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Flash   Listen
verb
Flash  v. i.  (past & past part. flashed; pres. part. flashing)  
1.
To burst or break forth with a sudden and transient flood of flame and light; as, the lighting flashes vividly; the powder flashed.
2.
To break forth, as a sudden flood of light; to burst instantly and brightly on the sight; to show a momentary brilliancy; to come or pass like a flash. "Names which have flashed and thundered as the watch words of unnumbered struggles." "The object is made to flash upon the eye of the mind." "A thought flashed through me, which I clothed in act."
3.
To burst forth like a sudden flame; to break out violently; to rush hastily. "Every hour He flashes into one gross crime or other."
flash in the pan, a failure or a poor performance, especially after a normal or auspicious start; also, a person whose initial performance appears augur success but who fails to achieve anything notable. From 4th pan, n., sense 3 part of a flintlock. Occasionally, the powder in the pan of a flintlock would flash without conveying the fire to the charge, and the ball would fail to be discharged. Thus, a good or even spectacular beginning that eventually achieves little came to be called a flash in the pan.
To flash in the pan, to fail of success, especially after a normal or auspicious start. (Colloq.) See under Flash, a burst of light.
Synonyms: Flash, Glitter, Gleam, Glisten, Glister. Flash differs from glitter and gleam, denoting a flood or wide extent of light. The latter words may express the issuing of light from a small object, or from a pencil of rays. Flash differs from other words, also, in denoting suddenness of appearance and disappearance. Flashing differs from exploding or disploding in not being accompanied with a loud report. To glisten, or glister, is to shine with a soft and fitful luster, as eyes suffused with tears, or flowers wet with dew.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flash" Quotes from Famous Books



... Sieglinda, then himself. Brunnhilda is overwhelmed by the revelation of a love so devoted, and at last promises to help him. It is her own nature as is revealed to her. Night and storm come on; Hunding's horn is heard as he comes nearer and nearer; Siegmund mounts amongst the rocks to meet him; a flash of lightning reveals them in the act of fighting; Brunnhilda hovers above to strike for him, when Wotan appears in a fiery glare and smashes Siegmund's sword, so that Hunding's spear passes through him. Sieglinda has awakened to see ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... principles which he advocated in literature. He united, remarkably, simplicity of character with brilliancy of talk. For instance, with all his success, he never sought higher society than that which he found himself gradually and by a natural momentum borne into, as he advanced. He never suppressed a flash of indignant sarcasm for fear of startling the "genteel" classes and Mrs. Grundy. He never aped aristocracy in his household. He would go to a tavern for his oysters and a glass of punches simply as they did in Ben ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... and impressions which make a noble soul forget years of suffering, and which, as by a sudden flash, reveal to it something of its own worth and grandeur. Thus it was with the hunchback. Thanks to this generous speech, she was for a moment conscious of her own value. And though this feeling was rapid as it was ineffable, she clasped her hands and raised her ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... the rich, who caught the low-breathed oath as the baby appeared, and saw the ugly look on the man's face. With instant alarm he had gone to the other side of the street, his eye upon the offender, and had been the first to see the covert motion, the flash of the hidden weapon and to fear ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... In a flash I saw his meaning. There was none but he wise enough to ride ahead. But who else could control the men—men who believed they had sloughed the regiment's honor in a Flanders trench and a German prison camp? They were sloughing their personal ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... of the hereditary material. We have in consequence of this work arrived within sight of a result that seemed a few years ago far beyond our reach. The mechanism of heredity has, I think, been discovered—discovered not by a flash of intuition but as the result of patient and careful study ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan

... less than two hundred yards was pressing close upon three or four of the rearmost riders. This seemed to me good opportunity for another call on my trumpet, and I blew, without easing my speed. On the sound of it, one of the dark figures in front swung round in saddle and fired, I saw the flash and the light of it on his gorget and morion: and with that, the bullet glancing against my mare's shoulder, she swerved wildly, leapt high, and came down with forelegs planted, pitching me neck-and-crop out of saddle ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... with a blinding flash and a roar, those English guns spoke. A minute had done it all. Sixty seconds before the gallant vessel had lain apparently at the Frenchman's mercy. Now the Frenchman was fastened inextricably, while the crowd upon deck stood as much exposed as if ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... been a fighting family," she continued, with a flash of pride in her black eyes. "They fought in the Revolution, in the Civil War, and in the Spanish-American War. But now that the country is again calling men to her aid," she finished with a sigh, "there are no more Carver men to answer the call. I am ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... straightening herself up, the manner of the question, more than the words, causing her cheeks to flush and indignant fire to flash in her eyes. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... sad, but as real and vivid in our minds as that fair and always-remembered scene our eyes beheld once more. We forget nothing. The memory sleeps, but awakens again; I often think how it shall be when, after the last sleep of death, the reveille shall arouse us for ever, and the past in one flash of self-consciousness rush ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to Serena as if there was a flash of red and green light through the room, and Ruth had gone. Serena gave a little ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... were very unlike. There was more flash and brilliance about Rudin, more fluency, and perhaps more enthusiasm. He appeared far more gifted than Pokorsky, and yet all the while he was a poor creature by comparison. Rudin was excellent at developing any idea, he was capital in argument, but his ideas did not come from his own ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... corresponding to numerically different sensations of sound each time it is pronounced. The general term man does not connote the sensations derived once from one man, which, once gone, can no more occur again than the same flash of lightning. It connotes the general type of the sensations derived always from all men, and the power (always thought of as one) of producing sensations of that type. And the axiom might be thus worded: Two types of sensation each of which co-exists with a third ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... an hour later, our trunks were ready. Conseil did them in a flash, and I was sure the lad hadn't missed a thing, because he classified shirts and suits as expertly ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... doctrines, its tender pathos, its rolling thunder of Sinai, and its sweet melodies of Calvary's redeeming love. I laid hold of the great themes, and I found a half hour of earnest prayer was more helpful than two or three hours of study. It sometimes let a flash from the Throne flame over ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... anything but apt to receive that which people attempt to put into it. Instead of being an open, roomy vessel for holding things, it may be awkwardly shaped, and sometimes difficult to open at all. Nor do things pour out of it in a stream, as water does from a pitcher; they rather flash out of it, like sparks from the anvil. Instead of possessing its own knowledge, it is possessed by it; it burns as it emits it, and its fire ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... spoken when Tom, looking out seaward, saw a sudden, bright flash of light upward. There was a brief pause—-then the sullen boom of ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... finished when a flash like lightning stabbed the darkness and came very near to stabbing him. It was the sword of Nevers, who was thrusting wildly before him into the gloom, while he cried: "Not a word! You have ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... night? Never, my good Feldmarschall;"—and as the Feldmarschall was a man of stiff notions, and had a tongue of some emphasis, the Dialogue went on, probably with increasing emphasis on Friedrich's side too, till old Schwerin, with a quite emphatic flash of countenance, crushing the hat firm over his brow, exclaims: "Well, your Majesty: the fresher fish the better fish (FRISCHE FISCHE, GUTE FISCHE): straightway, then!" and springs off on the gallop southward, he ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... curse, another shot. Then it seemed to John a thousand shots were fired. He saw the detective throw the rifle to his shoulder and there was a spurt of flame after a quick aim. In a descending circle he saw the flash of guns fired by the other detectives coming down from the hilltop. He saw Brennan—and it surprised him—shooting down into the gully "throwing" his shots in the cowboy fashion he had ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... own dress. It was not the nervous glance of the debutante, but the practised flash of experienced eyes which see without appearing ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... of the blindness of preconceived opinion. These authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of creation than at an ordinary birth. But do they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues? Do they believe that at each supposed act of creation one individual or many were produced? Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created as eggs or seed, or as full grown? and in the case of mammals, were they created bearing the ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... like a flash, and was deeply startled to see Raffles himself standing by the divan I had just vacated, divesting himself of ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... which had grown used to the flash and flutter of brilliant tropical birds in a cage would be apt to find the little dull-breasted swallow sitting motionless by her nest a very insipid subject of study. Probably no other man, as active ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... tranquillity that prevails throughout Bihar as compared with the spirit of revolution in Bengal proper. The microbe of anarchy finds an excellent culture-ground in minds which grovel before the goddess Kali. But the unrest cannot be isolated from other manifestations of cosmic energy, which flash from mind to mind and keep the world in turmoil. Every force of nature tends to be periodic. The heart's systole and diastole; alternations of day and night, of season and tide, are reflected in the ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... to his feet and moved away from her, The momentary flash of happiness had fallen from him; he felt very old and miserable as he stood leaning his elbow on the mantelshelf staring down at the fire. She no longer cared for him; something in her voice told him that as no actual words would have done. She had not wanted him to ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... coal to the powder. There was a flash, a puff of smoke rising to the ceiling, and ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... one by one little down feathers, and threw them under the Princess's nose. And the fluff flew into the Princess's nose, and into her mouth, and starting up she sneezed and coughed, and the ring fell out of her mouth on to the coverlet. In a flash the tiny mouse had seized it, and brought it to Waska as a ransom for the King of the Mice. Thereupon Waska and Schurka started off, and travelled night and day till they reached the stone tower where Martin was imprisoned; and the cat climbed up the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... said Faith with a laughing flash of her usually soft eye, "you immediately give me a desire for the one not here! It's like you, Mr. Linden. No, thank you—I'll have none of these. I believe Reuben has a desire for some of the clams ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... Hohenburg, were assassinated June 28, 1914, by a Serbian student, Gavrio Prinzip. The assassination occurred at Sarajevo in Bosnia, a dependency, or rather, a Slavic state that had been seized by Austria. It was the lightning flash that ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?" exclaimed Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes. "That smile, permit me to say, makes me suspicious of a low tone of feeling and shallow thought. It is my belief—yes, and my prophecy, should I die before it happens—that, when my sex shall achieve ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to his temple. At that moment a woman's shriek was heard, his wife rushed in, his arm was seized with the strength of despair; he started, and his finger touched the trigger—a flash, a report, and he sank back on the sofa, and groaning, raised both his hands ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... towering before him; but, quick as he was, John Clayton was almost as quick, so that the bullet which was intended for the sailor's heart lodged in the sailor's leg instead, for Lord Greystoke had struck down the captain's arm as he had seen the weapon flash in the sun. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Tillet there at this hour when the negotiations about the Madeleine were going on, Birotteau, in spite of his extreme confidence, felt uneasy. The excited manner of du Tillet seemed the sign of a discussion. "Can he be in it?" thought Cesar, with a flash of commercial prudence. The suspicion passed like lightning through his mind. He looked again and saw Madame Roguin, and the presence of du Tillet was no longer suspicious. "Still, suppose Constance were right?" he said to himself. "What a fool I am to ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... dee-ar, my sweet dormitte," said Maitresse Aimable, patting her shoulder. "It cannot harm thee, ba su! 'Tis but a flash in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... You're young and hard: And I was hard, though far from young: I've long Been growing old; though little I realized How old. And when you're old, you don't judge hardly: You ken things happen, in spite of us, willy-nilly. We think we're safe, holding the reins; and then In a flash the mare bolts; and the wheels fly off; And we're lying, stunned, beneath the broken cart. So, let the lass go quietly; and keep Your happiness. When you're old, you'll not let slip A chance of happiness so easily: There's not so much of it ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater than life, and that was love. Her mother was upheld by love. That was what the eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the love of her starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing death, because his hand was close ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... his eyes, usually so dreamy, so soft brown. Helen was startled at the lambent flash in their depths. He sauntered from the room. After a moment she heard his voice in conversation with the man he ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... of the dark blue sea; and she called aid her the rest of the Nereids, her own sisters; and they heard her and gathered together; and Thetis declared to them Hera's behests, and quickly sped them all on their way to the Ausonian sea. And herself, swifter than the flash of an eye or the hafts of the sun, when it rises upwards from a far-distant land, hastened swiftly through the sea, until she reached the Aeaean beach of the Tyrrhenian mainland. And the heroes she found by the ship taking their pastime, with quoits and shooting of arrows; and she drew ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... women, employed in reaping the extensive corn-fields through which we passed were raising their hoes and voices to heaven, and, yelling furiously, cursed 'Morimo' (God), as the terrific thunder-claps succeeded each vivid flash of lightning. On inquiry I was informed by 'Old Booy' that they were indignant at the interruption of their labors, and that they therefore cursed and menaced the cause. Such blasphemy was awful, even among ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... always watching, and at the least signal of alarm the whole herd takes fright simultaneously. Gregarious animals are quickly alive to their mutual signals; it is beautiful to watch great flocks of birds as they wheel in their flight and suddenly show the flash of all their wings against the sky, as they simultaneously and suddenly change their direction. Much of the tameness or wildness of an animal's character is probably due to the placidity or to the frequent starts of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... heaven and all its hosts, he shall not die!" "By Satan and his fiends, he shall not live! This is no transient flash of fugitive passion, His death has been my life for years of misery, Which, else I had not lived, Upon that thought, and not on food, I fed, Upon that thought, and not on sleep, I rested, I came to do the deed that must be done, Nor ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... the summer clouds that floated over the ocean were beginning to glow with the warmth of coming sunset. The sea lay so tranquil that the flash of the waves on the pebbly shore sounded like the rythmic accompaniment to the beautiful vision of earth and sky, and the boom of the water against the cliffs beyond came now and then, accentuating this like the beat of a heavy drum muffled or distant. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... conclude to take this step, my conscience—and history—will justify me." "If you succeed," said Betsey, shrewdly. "But Mr. Jay is very rigid, and he lacks your imagination, your terrible gift of seeing the future in a flash." ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... prays that the crops may be good in the coming year. For several days before the new fire is kindled, no ashes or sweepings may be removed from the houses and no artificial light may appear outside of them, not even a burning cigarette or the flash of firearms. The Indians believe that no rain will fall on the fields of the man outside whose house a light has been seen at this season. The signal for kindling the new fire is given by the rising of the Morning Star. The flame is produced by twirling an upright stick between the hands ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... do His bidding. He hears the sound of a rushing hurricane; but God is not in the wind. The mountain then is shaken by a fearful earthquake; but Jehovah is not in the earthquake. Again the mountain seems to flash with fire; but the signs he seeks are not in the fire. At last, after the uproar of contending physical forces had died away, in the profound silence of the solitude he hears the whisper of a still small voice in gentle accents; and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... see, through an opening in the leaves, the bird return to her nest, which appeared like a mere wart or excrescence an a small branch. The hummingbird, unlike all others, does not alight upon the nest, but flies into it. She enters it as quick as a flash, but as light as any feather. Two eggs are the complement. They are perfectly white, and so frail that only a woman's fingers may touch them. Incubation lasts about ten days. In a week, the young ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... the rush of new books upon the world the readers of to-day lose sight of the volumes which wove threads of gold into the joys and sorrows of the generation now travelling the downward slope of life. Their starry radiance is sometimes lost to view in the electric flash of the present day. If these pages can in any slight way aid in keeping their memory bright they will have reached their ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... stock of us like that, was too much for the mate. He lifted his lance and hurled it at the visitor, in whose broad flank it sank, like a knife into butter, right up to the pole-hitches. The recipient disappeared like a flash, but before one had time to think, there was an awful crash beneath us, and the mate shot up into the air like a bomb from a mortar. He came down in a sitting posture on the mast-thwart; but as he fell, the whole framework ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... So, in the moment of that crushing blast, Eyes, hearts, and hopes paused trembling for the last. Loud burst the thunder's clap and yawning rents Gash'd the frail garments of the elements; Then sudden whirlwinds, wing'd with purple flame And lightning's flash, in stronger terrors came, Burning all life and Nature where they fell, And leaving earth as desolate as hell. The pleasant hues of woods and fields were past, And Nature's beauties had enjoyed their ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... office on April 12, 1945. In May of that same year, the Nazis surrendered. Then, in July, that great white flash of light, man-made at Alamogordo, heralded swift and final victory in World War II—and opened the doorway to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... in position I decided on a strenuous effort to halve the game. I took a firm stance and the hockey stick and let drive for the hole with a tremendous pickaxe stroke. Instantly there was a blinding flash and an explosion, and, when we had finished picking sand out of our ears and eyes and allayed the excitement of the Chinks, we discovered my ball comfortably nestling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various

... thy meridian strength; but thou shalt shine for only a brief space, and then decrease, whilst He shall increase from the faint flush of day-spring to the perfect day." And might not the child reply, with a flash of intelligent appreciation?—"Yes, father, I understand; but I shall be satisfied if only I have prepared ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... battle was distinctly visible above the woods which bordered the Warrenton-Alexandria highway. Across Bull Run, in the neighbourhood of Groveton, and still further westward, where the cleft in the blue hills marked Thoroughfare Gap, was seen the flash of distant guns. McDowell, marching northwards through Gainesville, had evidently come into collision with the enemy. Jackson was run to earth at last; and it was now clear that while Pope had been moving northwards on Centreville, the Confederates had been ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... distant waters dash, I saw the current whirl and flash, And richly, by the blue lake's silver beach, The woods were bending with a silent reach. Then o'er the vale, with gentle swell, The music of the village bell Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills; And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... hand!" (A start of quick surprise.) "How could you dare?" (A flash of angry eyes.) And yet her hand in mine all ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... on the crest of the hill, and looking down to the Rue de l'Eglise I could get an inkling of what progress the savages were making from an occasional flash of shining metal in a ray of light from some window; for though the hour was late the town was still astir from the governor's ball, and lights were in most of the houses. As yet they were some distance behind us, but though we were on horses and they afoot, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... am. You know how I loathe asking a favour of anyone. Besides, it's rather an extraordinary one I'm going to ask of you. Came to me in a flash this morning when I saw your name in the paper. Sort of inspiration, 'pon my word. I think Edith sees it the same as I, although I haven't had time to go into it thoroughly with her. She's ripping, you know; ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... his dazed condition left him puzzled. How did this come about? Then, all in a flash he understood. This must be Monday. He must have left the saloon—drunk, blind drunk. He must have ridden—where? Ah, yes, now it was all plain. He must have ridden till he fell off his horse, and then slept where he fell. Monday—Monday. He seemed ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... standing in the deserted Round, there comes to me—across the sky where the plovers wheel and flash in the wintry sunshine—the sound of men's voices carolling at an unseen farm. They are singing The First Nowell; but the fourth Nowell—the fourth of the refrain—is the clou of that most common, most excellent carol, and gloriously the tenors and basses rise ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... me a fine name for an Egyptian god, though I hadn't met it before. Then I burst out laughing disrespectfully. "Why, you're only a Bath Mat wrong side out!" I heard myself sneering; and the god disappeared as a flash of lightning comes and is gone. In going, however, he stumbled slightly against the bed. It was a mere touch; but that, or my own ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... round the house. She had excellent eyes, and never used a glass. She saw the same faces she had seen for five years, the same occasional flash of beauty, the same average number of over-dressed women, the same paint, the same feathers, the same jewels. She saw opposite to her Madame Mayer, with the elderly countess whom she patronised for the sake of deafness, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... on his feet in a moment, and I saw, from the flash of his eyes, that he was a man of evil passions. Moving a pace or two in the direction of the other, he ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... of the moment, saw that most inspiriting of sights—the "break" of a salmon-trout. Up he went, from a brusque explosion of ripples and foam—up into the gray of the morning from out the gray of the water: scales all gleaming, hackles all a-bristle; a sudden flash of silver, a sweep as of a scimitar in gray smoke, with a splash, a turmoil, an abrupt burst of troubled sound that stabbed through the silence of the morning, and in a single instant dissipated all the placid calm of the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... with a dejected shake of the head. "If I can't put it through on the flash, I can't do it at all. My time is up. I'm down and out. All our pretty plans have gone to smash. You'd better go back to ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... The frantic colt was going to be broken. It was already saddled. Several additional men ran forward, and between them the horse was forcibly held for a moment—only for a moment, but it was long enough for the man who leaped like a flash on to his back. The others fell away, racing from the reach of the terrible lashing heels. Amazed for the moment at the sudden unaccustomed weight, the colt paused, and then reared straight up, till it seemed to Diana that he must fall backward and crush the man who was clinging to him. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... it, but, as usual in such cases, he heard no detonation, though the pale flash from Gordon's rifle was almost in his eyes. He, however, heard the thud of the heavy bullet, and a moment or two later, a floundering amidst ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... the pack, and was badly bogged; he was the only one that did not appear distressed when filled with water, the other two lay about in evident pain until morning. About the middle of the night thunder was again heard, and flash after flash of even more vivid lightnings than that of the previous night enlightened the glen; so bright were the flashes, being alternately fork and sheet lightning, that for nearly an hour the glare never ceased. The thunder was much louder than last night's, and a slight ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... looked at the boys. 'Ay,' he observed, with a flash of his bright dark eyes,' he ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hee could not preuaile with him to haue his Soule absolutely granted vnto him, as aforesaid; the said Spirit departed from him, then giuing a most fearefull crie and yell, and withall caused a great flash of fire to shew about him: which said Spirit did neuer after trouble ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... Messieurs!' she said with a flash of her old defiance. Then they left her with her empty locket and her ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... Williams says, 'the feeling is for low ones this year'!") and mustard-coloured boots. All that sounds hideous, I know, yet it wasn't. At first sight it was rather attractive, but it lost its attractiveness in a flash when it mistook the nature of ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... she was somedeal disturbed; became Like scarlet; nor would listen to my say; But seeing those bright jewels flash like flame, Her stubborn heart was softened, and gave way; And in brief speech and feeble said the dame What to remember takes my life away: She with my wishes, said, she would comply, If sure to ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... 1850, Charlotte Bronte paid another visit to London, and later to Scotland, where she found Edinburgh "compared to London like a vivid page of history compared to a dull treatise on political economy; as a lyric, brief, bright, clean, and vital as a flash of lightning, compared to a great rumbling, rambling, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... but the others protested so vigorously that he gave in and the whole party crawled under a sheltering ledge beside the brook. For an hour the storm raged. A few flakes of snow mingled with the descending rain drops. Then with a superb flash of lightning and crash of thunder the storm passed as suddenly as it had come, though for hours after they heard it reverberate ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... I am not mistaken. Did you not notice the flash of her eyes and the message she was passing about to have the girls meet in ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... in her enthusiastic, imaginative, nervous state, she heard, louder than ever, in the quiet of the warm night, the voices of the saints about her, who said love was never forbidden when it was so ardent and true as this. Behind her back a bright flash of light had suddenly appeared; scarcely a breath, but a delicate wave from the moon upon the chamber floor. An invisible finger, no doubt that of her guardian angel, was placed upon her mouth, as if to unseal her lips and relieve her from her vow. Henceforth she could freely ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... kerchief and I in my cap Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash; The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of day to the objects below; When what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver so lively and quick I knew in a moment it ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... of this encomium came up from the little gorge by the lake outlet, and it struck Helen Savine that the rock worker had changed to advantage since she first saw him. His keen eyes, which she had noticed were quick to flash with anger, had grown more kindly and the bronzed face was more reposeful. The thin jean garments and great knee boots, which had no longer any rents in them, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... professor, "observers will see a dazzling flash of light in which all shape will ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... cried, "you have come again—come to forgive your poor old grand—No, no," she added, as she saw the look of pain flash over Maggie's face, "I'll never insult you with that name. Only say that you forgive me, will you, Miss Margaret?" and the trembling voice was choked with sobs, while the aged form shook as ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... last supreme effort his strong will asserted itself in a command upon his consciousness. For one intense instant, briefer than the flash of the tiniest spark, he realized everything, save that the blow or the nearness of death seemed to have dulled all sense of fear. The most vivid thought of all was the reflection that he might have been saved but for his efforts to help Ninitta. The grim ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... unintelligible speculations, can never be the sterling bases of the ethical science! They must be evident, demonstrable principles, deduced from the nature of man, founded upon his wants, inspired by rational education, rendered familiar by habit, made sacred by wholesome laws, that will flash conviction on our mind, render systems useful to mankind, make virtue dear to us—that will people nations with honest men—fill up the ranks with faithful subjects—crowd them with intrepid citizens. Incomprehensible beings can present nothing ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... to dawn on me, or rather it came like a flash; and I turned and looked at her as I had not done before. I am slow, or I should have known when her father and mother had spoken as they did; but now I could see. I could see why she needed me. As an unsophisticated boy, I had been blind in my failure ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... While some of the party would be away sketching, Mr. Osbourne and I hammered away at a novel. We read Gibbon and Carlyle aloud; we blew on flageolets, we strummed on guitars; we took photographs by the light of the sun, the moon, and flash-powder; sometimes we played cards. Pot-hunting engaged a part of our leisure. I have myself passed afternoons in the exciting but innocuous pursuit of winged animals with a revolver; and it was fortunate there were better shots of the party, and fortunate the king could lend us a more suitable ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a smile, as he stood just back of them. They both turned with a flash, and a look of pleased surprise came over the faces of Reggie and his sister as they ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... see me. The feet stopped as I did. So nervous was I that I controlled an impulse to headlong flight with the utmost difficulty. Then looking hard, I distinguished through the interlacing network the head and body of the brute I had seen drinking. He moved his head. There was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced at me from the shadow of the trees, a half-luminous colour that vanished as he turned his head again. He was motionless for a moment, and then with a noiseless tread began running through the green confusion. In another moment he had vanished behind some ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... to merit the name of a poem at all. The poem of Isabella, then, is a perfect treasure-house of graceful and felicitous words and images: almost in every stanza there occurs one of those vivid and picturesque turns of expression, by which the object is made to flash upon the eye of the mind, and which thrill the reader with a sudden delight. This one short poem contains, perhaps, a greater number of happy single expressions which one could quote than all the extant tragedies of Sophocles. But ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... one of Kent's hands. His grip tightened. It began to hurt. And Kent, looking into his eyes, found his brain all at once like a black room suddenly illuminated by a flash of fire. Drop by drop the blood went out of his face until it was whiter ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... the fresh breeze which blows an hour before the sun revived me; yet I did not immediately recover my senses, for I thought my head had been cut off and fancied that I was in purgatory. With time, little by little, my faculties returned, and I perceived that I was outside the castle, and in a flash remembered all my adventures. I was aware of the wound in my head before I knew my leg was broken; for I put my hands up, and withdrew them covered with blood. Then I searched the spot well, and judged and ascertained ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... and, yielding to temptation, began to dance. By and by the music became extremely wild and the dancing proportionately furious. The day was beautifully fine and the sun shone through a clear blue sky, but the pipers were two evil spirits, and suddenly a flash of lightning came from the cloudless sky and turned them all, tempters and tempted, into stone, so there they stand, the girls in a circle and the pipers a little distance away, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... Black Man persuade you ever so hard. I know he will try. He has tempted me, but I never yielded, never gave him his will; and never do you, my boy, though you, with your dark complexion, and your brooding brow, and your eye veiled, only when it suddenly looks out with a flash of fire in it, are the sort of man he seeks most, and that afterwards serves him. But don't do it, Septimius. But if you could be an Indian, methinks it would be better than this tame life we lead. ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dear, so little. But it was years ago. Now he must seem older. Have you forgotten how he looks? You were such a child when he went. Glance into your mirror and you will see him again. The same eyes that flash blue in your dark face, the same smile, the same look of gentleness; strong gentleness. You are simply your father over again. That is why I love you so." She laid her cheek ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... going out one morning to his office, he met on the very landing a rather tall and very dark girl, who had just come running up stairs. She passed before him like a flash, opened the opposite door, and disappeared. But, rapid as the apparition had been, it had left in Maxence's mind one of those impressions which are never obliterated. He could not think of any thing else the whole day; and after business-hours, instead ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... with a flash of his eyes. At the same moment he swung the wheel over and began circling out to the left, so as to turn in the shortest possible space. "If that boat can outrun me I want to ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... itself—if you have ever been close enough to it to hear it—is very different from that, and far more awful. Still and silently it broods till its time is come. And then there is one ear- piercing crack, one blinding flash, and all is over. Nothing so swift, so instantaneous, as the thunder itself, and ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

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

... they run rippling past our feet, and see That lake lit up by dancing sunbeams—and Those light leaves quivering in the summer air; Or linger some sweet eve just on this spot Where now we seem to stand, and watch the stars Flash into splendour, one by one, as night Steals over yon snow-peaks, and twilight fades Behind the steeps of Jura! here, O here! 'Mid scenes where Genius, Worth and Wisdom dwelt,[D] Which fancy peopled with a glowing train Of most divine creations—Here to stray With one most cherished, and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... swift, flying grace which Mrs. Spencer had never noticed in her before. "I wonder if Gabriella can really care about George?" she thought quickly. "But if it is George she is in love with, why on earth did she start to work in a shop?" Then suddenly, following a flash of light, she reasoned it out to her complete satisfaction. "It must have been that she didn't know that George cared—that is why she is blushing so ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... face she never demanded immediate homage by the sudden flash of her beauty. But when her spell had once fallen on a man's spirit it was not often that he could escape from it quickly. When she spoke a peculiar melody struck the hearer's ears. Her voice was soft and low and sweet, and full at all times of harmonious words; ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... the Embankment, at the hot top of his speed, to get the notes back—at Montague Nevitt's chambers. He had walked with fiery zeal in that wrong direction for nearly a mile, his heart burning within him all the way, and his brain in a whirl, before it began to strike him, in a flash of common sense, that Montague Nevitt wouldn't be there at all. He had driven off to the office. Guy clapped his hand to his forehead once more, in an agony of remorse. Great heavens, what folly! He had heard ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... her flash-light, which swept the wharf as she spoke, suddenly brought into view the figure of a man lunging unsteadily along the dock. Leaving her sentence unfinished, she was by his side in ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... a shift in the music. The air swept from the merry tune into the minor from which the negro is never musically free. Then in a flash Franklin saw it all. He saw the picture. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... it, resolving that her son's studies at the college of Louis-the-Great should not be interrupted, even if she had to labor with her own hands. And when she spoke of manual toil, it was no wild, unmeaning exaggeration born of sorrow and a passing flash of courage. She found employment as a day-servant and in sewing for large shops, until she at last obtained a situation as clerk in the establishment where her husband had been a partner. To obtain this she was obliged to acquire a knowledge of bookkeeping, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... of danger, at last moved towards the tree, several entering the wood almost together. One approached the fatal bough. Like a flash of lightning, the leopard sprang upon the unfortunate creature, and in an instant it lay dead, struck down by its ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... twelve—to induce sleep. And on that night I'd been miles and miles out towards Yetholm, and back; and when you saw me with my map and electric torch, I was looking for the nearest turn home—I'm not too well acquainted with the Border yet," he concluded, with a flash of his white teeth, "and I have to carry a map with me. And—that's how it was; ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... splendid time for our friends, the labrus, but we did not get a bite. We persevered, however, fresh baiting the hooks, and throwing out again and again, with not a fin to flash after ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... are apt to be rather melodramatic. Wonderful passions work wonderfully. Eyes flash, lips are set, cheeks grow pale, quite often. Great coolness, vast powers, are continually displayed; yet they are well displayed, after the fashion of gentlemen, not of bravoes or villains or highwaymen. He handles thunder and lightning, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... in their stalls, and that I was really afraid they would break her neck, as she was not strong enough to manage them; but she laughed, and answered that if they did, it would be the best day's work they had ever accomplished, and she would give them a chance. Down the beach they went like a flash, and when she came home their flanks smoked like a lime-kiln. What is ever to be done with my mistress, I am sure I don't know. She makes the house so doleful, that nobody wants to stay here, and only yesterday Katie and Phoebe, the cook, gave ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... issue. With a swift contraction of the heart she realized that she must send her husband on this perilous duty. Ah! Could she do it? It was as if a cold hand were steadily squeezing drop by drop the life-blood from her heart. In contrast, and as if with one flash of light, the long happy days of the last six months passed before her mind. How could she give him up? Her breathing came in short gasps, her lips became dry, her eyes fixed and staring. She was fighting for what ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... two cages, she lured Gertie to an attempted attack on her. Gertie sprang up to the partition, placed her hands on it, with the fingers projecting through the meshes, and attempted to seize Tiny's fingers with her teeth. But the latter was too quick for her, and withdrawing her hands, like a flash seized in her teeth the middle finger of Gertie's left hand. She then bit it severely and with all her might, at the same time pulling and twisting violently, often placing the entire weight of her body on the finger. Her sharp teeth cut ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... of all this? He held out his hands to me without shaking mine, withdrawing them before I could do so, thought Raskolnikoff mistrustfully. Both watched each other, but no sooner did their eyes meet than they both turned them aside with the rapidity of a flash ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... heaven, no unquenchable fier such as worthily fell on the sinfull Citie of Sodom and Gomorra; but a sillie flash of fier, blazing forth of a frying pan ... and here was dwelling in a little lowe thatcht house, a poore beggarly woman: who, with a companion, began to bake pancakes with strawe'—here he becomes sarcastic—'for their abilitie and prouission ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... Eure theos ton alitron], God hath found out the Guilty. Here besides the Grass, you see all Sorts of Serpents. Here is the Basilisk, that is not only formidable for his Poison; but the very Flash of his Eyes is ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... but visibly beating We feel thy wings in the far Clear waste, and the plumes of them fleeting, Soft as swan's plumes are, And strong as a wild swan's pinions, and swift as the flash of ...
— A Dark Month - From Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works Vol. V • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... last words were almost inaudible: it was very wonderful for her to say so much. And a new ray of light seemed to flash on Jacinth's path as she listened. If such a thing were possible, if it could come to pass that Lady Myrtle should reinstate her nephew and his family in their natural place in her affection and regard, what happiness, what softening ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... we stroll along the road, three pretty little girls who are driving home a flock of geese tempt us to air our French a little, and a lively conversation ensues, causing their black eyes to sparkle and their white teeth to flash bewitchingly. One of the children explains why one of the awkward birds wears a clumsy triangular collar of wood, with a stake apparently driven through its throat, "to prevent it from going through the ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... rushed three Uhlans, sabres shining in the dim light from the window behind me; I laid my forefinger flat on the blade of my sabre and shortened my arm for a thrust—then there came a blinding flash, a roar, and I was down, trying to rise, until a clinched fist struck me in the face and I fell flat on ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... was cloudy, with here and there a star shining. From time to time a flash of lightning crossed the sky with a red dart, illumining the ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... ideas of life; and the delicious prologue and epilogue hint these graver analogies in a dainty music which pleasantly relieves the riotous uncouthness of the tale itself. If Rene's life is suddenly lighted up, so is the moss bank with the "blue flash" of violets in spring; and the diplomatic sister through whose service Paul wins his laurels has a more spiritual comrade in the cicada, who, with her little heart on fire, sang forth the note of the broken string and won her singer ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... a flash of lightning falls On our abodes, the danger calls For human aid, which hopes the flame 9 To conquer, though from heaven it came; But if the winds with that conspire, Men strive not, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... flash of your wit, sir," replied the damsel; "I am neither in spirits to enjoy, nor to reply ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... thou art,' said Meg, stepping up to him, with a frown of indignation that made her dark eyes flash like lamps from under her bent brows—'Fule body! if I meant ye wrang, couldna I clod ye ower that craig, and wad man ken how ye cam by your end mair than Frank Kennedy? Hear ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... soft turf, an idea occurred to Mike which he was accustomed in after years to attribute to genius, the one flash of it which had ever illumined ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... that led to his ruin—the partition of Portugal, which slid easily into the occupation of Spain, together with his Moscow adventure—were prompted by ambition or by a semi-fatalistic feeling that they were necessary to the complete triumph of his Continental System. He himself, with a flash of almost uncanny insight, once remarked to Roederer that his ambition was different from that of other men: for they were slaves to it, whereas it was so interwoven with the whole texture of his being as to interfere with no single process of thought ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

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

... hazy day, sinking into twilight. Suddenly my mysterious rival turned his horse full upon me, and to my utter amazement discharged a pistol at my head. The discharge was so close that I escaped only by the swerving of my horse at the flash. I felt my face burn, and in the impulse of the pain made a blind blow at him with my whip. He had drawn out another pistol in an instant, which the blow luckily dashed out of his hand. No words passed between us, but I bounded on him to seize him. He slipped away from my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... his hand, and he fired at the spot where he had seen the flash from the muzzle of the ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... home an' goin' ter de neighbor's house. Dey make me stay dar in de house wid 'em ter tote dere brandy frum de cellar, an' ter make 'em some mint jelup. Well, on de secon' night dar come de wust storm I'se eber seed. De lightnin' flash, de thunder roll, an' de house shook an' rattle lak a earthquake had ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... forgotten even their own names and who have taken up life anew under new circumstances, which they would continue until something would occur to bring about a restoration of memory, when the past in all of its details would come back in a flash. The annals of the English Society for Psychical Research contain quite a number of such cases, which are recognized as typical. Now, would one be justified in asserting that such a person, while living in the secondary ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... troops on sea and on land made every effort to keep off the pirates. They flew banners at morn and eve and fired guns seaward, so that the enemy, understanding by the flash and the detonation that we were prepared to resist, abstained from landing. But when the pirates handled their swords skilfully, their attack was fearful. Our countrymen when they saw these swordsmen, trembled and fled. Their fear of the Japanese was fear of the swords. The pirates' firearms were ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... swords drawn and waving in the light, all countenances turned on the king, all one shout of triumph, loyalty, and joy! Alas! alas! was it to be the last beat of the national heart? Alas! alas! was it to be the last flash of the splendour of France; the dazzling illumination of the catafalque of the Bourbons; the bright burst of flame from the funeral pile ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... car or hire a plane, or both. Fill your wallet—better have too much money than not enough. If you're too far away tonight to make it feasible to come back here, send me a flash. Brownie, you'll work this town first. Belle and I will have to work in the library for a while. We'll all want to ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... glass, and their coloring would shame the richest sky that ever bent over Italy. No tint could be more ravishing, no lustre more superb. Throw a stone into the water, and the myriad of tiny bubbles that are created flash out a brilliant glare like blue theatrical fires. Dip an oar, and its blade turns to splendid frosted silver, tinted with blue. Let a man jump in, and instantly he is cased in an armor more gorgeous than ever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... church of Santissima Annunziata, at Florence, your attention is drawn at once to a sort of miniature temple on the left hand. It is of white marble; but the glare and flash of crimson hangings and silver lamps scarcely allow your eye the quiet necessary to appreciate either form or material. A picture hangs there. It is the Miraculous Annunciation. The artist who was employed to ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... are conceited! But I believe you are right. It's something in your eyes—I noticed it as soon as I saw you— a sort of commanding look, and a flash every now and then when you aren't quite pleased. They flashed like anything just now, when I said you were lazy! The poor coolies would be frightened out of their senses. But you needn't go abroad unless you like. You could stay at home and ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

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

... error, perhaps wholly so, though I cannot see the blindness of my ways. I dare say when thunder and lightning were first proved to be due to secondary causes, some regretted to give up the idea that each flash was caused by the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... turned quickly towards Mrs. White, and, to her consternation, met the same steady, pitiless, aggressive look which she had seen on her face in their first interview. Mercy's first emotion was one of great indignation: her second was a quick flash of comprehension of the whole thing. A great wave of rosy color swept over her face; and, without knowing what she was doing, she looked appealingly at Stephen. Already there was between them so subtle a bond that each understood the other without words. Stephen ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... death by a fraction of an inch. I saw him fall, heard the shot ring out and watched the sand spurt up all in the one crowded second. The next moment I was running towards him, my hand moving instinctively to my empty pistol-pocket. But my mind readjusted itself in a flash, and I recollected that I wasn't dodging cannibals in the upper reaches of the Mambare, but was living in a civilised country where a man who carries a revolver, and gets caught at it, is fined more money than I'd seen in the last ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... the hay-cock, and from time to time dashed under—the hay. Then they gambolled farther off and were making merry over a pod of wild peas when a light form came skimming noiselessly over the field. There was a flash, a hurried rush, a clutch, a faint squeak, and one of the mice was borne away in the claws of its feathered foe. The survivor scrambled under the hay over Rolf's face and somewhere ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the creature that he must scrutinize more closely. On he came, till all his markings were distinctly seen. With one hand I pulled a little revolver from my hip pocket, and when the loon was about fifty yards distant, and had begun to sidle around me, I fired: at the flash I saw two webbed feet twinkle in the air, and the loon was gone! Lead could not have gone down so quickly. The bullet cut across the circles where he disappeared. In a few moments he reappeared a couple of hundred yards away. "Ha-ha-ha-a-a," said he, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... gentle creaking as the window was very slowly opened. I could stand it no longer, for my nerves are not what they used to be. I sprang out of bed and flung open the shutters. A man was crouching at the window. I could see little of him, for he was gone like a flash. He was wrapped in some sort of cloak which came across the lower part of his face. One thing only I am sure of, and that is that he had some weapon in his hand. It looked to me like a long knife. I distinctly saw the gleam of it as he turned ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... it a very comely and attractive little paper. It bore a motto that sounded almost like a threat, "We come to stay,"—a boast which it manfully kept for several years. As I lift my eyes from this paper, they rest on no less than ten great half-yearly volumes, which flash "The Dawn"—"The Dawn"—along a darksome folio shelf, as they have flashed it week after week across darkest Coalchester; and "The Dawn" ceased, at length, not from lack of power and encouragement to continue, but because the world had grown sadder by then, and it had lost the ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... berries shines a face more fair than they. It is a maiden gathering berries or nuts; in a basket of simple bark she offers you freshly gathered cowberries, rosy as her lips. By her side walks a youth who bends down the branches of the hazel tree; the girl catches the nuts as they flash by her. ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... shock of red lilies, and larkspur cleaving All with a flash of blue!—when will she be leaving Her room, where the night still hangs like a half- folded bat, And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... from her brilliant brow, * And her cheek shows the rosiest afterglow: And when both appear to the looker-on, * The skyline star ne'er for shame will show: An the leven flash from those smiling lips, * Morn breaks and the rays dusk and gloom o'erthrow. And when with her graceful shape she sways, * Droops leafiest Ban-tree[FN289] for envy low: Me her sight suffices; naught crave I more: * Lord ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... of the sangredor upon his neck, and gritted his teeth. The man's grip was heavy, hot and firm. A flash of pain shot up and down his back with lightning speed, as though a red hot poker had been laid upon it. Again and again and again! Six times in twice as many seconds the deft flint ripped his skin, and he fell forward upon his hands, faint and sick, as he felt his own blood welling upon his ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... seemed hardly to hear. "I'd seen photographs of the valley, but I'd quite forgotten, until suddenly it began to look familiar. Then, all in a flash, ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... was left for her then? To her own mind she had burned her bridges already. She was as far from this place in fancy as if the miles stretched veritably between them. And yet she knew no other life. She knew no other men. He was the only one. In a flash of shame it came over her that a woman with more experience would never have written such a letter. Everybody knew that men forget, change, easily replace first loves. Nobody but such a cloistered, ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam

... for a moment, so great was his astonishment; but recognizing the ogre who had attacked him at the Gate of Rashomon, he determined with his usual courage to put an end to him this time. He seized his sword, drew it out of its sheath in a flash, and tried to cut the ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... appeared weak, a holy wrath would seize upon Gustave. Then he flung a firm, incisive, accentuated note into the midst of the choir, vivid as a spark bursting from a fire covered with ashes. He would accompany it with a glance which seemed to flash from his father's eye; at such moments, he resembled him; but this transformation never lasted more than a second; the fictitious power disappeared as all which was Gustave ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... horror. Then 'twas calm and fix'd. Destruction's god, from his broad, wizard throne, Might on the front of coming whirlwinds, as They near'd his footstool, look unchang'd as he did: Sphinx-like! But, when the deed was done, The flash that left the swift-descending axe In triumph fiercely shot into his eyes, A moment welling quick successive fires, Like sudden birth of stars 'tween wintry clouds: Then came a look of doubt and wonderment, As if it were a thing he knew not of, And shudder'd at, amaz'd ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall. Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down, discovered the source of the disturbance. Gideon's grandson, a boy of fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking "flash-lights" of the Moor. Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad the Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument persuaded him to descend to the dining-room whither ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... a spring flood. To save her from Van Degen and Van Degenism: was that really to be his mission—the "call" for which his life had obscurely waited? It was not in the least what he had meant to do with the fugitive flash of consciousness he called self; but all that he had purposed for that transitory being sank into insignificance under the pressure of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton



Words linked to "Flash" :   brassy, news bulletin, charge, glimmer, cheap, jiffy, flash camera, flashbulb, star shell, lamp, splurge, cannonball along, exhibit, split second, flick, bucket along, mo, Bengal light, insight, photoflash, flash butt welding, flare, flash point, show, exhibitionism, rush along, flash card, bravado, Very light, shoulder flash, blink, gimcrack, hasten, twinkling, bit, moment, tasteless, display, streak, occurrence, wink, natural event, brightness, flash-forward, lightning, coruscation, show off, swank, hie, flashgun, flasher, flaunt, ostentate, ostentation, gleaming, fanfare, trice, minute, expose, flashy, newsbreak, pedantry, flash-freeze, flashing, in a flash, patch, twinkle, tear, second, New York minute, tatty, newsflash, convey, ritz, tawdry, appear, glitter, gaudy, hotfoot, race, flex, loud, instant, pelt along, speed, flash bulb, hot flash, blink of an eye, flash-frozen, heat flash, spark, visual signal, tacky, photographic equipment, cover, flash in the pan, sparkle, meretricious, plunge, occurrent, Very-light, brainstorm, brainwave, flash memory, bulletin, winkle, happening, dart, dash, trashy



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