"Spontaneous combustion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion. Most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that... Now, you're talking straight, Mr Crimmins. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... other point on which I offer a word of remark. The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when that event was ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... separates the true and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but exalted nature, from the soreness of a soul which is sympathizing with a morbid state of the body, that it is no wonder they are often confounded. And thus many good women are suffered to perish by that form of spontaneous combustion in which the victim goes on toiling day and night with the hidden fire consuming her, until all at once her cheek whitens, and, as we look upon her, she drops away, a heap of ashes. The more they over-work themselves, the more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... astonishment, exclaiming: "Hilloe! All the witches! Here's Cap! Why, where on earth did you shoot from? What's up now? You look as if you were in a state of spontaneous combustion and couldn't stand ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... that there are any difficulties. The ground was a bog, and as fast as earth was tipped in at the top it bulged out at the bottom. When, after great labour, this difficulty had been overcome, part of the embankment, fifty feet in height, which contained alum shale, decomposed, and spontaneous combustion ensued. The amazement of the villagers was great, but finally they came to the conclusion expressed by one of them, in "Dang it, they can't make this here railway arter all, and they've set it o' fire to ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... ruination. You're not strong enough to stand up under nothing like that. With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket you—you'd go up in spontaneous combustion, you would." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... regards safety to life and limb, much will be done by better arrangements. In steam-voyaging, we may expect that means will be adopted to avert, or at least assuage, the terrible calamities of conflagration and shipwreck—better acquaintance with the principles of spontaneous combustion, and with the natural law of storms, being of itself a great step towards this ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... he laughed, amused at her ingenuousness. "But I don't think it's what the sentimental schoolgirl feels for the college football player. As for love at first sight, I consider that simply absurd. To my way of thinking, love isn't a spontaneous combustion. It's a slow, steady growth and the soil in ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... analogous to the Japanese coal and that of Washington, but not to that of the Welsh or Pennsylvania coals. It might better be characterized as a highly carbonized lignite, likely to contain much sulphur as iron pyrites, rendering them apt to spontaneous combustion and injurious to boiler plates. Nevertheless, he says, when pyrites seams are avoided and the lignite is properly handled, it forms a valuable ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Shakespeare and Bacon. Correct transliteration of Greek; pronunciation of Latin. Sunday opening of museums; of theatres. The English Sunday; Bank Holiday. Darwinism. Is there spontaneous creation? or spontaneous combustion? The germ theory; Pasteur's cures; Mattei's cures; Virchow's cell theory. Unity of Homer; of the Bible. Dickens v. Thackeray. Shall we ever fly? or steer balloons? The credit system; the discount system. Impressionism, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... grew scarlet as if she'd been suddenly slapped. I expected to see the forked lightning of scorn dart from those immense dark eyes of Storm's: but instead they crinkled up in an engaging smile. One glance the man gave Pat and me, against his own will I think: but it was a spontaneous combustion of his sense of humour. It struck a spark to ours, and I dared to smile also. Pat didn't quite dare, but looked relieved, though still evidently scared about what might come next, and ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... farmer's sheep, who, in order to punish her, fastened one of the sheep in the ground and burnt it, except the feet, which were under the earth. The next morning Grace Pett was found burnt to a cinder, except her feet. Her fate is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions as a case of spontaneous combustion."[755] ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer |
