"Polar star" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a letter from Madame Hanska telling of the death of her husband the previous November. Balzac wished to leave for Russia immediately, but Madame Hanska's permission was not forthcoming, and it was not until July of 1843 that Balzac arrived at St. Petersburg to visit his "Polar Star." ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... a man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His polar star being one which rather ranges, And not the fix'd—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with such a fervour of intention— There was no doubt he earn'd his ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... A knowledge of this fact will encourage tens of thousands of others to settle in our midst, and it may not be long ere we may with truth be recognized throughout the political and the moral world as indeed the "Polar Star" of the republican galaxy.... ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... variation was a whole point east. This variation of the compass had never been before observed, and therefore the admiral was much surprised at the phenomenon, and concluded that the needle did not actually point toward the polar star, but to some other fixed point. Three days afterward, when almost one hundred leagues farther west, he was still more astonished at the irregularity of the variation; for, having observed the needle to vary a whole point to the eastward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... you will not be obeyed. You will multiply evil-doers and the unhappy by fear, by punishment, and by remorse; you will deprave men's consciences; you will corrupt their minds; they will have lost the polar star ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... cannot fail to attract attention because of the different arrangement of the stars. People living in the northern hemisphere have never seen the southern cross, nor the great fixed stars, Canopus or Achernar; and those below the equator have never viewed the polar star, and do not know the beauty of the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... Waterloo entirely from the French side, and speaking, for example, of left and right as if he had been—as in imagination he was—by the side of Napoleon instead of Wellington. Even M. Victor Hugo can see more merit in the English army and its commander. A radical, who takes Napoleon for his polar star, must change some of his theories, though he disguises the change from himself; but a change of a different kind came over Hazlitt as ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "steers his bark by the polar star, although he never expects to become possessor of it, and the thoughts of Isabelle of Croye shall make me a worthy man at arms, though I may never see her more. When she hears that a Scottish soldier named Quentin Durward distinguished himself in a well fought field, or left his body on ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... is the worship of Relativity. One master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the southern sky. Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites. Again, Zennism, like Taoism, is a strong advocate of individualism. Nothing is real except that which concerns the working of our own minds. Yeno, the sixth patriarch, once saw two monks ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... well-turned quatrain, said of Burns that he 'pass'd through life ... a brilliant trembling northern light,' but that 'thro' years to come' he would shine from far 'a fix'd unsetting polar star.' It will be remembered that, in another quatrain, Lord Erskine besought his contemporaries to 'mourn not for Anacreon dead,' for they rejoiced in the possession of 'an Anacreon Moore.' James Smith wrote of Miss Edgeworth that her work could never be anonymous—'Thy writings ... ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... you follow the polar star To the seat of the old Norse Kings, Past the death-white halls of Valhalla, Where the Norn to the tempest sings— Follow the steady needle That cleaves to its steady star To the uttermost realms of Odin ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... wind covers deep All things in snow, as in their sepulchres The dead are buried. In the distances The shock of warring Cyclades of ice Makes music as of wild and strange lament; And up in heaven now tardily are lit The solitary polar star and seven Lamps of the bear. And now the warlike race Of swans gather their hosts upon the breast Of some far gulf, and, bidding their farewell To the white cliffs and slender junipers, And sea-weed bridal-beds, intone the song Of parting, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner |
