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Faintly   /fˈeɪntli/   Listen
Faintly

adverb
1.
To a faint degree or weakly perceived.  "Stars shining faintly through the overcast" , "Could hear his distant shouts only faintly" , "The rumors weren't even faintly true"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Faintly" Quotes from Famous Books



... doubt from her, but for a distant sound that came faintly on her ears—the sound of covert laughter. Her doubt turned to conviction. Her face became hot; her heart, but for the anger at it, would have grown sick with the disappointment. Her conductors and the donkey were retreating, having played their joke out! ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... careful stupidity) how exceeding small some of the material is consciously ground in the great grim, thrifty mill of industrial success; and indeed we grow about as many cheap illusions and easy comforts in the faintly fenced garden of our little life as could very well be crammed ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... to Alec, took no notice of the request. He poured himself out some whisky, and raising the glass, deliberately examined how much there was in it. Alec smiled faintly. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... places in the evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns, supposing they had reached ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... very kind to me, Ned," she said, softly. "I've been so silly but I'm better now. I don't often carry on like that." She smiled faintly. "Let's walk a bit! I shall feel better and I have such a lot to tell you. Don't interrupt! I want you to know all about it, Ned." And so, walking backwards and forwards in the moonlit streets, deserted and empty, passing an occasional night prowler, watched with suspicious eyes by energetic members ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... mysterious and the tragic. But Violet Strange, for all her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature, and for the instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory of that expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the hall beyond, she felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an indefinable fear which no words can explain and no ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... again laughing inwardly, got worse, choked, had his back thumped, stamped about, frightened his wife, and at last recovered in a state of the last exhaustion and with the water streaming from his eyes, but still faintly ejaculating, 'A godfeyther—a godfeyther, Tilly!' in a tone bespeaking an exquisite relish of the sally, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... greatness?" she asked, with a faintly satirical inflection in her sweet voice which he had ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... lingered on the words till it trailed away into nothing, like the vanishing note of a violin which seems still to pulse faintly after ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... dawn of day was glimmering faintly at the window, before another change appeared—before she drew a long, sighing breath, and slowly opened her eyes on mine. Their first look was very strange and startling to behold; for it was the look that was natural to her; the calm look of consciousness, restored to what it had always ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... publication of a volume of verse, just as his fellow-novelists, M. Paul Bourget and Signor Gabriele d'Annunzio have severally done. Immature as juvenile lyrics are likely to be, these early rhymes of Daudet's have a flavor of their own, a faintly recognizable note of individuality. He is more naturally a poet than most modern literators who possess the accomplishment of verse as part of their equipment for the literary life, but who lack a spontaneous impulse toward rhythm. It may ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... analogy with the Greek manner than with the modern and emotional schools; it is objective, often minute, and always carefully composed, in the artistic sense of that term. The description of the river Oxus, for example, though faintly charged with suggested and allegoric meaning, is a noble close to the poem which ends in it. The scale is large, and Arnold was fond of a broad landscape, of mountains, and prospects over the land; but one cannot fancy Wordsworth writing it. So ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of faith and grope And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... my eyes and peer back into my obscure childish world I can see him sitting in his straight-backed cane-bottomed chair, drumming on the rungs with his fingers, keeping time to some inaudible tune—or chanting with faintly-moving lips the wondrous words of John or Daniel. He must have been at this time about seventy years of age, but he seemed to me as old as a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... France? Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones, Ill-favouredly become the morning field. Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose, And our air shakes them passing scornfully. Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd host, And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps; The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades Lob down their heads, drooping the hides and hips, The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes, And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit Lies foul with ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed heavily and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost travellers followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the left. After a little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige of a road in the hope that it might lead to some farm or cottage, at which Idle ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... Emma McChesney faintly, and shook off his hand. "Your stenographer can see—What ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... seemed to forbid his love; and the conviction that he must give it all up became a clear as it was painful. The poor fellow leaned his head against the shaggy bark of an elm in a shadowy square which the street-lamps could but faintly penetrate. The night wind swayed the budding branches of the great tree, and they sighed over him as ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... up faintly and put out her hand. "Pray," she said in a whisper—"pray for the mother;" but even as she spoke she gasped, half rose, then fell back, and was gone, the look of entreaty still in the eyes. The doctor closed them gently, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... excellencies!" he said in his native tongue; and upon Yussuf questioning him, he told them faintly that he was not much hurt, only a little stunned. That he was seated by the fount, with his horses grazing, when the band of armed men rode up, and one of them struck him over the head with the barrel of his musket, and when he recovered somewhat he found himself a ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... "to know something about politics." Ay, if the treatise had been upon fox-hunting, she would have desired "to know something about" that! Above all, yet distinguishable from the rest—as the sparks still upon stem and leaf here and there faintly glowed and twinkled—the withered flowers which recorded that happy hour in the arbour, and the walks of the forsaken garden—the hour in which she had so blissfully pledged herself to renounce that career in art wherein fame would have ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... clung to her hair. It was not actually raining, but each gas lamp had a rusty little halo of mist. The van and horses were gone, and in the black street the curtained window of the carters' eating-house made a square patch of soiled blood-red light glowing faintly very near the level of the pavement. Mrs Verloc, dragging herself slowly towards it, thought that she was a very friendless woman. It was true. It was so true that, in a sudden longing to see some friendly face, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... strong arms and bore it down the beach. A sail-boat lay in a cove, with a little skiff in tow. Waring arranged a couch in the bottom, and placed the old man in an easy position on an impromptu pillow made of his coat. Fog opened his eyes. 'Anything come ashore?' he asked faintly, trying to turn his head towards the reef. Conquering his repugnance, the young man walked out on the long point. There was nothing there; but farther down the coast barrels were washing up and back in the surf, and one box had stranded in shallow water. 'Am I, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... still around, and only the distant shouts of the beaters fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing detects the light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered leaves. His hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade the sleek coat or hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before the animal ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... policy, while making the breach irreparable with Aerssens and as many leading politicians as Aerssens could influence, he first brought on himself the stupid accusation of swerving towards Spain. Dull murmurs like these, which were now but faintly making themselves heard against the reputation of the Advocate, were destined ere long to swell into a mighty roar; but he hardly listened now to insinuations which seemed infinitely below his contempt. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Range, trackless and unbroken save by one or two clusters of dwarfed oaks, which at that distance were but mossy excrescences on the surface, barely raised above the dead level. On the other side the marsh took up the monotony and carried it, scarcely interrupted by undefined water-courses, to the faintly marked-out horizon line of the remote bay. Scattered and apparently motionless black spots on the meadows that gave a dreary significance to the title of "the Crows" which the rancho bore, and sudden gray clouds of sandpipers on the marshes, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... fast asleep; and lady Feng was feeling at length her sleepy eyes slightly dose, when she faintly discerned Mrs. Ch'in walk in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... faintly smiling. He was tired now, and hardly heard what Pelle was saying. "I must go to bed now so that I can get up at one. But where do you live? I'll come and see you some time. How queer it is that we should have run across ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... conditions that the strong man of right intent rebukes the sloth and hypocrisy of his time. Very seldom, if ever, does he faintly guess the result of his protest. Jesus rebuked the iniquities and follies of Jerusalem, pleading for simple honesty, directness of speech and love of neighbors. In wrath the Pharisees made the usual double charge against Him—heresy and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... In the course of his researches he displayed that thoroughness and passionate love of truth which was the distinguishing feature of his character throughout life. That he succeeded in a manner which has been surpassed by none, and only faintly rivalled by a very few, is now generally recognised both by his own countrymen and also—which is far more remarkable—by the inhabitants of the country which formed the subject of his study. So far as it is possible for any Western to achieve that very difficult ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... green squares of lawn, and the glowing beds at the sides. Over to her right the cloister court ran out, with its two rows of windows, bedrooms above with galleries beyond, as she knew, and parlours and cloisters below; the pleasant tinkle of the fountain in the court came faintly to her ears across the caw of the rooks about the elms and the low sounds from the stables and the kitchen behind the house. Otherwise the evening was very still; the two old ladies were sitting near the fireplace; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... up to the house had long since become overgrown with rank grass and weeds. Faintly traceable through the mass of green could be seen a rough footpath which the two followed carefully. They met no one. As they approached the night of black pines the mass of the old mansion began to loom up before them, grim ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... belly of the offender. Because he said he didn't want to love any more, we hate him for evermore, and try to run over him, every bit of him, with our love-tanks. And all the time we yell at him: "Will you deny love, you villain? Will you?" And by the time he faintly squeaks, "I want to be loved! I want to be loved!" we have got so used to running over him with our love-tanks that we don't feel in ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... but continued to gaze into the faintly glowing coals, and a tear slowly coursed down her pale, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... room was the tepidarium, a moist oozing arched den, with a light faintly streaming from an orifice in the domed ceiling. Yells of frantic laughter and song came booming and clanging through the echoing arches, the doors clapped to with loud reverberations. It was the laughter of the followers ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Judas. If the white quartz was full of gold that her father had overlooked—say fine gold, that would not show in the pan—then Wiley was indeed her friend; but if the quartz was barren and he had purposely deceived her in order to boom his own mine—she smiled with her lips and asked him rather faintly if he wanted ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... stroking his cane for a few minutes, then smiled faintly. "My mammy was mighty nigh as big, an' nevah seen a sick day in her life. Wit a staht lak dat, hit ain't no wonder I growed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... came faintly through the silence of the boundless woods, reminded him that there were other inhabitants of the solitude besides human beings. At such times, he drew nearer to the fire, as a child would draw near to a friend ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... an hour. Moreover, although Ramsdell did know what to do, and did it, the stroke of midnight found him still staring at the dark with burning eyes, while the pillowcase underneath his head hissed faintly to the steady throbbing of his temples. The noxious, deadly poison of Mrs. Brenton's talk had made its insidious way through and through his system, loosening its carefully maintained tensions, overthrowing its balances, stirring ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... after leaving the Orkneys we sighted Fair Isle, looming faintly through a mist of snow, far to starboard. With difficulty we tacked to windward, for the northeast wind had driven us considerably out of our course. Darkness came on at about three o'clock in the afternoon in these latitudes, and we wanted to make the harbour in ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... slow and faintly; the lips were drawn tight; the hearing so dulled that even loud noises seemed to have no effect upon them. The body was flabby and almost lifeless. It was not possible to obtain an answer to anything one asked ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... abandon the poor child without one struggle, without one effort to prevail on the woman to leave the helpless child in the better hands into which she had fallen? Like a flash of lightning all this passed through my brain; then I said to Jim faintly and ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... kept, as Bede expressly tells us, free of cost in the Irish monasteries, and drew their first inspirations in the Irish schools. Even now, after the lapse of all these centuries, many of the places whence they came still reverberate faintly with the memory ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... this drawing, which only one person can possess, and only one in a hundred enjoy, than he would have been in producing two or three pieces on a larger scale, which should have been at once accessible to, and enjoyable by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose, for instance, that Turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white paper, with his camel's-hair pencil, had struck the main forms of his fish into marble, thus, (Fig. 7); and instead of coloring the white paper so delicately that, perhaps, only a few of the most keenly observant artists in England can see it at all, had, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... of the then-struggling Party The Leader had founded—and I saw The Leader sitting in a chair, thinking. There was golden light about his head, Herr Professor. I have told this to other people and they do not believe me. There were shadowy other beings in the room. I saw, very faintly, great white wings. But the other beings were still because The Leader was thinking and did not wish to be disturbed. I assure you that this is true, Herr Professor. The Leader was the holiest of men—if he was ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)

... short though our nights are. A chilly little group gathers sleepily round the embers, watching mess-tins full of nondescript concoctions balanced cunningly in the hot corners, and gossiping of small camp affairs or large strategical movements of which we know nothing. The brigade camp-fires twinkle faintly through the gloom. A line of veldt-fire is sure to be glowing in the distance, looking like the lights of a sea-side town as seen from the sea. The only sound is of mules shuffling ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... and again closed her eyes. But it was evident that she still retained her consciousness; for her lips were moving faintly, as if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... some of you better go on to that town and get some bread and maybe weenies and potatoes," Grandma said faintly. ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... us to a strange looking house, and were now baying and leaping up against the door. We did not stop to knock, but began to break through, for inside we could hear faintly sounds of excitement and ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... about the death of good Mr. Richardson, the author of Pamela and Clarissa, whose works we all admired exceedingly. And as we talked about Clarissa, my wife took on herself to wipe her eyes once or twice, and say, faintly, "You know, my love, mamma and I could never help crying over that dear book. Oh, my dearest, dearest mother" (she adds), "how I wish she could be with me now!" This was an occasion for more open tears, for of course a young lady may naturally weep for her absent mother. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... faintly pealing, Far off evening bells come sad and slow; Faintly rise, the wondrous tale revealing Of the old ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... again like that of fixed stars. The cheek-bones, though softly rounded, are more prominent than in most women, and confirm the impression of strength. The nose, narrow and straight, has high-cut nostrils, and the mouth is arched at the corners. Below the nose the lip is faintly shaded by a down that is wholly charming; nature would have blundered if she had not placed there ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... be pretty well ventilated," said Dick, smiling faintly. "That was what made me so healthy, I expect. But did you ever know ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... show an elevated and cultivated race,—and come it must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama of human improvement.—life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. In that far-off mystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and waving palms, and wondrous flowers, and miraculous fertility, will awake new forms of art, new styles of splendor; ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... door-bell, Mr. and Mrs. Bingle were seated before the fire in the library. Kathleen sat upon the former's knee. The rest of the children had been sent off to the huge playroom on the top floor, and their distant shrieks, muffled by the thicknesses of many doors and walls, came faintly down to the fireside. With the subdued, even refined jingle of the door-bell, the two Bingles straightened up in their chairs and looked into each other's eyes, suddenly apprehensive. Who could be calling ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... forgotten us, suspending his grace, as they say in the schools. As in this temptation not only the spirit but also the flesh is afflicted, so afterward, when he again begins to remember us, the perception of grace which during the trial was evident only to the spirit and most faintly at that, is extended ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... At 9:30 P. M. we stood upon its summit, and before us stretched the sandy wastes of Kara-Kum, enshrouded in gloom. Thousands of feet below us the city of Askabad was ablaze with lights, shining like beacons on the shore of the desert sea. Strains of music from a Russian band stole faintly up through the darkness as we dismounted, and contemplated the strange scene, until the shriek of a locomotive-whistle startled us from our reveries. Across the desert a train of the Transcaspian railway was gliding ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... boy," said Mr Mackay, who had the "first watch," from eight o'clock till midnight that is, I sharing it with him, speaking as we were just abreast of the light I've mentioned, although so far to the southward that it could only be seen very faintly glimmering on the horizon like a star, a trifle bigger than those which twinkled above it and on either side in the clear northern sky—"we've run exactly forty- six miles ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... bristling and his tail growing stiff; then with a short sharp bark he sprang forward like an arrow from a bow in the direction of the feline objective. We saw a streak of yellow as she fled for safety and life; a cloud of dust, and the Menace and his quarry disappeared from view. Faintly from afar floated an eager yelp, telling that the chase was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

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

... ground in the mill for a year; his modest life has left him no time for enjoyment, and his ideas of all pleasure are crude. Watch him as he remains passively in an ecstasy of rest. The cries of children, the confused jargon of the crowd, fall but faintly on his nerves; he likes the sensation of being in company; he has a dim notion of the beauty of the vast sky with its shining snowy-bosomed clouds, and he lets the light breeze blow over him. I like to look on that good citizen and contrast the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence) he appeared embarrassed how ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... we should find a herd of deer. Remaining stationary while we spoke, a space of fifty miles, partly mountain, and partly valley, lay above and below us, and glancing the eye from end to end of this immense tract, not a hut of any kind could be seen; but, faintly, the tinkling of bells attached to the necks of sheep, or cattle, could be heard, and that only when the feeble puffs of wind blew from a certain direction. We wandered for many miles over the desolate mountains, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... "Did you break out of gaol?" But to tell the truth I was faintly uneasy; because, if he had, it would mean trouble for us all presently, when we had been traced by the police. But I need not ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... pursued Lady Caroline, faintly surprised, "is likely to be the more appreciative of any kindness shown to—er—what I may call the living ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery warm—a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... has a little more than half as much sugar; it has nearly three times as much proteids and salts; its proteids are different and much more difficult of digestion; its reaction is decidedly acid, that of mother's milk is faintly ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... faintly, as he reached the window, "take the flint and the tinder, and the wood in the basket, and make a fire. I have brought ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... down, the whole length of the hall, strode the four Friends, whacking with their sticks at every head that showed itself; and in five minutes the room was cleared. Through the broken windows the shrieks of terrified weasels escaping across the lawn were borne faintly to their ears; on the floor lay prostrate some dozen or so of the enemy, on whom the Mole was busily engaged in fitting handcuffs. The Badger, resting from his labours, leant on his stick and wiped his ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... (Mornex sur Saleve).—I was awakened by the twittering of the birds at a quarter to five, and saw, as I threw open my windows, the yellowing crescent of the moon looking in upon me, while the east was just faintly whitening. An hour later it was delicious out of doors. The anemones were still closed, the apple-trees in ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... carried by Terence, and whistling for the retriever, strolled off up the stream. In ten minutes the double-barrels were heard at a short distance, and a quarter of an hour afterward again, but this time faintly. Ten minutes before the hour was up he appeared, wiping the perspiration from his face, with seven and a half ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... birds were faintly dying away, the last low of the returning kine sounded over the lea, the tinkle of the sheep-bell was heard no more, the thin white moon began to gleam, and Hesperus glittered in the fading sky. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... huge columns of fire stretching heavenward from the oil wells in full blaze, and, over all, the pitiless hail of iron and explosives pouring upon them, the horror of the situation in which the soldiers and civilians found themselves may be faintly imagined. Gorlice was an inferno in a few hours. When the German infantry dashed into the town they found the Russians still in possession. Fighting hand to hand, contesting every step, the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... an hour later the little band was walking along with torches faintly lighting up ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... idyllic meadows and woodlands, post-chaises, carefree wanderers, and lovely maidens in picturesque settings; all suffused with gentle yearning and melting into soft melody. Eichendorff's patriotism was of the traditional type, echoing faintly the battle-hymns of the War of Liberation. For the great liberal movement of the thirties and forties he had neither sympathy nor comprehension.—FRIEDRICH RUeCKERT (1788-1866), endowed with a fatal facility of lyric expression, a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... burned at all; they only winked and breathed out sweet odors—each flame a different color and scent. They were as tall as her head, as she sat among them; and the one at her right ear was of isthagaria, while the one on the left faintly suggested tinnulalia-flowers. ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... builder and maker is God-perfect as his infinite wisdom-strong as his omnipotence-eternal as his existence. Who by searching can find out the perfections of the Almighty-they can only be traced by his revealed will, and with our poor powers, even then but faintly. No man ever possessed a more intimate knowledge of the Bible, nor greater aptitude in quoting it than Bunyan: he must have meditated in it day and night; and in this treatise his biblical treasures are wisely used. He begins with the foundation of the walls, and shows ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... was sitting in the dark on her door-step; a cat had curled up comfortably in her lap; her elm was faintly murmurous with a constant soft rustling and whispering of the lace of leaves around its great boughs. Now and then a tree-toad spoke, or from the pasture pond behind the house came the metallic twang of a bullfrog. But nothing ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... well known in London, and I believe is still alive, was one of those beauties in whom it is difficult to find any positive fault. Her hair was chestnut coloured, and astonishingly long and thick, her blue eyes were at once languorous and brilliant, her skin, faintly tinged with a rosy hue, was of a dazzling whiteness; she was tall for her age, and seemed likely to become as tall as Pauline. Her breast was perhaps a little small, but perfectly shaped, her hands were white and plump, her feet small, and her gait had something ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... widowed lady, to whom the brook and the land belonged, came walking in the fields with her maids. And one of them saw the figure of Sir Owen and, half fearful, she went up to him and found him faintly breathing. ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... almost still once more. At the same time the wind's voice sank in her ears like a music dropping downward in a hollow place. It rose, but swiftly sank a second time to a softer hush, and she perceived in the curtained enclosure a faintly growing light which enabled her to see, for the first time since she had left the church, her husband's features. He was looking at her with an expression of anticipation in which there was awe, and she realised ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... bewildered head. And then, when the conversation moved, naturally enough, from education to religion, from religion to science, and from science to evolution, I noticed how, so to speak, he pricked up his ears. He was thinking then, trying to realize, however faintly, that inside him was something different to anything inside us. His Catholic training, his sequestered up-bringing, his entomological studies, his intellectual resiliency, so deftly utilized by the Society of Jesus—all ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... last words he ever spoke, save that when his sister, Catherine of Schwartzburg, immediately afterwards asked him if he commended his soul to Jesus Christ, he faintly answered, "Yes." His master of the horse, Jacob van Maldere, had caught him in his arms as the fatal shot was fired. The Prince was then placed on the stairs for an instant, when he immediately began to swoon. He was afterwards ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... centuries, yet ever to remain divided. And if the lines in which their minds have flowed seem to be converging at last, and if hereafter Germans and English are again to unite in a single faith, the remote meeting point is still invisible, and the terms of possible agreement can be but faintly conjectured. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... talk, and behind the reverberation of his deep voice the roll of the organ like an approving echo could faintly be heard. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... sitting without a jury, which was not required by statute[826] to honor his request for counsel and whose "practice," in fact was to afford counsel only in murder and rape cases. Finally, the Court emphatically rejected the notion, suggested, however faintly by the older decisions, that the Fourteenth Amendment "incorporates the specific guarantees found in the Sixth Amendment, although it recognized that a denial of the rights stipulated in the latter Amendment may in a given case amount ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... don't know who Silent Sam is," said Mr. Nestor faintly. "But I'm sure I'm much obliged to him and your other friends. It has been very hard. Tell me, are my wife and Mary ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... said, smiling faintly. This was the answer she gave most often to her father's questions. "Is there anything you want, Posie?" he was sure to ask every morning, or, "What would you like me to get you to-day, little daughter?" The answer was invariable, given always ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... unbroken voice of song was pouring forth from the darkness. Or was it dark? It certainly wasn't light. The swamp, away behind old Wully Johnstone's fields, lay in blackness, and there was even a hint of moonlight sifted faintly through the gray veil of the sky. But the white line of birches by the stream stood out a soft, cloudy white, the fields were dimly distinguishable, and here and there a tree had taken form from ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... to ask me. I'm not familiar with such things. I thought you might preach less openly what you believe so strenuously. Coat the pills so they'll go down with the taste of orthodoxy." She smiled faintly. "I hate to see you putting ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... this Cult in London—South Place Chapel and Essex Hall, for instance, where they worship the Spirit of the Innermost. But the thing that struck me so oddly was the number of bald heads glimmering faintly in the reflected light from the lantern circle. And that set me thinking upon a difficulty I have ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... been an accident," said Lowrie faintly and huskily. "Get Riley Sinclair; quick. I got something ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... perform the impossible," said the professor, now faintly jovial. He tapped a thick pad of typewriter paper on the table beside him. "See, Dick, this is the world, the universe." He swept a finger down it. "It is long in time, and"—sweeping his hand across it—"it is broad in space, but"—now jabbing his finger against its center—"it ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... reply. He arose and briefly kicked Buttons out of the buttery. Then he mounted a chair to listen better. "He has hentered his ludship's apawtment," he remarked, hearing the sound of voices come faintly down the little private staircase that led from Sir Godfrey's study to the buttery: the Baron was in the habit of coming down at night for crackers and cheese before he went to bed. Presently one voice grew much louder than the other. It questioned. There came a ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister

... the well-turned semi-circular arch. The triforium is composed of a tier of semi-circular arches, nearly of equal span with those below. The perspective of the building is grand and palatial. In the evening, when it is illuminated only by a few faintly-burning tapers, the effect of the gleams of light, reflected from the returns of the arches and pillars, is particularly fine. Beyond the central arch which supports the tower, all is lost in gloom, except that at the extremity of the choir, the star-light just breaks through the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... leave him to rest. She gently released his hand from her grasp and laid it across his breast, and moved no more, excepting to wipe the drops from his brow. Solemn stillness had reigned for some time in the large, clean house, faintly smelling of lavender; but, on a sudden, doors opened and shut; steps were heard in the anteroom, seats were moved, and a loud confusion of men's voices became audible, among them that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... words; the Italian had the blood-caked ruler in his hand, and with his knife was reaching up to cut the thongs that lashed the hands. He was not tall enough, I seized him and lifted him up, then fell to work with my own knife upon the straps. And Raffles smiled faintly upon ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... broke noisily on the shore and rippled over the sand, that faintly hissed as it soaked up the water. The foremost waves, crested with white foam, flung themselves with a loud boom on the shore, and retreated, driven back to meet the waves that were pushing forward ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... shall master it." Immoral to hurt anybody but himself. Little things are all big with the past Lived in thoughts about events rather than in events themselves Love for open air and facts Low opinion of human nature Man abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life One's got to draw the line." "Ah!" said Cecilia; "where?" Pabulum of varying theories of future life Pass out of the country of the understanding of the young People do miss things when they are old! Perversity which she found so conspicuous in her servants ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... green slope of corn, a thin, soft vapour hung on the distant woods, and hid the hills. The pale young leaves of the aspen rustled faintly, not yet with their full sound; the sprays of the horse-chestnut, drooping with the late frosts, could not yet keep out the sunshine with their broad green. A white spot on the footpath yonder was where the bloom had ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... destroy the effect of so unanswerable a justification, unless it were the injudicious conduct of the apologists themselves, who betrayed the common cause of religion, to gratify their devout hatred to the domestic enemies of the church. It was sometimes faintly insinuated, and sometimes boldly asserted, that the same bloody sacrifices, and the same incestuous festivals, which were so falsely ascribed to the orthodox believers, were in reality celebrated by the Marcionites, by the Carpocratians, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... so slowly as did that one, in the opinion of the tired and impatient lad. But at last the eastern sky grew faintly gray and then flushed red, and another day was born. In the growing light, Billy stood up and looked about him. The bay or any familiar landmarks were not in sight. Billy was in a quandary. But before long he came ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... of an almost pure Saxon type—tall, broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed, with a skin the colour of new milk, and soft ashen hair parted smoothly over her ears and coiled in a large, loose knot at the back of her head. As he reached her she smiled faintly and a little brown mole at the corner of her mouth played charmingly up and down. After the first minute, Gay found himself fascinated by this single imperfection in her otherwise flawless features. More than her beauty he felt that it stirred ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... the colonel's own sake, than for any need still existing. He found the colonel alone. It was afternoon of a warm day in August, and Esther had gone with Mrs. Barker to get blackberries, and was not yet returned. The air came in faintly through the open windows, a little hindered by the blinds which were drawn to moderate ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... enterprise. In a book by John A. Hrones and G. L. Nelson, Analysis of the Four Bar Linkage (1951), the four-bar crank-and-rocker mechanism was exhaustively analyzed mechanically and the results were presented graphically. This work was faintly praised by a Dutch scholar, O. Bottema, who observed that the "complicated analytical theory of the three-bar [sic] curve has undoubtedly kept the engineer from using it" and who went on to say that "we fully understand the publication of ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson

... breakers was distinctly heard a little way ahead, and at the same time a light was seen away to the left, glimmering faintly through the darkness. It came home to the anxious crew with sickening certainty that they were being driven on the Farne Islands. These islands form a group of desolate rocks lying off the Northumbrian coast. They are twenty in number, some only uncovered at low tide, and all offering a rugged iron ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... words Sam stepped forward without further argument and laid the box on the bed in front of the little cripple. The babies crowded about. The mother left her machine and stood smiling faintly at the foot of ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown

... Fitz Barry smiled faintly, and answered languidly, "O, no fear of that; I am sure my father and Sophy are not a bit proud; and as to Nora, I don't think she has a particle of that sort of thing in her; so when they come, you must promise to let me make you ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... of the rich, silent forces of nature working all around you. The wet earth smells fruitful and luscious. Green shoots are peeping out everywhere. The twigs are stiff with their sap; and the moist, heavy English air is laden with a faintly resinous perfume. Buds in the hedges, lambs beneath them—everywhere the work ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... waiting, which ended with the boatman pulling out from shore. The watchers above had heard nothing, had not even seen him leave, although the lantern had faintly shown him riding upon the wave, moored to ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... sunlight glancing across the moor and glittering away over the water threw a strange glow upon the still, cold face of their ghastly burden. A soft breeze sprung from the sea, herald of the advancing eventide, following the drowsy languor of the perfect autumnal day. The faintly stirred air was full of its quickening exhilaration, but it found no human response in their heavy hearts. Solemn thoughts and silence came over all of them. Scarcely a word was spoken on ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... blow on the panels, but there was no reply. Then he called out and received no answer. He struck and called again and again, his voice rising to a shout while his hands were bleeding from the blows he had rained on the hard surface. Finally a voice came to him faintly through the door. ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... exiled Palm-tree grew Midst foliage of no kindred hue; Through the laburnum's dropping gold Rose the light shaft of orient mould, And Europe's violets, faintly sweet, Purpled the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... journey, they were less and less inclined to converse. At every turn of the sinuous road fresh splendors broke upon them. By slow degrees the glaciers became visible: first those of Gria and Taconay; then the Glacier des Boissons, thrusting a crook of steel-blue ice far into the valley; and then—faintly discernible in the distance, and seemingly a hand's breadth of snow framed by the sombre gorge—the Glacier des Bois, a frozen estuary of the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... is Thea," she answers and her voice is weary, gentle and a little hoarse. A caressing shimmer as of faintly blue velvet, an insinuating fragrance as of dying mignonette—both lie in this voice. The voice fills my heart. But I won't be taken in, least of all by some trite ghost which is in the end only a vision of one's ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... thing. As the violet dimmed I thought I heard Voice One very faintly (not as if speaking directly but as if the screen had heard and remembered—not a voice but the fluorescent ghost of one): "Thank ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... obeyed; but when he stood on the floor, he looked so odd in his crimson girdle and corked cheeks, with Dr. Rowlands surveying him in intense astonishment, that the scene became overpoweringly ludicrous to Duncan, who now in his turn was convulsed with a storm of laughter, faintly echoed in stifled ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... What excuse shall I make?" The man's voice was weary but patient. The tone of it set a chord humming faintly somewhere in Captain Cai's memory: but his mind worked slowly and (as he would have put it) wanted sea-room, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Giuseppone, Artois left the boat from the islet and, taking another, was rowed towards the public gardens of Naples, whose trees were faintly visible far off across the Bay. Usually he talked familiarly to any Neapolitan with whom he found himself, but to-day he was taciturn, and sat in the stern of the broad-bottomed craft looking towards the city in ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... these words the Baron sat glaring after the Italian, with something in his eye that resembled faintly the ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... "livelier iris changes on the burnished dove," and the fancy of the young man turns lightly to thoughts of his pretty cousin, so the same renewing spirit touches the "silent singers," and they are no longer dumb; faintly they lisp the first syllables of the marvelous tale. Witness the clear sweet whistle of the gray-crested titmouse,—the soft, nasal piping of the nuthatch,—the amorous, vivacious warble of the bluebird,—the long, rich note of the meadowlark,—the whistle of the quail,—the drumming of the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... antipathy to the Chinese. I saw him once in a towering rage because one of his herdsmen had permitted a travel-heated Asian to slake his thirst at the horse-trough in front of the saloon end of Jo.'s establishment. I ventured faintly to remonstrate with Jo. for his unchristian spirit, but he merely explained that there was nothing about Chinamen in the New Testament, and strode away to wreak his displeasure upon his dog, which also, I suppose, the inspired scribes ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... on a further descent, but the floor of the cave was five feet below him, and he fell heavily upon it, the gun going off as it struck the floor. Instantaneous as the fall had been, his eyes had taken in the scene. Several lanterns faintly lit up the cave; while in the centre a table, at which several figures were sitting, was illuminated by three or four candles. He was partly stunned by the heaviness of his fall, but vaguely heard shouts of surprise and alarm, and was, a minute later, roughly seized ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... forgotten work-basket lying overturned in the grass before her. Will spread himself out at full length on the ground, and kept his eyes open for chippers and spiders, and all the busy little things that crept, or leaped, or flitted around him. Now and then the afternoon hush was broken by the faintly tinkling bells of a horse-car turning some distant corner, the rumbling of a heavy team going over the dusty turnpike, or the voices of the belfry clocks calling the hour to each other from the steeples of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... dark. The stars shone faintly. The air was soft with a subtle fragrance; the fragrance of sun-warmed pine that the night had stolen from the slumbering woodlands. She slipped her foot in the wide stirrup. Half laughing, she allowed him to draw her up. She felt the hard strength ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... orderly. The rioters do their work with great composure, and though there are knots of people in every corner, all execrating the authors of such outrages, nobody dares oppose them. An attempt indeed was made, but it was ill-conducted, faintly followed, and soon put an end to by a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... which you wearied with external questions. Again, I ask, was I not right in my prophecies; and would you believe me now, if I tell you that you will not stop at this? If I told you that listening, I can hear faintly in the depths of your future, the tramp and neighing of the horses harnessed to blue brougham, driven by a powdered coachmen, who lets down the steps, saying, 'Where to madam?' Would you believe me if I told you, too, that later on—ah, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... happened to us was but one of the natural results of warfare—barring, of course, the murderous treatment of which no British seaman ever would be guilty. But I did not. My thoughts ran wholly on the actual facts, and, as I have said, faintly at times, but to my salvation, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... the butler opens the front door and escorts me to my motor. The chauffeur touches his hat. I light a small and excellent Havana cigar and sink back among the cushions. The interior of the car smells faintly of rich upholstery and violet perfume. My daughters have been to a ball the night before. If it is fine I have the landaulette hood thrown open and take the air as far as Washington Square—if not, I am deposited ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... fast asleep. There he lay for hours. A blue jay, chattering in a pine-tree near at hand, made no impression upon his sleep-deadened ear; a pair of ground squirrels scuttled in and out among the scrub-oaks, peering shyly at the motionless intruder, and squeaked faintly to one another, with vivacious action of nose and tail. They were, perhaps, discussing the availability of a certain inviting coat-pocket for purposes of domestic architecture. An occasional rumble of wheels on the road, a dozen rods away, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller



Words linked to "Faintly" :   faint



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