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Darken   Listen
verb
Darken  v. i.  To grow or darker.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Darken" Quotes from Famous Books



... his old noddle as much as to say he wouldn't; and so says I, 'Bad cess to the likes o' that I ever seen! Throth, if you wor in my counthry, it's not that away they'd use you. The curse o' the crows an you, you ould sinner,' says I; 'the divil a longer i'll darken ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... in this way, while he sat on the rocks holding the fishing rod and waiting in vain for his luck to turn. At last the day began to darken, and the evening came; still he had caught not a single fish. Drawing up his line for the last time before going home, he found that he had lost his hook without even knowing when he ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... all that vast country lying between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay on the east and the mountains of the Far West, constitute the principal nursery of North American waterfowl, whence, in autumn, come the flocks of Ducks and Geese that in winter darken the Southern {70} sounds and lakes. One stream moves down the Pacific Coast, another follows the Mississippi Valley to the marshes of Louisiana and Texas, while a third passes diagonally across the country in a southeasterly direction until it reaches the Maryland ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... the mild voice of the priest, "we make our own fate, and the shadows which darken our path are thrown from the evil passions of our nature. Had you left Reardon to his wild command, you had not now been ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... hillsides the wild knell is tolling, From their far hamlets the yeomanry come; As through the storm-clouds the thunder-burst rolling, Circles the beat of the mustering drum. Fast on the soldier's path Darken the waves of wrath,— Long have they gathered and loud shall they fall; Red glares the musket's flash, Sharp rings the rifle's crash, Blazing and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... quietly left the room. The relief I felt was instantaneous. It was like having one coil of an oppressive nightmare released from my breast. Dwight, on the contrary, who had sat like a statue ever since the room began to darken, showed no evidence of being influenced by this change, and, convinced that any movement towards a more cheerful order of things must come from me, I rose, and, without consulting his wishes, dropped the curtains and lighted the lamp. The instant I ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... artillery so rattled and roared since earth began! Condensation means clouds. We will find hereafter a whole body of legends about "the stealing of the clouds" and their restoration. The veil thickens. The sun's rays are shut out. It grows colder; more condensation follows. The heavens darken. Louder and louder bellows the thunder. We shall see the lightnings represented, in myth after myth, as the arrows of the rescuing demi-god who saves the world. The heat has carried up perhaps one fourth of all the water of the world into the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... engage us, can fill up but a few moments in human life. On too frequent a repetition, those pleasures turn to satiety and disgust; they tear the constitution to which they are applied in excess, and, like the lightning of night, only serve to darken the gloom through which they occasionally break. Happiness is not that state of repose, or that imaginary freedom from care, which at a distance is so frequent an object of desire, but with its approach brings a tedium, or a languor, more unsupportable than pain itself. If the preceding observations ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... one and cast from thy name All the shadows that darken thy life with their shame; Thou hast raised thyself up, against wind, against tide, Thou art high, thou art honoured, my joy and my pride; Now the song of the drunkard is chased from thy place, And my pride is relieved from this ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... disappeared. We exchanged but few words. I was still oppressed with the conviction of my own unworthiness, and wondered if she could read in my burning face the history of shame. How she must avoid and despise me, thought I, when she has discovered all, and how bold and wicked it was to darken the light in which she lived with the guilt that was a part of me! Not the less did I experience this when she spoke to me with kindness and unreserve. The feeling grew in strength. I was conscious of deceit and fraud, and could not shake the knowledge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... know The thousand Yugas making Brahma's Night, Then know ye Day and Night as He doth know! When that vast Dawn doth break, th' Invisible Is brought anew into the Visible; When that deep Night doth darken, all which is Fades back again to Him Who sent it forth; Yea! this vast company of living things— Again and yet again produced—expires At Brahma's Nightfall; and, at Brahma's Dawn, Riseth, without its will, to life new-born. But—higher, deeper, innermost—abides ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold

... darken counsel by words without knowledge, I leave the positive penal infliction, which takes effect beyond the precincts of this life, without one word of comment, in the short and solemn words of the Scripture, "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... fixed on the pink slip in his hand, and Philippa, who was watching him, saw his face darken suddenly and his rather square jaw shoot forward as a strong man's will in the face ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... evidently a very slow one. For fully half a minute no change could be seen in the uniform surface. Then, gradually, almost insensibly, the marginal portion began to darken, leaving the outline of the mummy in pale relief. The change, once started, proceeded apace. Darker and darker grew the margin of the paper until from slaty grey it had turned to black; and still the shape of the mummy, now in strong relief, remained an elongated patch ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... were absent; he directed that nothing in it should be touched. He speaks again of the great beauty of the island, even greater than that of the others he had seen. "The singing of the birds," he says, "seems as if a man would never seek to leave this place, and the flocks of parrots which darken the sun, and fowls and birds of so many kinds and so different from ours that it is wonderful. And then there are trees of a thousand sorts, and all with fruit of their kinds. And all have such an odor that it is wonderful, so that I am the ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale

... change less than in the plains; for these trees on the hills have their branches thicker, because they grow less high each year than in the plains. Therefore as these branches are dark by nature and being so full of shade, the shadow of the clouds cannot darken them any more; but the open spaces between the trees, which have no strong shadow change very much in tone and particularly those which vary from green; that is ploughed lands or fallen mountains ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... eyes would close, And bid their lids each other seek, Veiling the azure orbs below, While their long lashes' darken'd gloss Seemed stealing o'er thy brilliant cheek, Like raven's ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... songs of the birds. A gray tint was stealing over earth and sky; the lilies were closing their white cups; the birds singing their vesper hymn; longer shadows fell on the grass; cooler winds stirred the roses. He would come. The sky might pale, the earth darken, the sun set, the flowers sleep; but he would come. She would let no doubt of him enter her faithful heart. Let the night shadow fall, the sun of her love and her hope should still ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... to the midnight wind, And thought of friends untrue— Of hearts that seem'd so fondly twined, That nought could e'er undo; Of cherish'd hopes, once fondly bright— Of joys which fancy gave— Of youthful eyes, whose lovely light Were darken'd in the grave. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... these will alter the whole expression to a surprising extent. A few more lines will give age. The wig and spectacles are the refuges of the amateur. In themselves they can do little, but with the touches I suggest, and a deep-toned powder to darken the skin, your disguise will be complete. You ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the seams of his small-clothes, and darken his elbows with a blacking brush, ere he sallied forth to follow borrowed plumes; and when he returned from his public performance (oft rehearsed) Master Sighmon did innocently crumple his crapes, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various

... the most eminent of his Arabian commentators, and undoubtedly contributed more than any other individual to establish the authority of Aristotle over the reason of mankind for so many ages. Yet his various illustrations have served, in the opinion of European critics, to darken rather than dissipate the ambiguities of his original, and have even led to the confident assertion that he was wholly unacquainted with the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... the radiant girl standing on the threshold could be said to darken any door. She did not represent the ordinary Southern type, for her hair was gold in the sun and her eyes blue as the violets by the brook. They were full of mirth now as she said: "There you are, Aun' Jinkey, smoking and ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... though the heavier lines of age and sorrow could be seen, they appeared to have been half erased. He lay not in sunshine, but in clear light; the windows were open, the curtains restrained, for he had asked them not to darken the room. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... people silent before him, Ralph Flare's eyes half closed also, and the lull of the wheels, the long lake streaks of the sedative skies, the coming of great shadows like compulsions to slumber, made his forehead fall and the world go up and down and darken. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... commit a great crime. The father, penitent, seated himself in the cart with his son and the old man, and they returned home. There the husband gave the wicked wife a sound drubbing, bundled her heels over head out of the house, and bade her never darken his doors again. [The rest of the story, which has no connection with ours, tells how the little son by a trick made his mother repent and become a good woman, and brought about a reconciliation between ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... chiefest devotees and Allah's servants of purest qualities; so we made three days' march till we came in sight of that hermitage, and then we went up to it and passed the day in buying and selling, as is the wont of merchants. As soon as day had departed our sight and night was come to darken light, we repaired to the cell wherein was the dungeon, and we heard the holy man, after chanting some verses of the Koran, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... of their Chief, the "Little White Moon," who seldom spoke to her husband save to defend one of their number from his fits of anger, and who, with her golden hair and her skin of snow that the fierce sun could not darken, was like the shining angel who walks at the right hand of a good Mohammedan. They saw no wrong in Ahmara's presence; but she was haughty and high-tempered, and took part against them with Stanton. The whisper ran that the dancing-woman had brought bad luck to the expedition for so long ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... of the squall, and Rowley and I must shout our parting words. All the way along Princes Street (whither my way led) the wind hunted me behind and screamed in my ears. The city was flushed with bucketfuls of rain that tasted salt from the neighbouring ocean. It seemed to darken and lighten again in the vicissitudes of the gusts. Now you would say the lamps had been blown out from end to end of the long thoroughfare; now, in a lull, they would revive, re-multiply, shine again on the wet pavements, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and her priest, blessing him for deliverance from the misleadings of one who—great God! must I write it?—might at last have dragged her into crime. It is her request, as it is my command, that you darken our threshold no more, and that as far as practicable you keep yourself ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... scrambled out of bed and speedily resumed his ordinary wearing apparel. He was startled to perceive a bulky object suddenly darken their window. It was a peculiar-looking bundle from which coat sleeves and trousers' legs dangled indiscriminately. He had no difficulty in recognizing their missing clothes. He rushed to the window ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... later Mr. Barker walked in unannounced. It was natural enough that he should call, but Claudius did not want him. The Doctor had not had time to think over the situation, but he had, a vague impression that Barker had something to do with this sudden cloud of annoyance that had risen to darken his path. Barker, on his side, was prepared for storms, but he intended to play the part of confidential friend and consoler. Claudius, however, wanted neither friends nor consolation, and he was in the worst of tempers. Nevertheless, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... elegiast, very intelligent and highly polished, whose Essay on Criticism and Essay on Man were remarkably utilised by Voltaire; Edward Young, whose Night Thoughts enjoyed the same prodigious success in France as in England, and who contributed in no small measure to darken and render gloomy both literatures; MacPherson, who invented Ossian, that is, pretended poems of the Middle Ages, a magnificent genius, be it said, who exercised considerable influence over the romanticism of both lands; Chatterton, who ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... and with hot water wash out all the bowls, pitchers, &c., using separate cloths for these purposes, and never toilet towels. Dust the room, arrange every thing in place, and, if in summer, close the blinds, and darken till evening, that it may be as ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... which brings us together has about it nothing funereal, in sentiment or observance, to darken our minds or sadden our hearts to-day. The solemn rites of sepulture, the sobbings of sorrowing affection, the homage of public grief, the concourse of the great officers of state, the assemblage of venerable ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts

... himself; 'At New-England now the Sun of Comfort begins to appear, and the glorious Day-Star to show it self;—Sed Venient Annis Saeculae Seris, there will come Times in after Ages, when the Clouds will over-shadow and darken the Sky there. Many now promise to themselves nothing but successive Happiness there, which for a time through God's Mercy they may enjoy; and I pray God, they may a long time; but in this World there is no Happiness perpetual.' ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... bounty-loving Dapsilis, All were in heaven, now they with Hero were: But Venus' looks brought wrath, and urged fear. Her robe was scarlet; black her head's attire; And through her naked breast shin'd streams of fire, As when the rarified air is driven In flashing streams, and opes the darken'd heaven. In her white hand a wreath of yew she bore; And, breaking th' icy wreath sweet Hero wore, She forc'd about her brows her wreath of yew, And said, "Now, minion, to thy fate be true, Though not ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... which bore The reflex of my City in their depths. Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd To be a mystery of loveliness Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come When I must render up this glorious home To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant towers Shall darken with the waving of her wand; Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts, Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand, Low-built, mud-walled, Barbarian settlement, How chang'd from this fair City!' Thus far the Spirit: Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I Was left alone on Calpe, and ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... paper. It has been said, and believed, that Rivington, after all, was a secret traitor to the crown, and, in fact, the secret informant of Washington. Be this, however, as it may, as the war drew to a close, and the prospects of the King's arms began to darken, Rivington's loyalty began to cool down; and by 1787 the King's arms had disappeared and the title of the paper, no more the Royal Gazette, was simply Rivington's New York Gazette and Universal Advertiser. But although he labored ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... then here we have it—'4 June, total eclipse of the moon commences at 8.15 Greenwich time, visible in Teneriffe—South Africa, &c.' There's a sign for you. Tell them we will darken the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... prediction, that his funeral obsequies would be performed with bloody hands, verily fulfilled. In parts of the world which his living grasp had not seized, he would also see little to remind him of his past existence. Would not mortification darken the brow of the resuscitated conqueror on discovering, that when his name was mentioned in historic annals, it was less as a polar star to guide, than as a beacon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... hearing of such prosperous successe as Agricola had against the Britains, did not so much reioise for the thing well doone, as he enuied to consider what glorie and renowme should redound to Agricola thereby, which he perceiued should much darken the glasse of his fame, hauing a priuate person vnder him, who in woorthinesse of noble exploits atchiued, farre ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed

... very sad. I must bear up under it. The worst of it is, I am naturally subject to depression. In solitude I sink, sink. But the subject is too painful. Don't let us darken the ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... that he was worrying; yet it was evident that he had not the slightest suspicion of the real cause of the sudden pallor in her cheeks. She saw his face cloud and his eyes darken; and again she heard that faint, small voice of remorse—whispering deep in her heart's heart. He was always so considerate of her, this jailer of hers. His concern was always so real and deep. Yet in a moment more the kindly sympathy would be gone from his face. He would be lying ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... neck, and threw O'er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue, Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave, Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. Such was this daughter of the southern seas, HERSELF A BILLOW ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... strokes, causing the color to run outwards and become lighter as it approaches the axis. It will be found that during this process the brush will occasionally require washing in water, because from continuous contact with the dark streak the tint it contains will darken. When the first coat has been laid and spread or drawn out from end to end of the piece, the process may be repeated two or three times, the most even results being obtained by making the first dark streak not too dark, and going ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... even more. I could not give up hope. Not even when you wrote home, the year before last, that you had decided to live abroad. I got that news on the shortest day of the year. I watched the twilight darken into night until the very blackness swam before my eyes in blood-red spots. It was then I made up my mind ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban

... established a village library equipped with the history of shoes, the aesthetics of shoes, shoe economics, shoe technology, and shoe hygiene, not one of the girls or men who worked in the shoe factories would darken its doors to read about shoes. They would not for this simple reason; the workers' "individual and vocational interest" does not exist. They would say that they already knew more than they cared to about shoes. No literature could add culture or dignity to the job of stitching ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... Children may darken the hearts and lives of their parents. How many times is the mother-heart or father-heart grieved by the conduct of the children! It may be that they are only thoughtless, or they may be disobedient and wilful. Young people, cherish your parents, ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... objected, that neither can the Reds be made out of the Yellows, added together, or laid on in greater or less quantity, nor can the Yellows be made out of the Reds though laid never so thin; and as for the addition of White or Black, they do nothing but either whiten or darken the colours to which they are added, and not at all make them of any other kind of colour: as for instance, Vermilion, by being temper'd with White Lead, does not at all grow more Yellow, but onely there is made a whiter kind of Red. Nor does Yellow ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... it to bed, and after Pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it was all a joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the basket, and then he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle Ezra never to darken his door again. I don't how know he made up with Ma for calling it a dutch baby from the Polack settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around every day, and Ma and Pa have ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... he knew, and none the less so because he could not help things. She would say he ought to have worked harder, and a hundred such exasperating pointless things. Such thoughts as these require no aid from undigested cold pork and cold potatoes and pickles to darken the soul, and with these aids his soul ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... light." 8. Nelson's signal was, "England expects every man to do his duty." 9. Rubbers, or overshoes, are worn to keep the feet dry. 10. The sable, the seal, and the otter furnish us rich furs. 11. His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went. 12. Flights of birds darken the air, and tempt the traveler with the ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... Christ." Again, if the commandments were done away here, how could those "who teach them be of great esteem in the reign of heaven;" and how could they teach them without knowing the words from the decalogue? "The law of grace and the law of Christ" would darken counsel without knowledge. If the tables of stone were done away here, where are the commandments referred to so many times in the new testament for us to keep, and how useless for Christ to come at the ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... yet ended when we finally retraced our way across the narrow dyke to the mainland, prepared to resume our journey. The passage was slow and dangerous, and we made it on foot, leading the horses. The woods were already beginning to darken as we forded the north branch of the creek, and came forth through a fringe of forest trees into a country of rolling hills and narrow valleys. The two girls were already mounted, and Tim and I were busily tightening the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... involuntarily advanced a few steps nearer, and watched his father's countenance with the impatience of suspense. He saw him turn pale, his brow darken, and his ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... to me this testimony of my faith? thou art fled; they cannot track thy footsteps; I shall see thee no more on earth. I am dying fast, but not of the wound I took from thee; let not that thought darken thy soul, my husband! No, that wound is healed. Thought is sharper than the sword. I have pilled away for the loss of thee and thy love! Can the shadow live without the sun? And wilt thou never place ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... snow-white breakers from the dark heaving waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of heaven by the strips of land, crowned by the level tops of the cocoa-nut trees. As a white cloud here and there affords a pleasing contrast with the azure sky, so in the lagoon, bands of living coral darken the emerald green water. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... and there cast up, a piece Of coral or of ambergris, Which, boasted of abroad, we ignore The burden of the barren shore. I seldom write, for 'twould be still Of how the nerves refuse to thrill; How, throughout doubly-darken'd days, I cannot recollect her face; How to my heart her name to tell Is beating on a broken bell; And, to fill up the abhorrent gulf, Scarce loving her, I hate myself. Yet, latterly, with strange delight, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... no morning bank. A brightening came in the East; then a wash of some ineffable, faint, nameless hue between crimson and silver; and then coals of fire. These glimmered awhile on the sea line, and seemed to brighten and darken and spread out; and still the night and the stars reigned undisturbed. It was as though a spark should catch and glow and creep along the foot of some heavy and almost incombustible wall-hanging, and the room itself be scarce menaced. Yet ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... justice; if they fail to protect the innocent, to reward public services, and to chastise the guilty and disobedient; if they are not solicitous to foresee and to provide for the troubles which may arise, or to turn aside, by careful diplomacy, the storms which darken the horizon; if favour rather than merit dictates their choice of ministers for the high offices of the kingdom; if they do not immovably establish the state in its rightful power; if they do not on all occasions ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... sky appeared to darken, a cloud of arrows and javelins broke from all sides upon the clevoted Seljuks: immense masses of stone and marble were hurled from all directions, horses were stabbed by spears impelled by invisible hands, and riders fell to the ground without a struggle, and were trampled ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place. The house had pointed gables, and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only to darken the front door, made of heavy pieces ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and his association with both the Beaubien and Ames. Jim once told me, in a burst of alcoholic confidence, that she had saved him from J. Wilton's clutches in the dim past, and for that he owed her endless gratitude, as well as for never permitting him to darken her door again. Now I have never met the Beaubien. Few women have. But I dare say she knows all about us. However, the point that concerns us now is this: she has a hold on Ames, and, unless rumor is wide of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... are the boys themselves. It is no doubt encouraging for a soldier who has lost both arms to be told by a kindly and enthusiastic visitor at his bedside that all will be well, and he will be able to manage without them; but a certain measure of scepticism and despair may remain to darken his waking hours. But when a little fellow in precisely the same plight shows him how the disabilities have been conquered, his zest in life begins to return. Seeing is believing, and believing means new endeavour. The result is that the crippled ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... she crouched longer; each time made slower progress; and always the goal she had set herself, the end of that jutting hill, thrust itself out, nosed forward, sliding down to the plain. It began to darken, but Joan thought that her sight was failing. The enormous efforts she was making took every atom of her will. At last her muscles refused obedience, her laboring heart stopped. She stood a moment, swayed, fell, and this time she made no effort to rise. She ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... one was a traitor to the other. The dogma, that absolute power may, by the hypothesis of a popular origin, be as legitimate as constitutional freedom, began, by the combined support of the people and the throne, to darken ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... very convenient; but the plan has its drawbacks. Some letters will be in their nature black and brow-compelling. Tidings will come from time to time at which men cannot smile. There will be news that ruffles the sweetest temper, and at receipt of which clouds will darken the most kindly face. One would fain receive such letters ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... soul. Our inner happiness is measured out to us by an incorruptible Judge and the mere endeavour to corrupt him still further reduces the sum of the final, veritable happiness he lets fall into the shining scale. It is lamentable enough that a Rogron should be able to torture a helpless child, and darken the few hours of life the chance of the world had given; but injustice there would be only if his wickedness procured him the inner happiness and peace, the elevation of thought and habit, that long years ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... to receive every impulse of blind fanaticism. The stories, thus collected and put everywhere in circulation, were of a nature to terrify the imagination, fill the mind with horrible apprehensions, degrade the general intelligence and taste, and dethrone the reason. They darken and dishonor the literature of that period. A rehash of them can be found in the Sixth Book of the Magnalia. The effects of such publications were naturally developed in widespread delusions and ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... again; but I had scarcely done so when my spirits fell. I walked hastily away with a coarse threatening sound in my ears like that of the clarionets whose sustained low notes darken the woodland in "Der Frieschutz." I found myself presently at the graveyard. It was a barren place, enclosed by a mud wall with a gate to admit funerals, and numerous gaps to admit peasantry, who made short cuts across it as they went to and fro between Four Mile Water and ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw

... The night did not darken as it wore on, still starred brilliantly and lighted by a full, silver moon, which seemed to Will on these lone plains of the great West to have a size and splendor that he had never noticed in the East. He and the Little Giant now faced the north, while ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... Mendoza knew the world and the court, and he foresaw that sooner or later some royal marriage would be made for Don John of Austria, and that even if Dolores were married to him, some tortuous means would be found to annul her marriage, whereby a great shame would darken his house. Moreover, he was the King's man, devoted to Philip body and soul, as his sovereign, ready to give his life ten times for his sovereign's word, and thinking it treason to doubt a royal thought or motive. He was a rigid ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... sleighs were lost. The cloud was not dark; the snow fell in such small flakes that it did not seem that even an infinite number of them could bury the world; the wind drifting them together, though strong, was not boisterous; the March evening did not soon darken: and yet there was something in the determined action of cloud and wind and snow, making the certainty that night would come with no abatement, which caused even the inexperienced Englishman to perceive that he was passing into the midst of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... burn and glisten. Another moment, and the sun has sunk to rest. The phantom city fades; the ruddy background melts into the gray mountain-side. Dim ghost-like streaks linger about the double summits of La Pagna. They vanish. Nothing then remains but masses of leaden clouds soon to darken into night. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... freed from the power of death, so that its shadow should never darken his life in ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... going to begin, and everybody was as happy as happy could be, when, all of a sudden, there was a clashing of brazen claws and a rushing of wings, and something like a black cloud seemed to pass before the tall windows and darken all the room, so that the guests could hardly see their plates. Then the great doors burst open with a terrible bang, and an old fairy in a long trailing black gown, with her face almost hidden in a black hood, jumped out of a black chariot drawn by fierce ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... as he always had, that it is impossible to watch children without an ache for the inevitable pity of it that they should have to grow up. It was not, he felt, because they are particularly happy—for never again can there be griefs blacker than those which darken all a child's horizon, but simply because they stand for something beautiful which can never come again. Now, looking at Jim and the other children, he felt the old pity, but tinged with something new. For the first time he saw that it was only by realising ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... a matron who never said "No" when she meant "Yes;" and she smilingly kept to her own purpose, yet took good care that no shadow of a coming separation should darken her beloved Dorothy's wonderful trip in a private car. Just here we may recall to the readers' attention that this young girl's earlier experiences have been told in "Dorothy's Schooling," her "Travels" and "House Party" and best of ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... think, but he shook his old noddle as much as to say he wouldn't; and so, says I, 'Bad cess to the likes o' that I ever seen,—throth if you wor in my counthry it's not that away they'd use you. The curse o' the crows an you, you owld sinner,' says I, 'the divil a longer I'll darken your door.' ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... now that approaching disgrace begins to darken the closing years of my life, I can write with all truth and honesty that it is not the terror of the law, it is not the loss of my position in the county, nor is it my fall in the eyes of all who have known me, which cuts me to the heart; but ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... was very unshadowed, but the housekeeper's, on the contrary, seemed to darken more and more. She stood in the middle of the floor, in one of the small rooms, and surveyed the prospect, alternately within and without ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... would disgrace and darken the whole State. Nothing could be more infamous, and yet this man is president of the Humane Society. Now, the question arises, what is humane about this society? Certainly not its president. Undoubtedly he is sincere. Certainly no man would take that position ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... bewildered. For a time the interest of this story, intense as it had been to her, had distracted her mind from her own troubles; though all through she been conscious of some impending gloom that seemed to darken ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... The mistress treated the friend of the family as one would not have dared to treat a petty commercial traveller who came to a private house to offer his wares. She showed him the door, and desired him not to darken the threshold again. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... you must be more unhappy than I, for that awful deed will, like a thick cloud, forever darken your days. From my heart I forgive you. But answer me yet one question: how came you under this form, in the wilderness? What did you set about, after ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... a young man; his cheeks were girlishly smooth and of a clear, pale, olive tint, which sun and weather apparently were powerless to darken; his eyes were large, bold, and brilliant; his nostrils thin and sensitive, like those of a blooded horse. He seemed almost immature until he spoke, then one realized with a curious shock that he was a man ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... to take a bath there. A heavenly voice warned them: "Alight not here! Once a carpenter's axe slipped from his hand at this spot, and it took it seven years to touch bottom." The bird the travellers saw was none other than the ziz.[132] His wings are so huge that unfurled they darken the sun.[133] They protect the earth against the storms of the south; without their aid the earth would not be able to resist the winds blowing thence.[134] Once an egg of the ziz fell to the ground and broke. The fluid from it flooded sixty cities, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... them from their father's side, and conduct them to their beds. Happy father! happy children! May Providence be merciful, and keep the grim enemy away from your fireside! Let him not come now in the blooming beauty and the freshness of your loves! Let him not darken and embitter for ever the life that is still bright, beautiful, and glorious in the power of elevating and sustaining thought that leads beyond it. Let him wait the matured and not unexpected hour, when the shock comes, not to crush, to overwhelm, and to annihilate, but to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... tired this morning, Deb. The sunlight is so strong. I think I'll go darken my room, and lie ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... a little more about it, just quietly. How did you happen to go out there? Was it because you heard that Captain Herrick was wounded? That's the way the papers cabled the story. Was that true?" Then, seeing her face darken, he added: "Perhaps I ought not ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... is either understood at once, or it is not understood. The man who has loved understands it; and he who has not loved will never understand it. He who has loved knows that a shadow in the heart of the beloved one would darken his own: he knows that he would reckon no means too costly—watchings, labors, privations—by which to create a smile on the lips of the sorrowful; he knows that he would die to redeem a forfeited life; he knows that he would be happy in another's ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... burdened with toil, The seas are sown with the dead, With never a hand of a priest to assoil A soul that in sin hath fled. I have gold: I dread the danger by night; I have none: I repine and fret; I have children: they darken the pale sunlight; I have none: I'm in nature's debt. The young lack wisdom; the old lack life; I have brains; but I shake at the knees; Alas! who could covet a scene of strife? Give me peace ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... the end of a sheet of wax so as to produce the same appearance as a hem in muslin, and cut ten fine filaments for each flower (the hem represents the anthers). Colour the pistil and stamina pale pink: darken the end of the pistil to a deep crimson. Touch the ends of the stamina with a sable brush moistened with brown (crimson powder, orange powder, and cake sepia); while wet, dip them into farina (produced by mixing my lemon powder with white, quite dry). Cut a piece of wire, ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey

... the whole world about him was awakening. It mattered nothing to him that the white world was passing, and the rivers were starting to flood. The feathered world might wing to greet the new-born season. It might darken the sky with its legions. Such things had no power to stir his pulses, any more than had the thought of the great triumph he had achieved over the desperate Arctic elements, if all was not ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... called a "rising man," but he had had no opportunity to display the greatest faculties of the soldier. The time was coming now when he was to be tested, and the measure of his faculties taken in one of the greatest wars which darken ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... wornt sober shoo humoured him wi lettin him goa to bed. Next mornin he'd come to his senses a bit, soa shoo let him have sich a bit o' tongue as he hadn't had latly, for tha knows shoo's a glaid when shoo starts, for if awd to say quarter as mich to my felly as shoo says to him sometimes, he'd niver darken th' door agean. He began to see what a fooil they'd been makkin on him, an' he gate up intendin to goa to his wark, but when he saw hissen ith' seamin glass, he couldn't fashion, an' soa he began o' weshin hissen first i' cold watter an' then i' hot; but it wor what ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... a brute in your own house. I know you've struck me before, but I endured it and said nothing about it because you were drunk, but you are not drunk now, and if you lay a finger on me or my son to-day, I will never darken your ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... color of the hair various methods and preparations are employed. The principal of these are intended to darken it, but sometimes the contrary is aimed at. Whichever object is desired, it is necessary that the article or preparation employed to carry it out be not of a caustic or irritant nature, capable of injuriously affecting the delicate ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... mankind, civil and barbarous, confesses that the mind and body are at variance, and that neither can be made happy by its proper gratifications, but at the expense of the other; that a pampered body will darken the mind, and an enlightened mind will macerate the body. And none have failed to confer their esteem on those who prefer intellect to sense, who control their lower by their higher faculties, and forget ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... person in London had made his manuscript more saleable and had sold it without rendering an account of the profits, and for that he had been ready to curse humanity. Black, horrible, as the memory of a stormy day, the rage of his heart returned to his mind, and he covered his eyes, endeavoring to darken the picture of terror and hate that shone before him. He tried to drive it all out of his thought, it vexed him to remember these foolish trifles; the trick of a publisher, the small pomposities and malignancies of the country folk, the cruelty of a village boy, had inflamed ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... off down the piazza. Mr. de Valentin came forward eagerly to meet her. I saw his face darken as she ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... were still all dewy bright With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof 290 From the poor girl by magic of their light, The while it did unthread the horrid woof Of the late darken'd time,—the murderous spite Of pride and avarice,—the dark pine roof In the forest,—and the sodden turfed dell, Where, without any word, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... of Armenia dwelt in a castle of hewn stone about which a little city clustered, with mountains on every side to darken the sky, He was as swarthy as a Saracen and had a long nose like a Jew, but he was a good Christian and a wise ruler, though commonly at odds with his cousin of Antioch. From him Aimery had more precise ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... "I did not take the money as a bribe." The circumstances would always be stronger than his assertion. And besides, to come forward and tell everything about himself must include declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others against him. He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's existence when he first mentioned his pressing need of money to Bulstrode, and that he took the money innocently as a result of that communication, not knowing that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... after, a cry had gone forth, "Alexander the Great is dead!" verily I believe that Diogenes would have coiled himself up in his tub and felt that with the shadow of the stately hero something of glory and of warmth had gone from that sun which it should darken never more. In the nature of man, the humblest or the hardest, there is a something that lives in all of the Beautiful or the Fortunate, which hope and desire have appropriated, even in the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... charms, Woo the flatterer to my arms; While each moment she beguiles With her sweet enliv'ning smiles, While she softly whispers me, 'Lycidas again is free,' While I gaze on Pleasure's gleam, Say not thou 'Tis all a dream.' Hence—nor darken Joy's soft bloom With thy pale and sickly gloom: Nought have I to do with thee— Hence—begone—Anxiety. Isle of Man, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... cannot feel it; for how, but by unnecessary intelligence and artificial provocation, should the farmers and shopkeepers of Yorkshire and Cumberland know or care how Middlesex is represented? Instead of wandering thus round the county to exasperate the rage of party, and darken the suspicions of ignorance, it is the duty of men like you, who have leisure for inquiry, to lead back the people to their honest labour; to tell them, that submission is the duty of the ignorant, and content the virtue of the poor; that they ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... is your opinion, sir, you are no better than some of your friends, and for my part I will never darken your ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... of spirit more than common: so in peace, I daresay, with submission, he shall never have an opportunity to illustrate his memory more than by such a foundation. By which he shall have opportunity to darken the glory of the French king in peace, as he has by his daring ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe



Words linked to "Darken" :   overcloud, bedim, dun, embrown, alter, sully, cloud up, darkening, blind, stain, murk, black out, defile, cloud, benight, shade, modify, lighten, tarnish, overcast, shade off, shadow, dusk, change, blacken out, dim, brighten, maculate



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