"Natural phenomenon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are at first sight seemingly miraculous, are often explained as natural events by the majority of commentators. Thus the account of the angel who went down into the pool and troubled the water is usually interpreted as a natural phenomenon, and no real miracle. Modern travellers have noticed that this pool of Bethesda is an intermittent spring, which may ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... not to final causes. It does not admit free-will in the ordinary sense of the word. In the light of the Monistic philosophy the phenomena that we are wont to regard as the freest and most independent, the expressions of the human will, are subject just as much to rigid laws as any other natural phenomenon. As a matter of fact, impartial and thorough examination of our "free" volitions shows that they are never really free, but always determined by antecedent factors that can be traced to either heredity or adaptation. We cannot, therefore, admit the conventional ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... the now royal Ts'in court said: "After 500 years of separation Ts'in is reunited to our imperial house; in 77 years more a domineering monarch will arise." Seven years later the "raining down of metal" (probably some natural phenomenon not clearly understood at the time) was considered a good omen in connection with the new capital, now placed on the south bank of the River Wei. After Ts'in had conquered China, there are numerous other instances of oracles, omens, and so forth, all ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... he turns up afresh, with his own wonted perennial vigour, on paper at least, in company with the great sea-serpent, the big gooseberry, the shower of frogs, the two-headed calf, and all the other common objects of the country or the seaside in the silly season. No extraordinary natural phenomenon on earth was ever better vouched for—in the fashion rendered familiar to us by the Tichborne claimant—that is to say, no other could ever get a larger number of unprejudiced witnesses to swear positively and unreservedly ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... weather was too much for them. They could not withstand the driving rain, the water swirling round their knees. All the strength went out of their shaggy frames, their knees buckled and down they went, helpless, destroyed by a natural phenomenon to which they were unaccustomed. They had actually been smothered by ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... and memory. "Mythologie ist eine Apperceptionsform der Natur und des Menschen." (Zeitschrift fuer Voelkerpsychologie, Bd. i., s. 44). Most recent mythologists omit the latter branch of the definition; for instance, "A myth is in its origin an explanation by the uncivilized mind of some natural phenomenon." (John Fiske, Myths and Myth Makers, p. 21). This is to omit that which gives the myth its only claim to be a product of the religious sentiment. Schopenhauer, in calling dogmas and myths "the metaphysics of the people," fell into the same error. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... in a position where her emotions and her feelings are too strong for her judgment and inhibitions. Everyone who acts must act from similar causes or inducements. There is no special providence in the realm of mind. There is no room for chance in any natural phenomenon. Possibly the public will understand sometime, and law-makers and law-enforcers will place crime and ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... One striking natural phenomenon is exhibited here, arising out of the vicinity of this stupendous prong of the Cordilleras. The sea breeze blows into the harbour all day, but in the night, or rather towards morning, the cold air from the high regions rushes ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... animal matter of the molluscs. Each animal, in proportion to its size, is found to retain, as in the fossiliferous spindles of the Old Red Sandstone, its coherent nodule around it. One point in the natural phenomenon, however, still remains unillustrated by the experiments of Mrs. Marshall. We see in them the animal matter giving solidity to the lime in immediate contact with it; but we do not see it possessing any such affinity for it as to form, in an argillaceous compound, like that of the ichthyolite ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... an allegoric meaning is usually something deeper and subtler than this, and seldom so openly expressed. Many of Longfellow's poems—the Beleaguered City, for example—may be definitely divided into two parts; in the first, a story is told or a natural phenomenon described; in the second, the spiritual application of the parable is formally set forth. This method became with him almost a trick of style, and his readers learned to look for the haec fabula docet at the end as a matter of course. As for the prevailing optimism in Longfellow's ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... brighter or longer remembered than the magnificent auroral displays which occasionally illumine the darkness of the long polar night, and light up with a celestial glory the whole blue vault of heaven. No other natural phenomenon is so grand, so mysterious, so terrible in its unearthly splendour as this. The veil which conceals from mortal eyes the glory of the eternal throne seems drawn aside, and the awed beholder is lifted out of the atmosphere of his daily life into the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... I suppose that this natural phenomenon continued for about twenty minutes, not more, during ten of which it was at its worst. Then by degrees it ceased, the sky cleared and the moon shone out beautifully. We climbed to the roof again and looked. It ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... see Niagara. One was, as I was frequently told, that all I had seen, even to the "Prayer Eyes," would go for nothing on my return; for in England, America was supposed to be a vast tract of country containing one town—New York; and one astonishing natural phenomenon, called Niagara. "See New York, Quebec, and Niagara," was the direction I received when I started upon my travels. I never could make out how, but somehow or other, from my earliest infancy, I had been familiar with the name of Niagara, and, from the numerous pictures ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Ruins of the Chateaux of Montfaucon and Vaite, to be seen on the way. At Baume-les-Daines, visit the ancient Abbey Church, now turned into a public granary, also the valley of the Cuisancin, last, the Glaciere de la Grace-Dieu, a natural phenomenon of great ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... turnstile before these wonders are accessible. Rocks in themselves having insufficient drawing power, as the dramatic critics say, a maze has been added, together with swings, a seesaw, arbours, a croquet lawn, and all the proper adjuncts of a natural phenomenon. The effect is to make the rocks appear more unreal than any rocks ever seen upon the stage. Freed from their pleasure-garden surroundings they would become beautifully wild and romantic and tropically un-English; but as it is, with their notice ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... barrels of his shotgun showed that he did not mistake this for any natural phenomenon. The sound of the shots brought the rest up at a gallop, and a rapid fire was opened on ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... fratricide, drunkenness, lying, unbelief, theft, idolatry, slave-dealing, and other crimes, but no hint as to sanctifying or desecrating the Sabbath. At length, a few days before the giving of the law, a natural phenomenon announced to the Jews the great change that was at hand—the manna fell in double quantity on Friday, and was not found on Saturday. So new was this that, contrary to the command, the people went out on ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... meeting have told me that Dr. La Paz's theory was very interesting and that each point was carefully considered. But evidently it wasn't conclusive enough because when the conference broke up, after two days, it was decided that the green fireballs were a natural phenomenon of some kind. It was recommended that this phase of the UFO investigation be given to the Air Force's Cambridge Research Laboratory, since it is the function of this group to study natural phenomena, and that Cambridge set up a project to attempt to photograph ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... coincidences. But one is because of t'other. Irene believed my poison turned her stone red, or she would never have refused to wear it a minute longer, from an unreasonable dislike of the Evil One, whose influence she discerned in this simple, natural phenomenon. I considered myself justified in boning the ring for my own use, so I had it enlarged to go on my finger, and there it is, on! I shall never see it again, unless Septimius Severus turns up trumps. What colour should you say ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... years, but I have never known such a fog as that of last night, not even among the icebergs of Behring Sea. There one at least could see the light of the binnacle, but last night I could not even distinguish the hand by which I guided myself along the barrack-wall. At sea a fog is a natural phenomenon. It is as familiar as the rainbow which follows a storm, it is as proper that a fog should spread upon the waters as that steam shall rise from a kettle. But a fog which springs from the paved streets, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... the ground had been covered many times. Instead, he spent the time speculating on the meaning of the mysterious signal from space. Admittedly, he didn't have much knowledge of astrophysics or radio astronomy. But he had never heard of any natural phenomenon in space that emitted pulsed signals in random fashion. Some stars pulsed, like the Cepheid variables, but ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... miles, she knew everybody and everybody knew her; to the east her fame was bounded only by the regardless sea. She and her ancestors had lived in the village of Moze as long as even Mr. Mathew Moze and his ancestors. In the village, and to the village, she was Miss Ingate, a natural phenomenon, like the lie of the land and the river Moze. Her opinions offended nobody, not Mr. Moze himself—she was Miss Ingate. She was laughed at, beloved and respected. Her sagacity had one flaw, and the flaw sprang from her sincere conviction that human nature in that corner of Essex, which she understood ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... convinced by several boys older than myself that (I even remember the date) on June 18th the earth was going to be destroyed. It had been proved, I was told, beyond the shadow of a doubt that on that particular date some natural phenomenon would take place which would inevitably entail the destruction of everything living on the earth. This forms an interesting parallel to the present case; for at the time I was only about eight years old, and I had very scanty ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... a time. But there's no telling how long. This is a most remarkable natural phenomenon—one of the most remarkable ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... followed the drums were small, and walked shabbily. Each man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he went. There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a natural phenomenon. Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major pacing in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swinging plaids, the strange elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time—and the bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take up the martial ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meets us, in one instance, in the tragedy of Schiller, in an unexpected and unnecessary manner. How are we to understand the thunder which is heard in apparent confirmation of the cruel accusation of Thibaut? As a mere coincidence, as a mere natural phenomenon, we can hardly view it; appearing as it does in this atmosphere of wonders. The archbishop seems to think that possibly the thunder might testify for Johanna. But as the effect is to produce her condemnation, it is impossible it could have been intended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... with this belief in conjuration grow out of mere lack of enlightenment. As primeval men saw a personality behind every natural phenomenon, and found a god or a devil in wind, rain, and hail, in lightning, and in storm, so the untaught man or woman who is assailed by an unusual ache or pain, some strenuous symptom of serious physical disorder, is prompt to accept the suggestion, which tradition ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was actually omnipotent, actually infinite. Meneptah measured the God of Israel by his own gods. Furthermore, the miracles did not amaze him as they appalled Egypt. He was exceedingly superstitious; in his eye the most ordinary natural phenomenon was a demonstration of the occult. No matter that the advanced science of his time explained rainfall, unusual heat or cold, over-fruitful or unproductive years, pestilence and sudden death, eclipses, comets and meteors,—he believed them to be the direct results ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... leaders of bands were Li Tzu-ch'eng and Chang Hsien-chung. Li came from the province of Shensi; he had come to the fore during a disastrous famine in his country. The years around 1640 brought several widespread droughts in North China, a natural phenomenon that was repeated in the nineteenth century, when unrest again ensued. Chang Hsien-chung returned for a time to the support of the government, but later established himself in western China. It was typical, however, of all these insurgents that none of ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... of the trees on the opposite side. But soon as arriving at mid-stream the mystery is at an end; like most others, simple when understood. Their forms, outlined against the moonlit surface of the water, show a very natural phenomenon—two ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... possible! This animal, this monster, this natural phenomenon that had puzzled the whole scientific world, that had muddled and misled the minds of seamen in both hemispheres, was, there could be no escaping it, an even more astonishing phenomenon— a phenomenon made by the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... 'Wardrobe of a Celebrity Sold For A Song.' Where's them two pair of trousers? 'A Tragic Disappearance.' All up the spout. Everything gone. 'Not a Stitch to His Name.' Really, Richard, it wouldn't be proper to get well. A natural phenomenon of my standing couldn't—simply couldn't, Richard—go back to the profession with a wardrobe consistin' of two pink night-shirts, both the worse for wear. It wouldn't do! On the Stage In Scant Attire.' I couldn't stand it. 'Fell From His ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... the image has an appearance of complete reality. The cause of this illusion is evidently the same as that of the illusions of dreams, and of the origin of myth; namely, that everywhere and always the mental or natural phenomenon and its image are respectively entified. In the normal waking state, habit and other causes on which we have touched render our ideas of things altogether immaterial, as merely psychical forms and representative signs, but when the excitement of the organs increases, so as to present them to the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... universal. To everything existing, to the man and to the tree, to the state and to the store-room, was assigned a spirit which came into being with it and perished along with it, the counterpart of the natural phenomenon in the spiritual domain; to the man the male Genius, to the woman the female Juno, to the boundary Terminus, to the forest Silvanus, to the circling year Vertumnus, and so on to every object after ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... designed the world but never interferes in its process, either in the physical cosmos or in human history. Human history itself, civilisation, is a purely natural phenomenon. Events are strictly enchained; continuity is unbroken; what happened at any given time could have happened only then, and nothing else could have happened. Herder's rigid determinism not only excludes Voltaire's chance but also suppresses ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... method. The objections which were made when his doctrine was new—that it was horrible and depressing, that people ought not to act as he said they did, and so on—were all such as implied an unscientific attitude of mind; as against all of them, his calm determination to treat man as a natural phenomenon marks an important advance over the reformers of the ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... me into the house a vivid impression of a beautiful clear moonlight night, without a speck of cloud in the sky. I could not believe my ears. Sent early abroad for my education, I was not familiar with the most dreaded natural phenomenon of my native land. I saw, with inexpressible astonishment, a look of terror in my chief's eyes. Suddenly I felt giddy. The General staggered against me heavily; the girl seemed to reel in the middle ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... meditation or in dreams, and consuming hashish in large quantities. At the end of some time Mr. Feathercock succeeded in persuading himself that what he was witnessing was nothing more nor less than a perfectly simple and natural phenomenon, perhaps not well understood hitherto, and due entirely to the extraordinarily favorable action of melon pulp on the physical development of turtles. He decided to cut ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... by biologists, psychologists, and sociologists of human behavior as a natural phenomenon, materials upon human nature have rapidly accumulated. The wealth and variety of these materials are all the greater because of the diversity of the points of view from which workers in this field have attacked ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... power that soars above nature, but a force of nature like its other forces, as mysterious and as definite as they are, only that it dominates a specified group of beings, namely, living organisms. It may readily be compared with any other natural phenomenon. For instance, the phenomenon of crystallization has its well determined sphere of activity, viz., the mineral world. It employs definite mathematico-physical laws to obtain a specified result, and even acts differently in different mineral ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... certified modern forgery. The foregoing remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, joined with what we have learned about shape-perception and empathy, will enable the Reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly owned up to. For a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess enough elements in common with a masterpiece, otherwise it could never suggest any connexion with it. Given a favourable emotional attitude and the absence of obvious ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... is a natural phenomenon, enjoying the most robust health. It may be a pleasure for a man with great will power and an iron constitution to study more carefully into the habits of the cyclone, but as far as I am concerned, individually, I could worry along some ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... superstitious dread of coming evils. Indeed, the coincidence of the running of the bourne, a wet summer, a worse sowing-season, and a wet cold spring, may well inspire evil forebodings, and give a colourable pretext for such apprehensions as are often entertained on the occurrence of any unusual natural phenomenon. These intermittent rivulets have no affinity, as your correspondent E. G. R. supposes, to subterraneous rivers. The nearest approach to this kind of stream is to be found in the Mole, which sometimes sinks away, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... function for it in reason's ideal realm, every piece of knowledge remains useless, or even an obstacle in the way of our intended advance. This applies to individuals just as truly as it does to mankind. And since man's reason is a natural phenomenon and does apparently belong to the class of elemental forces, this warfare against the apparent fact, and the fortitude and hope which its whole-hearted prosecution begets, appear as a natural law to the intelligence and as a command and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... that if the weird white object was human and could witness his movements the best thing to do would be to try and creep upon it unobserved. On the contrary, if the ghost was some natural phenomenon, or a supernatural agent, all he could do ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... caution at this day to explain that the barbarian notion which it is here intended to convey by the term "animate" is not the same as would be conveyed by the word "living". The term does not cover all living things, and it does cover a great many others. Such a striking natural phenomenon as a storm, a disease, a waterfall, are recognised as "animate"; while fruits and herbs, and even inconspicuous animals, such as house-flies, maggots, lemmings, sheep, are not ordinarily apprehended as "animate" except when taken collectively. As here used the term ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... of a providence that works only by general laws was wholly alien to the feelings of the age. Every political event, as well as every natural phenomenon, was believed to be the immediate result of a special mandate of God. This led to the belief that his holy angels and saints were constantly employed in executing his commands and mingling in the affairs of men. The Church ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... from the brows of both men; Sarah Maria alone was calm. Various devices were used to dislodge her, and at the end of an hour she had moved a trifle further than a glacier does in a similar length of time, and was fully as cold and calm as this natural phenomenon. As she was quite near the opening of the car when she took her stand, in a physical as well as in a moral sense, even the very slight advantage gained by her enemies sufficed to put her in position to make her final exit when, like Sairy ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... three o'clock in the afternoon when we came in sight of the suspension bridge and Niagara Falls. I suppose it would be impossible for anyone now to feel the same profound interest in any natural phenomenon whatsoever. We believed that we were approaching the most stupendous natural wonder in all the world, and we could scarcely credit the marvel of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... return from the Lyapinsky house, I related my impressions to a friend. The friend, an inhabitant of the city, began to tell me, not without satisfaction, that this was the most natural phenomenon of town life possible, that I only saw something extraordinary in it because of my provincialism, that it had always been so, and always would be so, and that such must be and is the inevitable condition of civilization. In London it is even worse. Of ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... infinite meanings, like every other natural phenomenon; and deeper meanings in proportion to the exaltation of the soul which beholds it. But, consider, is it not, as the one perfect figure, the very symbol of the totality of the spiritual world; which, like it, is invisible, except at ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley |
