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Moonshine   Listen
noun
Moonshine  n.  
1.
The light of the moon.
2.
Hence, show without substance or reality.
3.
A month. (R.)
4.
A preparation of eggs for food. (Obs.)
5.
Liquor smuggled or illicitly distilled, especially liquor distilled illegally in rural parts of the southern U. S. (Dial. Eng., & Colloq. or Slang, U. S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Moonshine" Quotes from Famous Books



... brightness,— As pearls, we're told, that fondling doves Have played with, wear a smoother whiteness.[1] 'Twas one of those delicious nights So common in the climes of Greece, When day withdraws but half its lights, And all is moonshine, balm, and peace. And thou wert there, my own beloved, And by thy side I fondly roved Through many a temple's reverend gloom, And many a bower's seductive bloom, Where Beauty learned what Wisdom taught. And sages sighed and lovers thought; Where schoolmen conned no maxims stern, But all was ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not merely the guardian of the sun's rays and their director. It is the sun's treasurer; it holds the light that the world has lost. We talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of the most majestic of all secondary lights. If the reflecting moon is the bride, this is ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... "Wonderful moonshine this evening, light as day; and along with it aurora borealis, yellow and strange in the white moonlight; a large ring round the moon—all this over the great stretch of white, shining ice, here and there in our neighborhood piled up ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... sister mine! Cold the dews, and chill the night! Come from thy dreary shrine! The wan moon climbs the heavenly height, And underneath her sickly ray Troops of squalid spectres play, And the dying mortals' groan Startles the night on her dusky throne. Come, come, sister mine! Gliding on the pale moonshine: We'll ride at ease On the tainted breeze, And oh! our ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... promise right enough,' Moss replied. 'I'll promise anything—if only to keep you from talking such moonshine.' ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... the still in the dark, grimly and expectantly erect. Now he was going to have that period of happiness which he knew was the chief reason for people drinking moonshine whiskey. He looked forward to the sensation of exuberant joy very much as a man would look forward to five hours of happiness, to be followed by hanging by the ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... I will before the night is very much older," and he hurried up the corkscrew stair. He had just got to the top when the lights went out a second time, and he heard again the scuttling along the floor. Quickly he stole on tiptoe in the dim moonshine in the direction of the noise, feeling as he went for one of the switches. His fingers touched the metal knob at last. He turned on the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... visitants in a public garden, situated on one of the most beautiful of the Venetian islands. He strolled from arbour to arbour, threw himself down on the sea-shore, and watched the play of the waves as they sparkled in the moonshine. ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis

... sensuality and horror, the spectre nun and the charmed moonshine, shall not be wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with huge whiskers, and the most cat o' mountain aspect; tear-stained sentimentalists, the grimmest man-eaters, ghosts and the like suspicious characters will be ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... accepted at once as wise by the others. It was impossible to tell where the two warriors now lay, and, if they undertook to go on, their figures would be disclosed at once by the brilliant moonshine. So they flattened themselves against the ground in the shadow of the bushes and waited patiently. The time seemed to Grosvenor to be forever, but he thrilled with the belief in coming combat. He still felt that he was in the best of all company for forest and midnight battle, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... night! The torrent's roar Dies off far distant; through the lattice streams The pure, white, silvery moonshine, mantling o'er The couch and curtains with its fairy gleams. Sweet is the prospect; sweeter are the dreams From which my loathful eyelid now unclosed:— Methought beside a forest we reposed, Marking the summer sun's far western beams, A dear-loved friend and I. The nightingale To silence and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... any other profession, alas! alas! what ills might you have done! As I have heard the author of "Richelieu," "Siamese Twins," etc. say "Poeta nascitur non fit," which means that though he had tried ever so much to be a poet, it was all moonshine: in the like manner, I say, "ROAGUS nascitur, non fit." We have it from nature, and so a ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... I had an extraordinary and ludicrous experience with a lost person, though at the time it seemed only exasperating. I had stepped outside my cabin to drink in the "moonshine" on my superb outlook. Across the valley, as clearly as in daylight. Long's Peak and its neighbors stood out. The little meadow brook shimmered like a silver ribbon. I walked out to Cabin Rock, a thousand feet above the valley, and sat down. Coyotes yip-yipped their salutations to the sailing ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... child-like fashion, had reared his moonshine castle beam by beam. At first he had regarded it as moonshine and had refused to consider the building of it anything but a dangerously pleasant pastime. And then, little by little, as his dreams changed to hopes, it had become more and more real, until, just before the end, it was ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... blown yet!" said the other, "an' here's Mr. Thady as fresh as a four year old. Come along, man; the sooner he's got a snug room over his head the better he'll be. You forget he's not accustomed to be out all night, and take his supper of moonshine, as you are. Come along, Mr. Thady; you'll soon be where you'll get as good a dhrop as iver man tasted, an' you'll feel a deal better when you've got a glass or two of ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... plain tale, for I have kept my diary faithfully, from day to day, and can set down our adventures, such as they are, pretty much as they occurred. But Drew has bewitched me. He does not realize it, but he is a weaver of spells, and I am so enmeshed in his moonshine that I doubt if I shall be able to write of our experiences as they must appear to those of our comrades in the Franco-American Corps who remember them only through the medium of the revealing light ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... right, and when we entered the park, we scared a troop of deer, that fled bounding away in the forest shades. Our two boys quietly slept; once, before our road turned from the view, I looked back on the castle. Its windows glistened in the moonshine, and its heavy outline lay in a dark mass against the sky—the trees near us waved a solemn dirge to the midnight breeze. Idris leaned back in the carriage; her two hands pressed mine, her countenance was placid, she ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... yellow, flat-faced cinnamon rose? Not quite so lusciously fragrant as those in your grandmother's July garden? A trifle paler? Perceptibly cooler? Something forced into blossom, perhaps, behind brittle glass, under barren winter moonshine? And yet—A-h-h! Hear me laugh! You didn't really mean to let yourself lift the page and smell it, did you? But what did I ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... influence in the light of morning that tends to rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the sun's decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine. Giovanni's first movement, on starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into the garden which his dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. He was surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an affair ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... passed thus. The moon shone in at the window and its rays played along the earthen floor of the hut. Suddenly a shadow flitted across the bright strip of moonshine which intersected the floor. I raised myself up a little and glanced out of the window. Again somebody ran by it and disappeared—goodness knows where! It seemed impossible for anyone to descend the steep cliff overhanging the shore, but that was ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... agin I hain't got no use fer 'em—a-totin' guns an' knives an' a-drinkin' moonshine an' fightin' an' breakin' up meetin's an' lazin' aroun' ginerally. An' when they ain't that way," she added contemptuously, "they're like that un thar. Look at him!" She broke into a loud laugh. Ira Combs had volunteered ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... be a prodigious cast-iron light-house on the Goodwin Sands. Peter Borthwick and our Sibby are already candidates for the office of universal illuminators. Peter rests his claims chiefly on the brilliancy of his ideas, as exemplified in his plan for lighting the metropolis with bottled moonshine; while Sib. proudly refers to our columns for imperishable evidences of the intensity of his wit, conscious that these alone would entitle him to be called "the light of all nations." We trust that Sir Robert Peel will exercise a sound discretion in bestowing this important situation. Highly as we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various

... feeling, it is after sunset, at the coming on of twilight, that white objects are most to be complained of. The solemnity and quietness of Nature at that time are always marred, and often destroyed by them. When the ground is covered with snow, they are of course inoffensive; and in moonshine they are always pleasing—it is a tone of light with which they accord: and the dimness of the scene is enlivened by an object at once conspicuous and cheerful. I will conclude this subject with noticing, that the cold, slaty colour, which many persons, who have heard the white ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... confab; dialogue, interlocution; soliloquy, monologue; palaver, buncombe, blarney, blandishment, flattery, flummery; chaff, banter, raillery, persiflage, badinage, asteistn; chatter, babble, chit chat, gibberish, jargon, twaddle, fustian, moonshine, hanky-panky, jabbering, rhapsody, rant, grandiloquence; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... him he saw a glistening boat; he stepped into it, and the boat went on and on beneath the moon, and at last he saw the mainland, and he could trace a winding pathway going away from the shore. The sight filled his heart with joy, but suddenly the milk-white moonshine died away, and looking up to the sky he saw the moon turning fiery red, and the waters of the lake, shining like silver a moment before, took a blood-red hue, and a wind arose that stirred the waters, and they leaped up against the little boat, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... fatigue vanished. The sishing of the ski through the powdery surface of the snow was the only sound that broke the stillness; this, with his breathing and the rustle of her skirts, was all he heard. Cold moonshine, snow, and silence held the world. The sky was black, and the peaks beyond cut into it like frosted wedges of iron and steel. Far below the valley slept, the village long since hidden out of sight. He felt that he could never tire.... The sound of the church clock rose from time to time faintly ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... to live upon air, and here are some spoons to eat it with," said John Fordyce. "Harry! shall I help you to a mouthful of moonshine?" ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... rages, Where the lithe flag her purple flaunts, Where frogs go plopping round the edge And gnats are humming through the sedge, And on the leaf of each wide lily The scaly newts do lay their eggs And the small people dip their legs To shatter the moonshine floating stilly O'er the pool's mystic weedy dregs! Think yet again on rolling hills Where little sleepy new-born rills Are bedded deep in upland mosses, Where tiny stars of tormentils Peer skyward with their golden gaze, Where lichened dikes and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various

... somewhere in the dark bosom of Kinder Low, about midway between earth and sky. David guessed that Uncle Reuben must be searching the smithy. Then it descended rapidly, till finally it vanished behind the hill far below, which was just distinguishable in the cloudy moonshine. Uncle ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in the street, he made no scruple about taking Emmy's arm within the crook of his as they moved from the staring whiteness of the theatre lamps out into the calmer moonshine. It was eleven o'clock. The night was fine, and the moon rode high above amid the twinkling stars. When Alf looked at Emmy's face it was transfigured in this beautiful light, and he drew her gently from the direct way back ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... an ardent Norseman in feeling and instinct. "Go to Greece for beauty of form," he would say, "but to the North for depth of feeling and thought." He scorned alike the metaphysical subtleties of French philosophy and the moonshine heroics of German romanticism. But he was at one with Geijer and Ling in the desire to make Scandinavian heroes and myths the ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... of the towers, we devote out considerations to the /facade/ alone, which powerfully strikes the eye as an upright, oblong parallelogram. If we approach it at twilight, in the moonshine, on a starlight night, when the parts appear more or less indistinct and at last disappear, we see only a colossal wall, the height of which bears an advantageous proportion to the breadth. If we ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... exploits of their youth; such as watching the pregnant hind to her lair, and, when the calf was dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick to prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be killed; the shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer; and the losing a dog in the following extraordinary manner: Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-fallen was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, went, with a lurcher, to surprise it; when the parent-hind rushed out of the brake, and, taking a vast spring ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... perfect loveliness below, Glassed in the tranquil flow Of crystal fountains and unruffled streams? Half lost in waking dreams, As down the loneliest forest dell I strayed, Lo! from a neighboring glade, Flashed through the drifts of moonshine, swiftly came A fairy shape of flame. It rose in dazzling spirals overhead, Whence, to wild sweetness wed, Poured marvellous melodies, silvery trill on trill; The very leaves grew still On the charmed trees ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... new and neat houses, and they thought just as the others did; but at the window opposite the old house there sat a little boy with fresh rosy cheeks and bright beaming eyes: he certainly liked the old house best, and that both in sunshine and moonshine. And when he looked across at the wall where the mortar had fallen out, he could sit and find out there the strangest figures imaginable; exactly as the street had appeared before, with steps, projecting windows, and pointed gables; he could see ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... wake is a great broad, seething river of fire,— white like strong moonshine: the glow is bright enough to read by. At its centre the trail is brightest;—towards either edge it pales off cloudily,—curling like smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up momentarily through ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... prevailed throughout the exercises was in striking contrast to former days when pistols and "moonshine" whiskey ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various

... story of the savants and Christopher Columbus in an earlier day. Bering's conclusions were different from the moonshine of the schools. There was no "Gamaland" in the sea. There was in the maps. The learned men of St. Petersburg ridiculed the Danish sailor. The fog was supposed to have concealed "Gamaland." There was nothing for Bering but to retire in ignominy ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... ground. She desisted from the effort. Her eyes wandered down the street that lay shadowy with gable, and dormer-window, and long chimneys, in sharp geometric figures in the moonshine, alternating with the deeper shadow of the trees. There were no lights save a twinkle here and there in an ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... eminence, the great army of the consul might be descried, with its regular entrenchments and superb array of tents, its forests of gleaming spears, and its innumerable ensigns, glancing and waving in the cold wintry moonshine. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... had discovered and filed on the ocean. No one can look upon this picture for a moment and confuse Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific, with Kope Elias, who first discovered in the mountains of North Carolina what is now known as moonshine whiskey. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... himself. And this I can do without suspecting him of any intentional falsehood. As when in broad day- light a man tracks the steps of a traveller, who had lost his way in a fog or by a treacherous moonshine, even so, and with the same tranquil sense of certainty, can I follow the traces of this bewildered visionary. I understand ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... made a mistake so far as the railroad is concerned, Mr. Braden," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm a practical man myself, and I don't indulge in moonshine. I am a director in one or two railroads. I have talked this matter over with Mr. Flint, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... into moonshine. You'll see me fading away into silver smoke in a minute," replied Larry. "Let's get out of this, I'm getting frightened! Hold ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... eyes; and he declared we were in a new country, and I must come forth upon the platform and see with my own eyes. The train was then, in its patient way, standing halted in a by-track. It was a clear, moonlit night; but the valley was too narrow to admit the moonshine direct, and only a diffused glimmer whitened the tall rocks and relieved the blackness of the pines. A hoarse clamour filled the air; it was the continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. The air struck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a very silly thing to do, and as it turned out, very dangerous. These mountaineers are a wild lot, especially with a little moonshine in them. You might very well have been shot, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... connection wasn't along with her. P'raps they were married, I thought; might have been spliced that very morning. She had no gloves on, and whenever she walked with Mr. Robinson near to me, I'd take a long squint at her left hand; but there was no distinguishing a wedding-ring by moonshine, and even had it been broad daylight it would have been all the same, for the jewels lay so thick on her fingers you'd have ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... trick at the wheel, one day nort' o' Barbados? Sure, b'y! He heared a whisper behind him, like a whisper o' music, and when he turned his head 'round there she was, nat'ral as any girl o' the harbor, a-gleamin' her beautiful, grand eyes at him in the moonshine. An' when he come ashore didn't he feel so desperate lonesome that he died o' too much rum inside the year, down on the land-wash wid his two feet ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... This adventure of yours after buried treasure has not seriously been for the doubloons and pieces of eight, the million dollars, and the million and a half dollars themselves, but for the fun of going after them, sailing the unknown seas, coral islands, and all that sort of blessed moonshine. Well, Calypso and I are just like that, and I am going to tell you something exciting—we too have our buried treasure. It is nothing like so magnificent in amount as yours, or your Henry P. Tobias's—and where it is at this particular moment I ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... longer, and was turning back, when his eye caught a movement among the shadows in the distant lane. A quick thought came to him, and he kept his gaze beneath the heavy maples, where the moonshine fell in flecks. For a moment all was still, and then into the light came the figure of a man. Another followed, another, and another, passing again into the dark and then out into the brightness that led into the little gully far beyond. There was no sound except the baying of the dog; the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... nineteen years of age, and her face, as delicately beautiful as her form, bore the impression of the most angelic good-nature; but what I especially noticed was the indescribable fascination of her dark eyes, for a soft melancholy gleam of aspiration shone in them like dewy moonshine, whilst a perfect elysium of rapture and delight was revealed in her sweet and beautiful smile. She often seemed completely lost in her own thoughts, and at such moments her lovely face was swept by dark and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... the churchyard gate saying "good night," Mark used to think that they must all be feeling happy to go home together up the long hill to Pendhu and down into twinkling Nancepean. And it did not matter whether it was a night of clear or clouded moonshine or a night of windy stars or a night of darkness; for when it was dark he could always look back from the valley road and see a company of lanthorns moving homeward; and that more than anything shed upon his young spirit the grace ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... for moonshine, for deep silence, for starry nights, and silvery seas—in such things you excel; one feels as if one were there, and one envies you the fairy scenes of ocean. But, I implore you, be not sentimental. That is the feeble part ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... the world should need it, if your principles be true, and every man brings into the world his own particular lantern,—'Enter Moonshine,'—I do not quite understand; or, if it is in need of such illumination not withstanding, why it should not be possible for an external revelation to supply it still better than your illuminati, I am equally unable to understand. But let that pass. Mr. Newman concludes ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... no explanations on the road home, for Miss Ponsonby walked behind us with Stephen Shaw in the pale, late-risen October moonshine. But when we had sneaked through the neighbour-to-the-left's lane and reached our side verandah we waited for her, and as soon as Stephen Shaw had gone we laid violent hands on Miss Ponsonby and made her 'fess up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... replied, with the anger of one struggling against an unwelcome half-belief that refuses to be dismissed. 'It is all moonshine-madness. I'll never do it,—not at least while I retain my reason. It was no doubt partly for safety as well as for the other reason that my father wished the cross to be placed in the tomb. It will be far safer now in a cabinet ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... Germany are hazardously in agreement in regard to English and American liberal idealism. They think it moonshine and the League of Nations a failure, and that Freedom has been ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... didn't," said the Hatter. "I didn't want any Moonshine in a City Department and no poet is a good business man. I picked out a very successful Haberdasher in the Sixth Ward for the delicate business of organising the Department, and he has done most excellent work. We found that ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs

... the name come. Stranger, hit's HELL fer sartain! Well, Rich Harp was thar from the head-waters, an' Harve Hall toted Nance Osborn clean across the Cumberlan'. Fust one ud swing Nance, an' then t'other. Then they'd take a pull out'n the same bottle o' moonshine, an'—fust one an' then t'other—they'd swing her agin. An' Abe Shivers a-settin' thar by the fire a-bitin' ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... did move, for he started up from where his head had been lying on Jem's knees, and the poor fellow smiled at him in the broad morning sunshine. Sunshine, and not moonshine; and Don stared. "Why, Jem," he ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... posture with his back against the bulwark. His hands were spread open on the deck, his musket having fallen from the nerveless fingers; his head was tilted back until his high, conical hat had fallen off; and there, plainly visible in the moonshine, was a great patch of coagulating blood on his throat, showing where a bullet had drilled him clean through the neck. Ling would never speak again in this world, and his career, whether for good or for evil, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... him as beneath argument. No doubt he was often rude and unfair enough; but the whole mass of questions concerning the unseen world, which the priests had stimulated in his cousin's mind into an unhealthy fungus crop, were to Amyas simply, as he expressed it, "wind and moonshine;" and he treated his cousin as a sort of harmless lunatic, and, as they say in Devon, "half-baked." And Eustace knew it; and knew, too, that his cousin did him an injustice. "He used to undervalue me," said he to himself; "let us see whether he does not find me a match for him now." And then went ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... ready to say that the Americans did not like Henry Irving as an actor, and that they only accepted him as a manager—that he triumphed in New York as he had done in London, through his lavish spectacular effects. This is all moonshine. Henry made his first appearance in "The Bells," his second in "Charles I.," his third in "Louis XI." By that time he had conquered, and without the aid of anything at all notable in the mounting of the plays. It was not until we did "The Merchant of Venice" ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... part of the month; and, what is still more unfortunate, is very apt in Scotland to be obscured by clouds and mists. Johnny was sorely puzzled, therefore, how to accommodate his poetry-struck visitors with this indispensable moonshine. At length, in a lucky moment, he devised a substitute. This was a great double tallow candle stuck upon the end of a pole, with which he could conduct his visitors about the ruins on dark nights, so much to their satisfaction ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... of a sudden he turned, and taking the bridle of the burra gently in his hand, stopped her. I had now a full view of his face and figure, and those huge features and Herculean form still occasionally revisit me in my dreams. I see him standing in the moonshine, staring me in the face with his deep calm ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... with a formidable quietness, "I am not so unsympathetic with all this as you may perhaps suppose. I will not even say it is all moonshine, for it is something better. It is, if I may say so, honeymoonshine. I will never deny the saying that it makes the world go round, if it makes people's heads go round too. But there are other sentiments, madam, and other duties. I need not tell you your father was a good man, and ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... "That's moonshine," said I. And as regards the drinking, drabbing, and gaming of course it was. But the suggestion of cowardice gave me a sharp stab ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... shadows thrown by the high-rising moon, the crossing alley-way cut a slice of brilliancy as if with a knife. From the shadow into the moonshine two hands stretched towards her as Ned's voice greeted her. She saw his ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... annoyance at these assaults. When it came the turn of a sceptical and unimaginative old corporal to take the night detail, he took the liberty of assuming the responsibilities of this post himself. He looked well to the priming of his musket, and at midnight withdrew out of the moonshine and waited, with his gun resting on a fence. It was not long before the beat of hoofs was heard approaching, and in spite of himself the corporal felt a thrill along his spine as a mounted figure that might ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... modern in Villeneuve-Loubet, the moonlight would hide it or gloss it over; if there was anything ancient, the moonlight would enable us to see it as we wanted to see it. I pity the limited souls who do not believe in moonshine, and use the word contemptuously. One is illogical who contends that moonshine gives a false idea of things; for he is testing the moonshine impression by sunshine. It would be as illogical to say ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... all data in War is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not unfrequently—like the effect of a fog or moonshine—gives to things exaggerated ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... and high-born phrases always set Socrates by the ears, and when he could corner a Sophist, he would very shortly prick his pretty toy balloon, until at last the tribe fled him as a pestilence. Socrates stood for sanity. The Sophist represented moonshine gone to seed, and these things, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... which remind him of his own land. But if he attempt to impress on his landscapes any other spirit than that he has felt, and to make them landscapes of other times, it is all over with him, at least, in the degree in which such reflected moonshine takes place of the genuine light of the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... and made the glen abhorr'd: And there they lay till all their bones were bleach'd, And lichen'd into colour with the crags: And he, that once was king, had on a crown Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside. And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass, All in a misty moonshine, unawares Had trodden that crown'd skeleton, and the skull Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown Roll'd into light, and turning on its rims Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn: And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught, And set it on his head, and in his heart Heard ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... constellation of Orion is variously called by the Finns, the Moonshine, the Sword of Kaleva, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... the Holy Land. In this neighbourhood also was born John Davis, the Arctic explorer, whose name is given to the strait at the entrance of Baffin's Bay, which he discovered when on his expedition in his two small vessels, the Sunshine and the Moonshine,—the one of fifty tons, and the other of thirty-five tons burden, carrying respectively twenty-three ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... in bed with his wife, all the doors and windows of the house flew open together; he was startled at the noise, and the light which broke into the room, and sat up in his bed, where by the moonshine he perceived Calpurnia fast asleep, but heard her utter in her dream some indistinct words and inarticulate groans. She fancied at that time she was weeping over Caesar, and holding him butchered in her arms. Others ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... is it? As for the London estate, mother, that is all moonshine. What if it were gone altogether? It may be that it is that which vexes my father; but if ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... Ward's parenthesis, "This is a goak"! of dealing with people who do not know the difference between a blow and a "love-pat," between Quaker guns and an Armstrong battery, between a granite paving-stone and the moonshine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... which I give you many thanks as they amuse me very much. I gave a very ridiculous proof of it, fitter indeed for my granddaughter than myself. I returned from a party on horseback; and after having rode 20 miles, part of it by moonshine, it was ten at night when I found the box arrived. I could not deny myself the pleasure of opening it; and falling upon Fielding's works was fool enough to sit up all night reading. I think Joseph Andrews better than ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... bright moonshine and broken clouds, which sometimes drifted over the moon and sometimes left it clear. At the moment when Glam fell the cloud passed off the moon, and he cast up his eyes sharply towards it; and Grettir himself said that this was the only sight he ever saw that terrified him. Then Grettir ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... other hand, the "Moonshine" seems to be attempting too much. "Winter" does better, for it has a freezing stream, a mill-wheel, and a "widow bird." These "four little poems" of opus 32 had been preceded by six fine "Idylls" based on lyrics of Goethe's. The first, a forest ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... trees and entered it. Outside, the broken clouds had permitted an occasional gleam of watery moonshine; within the shadow of the trees it was gross darkness. Above them the wet branches, moved by the wind which still blew strongly, clashed together with a harsh and mournful sound, showering them with heavy raindrops. Their feet sank deeply in cushions of ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... shadowy lane into the fair moonshine, I started so that my whole frame underwent the most chilling vibrations of surprise. I again thought I had been taken at unawares and was conversing with another person. My friend was equipped in the Highland garb, and so completely ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... Dettermain said. 'Up to this day I have had my fears that we should haul more moonshine than fish in our net. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... seen in plenty, for my aunts and my mother were counted fair, but my uncle's wife was as little like to them as a sunset glow to pale moonshine or a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is true nevertheless. I had my golden dream like everyone else, and when Rosa loved me I told myself it had all come true. Well, perhaps, in a measure it has, only, after all, Rosa turned out to be more suited to real life than to poetic moonshine." ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... hounds giving tongue, and the woodways were packed with his knights in armour riding down into the water-mists—all his own Magic, of course. Behind them you could see great castles lifting slow and splendid on arches of moonshine, with maidens waving their hands at the windows, which all turned into roaring rivers; and then would come the darkness of his own young heart wiping out the whole slateful. But boy's Magic doesn't trouble me—or Merlin's either for that matter. I followed ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... him! You read with him and study with him! And you won't see that you let him drift more and more out of practical life and into moonshine. What does it do for him, that's what I ask? Where does it lead him? What's the good of it? Why he'll finish as a fusty old don. Does it make you a better man, Augustine, or a happier one, to spend all ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... Derwent's rapid stream as oft I stray'd, With Infancy's light step and glances wild, And saw vast rocks, on steepy mountains pil'd, Frown o'er th' umbrageous glen; or pleas'd survey'd The cloudy moonshine in the shadowy glade, Romantic Nature to th' enthusiast Child Grew dearer far than when serene she smil'd, In uncontrasted loveliness array'd. But O! in every Scene, with sacred sway, Her graces fire me; from the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... could sail to it in the moonshine boat Paul wrote of in his old composition—you remember?—how nice it would be," said Anne, rousing from her reverie. "Do you think we could find all our yesterdays there, Diana—all our old springs and blossoms? The beds of flowers that Paul saw there are the ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... manner "some close internal calculation." We see that he is reckoning how the dinner suits his plan of campaign, and "close calculation" may refer, as in Mr. Proctor's theory, to the period of the moon: on Christmas Eve there will be no moonshine at midnight. Jasper, having worked out this problem, accepts Crisparkle's proposal, and his assurances about Neville, and shows Crisparkle a diary in which he has entered his fears that Edwin's life is in danger ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... gracious welcome. And I go in, feeling under my feet a softness of matting thick as bedding. An immense square apartment is before me, full of an unfamiliar sweet smell—the scent of Japanese incense; but after the full blaze of the sun, the paper-filtered light here is dim as moonshine; for a minute or two I can see nothing but gleams of gilding in a soft gloom. Then, my eyes becoming accustomed to the obscurity, I perceive against the paper-paned screens surrounding the sanctuary on three sides ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... nonsense, some probably very trite raptures as to the expanse of the ocean, and the endless ripples which connected shore with shore. Mrs Hurtle, too, as she leaned with friendly weight upon his arm, indulged also in moonshine and romance. Though at the back of the heart of each of them there was a devouring care, still they enjoyed the hour. We know that the man who is to be hung likes to have his breakfast well cooked. And so did Paul like the companionship ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... horrible tales of the early years, and memory pointed to a corner of the lumber-shed adjoining the mill where she had often secreted herself to avoid her father's brutality,—always keeping her head in the moonshine, because she dreaded the darkness inside, which childish fancy filled with ghostly groups. She hated the place as she hated the past, and this was the second time she had visited it since the day that consigned her to the poor-house; for it was ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... with the heat of the sun, sharp detonations, the feeling of wet paws, the vertigo of flight, with fright, with the smell of the clay, and the sparkle of the brook, with the waving to and fro of wild carrots and the crackling of maize, with the moonshine and the joyous emotion of seeing his mate appearing amid ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... valiant trencher-man. He records with much zest going down the Bay to an island, or riding to Roxbury for an outing and dinner, and coming home in "brave moonshine." And, like his neighbor, Cotton Mather, he drew many a spiritual lesson from the food set before him; especially, however, at a scambling meal, or at any repast which he ate alone, and hence had naught and no one to divert therefrom his ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... by degrees, not to make it remarkable, so as to pass to windward of him, and have the guns loaded and run out, just as a matter of course, in the Mediterranean, tell the people. I don't want to have any talking about it, you know; for it will all be moonshine, I suspect. Look you, too, have the small arms and cutlasses up on deck, just to overhaul them, as it were. The studden-sails must come in, at all events; it won't do to be carrying on at night as if we had fifty hands in a watch instead of five. Now let ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... moonshine nights, When each thing draws to rest, Was seen dumb shows and ugly sights That feared[2] ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... replaced by a literature which had a closer connection with ordinary prosaic wants and plain everyday life. The educated public became weary of the Romantic writers, who were always "sighing like a furnace," delighting in solitude, cold eternity, and moonshine, deluging the world with their heart-gushings, and calling on the heavens and the earth to stand aghast at their Promethean agonising or their Wertherean despair. Healthy human nature revolted against the poetical enthusiasts who had lost the faculty ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... sky-line of a shadowy down, Whose pale white cliffs below Through sunny mist aglow Like noon-day ghosts of summer moonshine gleam— Soft as old sorrow, bright as old renown, There lies the home of all our ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... through the times even of our little Fritz and farther, if we will understand the word "Reformation," Brandenburg so feels; being, at this day, to an honorable degree, incapable of believing incredibilities, of adopting solemn shams, or pretending to live on spiritual moonshine. Which has been of uncountable advantage to Brandenburg:—how could it fail? This was what we must call obeying the audible voice of Heaven. To which same "voice," at that time, all that did not give ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... even between their golden olden bloom [Str. 2. Strange flowers of wildwood glory, With frost and moonshine hoary, Thrust up the new growths of their green-leaved gloom, Red buds of ballad blossom, where the dew Blushed as with bloodlike passion, and its hue Was as the life and love of hearts on flame, And fire from forth of each live chalice came: Young sprays ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... more conclusively shows the genuineness of Scott's romantic feeling than his willingness to undergo severe mental drudgery in pursuit of knowledge concerning the old storied days which had enthralled his imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library, poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, tracing genealogies, and unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. By the time he was ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... sometime angel in tears, and she tells him he does not love her as he once did, repudiates the charge with all his heart, and declares he loves her more than ever,—and perhaps he does. The only thing is that she has passed out of the plane of moonshine and poetry into that of actualities. While she was considered an angel, a star, a bird, an evening cloud, of course there was nothing to be found fault with in her; but now that the angel has become chief business-partner in an earthly working firm, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... in a real world of flesh and blood, of stones and brickbats, of flight and pursuit, that were any thing but figurative; the other in a world purely aerial, where all the combats and the sufferings were absolute moonshine. And yet the simple truth is, that, for anxiety and distress of mind, the reality (which almost every morning's light brought round) was as nothing in comparison of that dream kingdom which rose like a vapor from my own brain, and which apparently by fiat ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next moment the breeze had gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain were faintly designed in the moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Moonshine" :   moonlight, moonshiner, corn whisky, corn, visible radiation, extract, moon, bootleg, corn whiskey, chemistry, chemical science, moonbeam, distill, light, corn liquor



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