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Twinkling   /twˈɪŋkəlɪŋ/  /twˈɪŋklɪŋ/   Listen
Twinkling

adjective
1.
Shining intermittently with a sparkling light.






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"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books



... neighbouring flood Supplied, to him were more than mines of gold. Light was my sleep; my days in transport roll'd: With thoughtless joy I stretch'd along the shore My father's nets, or from the mountain fold Saw on the distant lake his twinkling oar Or watch'd his lazy boat still less'ning ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... temples where moving pictures are run through with cathedral solemnity, soft lights, flowers, orchestral uplift, and nearly classic song. This was a dismal little tunnel with one end lighted by the twinkling pictures. Tired mothers came here to escape from their children, and children came here to escape from their tired mothers. The plots of the pictures were as trite and as rancid as spoiled meat, but they suited the market. This plot concerned ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... stoutly, yet—being very deeply laden—nearly an hour elapsed before she fell alongside the French captain. A solitary lanthorn or two were twinkling from the sides; and they were hailed by the party who had the watch, with a—"Qui va la?" uttered however, as Bertram remarked, in a cautious and subdued tone. To this challenge the boat returned for answer—"Pecheurs ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... tangled barrier so quickly that the Lion and the Tiger, carrying Dorothy and the Wizard and the cage of monkeys on their backs, were able to stride through the forest at a fast walk. The brush seemed to melt away before them and the little axe chopped so fast that their eyes only saw a twinkling of the blade. Then, suddenly, the forest was open again, and the little axe, having obeyed its orders, lay still upon ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... jumping and clacking his teeth. The chickens crane their necks down to follow him. Faster and faster he goes, racing in small circles, till some foolish fowl grows dizzy with twisting her head, or loses her balance and tumbles down, only to be snapped up and carried off across his shoulders in a twinkling. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... to go, she looked really pretty. Her long lashes were wet with a twinkling moisture, like meadow-grass after a shower; and there was a softened, childlike expression stealing over the careless gayety of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... Miss Bailey, during her six months' reign over Room 18, had witnessed many first appearances, but never had charge of hers been borne into court on such a swelling tide of female relatives. The rather diminutive Teacher was engulfed in black-jetted capes, twinkling ear-rings, befeathered hats, warmly gleaming faces, and many flounced skirts, while the devoted eyes of the First Reader Class caught but fleeing glimpses of its sovereign between the red roses rising, quite without visible support, above ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... at an American table-d'hote. I was astonished, as an Indian well might be. Before my companions and self had had time to set down and make choice of any particular dish, all was disappearing like a dream. A general opposite to me took hold of a fowl, and, in the twinkling of an eye, severed the wings and legs. I thought it was polite of him to carve for others as well as himself, and was waiting for him to pass over the dish after he had helped himself, when to my surprise, he retained all he had cut off, and pushed the carcase of the bird away from him. Before ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... replied, his eyes twinkling; "once I fell off my boat at the mouth of Bear Creek, and, although I'm an expert swimmer, I guess I'd be there now if it hadn't been for my crew. You see the water was just deep enough so's to be over ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... while they into action spring The infant breeze with odorous wing, Perfumes of sweetest scent exhales, And the enlivened sense regales, With sweets exempt from all alloy Which neither irritate nor cloy. Nor less the calmly gladdened sight Enjoys the milder forms of light, Reflected soft in twinkling beams, From numberless translucent gems. But now Aurora dries her tears, And with a gayer mien appears, With cheerful aspect smiles serene, And ushers in the splendid scene Of golden day: while feeble night Precipitates his ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... young Thomas Van Dorn walked alone under the elm trees that plumed over the sidewalks in those environs with hands clasped behind him, occasionally gazing into the twinkling stars of the summer night, considering rather seriously many things. He had come out to think over his speech to the jury the next day in a murder case pending in the court. But the murderer kept sinking from his consciousness; the speech would not shape itself to ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... from Trent to Primolano where the Imperialist's vanguard lay, by a forced march of not less than sixty miles performed in two days. The surprise with which this descent was received may be imagined. The Austrian van was destroyed in a twinkling. The French, pushing everything before them, halted that night at Cismone—where Napoleon was glad to have half a private soldier's ration of bread for his supper. Next day he reached Bassano where the aged Marshal once ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... strange that roars of laughter greeted the song? Even Mrs. Marvin, a model of all that was well-bred, covered her eyes for a moment with her handkerchief, but when she removed it, the eyes were twinkling and it was evident that only her self-control kept ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks

... be seen, but he heard laughing and jodling and it did not appear to come from a human being. When Rudy reached the uppermost portion of the mountain, where the rocky path leads to the valley of the Rhone, he saw in the direction of Chamouni, two bright stars, twinkling and shining in the clear streaks of blue; he thought of Babette, of himself, of his happiness and became ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... been working too hard, have you, Arnold?" the old man inquired, looking me over with twinkling eyes. "We'll give you something to do that will make you forget you've ever seen work before! There are half a dozen colts in the pasture just spoiling to be broken in; you may try your hand at that, sir. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... East River Brooklyn, joined to New York by its Siamese ligament of the Bridge, seems the bigger twin of the two. The contrast at night is still more striking. The river and the town are brilliant with electric lights, where formerly twinkling lamps or gas-lights made darkness visible. These have the effect of stars of the first magnitude; and the great Bridge, seen on a dark night from the South Ferry, with its lights at regular intervals, suggests that Orion must have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into the air, but rarely actually delivering blows upon each other. Every thrust is parried, every movement met. They follow each other with dignified composure about the fields or lawn, into trees ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... Helen. "My uncle used to say no one could be a good friend who does not tell the whole truth." "That I deny," thought Cecilia. The twinge of conscience was felt but very slightly; not visible in any change of countenance, except by a quick twinkling motion of the eyelashes, not noticed ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep; and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... walking down a stony hillside, each with a lard-pail full of blueberries. It was a hot August afternoon; a northwest wind, harsh and dry, tore fiercely across the scrub-pines and twinkling birches of the sun-baked pastures. Lizzie Graham held on to her sun-bonnet, and stopped in a scrap of shade under a meagre ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... though the great pulse of life in London never quite ceases to be heard, even in the middle of the night. When we crept down to the edge of the shore, the yellow lamps were gleaming around, and the quiet stars twinkling above, and the young moon was looking down at her own image ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.

... with much gravity of tone but with twinkling eyes, "Come to think of it it isn't the taste of it that a man notices; it's the being just hot enough. I never had any coffee ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... For swift to east, and swift to west the warning radiance spread— High on St Michael's Mount it shone—it shone on Beachy Head; Far o'er the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire, Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire. The fisher left his skiff to rock on Tamar's glittering waves, The rugged miners poured to war, from Mendip's sunless caves; O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranbourne's oaks, the fiery herald flew, And roused the shepherds of Stonehenge—the rangers of Beaulieu. Right sharp and quick ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... pleasanter still was it to lie in the sleigh snugly wrapped in furs, and watch the inky sky powdered with stars—Ursa Major (now almost overhead) sprawling its glittering shape across the heavens, and the little Pleiades twinkling like a diamond spray against dark velvet. At times I could make out every lonely peak and valley in the lunar world, and even distinguish far-away Polaris twinkling dimly over the earth's great mystery. The stars are never really seen ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... which our great dailies are printed, and the machines shall do everything; cut off the picture, when it has passed among the cylinders, whereupon fresh canvas will be rolled in for a new one; another machine will stretch them; and they will pass through a varnish bath in the twinkling of an eye. But this is in the future. What I want of you, sir, and of other men of influence in society, is to let our people know of the great good that is ready for them now, and of the greater benefit that is coming. And, more than that, you can do incalculable good to our artists. Those poor ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... maidens; and he said, "Bring me seven baskets of cotton-bolls," and they brought him seven baskets of cotton-bolls; and he taught the seven maidens to weave a magical fabric from the cotton, and when they had finished it he held it aloft, and the breeze carried it away toward the firmament, and in the twinkling of an eye it was transformed into a beautiful full-orbed moon, and the same breeze caught the remnants of flocculent cotton which the maidens had scattered during their work, and carried them aloft, and they were transformed into bright stars. But ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... in active operation. From Chambers street the work of renovation progressed upward, until even Canal street was invaded by jobbers, and until a space of a half mile square had been entirely torn down and rebuilt. Vast fortunes were made in the twinkling of an eye. A German grocer, who held a lease of the corner of Warren and Church streets, received $10,000 for two years of unexpired lease. The fellow found that the property was needed for the improvement of adjacent lots, and made ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... bed now brought to light a sheet torn from a railway time-table, upon which a certain train was underscored in red ink. From another corner of the coffin he brought out a false beard and a pair of yellow spectacles! In a twinkling Juve dressed himself and crossing to the door, pushed it open and ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre

... rubbed in the treasure; so, when he heard the genie's speech to his mother, he hastened to take the lamp from her hand and said to him, "O slave of the lamp, I am hungry; my will is that thou bring me somewhat I may eat, and be it somewhat good past conceit." [286] The genie was absent the twinkling of an eye and [returning,] brought him a great costly tray of sheer silver, whereon were twelve platters of various kinds and colours [287] of rich meats and two silver cups and two flagons [288] of clarified old wine and bread ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... there's nothing like 'taking time by the fetlock', as Winkle characteristically observes, allow me to present the new member." And, to the dismay of the rest of the club, Jo threw open the door of the closet, and displayed Laurie sitting on a rag bag, flushed and twinkling with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... and he perceived that night was coming, so that the poor Prince began to give up all hope, and to think that there would be nothing for him but to lie down and die in despair, when suddenly he caught a sort of twinkling light through the thick bushes, which seemed to lie in the way he was going, and on he went, slowly enough, poor man! But still the light was before him, till suddenly he came to a great rock, overgrown in many places with briars and brambles. In ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... wife,—but, great God in heaven! how? Some mad exclamation escaped him, but without diverting her. The child knew the singing voice, though never heard before in that unearthly key, and turned toward it through the veiling dreams. With a celerity almost instantaneous, it lay, in the twinkling of an eye, on the ground at the father's feet, while his gun was raised to his shoulder and levelled at the monster covering his wife with shaggy form and flaming gaze,—his wife so ghastly white, so rigid, so stained with blood, her eyes so fixedly bent above, and her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... look changed to a bland smile as I saw the ragged straw hat with the hair standing out of the top, and the grubby face of Shock looking at me with his eyes twinkling and the skin all round wrinkled, while the rest ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory." The grave face and twinkling eyes with which this cordial acquiescence in the conclusion arrived at was expressed were irresistibly exhilarating. Just in the same way there was a sort of parenthetical smack of the lips in the self-communing of Scrooge when, at the very close of the story, after hesitating ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... is something you are not telling me," she said, with the ever-ready laugh twinkling beneath her dusky lashes. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... I did." Professor Stevens admitted, a smile moving that gray beard now and his blue eyes twinkling merrily. "But the Sargasso, an area almost equal to Europe, covers other land as well—land of far more recent submergence than Atlantis, which foundered in 9564 B. C., according to Plato. What ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... seized a light hen-coop and tossed it overboard, and the mate did the same with an oar in the twinkling of an eye. Almost without knowing what I did, or why I did it, I seized a great mass of oakum and rubbish that lay on the deck saturated with oil, I thrust it into the embers of the fire in the try-works, and hurled it blazing ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... willing pupil of the young reformer. There can be no question that even at this period Petri was regarded as a man of strength. A portrait of him painted when still a youth shows in a marked degree the traits by which he was distinguished later. The face is full and round, with large, warm eyes twinkling with merriment, and a high, clear forehead, from which is thrown back a heavy mass of waving hair. The mouth is firm as adamant, and the sharp-cut lips and chin are eloquent of strength. Altogether, it is the picture of just the man that Petri ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... people, having finished their soup, were assembling for the battle. It had rained very heavily, but at this moment the sun shone out and beat upon the French army, turning our brigades of cavalry into so many dazzling rivers of steel, and twinkling and sparkling on the innumerable bayonets of the infantry. At the sight of that splendid army, and the beauty and majesty of its appearance, I could contain myself no longer, but, rising in my stirrups, I ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... wide-nostriled nose; and the jaws were heavy and thrust forward brutishly. But the eyes, under the roof of the heavy, bony brows, held an expression profoundly unlike the cold, mechanical stare of the giant Dinosaur or the twinkling, vindictive glare of the black stranger. They gazed down at the battle with a sort of superiority, considerate, a little scornful, in spite of the obvious fact that either of the two, as far as mere physical bulk and prowess were concerned, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... it wishes, and to encounter no will but its own. Its desires grow by what they feed upon. As a French writer on education has well expressed it: 'At first it will want the cane you hold in your hand, then your watch, then the bird it sees flying in the air, and then the star twinkling overhead. How, short of omnipotence, is it possible to gratify its ever-growing wants?' Accustom the child to hear 'no' and 'must,' but let these hard words be softened by voice and manner—an art in which every true ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... terrible havoc. In a day this city has vanished; the shock of a mighty earthquake forgotten in an hour in the hopeless horror of fire; homes, hotels, hospitals, hovels, libraries, museums, skyscrapers, factories, shops, banks and gambling dens, all blotted out of existence almost in the twinkling of an eye; millionaires, beggars, dancers and workers, men great and small, foolish and courageous, with their women and children of like natures with them, fleeing together by the thousands and hundreds ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan

... windows, stellar domes. How our departed friends must pity us shut up in these cramped apartments, tired if we walk fifteen miles, when they some morning, by one stroke of wing, can make circuit of the whole stellar system and be back in time for matins! Perhaps yonder twinkling constellation is the residence of the martyrs; that group of twelve luminaries is the celestial home of the Apostles. Perhaps that steep of light is the dwelling-place of angels cherubic, seraphic, archangelic. A mansion with as many rooms as worlds, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... silence and took their accustomed places by the window and sewed for nearly an hour without exchanging a word. Eugenie had seen in the furtive glance that she cast about the young man's room—that girlish glance which sees all in the twinkling of an eye—the pretty trifles of his dressing-case, his scissors, his razors embossed with gold. This gleam of luxury across her cousin's grief only made him the more interesting to her, possibly by way of contrast. Never before had so serious an event, so dramatic a sight, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... choked me with its staleness, I perceived a bulky gentleman seated at ease, sucking a long clay pipe, his bulging legs cocked up on a card-table, his little, inflamed eyes twinkling ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... out of which to gather makeshift navies, until it could find leisure to build stancher ships. Manifestly the Government had no time for such a work. The existing Medical Bureau was hardly equal to the task. Organized to take charge of an army of ten thousand men, in the twinkling of an eye that army became five hundred thousand. At the beginning of the war the medical staff must have been very busy and very heavily burdened. With great hospitals to build, with troops of willing, but young and inexperienced surgeons to train to a knowledge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... walking in his righteousness With shining crowns of gold, Triumphing still in heav'nly bliss, Amazing to behold. 45. Each person for his majesty Doth represent a king; Yea, angel-like for dignity, And seraphims that sing. 46. Each motion of their mind, and so Each twinkling of their eye; Each word they speak, and step they go, It is in purity. 47. Immortal are they every one, Wrapt up in health and light, Mortality from them is gone, Weakness is turn'd to might. 48. The ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... division of the fourth corps, found himself during the hottest part of the action at a spot swept by the enemy's artillery. The Emperor, passing near him, said: "It is warm in your locality!"—"Yes, Sire; permit me to extinguish the fire."—"Go." This one word sufficed; in the twinkling of an eye the terrible battery was taken. In the evening the Emperor, seeing General Daleim, approached him, and said, "It seems you only had to blow on it." His Majesty alluded General Daleim's ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... query. The tassel of the cotton night-cap nodded, interrogatively, toward the object on which the twinkling ex-mariner's eye had fixed itself—on Charm's slender figure, and on the yellow half-moon of hair framing her face. There was but one verdict concerning the blonde beauty; she was a creature made ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... thought—a flash shot through his brain, immediately followed by a pang through his heart. The thought—"where are my clothes?"—the pang—the result of his disappointing glance towards the place in which he had placed them. He was out of the water in the twinkling of an eye. The boot which he had found was in his hand. Where were his trousers? where was his coat? There was his shirt being knocked about by the waves! He rushed upon it, threw it on the gravel near his boot, and began tremblingly to search for his other ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... pestilence broke out just after his departure, and the Ephesians telegraphed to Smyrna, by the only means in their power, for his immediate return; gold, in the meanwhile, falling at least ten per cent. Apollonius reappeared in the twinkling of an eye, suddenly, in the very midst of the wailing crowd, on the market place. Pointing to a beggar, he directed the people to stone that particular unfortunate, and they obeyed so effectually, that the hapless creature was in a few moments completely buried under a huge heap of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... amount of money as would sustain herself and children through the winter. I saw that it was costing her a pang to part with the gem; but necessity knows no law. The eyes of the extortioner kindled, for the instant, and with evident exultation, at the first glance of the jewel—but they fell in a twinkling as he assumed the cold, hard aspect of his calling, took the ring in his fingers, and holding it up to the window, pretended to examine it—assuming, at the same time, an air of affected disappointment. He thereupon began ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... ornamented with a shining gold cord. A little squat boat, rowed by three ragged gallegos, came bouncing up to the ship. Into this Mr. Bundy and Her Majesty's Royal mail embarked with much majesty; and in the twinkling of an eye, the Royal standard of England, about the size of a pocket-handkerchief,—and at the bows of the boat, the man-of-war's pennant, being a strip of bunting considerably under the value of a ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gap in the willows, lay a stretch of shadowy river meadow reaching back for a great distance to the second rise and fringed about its edge by even blacker shadows. And above it danced a million fire-flies weaving ceaselessly to and fro, waving their soft lanterns. They hung, a cloud of twinkling radiance, ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... the two privateers were running near the coast of France. There was a heavy mist and rain, also a fresh breeze, so the steersmen could not well see what way they were going. Suddenly the hulls of two large vessels loomed up in the blackness, and the twinkling lights from their port-holes shone upon the dripping sides of the British privateers. Voices came through the mist—French voices—so it was apparent that the ships were ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... knew not what to say next; so he sent for Abou Nuwas and bade him make a piece of verse commencing with the above line. 'I hear and obey,' replied the poet and in a twinkling extemporized the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... had found the world as funny and as frightful when she was a medical student as she did now; on the whole she thought not. Boys and girls are, for all their high spirits, creatures of infinite solemnities and pomposities. They laugh; but the twinkling irony, mocking at itself and everything else, of the thirties and forties, they have not yet learnt. They cannot be gentle cynics; they are so full of faith and hope, and when these are hurt they turn savage. About Kay and Gerda ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... of all the great boys in my time; clever, full of address, and not hampered with modesty. Remote rumors, not lightly to be heard, fell on our ears, respecting pranks of his among the nurses' daughters. He had a fair, handsome face, with delicate, aquiline nose, and twinkling eyes. I remember his astonishing me, when I was "a new boy," with sending me for a bottle of water, which he proceeded to pour down the back of G., a grave Deputy Grecian. On the master asking him one day, why he, of all the boys, had given up ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... is a nice meadow just beyond the shrubbery. Barbara knows the way; she often went there with—' He checks himself. Granny signs to them to go, and Barbara, kisses both the Colonel's hands. 'The Captain will be jealous, you know,' he says, twinkling. ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... the contents of the paper he wanted, though he had not unfolded it for years. He now read it carefully, and held it some time open in his hand before he put it back with the rest. He held it so long, while he looked out of his grated window, that at last he could see the little lights twinkling here and there in the windows of Ardea, and it was almost dark in the room. Nino grew restless, and laid his grim head on Ercole's knee, and his bloodshot eyes began to glow in the dark like coals. Then Ercole moved ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... the twinkling of an eye', said the Smith, 'for I have just learnt a new way to shoe; and a very good way it is when ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... that clung to the metropolis like a wet black shroud, a night in which the heavy, low-hanging vapours melted every now and then into a slow, reluctant rain, cold as icicle-drops in a rock cavern. People passed and repassed in the streets like ghosts in a bad dream; the twinkling gas-light showed them at one moment rising out of the fog, and then disappearing from view as though suddenly engulfed in a vaporous ebon sea. With muffled, angry shrieks, the metropolitan trains deposited their shoals of shivering, coughing travelers at the several stations, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... Hurtado de Mendoza," said the father, "will satisfy you on that point in a twinkling. 'If a gentleman,' says he, in a passage cited by Diana, 'who is challenged to fight a duel, is well known to have no religion, and if the vices to which he is openly and unscrupulously addicted, are such as would lead people to conclude, in ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... colony, but the fruitful land and salubrious climate quickly attracted free emigrants from England. Then gold was discovered, and thousands of people rushed to the new Eldorado, not only from Great Britain but from all parts of the world. Almost in a twinkling it changed from "our remotest colony" to a great country producing ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... passionate flood of tears, and in the impulse of the moment handed her own cup, which she had not tasted, to Jacko, who drained it in a twinkling—before the captain could snatch it from ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... Brandy, Stuart sat his horse, looking toward the Rappahannock, and laughing still. He was talking with brave Fitz Lee, whose stout figure, flowing beard, and eyes twinkling with humor, were plain in the starlight. I shall show you that gallant figure more than once in this volume, reader. You had but to look at him to see that he was the bravest of soldiers, and ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... fayre, and beautified with the moueable wauinges of theyr crysping hayre couered ouer with a thinne vayle, lyke a Spiders vvebbe. Theyr eyes byting and alluring, more bright, than the twinkling starres in a cleere ayre, vnder theyr circulate brees: vvith a small nose, betwixt their rounde and cherry cheekes: their teeth orderly disposed, small and euen set, of the collour of refyned siluer: vppon the rest, betwixt their sweet and soft ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... Roasting a thick-woolled mountain sheep Upon an iron spit. Above him wheels the winter sky, Beneath him, fathoms deep, Lies hidden in the valley mists A village fast asleep —- Save for one restive hungry dog That, snuffing towards the height, Smells Grim's broiled supper-meat, and spies His watch-fire twinkling bright. ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... course there is. Just as if your hens couldn't hatch ducks' eggs. Now you just wait till one of your hens wants to sit, and you put ducks' eggs under her, and you'll have a family of ducks in a twinkling. You can buy ducks' eggs a plenty of old Sam under the hill. He always has ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... trestles, all very white and clean under a brilliant full moon. There were here two Sisters whom I did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. "Noo tak. Fine, our hospital, don't you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here, golubchik, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors, some one. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... for the wits of either Charles' days, The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease, Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more, Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er, One simile, that solitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines, Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a page, Has sanctified whole poems ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... we began our journey, and soon entered the pine-woods. As we walked along in the darkness, we could scarcely see each other or the path. The wind was sighing mournfully among the tree-tops, and, as we gazed upward, we could see the stars twinkling in the clear sky. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... to the old town twice since the day I left it, as a boy—about this time. The first time I went he was there. I came across him in his big, splendid new library, his face like some live, but wrinkled old parchment, twinkling and human though—looking out from its Dust Heap. "It seems to me," I thought, as I stood in the doorway,—saw him edging around an alcove in The Syriac Department,—"that if one must have a great dreary heaped-up pile of books in a town—anyway—the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... absence of the household, he went through a variety of of uncouth gestures, pointing eagerly down to my feet, then up to a little bundle, which swung from the ridge pole overhead. At last I caught a faint idea of his meaning, and motioned him to lower the package. He executed the order in the twinkling of an eye, and unrolling a piece of tappa, displayed to my astonished gaze the identical pumps which I thought had been destroyed ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... changing, and displaying new and still more horrible features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly. At one moment the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time; and when I did, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... scuttle, and "All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths, and it not being very cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were soon on deck. I shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear and rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intense brightness, and as far as the eye could reach there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could not have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet it was blowing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... majestic pillars arched with foliage, propping a light-green ceiling, from which cones hang in pairs and in clusters, and through which curiously shaped clouds can be seen moving in a cerulean sky; and at night, instead of the clouds, the stars—the distant, twinkling, white and blue stars—what to these are the decorations in the ancient mosques? There, the baroques, the arabesques, the colourings gorgeous, are dead, at least inanimate; here, they palpitate with life. The moving, swelling, flaming, flowing life is mystically interwoven in the evergreen ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... a little pig with the money my daughter had paid her in the winter for spinning, and the poor woman kept it like a child, and let it run about her room. This little pig got the mischief, like all the rest, in the twinkling of an eye; and when my daughter was called it grew no better, but also died under her hands; whereupon the poor woman made a great outcry and tore her hair for grief, so that my child was moved to pity her, and promised her another pig next time my sow should litter. Meantime another ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... black pop into that hole in a sly and secret way, and he began to wonder; for he was inquisitive, as most birds are. He sat quite still on his rose-bush and watched and watched. Presently out of the hole popped a black head, bigger than Whitebird's, with two wise little twinkling eyes. ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... The boys finished their play, and went into the house, and I saw lights twinkling in the windows. I felt lonely and miserable in this strange place. I would not have gone back to Jenkins' for the world, still it was the only home I had known, and though I felt that I should be happy here, I had not yet gotten used to the change. Then the pain ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... the sculptor; and Mr. and Mrs. Hall introduced me to various people, some of whom were of note,—for instance, Sir Emerson Tennent, a man of the world, of some parliamentary distinction, wearing a star; Mr. Samuel Lover, a most good-natured, pleasant Irishman, with a shining and twinkling visage; Miss Jewsbury, whom I found very conversable. She is known in literature, but not to me. We talked about Emerson, whom she seems to have been well acquainted with while he was in England; and she mentioned that ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... put cucumber on your temples, my good sir. It would have taken it away in a twinkling. ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... when eight years old, walking with him one winter evening from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery; and he then told me the names of the stars, and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world, and that the other twinkling stars were suns that had worlds rolling round them; and when I came home, he showed me how they rolled round. I heard him with a profound delight and admiration, but without the least mixture of wonder or ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... up in a twinkling, but by that time the porcupine hod settled himself in a crotch, out of reach of the smoke, and the woods were silent again. The two listened with all their ears, but there was not a ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... result, Donnegan was promptly kicked head over heels and tumbled the length of the car. Lefty was on his feet and plunging after the tumbling form in the twinkling of an eye, literally speaking, and he was only kept from burying his knife in the flesh of his foe by a sway of the car that staggered him in the act of striking. Donnegan, the next instant, was beyond reach. He had struck the end of the car and rebounded ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... do assure you, and you will see finer things than most children will tonight. Steady, now, and do just as I tell you, and don't say one word whatever you see," answered Nursey, quite quivering with excitement as she patted a large box in her lap, and nodded and laughed with twinkling eyes. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... might be established; but we soon discovered that the Indians had no other design than to haul the boats on shore: Many of them leaped off the rocks, and swam to them; and one of them got into that which belonged to the Tamar, and in the twinkling of an eye seized a seaman's jacket, and jumping over board with it, never once appeared above water till he was close in shore among his companions. Another of them got hold of a midshipman's hat, but not knowing how ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... set and a thick mist as white as milk was rising over the river, in the church enclosure, and in the open spaces round the factories. Now when the darkness was coming on rapidly, when lights were twinkling below, and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding a fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except their frightened, gentle souls, may have fancied for a minute perhaps ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... dark road, and our driver, after coming back from a tour of inspection on foot, looked worried. I mildly asked if we would soon cross Snake River, but his reply was an admission that he was lost. There was nothing visible but the twinkling stars and a dim outline of the grim Tetons. The prospect was excellent for passing the rest of the night where we were, famished, freezing, and so tired ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... an Italian night was studded with sparkling stars that seemed to be twinkling with laughter at the pranks of a lively group of gay young fellows as they came out from a house half-way up the steep street of ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews

... things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. No matter what imprudent haste in my career; I am permitted to be rash. Gulfs are bridged in a twinkling, as if some unseen baggage-train carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from the heights I scan the tempting but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being carried over the mountains piecemeal on the backs of mules and lamas, whose keel shall plough its waves, and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... my younger days people wanted to flatter me by assuring me that we in some degree resembled each other: and faith! when I come to look thus closely at your figure, your physiognomy, your expression, your sweet smile, and those twinkling stars in your eyes there, and when I weigh all this with scrupulous impartiality, why, cousin Pancrazia of the house of Posaterrena in Florence, and little Beresynth of the family of Fuocoterrestro in Milan, are for such degrees of kin, as ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... the little garden of the Villa Clementine, coquetting with the flaming cannas, twinkling amongst the pebbles of the paths, stroking the backs of the lazy goldfish. Seating Elaine in the arbour, Riviere brought out pen and ink and a sheet of paper headed "Hotel du Forum, Place du Forum, Arles," which he happened to have ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... Juliet," he explained with twinkling eyes, "my clients are all country folk, and it makes them feel more at home to find a lawyer's office not very different ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... instinct had done the trick. As by a miracle the hopeless had come to pass. The helm had been put hard over, and the craft had answered as sweetly as any swish-tailed circus nag. Gramarye and all her works, if not forgotten, had in the twinkling of an eye become the fabric of a dream—mere relics of a fantastic age for a sane mind ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... stout, prosaic woman, and end her days in whist and all the ancient proprieties, or fade into a remorseful wraith that still haunts her unfortunate lover's grave? One shivers, and grows superstitious. The light twinkling from the windows of the cottage under the pines becomes very attractive. As we fall asleep after such a visit, we like to think of the meadow-larks singing on the mossy ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... brisk, bustling, active little man, - for he is, as it were, chubby all over, without being stout or unwieldy, - but yesterday his alacrity was so very uncommon that it quite took me by surprise. For could I fail to observe when he came up to me that his gray eyes were twinkling in a most extraordinary manner, that his little red nose was in an unusual glow, that every line in his round bright face was twisted and curved into an expression of pleased surprise, and that his whole countenance was radiant with glee? I was still more ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... Daisy only once during her abode at Mrs. Benoit's cottage; and now Daisy squeezed her hands and welcomed the sight of her with great affection; and June on her part, though not given to demonstrations, smiled till her wrinkles took all sorts of queer shapes, and even shewed her deep black eyes twinkling with something like moisture. They certainly were; and putting the smiles and the tears together, Daisy felt sure that June was as glad to see her as she was to see June. In truth, Daisy was a sort of household ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... the bright orbs that shine in Heaven, in the volutes of the flower, in the clustering of low shrubberies, in the waving of the grain-fields, in the slanting of tall eastern trees, in the blue distance of mountains, in the grouping of clouds, in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks, in the gleaming of silver rivers, in the repose of sequestered lakes, in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds, in the harp of AEolus, in the sighing ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... replied Sancho, "but if your worship wishes me to fetch the bachelor I will go for him in a twinkling." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... more pathetic chapter in the history of human struggle than the emergence of the smothered ambition of this race to meet the social exigencies involved in the professional needs of the masses. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the plowhand was transformed into a priest, the barber into a bishop, the housemaid into a schoolmistress, the day-laborer into a lawyer, and the porter into a physician. These high places of intellectual ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... — N. instantaneity, instantaneousness, immediacy; suddenness, abruptness. moment, instant, second, minute; twinkling, trice, flash, breath, crack, jiffy, coup, burst, flash of lightning, stroke of time. epoch, time; time of day, time of night; hour, minute; very minute &c, very time, very hour; present time, right time, true time, exact correct time. V. be instantaneous &c adj.; twinkle, flash. Adj. instantaneous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... were often beaten down and overturned by the winds and rains when their shelter was most needed. After two or three of these rickety shanties had been tumbled about their heads, to the no small risk of life or limb, they wisely concluded to abandon them, and sleep in the open air, with the twinkling stars above them, the gray old trees around them, and the damp, cold ground beneath them, with nothing between but their good blankets, and the dead, dry leaves of autumn heaped together; and lucky was he who got the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... and somewhat greedy act with a twinkling eye. When the dervish had drained the dish, the host filled a glass full to the brim with vinegar, and, with fierce joviality, bade him drink it. The poor man hesitated, and said something about wine and a mistake, but the Pasha repeated "Drink!" ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... with such an expression of dismay that the Jew started, raising his green spectacles to his forehead, and fixing his small, twinkling ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... transporting ourselves from place to place with the rapidity of thought. In this world we can, in the twinkling of an eye, send our thoughts on the wings of electricity across a whole continent, or the vast expanse of the ocean; after the resurrection, we shall possess that power in our very bodies, because they shall rise spiritual bodies, entirely under ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux

... shortness and sweetness, I suppose," said her husband, his eyes twinkling and sparkling with love, as he looked at her, and ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... From Ascog's rocks, o'erflung with woodland bowers, With scarlet fuschias, and faint myrtle flowers, My steps essay'd; brushing the diamond dew From the soft moss, lithe grass, and harebell blue. Up from the heath aslant the linnet flew Startled, and rose the lark on twinkling wing, And soar'd away, to sing A farewell to the severing shades of night, A welcome to the morning's aureate light. Thy summit gain'd, how tranquilly serene, Beneath, outspread that panoramic scene Of continent and isle, and lake and sea, And tower and town, hill, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... come to that, she is not to be compared to you, pretty Amice," said Cutbeard, who was a red-nosed, red-faced fellow, with a twinkling merry eye. ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... open skies her eyes did shut; The azure fields of Heav'n were 'sembled right In a large round, set with the flow'rs of light: The flow'rs-de-luce, and the round sparks of dew, That hung upon their azure leaves did shew Like twinkling stars, that ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... was in his shirt sleeves, with chains and seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a diamond twinkling through the fringe of his bristling beard. Drink and politics had made the Boss a very rich as well as powerful man. The more terrible, therefore, seemed that glimpse of the prison or the gallows which had risen before him the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... systems, as He said of old, they sleep! Not a bird, not a leaf shall pass by, But on the day of remembrance In the darkness, In a moment, in the twinkling of ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes

... still, they did the same; if I was astonish'd at their Make, and at what other things I had observ'd, I was more so, when I saw one of the tallest, dwindle in the Twinkling of an Eye, to a Pigmy, fly into the Air without Wings, and carry off a Giant in each Hand by ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... up and at work before the sun, Mr. Leach," said the captain, speaking clearly, but in a low tone, as they approached the camel. The head of the animal was tossed; then it seemed to snuff the air, and it gave a shriek. In the twinkling of an eye an Arab sprang from the sand, on which he had been sleeping, and was on the creature's back. He was seen to look around him, and before the startled mariners had time to decide on their course, the beast, which was a dromedary trained to speed, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... it was the two men now in the panel that had murdered him: And being further interrogate in what manner the vision disappeared from him first and last, Depones, That after the short interviews above mentioned, the vision at both times disappeared and vanished out of his sight in the twinkling of an eye; and that in describing the panels by the vision above mentioned as his murderers, his words were, Duncan Clerk and Alexander Macdonald: Depones, That the conversation betwixt the deponent and the vision was in the Irish language: Depones, That several times ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott

... the ground, save for an occasional roll, was entirely visible. Now, swarming out into the open, came masses of moving figures—fleeing figures. Hazon and Laurence, who each possessed a powerful glass, were able to master the situation in a twinkling. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... even the servants had absented themselves. Then I can remember how after reading the Arabian Nights or some such unearthly romance, as was the mode in the Thirties, the very sunshine stealing craftily and silently like a living thing, in a bar through the shutter, twinkling with dust, as with infinitely small stars, living and dying like sparks, the buzzing of the flies who were little blue imps, with now and then a larger Beelzebub—a strange imagined voice ever about, which seemed to say something without words—and the ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... about the rocks and bays of these wild shores, made him almost dizzy. "Blessed St. Nicholas!" ejaculated he, half aloud, "is it not possible to come upon one of these golden hoards, and to make oneself rich in a twinkling? How hard that I must go on, delving and delving, day in and day out, merely to make a morsel of bread, when one lucky stroke of a spade might enable me to ride in my carriage for ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... his twinkling eyes suspiciously as she handed him his coffee. For a moment she bit her lip to keep back a smile, then said ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... Rayne began slowly, and with a look of unusual merriment twinkling in his eyes, "It has taken a long time you see for this surprise to come, but it was worth the trouble of waiting. May be you think that at fifty years all the romance has died out of a man's life, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... reassured him. The company waited, on the qui vive, for they knew not what. Eleven o'clock came. Lucy went up to the bride's room; the door was still fast; she knocked—there was no reply; she called—there was no answer. Then Lucy screamed, and in a twinkling a crowd was around the door. They shook it, they rapped, they called, all in vain. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... about Edwardes' eyes radiated from twinkling pupils as he calmly asked himself what concern this was of his; this news of a woman he had never known except once long ago in a world of abandoned farms. But the laughter died quickly, because, absurd as it was by all practical standards, he ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... the top end of Miss Buffum's table when I first saw his good-natured face with its twinkling eyes, high cheekbones and broad, white forehead in strong contrast to the wizened, almost sour, visage of our landlady. Up to the time of his coming every one had avoided that end, or had gradually shifted his seat, gravitating slowly toward the bottom, where the bank clerk, the college professor ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... there!" he shouted, waving a flippant hand and twinkling his eyes at the beautiful girl ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... In the twinkling of an eye his people were before him. Then he, their master, having briefly ordered the handling of the said chest, this piece of furniture dedicated to love was tumbled across the room, but in passing the advocate, finding his feet ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... veil for her hat, and besought her to wear it, lest the sun should shine too brightly; while the ant came bringing a tiny strawberry, lest she should miss her favorite fruit. The mother gave her good advice, and the papa stood with his head on one side, and his round eyes twinkling with delight, to think that his little Bud was going ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... he was aware of something dark against the stars that tossed, and a light below, and a brightness of the cloven sea; and he heard speech of men. He cried out aloud and a voice answered; and in a twinkling the bows of a ship hung above him on a wave like a thing balanced, and swooped down. He caught with his two hands in the chains of her, and the next moment was buried in the rushing seas, and the next hauled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Horns, Trombones and Cornets, varied delightfully with the Highland Fling by Pipe Major Johnson of the 42nd, and the Sword Dance by Piper Reid of the 43rd followed by an encore, the "Shean Rheubs" which I defy any mere Sassenach to pronounce or to dance, at least as Piper Heid of the twinkling feet danced it that night. For he did it "in the style of Willie Maclennan," as a piper said, "the best of his day and they have not matched him yet." The massed pipe bands play "The 79th's Farewell at Gibraltar." Forty-one pipers ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... Quien sabe! A foreigner with much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of men who had been to Sulaco with a herd of black bulls for the next corrida had reported that from the porch of the posada in Rincon, only a short league from the town, the lights on the mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees. And there was a woman seen riding a horse sideways, not in the chair seat, but upon a sort of saddle, and a man's hat on her head. She walked about, too, on foot up the mountain paths. A woman engineer, it seemed ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... the Indian slave of a soldier, beaten and frightened two or three others, and wounded another soldier with an arrow. When the effrontery of the Moros was seen, and that they could do us some injury with their artillery, it was decided to attack them. [32] Therefore in the twinkling of an eye, the Spaniards attacked and took the palisade, hurling down the bombardiers with linstock in hand, giving them no chance to fulfil their duties. After this first artillery had fallen into their hands, they immediately took the town, and set fire to it, on account ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... gradually faded away, till only a silver glow in the west showed where the sun had set, and the sober gray of twilight was gently stealing over all the bright colours of sky, and river, and hill; now and then a twinkling light began to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... it a second time before the man heard her. He looked up in surprise. He had a frank, pleasant face with twinkling eyes and Mary Rose liked him ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... is very short and what one calls thick-set) was accompanied by a secretary, a chasseur, a valet, two postilions, two grooms, and four horses. He had six guns, six trunks, and endless coats of different warmth. In the twinkling of an eye cigar-cases, pipes, photographs, writing-paper (of his own monogram), and masses of etceteras were spread about in his salon, as if he could not even look in his mirror without having these familiar objects ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... another word. Down she came in a twinkling, dressed in her new red cloak and hood, her face peeping out of the folds of the latter, bright ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... hearty though frugal supper, disposed both master and man for rest that night. When the last gleam of sunset had faded from the western sky, and the last scraps of mare's flesh had vanished from their respective bones; when the stars were twinkling with nocturnal splendour, and all nature was sinking to repose, Lawrence and Quashy lay down on the grass, spread their ponchos above them, pillowed their weary heads upon their saddles, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... straight into the eyes twinkling across the table at him. Maloney knew that the young fellow was thanking him for having saved his life. He nodded lightly, but his words still seemed to make a jest of ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... Priest. Clust the son of Clustveinad, (though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant, fifty miles off, rise from her nest in the morning). Medyr the son of Methredydd, (from Gelli Wic he could, in a twinkling, shoot the wren through the two legs upon Esgeir Oervel in Ireland). Gwiawn Llygad Cath, (who would cut a haw from the eye of the gnat without hurting him). Ol the son of Olwydd; (seven years before he was born his father's swine were carried off, and when he grew up a man, he tracked the swine, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn; And even that power, which gave me first my oath, Provokes me to this threefold perjury; 5 Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear. O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinn'd, Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it! At first I did adore a twinkling star, But now I worship a celestial sun. 10 Unheedful vows may needfully be broken; And he wants wit that wants resolved will To learn his wit to exchange the bad for better. Fie, fie, unreverend tongue! to call her bad, Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr'd ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... students to withdraw from the College and to empty Government aided schools. How could I do otherwise? I want to gauge the national sentiment. I want to know whether the Mahomodans feel deeply. If they feel deeply they will understand in the twinkling of an eye, that it is not right for them to receive schooling from a Government in which they have lost all faith; and which they do not trust at all. How can I, if I do not want to help this Government, ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... was intense. I walked to the end of the Quay and leaned on the stone parapet. The Neva seemed vast like a huge, white, impending shadow; it swept in a colossal wave of frozen ice out to the far horizon, where tiny, twinkling lights met it and closed it in. The bridges that crossed it held forth their lights, and there were the gleams, like travelling stars, of the passing trams, but all these were utterly insignificant against the vast ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... turned and saw a short, thick-set man with a stubbly brown beard, whose eyes were twinkling, though his face was grave. "A boy who wants to fight for the Union, and insists on calling his horse Dixie, must be all right. Come with ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... gleaming moon, the exquisite temple of Philae perched on its high rock above the river, the fires on the shore, the masts of the dahabiehs twinkling with lights, and the barbarous songs floating across the water, gave the feeling of past centuries to the scene. From the splendid boat which Kaid had placed at his disposal David looked out upon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Paul readily agreed. They soon overtook the strangers. Long Ned walked the nearest to the gentleman, and brushed by him in passing. Presently a voice cried, "Stop thief!" and Long Ned, saying to Paul, "Shift for yourself, run!" darted from our hero's side into the crowd, and vanished in a twinkling. Before Paul could recover his amaze, he found himself suddenly seized by the collar; he turned abruptly, and saw the dark face of the young ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Civitas Society, and were shown into the drawing-room. Mrs. Schmidt, a thin wisp of faded womanhood, effaced herself in a remote corner, while Mrs. McMahon, a brawny Amazon with red, round face and shrewdly twinkling eyes, frankly wandered about the room, scrutinizing the furnishings and ornaments and commenting on them without restraint. Sadie Ferguson, on the other hand, seated herself elegantly upright on an upholstered chair, and disported herself altogether after the manner of heroines of high degree as ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... do all the fussy things in travelling—taking the tickets, and counting the luggage, and all that—they're such big men, aren't they?" said Denny, with mischief in her twinkling green eyes. ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth

... the presence of the "Camberwell Beauty," a rare and beautiful species of butterfly, of which he was determined to take home a specimen. In later days he was fair to see with his hat thrown back on his brow, his net in his hand: and his stout legs twinkling in their haste to ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... on he at length fell into a troubled sleep with his head against the trunk of the oak tree. He was aroused by soft music and twinkling lights, and beheld before him, ranged in a semicircle, the fairy queen and her attendants. The queen ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard

... proposed the Major, turning a stern face but twinkling eyes upon the group. "'Twill be my task to detect him. Leave him to me, young women, an' I'll put the thumb-screws on him in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... do these things just after Jackson has passed I catch it nastily, just about the rear buffers. My proposal is that Enderby and Jackson should encourage me a little by wearing scarlet coats, so that I can see them twinkling more brightly through the gap in my hedge, and if they will do this I will promise to provide them both with hunting horns. I have pointed out that a "View halloo" from ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... the pudgy fingers feeling his pulse, the gray eyes twinkling. "Narrow squeak you had—going to pull through all ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... know how to act, you will have obtained what we want from Mr. Webb in half the time." I then sprung on my horse, which, ready saddled, had stood at the gate during this conference, and, putting him to full speed, I was out of sight in a twinkling. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... asleep to his first lullaby. The night changed as he slept, white clouds and high Began about the lonely moon to close; And from the dark west a new wind arose, And with the sound of heavy-falling waves Mingled its pipe about the loadstone caves; But when the twinkling stars were hid away, And a faint light and broad, like dawn of day, The moon upon that dreary country shed, Ogier awoke, and lifting up his head And smiling, muttered, "Nay, no more again; Rather some pleasure new, some other pain, Unthought of both, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris

... down-stream in one dark cluster of jagged-topped cones lay the village of Red Dog's people. Away up-stream a long mile, black against the westward slope, the corral and storehouses, the school and office and quarters of the agency, the watch-lights twinkling like the stars above. Close at hand, loosely huddled along the bank, the grimy, smoke-stained lodges of Kills Asleep's sullen band, and in their midst, surrounded at respectful distance by a squatted semicircle of old men and braves, all muffled in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... dresses and waltzes, and who was the belle; But each was so happy, and all were so fair, That night stole away and the dawn caught them there! Such a scampering never before was seen, As the fairies' flight on that island green. They rushed to the bay with twinkling feet, But vain was their haste, for the moonlight fleet Had passed with the dawn, and never again Were those fairies permitted to traverse the main. But 'mid the groves, when the sun was high, The Indian marked with a worshipping eye, The HUMMING BIRDS, all unknown before, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... constitutes the key of access to the hidden chambers of the Roman world, can only be acquired with much expenditure of precious time and with infinite trouble. But "life is short and time is fleeting," and our bustling age expects to seize its required knowledge in the twinkling of an eye; well, in that case the story of Pompeii must remain a sealed volume to the traveller, who is conveyed to the City of the Dead in a train crammed with fellow-tourists; who eats a heavy unwholesome luncheon to ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan



Words linked to "Twinkling" :   bit, moment, second, mo, minute, bright, blink of an eye



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