"Comet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over England there rushed the bright stranger—a meteor, a comet, a fiery star! "such as no man before ever saw;" it appeared on the 8th, before the kalends of May; seven nights did it shine [235], and the faces of sleepless men were pale under ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... benefit by the designation given to this or that object in life's treasure-house: it is the skiff wherein they keep afloat for a brief while. A patch of lichen on the bark of an old tree, a blade of grass, a puny beastie: any one of these hands down a man's name to posterity as effectively as a new comet. For all its abuses, this manner of honouring the departed is eminently respectable. If we would carve an epitaph of some duration, what could we find better than a Beetle's wing-case, a Snail's shell or a Spider's web? Granite is worth none of them. Entrusted to ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... now we know what the comet meant That rode, blood-red and dire, Across the midnight firmament This year on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... keen stars: Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink With eager lips the wind of their own speed, As if the thing they loved fled on before, And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... entitled "The Church of England truly represented," begins by informing us that "the ignis fatuus of reformation, which had grown to a comet by many acts of spoil and rapine, had been ushered into England, purified of the filth which it had contracted among the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... jest; PATRIGE is dead! nay more, he died Ere he could prove the good Squire lied! Strange, an Astrologer should die Without one wonder in the sky Not one of all his crony stars To pay their duty at his hearse! No meteor, no eclipse appeared, No comet with a flaming beard! The sun has rose and gone to bed Just as if PATRIGE were not dead; Nor hid himself behind the moon To make a dreadful night at noon. He at fit periods walks through Aries, Howe'er our earthly motion varies; ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... down the road and proceeded from a pillar of dust which was approaching the house with reasonable rapidity. Presently the road changed from a trough of dust into a ribbon of greensward. The cloud dissipated itself, streaming away like the tail of a comet, and a ponderous and much begilt coach, drawn by six horses, their manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and outriders in gorgeous livery at the heads of each pair, rolled, or rather bumped into sight. With a seasick motion it undulated over the green acclivities ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... comet has just been discovered, situated in one of the feet of Cassiopea. It is invisible to the naked eye, and appears approaching the pole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... the remark so cosmic, everything is. But that is by the way. I was my uncle's nephew, and my uncle was no less a person than Edward Ponderevo, whose comet-like transit of the financial heavens happened—it is now ten years ago! Do you remember the days of Ponderevo, the great days, I mean, of Ponderevo? Perhaps you had a trifle in some world-shaking enterprise! Then you know him only too well. Astraddle on Tono-Bungay, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... each one tied with a colored ribbon, and often tucked behind his ears. Some of the writers of that day declared that the sight of this beard would create more terror in any port of the American seaboard than would the sudden appearance of a fiery comet. Across his brawny breast he carried a sort of a sling in which hung not less than three pairs of pistols in leathern holsters, and these, in addition to his cutlass and a knife or two in his belt, made him a ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... millions will one day perish! Look at the poisonous soil of the equator, at those putrid slimy tracks, teeming with horrid monsters, the enemies of the human race; look next at the sandy continent, scorched perhaps by the fatal approach of some ancient comet, now the abode of desolation. Examine the rains, the convulsive storms of those climates, where masses of sulphur, bitumen, and electrical fire, combining their dreadful powers, are incessantly ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... own way. This is what Paganini had done, and through this course had been able to form a style so peculiarly his own. It is not probable that De Beriot at this time knew much about Paganini; certainly he had never heard him. Paganini was at first looked on as a mere comet of extraordinary brilliancy, without much soundness or true genius, and many who afterward became his most ardent admirers began with sneering at his pretensions. De Beriot was in later years undoubtedly powerfully influenced by Paganini, but at the time of which we speak the young ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... the ladies of Zion because they don't want to look like dowdies, you remember: 'Tremble, ye women that are at ease, strip you and make you bare and gird sackcloth upon your loins.' And off he went like a comet, with the fashionable woman for his tail. If matrimony nowadays didn't always mean monogamy, who was chiefly to blame? Men were generally as pure as women required that they should be; and if the lives of men were bad it was often because women ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... chauffeur let the machine out. Over the deserted plains it tore, comet-like, a meteor preceded by a streamer of light. It swung to the banked curves with no slackening of momentum; it devoured the tangents hungrily; the night wind roared past, drowning all other sounds. Crouched immovably in his seat, the driver scanned the causeway that leaped into view and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... of the present article was born not far from the year 1810. Whether or no any comet or other unusual heavenly phenomenon heralded his entrance upon the scenes of earth, is not recorded. If, however, the astronomical appearances which are said to accompany the birth of the mighty ones of the sons of earth are gauged ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... to keep caution keen and prevent giddiness. In spite of myself I reached the little ledge, got my heels well set, and worked sidewise twenty or thirty feet to a point close to the out-plunging current. Here the view is perfectly free down into the heart of the bright irised throng of comet-like streamers into which the whole ponderous volume of the fall separates, two or three hundred feet below the brow. So glorious a display of pure wildness, acting at close range while cut off from all the world beside, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... a vassal who would fain hold land without owning a lord, and who goeth against the fealty and homage due from him and his predecessors?" The answer was, that the lord ought in that case to take back the fief as his own property. "As my name is Louis," said the king, "the Comet of La Marche doth claim to hold land in such wise, land which hath been a fief of France since the days of the valiant King Clovis, who won all Aquitaine from King Alaric, a pagan without faith or creed, and all the country to the Pyrenean ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit: 60 Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life. Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin, The cabinet of a richer soul within? No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corpse might seem a constellation. Oh! had he died of old, how great a strife Had been, who from his death should draw their life! Who should, by one rich draught, become ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... be involved in Scottish affairs. After his departure from his country, omens and prodigies had ensued. A comet appeared in November-December 1556. Next year some corn-stacks were destroyed by lightning. Worse, a calf with two heads was born, and was exhibited as a warning to Mary of Guise by Robert Ormistoun. The idolatress merely sneered, and said "it was but a ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... land, the savage derives from them an intensely realised perception of diabolical presence. In the darkness of the night; amid the yawning chasms and the wild echoes of the mountain gorge; under the blaze of the comet or the solemn gloom of the eclipse; when famine has blasted the land; when the earthquake and the pestilence have slaughtered their thousands; in every form of disease which refracts and distorts ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... stronger than was indicated. The great majority of cometary orbits are classed as parabolic; and it is ordinarily inferred that they are visitors from remote space, and will never return. But are they rightly classed as parabolic? Observations on a comet moving in an extremely eccentric ellipse, which are possible only when it is comparatively near perihelion, must fail to distinguish its orbit from a parabola. Evidently, then, it is not safe to class it as a parabola because of inability to detect the elements of an ellipse. But ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... a player has all his satellites taken, he then becomes a Comet, and can shoot from any part of any of the orbits every ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... wary footsteps ahead, and saw a figure rise up and go into the bows, marked by a faint, comet-like streak of light which must be the man's cigarette. The spot of light disappeared for a second and reappeared again in a swift, descending arc cut off by the bows. The smoker had thrown ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... orator, was born at Paris on the 15th of September 1736. Originally intended for the profession of a painter, he preferred writing tragedies until attracted to science by the influence of Nicolas de Lacaille. He calculated an orbit for the comet of 1759 (Halley's), reduced Lacaille's observations of 515 zodiacal stars, and was, in 1763, elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. His Essai sur la theorie des satellites de Jupiter (1766), an expansion of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... did I ever again meet Mr. Owen or any of his people. I believe, however, that they reached Durban safely and sailed away in a ship called the Comet. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... the temporal. That which we call reason and science changes like the coats and ties of men. Material science talks loud, its eyes empty, clutching at one restless comet and missing the universe. That thing known as psychology taught to-day in colleges will become even for your generation a curio, sacred only for the preservation of humour. No purpose that confines itself to matter can become a constructive effect, for matter breaks down, is continually ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... of the sky, throwing her silver mantle overnight's sable form, performs her varied evolutions without "variableness or shadow of turning." Every planet and every star has its fixed place assigned it, and even the fiery comet has its appointed orbit, and the man of science can tell the exact time of its appearance, and the course it will run, and now it is accounted for by the laws of nature, rather than regarded as a fearful herald of war or devastation; and even the meteor ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... wine, etc., to the Portuguese, who expressed their thanks verbally, saying "they had no paper or ink." They promised to do no wrong to the natives, at the request of Goyti, "because they were vassals of his majesty, and our friends." A comet seen next day "nearly above the town of Zebu," was taken by the soldiers as an omen of war and bloodshed. Affairs with the natives continued to improve steadily, and several chiefs came to offer themselves as vassals to the governor, promising to pay tribute. The Moro interpreter, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... was terrible! I am afraid even to think of it again. Black, black—oh, thou art black like the everlasting night! I only looked on thee for one dreadful instant. The blaze of the fire fell on your features—you looked like the awful night when a comet swings fearfully into our ken— oh, then I closed my eyes—I could not look on you any more. Black as the threatening storm-cloud, black as the shoreless sea with the spectral red tint of ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... "as you say? I wish to heaven he would not shine till morning! But bid my women form the milky way. Hence, my old comet! give the stars due warning—[ft] And, Christian! mingle with them as you may, And as you'd have me pardon your past scorning——-" Here they were interrupted by a humming Sound, and then by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of impassioned oratory felt the joy which the astronomer knows "when a new comet swims into his ken" in the appearance of a brilliant political orator, of masterly talent and more masterly will. This still young man of Hebraic origin, rather dashing and flashing in manner and dress, had not been thought to have any very ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... and pirated editions, and from America I have every reason to believe came Dr. Groschen. But if his ancestors came from Rhine or Jordan, that he received his education on the other side of the Atlantic I have no doubt. Why he came to Oxbridge I cannot say. He appeared quite suddenly, like a comet. He brought introductions from various parts of the world—from the British Embassy at Constantinople, from the British and German Schools of Archaeology at Athens, from certain French Egyptologists at Alexandria, and a holograph letter from ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... have returned to America, fancying he has seen London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Vienna, and whatever other places his body has been hurried through, not his mind; for that, in the excitement and rapidity of his flight, has streamed behind him like the tail of a comet, light, attenuated, vapory, catching ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... actually believe that if I had kept silent another hour the dreadful consciousness of guilt would have swelled within me to such a bulk as to have burst me into fragments, which would now be travelling around aimlessly in space, like the lost Pleiad, or like the dismembered and stray tail of a comet. So I called my next neighbor, Rush, out behind his barn, and, under oath of secrecy, revealed the good news to him, and then I did likewise by neighbor Tiltman, and so on, in seemly progression, by all the other neighbors, until at last ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... the trees, than pearls of great price begin to fall from the lips of the wise men of the east, and north, and west, and south; and anybody may have them by the bushel, for the picking up. Now, whether the comet has this year had a quickening influence on this crop, as it is by some supposed to have had upon the corn-harvest and the vintage, I do not know; but I do know that I have never observed the columns of the newspapers to groan so heavily ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own horizon—from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... was just as important to him as the tail of a comet; more important, if it could be turned into a joke. Look at the back of his mind and you will always see the same thing: horror of a fact. That is what lies before you, Denis, if, in a world of facts, you ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... chiaroscuro. This large, bright, comprehensive picture made a very deep impression upon me, not exactly as a work of art, but as a brilliant natural specimen. I was pleased to have seen it, as I was pleased to have seen the comet, and the whale which was brought to our front door on a truck. It was a prominent addition to ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Schnipp the governess? Certainly her plans and arrangements always turned out well, but still it became tiresome sometimes. Jackie grew restive. He had a quarrel with Mary, who flew down the garden in a rage, her hair streaming behind her like the tail of an angry comet. But it did not last: Jackie had a forgiving spirit, and was too fond of her to be angry long. He was always the first to make up a dispute, so that Mary was not at all surprised to see him soon afterwards waiting outside the vicarage door in a high state of excitement. He was going ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... one may look at this complete darkness and not note the dancing lights in it. After you see them, the glint of the fireflies flitting hither and thither, starring the meadows as thickly as distant suns star the sky, making a milky way of the brookside and flashing comet-like along the dry upland, is singularly vivid. They sparkle, these northern fireflies of ours, with a dainty glint that merely emphasizes the darkness. Now and then you may see the larva of one of these, which is the glow-worm beside the path. You ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a comet, with a very long tail. The superstitious thought my appearance to be significant of some coming misfortune. Some draughtsmen took my figure, as far as they could descry it, so that when I landed I found paintings of myself, and engravings ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... transparent substance, hard as the hardest rock and as transparent as air in the light of my electric lamps. My shell rested securely upon this substance. I walked upon it. It seemed as if I could see miles below me. In my opinion, Margaret, that substance was once the head of a comet." ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... took it for a jest: Partridge is dead; nay more, he dy'd, Ere he could prove the good 'squire ly'd. Strange, an astrologer should die Without one wonder in the sky; Not one of all his crony stars To pay their duty at his hearse! No meteor, no eclipse appear'd! No comet with a flaming beard! The sun hath rose and gone to bed, Just as if Partridge were not dead; Nor hid himself behind the moon To make a dreadful night at noon. He at fit periods walks through Aries, Howe'er our earthly ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... such navigation would have thought it folly our attempting to ascend; but a second glance would prove that our Indians had not acted rashly. In the centre of the impetuous current a large rock rose above the surface, and from its lower end a long eddy ran like the tail of a comet for about twenty yards down the river. It was just opposite this rock that we entered the rapid, and paddled for it with all our might. The current, however, as I said before, swept us down; and when we got to the middle of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... did not they stay there?" "Oh, then reappeared 'la petite trahison,'" and so they go on, and well do they deserve, and heartily do I wish, to have their pride and impudence lowered. But when I see what war is, when I see the devastation this comet bears in its sweeping tail, its dreadful impartiality involving alike the innocent and the guilty, I should be very sorry if it depended on me to pronounce sentence, or cry "havoc and ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... slope like a runaway comet, now wholly out of control, the powerful gray car leaped ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Dereham, from which indeed he departed in his eighth year. There are, however, interesting references to his memories of the place in Lavengro. The first is where he recalls to his author friend, who had offered him comet wine of 1811, his recollection of gazing at the comet from the market-place of 'pretty D——' in 1811.[23] The second reference is when he goes to church with the gypsies and dreams of an incident ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... mysterious manner, convoyed these 57 atoms to the museum by car without mishap and who apparently did not dread the necessity of getting them back again, although to the uninitiated it appeared a task beside which grasping a comet by the tail ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... from foreign service, clung to the chains of the as yet imperfectly disciplined man-of-war. As the two men who had been lowered in the boat hooked her, when afloat, along to the gangway, Israel dropped like a comet into the stern-sheets, stumbled forward, and seized an oar. In a moment more, all the oarsmen were in their places, and with a few strokes the boat lay ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motion—or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve—with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... clustering trees—green like the trees in stage scenery—could be vaguely discerned. To and fro, across the Pont des Invalides, gleaming lights flashed without ceasing; far below, across a band of denser gloom, appeared a marvellous train of comet-like coruscations, from whose lustrous tails fell a rain of gold. These were the reflections in the Seine's black waters of the lamps on the bridge. From this point, however, the unknown began. The long curve of the river was merely described by a double line of lights, which ever and ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... as brilliant as a comet, and almost as erratic. Without research or mental discipline, he could electrify an audience beyond all living men, and arouse in the minds of those who heard him ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability." There may be some hope of a large improvement, but otherwise he would "welcome a kindly comet to sweep the whole affair away." And he came to the final conclusion that such an improvement could only set in by deliberately resisting, instead of co-operating with, the processes of nature. "Social progress ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... [Footnote 610: This comet, as well as one which appeared the year in which Claudius died, is described by Seneca, Natural. Quaest. VII. c. xvii. and xix. and by Pliny, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... by the light of the Comet-King's tail!" And he tower'd with pride as he spoke, "If again with these magical colours I fail, The crater of Etna shall hence be my jail, And my food shall ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... nay, the darts of undeserved censure may pierce an innocent tender bosom through with many sorrows; but these are all exceptions to general rules. And it is according to these common laws that human behaviour ought to be regulated. The eccentric orbit of the comet never influences astronomical calculations respecting the invariable order established in the motion of the principal bodies ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... carriage to-night, but the man who had to clean it. For, although we were shooting along at a terrible rate, the train would not stop to set us down, but would cast us loose a mile from our station; and some minutes after it had shot by like an infernal comet of darkness, our carriage would trot gently up to the platform, as if it had come from London all on its own hook—and ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... music dies not, nor can ever die, Blown 'round the world by every wandering wind, The comet, lessening in the midnight sky, Still leaves its trail of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... myself I had exposed my own deceit: was I so utterly unversed in the heavenly politics as not to know that this person described herself fully as having been born four years previous to the date I had given him, in the year of the eclipse, which was moreover a comet-year and one in which Uranus usurped the throne of reigning planets, and breaking all bounds, shadowed that fateful season? That Aquarius, drawn by him, had imposed himself, too, and affected the very Moon in her courses? Indeed she would be an unbelievable person, that one! But assuredly ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... time—which was true,—and assured him that when the spots came back, the comets would come with them. Some time after he got a letter {46} from Pons, who informed him with great satisfaction that he was quite right, that very large spots had appeared on the sun, and that he had found a fine comet shortly after. I do not vouch for the first story, but I have the second in Zach's handwriting. It would mend the joke exceedingly if some day a real relation should be established between comets and solar spots: of late years good reason has been shown for advancing a connection ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... appeared amongst us like a comet," put in the ubiquitous Mr. Manners, "and, I fear, intends to disappear ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... feel. The wind blows violently, and soon the poor little boy sleeps quietly. A frightful noise awakens him. Jack starts up and sees something monstrous—a howling, snorting beast, with two fiery eyes that send forth a shower of sparks. The creature dashed past, leaving behind him a train like a comet's tail. A grove of trees, quite unsuspected by Jack, suddenly flashed out clearly; each leaf could have been counted. Not until this apparition was far away, and nothing of it was visible save a small green light, did Jack know that it was the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... years considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild fancies had been, of late days, strangely rife among mankind; and, although it was only with a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was generally received with I know not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the hotel where he was "raised," (papa is getting quite a Yankee), to which he replied, "in Ireland." I slept, wonderful to say, through part of our journey here, in one of those most uncomfortable cars, but woke up as we approached the station. The night was splendid (we had seen the comet at Rochester), and the moon was so bright as to make it almost as light as day; you may imagine our excitement when we saw, in the distance, rising above the trees, a light cloud of mist ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... Juan' his soliloquy when half-drunk; the 'Corsair' would have made a splendid episode in an epic—but the epic, where is it? and 'Cain,' his most creative work, though a distinct and new world, is a bright and terrible abortion—a comet, instead of a sun. So, too, are the leading works of poor Shelley, which resemble Southey in size, Byron in power of language, and himself only in spirit and imagination, in beauties and faults. Keats, like ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... given it the name by which it is chiefly known—the Sappho comet, or bar-tailed humming-bird. It is a migratory bird, seldom, however, found so far north. It is a native of Bolivia, where it is found in gardens, and near the abodes of men, of whom it seems to have no fear. In the winter it flies ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... measures were resorted to. From cities reeking with putrefying filth it was thought that the plague might be stayed by the prayers of the priests, by them rain and dry weather might be secured, and deliverance obtained from the baleful influences of eclipses and comets. But when Halley's comet came, in 1456, so tremendous was its apparition that it was necessary for the pope himself to interfere. He exorcised and expelled it from the skies. It slunk away into the abysses of space, terror-stricken by the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... is a kind of astronomical parody on the planet. Comets look some like planets, but they are thinner and do not hurt so hard when they hit anybody as a planet does. The comet was so called because it had hair on it, I believe, but late years the bald-headed comet is giving just as ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... into almost awful joy at beholding a mortal goddess! The house was crowded with hundreds more than it could hold, with thousands of admiring spectators who went away without a sight. This extraordinary phenomenon of tragic excellence! this star of Melpomene! this comet of the stage! this sun of the firmament of the Muses! this moon of blank verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned dagger! this empress of pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakespeare! this world of weeping ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... and see what good old Brownie's put by for us," said Norah, disappearing towards the house like a small comet. ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the free spirit of mankind at length Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's untamed strength, Or curb its swiftness in the forward race? Far, like the comet's way through infinite space, Stretches the long untraveled path of light Into the depths of ages; we may trace Distant, the brightening glory of its flight, Till the receding rays are lost to ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... philosophy of Poetry is not necessary to its existence any more than the astronomy of the heavens is to the brilliancy of the sun or to the splendors of a comet. A Poet is a creator, and his most perfect creature is a portraiture of any work of God or man; of any attribute of God or man in perfect keeping with Nature or with the original prototype, be it in fact or in fiction, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... minuuntur et disparent, [3091]Blancanus holds they come and go by fits, casting their tails still from the sun: some of them, as a burning-glass, projects the sunbeams from it; though not always neither: for sometimes a comet casts his tail from Venus, as Tycho observes. And as [3092]Helisaeus Roeslin of some others, from the moon, with little stars about them ad stuporem astronomorum; cum multis aliis in coelo miraculis, all which argue with those Medicean, Austrian, and Burbonian ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... consistent with healthy manhood of mind, and which seems growing, as is testified by the "Angel World"—that there is a great gulf between the powers it indicates, and the task of leading the age—and that, on the whole, it is rather a prodigious comet in the poetical heavens, than either a still, calm luminary, or even the curdling of a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... so. A thorough sportsman, whether showing forth in the "park" at Melton, whipping a trout-stream in Wales, or filling a country-house with black cock and moor-fowl; an unexceptionable judge of all the good things in life, from a pretty ancle to a well hung tilbury—from the odds at hazard to the "Comet vintage." Such, in brief, was Tom. Now his confrere was none of these; he had been drafted from the Galway militia to the line, for some election services rendered by his family to the government candidate; ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... there must always be "something in it": either a mitten for him, or a disappointment for her, or wedding-cake for all—generally and preferably, of course, the wedding-cake;—and belonging to such friendship as lawfully as a tail belongs to a comet, was a great, wide-spreading area of gossip. It was only in the case of Phebe Lane that this universal and common-sense rule had its one particular and unreasonable exception; and it was acting upon a speedily acquired knowledge of this by-law, that ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... careful cultivation. We have long since ceased to believe that we are living in a realm of chance. So clear and exact are nature's laws that we forecast, scores of years in advance, the appearance of a certain comet and foretell to the minute an eclipse of the Sun. And we understand this law of cause and effect in all our material realms. We do not plant potatoes and expect to pluck hyacinths. The law is universal: ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... but elaborately illustrated. Thus, in Flammariou's "History of the Heavens," there is a picture representing six astronomers in eastern garb, perched in uncomfortable attitudes on the uppermost steps of a pyramid, whence they are staring hard at a comet, naturally without the slightest opportunity of determining its true position in the sky, since they have no direction lines of any sort for their guidance. Apart from this, their attention is very properly directed in great part to the necessity of preserving their equilibrium. In only one ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... baleful comet die, The brood of blazing Sirius fly: God's orb shall quench their sultry heats And drive ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... shadowy mountain ranges of softest color, that melted up into the tender blue of the April sky. And right in the east a full moon wuz sailin', lookin' down tenderly on Josiah and me and the babe—and Jonesville and the world. And the comet sot there up in the sky like a silent ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... conventions of society and six feet of mahogany kept them separated more effectually than miles of country. They smiled and nodded, however, and Dacre raised his glass of wine, and the two pledged each other's health in some old comet claret ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... will be glad to see you. She has been glad always to see a letter with the Edinburgh postmark. James Sinclair is waiting for advices, so 'good-bye' until we meet at Meriton. Just tell MacRoy to let us have a bottle of the 'comet' [Footnote: Comet wine, that of 1811, the year of the comet, and the best vintage on record; famed for its delicate aroma.] Madeira tonight. The occasion will excuse it." Allan felt grateful, for he knew what the order really meant—it was the wine of homecoming, ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... from that vast height downward; while the fire within its bosom, instead of being put out, burned fiercer than ever, and quickly began to consume the dead carcase. Thus it fell out of the sky, all a-flame, and (it being nightfall before it reached the earth) was mistaken for a shooting star or a comet. But at early sunrise, some cottager's were going to their day's labour, and saw, to their astonishment, that several acres of ground were strewn with black ashes. In the middle of a field there was a heap of whitened bones, a great deal higher ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken; and besides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I cannot bring myself to think was made for nothing. If certain things, which seem to me ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have a mission! ay, even a political mission of immense importance! which they will best fulfil by moving in the sphere assigned them by Providence: not comet-like, wandering in irregular orbits, dazzling indeed by their brilliancy, but terrifying by their eccentric movements and doubtful utility. That the sphere in which they are required to move is no mean one, and that its apparent contraction arises only from a defect of intellectual ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... showing the relative positions and movements of the earth, sun and moon. What governs the tide? What causes an eclipse? What is a comet, a shooting ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... "Bless'd be thy labors, most adventurous Bozzy, Bold rival of Sir John and Dame Piozzi; Heavens! with what laurels shall thy head be crown'd! A grove, a forest, shall thy ears surround! Yes! whilst the Rambler shall a comet blaze, And gild a world of darkness with his rays, Thee, too, that world with wonderment shall hail, A lively, bouncing ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... how poor sinners will feel in the day of judgment when they will be standing awaiting their doom, knowing that the wrath of God rests upon them, and that they are without hope. Far more terrifying things than the passing of a comet will be happening then; and many will be crying for the rocks and mountains to fall on them to hide them from the presence of him that liveth and reigneth forever. I confess, that though I was saved, I trembled at seeing that ball of fire in its weird passage. I thought that if this ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... earth cast by the sun. But he was as one born out of due time. We are all familiar with the use made by students of unfulfilled prophecy of every extraordinary occurrence in nature, such as the sudden appearance of a comet, an earthquake, an eclipse, etc. We know how mysteriously they interpret those simple passages in the Bible about the sun being darkened and the moon being turned into blood. If they were not wilfully blind, such facts as are established by the following quotations would open ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... not for human utterance now, and we sat together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the coming of the fiery comet that they know is ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... along the haw-and-holly-lined roads of the wonderful southern counties. They would scuttle on ahead of us, weaving in and out of the hedgerows; and finally, when we insisted on it and flung pebbles at them to emphasize our desires, they would get up, with a great drumming of wings and a fine comet-like display of flowing tailfeathers on the part of the cock birds, and go booming away to what passes in Sussex and Kent for dense cover—meaning by that thickets such as you may find in the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... saying last year, when the saddle-shaped comet appeared, that it came to foretell a war with the Moors!" she ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... Co., successors to Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, the mark, of which M. Werl and his son are the sole proprietors, still remaining "Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin," while the corks of the bottles are branded with the words "V. Clicquot-P. Werl," encircling the figure of a comet. The style of the wine—light, delicate, elegant, and fragrant—is familiar to all connoisseurs of champagne. What, however, is not equally well known is that within the last few years the firm, in obedience to the prevailing ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... thunder, And saw the glare of a comet Holding its destined way To an undiscovered day, And its tresses ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... the light that they need in the unchanging feelings of all. The truest man will never be he who desires to be other than man. How many there are that thus waste their lives, scouring the heavens for sight of the comet that never will come; but disdaining to look at the stars, because these can be seen by all, and, moreover, are countless in number! This craving for the extraordinary is often the special weakness of ordinary men, who fail to perceive that ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... is occasionally seen is Kamehameha's large war god, from his temple in Hawaii, that even in his lifetime would leave its pedestal and thrash among the trees like a lost comet. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... journeys at sunset that I was always over-powered by unique impressions. During the first part of our stay in the September of that year we saw on one of these occasions the marvellous apparition of the great comet, which at that time was at its highest brilliancy, and was generally said to ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Like a fiery comet bristling, Rose the young man's hair, And, poor soul! he fell a-whistling Out of sheer despair. Down the gloomy street in silence, Savage-calm he goes; But he did no deed of vi'lence— Only blew ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the confidence of China. Boxerism and students of the Government Reform Movement. Author's impressions formed within the danger zone. More Boxerism in China than we know of. Causes of the Chao-t'ong Rebellion. Halley's Comet brings things to a climax. Start of the rioting. Arrival of the military. Number of the rebels. They hold three impregnable positions, and block the main roads. European ladies travel to the city in the dead of night. A new ch'en-tai takes the matter in hand. Rumors and suspense. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... have fortunately Halley's Comet in the Bayeux Tapestry for our familiar 1066; but beware! everything before that is to be ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... picked up Sard's trail. It led to a dealer in automobiles. Sard had bought a Comet Six, paying cash, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... which threatened to turn the continent into an unpeopled wilderness. For year after year there were signs in the sky, on the earth, in the air, all indicative, as men thought, of some terrible coming event. In 1337 a great comet appeared in the heavens, its far-extending tail sowing deep dread in the minds of the ignorant masses. During the three succeeding years the land was visited by enormous flying armies of locusts, which descended in myriads upon the fields, and left the shadow of famine in their track. In ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... rhythmics, that sophism of sophisms. I am the author of the Mystery which was presented to-day with great triumph and a great concourse of populace, in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice. I have also made a book which will contain six hundred pages, on the wonderful comet of 1465, which sent one man mad. I have enjoyed still other successes. Being somewhat of an artillery carpenter, I lent a hand to Jean Mangue's great bombard, which burst, as you know, on the day when it was tested, on the Pont de Charenton, and killed four and twenty curious spectators. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Band Club House, at Burlington, said he arrived there at daylight on the morning of the 5th, and he still held the pieces of dress, but the whole back of his coat was burned off, and the suspenders just held by a thread. He said the comet struck the earth at Racine, at 9:30 the night before, and knocked the town into the lake, and he and another fellow ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... have planted four of Mr. Gellatly's varieties, namely Craig, Brag, Comet and Holder, as well as Barcelona, Cosford, Medium Long and Buchanan. Craig and Brag are the only ones which have borne. Trees of those varieties planted in 1942 bore their first crop in 1946. They have very few nuts on them this ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... of this extraordinary man's life by an account of the cause why he was denominated Black Beard. He derived this name from his long black beard, which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face, and terrified all America more than any comet that had ever appeared. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbon in small quantities, and turn them about his ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols. He stuck lighted matches under his hat, which appeared on both sides of his face ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... we went on board the bark Comet. Farewells were said; our visit at these islands was ended; and we ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... obedience; and I'll keep my word, even if there should be a comet. I'll go and buy the horse, and then I shall be ready to take the ring-fence as ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... end of the Confederate line told him that the South had won. After midnight that night he carried to the telegraph office the message in which President Davis announced the victory and, walking back through the clear, still night, saw the comet, forerunner of evil, hanging over the field, as if in recognition of a fiery spirit on earth akin to its own. At headquarters on Monday, the 22d, he looked out at the pouring rain and raged over the inaction which kept the victorious army ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... very summit of the hill. I called the attention of my men to it, and they too thought it merely a fire; but a few minutes afterwards, as we got farther off shore, the light rose clear up above the ridge of the hill, and some faint clouds clearing away from it, discovered the magnificent comet which was at the same time, astonishing all Europe. The nucleus presented to the naked eye a distinct disc of brilliant white light, from which the tail rose at an angle of about 30 deg. or 35 deg. with the horizon, curving slightly ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... imagine to the contrary, specially some Astrologers, knowing of the Eclipse of the Sunne which we saw the same yeere before in our voyage thitherward, which vnto them appeared very terrible. And also of a Comet which began to appeare but a fewe dayes before the beginning of the saide sicknesse. But to exclude them from being the speciall causes of so speciall an accident, there are further reasons then I thinke fit at this present to be ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name— Now Dasher! now Dancer! Now Prancer! now Vixen! On Comet! on Cupid! on Donder and Blixen! To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!' As the leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... human existence that his eye cannot reach them. And when they do condescend to pay us a visit, they traverse so wide a circuit that the curve they describe is too slight to furnish a basis for reliable mathematical calculations. Hence the orbit of a comet is a mystery, and the return not unfrequently a surprise. If this be true of what seem to be the unfinished or exploded worlds, that swing like airy nothings in the heavens and fringe the imperial realm of physical being, then what may not be predicated of the profounder mysteries that lie bosomed ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller |
