"Lightning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the sky was black and the lightning flashed, as he filled a pipe with tobacco and offered it skyward, "Oh, grandfather! I am very poor. Somewhere make those who would injure me leave a clear space for me." Then he put the sacred green cedar upon the fire—the cedar ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... if you yield to entertaining a temptation, there is the opportunity presented to you like lightning. A theologian told me this, and it is partly true: but not of Mammon or Belphegor, or whatever Devil it is that overlooks the Currency (I can see his face from here): for how many have yielded to the Desire of Riches and professed themselves ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... leaving the Modder the sky grew black with clouds, the birds hid themselves from view and the veldt-cricket ceased from his monotonous chirrup. Then all at once the storm burst upon us. The lightning played incessantly and sheets of rain blotted out the kopjes and the veldt from view. It was in weather like this that our poor fellows advanced through the ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... Above the lateral portals of the facade are two towers, that on the right rising two stages above the embattled crest, while that on the left stops at that level. The spire with which it was formerly surmounted was ruined by lightning early in ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... a lightning movement of which the most astute observer could never have supposed him capable, Sam Tuk whipped a loaded rubber tube from his sleeve and struck Kerry a shrewd blow across the back ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the little Red Shirt who had the ball, touching it slightly to the right, tangled himself up in Johnnie Big Duncan's legs and sent him sprawling, while Dan swiped the ball to another Red Shirt who had slipped in behind the master, for there was no such foolishness as off-side in that game. Like lightning the Red Shirt caught the ball, and rushing at Thomas, shot furiously at close quarters. Goal number ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... her cabin, but with no intention of remaining there. She was firmly convinced that the storm would come, and she meant to be on deck while it was raging. What harm could thunder or lightning, hail or rain, do to her while he was by to protect her? He would be busy sailing the boat, perhaps, but still he would have a moment now and then in which to think of her ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... are the end of rough weather, lass. Through wind and cloud and lightning, God clears up the sky. Thee must not lose patience, 'merch i; by and by it will ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... feels that he has found the truth, he knows also that what is real and true can never be killed or silenced; and secondly, that truth in the world has its purpose, and this purpose must in the end be a good one. We do not complain about thunder and lightning, but accustom ourselves to them, and seek to understand them, so as to live on good terms with them; and we finally invent lightning conductors, to protect ourselves, as far as we can, against the inevitable. So it is with every new truth, if it is only maintained with courage. ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... delighted to do him honor. When he visited England for the second time, in 1757, he was the Agent for the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, he was Deputy Postmaster-General for the British colonies, he was famous throughout the civilized world for his discovery of the identity of lightning with the electric fluid. He was in London for the third time when Rockingham took office. He had lived nearly sixty years of a crowded, memorable, admirable life; he was loaded with laurels, ripe in the learning of books and the learning of the book of the world. Even he whom ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... will not easily pass from my memory. Captain Hudson had ordered the cables to be ranged in readiness to anchor. The carpenter and his crew were sent for, and ordered to prepare for the last desperate expedient of cutting away the masts. Every now and then, as a bright flash of lightning darted from the sky, they might be seen with their gleaming axes uplifted, ready at a moment to execute the fatal order. Everybody was on deck, for our ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... flash in the heart, as if Hell's flame of shame and Heaven's lightning of righteous wrath lit it together. The pock-marked rascal is lying quiet on the ruddled bricks at the foot of the stairs. The woman's Voice curses until the corner is turned. A door slams. He is hatless and unwashed and dishevelled, standing in the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the Ottoman Turks, surnamed ILDERIM, i. e. Lightning, from the energy and rapidity of his movements; aimed at Constantinople, pushed everything before him in his advance on Europe, but was met and defeated on the plain of Angora by Tamerlane, who is said to have shut ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... struck by the intense bitterness in his tone. Truly this man, with his lightning changes from boorish incivility to whole-hearted hospitality, from apparently impenetrable reserve to an almost desperate outspokenness, was as ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... was a slight jar perceptible, but no such result as the enemy had hoped. The wire was so quickly fused, accompanying an explosion giving out an intense light, that it seemed to shoot to the earth like a streak of lightning, setting fire to or knocking down everything that lay in ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... should we ever have had the telephone? Or without Marconi should we have had the wireless, or without Morse, the telegraph? Or, to go back still farther, without Franklin should we ever have known the identity of lightning and electricity? Who taught us how to control electricity and make it do our work? One of the questions of Job was, "Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?" Yes, we ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... weather-beaten face half covered with a thick gray beard. His big head was quite bald, and the bareness of his forehead only served to make his bushy eyebrows more prominent. Behind these his round deepset eyes seemed to flash like lightning at the end of summer behind the fading foliage. He was of small stature, but very broad-shouldered; in fact, built like a gladiator. The rags in which he was clad were defiantly filthy. His face was short and of a vulgar type, like ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... is her last letter to me, and I never went back to see what she meant, for the bees were bad in my head and I forgot everything, even Gretchen herself. Poor little Gretchen! What was the idea which came to me like a flash of lightning, in regard to this letter, when I heard you sing? It is gone, and I cannot ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... them, as in the rams' horns that blew down Jericho: send up your prayers, and cry with the Psalmist, "Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down, touch the mountains, and they shall smoke; cast forth lightning, and scatter them; shoot out thine arrows, and destroy them; send thine hand from above, and deliver me out of the great waters, from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, their right hand is a right hand ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... his despatches, and employed himself upon them to a late hour. At length, feeling heated and oppressed, he arose, and opened a window. As he did so, he was almost blinded by a vivid flash of forked lightning. Ever ready to court danger, and convinced, from the intense gloom without, that a fearful storm was coming on, Henry resolved to go forth to witness it. With this view he quitted the closet, and passed through a small door opening on the northern terrace. The castle clock tolled ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... one day be mistress of that handsome place in Ireland, Lord Hardy's home, if she only played her cards well. Surely that low-born Yankee girl, Augusta Browne, could never be her rival, even if she had money. Such was the thought which flashed like lightning through Daisy's mind as she felt the touch of Lord Hardy's hand and heard his ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... to describe the joy of Archie's mother at his return. The news spread like lightning among the tenantry, and in an hour after the wayfarers reached the castle men and women could be seen flocking over the hills at the top of their speed to express their delight and enthusiasm at their lord's return. By nightfall every tenant ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... though it was, spoke volumes. It was a flash of lightning, that gave me a distinct view of the black and dreadful abyss that was immediately before me; and into which I foresaw I must ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... brickwork 37 feet high by 28 broad.... On one side of it, beneath the crowning masonry, lie huge fragments torn from the pile itself. The calcined and vitreous surface of the bricks, fused into rock-like masses, show that their fall may have been caused by lightning. The ruin is rent almost from top to bottom. No traces whatever now remain of the spiral passage spoken of by the Jewish traveller." Cf. Professor T.K. Cheyne's article, "The Tower of Babel," in the new Biblical Cyclopaedia. Nebuchadnezzar, in his Borsippa ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... to reflect on the vast degree to which all the minor uses and observances of the Church—which are nine-tenths of all their religion to the multitude—were only old heathen superstitious in new dresses. The bell was a spell against the demons of lightning in old Etrurian days; to this time the Tuscan peasant bears one in the darkening twilight-tide to drive away the witches flitting round: in him and them "those evening bells" inspired a ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sculpture, among which Mr. St. Gaudens' statue of Lincoln is conspicuous as a wonderful triumph of artistic genius over unpromising material. The show of flowers in the parks is not easily paralleled in public domains elsewhere. Of these, rather than of its stockyards and its lightning rapidity in pig-sticking, will the visitor who wishes to think well of Chicago ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... mean that you've been in the garret all these hours?" cried Amy in accents of exasperation. Her face gave no hint of its usual easy-going good-nature. Though the tears were still undried upon her cheeks, ominous lightning played in her eyes. It really looked as if she could not easily forgive Aunt Abigail for her failure to be ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... ovaries, which had been forced down in front of the uterus and been fixed there by adhesions. Here there was little sexual proclivity, but the eyes were very remarkable. They flashed and glittered unceasingly, and at times perfect lightning bolts shot from them. Usually there is a bright glittering sheen in them which contrasts with the dead look in the irides of sexual excess or ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... time, when the storms are hushed. The lakes and falls would be buried then; but so, also, would be the traces of destructive feet, while the views of the mountains in their winter garb, and the ride at lightning speed down the pass between the snowy walls, would ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... sentence she was so astonished that she rose from her chair and stood before him. She became very white, and, with the strained look that then came to them, her eyes opened widely. And she gazed down at Franklin Winslow Kane while, in three flashes, searing and swift, like running leaps of lightning, three thoughts traversed her mind: Gerald—All that money—A child. It was in this last thought that she seemed, then, to fall crumblingly, like a burnt-out thing reduced to powder. A child. What would it look like, a child of hers and Franklin Kane's? How spare and poor and insignificant were ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... (for she turned it to one side), offered me something. I held out my arms by instinct; she dropped a bundle into them, with a bursting sob that went straight to my heart. It was a baby. I looked round again; but the woman was gone. She had run away as quick as lightning. There was a little packet of clothes—very few—and as if they were made out of its mother's gowns, for they were large patterns to buy for a baby. I was always fond of babies; and I had not my wits about me, father says; for it was very ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... flattening the white-capped waves which they could see, both from Captain Ben's bungalow and from this old house to which they had come to play. And now, as all six peered out of the attic window of the old house, there was an unexpected flash of lightning, followed by ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... reported. It was said, "that two suns had been seen; that it had become light for a time during the night; that at Setia a meteor had been seen, extending from the east to the west; that at Tarracina a gate, at Anagnia a gate and the wall in many places, had been struck by lightning; that in the temple of Juno Sospita, at Lanuvium, a noise had been heard, accompanied with a tremendous crash." There was a supplication for one day for the purpose of expiating these, and the nine days' sacred rite was celebrated ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... alone could save her lover, and she could bring his death about. She knew that if he could be brought to look into a calabash in which was water so that a reflection of him was made, and the reflection were broken by hurtling the water, he would die as though he had been struck by lightning; for the reflection was his soul. But none knew better than he the danger, and he could be made to look only by a guile which had lulled his least suspicion. He must never think that he had an enemy who was on the watch to cause his destruction. She knew what she had to do. But the time was short, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... free to take care of themselves. As she rises over the big windfall, they hang from the ankle joints, limp as a glove out of which the hand has been drawn, yet seeming to wait and watch. One hoof touches a twig; like lightning it spreads and drops, after running for the smallest fraction of a second along the obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wonderful hind hoofs ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... not she would have given a gentle answer to a message from the queen. I shall continue my search." With this, he turned to leave, and the ladies, including Jane, who was there and saw it all and told me of it, awaited the bolt they knew would come, for they saw the lightning gathering in Mary's eyes. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... the operations on land English troops; seeing that the auxiliary land forces are to be exclusively American, while the naval force shall be purely English. Every thing is smooth, and we wait only for the fiat of your illustrious president to depart like lightning." ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... dark, but now and then bright flashes of lightning illuminated the houses, revealing them in a dazzling glare, which blinded their eyes and compelled them to stand still. And when the lightning disappeared, nothing more could be seen. In their own native village the two seemed as if they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... moments of this labour had scarcely elapsed, when a considerable portion of the brick-work, consolidated into one firm mass, fell with lightning suddenness from above. It hurled him under it, prostrate on the foundation arch which had been his support; crushed and dislocated his right shoulder; and shivered his lantern into fragments. A groan of irrepressible anguish burst from his lips. He ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... laid down his newspaper and looked cautiously around the room. Satisfied apparently that he was alone, he rose to his feet and walked swiftly to Laverick's writing-table. With fingers which seemed gifted with a lightning-like capacity for movement, he swung open the drawers, one by one, and turned over the papers. His eyes were everywhere. Every document seemed to be scanned and as rapidly discarded. At last he found ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... aware of all this, and it is precisely for this reason I speak as I do," said Stein. "We must work to dispel the dangers to which your majesty referred; we must erect lightning-rods to attract the dangerous fire. If your majesty had a less vigorous soul, I should conceal from you the calamities still threatening Prussia, notwithstanding the treaty of Tilsit; but Queen Louisa is the genius of Prussia, and I ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... or forerunning; the stage of pain.—This consists of lightning-like pains in the lower extremities, numbness, formication (feeling of ants, etc., crawling), sensation of dead extremities; pins and needles in the soles of the feet and fingers, coldness, itching of arms and scrotum or other parts, a sensation of constriction ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... a gleam like lightning. "I needn't tell you, of course, but I may as well let you suffer over the knowledge." He curled his lips with superb scorn. "I have one human weakness. I want Athalia." The icy eyes warmed for a fleeting second. "She is anticipating her meeting with you—bah! The taste ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... hid beneath a further fringe of rain; a very thick fringe. Between, the masses of vapour in the sky seemed charging for a tremendous outburst. It had not come yet when the slow going little wagon passed through Crum Elbow; but by this time the Captain had seen distant darts of lightning, and even heard the far-off warning growl of the thunder. A new idea started up in the Captain's mind; his frisky horse ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... our guards round the Temple, so that none could issue out thence to communicate with the Idumeans. At night a terrible storm set in, with lightning, thunder, and rain, so that the very earth seemed to shake. A great awe fell upon all, within and without the city. To all, it seemed a sign of the wrath of God at the civil discords; but though, doubtless, it was the voice of the Almighty, it ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... terrific, the frequent flashes of lightning affording the only guide on the road as he resolutely trudged onward, leading his jaded steed. The earth seemed fairly to tremble beneath him in the war of elements. One bolt threw him ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... horrors, sweep away at once the dyspeptic unbelief, the insincere bigotry, the effeminate frivolity which now paralyses our poetry as much as it does our action, and strike from England's heart a lightning flash of noble deeds, a thunder peal of noble song. Such a case is neither an impossible nor a far-fetched one; let us not doubt that by some other means if not by that, the immense volume of thought and power which is still among us will soon find its utterance, and justify itself to after ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... camp is shaped like an ordinary "A" tent. The ridge pole should be about 8 ft. long and supported by crotched uprights about 6 ft. from the ground. Often the ridge pole can be laid from one small tree to another. Avoid tall trees on account of lightning. Eight or ten long poles are then laid slanting against the ridge pole on each side. Cedar or hemlock boughs make the best thatch for the brush camp. They should be piled up to a thickness of a foot or more over the slanting poles and woven in and out to keep them from ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... being quickly handed. The officer had ordered topgallant-yards to be sent down, and topgallant-masts struck, when a vivid flash of forked lightning darted close ahead, across the ship's course, followed by a terrific crash of thunder, which startled all on board. Many thought the electric fluid had struck the ship. The captain sprang on deck. He was just in time to see the ship taken aback ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... his attitude was of pure compassion. Toward the Pharisees it was denunciatory. Wealth of ceremony and poverty of spirit, self-complacency mixed with scorn for others and with hostility to new light and love, roused in him a wrath which broke in lightning-flashes. "Woe unto you! whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Quick as lightning the demon rose again, and tilted fiercely at him once more. It was a death fight between those two for that rocky platform. Should Satan thus usurp St. Michael's Tor? Ten thousand times, no! Yield, yield! No surrender! ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... curiosity and approached. Within a yard of the old man and his chest she stopped suddenly with a gasp. The hermit stood up with two snakes twining about his hands and wrists. The serpents ran their tongues out like lightning, and their beady eyes glowed as though living fire dwelt in their heads. Ruth was frightened, but she would not scream. The hermit handled the snakes as though they were as harmless as kittens—as probably they were, the poison sacks having ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... that was wound around my body in such a way that I could not move. The cars were coming closer and closer, faster and faster; the light of the engine looked like one horrid eye of fire; I could hear the rattle and rush of a thousand wheels; it was coming right on me with the rapidity of lightning. I could feel the beating of my heart, and my hair stood up and shook and shivered. The engine ran up to me and stopped, the hot smoke and steam choking and smothering me. The devils cursed and howled because the cars did not run over me; they said the ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... light-beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps answering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions, reproachful interpellations; in words prompt as lightning, quiet as light. Nay, the cross-fire too: such side questions and incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main-battle, he (having only one tongue) could not get answered; these also he ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... disturbs the error of your body and a cloud appears in the sky.... The elements of the body of your belief are shaken, earth is lit up by the fire of your error, the heat rises, the heaven or mind grows dark ... the lightning of hot flashes shoot to all parts of the solar system of your belief. At last the winds or chills strike the earth or surface of the body, a cold clammy sensation passes over you. This changes the heat into a sort of watery substance which ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... in the automatic the aim was to deal with impulses following each other from twenty-five to one hundred times as rapidly as in Morse lines, and to attempt to receive and record intelligibly such a lightning-like succession of signals would have seemed impossible. But Edison discovered that by utilizing a shunt around the receiving instrument, with a soft iron core, the self-induction would produce a momentary and instantaneous reversal of the current at the end of each impulse, and thereby give an ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... with me to this ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I could not repent; at least the emotion of repentance would not come. Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette, was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier, now asleep at the house of Lucius ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... thing happens—swift as lightning she lifts her hand, and gives him a little stinging blow ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... for the night between two forks of Fishing river. A large mob had gathered, bent on destroying the camp. A boat containing forty mobbers had been sent over the river, when a storm arose. The rain fell in torrents, the lightning flashed, the thunder shook the earth. Great hail stones destroyed the corn in the fields and stripped the trees of leaves. The mob scattered in confusion. The river rose nearly forty feet, which made it impossible for anyone to cross. The brethren took shelter in ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... fire, to display his holiness and his purity; sometimes he renders himself visible under the form of a burning bush, to express himself to be as formidable as a devouring fire: again, he rains sulphur; and often, before he speaks, he attracts the attention of the multitude by flashes of lightning. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to bear in mind the astounding power exerted by fascination of this order to understand that marvellous return from the Isle of Elba, that lightning-like conquest of France by an isolated man confronted by all the organised forces of a great country that might have been supposed weary of his tyranny. He had merely to cast a look at the generals sent to lay hands on him, and who had sworn ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the artist. And she would have again to meet him! If she had had thunder and lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had set fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been annihilated on the spot. She was at that moment a murderess at heart. But the dinner-bell rang. The young fury gave a last glance ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... of cases lightning-stroke proves instantly fatal. In non-fatal cases the patient suffers from a profound degree of shock, and there may or may not be any external evidence of injury. In the mildest cases red spots or wheals—closely resembling those of urticaria—may ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... them left. The pilgrims who went to visit them in such numbers in olden times were accompanied by monks from a monastery about four miles below, who would beseech them not to injure a single leaf. But the greatest care could not preserve the trees. Some of them have been struck down by lightning, some broken by enormous loads of snow, and others torn to fragments by tempests. Some have even been cut down with axes like any common tree. But better care is now taken of them; so that we may hope that the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... warriors opposing him, and whom I recognized as Warhoons, charged simultaneously. The mighty fellow made quick work of one of them, but in stepping back for another thrust he fell over a dead body behind him and was down and at the mercy of his foes in an instant. Quick as lightning they were upon him, and Tars Tarkas would have been gathered to his fathers in short order had I not sprung before his prostrate form and engaged his adversaries. I had accounted for one of them when the mighty Thark regained his feet and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Indians, Gonzalo and his troops took possession of their deserted habitations in which they rested for some days. While here, the country was visited by a dreadful earthquake, accompanied by prodigious thunder and lightning and an immense fall of rain. The earth opened in many places and swallowed up above five hundred houses. By the excessive rains, which continued forty or fifty days, a river in the neighbourhood of the Spanish quarters became so swollen that it was quite impassable, in consequence of which the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... understand." In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance of a flash of lightning." In the constitution and continuity of his style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes, naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the thought, but that seize it in its very centre, in its interior, that join and ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Canning, the hero of the day, now rose. If his predecessor might be compared to a dexterous and elegant boxer, Canning presented the image of a finished antique gladiator. All was noble, simple, refined; then suddenly his eloquence burst forth like lightning-grand and all-subduing. His speech was, from every point of view, the most complete, as well as the most irresistibly persuasive—the crown ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Chan to the door, and gave a wave of his hand in the direction of the sky. Instantly the sound of the fluttering and swish of wings was heard, and in a moment a splendid eagle landed gracefully at their feet. Taking their seats upon its back, they found themselves flashing at lightning speed away through the darkness of the night. Higher and higher they rose, till they had pierced the heavy masses of clouds which hung hovering in the sky. Swift as an arrow the eagle still cleft its way upward until the clouds ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... earth out of which the flax grows. The surrounding belt signified the ocean which surrounds the earth. The violet tunic denoted the air by its color: its little bells betoken the thunder; the pomegranates, the lightning. The ephod, by its many colors, signified the starry heaven; the two onyx stones denoted the two hemispheres, or the sun and moon. The twelve precious stones on the breast are the twelve signs of the zodiac: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... morning sea." You may even find yourself on Olympus, the mount of a thousand folds, listening to the everlasting assault upon the Gods by the Titans, sons of strife. And if you are very patient you may witness Zeus, the lightning-gatherer, pierce the black clouds and rend the sky, illuminating hill and vale with the fierce light which makes even ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... ranger! dark, forlorn, mysterious stranger! Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore! Tell us of that world of wonder—of that famed unfading "Yonder!" Rend—oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... spectators saw to astonish them. Other incidents followed equally unlooked-for, and with lightning rapidity. One was indeed of simultaneous occurrence; a second couple of the scavengers— the gigante y enano—rushing towards the coachman's box, clambering up to it, Rock flinging the dwarf before him as one would an old carpet-bag, and mounting after. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... print for many years, and yet we find people who say that Washington was cold of heart and lacking in human sympathy. What could be more intensely human than this? What a warm heart is here, and what a lightning glimpse of a passionate nature bursting through silence into burning speech! Then comes the iron will which has mastered all the problems of his life. "He shall have full justice;" and St. Clair had justice. He had been an unfortunate ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of lightning has a single ray of happiness shone out and then disappeared. He came here to see me, but could remain only two hours. Last Wednesday he left Warsaw, as if he were going to Courland, but, sending his carriages before him on the way to the north, he turned aside and hastened ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... the other day to say that he had a nice carpet and a good pillow; did I want anything of the sort? He would be proud that I should use anything of his. You would delight in Avery, my cuddy man, who is as quick as 'greased lightning', and full of fun. His misery is my want of appetite, and his efforts to cram me are very droll. The days seem to slip away, one can't tell how. I sit on deck from breakfast at nine, till dinner at four, and then ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... a kind sleep, from which I was aroused by a terrific clap of thunder and such a deluge of rain as I had never witnessed. Heretofore I had always disliked lightning, but nature's present "pyrotechnical display" challenged naught but my most enthusiastic admiration. When it was over supper was announced, and soon afterward we retired for the night, I occupying one of the beds in the big room, one of the women of the ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... effort was near to proving his ruin. Just as he swung forward, the giant, with a sudden contraction of all his vast frame, sprang out and brought down his war axe in a sheer downward blow at half-arm's length. White Calf with lightning speed changed his own attack into defence, sweeping up his weapon to defend his head. On the instant his arm was beaten down. It fell helpless at his side, the axe only hanging to his hand by means of the loop passed around the wrist. A spasm of pain crossed ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... sleigh, crowded with buffalo robes, evidently the equipage of some wealthy establishment, stood on the highway where it swept down to General Harrington's mansion. Ralph helped his companion in, and they dashed off noiselessly as lightning, and ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the Catacomb, one man, no worse than the rest, though no less foolish, will have pointed to its mouth, and said, 'Obscene rites are practised in that darkness. The devotees of an execrable creed skulk there out of sight.' Not till the time was ripe, did lightning split the face of the rock, and ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... themselves round the room, like so many graven images, and all night not one of them opened her mouth. I'm not romancing, Hargrave; this is absolute fact. In the early morning a fearful thunderstorm broke out, one of the most violent I have ever known. The little garret burned blue with the lightning, and thunder roared and rattled as if it were on the very roof of the house. It wasn't much of a lamp I had, and it was a queer thing when a spurt of lightning came to see those three twisted figures sitting round the walls, or to have the voice of my patient drowned by the booming of the thunder. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had got, during the intaken breath before he began to speak, a sensation,—as sharp and momentary as the landscape revealed in a lightning flash,—of a sudden terror on his part; as of one finding himself on the edge of an abyss of understanding. For that one glaring instant before he had had time to turn his face away he had known what she meant. But he never would ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... practising a non-natural art of spirals and zig-zags, cuts himself off "from all possible sources of healthy knowledge or natural delight," to what did the good and healthy Highlander condemn himself by practising the art of the plaid? A spiral may be found in the vine, and a zig-zag in the lightning, but where in nature is the plaid to be found? There is surely no curve or curl that can be drawn by a designing hand but is a play upon some infinitely various natural fact. The smoke of the cigarette, more sensitive ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... far more strongly than Eden could do. As by a lightning flash, the purblind politicians of Vienna could now discern the storm-wrack drifting upon them. The weakness of the Piedmontese army, their own unpreparedness in the Milanese, the friendliness of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ran forward. And she saw, with a lightning look that burned the picture on her brain for all her life, the boys blessed little figures—and Anne leaning on her father's knee, as he sat on an overturned bookcase—and against Bert's shoulder the little fat, soft brown hand, and the sunny crown ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... 'Orpheus,' and some other works." The agencies which stimulated Beethoven's grandest thoughts are eminently characteristic of the man. He loved to let the winds and storms beat on his bare head, and see the dazzling play of the lightning. Or, failing the sublimer moods of Nature, it was his delight to walk in the woods and fields, and take in at every pore the influences which she so lavishly bestows on her favorites. His true life was his ideal life in art. To him it was a mission and an inspiration, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... she said. "It's like lightning. It won't happen the second time In the same place. I'm not afraid, though ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... the lightning had struck a large tree further up the road, the rain suddenly stopped and the sun shone out as hot ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the ground, and at hearing their flesh low as it boiled in the cauldron. Indeed, Helios had gone to Jupiter, and threatened to stop his chariot unless he had his revenge; so as soon as the wretched crew embarked again a storm arose, the ship was struck by lightning, and Ulysses alone was saved from the wreck, floating on the mast. He came back past Scylla and Charybdis, and, clinging to the fig tree which hung over the latter, avoided being sucked into the whirlpool, and ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lightning which will come soon, Tayoga, and which you meant, when you spoke of fire, will not that unveil us to the sentinels ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and terribly with nature in that old oak-tree. But who can so struggle forever? Anguish, remorse, horror, despair, and love wrenched her to and fro; and O mysterious human heart! gleams of a mad fitful joy shot through her, coming quick as lightning, going as quickly, and leaving the despair darker. And then the fierce struggle of the soul to make itself heard! More than once she had to close her mouth with her hand: more than once she seized her throat not to cry out. But as the struggle endured, she got weaker ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... precarious mode of life, than from any innate wish to betray. The Indian's face, after all, is a perfect index of his mind. The eye chances its expression with every impulse and passion, and shows what is passing within as clearly as the lightning in a dark night betrays the course of the stream. I cannot think that deceit forms any prominent trait in the Indian's character. They invariably act with the strictest honour towards those who never attempt to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... ready for the storm, before he prepared for what might follow. He and Ailwin pulled down the long piece of cloth from its support, doubled it again and again, and put Mildred into the middle of it. Oliver longed to lay her under a leafy tree; but he dared not, on account of the lightning, which was already beginning to flash. He and Ailwin set up the deal table as a sort of penthouse over her; and then busied themselves, in her sight, in piling together everything else they had, to keep as many articles as possible ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... the first time last year, he was so taken by a Punch and Judy show that he never saw the sea. His smile was the most ridiculous thing in the world. He blushed continually, panted, grinned like some boy caught kissing, and was always apologetic. Lightning made him hide his head, and he was afraid of engines—their regularity upset him. Running behind the reaper—this quick-moving, noisy thing smelling of oil, made up of sliding chains—appalled him; there were five wheels at ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... quick as I can pull the trigger!" said Edith—her eyes blazing with the sense of having fate—the worst of fate in her own hands; it was but a pressure of the finger, to be made quick as lightning, and she was beyond their power! Her finger was on the trigger—the muzzle of the pistol, a cold ring of steel, pressed her burning temple! She felt it ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of lightning drags down a deeper gloom on my sight, and my heart gropes for the path to where the music ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... the match from the Pavilion, you escape these trials, but there are others. In the first few overs of a School match, every ball looks to the spectators like taking a wicket. The fiendish ingenuity of the slow bowler, and the lightning speed of the fast man at the other end, make one feel positively ill. When the first ten has gone up on the scoring-board matters begin to right themselves. Today ten went up quickly. The fast man's first ball ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... not that my uncle was a poet," muttered Balder to himself. "A daughter of fire,—yes, there is lightning in her eyes!" Aloud he said, secretly alluding to the manner of his descent ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... mission, of a destiny they had to fulfill. What more have poets and artists done? The fixed and irresistible idea has led more than one to a foreseen death, as in the discovery of explosives, the first attempts at lightning conductors, aeronautics, and many others. Thus, from a true intuition, primitive civilizations have put on a level great poets and great inventors, erected into divinities or demi-gods historical or legendary personages in whom the genius of discovery ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... invective, withering sarcasm and chaff for the police, who winced under it, poor fellows, and would have preferred something they could defend themselves from—bayonets, for instance—to the forked lightning that shot from the tongue and eyes of this female agitator. Whatever would be the opinion of critics about it, Mary McConigle voiced the sentiments of the people and was cheered by the men and kissed by the women. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... her "steady before it" the captain went forward to ascertain the extent of the damage they had sustained. It was now intensely dark, the rain falling in torrents, and lightning bolts striking the water all around them, accompanied by fearful and incessant peals of thunder. A human voice could not have been heard five paces away. The wind, which fairly roared through the shrouds, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... fixedly for a few minutes, as if she could not credit his assertion, and then receiving no contradiction, uttered a wild scream, and rushed out of the room. Rochester followed, and saw her dart with lightning swiftness across the court-yard. On gaining the street, he perceived her flying figure already at some distance; and greatly alarmed, started in pursuit. The unfortunate girl was not allowed to proceed far. Two persons who were approaching, and who proved to be Etherege and Pillichody, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "but that never would have happened but for Palus' instantaneous grasp of the situation and lightning decision. Any other charioteer would have reined in or tried to swing round to the right; he lashed his team and guided them so perfectly that, with not a hand's- breadth to spare anywhere, the two wheels passed precisely where there was the only chance of their passing, and he ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... any attack on himself? But before I could make any comment on my companion's information, my attention to the subject was diverted. All that afternoon the weather had been threatening to break—there was thunder about. And now, with startling suddenness, a flash of lightning was followed by a sharp crack, and that on the instant by a heavy downpour of rain. I glanced at Miss Raven's light dress—early spring though it was, the weather had been warm for more than a week, and she had come out in things ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... said Miss Emmerson, with a smile, as Julia withdrew from the window, "if Charles be a little afraid of lightning, he has no dread of ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... the summer was over. Winter in the Tropics is the rainy season. It shows itself less by any sensible change of vegetation than by floods, gusts, thunder and lightning. The streams rose and raged; the men were wetted to the skins ten times a day, and had no dry clothes to put on. The fleet was some hundred miles away. Ralegh set his face homewards. The boats glided down the Orinoko at a rate, though against the wind, of little less than 100 miles a day. On ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... on a short "leg," before taking the long one that would fetch down towards Tristan d'Acunha, proceeding in the ordinary track of vessels going round the Cape of Good Hope; when, suddenly, towards evening, it fell nearly calm and sheet lightning was noticed towards the eastward, where a dense bank of dark clouds had mounted ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dark, for the night was closing in; the spears flashed dimly, and in place of smoke long tongues of flame shot from the rifle barrels, illumining the stern faces of those who held them as lightning does. But soon there was to be light. If any had leisure to observe, they may have seen flakes of fire flying upwards from the dim bush, and wondered what they were. They were bunches of burning grass being thrown on spears to fall in the thatch of the hospital roof. Presently something ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... there came a slight puff of wind, and the water curling under it glanced more luminously; while an occasional flash of lightning announced that the clouds above were ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... the presence of Murphy, who, quick as lightning, threw himself before Rudolph, he would have rushed ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... turned on the one theme so dear to him; and their originality was inexhaustible. What could be finer than his notion of the lightning, that it was produced by a sudden opening and shutting of God's eye—or of the rainbow, that it was the reflection of God's smile? What more graphic than his representation of Satan's malice and impotence, when, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... replying. Nearer moved the scarlet line. Again a rattling volley, with no answering musket shot from fence or embankment. What the meaning of such silence? Suddenly a line of light streamed from the river to the foot of the hill, and like the lightning's flash ran along the embankment and round the redoubt. A rattle and roar like the waves of the sea upon a rocky shore came to their ears across the shining waters. Men were reeling to the ground, whole ranks going down before ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... praefect of the city. "Carus," says he, "our dearest emperor, was confined by sickness to his bed, when a furious tempest arose in the camp. The darkness which overspread the sky was so thick, that we could no longer distinguish each other; and the incessant flashes of lightning took from us the knowledge of all that passed in the general confusion. Immediately after the most violent clap of thunder, we heard a sudden cry that the emperor was dead; and it soon appeared, that his chamberlains, in a rage ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... descent was begun, and for a long time, so remarkable was the transparency of the water, they could see the bell sinking, and becoming smaller until it resembled a blue pearl. Sometimes a metallic flash shot from its polished sides like a gleam of violet lightning. But at length it passed from view, swallowed up ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... the very brink of the ocean of intemperance. Its briny waters are composed of human tears. Its winds, the sighs of those made poor and wretched by the inebriation of husbands, fathers, sons. Its billows, ever tossing, are overhung with black and lowering clouds, and illuminated only by the lightning's vivid flash, while hoarse thunders reverberate over the wide and desolate waste. Engulphed in this dreary ocean, the wretched drunkard is buffeted hither and thither, at the mercy of its angry waves—now dashed on jagged rocks, bruised and bleeding—then engulphed ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... the lightning, yet preserues the skinne, So did these words split Lucklesse-fortunes hart, Her smiling Superficies, lockt within A deepe exulcerated festring smart; Heere shee perceiu'd her first disgrace begin, And wordlesse from the heauens takes her depart. Yet as she flewe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... and unexpected revelation of Shakespeare overwhelmed me. The lightning-flash of his genius revealed the whole heaven of art to me, illuminating its remotest depths in a single flash. I recognized the meaning of real grandeur, real beauty, and real dramatic truth; and I also realized the utter absurdity of the ideas ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... brilliant flash of lightning split the inky clouds which had now risen high over the western hills, and a deep roll of thunder came echoing up the valleys as if in answer to the roar of the cannonade on the sea. The moment every one was on board, Arnold gave the signal to ascend. As soon as the fan-wheels had raised ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... for the concern was increasing at lightning speed. He did not care to mince his words, for it ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... your waist and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car, and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of 'em had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. Have you forgot ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift flying meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passeth from life to ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... beyond a circular stanchion, the shadowy outline of a man. He tried to speak, to say, "Bosun! Bosun!" But his misused throat and parched tongue refused to form the words. And with the other's voice came memory, complete and terrible. The past was arrayed before his mind's eye with a lightning flash of recollection. The dreadful present was clear to him ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... not a Theban sleeps, But such as ne'er must wake. All crowd about The palace, and implore, as from a god, Help of the king; who, from the battlement, By the red lightning's glare descried afar, Atones the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... men. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might have written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains where he found it—his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied night—the jaws of darkness do devour it up—this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, "all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark," no steady ray has ever, or will ever, come,—over ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... winter or spring hail near Egypt and Judea, see the like on thunder and lightning there, in the note on Antiq. B. VI. ch. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... and I," announced Miss Lacey, bubbling, "were driving to the wedding. As we turned out of Long Lane into the Buckler Road, a great green car went by like a flash of lightning. Fortunately we were on the other side, or we'd have been smashed up. And, miles behind, there was a little white dog running the same way. I saw him, because I was back to the engine. Of course we were going much faster than him, and I soon lost ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... a prolonged shriek of terror, for just then something that seemed to move with the speed and power of a lightning express train, dashed out of the intense darkness which concealed all objects in the interior of the smoke-house, and Lester received a glancing blow on the shoulder that floored him on the instant. While the latter was calling ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... of Mecklenburg. Horry, too, is silent in his history of Marion, whose scene of action was the country bordering On Mecklenburg. Ramsay, Marshall, Jones, Girardin, Wirt, historians of the adjacent States, all silent. When Mr. Henry's resolutions, far short of independence, flew like lightning through every paper, and kindled both sides of the Atlantic, this flaming declaration of the same date, of the independence of Mecklenburg county, of North Carolina, absolving it from the British allegiance, and abjuring all political connection ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... extinguished; and he was thrown with violence from his couch. He was lodging in a convent; and soon after this first intimation of the tempest he heard the monks calling to each other through the darkness. From cell to cell they hurried, the ghastly gleams of lightning falling on their terror-stricken faces. Headed by the Prior, and holding crosses and relics of the saints in their hands, they now assembled in Petrarch's chamber. Thence they proceeded in a body to the chapel, where they spent the night in prayer and expectation of impending ruin. It would ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of lightning it had come. Beyond that one moan she fought silently, lips tight, one hand clutching at her side, through seconds that seemed eternities to the man watching helplessly. At last the spasm passed and ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... spoiling of your Italy, the hearer, calling up a "mumping visnomy," thinks he echoes your complaint by his sigh, "Ah, yes—the electric light; you meet it everywhere now; so modern, so disenchanting." It is, on the contrary, enchanting. It is as natural as lightning. By all means let all the waterfalls in all the Alps be "harnessed," as the lamentation runs, if their servitude gives us electric light. For thus the power of the waterfall kindles a lovely lamp. All this to be done by the simple force of gravitation—the powerful fall of water. "Wonderful, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... classical and domestic drama. Addison's CATO is a specimen of the one; and would it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which, divested ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... your card, I thought to myself, in a breath: 'Ford, Cumberledge; what do I know of those two names? I have some link between them. Ah, yes; found Mrs. Cumberledge, wife of Colonel Thomas Cumberledge, of the 7th Bengals, was a Miss Ford, daughter of a Mr. Ford, of Bangor.' That came to me like a lightning-gleam. Then I said to myself again, 'Dr. Hubert Ford Cumberledge must be their son.' So there you have 'the train of reasoning.' Women CAN reason—sometimes. I had to think twice, though, before I could recall the exact ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the little bird, loudly, for already the trout had flashed away into a dark pool beneath a cascade, where the falling waters made a deafening noise. In another instant he made another dart, and quick as lightning they were in broad, shallow water. Again they were whirled from eddy to eddy, and already the stream had widened into a little river. The bending trees, the weeds, and grasses, were mirrored in its cool depths, as now with long, steady ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... Sandford, carelessly, "but I believe I am grown afraid of your father. His temper is a great deal altered from what it once was—he raises his voice, and uses harsh expressions upon the least provocation—his eyes flash lightning, and his face is distorted with anger upon the slightest motives—he turns away his old servants at a moment's warning, and no concession can make their peace. In a word, I am more at my ease when I am away from him—and I really believe," added he with a smile, but with a tear ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... and method, as exhibited in the ripest fruits of his intelligence, is such as implies above all other things the possession of a quality the very opposite of obscurity—a faculty of spiritual illumination rapid and intense and subtle as lightning, which brings to bear upon its object by way of direct and vivid illustration every symbol and every detail on which its light is flashed in passing." Browning has himself a word to say on this topic. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Brunnhilde had to hail the midnight, or at any rate a very obscure twilight. Georgie, it is true, with wonderful presence of mind, turned on an electric light when he had finished playing, but it was more like a flash of lightning than a slow, wonderful dawn. The tableaux were over well before 10.45, and though Lucia in answer to the usual pressings, said she would "see about" doing them again, she felt that Mrs Weston and Colonel Boucher, who made their first public appearance as the happy pair, attracted ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... play with the forked lightning, or take in my hands living wires, with their fiery current, than speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their own ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... heavy, ominous thunder-clouds came rolling silently in from the west. Lightning played in fitful dashes. Then followed swirling wind gusts, which stirred up fantastic columns of whirling dust, roared down the ravines, and raised a surf which grated furiously on the shingle below. Thunder crashed and bellowed, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... not thus that the New Law, the Law of grace and love, was given to the world. No dark cloud covered the mount of the Beatitudes from which our Lord preached; no deafening thunders were heard; no angry flashes of lightning were visible. There was nothing forbidding in the voice, words, or appearance of the Divine Lawgiver. In the whole exterior of our Savior there was a something so sweet, so humble, so meek and captivating, that the people were ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... yon thunder-cloud, That swathes, as with a purple shroud, Benledi's distant hill. Is it the thunder's solemn sound That mutters deep and dread, Or echoes from the groaning ground The warrior's measured tread? Is it the lightning's quivering glance That on the thicket streams, Or do they flash on spear and lance The sun's retiring beams? I see the dagger crest of Mar, I see the Moray's silver star Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war, That up the lake comes winding far! To hero bound for battle strife, Or ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... take a sly peep behind the curtain of the big play, hoping perhaps to get a slight hint as to what machinery hoists the moon, and what sort of contrivance flings the thunder and lightning, and many other things that are none of his business. Only, to be sure, he intends to get away safely with his information. When you think you see your finish bowing to receive you, something happens ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... stopped her by barring the way, he even thought of dismounting, thinking mayhap that she had left something behind at the cottage, and cursing his men for allowing her to return alone, but quick as a flash of lightning she ran past him, dragging her hood closer over ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... a boy," said one visitor sanctimoniously to Hetty, as they left Sally's room together. Hetty turned upon her like lightning. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... birds, he shaved the notabilities of the place: the mayor, the parish priest, the notary. Our master was a bell ringer. A wedding or a christening interrupted the lessons: he had to ring a peal. A gathering storm gave us a holiday: the great bell must be tolled to ward off the lightning and the hail. Our master was a choir singer. With his mighty voice, he filled the church when he led the Magnificat at vespers. Our master wound up and regulated the village clock. This was his proudest function. Giving a glance at the sun, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... like the flashing of lightning. Lifting her in his arms he carried her homewards and laid her down on the verandah. Frantic with fear he was going to fetch Mrs. Twist when she sat up rather shakily ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... death he received the last Sacraments of the Church. 'As the evening closed in, at a quarter to six, there came a sudden storm of hail and snow, covering the ground and roofs of the Schwarzspanierplatz, and followed by a flash of lightning and an instant clap of thunder. So great was the crash as to rouse even the dying man. He opened his eyes, clenched his fist, and shook it in the air above him. This lasted a few seconds, while the hail rushed down outside, and then ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... axe, wielded by the giant hunter, descended on his head, cracking his skull as if it were an eggshell. The savage sank to the earth without even a moan. Another savage naked and powerful, slipped in. He had to stoop to get through. He raised himself, and seeing Wetzel, he tried to dodge the lightning sweep of the axe. It missed his head, at which it had been aimed, but struck just over the shoulders, and buried itself in flesh and bone. The Indian uttered an agonizing yell which ended in a choking, gurgling sound as the blood spurted from his throat. Wetzel pulled the weapon from the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Suns combined together. Towards the centre of that effulgence, O son of Pandu, I saw a cloud looking like a mass of blue hills, adorned with rows of cranes, embellished with many a grand rainbow, with flashes of lightning and the thunder-fire looking like eyes set on it.[68] Within that cloud was the puissant Mahadeva. himself of dazzling splendour, accompanied by his spouse Uma. Verily, the great Deity seemed to shine with his penances, energy, beauty, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
