"Lightning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the noon, and her hounds are in quest by day, [Ant. 3. And the world is fulfilled of the noise of them crying for their prey, And the sun's self stricken in heaven, and cast out of his course as a blind man astray. From east to west of the south sea-line [Str. 4. Glitters the lightning of spears that shine; 1310 As a storm-cloud swoln that comes up from the skirts of the sea By the wind for helmsman to shoreward ferried, So black behind them the live storm serried Shakes earth with the tramp of its foot, and the terror to be. Shall the sea give death whom the land ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... operation. The pain felt was severe; but it was insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I said, pointing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave! Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave! Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms— The lightning and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... a capitulation, he would shed the last drop of his blood. He told me to look on his table and house as my own, advised me to go there directly to repose myself, and clapping spurs to his horse, he flew like lightning to the hornwork." ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Quick as the flashing lightning, the rapid thoughts of Mabel Dunham glanced over the five or six subalterns of the corps, who, by age and inclinations, would be the most likely to form such a wish; and we should do injustice to her habits, perhaps, were we not to say that a lively sensation of pleasure rose momentarily in ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... where it was brought into the general viewing-room: and the first thing that was done here was naturally to pull off the galoshes—when the spirit, that was merely gone out on adventures, must have returned with the quickness of lightning to its earthly tenement. It took its direction towards the body in a straight line; and a few seconds after, life began to show itself in the man. He asserted that the preceding night had been the worst that ever ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the flame of the enclosed candle. The other end of the cord referred to led down an open hatchway close to the fore-bulkhead of the cabin; and as I took in the whole scene in a single comprehensive glance—the open hatchway, the black cord, and the dimly-burning lantern—I realised with lightning intuitiveness that every soul on board the brig was tottering upon the very brink of eternity; the reckless villain before me was in the very act of exploding the powder magazine, and blowing the ship and all ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... a confidante of Kate by the slight considerations of having never, in all his life, spoken to the object of his passion, and having never set eyes upon her, except on two occasions, on both of which she had come and gone like a flash of lightning—or, as Nicholas himself said, in the numerous conversations he held with himself, like a vision of youth and beauty much too bright to last—his ardour and devotion remained without its reward. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... scrupulous neatness and politeness, was a poverty-stricken, shiftless vagabond; and what good had grammar done him? The ruined gentleman stood before the president—who was seated in his large armchair at the bank—holding his hat uncertainly, the nervous smile glimmering like heat lightning upon his pale, anxious face, in which his eyes shone with that singular, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... happens to come across any spirit of perception and subtlety which may be at the time passing by, the spirit of right does not yield to the spirit of evil, and the spirit of evil is again envious of the spirit of right, so that the two do not harmonize. Just like wind, water, thunder and lightning, which, when they meet in the bowels of the earth, must necessarily, as they are both to dissolve and are likewise unable to yield, clash and explode to the end that they may at length exhaust themselves. Hence it is that these spirits have also forcibly to diffuse ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... shameful? I am happy to say I did not pay for my seat. Even in Budapest I was a persona gratis. 'T was certainly a remarkable scene, its solemnity emphasized by the thunder without, that drowned the voice of the mueddin calling to prayer, and by the lightning and rain-torrents that sent the pretty little al fresco waitresses scudding about with their serviettes on their heads to tend the few parties in the leafy square that dined on regardless of diluted wine or under the protection of umbrellas. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and flashed up brightly, and everything about them seemed to have plunged in darkness. It is thus that in the flash of lightning all other lights are instantly darkened and the heavy yellow flame casts a shadow ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... over-stowed with liquor, whereby you became crank, and rolled, d'ye see, in such a manner, that by a pitch of the ship your starboard heel was jammed in one of the scuppers; and as for the matter of your eye, that was knocked out by your own crew when the Lightning was paid off: there's poor Pipes, who was beaten into all the colours of the rainbow for taking your part, and giving you time to sheer off; and I don't find as how you have rewarded him ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Carson who was no longer Dick Carson but John Massey held out his hand to the man who had wronged him so bitterly. The paraquet in the corner jibbered harshly. Thunder rumbled heavily outside. An eerily vivid flash of lightning dispelled for a moment the gloom of the dusk as the two ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... state frankly, were traitors to the Daily cause, spies and mischief-makers from elsewhere) raced unhesitatingly in, crying that toasted cheese sandwiches and jam tarts were to be distributed like lightning to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... admixture of all foreign bloods. In about twenty-five or fifty years the model American will step forth. He will have the strong brain of the German, the polished manners of the French, the artistic taste of the Italian, the stanch heart of the English, the steadfast piety of the Scotch, the lightning wit of the Irish, and when he steps forth, bone, muscle, nerve, brain entwined with the fibers of all nationalities, the nations will break out in ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... 1746 he began to study the construction and habits of lightning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that he would be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or odd specimens of lightning, if they would send them into the Gazette office by express for examination. Every time there was a thunder storm, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... known to our readers that the steeple of the old meeting-house was struck by lightning about a month ago. The frame of the building was a good deal jarred by the shock, but no danger was apprehended from the injury it had received. On Sunday last the congregation came together as usual. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Priority, however, belongs beyond all doubt to T'ien, which it would have been more natural to find meaning, first the visible heavens, and secondly the Deity, whose existence beyond the sky would be inferred from such phenomena as lightning, thunder, wind, and rain. But the process appears to have been the other way, so far at any rate as the written language is concerned. The Chinese script, when it first came into existence, was purely pictorial, and confined to visible objects which were comparatively easy to ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... shopping in the Strand, and then I thought I would look you up in your grimy old diggings. My word, we are going to have a storm, Herrick," as a flash of lightning lit up ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... at me, why, it just roused all the devil there was in me. I put up my hand—so—as if to ward off the stroke, and as the whip came down, I caught it in my hand, wrenched it out of the Don's grasp, and, as quick as lightning, returned the blow with all my strength, lashing him fair across the face and cutting his cheek open. He reeled backwards in his saddle, and I, first letting out right and left at the two overseers, who stood one on each side of me, and bowling them over like a ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the boys, who was driving a trim-looking bay, and who had crossed the line at the ending of the course second only to a pacer that could "speed like a streak of lightning," as the boys said,—"Hellow, deacon; ain't you going to shake out old shamble-heels, and show us fellows what speed is to-day?" And the merry-hearted chap, son of the principal lawyer of the place, laughed heartily at his challenge, while the other drivers looked ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... astropaphobia is a morbid fear of being struck by lightning. It was first recognized by Bruck of Westphalia, who knew a priest who was always in terror when on a country road with an unobstructed view of the sky, but who was reassured when he was under the shelter ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... imaginable limit the beauty and the cost of the adored effigy. The combination is as harmonious as it is splendid. No wonder it is commonly believed that Buddha himself alighted on the spot in the form of a great emerald, and by a flash of lightning conjured the glittering edifice and altar in an instant from the earth, to house and throne ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... mould are whirled up into the air, but these are promptly washed down again whenever it rains; and the same is true of the smoke impurities in the air of our great cities. Air is also constantly being purified by the heat and light of the sunbeams, burned clean in streaks by the jagged bolt of the lightning in summer, and frozen sweet and pure by the frosts every winter. So that air in the open, or connected with the open, and free to move as it will, is always pure and wholesome. But to be sure of this, it must be "eaten alive"—that is, in motion. Stagnant air is always dead and, like all dead things, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... limit of the southeast trade winds the air was heavily charged with electricity, and there was much thunder and lightning. It was hereabout I remembered that, a few years before, the American ship Alert was destroyed by lightning. Her people, by wonderful good fortune, were rescued on the same day and brought to Pernambuco, where ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... buzz of voices ceased, for there was a sudden blinding flash of lightning and a loud peal of thunder that made the windows rattle. The storm which Mrs. Sherman had predicted would come before morning, had crept up unnoticed, ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... highway in all Britain. It is laid out on a liberal scale, magnificently surfaced and bordered much of the way by wide and beautifully kept lawns and at times skirted with majestic trees. We saw a facsimile of a broadside poster issued about a century ago announcing that the new lightning coach service installed on this road between London and York would carry passengers the distance of one hundred and eighty-eight miles in the astonishingly short space of four days. This coach, of course, traveled by relays, and at what was then considered breakneck speed. Over this same ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... seen that all was not well with us, and that some monster lingered in our thoughts. Our work that morning was the same as it had been for several days past—drawing out and spreading manure. While thus engaged, I had a sudden presentiment, which flashed upon me like lightning in a dark night, revealing to the lonely traveler the gulf before, and the enemy behind. I instantly turned to Sandy Jenkins, who was near me, and said to him, "Sandy, we are betrayed; something has just told me ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... oppressive vividness, is not painted in a style of vague suggestiveness, but in a hard, distinct, definite, realistic way, the realism which results from a faithful record of distorted impressions. The poet's imagination is like a flash of lightning which strikes through the darkness, flickering above the earth, and lighting up, point by point, with a momentary and fearful distinctness, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... still justifies the reputation given to it by one of the British admirals of the "olden time." The "Bermoothees," he records in his quaintly written journal, "is a hellish place for thunder, lightning, and storms." Shakspeare, too, sends "Ariel" to "fetch dew" from the "still vexed Bermoothes" for his exacting master Prospero. But although gales of wind during the winter, and thunder storms in the summer, are so prevalent, the climate is delightful. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... grand divisions of animate and inanimate nature. Doubtless the nascent scientist may have imagined life animating many bodies that we should call inanimate—such as the sun, wandering planets, the winds, and lightning; and, on the other hand, he may quite likely have relegated such objects as trees to the ranks of the non-living; but that he recognized a fundamental distinction between, let us say, a wolf and a granite bowlder we ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... that eighth sense of armed caution, which is the possession of every girl who has to work for her living and is conscious of the perils which await her on every side, reviewed with lightning speed all the possibilities and gave ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... according to the Railway-Steamship time-cards, to make the passage from Calais to Dover, but the writer has never been able to make one of these lightning passages. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... great black blasted pine, its waist the height of a tall tree, and its two lonely lightning-scathed and white arms stretched out like a malediction; and for a moment he had to take himself in hand. After a little he mastered the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... with great violence against my head, with a scream of rage and triumph, hurting me a good deal as it dug its cruel, armed heel into my cheek. The pigeon had fluttered, stunned and exhausted to the ground, and, quick as lightning I stooped to pick it up; so great had been the impetus of the hawk's final charge that he had never perceived his victim had escaped him. The cunning of these birds must be seen to be believed. I have often watched a wary old hawk perched most ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... willing to grant the identity of life, and its divine possibilities, but I cannot worship it as life itself, a mere manifestation of nature. I know that there is such a thing as living rock, and that it may be killed by a bolt of lightning as readily as a tree; but this does not make it any more worthy of worship than I am, and that is terribly unworthy. The rock and I are types of life, stages in the development of life, but for my child there must be something better. For the child ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... had we looked upon anything like this. Great masses of coal-black clouds frowned down upon us, flanked by fiery crimson cloud banks, that looked as if they would rain blood, whilst the atmosphere was dense enough to half-stifle one. Now and again the thunder rolled out majestically, and the lightning flashed from the black clouds into the red, like bayonets through ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... the present," he explained. "Soon as we bag the game we'll run 'em in here quick as lightning. Most likely keep 'em here all day, so's not to have to parade 'em through the streets until after dark. A man's coming soon with coffee ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... contemptible as he saw the Carthusian turn from him in all the hallowedness of resignation. He was even conscious of a momentary inclination to follow the example of the preacher's philanthropy and disinterested zeal, but it glanced like a flash of lightning through a dark vault, where there lies nothing to catch the blaze; and he slowly descended the hill in a direction different from that of the Carthusian, forgetting him and his doctrines, and buried in anxious thoughts about his ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... he was ten feet away. The noise awakened the sleepers, who sat up and then sprang to their feet, their hands instinctively streaking to their thighs for the weapons which peeked contentedly from the bosom of Mr. Cassidy's open shirt. One of the Mexicans made a lightning-like grab for the back of his neck for the knife which lay along his spine and was shot in the front of his neck for his trouble. The shot spoiled his aim, as the knife flashed past Mr. Cassidy's arm, wide by two ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... brief autumn, Fierce storm-rack scrawled with lightning Passed over it Leaving the naked bleeding earth, Stabbed with the swords of ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... upon their hearts in sanctifying them, caused them to see and flow together. It might be said that the giving of this glorious light was in one respect similar to the second coming of the Son of man: "As the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." The fact that many persons in different parts of the world saw this light independently of each other and at about the same time is one evidence that this movement is God's work and not man's. ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... mind, as if stretched upon a clearly defined panorama, and caused him to heave a deep sigh. What compensation had he got for all these sufferings, which were the result of his ambition? And the answer came to him with the suddenness of lightning-"Ruler over Kalorama, for a day." "Heaven be with me," he sighed; "for now my poverty is perfect. And who would envy my fate, here in a desert, without a friend, and in the raiment of a priest, which if I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... enthusiasm as he went on: "Just wait until the lightning begins to play around some of these birds. Then you'll see them scamper. I'm going to the city to-morrow to have a talk with the C.E. and I've just got a sneaking hunch that I'm going to ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... want of knowledge destroyeth you, but want of consideration of what you know, and this is brutishness. Men's hearts do not carry the seal and stamp of their knowledge, because thoughts of God and his word are but as passengers that go through a land, as lightning going through the mind, but warms it not; and so their practice carrieth no impression of it either. How base is it for those who have God for their God, to be so ignorant of him! Would not any man willingly travel about his own possessions? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... sweetheart, remaining thus breathless and choking until she heard the stairs creak. Then, she briskly seated herself again, and resumed her glum grimace, while Laurent calmly continued the interrupted conversation with Camille. It was like a rapid, blinding flash of lightning in a leaden sky. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... whisper. She leaned back in her chair, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. It was very quietly done, and very touching. The Duchess threw a lightning glance at her husband; and then, possessing herself of one of Julie's hands, she kissed it and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fear at the thought of the unknown power which had ruined the ancient manor-house in a moment. An invisible cloud seemed to be hanging over the valley and the village; the first flash of lightning had struck and completely shattered ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... by Jupiter, according to the promise she had obliged him to make; but, being unable to support the effulgence of his lightning, she is burnt to ashes in his presence. Bacchus, with whom she is pregnant, is preserved; and Tiresias decided the dispute between Jupiter and Juno, concerning ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... high. Then, clapping the palm of his right hand to his mouth, Red Fox gave voice to a ringing war whoop, fierce, savage and exultant, and, almost at the instant, like the boom and rumble that follows some vivid lightning flash, the prairie woke and trembled to the thunder of near a thousand hoofs. From every point of the compass—from every side, yelling like fiends of some orthodox hell, down they came—the wild warriors of the frontier in furious rush upon the silent and almost peaceful covert of this little ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... with deep unction. "He was pretty well covered with bruises and scratches, but he forgot them in the awful fright you gave him. He took you to be some demon, some mysterious Aztec god out of a far and dim past, who had smitten him with lightning, because he presumed to climb upon a sacred pyramid. But some of us who were not so credulous, perhaps because we did not have his bruises and scratches, searched all the sides and the top of the pyramid. We failed to find you and we knew that you could ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... band of metal over her front teeth; a third had red hair and a thick powdering of freckles; "The Currant Buns" wore dresses of yellowy-brown tweed, which in Dreda's eyes made them appear "bunnier" than ever. So much was taken in by the first lightning glance, as at the appearance of Miss Bretherton the girls leapt mechanically to their feet and stood ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... led Cinderella to her bed-chamber, and said to her, "Run into the garden and bring me a pumpion." Cinderella flew like lightning, and brought the finest she could lay hold of. Her godmother scooped out the inside, leaving nothing but the rind; she then struck it with her wand, and the pumpion instantly became a fine coach gilded all over with gold. She next ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... to be withdrawn from the cone. He is alone. Deep shadows gather round the farmstead and the ricks, and there is not a sound, nothing but the rustle of a leaf falling from the hollow oak by the gateway. But at midnight, just as the drier is drawing the hops, a thunderstorm bursts, and the blue lightning lights up the red cone without, blue as the sulphur flames creeping over the charcoal within. It is lonely work for him in the storm. By day he has many little things to do between the greater labours, to make the pockets (or sacks) ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the mucker sprang in with a vicious left hook to the jaw, followed, with lightning rapidity, by a right upper cut to the chin that lifted Battling Dago Pete a foot from the floor to drop him, unconscious, against the foot ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... other three hoofs scattered the Imperial diet in all directions, and, what is worse than all, tore to pieces a multitude of our exquisite caps. Our queen was almost frantic at the breach of the peace—she stamped with her foot, and cried out, "LIGHTNING!" and what that means we all pretty well know. Just at this time, too, she received information of the maiden's arrogant behaviour towards her suitors, and on the instant she determined to put the sinner to her prayers. We began by devouring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... machinery. My idea was to make so many guns. The Government asked for four times as many. So we took down more houses, and built another much larger shop. The work was finished in ten weeks. Five other large workshops were put up last year, all built with lightning speed, and everywhere additions have been made to the machinery in every department wherever it was ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fire from the eminence leaped to a climax; the Hungarians knew they were fighting for their lives. In the horde rushing up the steep slope lay an appalling danger. Up they surged, without firing a shot, the bayonets gleaming in the lightning flashes. Among the rocks appeared white faces behind black rifle barrels. And then, with one fierce yell, the men in the shaggy sheepskin coats were hurling themselves in among the men in blue-gray uniforms. For a few brief moments there ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... your lips unchallenged, If their errand is true and kind— If they come to support the weary, To comfort and help the blind; If a bitter, revengeful spirit Prompt the words, let them be unsaid; They may flash through a brain like lightning, Or fall ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... in her sleep with pain, Sultrily suspired for proof: In at heaven and out again, Lightning!—where it broke the roof, Bloodlike, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... person is, that he was 'a Son of Thunder;' that his very voice, when he chose, was awful; that he, and his brother James, before they were converted, were not of a soft, but of a terrible temper; that it was James and John, the Sons of Thunder, who wanted to call down thunder and lightning from heaven on all the villages who would not ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... for my crust, and carried the book which I had borrowed to the common passage of the house, from whose dim lamp I received the glimmer that served me to read, and to sustain the incensed ambitious spirit that would not quell within me. The days glanced by quicker than the lightning. I could not read enough; I could not acquire knowledge sufficient, in that brief interval of days, between the acquisition of my little wealth and the spending of my last farthing. The miserable moment came. I was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... did go on, and, roaring over the roof, made conversation difficult. The bushmen called it a "bit of a storm"; but every square inch of the heavens seemed occupied by lightning and thunder-bolts. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... felt that the man for whom she had sacrificed every thing—her youth, her honor, and her duty—despised her, and could never forgive her for having cheated him into taking her for his wife. She died the victim of his contempt and hatred. Not suddenly, not as with a lightning-stroke, did his contempt kill, but slowly and steadily did it pierce her heart. She bore the torture for one desolate, disconsolate year, and then she died solitary and forsaken. No loving hand dried the death-sweat on her cold forehead; no pitying ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... fired, as a prelude to the general feu-de-joie which immediately succeeded. Three times was it repeated, and the reverberations sounded among the hills with tremendous effect, darkness adding grandeur to the scene, as the flashing of the musketry of the army broke upon it like sheeted lightning. The feu-de-joie was immediately followed by three shouts of acclamation and benediction for the dauphin, given by the whole army as with one voice. At half-past eleven o'clock the celebration was concluded ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... tracts of forest and heath for hours, and never meeting a soul or seeing a house, it is surprising to be told that on such a day you took such a drive and were at such a spot; yet this has happened to me more than once. And if even this is watched and noted, with what lightning rapidity would the news spread that I had been seen stalking down the garden path with a hoe over my shoulder and a basket in my hand, and weeding written large on every feature! Yet I ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... are no effectual charm against lightning. The frequent firing of abbey churches by lightning confuteth the proud motto commonly written on the bells in their steeples, wherein each intitled ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... on their lightning-rod; They cleared the human mind from error; They emptied heaven of its God, And ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... traveling now in a cloud of dust. And it was this, no doubt, which accounted for the fact that he did not see a buckboard drawn by an aged mule until he heard a shout, and his horses swung off the trail of their own accord. Quick as lightning he drew them ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... but the thing wanted explanation. He rounded the building, and as he did so understood the change in the weather. A sharp gust of wind took him, and he felt several drops of rain splash upon his face. A moment later a flash of lightning preceded a distant ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... rule, six charges were fired together, those of the afternoon relay of men being exploded at very regular hours—the last usually at 5:45 P.M. There were only sixteen men in the shaft, and the work of connecting the wires had commenced, when the flash of lightning that occurred at 5:42 P.M., suddenly charged the conductors and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... than lightning faster, Tell me where's thy youthful master! Him in fight thou hast forsaken, Or has cast him ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... down himself in Gold, Prostrate as holy ground Ile worship thee. Our Ladies Chappel henceforth be thou nam'd; Here first Loves Queen put on Mortality, And with her Beauty all the world inflam'd. Heaven's Chambers harbouring fiery Cherubins, Are not with thee in Glory to compare. Lightning, it is not Light which in thee mines, None enter thee but streight entranced are. O! if Elizium be above the ground, Then here it is, where nought but ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... destiny was, Argemone found herself, in the course of the evening, alone with Lancelot, at the open window. It was a still, hot, heavy night, after long easterly drought; sheet- lightning glimmered on the far horizon over the dark woodlands; the coming shower had sent forward as his herald a whispering draught of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... eyes flashed lightning; his nostrils quivered and his lips tightened. He rose from his chair, but his comrade touched his coat and forced him to sit down again, while with a single glance he silenced him. Then he who had thus given proof ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... before you the general lines on which I propose to deal with problems relating to race and nationality, I propose now that we should make a lightning trip round the world and cull, as we go, samples which will illustrate the kind of friction which arises wherever races or nationalities come into close contact. As I have already said, every country can yield us material for our study, but none on such a vast experimental scale ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... commander in chief of its army, and his wife the duchess of Hohenburg, were assassinated June 28, 1914, by a Serbian student, Gavrio Prinzip. The assassination occurred at Sarajevo in Bosnia, a dependency, or rather, a Slavic state that had been seized by Austria. It was the lightning flash that ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... from it, but it was in the midst of an elemental uproar. Some electric lamps shining through the trees made high lights on the crests of the rapids, while the others near were in shadow and dark. The black mass of Goat Island appeared under the lightning flashes in the northwest sky, and whenever these quick gleams pierced the gloom the frail bridge to the island was outlined for a moment, and then vanished as if it had been swept away, and there could only be seen sparks of light in the houses on the Canadian shore, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in was too low, and Bob let it pass him; but the second was just where he wanted it. The bat swung around like lightning, and, following a loud crack, the sphere sailed off towards ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... man out flat. Now, the reason the elms are so dangerous is because they will wait so long till somebody passes. Trees can do a great deal, I can tell you; why, I have known a tree, when it could not drop a bough, fall down altogether when there was not a breath of wind, nor any lightning, just to kill a cow or a sheep, out of sheer ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... mourn the dead, I break the lightning, I announce the Sabbath, I excite the slothful, I disperse the ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... tale the mythical rendering is inwrought into the style of the narrative. Storm weds Perfume. Their children are the Sun-at-high-noon; a second son, possibly Lightning; twin daughters called after two varieties of the forest vine, ieie, perhaps symbols of Rainbow and Twilight; and five sweet-smelling daughters—the four varieties of maile vine and the scented hala blossom. The first-born son is of such divine character ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... listen with concentrated mind and close attention, and then pour forth a perfect torrent of ideas and plans, and, if the occasion calls for it, will turn around to the table, seize a writing-pad and make sketch after sketch with lightning-like rapidity, tearing off each sheet as filled and tossing it aside to the floor. It is an ordinary indication that there has been an interesting meeting when the caretaker about fills a waste-basket with these ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... roaring of thunder over the great unsheltered plain before us—the hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment—the forked lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped together near the spot where we had halted—the furze-cutter pointed ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... whole scene in a rapid glance for in an instant the dogs began to bark and their masters were thrown into a state of alarm. We stopped, and they saw us, saw me—a white man—and full of fright they sprang to their feet. Like lightning they gathered up their provisions, the women slung the children on to their shoulders and they all disappeared, over the stout fence they had erected round their dwelling place, with the agility and the speed of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... such terrific relief that they lodge themselves in one's brain with such crushing force. In all his books it is the separate individual scenes of which one finds oneself thinking as one recalls the progress of this narrative or the other. And when he has struck out with a few vivid lightning-like flashes the original lineaments of one of his superb creations, it is rather in separate and detached scenes that he makes such a person's indelible characteristics gleam forth from the surrounding darkness, than in any continuous psychological ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... who had been busy making those lightning-like automatic calculations for which he is so famous, "it's quite impossible to fully satisfy all of you, and it is perfectly plain to me that we shall have to effect a Compromise and sacrifice some of the ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... were probably denizens of a deep sea, The Ventriculites of the Chalk (fig. 189) is, however, a genus still more closely allied to the wonderful flinty Sponges, which have been shown, by the researches of the Porcupine, Lightning, and Challenger expeditions, to live half buried in the Calcareous ooze of the abysses of our great oceans. Many forms of this genus are known, having "usually the form of graceful vases, tubes, or funnels, variously ridged or grooved, or otherwise ornamented on the surface, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... patents on a machine for raising water to run a waterwheel, on one for making nails, for producing power by using a weight, for curing the bite of a mad dog, for counting the revolutions of a wheel, for a reaper and thresher, and for a lightning-rod on an umbrella. In the second session Congress passed an act making the members of the Cabinet, except the busy Secretary of the Treasury, a board to hear petitions and to grant sole rights ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... the people, and because he cherished it he never flattered the mob, nor hung upon its neck, nor pandered to its passion, nor suffered its foaming hate or its exulting enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of his regnant soul. He moved in solitary majesty, and if from his smooth speech a lightning flash of satire or of scorn struck a cherished lie, or an honored character, or a dogma of the party creed, and the crowd burst into a furious tempest of dissent, he beat it into silence with uncompromising iteration. ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... trees, the scatterer of the harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even their consequence, pestilence, are assigned to him. He is said to have in his hand a "flaming sword," with which he effects his works of destruction; and this "flaming sword," which probably represents lightning, becomes his emblem upon the tablets and cylinders, where it is figured as a double or triple bolt. [PLATE XIX., Fig. 4.] Vul again, as the god of the atmosphere, gives the rain; and hence he is "the careful and beneficent chief," "the giver of abundance," "the lord of fecundity." In this capacity ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... better than the gloomy errors, The weeds of nations in their last decay, When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors, And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay: And Hope is nothing but a false delay, The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death, When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away, Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... we have to say of suffocation, let us treat of Lightning. When a person has been struck by lightning, there is a general paleness of the whole body, with the exception of the part struck, which is often blackened, or even scorched.—Treatment. Same as for drowning. It is not, however, of much use; for when death takes place at all, it is ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Amalekites, nations which worshipped Baal with fornication and all kinds of uncleanness, and Israel was ever at the point of mingling with them. Then it would have been forgotten as they will be forgotten; but if it will only abide in the Law, as given in thunder and lightning in the wilderness, it will be great, when, except for their struggles with Israel, the recollection of Amalekite and ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... it's a drunken man—in our driveway!" cried Paul, with proprietary indignation. "Get out of here!" he yelled angrily at the intruder's retreating back. When he turned again to Lydia he saw that one of her lightning-swift changes of mood had swept over her. He was startled at her pale face and burning, horrified eyes, and remembering her condition with apprehension, picked her up bodily and carried her up the stairs to their bedroom, soothing her with ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... pierced me as if it had been a flash of lightning coming through the frosty air of a winter morning. I dropped the useless reins and turned. Kitty's face was ablaze. She made a movement as if she was about to jump out ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... at him like lightning from a black cloud, and with the lightning a reality that had lacked before to leap ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... tale of three artful wives—or, to employ the story-teller's own graphic terms, "three whales of the sea of fraud and deceit: three dragons of the nature of thunder and the quickness of lightning; three defamers of honour and reputation; namely, three men-deceiving, lascivious women, each of whom had from the chicanery of her cunning issued the diploma of turmoil to a hundred cities and countries, and in the arts of fraud they accounted Satan as an ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the brazen car comes on. It burns in the East as the sunrise burns. I see great flashes where the far trail turns. Butting through the delicate mists of the morning, It comes like lightning, goes past roaring, It will hail all the windmills, taunting, ringing, On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills— Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills. Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn, Ho ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Akpap with two of the girls and some small children, she was caught in a tornado and made her way over the six miles of bush- road through pelting rain. The darkness was lit up by almost continuous lightning, but they lost their way, and she had at last to commandeer an old native to lead them. Such experiences were now part of her ordinary life again. On her trips up and down the Creek she was constantly drifting ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... course: telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity—and any normal adult would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that he was capable of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we must merely sit back and wait for lightning to strike." ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... other. Love's just a sort of miracle thing that happens to you. You don't have it because you deserve it. The person I made that promise to would have earned it, if any one could. But it doesn't come that way. It's like lightning. It strikes or else it doesn't. Well, it struck us. But friendship—there's this about it. You can't get it any way in the world, except just by earning it. Nobody can give it to you, no matter how hard he tries. So when you've got it, you can always say, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... expanse of the moorland. Chifney, mindful of his charge, hurried Dickie into a greatcoat, buttoned it carefully round him, offered to drive, almost insisted on doing so. But the boy refused curtly. He welcomed the stinging rain, the swirling wind, the swift glare of lightning, the ache and strain of holding the pulling horses. The violence of it all heated his blood as with the stern passion of battle. And under the influence of that passion his humour changed from agonised pity to a fierce ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet |
