"Electricity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bosom. In this case the gods are the personifications of the forces of Nature. But the initiated Adepts of India understand very clearly that the god Indra, for instance, is nothing more than a mere sound, born of the shock of electrical forces, or simply electricity itself. Surya is not the god of the sun, but simply the centre of fire in our system, the essence whence come fire, warmth, light, and so on; the very thing, namely, which no European scientist, steering an even course between Tyndall and Schropfer, has, as yet, defined. This concealed ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... open. All woodwork was warped; ivory knife-handles were split; paper broke when crunched in the hand, and the very marrow seemed to be dried out of the bones. The extreme dryness of the air induced an extraordinary amount of electricity in the hair and in all woollen materials. A Scotch plaid laid upon a blanket for a few hours adhered to it, and upon being withdrawn at night a sheet of flame was produced, accompanied by ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... rope on it. Conclude to make another boat. Unsanitary arrangement of their kitchen. Purifying means employed. Different purifying agents. Primary electric battery. The cell; how made. The electrodes. Clay. The positive and the negative elements. How connected up. The battery. Making wire. How electricity flows. Rate of flow. Volts and amperes. Pressure and quantity. Drawing out the wire. Tools for drawing the wire. Friction. Molecules and atoms. Accomplishments of "Baby." Climbing trees and finding nuts. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... not take advantage of the opportunity of shining in the eyes of her new brother-in-law by showing her acquaintance with the discussions on electricity which she had studied for Mr. Belamour's benefit, nor did she speak of Dr. Godfrey's views of Wesley and Whitfield. Had she so ventured, her sister would have pitied her, and Mr. Arden himself been somewhat shocked at her being admitted to knowledge unbecoming ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... book of Genesis was a standard scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo's demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun, Newton's theory of gravitation, Sir Humphry Davy's invention of the safety-lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post. It was just the same in other subjects. Thus Nietzsche, by the two or three who had come across his writings, was supposed to have been the first man to whom it occurred ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... among the ancient Mexican picture-writings.[7] Geology, in her labors to determine the character of the exhumed bones and shells of extinct classes of the animal creation of former eras, has not failed to impart the most important knowledge of the physical history of the planet we occupy. Electricity and magnetism have also enlarged their boundaries. Chemistry is in the process of fulfilling the highest expectations. All these sources of knowledge have been poured into the lap of geography and ethnography, and ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... caused by the friction of vapor, which is at a suitable temperature. Thus two or more currents of air coming together will cause lightning, as the friction concentrates the electricity, and as there is no conductor the heavy voltage flies usually toward the nearest conductor. This voltage is so great that it explodes the air. The air coming together again produces a ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver
... that American enterprise and administration have transformed Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, from a medieval into a modern city. Its newly constructed streets and pavements, water-works and drainage, electricity and the trolley, have turned this old and dilapidated Spanish town into a place of order and beauty. Its parks and gardens, its municipal buildings and hospitals, are an object-lesson to all beholders. The walls of the fort still remain, but ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... the kindling of the first fire. The domestication of animal life marked another great step in the long ascent. The capture of the great physical forces, the discovery of coal and mineral oil, of gas, steam and electricity, and their adaptation to the everyday uses of mankind, wrought the greatest changes in the course of civilization. With the discovery of radium and radioactivity, with the recognition of the vast ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... proper height. Then the entrance through the combined bridge and conning tower was hermetically sealed. A moment more and the tanks were opened, telling the lads that the submarine was about to submerge. The gasoline motors stopped their endless song. From now on electricity would ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... be kept under rigid control, and if there be nothing in it of malice, even when it prompts to punishment. Anger is just and right when it is not produced by the mere friction of personal irritation (like electricity by rubbing), but is excited by the contemplation of evil. It is part of the marks of a good man that he kindles into wrath when he sees 'the oppressor's wrong.' If you went out hence to-night, and saw some drunken ruffian beating his wife or ill-using his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... on the tree, not a ripple disturbed the surface of the water. There seemed to be scarcely any air even, as though some vast pneumatic machine had rarefied it. The entire atmosphere was charged to the utmost with electricity, the presence of which sent a thrill through the whole nervous system of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a deep glow of electricity shaded with daffodil silk, a pretty artistic room with high palms, choice cut flowers, and soft luxurious couches upholstered in grey and gold brocade. There sat two ladies, one of whom was in a silk gown of bottle ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... door. I have attended thousands of prayer meetings since then, but never one that had a more distinct resemblance to the Pentecostal gathering in "the upper room" at Jerusalem. The atmosphere seemed to be charged with a divine electricity that affected almost every one in the house. Three times over I closed the meeting with a benediction, but it began again, and the people lingered until a very late hour, melted together by "a baptism of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... clouds in the horizon, and eventualities "which they awaited in the firm resolve to fulfil the mission assigned to them by Providence." The other ministers would not share the responsibility of language so charged with electricity. Cavour then did one of those simple things which yet, by some mystery of the human brain, require a man of genius to do them—he sent a draft of the speech to Napoleon and asked him what he thought of it! The Emperor answered that, in fact, the disputed ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Dr. Frankstone had said, "I don't see why we should attribute some special mystery to life—do you? We don't understand it as we understand electricity, even, but that doesn't warrant our saying it is something special, something different in kind and distinct from everything else in the universe—do you think it does? May it not be that life consists in a complexity ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... consider herself as her child's sun, a changeless and ever radiant world, whither the small restless creature, quick at tears and laughter, light, fickle, passionate, full of storms, may come for fresh stores of light, warmth, and electricity, of calm and of courage. The mother represents goodness, providence, law; that is to say, the divinity, under that form of it which is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will inculcate in her child a capricious and despotic God, or even several ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... represented the harnessing of five hundred thousand horse power of the Beaver River water. The engineer had assured him, in his unsmiling fashion, that he had secured enough power to supply the whole Province of Quebec with electricity. All of which, in Bat's estimation, seemed to ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... citified Annie, we do not run our universe by electricity as you do in the city, and it is our only means of attracting 'central.' I rang the bell, put the receiver to my ear and heard, 'I am using ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... nothing hidden in it and never has been. And madame has a fancy for wax lights," his gaze travelling upward to the glittering chandelier. "Hum-m-m! How well they know, these women whose beauty is going off, that wax-lights show less of Time's ravages than gas or electricity. Candles in the chandelier; candles in the sconces; candles on the mantelpiece. This room should be very charming when it ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... theological works. Like Johnson, too, he was a great dabbler in physic and a reader of medical works. His writings covered a great range. He wrote, he says, among other works, an English, a Latin, a Greek, a Hebrew, and a French Grammar, a Treatise on Logic and another on Electricity. In the British Isles he had travelled perhaps more than any man of his time, and he had visited North America and more than one country of Europe. He had seen an almost infinite variety of characters. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... with one hand, and with the other fuming a cremaillere, which appears to give a very quick rotatory movement to two glass globes revolving upon a vertical axis. The friction of the globes is supposed to develop electricity to which his power of ascending ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... remaining Undefiled of Europe. They are not advertisers, nor self-servers. They do not believe in intellect alone. Their genius is intuitionally driven, not intellectually. Just as steam has reached its final limitations as a force, and is being superseded by electricity (the limitations of which have not yet been sensed so far even by the most audacious), so the intellect, as a producing medium, has had its period—a period of style-worship, vanities of speech and action, of self-service, of parading, of surface-show and short-sightedness, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... beings, which sank at last, by slow and minute gradations, into matter which seemed to him to be inanimate; but even all this was permeated by certain forces, themselves unseen, but the symptoms of which were apparent in all directions, such as heat, motion, attraction, electricity. He believed it possible that all these might be different manifestations and specimens of the same central force; but it was nothing more than ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the Government as to the supply of wheat, which had just been published in the editions of the evening papers. It was very late in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day. Long since the gas and electricity had been lighted in the office, while in the streets the lamps at the corners were reflected downward in long shafts of light upon the drenched pavements. From the windows of the room one could see directly up La Salle Street. The cable cars, as they made ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... ran a wire all around the shop, and charged the conductor with a mild current of electricity. Some people got shocked by coming too close, and after that they gave my place a wide berth. I'll do the same ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... early as five o'clock, the following telegram was sent to the Twentieth Precinct: "Notify General Sandford to go immediately to Eighty-sixth Street and Harlem—mob burning." Indeed the air was charged with electricity, but the commissioners now felt ready to meet the storm whenever and wherever it should burst. A large force of special policemen had been sworn in, while General Brown had over seven hundred troops, ready to co-operate with the police. The public buildings were all well guarded—Sandford had ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... negative of a common photograph, brought out by a dark background; and do you notice the figures are invisible at certain angles? It is very evident the storm came up during the altercation that night, and electricity printed the whole scene on this door; stamping the countenance of the murderer, to help the instruments of justice. While the blinds were closed, and the curtain was looped aside, of course this wonderful witness could not testify; but ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... wandered from an account of Mr. Dutton's dealings with a refractory choir boy bent on going to the races, she found a discussion going on about some past lectures upon astronomy, and Nuttie vehemently regretting the not attending two courses promised for the coming winter upon electricity and on Italian art, and mournfully observing, 'We never go to anything ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one special flag of the Children World Union? When the moment comes that the wonderful modern communication begins to help the children to meet each other and to pay visits to each other, at that moment the invention of steam and electricity will justify itself. In transferring the troops and facilitating crime it does net justify itself. Let the word communication be not only for the sake of crime and for the sake of bread; let it be for the sake of ...
— The New Ideal In Education • Nicholai Velimirovic
... at himself, and rather disposed to think that he was weak; for somehow all the hot blood had gone out of his arms and fists, which were now perfectly cool, and felt no longer any desire to fly about as if charged with pugno-electricity, which required discharging by being brought into contact with ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... was lighted by electricity. Tom threw on the light, then wheeled toward the bed, to find the superintendent sitting up, revolver ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... human mind were freely and fully exercised in this reign. Considerable progress was made in mathematics and astronomy by divers individuals; among whom we number Sanderson, Bradley, Maclaurin, Smith, and the two Simpsons. Natural philosophy became a general study; and the new doctrine of electricity grew into fashion. Different methods were discovered for rendering sea-water potable and sweet; and divers useful hints were communicated to the public by the learned doctor Stephen Hales, who directed all his researches and experiments to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... received. Galileo freely expressed his admiration for the work and its author; Bacon, who admired the author, did not express the same admiration for his theories; but Dr. Priestley, later, declared him to be "the father of modern electricity." ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... she had surprised him by some unexpected knowledge of the principles of electricity, and explained the acquirement by telling him that this subject was her father's favourite study. Wilfrid put the question now with ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... to learn, base worshippers of gold; When you were wild barbarians, our Governments were old! Your self-conceit and arrogance we therefore laugh to scorn; We had our laws millenniums before your courts were born. You talk by electricity, you ride on wings of steam, You thunder with machinery,—and these you proudly deem The grandest triumphs of the race, forgetting that mere speed In transference of men and things is less than ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... your thoughts that have made you feel alternately weak and strong.' My master looked at me affectionately. 'You have seen how your health has exactly followed your expectations. Thought is a force, even as electricity or gravitation. The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God. I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... are not the only monopolies which have the use of our city streets. Water, gas, and steam pipes beneath the pavements, and wires, either in subways or strung overhead, carrying electricity for street and domestic lighting, telegraph, telephone, and messenger service, are all necessities ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... family and commercial, electric light. I abominate commercials, but they know how to feed. Why the deuce can't these people advertise something worth knowing? Electric light—who wants to eat overdone steaks by electricity?" ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my hearers, for one moment, of the wonders of electricity. Here is a power which we name but do not know; which flashes through the sky, shatters great trees, burns buildings, strikes men dead in the fields; and we have learned to lead it, all unseen, from our house-tops to the earth; ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... of the editorial staff of the New York Sun; "Sir Austen H. Layard: Modern Archaeology," by Rev. William Hayes Ward, D.D., editor of The Independent, New York, himself eminent in Oriental exploration and decipherment; "Michael Faraday: Electricity and Magnetism," by Prof. Edwin J. Houston of Philadelphia, an accepted authority in electrical engineering; and, "Rudolf Virchow: Modern Medicine and Surgery," by Dr. Frank P. Foster, physician, author, and editor of the New York ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... then, and had been for a long period, perfectly well known to my instructors, who possessed all the means of extracting it from substances as yet undreamed of by latter-day scientists. I was only permitted to hint at it under the guise of the word 'Electricity'—which, after all, was not so much of a misnomer, seeing that electric force displays itself in countless millions of forms. My "Electric Theory of the Universe" in the "Romance of Two Worlds" foreran the utterance of the scientist who ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... effect of a personage, the denouement of "Chaos Vanquished" was more powerful still. The impression which it made was, as usual, irresistible. Perhaps, even, there occurred in the hall, on account of the radiant spectator (for sometimes the spectator is part of the spectacle), an increase of electricity. The contagion of Gwynplaine's laugh was more triumphant than ever. The whole audience fell into an indescribable epilepsy of hilarity, through which could be distinguished the sonorous and magisterial ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... modern quality of Conrad lies in this transference of wonder from nature to the behavior of man, the modern man for whom lightning is only electricity and wind the relief of pressure from hemisphere to hemisphere. Mystery lies in the personality now, not in the blind forces that shape and are shaped by it. It is the difference, in a sense, between Hawthorne, who saw the world as shadow and illusion, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... dial, which is twenty-four feet in diameter, besides two smaller ones which are fixed in front of the galleries, at the east and west ends of the building. I am afraid that it would tire you, were I to attempt to tell you exactly what electricity is, and must therefore satisfy your curiosity, for the present, by letting you know that it is caused by the coming in contact of different substances possessing peculiar properties, which cause them to ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... which fell to him by virtue of his official position. His first instrument, the open-test apparatus, was prescribed by the act of 1868, but, being found to possess certain defects, it was superseded in 1879 by the Abel close-test instrument (see PETROLEUM). In electricity Abel studied the construction of electrical fuses and other applications of electricity to warlike purposes, and his work on problems of steel manufacture won him in 1897 the Bessemer medal of the Iron and Steel Institute, of which from 1891 to 1893 he was president. He was president of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the English-speaking peoples will dominate it—dominate it, because they are the practical peoples. They have given to the world all its great practical inventions—the railroad, the steamship, electricity, the telegraph and cable—all of them; they are the great civilizing forces, rounding the world up to new moral understanding, for what England has done in Africa and India we have done in a smaller way in the Philippines and Cuba and Porto Rico; they are the great ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... original motive power of the prairie to the uses of agriculture was, and it is not of importance now. The buffalo has long since gone. Even the ox and the Norman horse, so long in use there, have been largely supplanted by that mysterious force, electricity, which Franklin was discovering on the other side of the Alleghany Mountains at the very time that this suggestion was being made to the minister of Louis XV. It is known, however, that the king took thought of the little Illinois ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... unconscious. Whenever he was suddenly roused from a fit of abstraction by the master's cry, "You are doing nothing!" it often happened that, without knowing it, he flashed at his teacher a look full of fierce contempt, and charged with thought, as a Leyden jar is charged with electricity. This look, no doubt, discomfited the master, who, indignant at this unspoken retort, wished to cure his scholar of ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... which man is cognizant, escape the senses in gradation. We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous ether. Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas more essentially distinct than that which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... every stroke, is a matter for cheers, derisive or otherwise. The Rev. Septimus need not prate of golden days gone by. Boys at heart never change. And the atmosphere is so charged with electricity that a spark sets ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... of transition, and the vigor which emanated from the young President passed like electricity through all lines and hastened the change. He caused the White House to be remodeled and fitted on the one hand for social purposes which required much more spacious accommodation, and on the other ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... these companies electricity and water for irrigation are supplied to towns and country regions contiguous to their lines, and they have materially aided in the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... represent goods, the bank note is new goods. Even metallic money has only a credit-value, inasmuch as it can be used only to effect exchanges. To the - of the creditor may correspond a of the debtor; but the latter is negative only in the sense that we speak of negative electricity, a negative thermometrical degree. When an estate is leased, the owner has, in his demand for rent, a vendible plus; but the lessee no corresponding minus. (Not so. To the same extent that the proprietor has his future payments on the lease discounted, the present sale-value ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... service to the science of geology, to form a mathematical theory of the physical condition of the earth, and to ascertain its exact conformation. It would probably throw light on the wonderful phenomena of magnetism and atmospheric electricity and the mysterious Aurora Borealis—to say nothing of the flora of these regions and the animal life on the ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... means very often that many rooms must be used as sleeping apartments for them, frequently too a sitting room or a special dining room is given them. This is not all, for the rooms must be furnished and kept clean and warm, and supplied with an unlimited amount of gas and electricity. In many families the boarding and lodging of household employees cause as much anxiety and expense to the housewife as to ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... inadequately warmed the large room. Mrs. Oglethorpe, like many women of her generation, never indulged her backbone save in bed, and she seated herself in her own massive upright chair not too close to the fire. She had made a concession to time in the rest of the house, which was lighted by electricity, but the gas remained in her own suite, and the room was lit by faint yellow flames struggling through the ground-glass globes of four-side brackets. The light from the coals was stronger, and as it ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... even of the religion, in many who thus gave show to their feelings. But neither those who were good before nor those who were excited now were much the better for this and like modes of playing off the mental electricity generated by the revolving cylinder of intercourse. Naturally, such men as Joseph Mair now grew shy of the assemblies they had helped to originate, and withdrew—at least into the background; the reins slipped from the hands of the first leaders, and such windbags as Ladle ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... laughing contemptuously. "The ridiculous idea of her trying to compete in a man's age-old occupation! As if she ever could learn enough about joists and beams and girders and installing water and gas and electricity to build a house. She should have had the sense to know ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... equal ranges of temperature, were inversely proportional to their combining weights. Thus a definite relation was established between the hypothetical units and heat. The phenomena of electrolytic decomposition showed that there was a like close relation between these units and electricity. The quantity of electricity generated by the combination of any two units is sufficient to separate any other two which are susceptible of such decomposition. The phenomena of isomorphism showed a relation between the units and crystalline forms; certain units ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... to maintaining the limb in the abducted position, it is necessary to keep up the nutrition of the muscles by massage and electricity. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... ZHIGALOV. [Meditatively] Electricity... h'm.... In my opinion electric lighting is just a swindle.... They put a live coal in and think you don't see them! No, if you want a light, then you don't take a coal, but something real, something special, that you can get hold of! You must have a fire, you understand, which is natural, not ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... with the small advances which dear Dr. Lawrence makes towards recovery. If we could have again but his mind, and his tongue in his mind, and his right hand, we should not much lament the rest. I should not despair of helping the swelled hand by electricity, if it were ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... spirit animating nature, the universal force which takes the myriad forms, heat, light, gravitation, electricity, and the like. ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... the scientific gentleman, he demonstrated, in a masterly treatise, that these wonderful lights were the effect of electricity; and clearly proved the same by detailing how a flash of fire danced before his eyes when he put his head out of the gate, and how he received a shock which stunned him for a quarter of an hour afterwards; which demonstration delighted all the scientific associations beyond measure, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... was only a tramp telegrapher, but he was not satisfied with being anything but the best, and many are the stories of speed he attained in sending or receiving messages. He was inquisitive—wanted to know more of the mysteries of the electricity that carried his messages. He began experimenting, and by close application to his studies, has astonished the world with his telephone, phonograph and ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... bed of the stream, breaking through the bushes, and forming into a long line, which, as soon as formed, was at once hidden at regular intervals by flashes of flame that seemed to leap from one gun-barrel to the next, as you have seen a current of electricity run along a line of gas-jets. In the dim twilight these flashes were much more blinding than they had been in the glare of the sun, and the crash of the artillery coming on top of the silence was the more fierce and terrible ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... most extraordinary one I ever saw,' observed the doctor. 'There is a vitality in her presence that affected me like electricity in a water bath. She has eyes like Sigmund the Volsung—perhaps he was her ancestor, since her name ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... danger as some people fear. I do not believe that the study of the hidden side of Nature is so perilous a study as some think. All researches at first hand in the early days of a science have some danger: chemistry, electricity, had dangers for their pioneers, but not dangers from which wise people and brave should shrink; and I fear for the future of the Theosophical Society if it follows the track of many of the religions and lets go its hold of knowledge of the other worlds, and ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... effort; it is a safety-valve through which fancy and poetry conduct away foul vapors; it is an alembic, retaining only the pure and valuable of all that is poured into it, to be stored for future use. It is a lightning-rod that conducts away from the body all superfluous electricity. It does not harm a sensible child to put it to study early, but it destroys a dull one. Let your poor soil lie fallow, but harvest your rich mould, and you shall be repaid, without harm ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... independent middle course between the mechanical explanation of life and the assumption of a specific vital force, so in all the burning physical questions of the time he seeks to rise above the contending parties by means of mediating solutions. Thus, in the question of "single or double electricity," he ranges himself neither on the side of Franklin nor on that of his opponents; in regard to the problem of light, endeavors to overcome the antithesis between Newton's emanation theory and the undulation theory of Euler; and, in his chapter on combustion, attacks the defenders of phlogiston ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... at once organized, messages were sent back and forth from our camp at Lovejoy's to Atlanta, and to our telegraph-station at the Chattahoochee bridge. Of course, the glad tidings flew on the wings of electricity to all parts of the North, where the people had patiently awaited news of their husbands, sons, and brothers, away down in "Dixie Land;" and congratulations came pouring back full of good-will and patriotism. This victory was most opportune; Mr. Lincoln himself told me ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... bringing near. The propinquity of the magnet makes the soft iron a magnet; the qualities of the magnet are produced in it, it manifests poles, it attracts steel, it attracts or repels the end of an electric needle. In the presence of a postively electrified body the electricity in a neutral body is re-arranged, and the positive retreats while the negative gathers near the electrified body. An internal change has occurred in both cases from the propinquity of another object. ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... the atmosphere appeared to be heavily charged with electricity, the thunder held off, and when night closed down upon the convoy, the moon being then in her third quarter and rising late, it became as ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... minor inconveniences of the camp was the extraordinary uncertainty of the lighting. Other camps, even the Con. Camp occasionally, suffered from failure of the supply of electricity. For some reason the thing happened more often in this camp than elsewhere; and even when the current was running strongly we found ourselves in darkness because our wires fused in places difficult to get at, or branches fell from trees and broke wires. We got accustomed to these disasters ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... the electricity with which the air was charged, started to relieve his feelings by barking stormily. The nervous outburst of reproof which greeted his eloquence was so unexpectedly menacing that he retired precipitately beneath the table, his small white tail ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... his attention to the outside of the books which passed through his hands. In his spare moments, however, he made himself familiar with the inside of many of them, eagerly devouring such works on science, electricity, chemistry, and natural philosophy, as came within his reach. He was especially delighted with an article on electricity, which he found in a volume of the "Encyclopedia Britannica," which had been given him to bind. He immediately began work on an electrical ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... came, or whither it went; that the utterances which startled them, the tones of feeling and thought which terrified them, reappeared, though crushed in one place, suddenly in another; that the whole atmosphere was charged with them, as with electricity; and that it was impossible to say where the unseen force might not concentrate itself at any moment, and flash out in a lightning stroke. Then their fear has turned to a rage. They have thought no more of putting down opinions: ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... that Sir Richard was not quite dead. There was life in the brain, she persisted in saying. Would he revive? "For forty-eight hours," she tells us, "she knelt watching him." She could not shed a tear. Then she "had the ulnar nerve opened and strong electricity applied to make sure of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... and capital shake hands today. The lion and the lamb sleep together. Here in the West are the representatives of labor and in the East are those of capital. The two united make the era of progress. Steam, Gas, and Electricity are the liberty, fraternity, and equality of the people. The world is on the ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... used to be rather lavish of electricity, but he did but a small retail business in it, compared with our dear GEORGE FRANCIS, the demi-god, who, when he is not talking with sublime garrulity, is telegraphing without regard to expense. Evidently it has dawned upon the mind (if he has any,) of this extraordinary being, that the world, in ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the sidewalks, the water-works, the free library, the introduction of electricity, the projected system of drainage, and all the various religious enterprises at various times, I am proud—I am humbly proud—that I have been allowed to ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Dorriforth's voice in anger, was to the servants so unusual, that it acted like electricity upon the man, and he drove on at the instant with such rapidity, that Lord Frederick was in a moment left many yards behind. As soon, however, as he recovered from the surprise into which this sudden command had thrown him, he ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... the nature of electricity seemed to envelop her, that made her pulses bound, her lips quick to smile, and her eyes shine like twin dreamstars. She seemed to be moving to some rapturous music unheard save only by herself. At night, alone with her heart, she dared hardly name to herself the meaning of it all, a ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... Philosophy, Pneumatics, Optics, Dioptics, Catroptics, Hydraulics, Erostatics, Geology, Glorification, Divinity, Mythology, Medicinality, Physic, by theory only, Metaphysics practically, Chemistry, Electricity, Galvanism, Mechanics, Antiquities, Agriculture, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... smelled of moth powder With its ivory-white walls and masses of sheeting it looked crudely bright in the glare of electricity switched on by Logan. A glance at the closed bay window showed that outside the glass was a screen of unpainted wood. There was no door save that through ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... house, the groom we found And waitress at the door, for the clear sound From two electric wires pressed by the cart In passing through the gate, had sent a dart Of electricity that rang a bell, To man and maid of our ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... chemical, physiological or psychological action, have been attained." He proposes to remedy this failure, and to carry the natural sciences to their "basic principles." He proceeds to speculate with great ingenuity on the nature of light, the form, relations and movements of atoms, the action of electricity upon them, the constitution of the atmosphere, mode of creation of the solar system, and the rationale of chemical affinity. From these lofty regions he stoops to his conclusion in the new science of "chromo-therapeutics." He undertakes to define and explain the alleged effects upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Xochimilco, as the present amount per capita of 137 litres is not sufficient. The new works will ensure a per capita supply of 400 litres, for a population of 550,000 inhabitants. The lighting of the city and suburbs is by electricity, and is efficiently performed, giving the capital the reputation of being an excellently illumined community. A Canadian Company, the Mexican Light and Power Company, holds the contract for this work. The drainage and sewerage of the capital form a fine modern sanitation system, which has recently ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Annesley's darted a little tingle of electricity that flashed up her arm to her heart, where it caught like a hooked wire. She was surprised, almost frightened by the sensation, and ashamed because she didn't ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... take them into his confidence. But they waited in vain. He seemed to have forgotten their existence, and the silence grew tense and painful. All at once, Mrs. Berry, who was clinging to her husband's arm, uttered a scream, which acted like a shock of electricity on the overstrained nerves of ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... charms animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had not been an animal charmer—which is a boy charmer, too, because a boy is an animal. I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us—like electricity and ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for eight days previous to the fifteenth of January, 1846, had been heavy and tempestuous, with constantly recurring storms of thunder and lightning. The atmosphere was charged with electricity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... and capital of Ancient Russia, climbs from its ancestral beginnings, on the banks of the River Dneiper, up the steep sides and over the summit of a commanding hilltop, crowned by an immense gold cross, illumined with electricity by night, to flash its message of hope to foot-sore pilgrims. The driver of our drosky drove us over the rough cobbles so rapidly, despite the hill, that we were almost overturned. It is the manner of Russian drosky drivers. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... meant for me, my dear colonel?" asked Max, sending a glance at Philippe which was like a current of electricity. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... hat and gloves, and placed them on the grand piano. I observed that she was flushed, and I put it down to the natural excitement of the artist about to begin work. The orchestra sounded resonantly in the empty theatre, and, under the yellow glare of unshaded electricity, the rehearsal of "Carmen" began at the point where ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... miniature universes. Round a central sun, termed a Proton, whirl a number of electrons in rhythmic motion and incessant swing. And these electrons and protons—what are they? Something in the nature of charges of electricity, positive and negative. So where is ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... "reindeer". When the Aurora Borealis was particularly bright in the sky they would say that deer were plentiful in that part of the heavens. Their fancy in this respect was not quite so silly as one might think. They had learnt from experience that the Aurora Borealis was in some way connected with electricity, and experience had equally shown them that the skin of the reindeer, if briskly stroked by the hand on a dark night, would emit as many electric sparks as the back of a cat. On the other hand, the Amerindians in the southern ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... farm kitchen hot and cold water gushes from bright nickel taps into a clean white enamel sink, thanks to the pneumatic water supply system. The house and other farm buildings are lighted by electricity and perhaps the little farm power plant manages to operate some machinery—to drive the washing machine, the cream separator, the churn and the fodder-cutter or tanning-mill. There is also a little blacksmith shop and a carpenter shop where repairs can be attended to without delay. True, all these ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... matter. Philosophers have tried to teach it, But all their learning cannot reach it; 'Tis matter still, "that's what's the matter" With all their philosophic chatter, And Latin, Greek, and Hebrew clatter, Crucibles, retorts, and receivers, Wedges, inclined planes, and levers, Screws, blow pipes, electricity and light, And fifty other notions, quite Too much to either read or write. Just ask the wisest, What is matter? And notice how he will bespatter The subject, in his vain endeavor, With deep philosophy so clever, To prove you what you knew before, That ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... strictly accurate to say that at the close of the nineteenth century the Spaniards of Manila were using the same tortures that had made their name abhorrent in Europe three centuries earlier, for there was some progress; electricity was employed at times as an improved method of causing anguish, and the thumbscrews were much more neatly finished than those used by the Dons ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... Science is his play. When he discovered Hodge's Nature Study and Life at age of 11 years he literally slept with the book till he almost knew it by heart. Since age 12 he has given much time to magazines on mechanics and electricity. At 13 he installed a wireless apparatus without other aid than his electrical magazines. He has, for a boy of his age, a rather remarkable understanding of the principles underlying electrical applications. He is known by his playmates as "the boy with ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... gun had commonly succeeded in breaking water-spouts, by the strong vibration it causes in the air; and accordingly a four-pounder was ordered to be got ready, but our people, being, as usual, very dilatory about it, the danger was past before we could try the experiment. How far electricity may be considered as the cause of this phenomenon, we could not determine with any precision; so much however seems certain, that it has some connection with it, from the flash of lightning, which was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... member, as the Rifleman grasped it, was like the poles of a battery. It sent a shock through every part of his system, and gave his arm precisely the same tremor that takes place when a person is charged through this limb with electricity. If Edith had only returned the pressure, Lewis Dernor most assuredly would never have been able to stand it, and, therefore, it was fortunate ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... democracy of England for the voice of Ireland. All that has vanished into thin air. All that has radically changed. The change has been slow and gradual, but it has been continuous and sure. Such a change as that can never be reversed. You might as well talk of the world going back to the days before electricity or petrol as hope to bring back the prejudices and the ignorance of the masses of the people in this country about Ireland, as they existed in ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... the north-bound passenger train that departed five minutes later. But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was flagged to take on a traveller, he abandoned that manner of escape. There were telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at electricity and steam. Saddle and spur were his rocks ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... true, No! And yet—and yet—?" Words cannot express the agonizing doubts, the questionings, occasionally the horror of Voltaire: poor sick soul, keeping a Dionysius'-Ear to boot! This blurt of La Mettrie's goes through him like a shot of electricity through an elderly sick Household-Cat; and he speaks of it again and ever ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Pierre Delarue experienced a strange feeling. In his feverish haste he longed for the swiftness of electricity to bring him near Micheline. As soon as he arrived in Paris, he regretted having travelled so fast. He longed to meet his betrothed, yet feared ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... at which Margaret was making her debut was a large one in a Belgian city, a big modern house, to all appearance, and really fitted with the usual modern machinery which has completely changed the working of the stage since electricity was introduced. But the building itself was old and was full of queer nooks at the back, and passages and shafts long disused; and it had two stage entrances, one of which was now kept locked, while the other had the usual swinging doors ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... have remarked, their intimate structure closely resembles that of common muscle; and as it has lately been shown that rays have an organ closely analogous to the electric apparatus, and yet do not, as Matteucci asserts, discharge any electricity, we must own that we are far too ignorant to argue that no transition of any ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... are probably few people in the city of Boston who realize that over 25,000 abandoned cats and 3,000 dogs are electrocuted each year by the Animal Rescue League, by means of a cage which is charged with a strong current of electricity. After entering and the door is closed, they die without pain or struggle. June is the time of year that people abandon dogs, cats and other pets, for at this time they move to the seashore and disregard their four-footed ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... but the truth is also that Doctor Nesbit did what he did—won the county seat for Harvey, secured the railroad, promoted the bond election, which gave Daniel Sands the franchises for the distribution of water, gas and electricity—not because the Doctor had any particular regard for Daniel Sands but because, first of all, the good of the town, as the Doctor saw it, seemed to require him to act as he acted; and second, because his triumph ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... There is great danger that they, who enter smiling into this Trophonian cave, will come out of it sad and serious conspirators; and such will continue as long as they live. They will become true conductors of contagion to every country which has had the misfortune to send them to the source of that electricity. At best they will become totally indifferent to good and evil, to one institution or another. This species of indifference is but too generally distinguishable in those who have been much employed in foreign courts; but in the present case the evil must be aggravated without measure; for ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... magnetism and electricity are imperceptible to our sight, though they may be registered by the appropriate apparatus; and if we had the proper sense of apparatus to perceive them, these rays of vibratory force would open up a whole new world ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... by the velocity of the wind, and the darkness of the passing cloud, I naturally turned my eyes to the right, and was not a little surprised to observe a pale clear flame, in form like that of a small candle, playing upon the point of the cane. Taking it for granted, forthwith, that a stream of electricity, attracted by the cane, was passing from the cloud through my body, and through the horse, into the ground, I instantly turned it downwards. At the time I did not wait to consider that I was in the hollow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... from the edge of the windowsill, where he was perched, and Mr. Skale, standing close in front of him, caught his two wrists and set him upon his feet. A shock, like a rush of electricity, ran through him. He took his courage boldly in both hands and asked the question ever burning at the back ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... the old gentleman's beard began to curl and coil with the electricity of exasperation, and at every moment I expected to see sparks fly out from it. The old lady folded her hands across her treasure, and looked daggers ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... general reader with popular and connected views of the actual progress and condition of the Physical Sciences, both at home and abroad. The Mechanical Arts, Dietetic Chemistry, the Structure of the Earth, Electricity, Galvanism, Gas, Heat, Light, Magnetism, the Mathematical Sciences, Philosophical Instruments, Rain, Steam, the Cometary System, Tides, Volcanoes, &c., have, among many others, been developed in original communications and discussions, abounding in the freshest facts, the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... to be, not an original speculation of our own teacher, but a precious belief held by elect souls in all ages to embody the truth of the relations between what is called the Divine and the human. I say "called" because this doctrine annihilates the distinction. As the electricity in the atmosphere may annihilate space by enabling us to flash a thought instantaneously even to a world whose distance is measured in millions of miles, so does this sublime conception of the great Oneness shatter the foundations on which all outside ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... electricity, n. Associated Words: volt, voltage, ohm, kilowatt, ampere, amperage, armature, current, amperemeter, battery, dynamo, motor, voltaic, magnet, charge, coil, induction, conductor, nonconductor, insulate, insulation, farad, electrology, electric, electrician, electrify, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... judicial violation of the laws of nature, than a reasonably credible consequence or evolution of those laws, which strikes Ferdinand with madness and Bosola with repentance. But the whole atmosphere of the action is so charged with thunder that this double and simultaneous shock of moral electricity rather thrills us with admiration and faith than chills us with repulsion or distrust. The passionate intensity and moral ardor of imagination which we feel to vibrate and penetrate through every turn and every phrase of the dialogue would ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
