"Petrifaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the mineral nature of the matrix itself, or by the superposition of an impermeable stratum; but if unimpeded, the fossil shell or bone will be dissolved and removed, particle after particle, and thus entirely effaced, unless petrifaction or the substitution of some mineral for the organic ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... perfection of a faultless form—he lays the chisel to the stone, the mallet strikes the steel, one by one the shapeless fragments fly from the shapely limbs, the matchless curves are uncovered, the breathing mouth smiles through the petrifaction of a thousand ages, the shroud of stone falls from the godlike brow, and the Hermes of Olympia stands forth in all his deathless beauty. Another is born to the heritage of this world's power, fore-destined to rule and ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... because he is a man. The only people that are fit for political life nowadays are those whose hearts have been turned to stone. (Picks up something from the table and gets up.) Ah, just look here! Here is a fine specimen of petrifaction. It is a fragment of palm leaf of some kind, found impressed in a bit of rock from Spitzbergen. I sent it you myself, so I know it. That is what you have to be like to withstand arctic storms!—it will ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... we know, but the chance that George I could not speak English gave it one of its essential peculiarities—the system of a Cabinet independent of the Crown and subordinate to the Prime Minister. The wisdom of Lord Grey saved it from petrifaction and destruction, and set it upon the path of Democracy. Then chance intervened once more; a female sovereign happened to marry an able and pertinacious man; and it seemed likely that an element which had been quiescent within it for years—the element of irresponsible administrative power—was ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... tropical lowlands, with their feeble grasp on the sterner aspects of creed and character, have nothing in common with this Indian tribe, remaining on the outskirts of an alien civilisation. The creed for which the early Tenggerese fought and conquered, has cooled from white heat to a shapeless petrifaction, and weird influences throng the ruined temple of a moribund faith, but the shadows which loom darkly above the mouldering altars still command the old allegiance, and a thousand hereditary ties bind heart ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... N. hardness &c. adj.; rigidity; renitence[obs3], renitency; inflexibility, temper, callosity, durity [obs3]. induration, petrifaction; lapidification[obs3], lapidescence[obs3]; vitrification, ossification; crystallization. stone, pebble, flint, marble, rock, fossil, crag, crystal, quartz, granite, adamant; bone, cartilage; hardware; heart of oak, block, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... every sect, party, or institution when it stops growing, its arteries harden, its young men see no visions, its old men dream no dreams; it lives in the past and desperately tries to perpetuate the past. In politics when this process of petrifaction is reached, we call it Bourbonism, and the sure sign of the Bourbon is that, being unconscious that he is the victim of sclerosis, he sees no reason for seeking a cure. Unable to adjust himself to change and new conditions ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the three great portals, the plastic forms which were to add so greatly to the Gothic architecture: male and female saints, Evangelists, and Apostles in great array, all somewhat more than life-size. Only one adverse impression is cast: that of petrifaction. The figures, almost without exception, appear as integral parts of the architectural fabric, rather than as added ornament. They are most ungainly, tall, stiff, and column-like, much more so than similar works at Reims, or at Amiens, where the sculpture ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... is planted there, nor, if we may trust to the Malayan accounts, suffered to be imported. Upon the same authority also we are told that the island derives its name of Batu from a large rock resembling the hull of a vessel, which tradition states to be a petrifaction of that in which the Buluaro people arrived. The same fanciful story of a petrified boat is prevalent in the Serampei country of Sumatra. From Natal Hill Pulo Batu is visible. Like the islands already described it ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... this society, in which regularity of form did not conceal petrifaction of heart, induced Chopin to think that the CONVENANCES and courtesies of manner, in place of being only a uniform mask, repressing the character of each individual under the symmetry of the same lines, rather serve to contain the passions without stifling them, coloring only that bald crudity of ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... came chiming as freshly into my memory as if scarce a month had passed since I had composed them beside the Conon. Here they are, with all the green juvenility of the home-sickness still about them—a true petrifaction of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... then she had stolen over. She had to make sure, for the peace of her mind, that this was really the man. One glance through the window at that picturesque head had been sufficient. A momentary petrifaction, and terror had lent ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... large herds of buffalo, and the copses of timber appeared to contain elk and deer, "just below Cedar Island," adds the journal, "on a hill to the south, is the backbone of a fish, forty-five feet long, tapering towards the tail, and in a perfect state of petrifaction, fragments of which were collected and sent to Washington." This was not a fish, but the fossil remains of a reptile of one of the earliest geological periods. Here, too, the party saw immense herds of buffalo, thousands in number, some of which they killed for their meat and skins. They ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... coldly to one another. Lavretsky went to his lodgings, and locked himself in. He was experiencing emotions such as he had hardly ever experienced before. How long ago was it since he had thought himself in a state of peaceful petrifaction? How long was it since he had felt as he had expressed himself at the very bottom of the river? What had changed his position? What had brought him out of his solitude? The most ordinary, inevitable, though always unexpected ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... why, yes," exclaimed Charles-Norton, recovering from his momentary petrifaction; "come in, make yourself at home, have ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... upon the whole happy, evidently were meant to be happy. But every believer of the doctrine in debate is bound to be unutterably wretched. If he has any gleam of generous sentiment or touch of philanthropy in his bosom, if he is not a frozen petrifaction of selfishness or an incarnate devil, how can he look on his family, friends, neighbors, fellow citizens, fellow beings, in the light of his faith seeing them quivering over the dizzy verge of a blind probation and momentarily dropping into the lake of fire and brimstone ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... was biscuit not unconquerable by teeth used to the fare of the sea life, and picking up a whole one, I sat me down on the edge of a cask and fell a-munching. One reflection, however, comforted me, namely, that this petrifaction by freezing had kept the victuals sweet. I was sure there was little here that might not be thawed into relishable and nourishing food and drink by a good fire. The sight of these stores took such a weight off my mind that no felon reprieved from death could feel more elated than I. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... of Media are numerous and valuable. Excellent stone of many kinds abounds in almost every part of the country, the most important and valuable being the famous Tabriz marble. This curious substance appears to be a petrifaction formed by natural springs, which deposit carbonate of lime in large quantities. It is found only in one place, on the flanks of the hills, not far from the Urumiyeh lake. The slabs are used for tombstones, for the skirting of rooms, and for the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... given in the books in which theological students are mis-educated, all of which unite in claiming that which they cannot agree in defining. The Westminster Confession of Faith may be taken as the dogmatic petrifaction of the notion which lies, more or less undeveloped and still living, ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... heart. What he dreads in space is that the heart should be possessed by it, and transformed into it. He dreads that the imagination should be fascinated by the homogeneous and static, hypnotised by geometry, and actually lost in Auseinandersein. This would be a real death and petrifaction of consciousness, frozen into contemplation of a monotonous infinite void. What is warm and desirable is rather the sense of variety and succession, as if all visions radiated from the occupied focus or hearth of the self. ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... head into the opening where Arthur sat. As the creature saw him, its start of surprise would have shattered the nervous system of anything but a cat. It stood half thrown back on its haunches, its ears flattened, its eyes glaring in a petrifaction of amazement. Arthur sat motionless as marble, laughing inwardly. For full two minutes the two stared at each other without moving a muscle, and then, without relaxing its tense attitude, the cat by almost imperceptible degrees withdrew ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... educational interests. To this the gentlemen assented, and next day they went to Cardiff. They came; they saw; and they narrowly escaped being conquered. Luckily they did not give their sanction to the idea that the statue was a petrifaction, but Professor Hall was induced to say: "To all appearance, the statue lay upon the gravel when the deposition of the fine silt or soil began, upon the surface of which the forests have grown for succeeding ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... heavenly cheer or infernal laughter Our first step out of the gulf or in it? 140 Shall Man, such step within his endeavor, Man's face, have no more play and action Than joy which is crystallized forever, Or grief, an eternal petrifaction? ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... works, is throughout characteristic; the energy of fire, the splendor of light, she shuts up in hard stone, the tender soul of melody in severe metal; even on the threshold of Life, and already meditating organic shape, she sinks back overpowered by the might of Form, into petrifaction. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... inviolable. Do not ask of Hindoo, Egyptian, Romanesque masonry to reform their design, or to improve their statuary. Every attempt at perfecting is an impiety to them. In these architectures it seems as though the rigidity of the dogma had spread over the stone like a sort of second petrifaction. The general characteristics of popular masonry, on the contrary, are progress, originality, opulence, perpetual movement. They are already sufficiently detached from religion to think of their beauty, to take care of it, to correct without relaxation their parure ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... measure and jingling of words that never touch the heart, but leave the individual ready to throw stones and light brands of torture: a case-hardening of the affections and the aspirations, that wraps the soul like the bandages of the mummied Pharaohs, a mere petrifaction. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... most of this wood exists," writes Professor Lester F. Ward, paleobotanist, "almost places them among the gems or precious stones. Not only are chalcedony, opals, and agates found among them, but many approach the condition of jasper and onyx." "The chemistry of the process of petrifaction or silicification," writes Doctor George P. Merrill, Curator of Geology in the National Museum, "is not quite clear. Silica is ordinarily looked upon as one of the most insoluble of substances. It is nevertheless readily soluble in alkaline solutions—i.e., solutions containing soda or potash. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... benumbed by the personality and action of Napoleon. The burning enthusiasm for the Rights of Man was quenched, the passion for civic equality survived only as the gibbering ghost of what it had been in 1790, and the consolidation of revolutionary France was effected by a process nearly akin to petrifaction. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... all my might to speak the long words right, that there might be no room for correction; but Miss Pinshon's voice interrupted me again and again. I felt cast away in a foreign land; further and further from the home feeling every minute; and it seemed besides as if the climate had some power of petrifaction. I could not keep Medusa out of my head. It was a relief at last when the tea was brought in. Miss Pinshon took the magazine ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... stone lying where they fell; trees of old date, growing where the pillars of the aisles used to stand,—these are the best points of ruined abbeys. But, everything here is kept with such trimness that it gives you the idea of a petrifaction. Decay is no longer triumphant; the Duke of Devonshire has got the better of it. The grounds around the church and the ruins are still used for burial, and there are several flat tombstones and altar tombs, with crosiers engraved or carved upon them, which at first I took to be the memorials ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... others of the party, were successively asked their opinions. One of the young ladies guessed it to be the petrifaction of an antediluvian mussel. Lord Curryfin said petrifactions were often siliceous, but never pure silex; which this purported to be. It gave him the idea of an ass's head; which, however, could not by any process have been turned ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... articles exposed to the dropping of the water, they become petrified in a short time. This water has the same effect on dead animals and rapidly converts them into stone. I have myself seen a small basket filled with plovers' eggs become in eight days a perfect petrifaction. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... that change in his disposition and character which will send him forth to put that desire into practice. At present, every Prison is more or less a Training School for Crime, an introduction to the society of criminals, the petrifaction of any lingering human feeling and a very Bastille of Despair. The prison brand is stamped upon those who go in, and that so deeply, that it seems as if it clung to them for life. To enter Prison once, means in many cases an almost certain return there at an early date. All ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... a lover's mistress "the lode-star of his one desire." That to him Peggy ought to be. Lode-star. One desire. The words confused him. He had no lode-star. His one desire was to be left alone. Without doubt he was suffering from some process of moral petrifaction. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrifaction of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... had burned out before Columbus ever dreamed of the new world. About four miles below Grand river, on a bluish cliff that shot out in the water almost at right angles, they landed and found many beautiful specimens of petrifaction—fish retaining their prismatic beauty of exterior. The mother of pear-like shells of the extinct anomite lay about as though the place had once been the bed of a mighty ocean. The shore was covered with agates and looked gray and instead of mud sucks, there were pebbly beaches ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... French parties, French plays, French lectures. We read French, speak French, sing French, and look French; and, if you are so barbarously ignorant as not to understand that language, why, you might just as well retire for an old fossil or petrifaction. You're obsolete, that's all; as much behind the times as RIP VAN WINKLE himself, after his memorable sleep. English is out of date here—a relic of the Dark Ages. Fashionable ladies return from Paris, bringing with them accomplished bonnes, and every one is prohibited ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... but their true dwelling places were the sea, and the stony beach that edged its familiar shore, and the fish-houses, where much salt brine from the mackerel kits had soaked the very timbers into a state of brown permanence and petrifaction. It had also affected the old fishermen's hard complexions, until one fancied that when Death claimed them it could only be with the aid, not of any slender modern dart, but the good serviceable harpoon of a ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... woman gazed at them in a kind of petrifaction. Twopence from a girl as poor as herself, and she was to buy gin with the money? Gin! Never before had she been told to go and buy gin. Why, the missionaries, and all the good folks round, said it was the curse of ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... never again lost. No one paid any attention to the unhappy child in the first moments of his anguish, or noticed that he neither groaned, sighed, nor wept. When at last they went to him they found him convulsed and rigid, like a petrifaction of grief; although he walked about, heard and saw, and covered his wounded and dying father with kisses. But he shed not a single tear, either during the death agony of that beloved being, when he kissed the cold face after it was dead, or when he saw them carry the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little ridiculous. I was a brand-new local editor in Virginia City, and I felt called upon to destroy this growing evil; we all have our benignant, fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire. But maybe it was altogether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of it at all. I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
