Notch

“ Milton, P. L. ix. 186; guilty, Greene, James IV, v. 6 (Sir Cuthbert) . L. nocens, hurtful, culpable.
nock, a notch at the end of a bow, or in the head of an arrow; ‘The nocke of the shafte’, Ascham, Toxophilus (ed. Arber, 127) . Also, the cleft of the buttocks, Butler, Hud. i. 1. 285. Du. nock, ‘a notch in the head of an arrowe’ (Hexham) . See Nares.
nock, (perhaps) a notch. The phr. much in my nock seems to mean ‘much in my line’, ‘very suitable for me’, Triumphs of Love and Fortune (last speech but one of Lentulo) , in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vi. ”

“ Like a dark cloud Necker paus'd, and like thunder on the just man's burial day he paus'd;
Silent sit the winds, silent the meadows, while the husbandman and woman of weakness
And bright children look after him into the grave, and water his clay with love,
Then turn towards pensive fields; so Necker paus'd, and his visage was cover'd with clouds. ”

“ I saw the hills as distinct as if awake, and that they were all in flames. I perceived, too late, my folly ; and my tempter, with an air of insult, informed me, that all the mercy God had in reserve for me was comprised in that ring, which I had wilfully thrown away. ”

“ I, an idle singer, fleeing from the world's shame, make a pilgrimage to an unknown land—O Heaven—or Hell?
Thou Silence, who never responds to mortal's voice, where is the secret door of Paradise?—Speak once unto me! ”

“ So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the change in relation to the general framework of human life, its effect of swift, magnificent dawn, of an overpowering letting in and inundation of light, and the spirit of living. In my memory all my life before the Change has the quality of a dark passage, with the dimmest side gleams of beauty that come and go. ”

“ Thus-wise the world is fashioned, and the new sun of the morn Where earth last night was desert beholds a kindred born, That to-morrow and to-morrow blossoms all gloriously With many a man and maiden for the kindreds yet to be, And fair the Goth-folk groweth. ”

“ They set themselves before the eyes of all not alone as models for imitation to many, but as fearful and yet delightful spectacles on the boundary line between this world and the next world, where in that period everyone thought he saw at one time rays of heavenly light, at another fearful, threatening tongues of flame. ”

“ I sometimes went thither, into the grove of the nightingale, when the visits of strangers had wearied me, and there is no weariness so great as that which human beings experience from their own kind—and the nightingale then came and sang peace and freshness into my spirit. There, too, I sat, more than once, with friends whose conversation made my life richer. ”

“ The conveyer belt of souls carrying the damaged ones far into the night, spitting out the lukewarm with plenty of latitude to manoeuvre in between. Lavender and the dye from purple shells in piercing shrieks extracting the enacted will of Nietzscheans before their time; fledglings in a world ill begotten and barely within a choosing. ”

“ Over the earth the shadows creep with deepening gloom, wrapping all objects in a mysterious dimness, in which all certainty is destroyed and any guess seems plausible. Forms lose their outlines, and are dissolved in floating mist. The day is over, the night draws on. ”

“ The song of the nightingale, the whistling of the wind, and the splendors of light, color, and form please us, because they strike our senses agreeably; and as our senses are fitted for this by nature, which also has the same effect, so must the artful imitation of nature please us also. ”

“ He who has sat day and night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, or a treasure- seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave--it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine--his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passerby. ”

“ Of the assistant witches, one traces with hurried steps the edifice, sprinkling it, as she goes, with drops from the Avernus, her hair on her head stiff and erect, like the quills of the sea-hedge-hog, or the bristles of a hunted boar; and another, who is believed by all the neighbourhood to have the faculty of conjuring the stars and the moon down from heaven, contributes her aid. ”

“ I am the centre of the world," springs up with full force when we are suddenly overtaken by same. We feel dazed and, as it were, standing in the midst of a surge, dazzled by one great piercing eye, which from all sides gazes down upon us and looks straight through and through us. ”

“ I rushed out of the house—it was a late hour in the evening—there was no moon in the sky, and I felt the dampness of the falling dew, as I flew, with uncovered head, like an unblessed spirit, through the darkness. My brain began to be thronged with wild images. ”

“ When he saw that the time had come, he raised a shout early in the morning, then climbed a tree, cracked the nuts, ate some himself, and put some on the stones in his sacred place for the particular ghost whom he worshipped. Then all the people might gather the nuts for themselves. ”

“ In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. ”

“ The whole scene was as composed as if there were scarce one of us but had a secret thirst for the infinite to be quenched. And it was the infinite that, for the hour, the distinguished foreigner poured out to us, causing it to roll in wonderful waves of sound, almost of colour, over our receptive attitudes and faces. ”

“ A shadow in the mind, a thought of God,
A little fragment of the eternal order,
That postulates the whole.
If we could see
The universal Temple in which it stands
We, too, should bow our heads; for if this Form
Were shaped by Chance, it was the selfsame Chance
That gave us love and death. In this the fool
Descries a reason for denying all
To which our peasants kneel. The years to come [135]
(And you will speed them, Jean) will rather make
This dust the floor of heaven. ”

“ It is in a mood such as this—a mood desirable above all others—that I take up my pen to reply to your kind and thoughtful letter. The interests we share have become welded together to the smallest particle; once again we have realized that mere strokes of the pen in fact, even the most unexpected whims in the past of a few individuals determine the history of countless numbers of others; and we readily leave it to the pious to thank their God for these accidents. We may perhaps laugh at this thought when we meet again in Leipzig. ”

“ Of some sad sea-soul for his wand'ring nymph.
Thou couldst not yield to mortal love's enthralling
And Nerius calling in thy spirits coralled lymph.
O! if our hearts have sweeter balm than tears,
It is the call that kissed thy dreaming ears. ”

“ Thus, a concentric circle is drawn round every being, which has a centre and is peculiar to himself. In the same way our ear encloses us in a small space, and so likewise does our touch. We measure the world by these horizons within which our senses confine each of us within prison walls. We say that this is near and that is far distant, that this is large and that is small, that one thing is hard and another soft; and this appreciation of things we call sensation—but it is all an error per se! ”

“ His art always leads him into two distinct directions, from the world of the play of sound to the mysterious and yet related world of visible things, and vice versa. He is continually forced—and the observer with him—to re-translate the visible into spiritual and primeval life, and likewise to perceive the most hidden interstices of the soul as something concrete and to lend it a visible body. ”

“ So, amid the sleepers, the black eunuchs stood.
When the sleepers stirred faintly in the heat
Of that painted room a silken sound I heard,
And a thin music, sweet as the brown nightingale
Sings in the jealous shade of a lonely spinney,
Stranger far than any music mortal made
Fell softer than the dew falleth when stars are pale. ”

“ One reason why the people of the wood, the nymphs, the fauns, and the satyrs, were permitted to see the celestial beauty of Una unveiled lay in the fact that through their experiences a means was provided by the poet to quicken the imagination into a sense of its pure nature. ”

“ "If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so.
But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it and it listeth. We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands." ”

“ What a delightful nook in which to dream away the days! It was dim and cool and still, although outside its walls of green the afternoon sun was beating down fiercely. A stranger might pass and never guess its presence. ”

“ Yet, truly, was this all as the little book of metal had told unto me; and so should I have been something prepared; yet are we ever thus needing eye-proof; and perhaps it is more proper that it be so. ”

“ The light on the torch was reflected off a skin which glittered as if scaled, glittered with the brilliance of jewels in bands and coils of color spreading from the throat down the chest, spiraling about upper arms, around waist and thighs, as if the stranger wore a treasure house of gems as part of a living body. ”

“ The sensitiveness of our human nature makes us to be influenced by the night and silence, as well as by the day and voice; let me confess, however, that my suspicion of the Western poetic feeling dates from quite far back in the days of my old California life, when I was quite often laughed at for my aimless loitering under the moonbeams, and for my patient attention to the voice of the falling snow. ”

“ To the first indications of ascending or of descending life my nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master to my backbone—I know both sides, for I am both sides. ”

“ Would that I could live again in the dreamland of the poets that we loved so well, and wander with dearest Nelly through those forest glades, peopled with the creations of Uhland, Tieck, and Chammisso! What a glorious world is theirs, and how unlike the real one! ”

“ If we, in the inside, could not sleep, how could these men, whom a shell might at any instant turn into blood and dust? There they lay peering ahead and whispering to each other in their unaccustomed surroundings—tired, strained, and watchful. ”

“ There, too, was a gaping hole—but not without its message. Etched in the metal frame, in the same iridescent purple glow, were two words. Two enigmatic words to reverberate throughout the world, burned in by some watcher—some keeper—some warden. ”

“ Why does everything within you turn upon me eyes full of yearning? Even at this moment, as I stand dumbly, fixedly, perplexedly contemplating your vastness, a menacing cloud, charged with gathering rain, seems to overshadow my head. ”

“ Behold! The night's shadow girding round our half-sphere, the world goes into reverie,—
Yea, my spirit in a dream rises afar to steal the matchless pearls of eternal stars!
Hark! the far-off fowl sings of the divine morn of light! I hail the glorious sun's ascent!
I chant again of the complete order of the universe with the earth, with the heaven above! ”

“ There, following the small circular footpath which her own persevering steps have day by day already traced, appears the form of a solitary woman, pacing slowly about the mound of grassy earth which marks the grave of the young Goth. ”

“ I met her dark, deep hazel eyes, and once more my gaze was held fixed as by a strong magic—the kind of fascination that keeps one sometimes staring for whole minutes into one's own eyes in the glass. I gazed into her eyes, and felt my own dilate, pricked with a smart like the smart of tears. ”

“ The glow of the newly-lit fire flickers up over her face—her face, with its pure oval outlines, its delicate, regular features, and its dreamy eyes, that are neither blue nor gray nor hazel, but something vague and indistinctly beautiful, entirely peculiar to themselves. ”

“ Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seems to me all the jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the fervor of tones!-
They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their water that it may seem deep.
And rather would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers: but mediaries and mixers are they to me, and half-and-half, and impure!-
Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God.
Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one. And they themselves may well originate from the sea. ”

“ Then when the morning sun rises upon him, glowing like a Deity of anger, when the town is opened, he sees perhaps in the faces of the dwellers therein still more desert, uncleanliness, deceit, and insecurity than outside the gates—and the day is almost worse than the night. ”

“ Bent as you are from straining
against the bitter horizontals of
a north wind,—there below you
how easily the long yellow notes
of poplars flow upward in a descending
scale, each note secure in its own
posture—singularly woven.
All voices are blent willingly
against the heaving contra-bass
of the dark but you alone
warp yourself passionately to one side
in your eagerness. ”

“ How, in a houseful of shadows, should he know his own Shadow? How, in a houseful of noises, distinguish the summons he felt to be at hand? Ah, trust him! He would know! The place was full of a jugglery of dim lights. ”

“ If a figure in mediæval costume and rapier were to come round a corner suddenly, or emerge from some dark nook, it would scarcely startle the senses, so appropriate would it seem with the surroundings, enshrouded in mysterious shadows. ”