"Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mighty and stupendous region, and he was awe-stricken—as who shall not be?—by what he there beheld. He worshipped the unseen power, so does this man; he believed in Revelation, so does he; but with him—it is the revelation which is made in that wondrous firmament above, and in the earth beneath, and in the glories that surround us. What knowledge had Newton of geology? what of chemistry? what of the facts which they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... experience than is generally supposed. To find a landscape has been reversed by the hand that wields the duster, so that the trees stand on their heads, and the sky is as the waters that are beneath the firmament, is an experience that has been denied to few painters, and Mrs. Dixon would have found many to sympathise with her, as she stood in silent stupefaction before the portrait. Larry had been justified in his ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... curved tail that seemed to pulsate from end to end. It was so bright that it cast shadows at night, as distinct as those made by the moon. No such cometary monster had ever before been seen. People shuddered when they looked at it. It moved with amazing speed, sweeping across the firmament like a besom of destruction. Calculation showed that it was not more than 3,000,000 ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... universe of ours came into existence at no great distance of time from the present; and that the parts of which it is composed made their appearance, in a certain definite order, in the space of six natural days, in such a manner that, on the first of these days, light appeared; that, on the second, the firmament, or sky, separated the waters above, from the waters beneath the firmament; that, on the third day, the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon it a varied vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its appearance; that the fourth day was signalised ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... the great Cat [i.e., Ra] himself, and therefore in his name which I bear, I can tread on all my enemies. O great Ra, who climbest the heavenly vaults and who sailest in thy boat across the firmament with undisputed authority, do thou save me from that austere god whose eyebrows are as menacing as the balance that weighs the deeds of men. Save me, I pray thee, from these guardians of the passages who ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... arraigned the reason, the heart and the knowledge of the race against Jesus Christ and His religion. They stretched Galileo on the rack for inventing a telescope which gave new beauty to the psalm, 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... sea of gold and crystal described by the prophet; and its warm orange hues so harmonized with those of the sky, that, passing over the dimly-defined line of demarcation, the whole upper and nether expanse seemed but one glorious firmament, with the dark Ailsa, like a thunder-cloud, sleeping in the midst. The sun was hastening to his setting, and threw his strong red light on the wall of rock which, loftier and more imposing than the walls ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... missionary? "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." Is God not preparing the world for missions which will embrace the whole of Adam's family? The gallant steamships circumnavigate the globe. Emigration is going on at a rate to which the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... looked down at the luminous dial of his wrist watch. The two resumed their vigil, and there was quietness between them. For some time they lost themselves in the sparkling glory of the firmament, hardly moving, except to pull closer the collars of their flannel shirts against the increasing coldness of the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... gold-colored cloudlets in all their primeval beauty, Ushered the bright orb of day to his task well appointed, Like a bevy of beautifal girls in the court of their monarch, Or a regiment of soldiers all bright in new rose-colored armour. Two altars arose between earth and the cloud-speckled firmament; Cain walked in a stern and defiant advance to his altar, A recklessness flashed from his eyes, and passions unconquered, As he scornfully looked on the kneeling, worshipping Abel, Ay scornfully thus he addressed his young ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... in thy narrow banks are pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... lay over the forest-clad mountains, there was a stillness over everything, but not the quiet of sleep. It seemed as though all nature retained her breath, as if she felt disposed to allow her image to be imprinted upon the firmament. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... found on modern shores; the hardened sea-sands of the oldest epochs show ripple-marks, such as may now be found on every sandy coast; nay, more, the pits left by ancient rain-drops prove that even in the very earliest ages, the "bow in the clouds" must have adorned the palaeozoic firmament. So that if we could reverse the legend of the Seven Sleepers,—if we could sleep back through the past, and awake a million ages before our own epoch, in the midst of the earliest geologic times,—there is no reason to believe that sea, or sky, or the aspect of the land would ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... As the question perpetually recurred to their minds, 'Where is he who abideth forever?' they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which changes, and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of heaven. That never changed, that was always the same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The Almighty Father must be there, unchangeable in the unchangeable heaven; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... quenched full, And the torn members of her hideous corpse; Of lying prophets, the confounded crew, And flames upon the altar fall'n from heaven; Elijah speaking like a potentate Unto the elements, the firmament As heated brass becoming, closed by him; The earth three years without both rain and dew; The dead reviving at Elisha's voice? O, Abner, own in these transcendant deeds, A God such as He was throughout all time. Who knoweth, when He wills, to show His glory, His ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... mountain it is night. The sky is glued to the edges of the outer earth. It consists of four high walls which meet in a concave roof, so that the earth is the floor of the universe. There is an ocean on the other side of the sky, constituting the "waters that are above the firmament." The space between the celestial ocean and the ultimate roof of the universe belongs to the blest. The space between the earth and sky is inhabited by the angels. Finally, since St. Paul said that all men are made to live upon the "face of the earth" how could ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... from it would be able to deduce the longitude by the hour angle. The sun would be made his counselor each day. The moon—the planets would say to him, "There, on that point of the ocean, is thy ship!" That firmament, on which the stars move like the hands of a perfect clock, which nothing shakes nor can derange, and whose accuracy is absolute—that firmament would tell him the hours and the distances. By astronomical observations he would ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... The brilliant sun, rising in a flood of light, pierces through the thin haze of morning, converting the countless myriads of dewdrops that hang on tree and bush into sparkling diamonds, and burnishing the motionless flood of water, till a new and mighty firmament is reflected in the wave; as if Nature, rising early from her couch, paused to gaze with admiration on her resplendent image reflected in the depths of her own matchless mirror. The profound stillness, too, broken only by the measured sweep of the oars, fills ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... ripened at last, and Greece had many of her claims allowed. Thus in reorganizing the communities of the world the personal factor played a predominant part. Venizelos was, so to say, a fixed star in the firmament, and his light burned bright through every rift in the clouds. His moderation astonished friends and opponents. Every one admired his expose of his case as a masterpiece. His statesman-like setting, in perspective, the readiness with which he put himself in the place of his competitor and struck ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... consider me now as speaking of features only, for as to form, alas, that is under such a total crinoline eclipse that this season of total darkness in fashion's firmament forbids any speculation on that subject. The reign of crinoline amplitude is not only not removed, but is more dominant than ever. Who could have predicted that, because an heir to the French throne was in expectancy, all womankind, old and young, would so far sympathize ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... with them,—a man who has found out that there are plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world,—above all, who has found out, by living into the pith and core of life, that all of thy Deity which can be folded up between the sheets of any human book is to the Deity of the firmament, of the strata, of the hot aortic flood of throbbing human life, of this infinite, instantaneous consciousness in which the soul's being consists,—an incandescent point in the filament connecting the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... teaches us the causes of things. Mysteries, hitherto hidden both in the garden and in the field, and in the heaven and in the air, lie unfolded to our view. Every walk we take, while the surface of the earth remains as it is, and the canopy of the firmament is spread over us, gives its the opportunity, in all the innumerable objects presented to our view, of almost endless investigation and delight. And the deeper we go into the hidden things of nature, and the more we unfold ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... was scarcely a space in the firmament which was not filled at every instant with these falling stars, nor on it could you in general perceive any particular difference in appearance; still at times they seemed to shower down in groups—calling ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... all interest and meaning; nowhere is there advance or retrogression, nowhere better or worse, nowhere sense or consistency at all. Systems, however imposing, structures, however vast, fly into dust and powder at a touch. The stars fall from the human firmament; the beacon-lights dance like will-o'-the-wisps; the whole universe of history opens, cracks, and dissolves in smoke; and we, from an ever-vanishing shore, gaze with impotent eyes at the last gleam on the wings of the dove of Reason ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... order of the variable winds. How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and nothing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the mist rolls up, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... patcher repatched," and the book professed to be "a complete Resartus philosophy of clothes." Since everything wears clothes of some kind (the soul wears a body, and the body garments; earth puts forth grass, and the firmament stars; ideas clothe themselves in words; society puts on fashions and habits), it can be seen that Carlyle felt free to bring in any subject he pleased; and so he did. Moreover, in order to have liberty of style, he represented himself to be the editor ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... luxury. To own the thing which is not vulgarized by the two thousand wealthy citizens whose notion of luxury is the lavish display of the splendors that shops can supply, is the stamp of true luxury —the luxury of the fine gentlemen of the day, the shooting stars of the Paris firmament. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of the female character and intellect; not wholly new to him, yet now renewed and fortified. It was from the lips of Mary Ashburton, that the revelation came. Her form arose, like a tremulous evening star, in the firmament of his soul. He conversed with her; and with her alone; and knew not when to go. All others were to him as if they were not there. He saw their forms, but saw them as the forms of inanimate things. At length her mother came; and Flemming beheld in her but another Mary Ashburton, with ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... perhaps not generally known," wrote Miss Blivens, "that the honour of having discovered this latest luminary in the stellar firmament should be credited to Director Howard Henshaw of the Victor forces. Indeed, I had not known this myself until the day I casually mentioned the Gills in his presence. I lingered on a set of Island Love, at present being filmed by this master of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... hour is yet too early for the great performance. The frogs are only beginning to feel a little lively. It is when the sun has gone quite down, and the stars begin to twinkle upon the water, that the ball really opens. Then the gay tumult seems to extinguish every other sound, and to fill the firmament. Oh! they must have a high time of it, these little green-backed frogs that make so much noise throughout the warm nights of June. Sometimes I creep into my canoe and paddle by the light of moon or stars as noiselessly as I can along the fringe of sedges and flags and bullrushes, hoping ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... his own province or city, neither knows nor hears of him—but say they did, what's a city to a kingdom, a kingdom to Europe, Europe to the world, the world itself that must have an end, if compared to the least visible star in the firmament, eighteen times bigger than it? and then if those stars be infinite, and every star there be a sun, as some will, and as this sun of ours hath his planets about him, all inhabited, what proportion bear we to them, and where's our glory? Orbem terrarum victor Romanus habebat, as he cracked ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... when it began to become dark, we walked on the terrace to enjoy the appearance of the firmament, glittering with ten million stars; to which a slight touch of early frost gave tenfold lustre. As we gazed on this splendid scene, Miss Geddes, I think, was the first to point out to our admiration a shooting or falling star, which, she said, drew ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of the emperour Anastasius, and in the sixteenth yeare of Clodoueus king of the Frenchmen. The cause why he was surnamed Pendragon, was, for that Merline the great prophet likened him to a dragons head, that at the time of his natiuitie maruelouslie appeared in the firmament at the corner of a blasing star, as is reported. But others supposed he was so called of his wisedome and serpentine subtiltie, or for that he gaue the dragons head in his banner. This Vter, hearing that the Saxons with their capteins Occa or Otta ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... with tremendous discords and strange modulations; but before it closes, the music relates the beauties of the newly created earth springing up "at God's command." Raphael describes the making of the firmament, the raging of the storms, the flashing lightning and rolling thunders, the showers of rain and hail, and the gently falling snow, to an accompaniment which is closely imitative in character. The work of the second day forms ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... height Aurora's face Shines brighter than a star, As stepping forth in dewy grace, The gates of day unbar; And lo! the firmament, the hills, And the vales that intervene— Creation's self with gladness thrills ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... with us alone. Yes, I tell you; in us will be rescued both the WOMAN and the SLAVE of these modern ages. The trial has been hard, brother; it has lasted throughout eighteen centuries; but it will last no longer. Look, my brother! see that rosy light, there in the east, gradually spreading over the firmament! Thus will rise the sun of the new emancipation—peaceful, holy, great, salutary, fruitful, filling the world with light and vivifying heat, like the day-star that will ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... wheel Revolving round this dark abode of man. Night after night, with even pace they moved. Year after year, not altering by one point, Their order, or their stations, those fixed stars In that revolving firmament. The Plough Still pointed to the Pole. Fixed in their sphere, How else explain that vast unchanging wheel? How, but by thinking all those lesser lights Were huger suns, divided from our earth By so immense a gulf that, if they moved Ten thousand leagues an hour among themselves, It would ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... itself with infinity, instead of surrendering itself up to the influence? Again they laughed—then bade each other good night, and betook themselves homeward with slow and serious pace. There might be some reason for sadness, too. That brilliant firmament probably contained infinite worlds, each full of struggling and suffering beings—of beings who had to die—for life in the stars implies that those bright worlds should also be full of graves; but all that life, like ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... the favourable breeze which was now blowing, and the smooth water which would render our voyage easy. We lost sight of the Cowlitz just as the sun sunk in the western wave. We were now gliding calmly over the starlit sea—the beautiful firmament above us shining with a splendour peculiar to the torrid zone. The boats sailed well, and ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... long before clouds appeared on the firmament, and they came, as they had come before, and as they were to come ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... [207] The firmament, being a solid mass, has paths cut out along which the stars move in their courses, just as there are channels made ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... give such reasons for all things in a treatise by itself, I shall put off its exposition till that time. After this, on the second day, he placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts, and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth, and fitted it for giving moisture and rain, and for affording the advantage of dews. On the third day he appointed the dry land to appear, with the sea itself ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Themis, stern governor of the rebellious, leader of righteous men, sceptred King of manliness, who whirl your fiery sphere among the planets in their sevenfold courses through the aether wherein your blazing steeds ever bear you above the third firmament of heaven; hear me, helper of men, giver of dauntless youth! Shed down a kindly ray from above upon my life, and strength of war, that I may be able to drive away bitter cowardice from my head and crush down the deceitful impulses of my soul. Restrain also the keen ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... which Tasso began under the roof of his friend at Naples. This work is now very little known, but it is worthy of being read, if only for the lofty dignity of its style, and the beauty of some of its descriptive parts, particularly the creation of light on the first day, and of the firmament on the second, and the episode of the Phoenix on the fifth. Its association with Milton's far grander work, as literary twins laid for a while in the same cradle, will always invest it with ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... remoteness from common life could hardly be greater if one were suddenly swept away to some far star, blazing in the firmament; or if Charon had rowed him over the mystic river and he had entered the abodes of life on the plane beyond. Even the hotel becomes an enchanted palace whose salons, luxuriously decorated, open by long windows on marble balconies overhanging the Grand ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... is broken and the earth, outworn With many parturitions, scarce creates The little lives—she who created erst All generations and gave forth at birth Enormous bodies of wild beasts of old. For never, I fancy, did a golden cord From off the firmament above let down The mortal generations to the fields; Nor sea, nor breakers pounding on the rocks Created them; but earth it was who bore— The same to-day who feeds them from herself. Besides, herself of own accord, she first The shining grains ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... few minutes; and, even as we stood watching, the pallor strengthened and spread to right and left and upward, suggesting the stealthy but rapid withdrawal of an infinite number of dark gauze curtains from the face of the firmament, until presently the eastern quadrant of the horizon became visible, the pallid sea showing like a surface of molten lead, sluggishly undulating like the coils of a sleeping snake, while overhead stretched an unbroken ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... over the valley, and the first stars glistened faintly. I dipped under the fan of water and took my stand in the hollow behind it. There was no moon, but my telescope was inclined, as it were, at a generous angle, and a section of the firmament was open before me. My heart beat fast as I ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... I gazed upon the wonderful vision the glory vanished, and the peaks became sad and grey. It was strange to be the only human being at that glacial altitude, and to descend again through a foot of untrodden snow and over sloping sheets of ice into the darkness, and to see the hill sides like a firmament of stars, each showing the place where a solitary man in his hole was delving for silver. The view, as long as I could see it, was quite awful. It looked as if one could not reach Georgetown without tumbling down a precipice. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... inuention for the good of the common-wealth; his place is powerful, while his seruice is faithfull, and his honour due in the desert of his employment. In summe, he is as a fixed planet mong the starres of the firmament, which through the clouds in the ayre, shewes the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... success from Constance, and glowing tributes from the papers. The head-lines ranged from "Suffragettes Unearth New Genius" to "Distinguished Exhibit at Home of Theodore M. Elliot." The verdict was unanimous. A new star had risen in the artistic firmament. One look at the headings, and Stefan dropped the papers in disgust, but Mary pored over them all, and found him quite willing to listen while she read eulogistic ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... radiant for miles and miles till it too was no more identity but only sea, receiving the sun, without thought, without limbs, without pain. He sprinted with the last breath he had in him to annihilation in that light lustrous firmament. Then his flung-out hand struck something firm and smooth. With the momentary twinge of a jarred toe, he stopped in the middle of a stroke, grabbed at the firm thing unthinkingly, felt it slip away from him, trod water and came ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... far distant, perhaps four or five miles away, and yet the wild heavens were aglow with strange flashing fires, the reflections of the bombs and star-shells which paled the ineffectual lights of the firmament. Battle! Schloss Szolnok, too, should see battle—his own with Goritz! But Renwick would take no ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... was white, the firmament was white, the plumage of the wind was white. The wind flew between curling drift and falling cloud, brushing all comers with its feathers of light dry snow. At the sides of the road the posts and bars of log-fences stood above the drifts; on the side of the hill ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... lifted her betwixt us and then suddenly with a soft, murmurous cry, she lifted her arms to the glory of the wide firmament above us and with shuddering sigh let them slowly fall, and with this sigh the strange, wild soul of her sped away back to the Infinite whence it ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... i. 6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... into the southern seas, helped thereto by the north wind. Finally her body was divided, like "a /masde/-fish," into two parts, one of which was made into a covering for the heavens—the "waters above the firmament" of Genesis i. 7. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... Bearwarden, "he is the right sort. When he gave that promise I knew his men would be there." They soon perceived that they had reached the void of space, for, though the sun blazed with a splendour they had never before seen, the firmament was intensely black, and the stars shone as at midnight. Here they began to change their course to a curve beginning with a spiral, by charging the Callisto apergetically, and directing the current towards the moon, to act as an aid to the lunar attraction, while ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... a few days gave me a clearer idea than I had ever had what it is to be blinded suddenly, helplessly. With a little stretch of the imagination I knew then what it must be when the great curtain shuts out suddenly the light of day, the stars, and the firmament itself. I see the blind man's eyes strain for the light, as he fearfully tries to walk his old rounds, until the unchanging blank that everywhere spreads before him stamps the reality of the dark ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... centre and source of good—is every where radiant with beauty. From the shell that lies buried in the depths of the ocean, to the twinkling star that floats in the more profound depths of the firmament—through all the forms of material and animated existence, beauty, beauty, beauty prevails! In the floral kingdom, it appears in an infinite variety—in an unstinted and even a richer profusion than in ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... gold shell,—that shell is the Ocean, Colored with gold from the glow of the morning. Saga is Spring-time, Writ on the green of the fresh springing field, with flowers for letters. Balder, the kingly, is pictured there, throned on the sun at midsummer, Which pours from the firmament riches untold,— personified goodness; For lights are the good, radiant, resplendent, but the evil are darkness. Constantly rising the sun groweth weary; the good also falter, Giddy with walking precipitous heights; sighing they downward Sink to the land of the shades,—down ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that of Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set up the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and have been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared to provoke, incense, or endamage the one for fear of the other. Nay, which is more, this sacred ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the plates appear, in their present position, nearly unnecessary; 14 and 15, for instance, in Vol. III. These are illustrations of the chapters on the Firmament in the fifth volume; but I should have had the plates disproportionately crowded at last, if I had put all that it needed in that volume; and as these two bear somewhat on various matters spoken of in the third, I placed them where they are first alluded to. The frontispiece has chief reference ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, ... ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... him on his mountain throne, Hurling the clouds together at his feet, Till Earth is hidden, lost, and swallow'd up As in the flood of waters,—and he sits Eyeing the boundless firmament above, Proud and unruffled, till his heart exclaims,— "I am a god, Heaven is my home,—the Earth ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... like instrument to the one used by Waldmeer, and through it spoke:—"Venus, one of the great stars, has been shaken from the firmament. It fell in the suburbs of Telmantio, ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... persuaded that their eternal salvation depended on their having true beliefs. Any slackness in finding out which beliefs are the true ones would have to be answered for before the throne of Almighty God, at the sure risk and peril of everlasting damnation. To what quarter in the large historic firmament can we turn our eyes with such certainty of being stirred and elevated, of thinking better of human life and the worth of those who have been most deeply penetrated by its seriousness, as to the annals of the intrepid spirits whom the protestant doctrine of indefeasible ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... of the astronomer priests was devoted to observation of the heavenly bodies, it is not surprising that they should have mapped out the apparent course of the moon and the visible planets in their nightly tour of the heavens, and that they should have divided the stars of the firmament into more or less arbitrary groups or constellations. That they did so is evidenced by various sculptured representations of constellations corresponding to signs of the zodiac which still ornament the ceilings of various ancient temples. Unfortunately the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the opening mind in the earliest stage of social life. But astronomy had not advanced farther than to present an interesting subject of contemplation to the pious mind, which could only regard the firmament as a smooth surface spread out like a curtain, or bearing some resemblance to the canopy of a spacious tent. The schools of the prophets, we may presume, were still strangers to those profound calculations which determine the distance, the magnitude, and the periodical revolutions ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... teaching, and who in themselves are great benefactors of the Negro race. The following educators have wrought much in the matter of elevating their race in all the essentials of right-living. The most conspicuous figure just now in the firmament of Negro educators is President Booker T. Washington, who has at his command both the hand and the heart of the American people. The far-reaching influences of his work at Tuskegee, Alabama, where, perhaps, more than 1,300 ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... other, but, seized Hylas like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake, that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruins of nations, and the limbs ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... as money-needs are concerned, live under a cloudless sky of summer—dreary rather and shallow, it seems to me, however lovely its blue light; when for the poor man a breach is made through a vaporous firmament, he sees deeper into the blue because of the framing clouds—sees up to worlds invisible in the broad glare. I know not how the born-rich, still less those who have given themselves with success to the making of money, can learn that God ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... me. I at first amused myself with all the richness and variety of colours which appeared in the western parts of heaven; in proportion as they faded away and went out, several stars and planets appeared one after another, till the whole firmament was in a glow. The blueness of the ether was exceedingly heightened and enlivened by the season of the year, and the rays of all those luminaries that passed through it. The Galaxy appeared in its most beautiful white. To complete the scene, the full moon rose ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... of GOD, and the firmament sheweth his handywork! One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another; they have neither speech nor language, yet their voice is gone forth into all lands, and their words into the ends of the world. Manifold are thy works, O LORD! in wisdom ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... privilege of meeting certain celebrated persons—authors and artists, philosophers and statesmen—of whose renown she had been a humble and distant beholder, and who now, as a part of the habitual furniture of London drawing rooms, struck her as stars fallen from the firmament and become palpable—revealing also sometimes, on contact, qualities not to have been predicted of sidereal bodies. Bessie, who knew so many of her contemporaries by reputation, had a good many personal disappointments; but, on the other hand, she had innumerable ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... hard the drum was split (Pom-pom, rub-a-dub-dum) Out lept Saint Gabriel from it (Praeclarissimus Omnium) Who spread his wings and up he went Nor ever paused in his ascent Till he had reached the firmament (Benedicamus Dominum). ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... That he may be forced by his own friends into that cry, is, I fear, still possible. Kentucky, at any rate, did not secede in bulk. She still sent her Senators to Congress. and allowed herself to be reckoned among the stars in the American firmament. But she could not escape the presence of the war. Did she remain loyal, or did she secede, that was ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... to the child, but scarcely had she finished her story, when the root of a For-Get-Me-Not caught the drop and sucked her in, that she might become a floweret, and twinkle brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Mahomet made the moon perform seven circuits round Caaba or the holy shrine of Mecca, then enter the right sleeve of his mantle and go out at the left. At its exit, it split into two pieces, which re-united in the centre of the firmament. This miracle was performed for the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... this softened mood, the gods pointed to the firmament where her father's eyes glowed like radiant stars in the northern hemisphere. They told her they had placed them there to show him all honour, and finally added that she might select as husband any of the gods present at the assembly, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Then why was it not reasonable to believe that that role was to be that of the Messiah come to sit on the throne of His father David, and destined to bring Israel from her now obscure position to once more shine as a bright star in the firmament of nations? Why was it not reasonable that He was to lead the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... accumulated through many generations of jovial housekeepers. Before these stood the two Yule candles beaming like two stars of the first magnitude; other lights were distributed in branches, and the whole array glittered like a firmament of silver. ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... stars; but Master Euseby can run over half a score and upward, here and there. 'Am I right, or wrong?' cried he, spreading on the back of my hand all his fingers, stiff as antlers and cold as icicles. 'Look up, Joseph! Joseph! there is no Lucifer in the firmament!' I myself did feel queerish and qualmy upon hearing that a star was missing, being no master of gainsaying it; and I abased my eyes, and entreated of Euseby to do in like manner. And in this posture ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... I to blame for all that is wrong in the world? I didn't invent Sin and Hate and Slaughter. Who made it my duty anyhow to administer the Universe, and keep the planets to their Copernican courses? My shoulders are bent beneath the weight of the firmament; I grow weary of propping up, like Atlas, this ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... the clouds, the trees, the birds, the animals, all move beautifully; and beautifully do the joyous light-words of the skies dance their eternal cotillion of glory. From the mote that plays its little frolic in the sunbeam, to the world that blazes along the sapphire spaces of the firmament, are visible the ever-varying features of the enrapturing spirit of Beauty. All this great realm of dazzling and bewildering beauty was made by God. What shall we say then, is he not a lover of Beauty? Is it irreverence thus ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... perplexing. I had to fight out the question all alone. It was impossible to follow my classmate so completely as to accept his conclusions and become the materialist that he was, and so find a relative repose; and the conflict became very grave. The entire scheme of Christianity disappeared from my firmament; but, in the immediately previous years, I had been a reader of Swedenborg, and I held immovably an intuition of immortality,—or, if the term intuition be denied me, the conviction that immortality was the foundation of human existence, grounded in my earliest thoughts, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the hideous monsters! the villainous reptiles! Aye! punishment will overtake them; they shall rue this day! All Rome shall rue this day: her streets shall flow with blood and I'll invent such tortures for every man as will turn the firmament ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... piece to support as we went by him, ascending the inclined artillery road, whence we presently came out upon the ramparts, with the vast sweep of star-set firmament above, and below us the city's twinkling lights on one side, and upon the other two great rivers at their trysting with the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... he raised his eyes, there was the silent upturned sea of heaven, a blue sea crested with surging white clouds like waves; and at the same time this firmament moved in the water where it billowed under ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... thought in an almost undefined way of mother's words as she held the fluttering thrushes to her lips and kissed their downy breasts. Then had come the unlooked-for interruption. Polly's life seemed cloudless, and all of a sudden there appeared a speck in the firmament—a little cloud which grew rapidly, until the whole heavens were covered with it. Mother had gone away for ever, and there were now nine children in the ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... in strict and wondrous harmony." As when the sturdy north blows from his cheek A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, Clear'd of the rack, that hung on it before, Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil'd, The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove With clear reply the shadows back, and truth Was manifested, as a star in heaven. And when the words were ended, not unlike To iron ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton," says Emerson, "is that they set at nought books and traditions, and spoke not what men thought, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within; more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." It is strange that any one who has recognised the individuality of all works of ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... destruction. The humble walk hand in hand with Providence to immortality. Their works survive. When the people of the Colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of the great empires of that day are gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain. It pictures the vision of a people whose eyes were turned to the rising dawn. It represents the hope of a father for ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... generally more plentiful when thunder and lightning are on top, which is in warmer weather. The temperature of the air at the time of the encounter was 37 degrees; water 54 degrees. It had been cold during the night, but grew warmer in the morning. The clouds which overspread the firmament ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... but is believed with good reason). Even Luther joined in the theological warfare against science, saying, "I am now advised that a new astrologer is risen, who presumeth to prove that the earth moveth and goeth about, not the firmament, the sun and moon—not the stars—like as when one sitteth on a coach, or in a ship that is moved, thinketh he sitteth still and resteth, but the earth and trees do move and run themselves. Thus it goeth; we give ourselves up to our own foolish fancies and conceits. This fool (Copernicus) ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch, and in consequence ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... without bursting. And now, while with woe in his look he watches the swooping bird, well knowing the sinister significance of its flight, he sees another, and another, and yet another, till the firmament seems ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... firmament on high With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... and quietude brooded over the Station. Darkened bungalows looked like sightless monsters dead to the world, and the silent lanes were alive alone with fireflies scintillating like myriad stars in a firmament of leaves. At Muktiarbad, there was little else for the English residents to do after the Club had closed its door at nine, but eat, drink, and sleep. Theatres never patronised mafasil stations, and cinemas had not yet found their way so far into rural Bengal. In the bazaar also, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... represent Ships, armies, battles in the firmament; Till steady eyes the exhalations solve, And all to its first matter, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... The moon would not rise until seven minutes past eleven, and if we could be aided by a few clouds we should have sufficient darkness; for be it known that in these tropical climates, where almost every star is a moon, there is no such thing as darkness when the firmament is clear. But my hopes began to fade, with the day, for one cloud disappeared after another, as the sun went down, until the night promised to be as serene and bright as the last. Venus, too, looked double her usual size, and being three hours bright at sunset, poured ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... wrought without the co-operation of a single human being, the flames were extinguished, the smoke began to subside, then diminished in intensity, paled and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the scene; night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament. The large blazing stars which spangled the African sky glittered ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... protecteur et la restaurateur. Son palais fut l'asyle des sciences. Le nom de ce conquerant et de cet legislateur remplit la terre. Tout fut uni par le force de son genie." De Sismondi calls him "a brilliant star in that dark firmament." Mr. Loudon, in p. 40 of his Encyclopaedia, says, that "The Abbe Schmidt informs us (Mag. Encyc.) that this monarch, who had domains in every part of France, gave the greatest encouragement to the eradication of forests, and the substitution of orchards and vineyards. He was on terms of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... of joy from the redeemed is sent; Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks; Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks Send up hosannas to the firmament! Fields where the bondman's toil No more shall trench the soil, Seem now to bask in a serener day; The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs Of heaven with more caressing softness play, Welcoming man to liberty like theirs. A glory clothes the land ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... free from shame and glory. John, the land-labourer, is the one living and memorable figure, and he, alas! cannot possibly be more near than a collateral. It was on August 12, 1678, that he heard Mr. John Welsh on the Craigdowhill, and "took the heavens, earth, and sun in the firmament that was shining on us, as also the ambassador who made the offer, and the clerk who raised the psalms, to witness that I did give myself away to the Lord in a personal and perpetual covenant never to be forgotten"; and already, in 1675, the birth of my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enclosures of Cottesbach in 1602, of Enderby about 1605, of Thornby about 1616, were all accomplished by a lessening of the land under the plough. Moore, writing in 1656, says: 'Surely they may make men as soon believe there is no sun in the firmament as that usually depopulation and decay of tillage will not follow inclosure in our inland countyes.'" (p. 117). Letters from the Council were written in 1630 complaining of "'enclosures and convercons tending as they generallie doe unto depopulation.... ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... the mountains, the country, and the people, till they reached the courtyard gate. Mr. Olmney then passed on. So did the doctor, though invited to tarry, averring that the sun had gone down behind the firmament, and he had something ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and let the darkness be gathered together in one place beneath the heaven, and half of its place be given for the light, and it was so. And Jehovah beheld the light that it was glorious. And he said let the firmament of electricity divide the waters again beneath the heaven. And let the substance of the upper part of the waters above the firmament be gathered together and ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... the happy trial prove most glory. But evil on itself shall back recoil, And mix no more with goodness, when at last, Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, It shall be in eternal restless change Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on! Against the opposing will and arm of heaven May never this just sword be lifted up; But, for that damned magician, let him be girt With all the grisly legions that troop Under ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... human life, than the literature of any nation that ever existed. That same race, side by side with the unparalleled growth of its industry produces Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and Newton, all four at the summit of human thought,—and then, just below these unapproachable fixed lights, a whole firmament of glories, lesser than they, as all created intelligence must be, yet in whose superior rays the age of Augustus, of Leo X., of Louis XIV., all but the age of Pericles, the culture of Greece, pale and fade. And yet the literature ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... happen; but the mystery beyond is not by one hair's breadth impaired nor their influence upon the spectator diminished. In Alaska perhaps more than any other country it is the heavens that declare the glory of God and the firmament that shows His handiwork, and the awestruck Indian who comes with timid inquiry of the import of such phenomena is rightfully and scientifically answered that the Great Father is setting a sign in the sky that He still rules, that His laws and commandments shall never lose their force, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... hearing nothing but the slow pounding of their own heartbeats. Each time he got back, it faded away, and all he remembered was the excitement. But each time he went through it, it was worse. Just standing and waiting in the silence, praying they weren't spotted—staring at the unmoving firmament and knowing he was a projectile hurtling two miles each second straight at a clump of metal and flesh that was the enemy. Knowing the odds were twenty to one against their scoring a kill ... ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... I make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies. My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold or precious stones, or ivory, or purple; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament and the rocks. The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts. My ears are no longer courted by those harmonious instruments and voices which have so transported my soul; they hear ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... not usually seen amongst other nations lying beyond the seas. Wherefore we must needs confess that the situation of our island (for benefit of the heavens) is nothing inferior to that of any country of the main, wheresoever it lie under the open firmament. And this Plutarch knew full well, who affirmeth a part of the Elysian Fields to be found in Britain, and the isles that are situated ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... cried, "I'm delighted beyond measure! How beautiful you look to-night! No star in all the firmament half so radiant as your eyes; no rose that ever bloomed could rival the blush on ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... not far from the other, just as if they had been friends, Orlando by the fountain, Agrican beneath a pine. It was a beautiful clear night, and, as they talked together before addressing themselves to sleep, the champion of Christendom, looking up at the firmament, said, "That is a fine piece of workmanship, that starry spectacle; God made it all, that moon of silver, and those stars of gold, and the light of day, and the sun,—all for the sake of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... by this vast herd of elephants as they drifted on and away, following a leader as does a herd of sheep. They browsed from growing herbage which they encountered as they traveled, and now and again shook the firmament with their ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... here, except shadows, but this broad earth stood deep and dim, idle 105 and useless, alien even to God himself; on it the King whose purpose never falters turned his eyes and beheld the place void of joy; he saw dark clouds, black under the firmament, throng in the eternal night, dun and 110 waste, until this world-creation came to pass through the word of the King of Glory. First the everlasting Lord, protector of all things, created heaven and earth; as the almighty King put forth the firmament ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... azure more shall robe the firmament, Nor spangled stars be glorious." BYRON, Heaven ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out, the red lightning ripped open the black wardrobe of the firmament, and he saw the salted sea driven by the fury of the hurricane into great billows of foam. Sinking back upon his pillows his last words were: "Thank God, I have been a lighthouse builder, and though the light of my ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... who surrounded him like the confessing saints whom the painters group round the Lord. The precentor and the dignitaries of the order, decorated with the glittering insignia of their ecclesiastical vanities, came and went among the clouds of incense like planets revolving in the firmament. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... And I reply, 'Sweetest, I vow I never loved but half till now.' She turns her face to the wall at this, And says, 'Go, Love, 'tis too much bliss.' And then a sudden pulse is sent About the sounding firmament In smitings as of silver bars; The bright disorder of the stars Is solved by music; far and near, Through infinite distinctions clear, Their twofold voices' deeper tone Utters the Name which all things own, And each ecstatic treble dwells On one whereof ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore |
