"Blurred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is that many of her Judges belong to that very common species of Judge. Judex apiarius. Their capacity for hearing the facts and declaring the right is blurred by the buzz of the bee ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... to me when I awaked into the Future, into the Everlasting Night that lapped this world, that I saw near to me, and girdling me all about, a blurred greyness. And presently this, the greyness, would clear and fade from about me, even as a dusky cloud, and I would look out upon a world of darkness, lit here and there with strange sights. And with my waking into that Future, I waked not to ignorance; but to a full knowledge of those things ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... fin; Adventurers tossed by king Time In region 'neath supernal skies. To dungeoned knells where venom specks The robes of priestesses with sin, And prowling apes get drunk with wine, We turn each thought to coral eyes That seas have blurred with coffined night, And whisper deeds wrought in silence. A quiver that the tomb-sweat bore When walls were split with Typhon's ire; And monstrous shapes that carved the light As dragon-worms brought pestilence To souls who grovel on this shore, Proclaim each gyving djinnee sire. ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... rifleman looks at when he fires. The eye can be focused accurately upon objects at only one distance at a time; all other objects we see will be more or less blurred and fuzzy looking, depending upon their distance from the object upon which ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... a flashing brain picture of a great, high-walled yard with a monster in it of the kind he had caught a close-range glimpse a short while before. Also, he saw a blurred, tiny figure, running from wall to wall, that was Greca's imagining of Brand and his efforts to escape the ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... at the veil, and put it on again. The sight of her face, momentary as it had been, reassured Emily. Her wild eyes, made wilder still by the blurred stains of rouge below them, half washed away—her disheveled hair, with streaks of gray showing through the dye—presented a spectacle which would have been grotesque under other circumstances, but which now reminded Emily of Mr. ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... long stillness in the dim room; the dashing rain and the muttering thunder were the only sounds in the world. The white dress was motionless in the chair, vague, impersonal—he could see only the blurred suggestion of a face above it; it got to be fantastic, a dream, a condensation of the summer lightning and the storm-clouds; unrealities seized the quick imagination of the man; into his fancy came the low, buoyant voice out of key with ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... suddenly. It was a dreadful night for any one to be out, but Anita, undisturbed and crisp in her white apron and cap, came through the hall. A voice asked a question, and the blood began to pound in my body. Things were blurred for a bit, and when my vision cleared—I saw Olaf in the shine of the candles in the room beyond, with Nancy crushed to him, his bright head bent, the sheer blue of her frock infolding him—the archway of the door framing them like the figures of saints in the ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... of the river driven by paddles in hands that were wonderfully skilled. They were about to pass out of view behind the grey wall of stone which lined the waterway. The figure of the girl in the prow of the hindmost boat was blurred and indistinct. Marcel had eyes for nothing else. He raised his fur cap and waved it slowly to and fro. And as he waved he thought he detected a similar movement in the boat. He could not be sure at the distance. But he believed. He ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... half past twelve o'clock. Hiram sat down, and taking up a torn piece of paper, scratched off a blurred and nearly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and endorsement through the mist of moisture that blurred her glasses. "The doctor knows us, and knows we will not disobey again; and he will call no others. He will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Magic came stealing down the blurred highways. Lamps became lanterns, shedding a muffled light, deepening and charging with mystery the darkness beyond. Old friends grew unfamiliar. Where they had stood, fantastic shapes loomed out of the mist and topless towers rose up spectral to baffle memory. Perspective fled, shadow and stuff ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... to beckon to Eleanor and then urged Noddy along the foothold cleft from the cliff. Above, the rock-wall rose to the mountain-top; beneath, Polly could not gauge the depth—it was too dreadful and was now blurred by fine drifts ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... such an awakening as he had not known for months on end. And out there in the garden it was a miracle of a morning: divinely clear, with the mellow clearness of England; massed trees, brooding darkly; the lawn all silver-grey with dew; everywhere blurred outlines and tender shadows; pure balm to eye and spirit after the hard brilliance and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... awhile. A soft mist hung all around; sky and sea were of a delicate blurred blue-grey, the former mottled in places. The sun was not visible, but its light lay in one long gleaming line out on the level water; beyond, all was vapour-veiled. There were no breakers; now and then a larger ripple than usual splashed on the beach, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... found this unexpectedly easy. In fact, after a minute or two, one might almost have said that the hilarity became a little too boisterous, that the laughter almost bordered on the hysterical, that the humor seemed rather blurred for this stage of the evening. Then, presto! the room was in a nervous hush, while Irina lifted a quivering glass to the candle-light, and, in a voice not her own, proposed a toast:—The complete success of Yevgeny Burevsky's experiment, and—and his speedy ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... more specially to his last Essays) that we ought willingly to follow her prescriptions; and incessantly he asserts that, in doing so, we cannot err. He designates her as a guide as mild as she is just, whose footprints, blurred over as they are by artificial ones, we ought everywhere to trace anew. 'Is it not folly,' he asks with Seneca, [4] 'to bend the body this way, and the mind that way, and thus to stand distorted between two movements utterly ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable (even though it seem a wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure. What if the human derelicts I had so far chosen for my experiments had no souls to photograph? Sodden with drink, debauched, degraded, and spiritually blurred or blunted to the last degree, these after all were the least likely subjects to yield results to the spirit photographer. I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as these, entities in which the soul was a major and not a minor ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... food that went into their bodies, they would not be concerned about the evil thoughts that arose in their souls. If they were taught to focus on petty duties, such as tithing, the great ethical principles and obligations moved to the outer field of vision and became blurred. The Sabbath, which had originated in merciful purpose toward the poor, had been turned into another burden. Religion, which ought to bring good men into saving contact with the wayward by love, actually resulted in separating the two ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... head and blurred eyes he moved painfully through the forest and over the sandy riverbank. On those rare occasions when he saw game his arms trembled so violently as he drew the bow that the arrow went wide and fell ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... bulletin, upside down, scrawled with painful hand-writing. It was a memorial written by some soldier to his comrades fallen in the fight against Kerensky, just as he had set it down before falling on the floor to sleep. The writing was blurred with ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... rushed over the moon, and the horsemen's figures, having become more and more blurred, were lost in the blackness, Miss Sally closed and bolted the door. The horses were faintly heard coming to a halt, at about the junction of the branch road with the highway, then moving on again rapidly, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... denied. Mr. Burke with his usual outrage, abused the Declaration of the Rights of Man, published by the National Assembly of France, as the basis on which the constitution of France is built. This he calls "paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man." Does Mr. Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and that he has none himself; ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... failure of our present reports in this respect Is definition of purpose desirable? It is necessary for formulation of policy Societies with limited incomes cannot afford to pursue every good object The admission of diverse purposes has blurred the purpose of Medical Missions The admission of diverse purposes has confused the administration of Educational Missions The admission of diverse purposes has distracted Evangelistic Missions Hence the absence of unity in the work Hence the ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... screen of memory there flashed a blurred vision of an electric sign emblazoning the phrase, "Au Printemps," against the facade of a building with windows all blind and dark save those of the street level, which glowed pink with light filtered through silken ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... dream gradually assume a certain vague order in the waking recollection, there came to me a confused consciousness of the events of the preceding twenty-four hours—the long journey and the weariness of it; the interminable frieze of flying landscape, with its dreary, snow-covered stretches blurred with black towns; the shriek of the locomotive as it plunged through the darkness; the tolling of ferry-bells, and then, at last, the slow sailing over a black river toward and into a giant city that hung splendid upon the purple night, turret upon turret, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... had been the dupe of the Mengwe! As the mind of Tsiskwa dwelt on the various subtleties of the diplomatic attitude of the Mengwe toward the Lenape, its craft so appealed to him that his lips curved with relish; a smile irradiated his blurred eyes and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of merriment, as young as a boy's, while he cried, "Iroquois! Iroquois!"—the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation, whence they take ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Eastman took it down and looked at it; a boy in track clothes, half lying in the air, going over the string shoulders first, above the heads of a crowd of lads who were running and cheering. The face was somewhat blurred by the motion and the bright sunlight. Eastman put the picture back, as he found it. Had Cavenaugh entertained his visitor last night, and had the old man been more convincing than usual? "Well, at any rate, he's seen ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of safety the earthquake was cradling its fire; the ground was growing hollow beneath his tread; but his ear was too dull to catch the sound; his vision too blurred to read the ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... that distance-devouring rush was a blurred picture of a plunging, rocking, clamoring engine bounding over mile after mile of the brown plain; of the endless dizzying procession of oncoming telegraph poles hurtling like great side-flung projectiles past the cab windows; of now and then a lonely prairie station with waving semaphore ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... raise his glass indifferently to his lips. All at once his glass shook. Maria's dark and sparkling face became blurred. He could no longer define the features of the stranger. He had never before experienced anything of the kind. He tried to account for it, ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... utter a sound. Everything was blurred before my eyes, for it was only then that the full realisation came upon me that the man at the rudder—the man who held all our lives in his ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... blurred handwriting. The letter was evidently in a feminine hand; but the characters were rudely and inartistically formed, while every here and there a heavy down-stroke or flourish marred the beauty of the page. Wherever such thick lines occurred the ink had run and formed ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... arose to speak, the sea of faces before her seemed blurred. She was talking into blank darkness. She could not even hear her own voice. But as she went on, and the needs of the soldiers crowded upon her mind, she forgot all fear, and for two hours held the audience ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... his imitation of Archimedes, only relaxing the intensity of his attention to the text (which blurred into jargon before his fixed gaze) when he heard that light laugh again. He pursed his lips, looked up at the ceiling as if slightly puzzled by some profound question beyond the reach of womankind; solved it almost immediately, and, setting his ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... the catalogue of mechanical devices which almost affects the mind with fatigue. Fifty years ago the ordinary citizen picked up his ideas of all that was going on in the world from a sorely-taxed news-sheet; and a very blurred idea he managed to get at the best. Poor folk had to do without the luxury of the news, and they were as much circumscribed mentally as though they had been cattle; we remember a village where even ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... it until the type grew blurred. What did it mean? He asked himself that a thousand times. What did it mean? He sought his room and locked the door, striding up and down with agitation, the cablegram clenched in his hand. He was beside himself, triumphant ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... signs in the valley of the white fog that sometimes, even in April, comes in before sunset; already a veil of liquid air was drawn across the hills, and when he crossed Easton Down (if it was Easton Down) again the sea's face was blurred with mist. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... alone As when I walk among the crowd— Blurred masks of stern or grinning stone, Unmeaning eyes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... just beginning to simmer, and near at hand was a pile of dry wood cut into short lengths. In an instant the awful meaning of these preparations flashed across his mind. They intended to boil him alive! For a moment he felt sick and dizzy. All things spun in a mad whirl before his blurred vision, and he feared his senses were departing. Recovering himself by a supreme effort of will, and animated by an access of fury, he sprang forward, overturned the tub, so that its contents were poured on the hissing flames, instantly extinguishing them, and hurled ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... at a game of cards, and he sat down where he could gaze out the window and think. Here was a new complication, a fresh puzzle to be unravelled. He had never expected this woman to come into his life again; she had become a blurred, unpleasant memory, a bit of his past which he had supposed was blotted out forever. Mrs. Dupont—then she had not married Le Fevre after all. He dully wondered why, yet was not altogether surprised. Even as he turned this fact over and over in his mind, speculating upon it, he became ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the day was like a blurred page to her. She was glad when the other children picked up their books and empty baskets and kettles ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... other who touched the foremost ranks, two years younger than several; and though he now and then showed a feverish spark of genius, reminding Mr. Cheviot of Norman in his famous examination, it was not sustained—there were will and force, but not scholarship—and besides, there was a wide blurred spot in his memory, as though all the brain-work of the quarter before his illness had been confused, and had not yet become clear. There was every likelihood that a few years would make him superior to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sir George mused, 'how we remember trifles of the long ago with preciseness, when often bigger events are blurred. I recollect, very well, a slight incident of the scene on the island of Dorre, off the north-west coast of Australia, when a storm caught us. In turn, I caught an old cormorant by the neck, and the bird was all we had for breakfast next morning. A most ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... Parrott stirred, shot forward abruptly. In two seconds it was fifty yards distant, its silhouette already blurred, its wheels lifting from ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... comes very clearly before me as I think of it. The dark loom of the club-headed willows flitting by us, the moaning of the breeze among the withies, the vague, blurred figures of the troopers, the dull thud of the hoofs, and the jingling of scabbard against stirrup—eye and ear can both conjure up those old-time memories. The Baronet and I rode in front, knee against knee, and his light-hearted chatter ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thought of his mind,' says Sir Francis, 'as of a very powerful telescope pulled out just a little too much.' The sharp definitions, perceptible sometimes to inferior minds, were in his a little blurred. These peculiarities, however, were even advantages in this special class of business. The precedents and principles involved were rather vague, and much of the work within the province rather of the historian than of the lawyer. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For her natural ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... season being to vans what changes of reign are to courtiers. In front, outside, was a board, a kind of frontispiece, on which the following inscription might once have been deciphered; it was in black letters on a white ground, but by degrees the characters had become confused and blurred:— ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... away on Friday evening, for a last look at Lake Ida lying behind us in her winter black numbness, her aspect seemed more forbidding than ever, for only the bare steep hill-sides could be seen; the pine forest and white distant mountains were all blotted and blurred out of sight by a heavy pall of cloud creeping ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... true that the common man derives no material advantage from the national success along this line, though he commonly believes that it all somehow inures to his benefit. It would seem that an ingrown bias of community interest, blurred and driven by a jealously sensitive patriotic pride, bends his faith uncritically to match his inclination. His persuasion is a work of preconception rather ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... A blurred sun rises in the sky.... One can see the green valley of Rion and the Bay of Poti by the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes. "No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... their—"divorce," one might call it—is blurred by the usual discrepancies of gossip. The most probable account seems to be that according to which Chopin mortally wounded Sand by receiving her daughter and her son-in-law when they were out of Sand's favour. All accounts agree that this ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... her voice Von Barwig started as if he had been shot, and with a half articulate cry he turned and gazed in the direction from whence the voice came. He saw in the dim twilight, for the sun had now nearly gone down, the half-blurred vision of a young lady dressed in the height of fashion. Her features he could not distinguish, as her back was to the window, but he could see that she was a handsome young woman of about twenty years of age. As Von Barwig turned toward her she looked at her ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... spoken again, but something in her face restrained him. He bent and kissed her reverently, as a brother might, and went out. And she, watching him go, found her vision suddenly blurred by a mist of tears. For there is something in every woman's heart that pleads a true man's cause, for all that she may not accept ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... again propping his chin upon his hands, listened with all his soul. Yet he was not entertained; rather he was enthralled; he sat quiet under the compulsion of a spell. His face became unnaturally white, his eyes unnaturally large, while the flames of the candles shone ever redder and more blurred through a blue haze of tobacco smoke, and the level of the wine grew steadily ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... suit, and the sweat on his face prickled maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his ...
— All Day September • Roger Kuykendall
... calls them) and then stuffs them into his pockets where they "become round hard balls" soon to be discarded. What Dr. Reefy's "truths" may be we never know; Anderson simply persuades us that to this lonely old man they are utterly precious and thereby incommunicable, forming a kind of blurred moral signature. ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... of sombre questioning as they met his. Moving slowly on, the two men stood at length by Jack's grave. The moon rose languidly, and shed a curious and ethereal twilight upon the stone at its head. The blurred place from which Uniacke had struck the name was plainly visible. Instinctively the clergyman's eyes sought the ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... stillness in the woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush that precedes a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing to herself, and keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy more than a deadening sky: a something solemn and unknown, hinting of evil to come. The dwarf-pines on the road-side scowled weakly at her through the gray; the very silver minnows in the pools she passed flashed frightened away, and darkened into the muddy niches. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the body aside and heaped branches against the log, he rekindled the fire. In the light which it cast he could see the blurred trail of Spurling, where he had crawled to and from the cabin; also he could see the tracks which the slayer's snowshoes had left as he strode away through the forest following the portage. He stooped and examined them. By so doing he learnt a new ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... ahead. Instantly every head was uncovered, and the rustle of whispered prayers fluttered over the deck, as the pilgrims bowed and crossed themselves. Nothing was to be seen; but, stroke after stroke, the hollow sounds, muffled and blurred in the opaque atmosphere, were pealed out by the guiding bell. Presently a chime of smaller bells joined in a rapid accompaniment, growing louder and clearer as we advanced. The effect was startling. After voyaging for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... and that, in his present mood, was more to his purpose than the exact shade of her taste. It was odd, too, to discover suddenly that the blurred tapestry of Mrs. Murrett's background had all the while been alive and full of eyes. Now, with a pair of them looking into his, he was conscious of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the room from me. Only her back was visible and a somewhat blurred side-view reflected in the mirror on the wall. Even so much was, however, more than welcome, including as it did a smooth white neck, a small shell-like ear, and a mass of warm, crinkly, red-brown hair. She wore a rose-colored gown, I noticed, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... teleceiver and switched it on. The screen blurred and then steadied into a view of the spaceport outside. Tom scanned the launching ramp below, and, satisfied it was clear, he switched the teleceiver to ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... rhythmically uncertain generally have a muscular system which is irregularly responsive to mental stimuli; the response may be too rapid or too slow; in either case impulse or inhibition falls at the wrong moment, the change of movement is not made to time, and the physical expression of the rhythm is blurred. ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... of the pony and cantered up the trail. But before he had gone a hundred yards, he was off again, examining the hoofmarks the animal left in the sand. The left hind mark differed from the others in that the detail was blurred and showed nothing but ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... bear it," said Nan. She was looking at the darkening woods and her wet eyes blurred them more than the falling dusk. "It isn't healthy. It isn't right. I want you to want things like fury, and I don't know whether I should care so very much if you banged yourself up pretty well not getting them. And if you actually got them! ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of the Abbey to the majestic strains of the organ—out of the dim, blurred light shining shaft-like across the glowing mosaic of gold, and marble, and great jewelled windows, into the hard, everyday world. The pavements were crowded with pedestrians hurrying here and there; restaurants had opened their doors, tobacco merchants ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... experiences or, perhaps, because of them, the memory of the first years at Hull-House is more or less blurred with fatigue, for we could of course become accustomed only gradually to the unending activity and to the confusion of a house constantly filling and refilling with groups of people. The little children who came to the kindergarten in the morning were followed by the afternoon ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... spell-bound to the tale. The meaning of Dan's departure was all clear now. While people had been blaming the lad as an ungrateful runaway he had fared forth in loving service on behalf of his guardians. A mistiness blurred Stephen's eyes as ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... inheritance that is above? These are but the fundamentals, the outlines of Gospel truth. But far too many of you see them, in such a manner as you see the figures cast upon a screen when the lantern is not rightly focussed, with a blurred outline, and the blurred outline keeps you from seeing the sharp-cut truth as it is in Jesus. In all regions of thought inaccurate knowledge is the worst foe to further understanding, and eminently is this the case in religion. Brethren, some ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... his own eyes, which were rather blurred with moisture, and stepped closer to the casement. "Mr. Venn is asking Christian Cantle to sing," he replied, "and Christian is moving about in his chair as if he were much frightened at the question, and his father has struck up ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... happy, the fault would have been my own. I am moralizing—the one thing I have been trying to avoid all through my tale. What really is in my mind is to point out to any youngster who reads this, and whose future suddenly becomes blurred and may appear hopeless, that if he relies on his own self, gives his truest instincts fair play, and determines to beat his bad luck and give to himself his best, he will more than likely succeed, as it was ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... the guardian lions. There were scores listening there who could not see the speakers even as well as could the occupants of the car. In front of the little row of women on the plinth a gaunt figure in brown serge was waving her arms. What she was saying was blurred in the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of an ugly quivering wrench communicated itself from the point of my sword to my mind; I heard Strepp and Royale cry "Hold!" I saw Forister fall; I lowered my point and stood dizzily thinking. My sight was now blurred; my arm ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... she stood, white and gasping, staring at him with large, frightened eyes. The sheep-walk was but a tiny threadlike track: the slope of the shingle on either side was very steep: below them lay the valley; distant, lifeless, all blurred by the evening dusk. She looked about her helplessly for ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... features were hardly to be recognised, so blurred and swollen with crying was the poor little face. But still there was no confession. "I didn't touch Towzer's goodies," she persisted over and over again. Eleanor's heart ached, but still duty ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... down upon it. There was the sound of wind in my ears, and my heart pounded, and my sight blurred. Then somebody—oh, surely not I!—in a ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... been placed in one of the vases on the mantelshelf and that the mandarin skirt clung a trifle less precisely to the polished surface of the oak piano. A magazine sprawled face downward on the floor. Already the impress of Mrs. Hilmer on the surroundings was becoming a trifle blurred. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... pleasant houses, each standing in its own grounds. In the light of a street lamp we read "Laburnum Villa" upon the gate-post of one of them. The occupants had evidently retired to rest, for all was dark save for a fanlight over the hall door, which shed a single blurred circle on to the garden path. The wooden fence which separated the grounds from the road threw a dense black shadow upon the inner side, and here ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as the cave stretched. He came to a sharp turn in the cave, with the failing lamplight now behind him, so that his shadow confronted Jurgen, blurred but unarguable. It was the proper shadow of a commonplace and elderly pawnbroker, and Jurgen ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the daylight apparatus, which we will now consider, the negative is placed in the holder opposite the center of the ground-glass, upside down and facing into the work room. The room is darkened and lens uncapped. An image more or less blurred will appear on the screen. If the enlarged picture is to be only slightly larger than the negative, the lens must be racked out until its distance from the negative is but little less than its distance from the screen. To make the enlargement greater we simply ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... clear summer's day I have been able to see the ground beneath with perfect distinctness from a height of 4,500 feet, yet when the craft had ascended a further two or three hundred feet, the panorama was blurred. A film of haze lies between the balloon and the ground beneath. And the character of this haze is continually changing, so that the aerial observer's task is rendered additionally difficult. Its ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... the sky overhead was clear as sapphire, but all round the circle of the horizon the mists of autumn blurred the landscape. The hills stood no more in their places. Gone were the Kips, with their waving lines. Of the Cruives, with the heather thick and purple upon them, not a trace. Gone the graceful swirl of the Cooran Hill, which ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... have taken on some malign mystery and have given it to the multitudes that move there, that turn in the winding paths among ghostly flowers and bushes, that approach and recede and approach in the darkness of the lawns. Blurred by the darkness and diminished to the barest indications of humanity, their forms are more piteous and forlorn than ever; their faces, thrown up by the darkness, more awful in their blankness and their pallor. The scene, drenched in darkness, is ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... or both, to whom (as far as he has revealed them to us) he has kept his promise, we fall to pitying Shakespeare, the bestower of immortality. In the great temple raised by his genius to his own undying glory, one narrow door opens into a secret, silent crypt, where his image, blurred and indistinct, is hardly discernible through the gloomy atmosphere, heavy and dim as if with sighs and tears. Here is no clew, no issue, and we return to the shrine filled with light and life and warmth and melody; with knowledge and love ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... surefootedness of a mountain goat, we soon reached the cluster of rocks, the bases of which were embedded in the now hard and stiffened sand, and almost at the same moment another heavy rain squall swept down and blurred sea and sky ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... recollection of the past, any attempt to recall the features of a beloved being shows them to one's vision as through a mist of tears—dim and blurred. Those tears are the tears of the imagination. When I try to recall Mamma as she was then, I see, true, her brown eyes, expressive always of love and kindness, the small mole on her neck below where the small hairs grow, her white embroidered collar, and the delicate, fresh hand which so often ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It flashed strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes, and smote on the white ruin of Lily's face. The girls looked at each other in silence; then Lily repeated: "I couldn't ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... own purposes, it is not less acceptable, however, when the fog has come in from the sea like a visible reverie, and blurred the whole valley with its whiteness. I find that particularly good to look at from the trolley-car which visits and revisits the river before finally leaving it, with a sort of desperation, and hiding its passion with a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... get accounts of these successive disasters out over our audiophones. Above my desk, in a duplicating mirror from Headquarters, I could see that at the palace of Mombozo a throng of terrified blacks were gathered. It was night there—a blurred scene of flashing ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... are merely cloud-capped. This lower level with blurred and misty edges may not be further compressed, but the air is warm, thick, sticky, and so saturated with vegetable odours that even the salt of the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... sorrow from her aging father's eyes. No wonder she soon began to write more frequently. These letters from Virginia were the greatest joy her father had, she told herself, and though she wrote through a mist that blurred the page, she soon grew conscious of a strange, shy sense of comfort, of a thrilling little spring of glad emotion, of tender, shrinking, sensitive delight, and by the time the hot summer was waning and August was at hand this unseen soldier, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... oak, leaving five or six inches (which would otherwise be covered with carving or veneer) for the embroidery. The mirror itself is comparatively small, being only a secondary consideration, and often little remains of it for its original purpose, as the glass is blurred and the silvering gone. Many of these mirrors have bevelled glass, which, of ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... illumination at his feet, but beyond that there was only a brown darkness, scented with the smell of books in leather bindings, in which the figures of several men, sprawled out in big chairs before the window, were faintly visible. The window itself, a square of blank fog-blurred dusk, served merely to heighten the obscurity. Mr. Vandusen, a small, plump shadow in the surrounding shadows, found an unoccupied chair and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... reds, the brilliant happy reds of the Chinese. In fact, but for her head, she would have been only half visible as she advanced against the background of the screen. Mary's impression of her was blurred, but Stefan, whose artist's eye observed everything, noticed that her narrow feet were encased in heelless satin shoes which followed the natural shape of the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... sheltered spot and stood for a few moments breathing in the strong salt air. Notwithstanding his success, he was unaccountably depressed. As far as he could see across the grey waste of waters, there was no sign of any passing ship, but the eastern horizon was blurred by a low-hanging bank of sinister-looking clouds. Suddenly a voice rang out, hailing him. It was the captain descending ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shack, his crutches across his knees. Seeing her signal, he got up and hobbled hastily around the corner, from where he blinked into the gap. And, unable to make out anything but a blurred collection of moving things, he called Marylyn from ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... irritable as the months at Priesthope drew into a year. A new element of misery was added to her life by the sight of Wentworth, and his visits were becoming frequent. His mere presence made acute once more that other memory, partially blurred, persistently pushed aside—the memory of Michael in prison. The figure of the duke had temporarily displaced that other ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder River!' They can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks he knows how to break a colt," he shouted, looking around with the irrelevant fierceness of drink—and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in laughter as the subject blurred in his mind. "You're not drinking, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not distinguish his face. His features grew blurred and misty. Then the monk's head and arms disappeared; his body seemed merged into the seat and the evening twilight, and ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of the funeral was one of ghostly gloom. The November wind swept icily over the sea with a dreary wail of winter; the cold rain beat its melancholy drip, drip; sky and earth and sea were all blurred ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... not defect. Once she had been exceedingly pretty; she was moderately pretty still. The narrow oval of her face remained unspoiled but the small features, once delicately clear, appeared in some strange way to be blurred and coarsened. The fine grained skin which should have been delicate and firm had coarsened also and upon close inspection showed multitudes of tiny lines. Her fluffy hair was very fair, ashy fair almost, and would ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... on the rock was starlight. Darkness covered the blurred outline of Oraibi's houses, with only an occasional point of light here and there, or the sudden glow from some kiva as the opening reflected the fire at ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... the swinging door of the saloon and made his way amid the crowd of men within, through an atmosphere blurred with tobacco smoke and heavy with the smell of spirits. The place was brilliantly lighted, and the huge, heavily gilt mirrors upon every wall reflected and multiplied the garish illumination. There were several bartenders in their shirt sleeves, hard at ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and "pagan" elements. The distinction is blurred to some extent by the clothing of heathen customs in a superficial Christianity, but on the whole it is clear enough to justify the division of this book into two parts, one dealing with the Church's feast of the Holy Birth, the other ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... had been torn open, but the letter, though blurred with grime and dirt, was still in it. With eager fingers ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... shame that I liked John the better of the two; he had grit and dash, and that salt of the Old Adam that pleases men with any savage inheritance of blood; and he was a wayfarer besides, and took my gipsy fancy. But however that may be, and however Robert's profile may be blurred in the boyish sketch that follows, he was a man of a most quaint and beautiful nature, whom, if it were possible to recast a piece of work so old, I should like well to draw again with a maturer touch. And as I think of him and of John, I wonder ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ordinary occasions. The chairs, antique in shape, were covered with tapestry representing the fables of La Fontaine; it was necessary, however, to know that writer well to guess at the subjects, for the faded colors and the figures, blurred by much darning, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... half-dozen men seemed to be surrounding him and Juliette, but the drizzling rain blurred every outline. The blackness of the night too had become absolutely dense, and in the distance the cries of the populace grew more ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... standing upon the platform on the other side of the tracks, waiting for the south-bound train as he and others waited for the north-bound—and they all sang "Should auld acquaintance be forgot;" and, while they looked across at each other, singing, the shining rails between them wavered and blurred as the engine rushed in and separated them and their lives thenceforth. He filled his pipe again and spoke to the phantoms gliding over the dust—"Seven years!" He was occupied with the realization that there had been a man in his class whose ambition needed no restraint, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... with Latin mottoes in black letters, and which, when thus painted, he consigned with an anxiously beating heart to the trial of the ovens, and which sometimes came forth from the trial all cracked and blurred and marred, and sometimes emerged in triumph and came into his trembling hands iridescent and lovely with those lustrous and opaline hues which we admire in them to this day as the especial glory ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... and went out to meet him, but for once he paid no heed to her, and passing into the house sat himself down in the chair by the window, while he still gazed with troubled eyes at the outside of the envelope, and the blurred post-mark which told him nothing. Moments passed before he could summon up courage to open it, for in his heart he felt almost certain who the writer was, and he dreaded to read what might be written; and when at last he did make up his mind, his hand trembled so ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... or two dwellings swept by like so many telegraph-poles past a car-window. Then they became more widely spaced, and were succeeded by a blurred and incoherent expanse of woods, fields, parks, hedges, glimpses of lawns surfaced like a billiard-table, flashes of white facades ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... same day for a sufficient pretext. As the hour approached Fergus made the distressing discovery that his friend and host had anticipated the festivities with too free a hand. Macbean was not drunk, but he was perceptibly blunted and blurred, and Fergus had never seen the pale eyes so watery or the black skull-cap so much on one side of the venerable head. The lad was genuinely grieved. A whiskey bottle stood empty on the laden board, and he had the temerity to pocket the corkscrew while Macbean was gone to his ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... perhaps the first time I caught a glimmer of its full significance, and her face, clean-cut against the shadow where a fretted pinnacle allowed one shaft of light to pass it, looking, I thought, like that of a haloed saint. The rest was all a blurred impression of rolling music, half-seen faces, and gay uniforms, until a tall old man of commanding personality stood high aloft in the carved pulpit, and proclaimed a doctrine that seemed strangely out of place in the busy town. Honest labor ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... and moved swiftly to the light. Her eyes were quite blurred with shining mist. She could not read the words. Keith! She could only murmur his name, holding the letter ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... could make out three blurred figures fighting their way slowly against the storm across the compound. One was the guide; the second was the mandor, naked save for a cotton sarong around his waist; the third ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the walls; along the wide passage and cabinets, high china jars, the hollow scoop of the window at the far-distant end, were all alive and moving. And, in strange contradiction to the moving voices within the house, came the blurred echo of the London life, whirring, buzzing, like a cloud of gnats at the window-pane. "Look out! Look out! Look out!" the house cried, and Henry, with ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard of values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew blurred in her mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just "kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... over level places. Carrying the weight of a boy was nothing to the horse, and before half an hour had passed, the ford and trail came in view of the anxious courier. Halting in order to survey the horizon, the haze and heat-waves of summer so obstructed his view that every object looked blurred and indistinct. Even the dust cloud was missing; and pushing on a mile farther, he reined in again. Now and then in the upper sky, an intervening cloud threw a shadow over the plain, revealing ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... Land of Fogs—the old idea of the land of Fogs was that of a vision of confused and faint sensation, with the light of the intelligence dimmed and blurred like these gas lamps in ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... field lights. A new world here. The field was flat, caked ooze, cracked and hardened. It sloped upward from the shore toward where, a quarter of a mile away, I could see the dull lights of the settlement, blurred by the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... felt the mingled kindness and irritation that he always roused in her. He stood in the light of the hall lamp, a fat man, a soft hat pushed to the back of his head, a bag in one hand. His face was weak and good-tempered, his eyes had once been fine but now they were dim and blurred; there were dimples in his fat cheeks; he wore on his upper lip a ragged and untidy moustache and he had two indeterminate chins. His expression was mild, kindly, now a little ashamed, now greatly indignant. It was a pity, as he often said, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... a movement in the white shape. He could discern the blurred outline of the head of the animal as she raised it up a little. There was a low moan followed by a great cry. The Herd stood still, terror in his heart. For he interpreted that cry in all the terrible inarticulate consciousness of his own being. That cry ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... this lovely equipment was blurred, almost obscured at times, by the shadow that he was beginning to liken to the San Francisco fogs that drifted through the Golden Gate and settled down into the deep hollows of the Marin hills; ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and again. It seemed to me to be touched up a good deal; it was glazed as well as framed, and the glass blurred some of the details. But there unmistakably was my face, my eyes, my nose and mouth, my head and hand, posed for a professional photographer. And I had never posed so ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... room he could trace the outline of a window with rain streaming down the outside, and the blurred lights of the city beyond. But the room was empty, appallingly empty; and so still. He stood there, cold as ice, staring, shivering listening. Suddenly there was a step behind him and a light flashed into the room, and when ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the lore Which she had learned of nature and the woods, That beauty's chief reward is to itself, And that Love's mirror holds no image long Save of the inward fairness, blurred and lost Unless kept clear and white by Duty's care. So she went forth and sought the haunts of men, And, being wedded, in her household cares, Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgot 70 The little Sheemah and her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the vision came to Rallywood sufficiently quickly. His view of the lamp-lit city grew suddenly blurred and he saw instead his own reflection in the polished glass, as the lights were turned on in the room behind him. In that same instant too the vague sweet outlook ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... was on the multitude of people. The eyes of all the citizens of London were bent upon that long wide space of sand within the lists; many, blurred by tears, could not bear to look at the white figure in the midst ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... some irksome task, the ache in the heart for home and the loved ones there, the iron discipline of the war-machine of which they formed a part, the chance of wounds and that mysterious crisis called death—these were the elements which made up the blurred vision in ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... as this it does not much matter whether Rouveyre prints it upon Whatman paper, or whether it steals to light in blurred type from some ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... be," Ross muttered, and then blurred into sudden action. He shot to his feet, and then, arms extended, dashed toward the source of the voice. He hit the ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... came back upon Nick with a rush. His eyes were blurred with rising tears. Unconsciously, in his grief, he made a movement forward, and suddenly ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a great force, an inexorable power that grasped me and wrenched me, tearing me from the point in space I had occupied a moment before. My perception blurred, but I was not frightened. Without the Pat I did not care what happened. I was intensely curious. "So this is how it is," I reasoned in a ...
— Cogito, Ergo Sum • John Foster West
... her invoked: His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked. What wisdom counselled, Policy declined; All perils dared he save the step behind. Ahead his grand initiative becked: One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked. Stripped to the despot upstart, for success He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness. He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught, While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught He held in hand, while ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man from the Gent's Furnishings strode forward to meet her, his eyes on her blurred and swollen face. "Say, listen," he began, "say, listen—" Then his gaze dropped to the child in her arms and grew bleak, and Ethel shrank back and away from him, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... alarming,—at first reading so unintelligible,—that I could only see that some great misfortune had befallen us; and I stopped short and dropped on my knees to pray for the life and health of those whom that misfortune more specially seemed to menace; and then, towards the end of the last blurred sentence, read twice, thrice, over,—I could cry, "Thank Heaven, thank Heaven! it is only, then, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brimming with tears of indignation. The one thought occupying her whole mind was whether Walter really wished to see her again. Had Flockart spoken the truth? The serious face of the man she loved so well rose before her blurred vision. She had been his—his very own—until she had ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... benediction pronounced, and Cary and Pauline were man and wife. The priest producing the parish register, the names of the principals and witnesses were signed. Zulma wrote hers in a large steady hand, but a tear, which she could not restrain, fell upon the letters and blurred them. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... the most part all was invoked in the semi- darkness of the summer night, but here and there light came from an upper window on some boyish face, perhaps full of mischief, perhaps somewhat bewildered and appalled. Here and there were torches, which cast a red glare round them, but whose smoke blurred everything, and seemed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... two or three days (having no time to lose) I shall marry! But no, the picture painted by my fancy has faded. I can no longer see this little creature in my mind's eye; the sellers of the white mice have blurred her image; I fear now, lest she should be ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti |
