magnetic" when he says, "Boys, I am a model high tarriffite, and in favor of reciprocity;" even the vitriolic ravings of the iridescent—sparkling phrases without ideas, torchlight jeremaids about the poor Southern negro, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... thickest of the mist floated up, and rose above us like a gauze—like canopy of fleecy clouds overhanging the whole level plain, through which the red quenched sun, which a moment before was flaming with intolerable brightness overhead, suddenly assumed the appearance of a round red globe in an apothecary's window, surrounded by a broad yellow sickly halo, which dimly lit up, as if the sun had been in eclipse, the cane—fields, then in arrow, as it is called, (a lavender coloured flower, about three ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... Bandon, there was no notable attempt at insurrection. But in Connaught, very unexpectedly, as late as the end of August, the flame extinguished in blood in Leinster and Ulster, again blazed up for some days with portentous brightness. The counties of Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon and Galway had been partially organized by those fugitives from Orange oppression in the North, who, in the years '95, '96, and '97, had been compelled to flee for their lives into Connaught, to the number of several thousands. They brought ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... as brilliant as the hymenium, and led me to think that it was due to the spores which had fallen on the surface of the stipe. Therefore, being in the dark, I scraped with my scalpel the luminous parts of the stipe, but it did not sensibly diminish their brightness; then I split the stipe, bruised it, divided it into small fragments, and I found that the whole of this mass, even in its deepest parts, enjoyed, in a similar degree to its superficies, the property of light. I found, besides, a phosphorescence ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... Beecher Stowe had enthroned within her heart. Moreover, to whatever group these splendid orbs belong, their deathless radiance has been derived, in every case, from the perennial Fountain of all Beauty and Brightness. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... not the place to speak of Mr. Pater's private virtues, the personal charm of his character, the brightness of his talk, the warmth of his friendship, the devotion of his family life. But a few words may be permitted on the value of the work by which he will be known to those who ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... not hence my bark, Through wintry winds and billows dark; I come with humble heart to share Thy morn and evening-prayer; Nor mine the feet, oh! holy Saint, The brightness of thy ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... light in the western sky, whether caused by the low-hanging, mist-hidden moon or a freak reflection of the coming dawn. Against that patch of brightness the northern headland of Lost Island loomed up high and barren save for its one tall tree. But it was neither headland nor tree that caught Jerry's attention and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... their sky-aspiring pinnacles In barren ruggedness and majesty; While here some verdure-covered height instils An awe less dread by its fertility; And here again, a peak of snowy whiteness Relieves the gloom and shadow by its brightness. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... feelings, though they may have dimmed the brightness of his anticipations, could not for long overcloud that 'unfailing cheerfulness' which contributed much to make him throughout life so successful himself, and so helpful to others: still less could ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... number of omnibuses, horsecars, and other democratic vehicles, the vendors of cooling fluids, the white trousers and big straw hats of the policemen, the tripping gait of the modish young persons on the pavement, the general brightness, newness, juvenility, both of people and things. The young men had exchanged few observations; but in crossing Union Square, in front of the monument to Washington—in the very shadow, indeed, projected by the image of the pater patriae—one of them remarked ...
— An International Episode • Henry James

... did not care to take her with him to Paris, spoke of possible dangers, and hinted it was time she was off his hands. There seemed a confession trembling in her laughing eye. It gave him courage to seize her fingers, to falter a request that she would come to him—to Heidelberg! The brightness died suddenly out of her face: ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... in a lingering one, there are times when life's flickering embers glow with an unnatural brightness. Hence, it would not be a all surprising if a similar phenomenon were to be observed in the case of dying Darwinism; for it cannot be doubted that its disease is chronic. It has, in fact, been dying this long time. Certain indications render it very probable ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... all its brightness, warmth, and suggestiveness had returned to cheer the hearts of men; and, really, those who have never experienced the long six-or-eight-months' winter of Rupert's Land can form no conception of the feelings with which the body—to say nothing of the soul—opens up and expands ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... best of all, the noblest, O how gentle! O how kind Lips of sweetness, eyes of brightness, Steadfast ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... fairylike brightness of the island in the lagoon. The green leafage of the shrubbery was suffused in tender light; the waters reflected calmly all their drapery, but none of the savage desolation of the pyre in the Court of Honor. Beyond where the gracious pile of the Art Building ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... compulsive process? Shall we sit With memory, warming our weak hands at it, And say: "So be it; we have had one hour"? Surely the mountains are a better dower, With their dark scope and cloudy infinite, Than small perfection, trivial exquisite; 'Mid all that dark the brightness ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... deeply touched, so much so that she almost felt sorry for Aunt Henrietta, she would have given much to bring a little brightness, a little kindness, into that worn, restless, unhappy face, true reflection of the nature which itself created its own unhappiness, as well as that of all connected with it. She said, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... from small characteristics to very great ones. There is a lesson in this, and it has been perfectly appreciated by poets and similar sorcerers.] and soon the stream grew smoother, the rocks disappeared from its bed, and then from afar there was a brightness, and he was soon in the daylight and sunshine on a beautiful stream, and by the banks thereof there grew the wabeyu-beskwan, or water-lilies, and very pleasant it was to him to feel the wind again. So using his paddle ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... it. The brightness is appalling. These hard, blue skies without a cloud in them, this everlasting sunshine—how I ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... sea, or at night sleeping on its shores. We do not realize to ourselves the intoxication of a life which thus glides away in the face of heaven—the sweet yet strong love which this perpetual contact with Nature gives, and the dreams of these nights passed in the brightness of the stars, under an azure dome of infinite expanse. It was during such a night that Jacob, with his head resting upon a stone, saw in the stars the promise of an innumerable posterity, and the mysterious ladder ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... to go, I shall be delighted," she responded, as the brightness came again to her face. "I sometimes grow weary, and, I confess, a little sad sitting alone when Dorothy cannot be with me. Aunt Dorothy, now that she has her magnifying glasses,—spectacles, I think they are called,—devotes ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... not much like Webster's, but they are excellent reading; full of keen, vivid thought, bright sayings, and genial humor. He had the imagination of Demosthenes, but without the logical faculty. Many of them possess historical value, and but for too much voix blanc, like the brightness of new silver, might be compared with Emerson's essays. Certain passages and individual sentences are of rare beauty. Speaking of Lovejoy thirty years after his death, he said, "How cautiously men sink into ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... at last, that the great Power of the Universe has so constrained and ordered the uncertainties and perils of our lot, as not only to reconcile all its apparent contradictions with the ends of moral discipline and benefit, but to make even the darkness of calamity flash rays of brightness and of hope. Thus, along with an enlarged knowledge of men and things, he gives us the wisest counsel about our conduct and proceedings in the world, and also the most encouraging conclusions with regard to our ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a lover of Dress. He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a mantle of beauty; every star is vailed in brightness; every bird is clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle upon the thousand hills are dressed by the Hand Divine. Who, studying God in his works, can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence of correct taste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... tired! he had never heard of such a thing. What had put her out? The sweet brightness had died out of her eyes, and her cheeks were flaming. Should he follow her and have it out with her, there and then? But, as he hesitated, young Hamilton came over the grass and linked his ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... strictly a family party, with Mrs Scarfe added; for the other three visitors had not yet returned from Windsor. Raby sought protection from her aunt by devoting herself to Mrs Scarfe, and quite delighted that good lady by her brightness and spirit. Mrs Scarfe took occasion in the drawing-room afterwards to go into rhapsodies to her young friend regarding her son; and when about ten o'clock the holiday- makers arrived home, in high spirits and full of their day's sport, she achieved a grand stroke of generalship by leaving the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... with the lamps and brightness, and scarcely had she gone again when Sanderson in turn was seen climbing through ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... blending in childhood association and affection. It is interesting to think what the effect would have been upon the characters of both if they had been reared in close companionship. How would John's stern, rugged, unsocial nature have affected the gentle spirit of Jesus? What impression would the brightness, sweetness, and affectionateness of Jesus have made on the ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... reading, a letter, which she hurriedly concealed. She had hardly finished her morning toilette, her maid being still in the next room. At the name—-at the footsteps of Marguerite Vanel—Madame de Belliere ran to meet her. She fancied she could detect in her friend's eyes a brightness which was neither that of health nor of pleasure. Marguerite embraced her, pressed her hands, and hardly allowed her time to speak. "Dearest," she said, "have you forgotten me? Have you quite given yourself up to the pleasures ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... readers, it is not because the times are not ripe for it. This remarkable novel presents the great social problem in a striking garb.... "Demos" does not aspire to vie with "Alton Locke," but it tells a story more practical, and of more brightness and variety.'—TIMES. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... alive as he could be, with his great red beard, and his face tanned and burnt like a brick! He took no notice of us whatever, only kept kissing Percy over and over, till her face, which was white as death, was covered with living crimson, and her heavy-lidded eyes turned to stars for brightness! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... the white-eyed vireo, or flycatcher, deserves particular mention. The song of this bird is not particularly sweet and soft; on the contrary, it is a little hard and shrill, like that of the indigo-bird or oriole; but for brightness, volubility, execution, and power of imitation, he is unsurpassed by any of our northern birds. His ordinary note is forcible and emphatic, but, as stated, not especially musical; Chick-a-re'r-chick, he seems to say, hiding himself in ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... cabin to resuscitate Miss Pringle and, as she said, "have it out with her." Cleggett, gazing from the deck towards Morris's, in the strong moonlight, wondered when the attack would be renewed. He thought, on the whole, that it was improbable that Loge would return to the assault while this brightness continued. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... safety none could view, Did not those fringed lids their brightness shade— Mistaken youths! their beams, too late ye knew, Are by that soft defence more ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... honor paid to Mary! As well might we imagine that the sun, if endowed with intelligence, would be jealous of the mellow, golden cloud which encircles him, which reflects his brightness and presents in bolder light his inaccessible splendor. As well imagine that the same luminary would be jealous of our admiration for the beautiful rose, whose opening petals and rich color and delicious fragrance are the fruit of ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... another child,—one who awaited her home-coming,—a petted little princess born to purple and fine linen, that made her so tender towards them. Remembering what hers had, and all these lacked, she felt that she must crowd all the brightness possible into the short afternoon they ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... in the midst of those few days of sunny weather which come in January, deluding us so with their brightness and warmth that we look round for roses and are astonished to see the earth bare of flowers. And these bright afternoons Esther spent entirely with Jackie. At the top of the hill their way led through a narrow passage between a brick wall ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... higher: and now the roar of the pursuing flames came fearfully on the fugitives, growing louder and louder, while volumes of dense smoke were driven over their heads, and darkened the sky that had so lately shone in all its summer brightness. ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... towards us, when I saw that it was none other than the general himself. His beard was all a-bristle with fury, and his deepset eyes glowed from under their heavily veined lids with a most sinister and demoniacal brightness. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... times, looked upon him with abhorrence) made him silent, and the old man would spend his leisure hours in walking up and down the parlour with his eyes riveted upon the buffets, where the silver tankards now beamed in all their pristine brightness. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... announce the mountains which possess pure brightness, which have much brightness, created by Mazda, pure, lords of purity." So sang the Zarathustrian priest, chanting the Vispereds of the Avesta,—deep-hearted child of the world, himself now shining on the far-away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... was an atmosphere of welcome, a genial brightness. The young men were anxious to tell you where the best sport could be got. The young ladies had a merry, genuine, unaffected smile—clearly delighted to see you, and not in the least ashamed of it. They showed an evident desire to please, without a trace of an arriere pensee. Tall, well-developed, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... the moisture squeezed out of the glands during moderate laughter or smiling may aid in giving them lustre; though this must be of altogether subordinate importance, as they become dull from grief, though they are then often moist. Their brightness seems to be chiefly due to their tenseness,[13] owing to the contraction of the orbicular muscles and to the pressure of the raised cheeks. But, according to Dr. Piderit, who has discussed this point more fully than any other writer,[14] ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... his elbows from the parapet and stood up. His face took life and fire, there came a brightness as of joy into his eyes. After all, then, this time he was not to ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... fresh and lively as at first. The reason of which, they say, is that in dyeing the purple they made use of honey, and of white oil in the white tincture, both which after the like space of time preserve the clearness and brightness of their luster. Dinon also relates that the Persian kings had water fetched from the Nile and the Danube, which they laid up in their treasuries as a sort of testimony of the greatness of their ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... young man something older, were strolling off in the direction of the woods; while five or six chubby girls and boys were making the echoes leap and dance along the hills, in the clamorous delight which they felt in their innocent but stirring exercises. The whole scene was warmed with the equal brightness of the natural and the human sun. Beauty was in the sky, and its semblance, at least, was on the earth. God was in the heavens, and in his presence could there be other than ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... And bid her Esquire let him out. 900 But ere an artist could be found T' undo the charms another bound, The sun grew low, and left the skies, Put down (some write) by ladies eyes, The moon pull'd off her veil of light 905 That hides her face by day from sight, (Mysterious veil, of brightness made, That's both her lustre and her shade,) And in the lanthorn of the night With shining horns hung out her light; 910 For darkness is the proper sphere, Where all false glories use t' appear. The twinkling stars began to muster, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... any person in company for a mighty, usually concluding the result with a mirthful ditty, or a doleful countenance, according to the situation in which he is left as a winner or a loser; and in either case accompanied with a brightness of visage, or a dull dismal countenance, indicative of the event, which sets description at defiance, and can only be ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... of sickness, glided away two agreeable winters, when the transient gleam of brightness became suddenly obscured, and her prospects involved ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... comer, who expects to see dazzling peaks towering in the air. Approaching nearer, the snowy mountains sink behind the wooded ones, long before the latter have assumed gigantic proportions; and when they do so, they appear a sombre, lurid grey-green mass of vegetation, with no brightness or variation of colour. There is no break in this forest caused by rock, precipices, or cultivation; some spurs project nearer, and some valleys appear to retire further into the heart of the foremost great chain that shuts out all ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... saw a glory like a stream flow by In brightness rushing and on either side Were banks that with spring's wondrous hues might vie And from that river living sparks did soar And sank on all sides in the flow'rets bloom Like precious rubies set in ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... heaven. I go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye. I was made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent from heaven to confer that awful dignity. Their presence filled this place with an intolerable brightness. And they knelt to me, King! yes, they knelt to me! for I was greater than they. I have walked in the courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs. Touch my hand—be not afraid—touch it. There—now thou hast ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... holding his wife's hand, saying nothing, for he has nothing more to say. A high screen behind the couch on which they rest cuts off the gaslight; only the firelight plays fitfully upon the two faces. Suddenly the brightness falls away, and over that foreshadowing of death, now only three days distant, the ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... faded from the freshness of hue which distinguished him in youth. His features, always sharp, had grown yet more angular: his brows seemed to project more broodingly over his eyes, which, though of undiminished brightness, were sunk deep in their sockets, and had lost much of their quick restlessness. The character of his mind had begun to stamp itself on the physiognomy, especially on the mouth when in repose. It was, a face striking for acute ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... give some account. "I am at Paris," writes Guy of Bazoches, about the end of the twelfth century, "in this royal city, where the abundance of nature's gifts not only retains those that dwell there but invites and attracts those who are afar off. Even as the moon surpasses the stars in brightness, so does this city, the seat of royalty, exalt her proud head above all other cities. She is placed in the bosom of a delicious valley, in the centre of a crown of hills, which Ceres and Bacchus enrich with their gifts. The Seine, that ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... capped by marble roofs that shone like snow for whiteness, Its foot was deep in gardens, and that blossoming plain Seemed in the radiant shower of its majestic brightness A land for gods to dwell in, ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... brightness of it the lines of trees along the roads to Hooge were silhouetted as black as ink, and the fields between Ypres and the trenches were flooded with a milky luminance. The whole shape of the salient ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... charity's like the light o' the sun, by which all things are cherished. It is the brightness of the soul, and the glorious quality which proves our celestial descent. Our other feelings are common to a' creatures, but the feeling of charity is divine. It's the only thing in which man partakes of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... wearily upon her, all her griefs might have been traced back to the influence of faults, which in her childhood were not sufficiently developed to seem of consequence, or to merit rebuke. To us she was so loving and complying, that the less favorable traits of her nature were lost to our eyes in the brightness of her better endowments. Like all poetic persons, she had various fancies and caprices; but hers were all pure in purpose, and imparted a charm to her restless being. Even her tenderness had its fantasies, and lavished itself wastefully without thought or reason. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... urged their ponies ahead at a fast clip and the sun was still far from the meridian when they came in sight of the entrance to the defile. Dark and sinister it loomed in contrast to the brightness of the day. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... say. She is a bright little creature, but her brightness begins to need new things to work upon. She does very well at school now, I hear, and she minds very well and is much less lawless than she used to be; but she is like a candle that refuses to burn, and is satisfied with admiring its candlestick. She is quite the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... one that tore up the whole place, and they called the mountain 'Ni-Ko San,' or Two-Storm Mountain. Then an old party who was a saint, I believe, and very wise, placed a curse on the storm demon and named the place 'Nikko San,' Mountain of the Sun's Brightness." ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... surely work Great revolution in all human laws,— Where stop its courses I as yet know not; 'Tis to me like the sun, that all the day Shines godlike in my vision, and, at night, Though darkness hide its brightness, still, I feel, Shines on in glory over other spheres; It is a power beneficent and good, That grants to spirit infinite control Over all matter, and that frees the soul From its flesh shackles, and its sensuous means. What else its influences, or for health, For happiness, ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... consider some of the objective conditions from the standpoint of moral science. What the sunshine of a warm day is to all growing things on the earth, so is that shining seen in other faces that reaches the depths of the human soul with brightness and life. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... consent, allows to her. I only feared that she might have been too perfect, too precisely excellent, too matter-of-fact a paragon for you to coalesce with comfortably, ... and that a person whose perfection hung in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened down by some of 'those fair defects which best conciliate love,' would, by appealing more dependently to your protection, have stood a much better chance with your good-nature. All these suppositions, however, I have been led into by my intense ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... no small wonder of her neighbor, Mrs. Sharp, the shack began to take on an air of homely brightness and comfort which that lady's more pretentious place lacked, even after a residence of ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... over, what with the sweet twilight gladness of Mark, the merry noonday brightness of Saffy, and the loveliness all around, the heart of Hester was quiet and hopeful as a still mere that waits in the blue night the rising of the moon. She had some things to trouble her, but none of them had touched the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... The sun was above the horizon, the sky was clear and the air was balmy. The warm season was at hand, but it had not fully set in, and, under the shade of the towering trees, the coolness was delightful. Birds were singing and the brightness and cheerfulness which pervaded nature every where was like that which makes us fling our hats in air ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... pursuing his own fancies, rode on fast, and side by side; the long shadows of declining day struggling with a sky of unusual brightness, and thrown from the dim forest trees and the distant hillocks. Alternately through shade and through light rode they on; the bulls gazing on them from holt and glade, and the boom of the bittern sounding in its peculiar mournfulness of toile ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... with a sheen of pink and purple tiles halfway up the white wall to the dark wood of a roughly carved ceiling, and instead of coming into a room at the end, she walked unexpectedly into a large fountain court, bright with the crystal brightness of spraying water and the colour of flowers, shaded with orange trees whose blossoms ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... was the first to die, and the doctor feared that ere long several others would sink under the disease from which they suffered. A deep gloom settled on most of the crew, but there was light and brightness in old Andrew's cabin, which he endeavoured to shed abroad. That light came from within. It arose from his firm faith in God's loving mercy and protecting providence. "Do not despair, mates," he said, over and over again. "God has ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston

... had rather poor luck, owing, they said, to the sunny brightness of the day, a complaint seldom heard in this climate. They got good exercise, however, jumping from boulder to boulder in the brawling stream, running along slippery logs and through the bushes that fringe the bank, casting here and there into ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... transitory, as the odour of incense in the fire."—Dr. Johnson. "Terrestrial happiness is of short continuance: the brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel, the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odours."—Id. "Thy nod is as the earthquake that shakes the mountains; and thy smile, as the dawn ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... clear to the crest of the hill, directly above where the two stood, was an area half a mile wide upon which no timber grew. Here and there a jumbled outcropping of rock broke the long smooth sweep of snow upon which the last rays of the setting sun were reflected with dazzling brightness. As Connie waited expectantly he was conscious of a tenseness of nerves, that manifested itself in a clenching of his fists, and the tight-pressing of his lips. His eyes swept the long up-slanting spread of snow, and even as he looked he heard 'Merican Joe give a startled grunt, ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... began its deliberations in the finest humor with everybody, particularly with that prime favorite, Susan B. Anthony. This lady daily grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of doing everything connected with the council. Miss Anthony when in repose looks worn with the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... place; yea, was put into such principalities as belonged to the best of his territories and dominions. This Diabolus was made 'son of the morning,' and a brave place he had of it: it brought him much glory, and gave him much brightness, an income that might have contented his Luciferian heart, had it not been insatiable, and enlarged ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... cold hand closed all too soon a loveable and useful life. Our friendship was close and intimate, such as is formed in the warmth of youth and which the grave alone dissolves. To me, during those short years, it lent brightness and gaiety to existence; and, in the days that have followed, its memory has been, and is now, a ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... then, the sky, if no human chisel ever yet cut breath, neither did any human pen ever write light; if it did, mine should spread out before you the unspeakable glories of these southern heavens, the saffron brightness of morning, the blue intense brilliancy of noon, the golden splendour and the rosy softness of sunset. Italy and Claude Lorraine may go hang themselves together! Heaven itself does not seem brighter or more beautiful to the imagination, than these surpassing pageants of fiery ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... eye roams widely o'er glad Nature's face, To mark each varied and delightful scene; The simple and magnificent we trace, While loveliness and brightness intervene; Oh! everywhere is ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... over-illuminated to the dazzling whiteness usually used in flash lights. Excessive illumination alters the proper perception of the coloring of the mucosa, besides shortening the life of the lamps. The proper degree of brightness is obtained when, as the current is increased, the first change from yellow to white light is obtained. Never turn up the ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... less for warmth than for society. The first gleam made the dark lonely islet into a cheering home, turned the protecting tree to a starlit roof, and the chestnut-sprays to illuminated walls. Lying beneath their shelter, every fresh flickering of the fire kindled the leaves into brightness and banished into dark interstices the lake and sky; then the fire died into embers, the leaves faded into solid darkness in their turn, and water and heavens showed light and close and near, until fresh twigs caught fire and the blaze came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... comply with the request, and so they sat on, the boy's red-gold curls making a gleam of brightness on the sombre black garments of widowhood ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... air for a passing fly and returning to their perch. Long after their associates have gone southward, they linger like the last leaves on the tree. It is indeed "good-bye to summer" when the bluebirds withdraw their touch of brightness from the dreary ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... choosing the rattlesnake to represent America. The style of the article and its keenness are like Franklin, but there is no proof that he was its author. Whoever did write it notes that the "rattler" is peculiar to America; that the brightness of its eyes and their lack of lids fit it to be an emblem of vigilance. It never begins an attack and never surrenders, never wounds till it has given warning. The writer had counted the rattles on the naval ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan

... thought fit to direct the two Ambassadors who are the bearers of this letter to visit your most Serene Piety, that the transparency of peace between us, which from various causes hath been of late somewhat clouded, may be restored to-its former brightness by the removal of all contentions. For we think that you, like ourselves, cannot endure that any trace of discord should remain between two Republics which, under the older Princes, ever formed but one body, and which ought ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... round, and raising her eyes, watched for some minutes the gloomy cloud. It was slowly moving towards the west, and as it did so, the sun behind it began to edge all its dark outline with brightness. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... catches her breath, shows relief in every feature, lifts her eyes with sudden brightness, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... sunrays seemed to fall violently upon the calm sea—seemed to shatter themselves upon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor of light that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteady brightness. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... dearest," she wrote, "and I answer that I am happy, with a still, deep happiness, over which a hundred troubles and cares ripple like shadows on a lake. But oh! poor Aunt Mitty, with her silent hurt pride in her face, and poor Aunt Matoaca, with the strained, unnatural brightness in her eyes, and her cheeks so like rose leaves that have crumpled. Oh, Ben, I believe Aunt Matoaca is living over again her own romance, and it breaks my heart. Last night I went into her room, and found her with her old yellowed wedding ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... and despondent housewife, in all secrecy, decked herself out with these jewels of memory, they did not succeed in shedding any brightness over her life in the present. She was scarcely conscious of any connection between the golden-locked angel with the red ribbons and the five-year-old boy who lay grubbing in the dark back yard. These moments snatched her quite away from reality; ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... drove off to the garden-party with an animation most unusual under the circumstances. Garden-parties were, as a rule, unmitigated bores, but this one would be an exception! Peggy would be there, and where Peggy moved fun and brightness followed in her footsteps; and Arthur had been despatched by Mr Rollo to take his place in escorting the ladies. Eunice was persuaded that no man in the world was nobler than her father, but, socially speaking, he had ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... a great black book, the family Bible. I must have been very small, and it was a large Bible, and lay on a table in the sitting-room. I see my mother standing before me, with her violin on her arm. She is light, young, and very graceful; beauty seems to flow from her face in a kind of dark brightness, if I may use such an expression; her eyes are soft and deep. I have seen no other eyes like my mother Marie's. She taps the violin with the bow; then she ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards



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