"Lightning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... captain looked wrathful. "Oh, you paid ten shillings as well, did you? And what the thunder and lightning have you tried to steal a passage for when you'd ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... paths the tangled clue He taught the nations to unravel; And mapped the track where safely through The lightning-footed thought might travel. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... rebels refused and shot one of the Osages dead. The Osages then fired on them. They ran and a running fight was kept up for some 15 miles. The rebel guide was killed early in the action. After crossing Lightning Creek, the rebels turned up the creek toward the camp of the Big Hill Camp. The Little Osages had sent a runner to aprise the Big Hills of the presence of the rebels and they were coming down the creek 400 strong, and met the rebels, drove them to the creek and surrounded them. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... give a darn for storms," Bert declared. "—Pass them frijoles, Pedro.—Remember that time it blowed the hay derrick down and he wouldn't come to the house, just stayed out and watched the wind and lightning?" ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... obscure'' (connected with achlus, "mist''); "snakeborn'' (echis), the snake being one of the chief forms taken by Thetis. The most generally received view makes him a god of light, especially of the sun or of the lightning. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... gate-post to recover he breath. His face was colorless, and the crimson line defined itself sharply against the pallor; but the rage was dead within him. It had been one of his own kind of rages,—like lightning out of a blue sky. As he stood there a smile was slowly gathering on ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to the stern, making one after another of the excursionists deliver his valuables, and then slipped quietly over the stern of the barge; the pirate craft began to spit and sputter furiously; and the next moment it was tearing through the water like a streak of lightning. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... dashes among the rocks below, the eye of one fastens on something clinging to a rock, caught on the very verge of the Falls. Scarcely willing to believe his own vision, he directs the attention of his companions. The terrible news spreads like lightning, and in a few minutes the bridge and the surrounding shore are covered with thousands of spectators. "Who is he?" "How did he get there?" are questions every person proposed, but answered by none. No voice is heard above the awful flood, but a spy-glass shows frequent ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... light-hearted folk, who live in beautiful houses of pure crystal, where they can rest themselves and play their games and go in when it rains. For it rains in Mo as it does everywhere else, only it rains lemonade; and the lightning in the sky resembles the most beautiful fireworks; and the thunder is usually a chorus from the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... lightning had struck him where he sat, Hector could not have been more astonished. For a moment he was struck ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... folded again its scared wings over the world; and the trees rustled their leaves with one wavy sweep, and were still. And again the rain came down in a tumult—warm, genial summer rain, full of the life of lightning. Alec stood staring through the dull dark, as if he would see Kate by the force of his will alone. The tempest in the heavens had awaked a like tempest in his bosom: would the bosom beside his receive his lightning and calm his pent-up storm by giving it space to rave? His hand took ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... from something else if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to see the far-off lustre of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in a thunder-storm will light a candle that they may not see the lightning, so many Christians have their hearts filled with the twinkling light of some miserable tapers of earthly care and pursuits, which, though they be dim and smoky, are bright enough to make it hard to see the silent depths of Heaven, though it blaze with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... gives a word picture of a thunderstorm. He describes the furious blast, the crashing thunder, the vivid lightning. Many times as a young lad he had watched the black storm-clouds gather over the hills and valleys of Bethlehem. He had no fear of the tempest. God's voice was in the wind; God's voice divided the lightning-flashes; God's voice shook the wilderness. ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... is recollecting Shakespeare (Winter's Tale, 4. 4), not looking at the primrose. The pine is not "rooted deep as high" (P.R. 4416), but sends its roots along the surface. The elm, one of the thinnest foliaged trees of the forest, is inappropriately named starproof (Arc. 89). Lightning does not singe the tops of trees (P.L. i. 613), but either shivers them, or cuts a groove down the stem to the ground. These and other such like inaccuracies must be set down partly to conventional language used without meaning, the vice ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... for his diamond trousers; but suddenly, as he raised his hand to push away the chair on which the despised brown knickerbockers lay, he dropped the sea-flower! Instantly everything about Patty and the diamond trousers passed out of his mind like a flash of lightning, and looking up at his mother, he said: 'What was I crying about, Mamma? Isn't it time to get up?' And his mother said: 'Yes, my darling, it is high time to get up, and I think you have had ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... which was held in a little ruined stone hut, situated behind some trees on a dreary hill just outside Bosekop. It was a miserable place, barren of foliage,—the ground was dry and yellow, and the hut itself looked as if it had been struck by lightning. The friends, whose taste had led them to select this dilapidated dwelling as a place of conference, were two in number, both women,—one of them no other than the minister's servant, the drear-faced Ulrika. She was crouched on the earth-floor in an attitude of utter abasement, at the feet ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... this huge Castle, standing here sublime, 1 love to see the look with which it braves, 50 Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, The lightning, the fierce wind, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... to a beautiful spot. He climbed a mountain, and from there proceeded to produce lightning, thunder and wind, which exterminated the rest of the tribe in the aldeia. That is why, when the Bororos see lightning, they say that it is someone's vengeance coming ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side. Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, 325 A river ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had listened to George's speech in open-mouthed amazement, and some little contempt for what he regarded as the young man's ignorance; but even his dense intellect could not at last fail to grasp the inward meaning and intention of the speaker; a lightning flash of intelligence revealed to him that it was not ignorance but a desire to spare his mother the anguish of long-drawn-out anxiety and the agony resulting from the mental pictures drawn by a woman's too vivid imagination; and forthwith he rose nobly to the exigencies of the occasion by chiming ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... lips are set, cheeks grow pale, quite often. Great coolness, vast powers, are continually displayed; yet they are well displayed, after the fashion of gentlemen, not of bravoes or villains or highwaymen. He handles thunder and lightning, the terrific weapons of the mighty Jove himself, in a very haughty, Jove-like manner, it must be confessed. He isn't afraid of singing his fingers with the thunderbolts, but seizes them with the familiar gripe of unquestionable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... moment forked lightning plays across the sky in a great ragged streak, and immediately there is another display as if answering it, but we can hear ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... that a man set in authority over other men should exercise his power in a spirit of clemency and should consider whether the conditions of the world is more beauteous and pleasant to the eyes on a fine calm day, or when everything is shaken with frequent thunder-claps and when lightning flashes on all sides! Yet the appearance of a peaceful and constitutional reign is the same as that of the calm and brilliant sky. A cruel reign is disordered and hidden in darkness, and while all shake with terror at the sudden explosions, not even he who caused all this disturbance ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... likely kill one, but the other would certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent as well as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely in Denys's face, and, turning, jobbed with the steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back covered with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning, and, just as the axe turned to descend on him, drove his sword so fiercely through the giant's body, that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his friend, saw a steel point come ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... upon an ocean whipped into mighty white-crowned waves. Rain beat down in sheets from low dense clouds; vivid violet lightnings flashed before us. It seemed very strange to see such lightning and hear not the faintest whisper of thunder—but no sound came from anything we saw through the blue-rimmed ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... an instant she was off, lying along it light as a feather, but holding the runners in a grip of steel. In a moment more she was nothing but a traveling black dot far down the valley, lifting to the banks, swirling lightning swift back into the straight in a series of curves and flashes, till at the end the toboggan, girl and all, swung high into the air, and subsided safely ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... the parapet and once more looked up the stream. Once more, as on a memorable day in August, the sun was upon the water. Then the heat was intense, and the heavy cumulus clouds were charged with thunder and lightning. Now the sun shone with nothing more than warmth, and though the clouds, the same clouds, hung in the south-west, there was no fire in them, nothing but soft, warm showers. She looked and looked, and tears came into her ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Dantesque cloud of love and destiny, around his forehead, through that motley mock-heroic band of burghers. Manfredi, consumed by an unholy passion for his sister, burns for one moment, like a face revealed by lightning, on our vision and is gone. Finally, when the mood seizes him (for Tassoni persuades us into thinking he is but the creature of caprice), he tunes the soft idyllic harp and sings Endymion's love-tale ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... when the Egyptians were cutting stones for the pyramids. Everybody knows, or should know, what the great Ben. Franklin did by means of a kite, though the kite through which he learned the nature of lightning was of a model that is not often seen at this time. This was the old bow kite, the kind that every beginner learns to make, and which ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the flock of sheep broke and hurried back to the open plain. At the same instant Dot could hear the sharp barking of a sheep-dog, a noise that produced an instant effect on the creatures she was with. With lightning speed the Kangaroo had popped her into her pouch and was hopping away, and the Emu was striding with its long legs as fast as it could for the cover of ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... went on in the house much as usual, with a little more silence where had been much. The wind lay moveless on the frozen earth; the sun shone cold as a diamond; and the fresh snow glittered and gleamed and sparkled like a dead sea of lightning. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... immediately afterwards by a lightning play that amazed the Belleville spectators. He dodged all interference and when finally too hard pressed, managed to send the rubber disc across to Dugdale, who continued the good work by shooting it into the charge of Hobson; and, almost before Leonard could try to stop its flight, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... end of Langley Lane) the young rooks have not yet all flown, though it is the end of the first week in June. There is a little pond near the rookeries, and by it a row of elms. From one of these a heavy bough has just fallen without the least apparent cause. There is no sign of lightning, nor does it even look decayed; the wood has fractured short off; it came down with such force that the ends of the lesser branches are broken and turned up, though, as it was the lowest limb, it had not far to fall, showing the weight ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... country is on fire, that a terrible struggle begins. (Wrote in this sense an article for the National Intelligencer; insertion refused.) They, the leaders, look to create engines for their own political security, but no one seems to look over Mason and Dixon's line to the terrible and with lightning-like velocity spreading ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... trident. Pallas, with the nine Muses, stands wondering what horrible thing this may be, and Pan, embracing a Nymph who is trembling with fear, seems to wish to save her from the glowing fires and the lightning-flashes with which the heavens are filled. Apollo stands in the chariot of the sun, and some of the Hours seem to be seeking to restrain the course of his horses. Bacchus and Silenus, with Satyrs and Nymphs, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... trappers found him they were delighted to have caught a curiosity, and they immediately dragged him to the palace courtyard. There he heard the whole court buzzing with gossip. Prince Cherry had been struck by lightning and killed, was the news, and the five favourite courtiers had struggled to make themselves rulers, but the people had refused them, and offered the crown to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... powder. Now this powder used to be, and I believe still is, employed for two objects which seem, at first sight, to have no particular connection with one another. It is, or was, employed in making lightning, and in making pills. The coats of the spores contain so much resinous matter, that a pinch of Lycopodium powder, thrown through the flame of a candle, burns with an instantaneous flash, which has long done duty for lightning on the stage. And the same character makes it ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... common with his auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addison's Cato is a specimen of the one; and would it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... more than two years. "Since his death was to bring about many calamities," says Niccolo Macchiavelli, "it was the will of Heaven to show this by omens only too certain: the dome of the church of Santa Regarata was struck by lightning, and Roderigo ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there the temperature rose to 105 degrees in the shade, but in the evening a cool breeze stirred the dust and I sat outside the Albergo Rosa d'Oro, talking with various passers-by. About nine o'clock bright lightning began to fill the sky, but, as yet, no rain. And then about eleven, just after I had gone to bed, came a tremendous drenching thunderstorm and a great whirlwind. And then, very suddenly, all became quiet again, save for ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... general chorus. We hardly know a sound which is further removed from pleasant harmony than their yells. The sudden burst of the long-protracted scream, succeeding immediately to the opening note, is scarcely less impressive than the roll of the thunder clap after a flash of lightning. The effect of this music is very much increased when the first note is heard in the distance—a circumstance which frequently occurs—and the answering yell bursts out from several points at once, within a few yards of the place where the auditors ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... collected in the church square, and then to the beautiful meadows glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. "Ah!" she said, "let me see the benediction of God in the strange atmospheric condition to which we owe the safety of our harvest. Around us, on all sides, tempests, hail, lightning, have struck incessantly and pitilessly. The common people think thus, why not I? I do so need to see in this a happy augury for what awaits me ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... preaching and sermons and schemes and institutions and organisations when we have the divine Lord Himself for our strength? 'Jehovah is my Banner,' and Moses' rod is only a symbol. At most it is like a lightning-conductor, but it is not the lightning. The lightning will come without the rod, if our eyes are to the heaven, for the true power that brings God down to men is that forsaking of externals and waiting upon Him which He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... anti-slavery men who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous abhorrence of slavery, but also by hatred of the slaveholder. What he himself seemed to enjoy most in his talk was his sardonic humor, which he made play upon men and things like lurid freaks of lightning. He shot out such sallies with a fearfully serious mien, or at least he accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham Lincoln's hearty ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... ranger! dark, forlorn, mysterious stranger! Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore! Tell us of that world of wonder—of that famed unfading "Yonder!" Rend—oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... the revealing light should shine down upon us, and like the sunshine on wet linen, melt away the foulness which it touches, than that we should huddle the ugly thing up in a corner, to be one day revealed and transfixed by the flash of the light turned into lightning. 'He that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his deeds ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Granville, took or destroyed about forty ships and their convoy. Yet this damage was inconsiderable, when compared to that which the English navy sustained from the dreadful tempest that began to blow on the twenty-seventh day of November, accompanied with such flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder, as overwhelmed the whole kingdom with consternation. The houses in London shook from their foundations, and some of them falling buried the inhabitants in their ruins. The water overflowed several streets, and rose to a considerable height in Westminster-hall. London ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of the present day, his heart smote him a little for his injustice. He certainly did know one girl who was eminently faithful and true; who worked hard, and, as he had just found out, suffered greatly—a girl whose true nobility of mind and life was revealed to him as if by a lightning ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Now whosoever hath it, it is perpetual, the Spirit dwells in them. It is not a sojourning for a season, not a lodging for a night,—as some have fits and starts of seeking God, and some transient motions of conviction or joy, but return again to the puddle, these go through them as lightning, and do not warm them or change them but this is a constant residence; where the Spirit takes up house he will dwell, "he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you," and abide for ever, John xiv. 16, 17. If the Son abide in the house for ever, (John viii. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... confident, however, that it signified a man[-i]d[-o] who controls the fog, one different from one of the a-na-mi-ki, or Thunderers, who would be shown by the figure of an eagle, or a hawk, when it would also denote the thunder, and perhaps lightning, neither of which occurs ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... mourn the dead, I break the lightning, I announce the Sabbath, I excite the slothful, I disperse the winds, I ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... great clouds which throw dense changeable shadows on the waters: in places these are as black as night, and bring to mind images of tempests and horrible shipwrecks; in other parts the sky is lighted up by patches and wavy streaks of bright light, which seem like motionless lightning or an illumination from mysterious stars. The ceaseless waves gnaw the shore in wild fury, with a prolonged roar which seems like a cry of defiance or the wailing of an infinite crowd. Sea, sky, and earth regard each other gloomily, as though they were ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... our Blessed Lady sent that Cloud That saved me when the Boche came up behind. I made a lightning turn, only to find The Boche on top of me. It seemed a kind Of miracle to see that Cloud—I swear A moment past the sky was everywhere As clear as clear; there was no Cloud in sight. It looked to me, floating there calm and white. Like a great mother hen, and I a chick. She seemed ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... be wondered at that the wits of the fugitives were at once set to work in lightning-like manner. If they were to escape, indeed, and were to avoid the police officials waiting for them at the station so near at hand, they must act instantly, must find some loophole, must alter their plans ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... hillside. He was not handsome, but he was strong. His shoulders were broad, and his chest was deep, and he was armed to the teeth. Spear points stuck from every one of his pockets, and in each hand he carried a lance as sharp as lightning. ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the Indians, denied the existence of a Great Spirit. When they heard the thunder or saw the lightning, they laughed and declared that they were greater than either. This so displeased the Great Spirit that he caused a deluge. The water rose higher and higher till it drove these proud giants from the low grounds to the hills and thence to the mountains. At last even the mountaintops ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... joyous smile hovered about D'Ossuna's lips. This joy was but natural, for the young man was of the blood of the Gusmans, and his cousin, the condemned prisoner, was his dearest friend. The King perceived the smile, and his eye shot forth lightning. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... mind the unfortunate are always objects of respect. As the ancients held sacred those places which had been blasted by lightning, so the feeling heart considers the afflicted as having been touched by the hand of God Himself. Such were the sensations with which Mary found herself in the presence of the venerable Mrs. Lennox—venerable rather through affliction than age; for sorrow, more than time, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... arrived in this country there are other phenomena, equally curious; as fire-flies, night-hawks &c.; but, above all, such tremendous peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, as can be conceived only by those who have ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... front; the swift blows continually threatening to crush his guard; the fierce, cruel faces glaring at him eye to eye, and his own desperate efforts to drive and kill. It all abides in fevered memory not unlike those pictures of horror coming of a dark night when lightning leaps from the black void. I mind the first man to reach me, a burly ruffian, whose shining spear-point missed my throat by so narrow a margin it tasted blood ere my rifle-stock crushed the side of his head ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... command to some who stood near her person, and in a moment, as if by a flash of lightning, the cowering, terrified Demon had vanished, carried away to be confined in one of the dungeons where persistent haters of mankind are kept imprisoned, until their hearts are changed by some noble sentiment of compassion and the Goddess sees that they are ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... Satan, the king of the evil spirits, falling down like lightning from heaven. I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and nothing shall harm you. Still, do not rejoice because the evil spirits obey you; but rejoice that your ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... matter of minutes, whirlpools being plentiful, and then M'bo and Pierre, provided with our surviving poles, stood in the bows to fend us off rocks, as we shot towards them; while we midship paddles sat, helping to steer, and when occasion arose, which occasion did with lightning rapidity, to whack the whirlpools with the flat of our paddles, to break their force. Cook crouched in the stern concentrating his mind on steering only. A most excellent arrangement in theory and the safest practical one no doubt, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... The affair happened like a flash of lightning. We had been to Capri one afternoon, and I was tired. I went to my room to rest for a couple of hours, fell asleep, and awoke to find Giovanni staring at me in the most terrifying manner. There was a fierce scene. We are both hot-tempered, and when he accused me of a ridiculous ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... him still, and her father felt like one who was beating back the spring. Her mother was torn with the torment of an armed neutrality. Further, my beautiful church had been scarred by the explosive riot of that ordination day, stricken with a soul's lightning; and the whole tragedy of our home life had been laid bare ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... trencher, because, as she said, she feared lest we should break them and anger the ghosts, who liked their food to be well served. So we started, and presently entered the mouth of that awful valley which, Martina told me, looked as though it had been riven through the mountain by lightning strokes and ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... brightly where we were. As the cloud continued to circle, it increased in size, momentum, and density of color, spreading out like a huge umbrella. Soon thunder could be heard, growing louder and more frequent until it became one continuous roar, fairly shaking the earth. Long, vivid flashes of lightning chased each other in rapid succession over the crags and lost themselves in crevice and ravine. All work was forgotten. In fact, one would as soon think of making saddles in the immediate presence of the Almighty as in the presence ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... from the West and winds from the North; then strong wind from East (something Turkish here); light breeze from Scotland (Highland Fling); Anticyclonic movement; "Depression" on the hautbois; increase of wind; then thunder, lightning, rain—all the elements at it! Grand effect!! Crash!!! and ... for finale, calm sea, sun shining, joyful chorus, Harvest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... heard was a voice asking if I was hurt, and saying, 'You'll pardon me, sir.'" He chuckled with his first sign of mirth. "When I got my senses back there was a big feller sitting on me, nearly choking off my wind. He brung out one of them lightning-bug flashlights and turned it full on me, and then shouted like a maniac, 'Why, it's Cap'n Pott!' 'That's me, but who in hell be you?' I'm telling you just as I said it. He told me his name was Mack McGowan. Well, I was real glad to see him till he told me he was the new preacher and was going ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... giving way beneath his feet. Another glance from those green eyes! But, alas, this time it was cold and menacing, a livid flash of lightning refracted from ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... raised up, and shall show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. [24:25]Behold, I have told you before. [24:26]If, therefore, they say to you, Behold he is in the wilderness, go not forth; Behold he is in private rooms, believe it not. [24:27]For as the lightning comes forth from the East, and shines even to the West, so shall the coming of the Son of man be. [24:28] Wherever the dead body is, there will the eagles ...
— The New Testament • Various
... a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes silently, it's quicker than its ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... had been cited as a model of social correctness by Aunt Jamsiah stood upon the doorstep looking eagerly up into Pee-wee's face and wagging his tail with vigorous and lightning rapidity. Wiggle's tail was easily the fastest thing in Everdoze. His head vibrated in unison with it and his look of intentness carried with it all sorts of friendly expectations. He fairly shook with excitement and cordiality. ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the Prophet, the averter of our ills, While the lightning flasheth bright o'er the ocean ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... The heavens are lighted up across their broad expanse by a continuous sheet of lightning, playing relentlessly over the doomed lines. Now a faint light of dawn shimmers in the east and soon blots out the fireworks. A lark rises high, carolling. . ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... recounted, as we sat here talking that night. It was just a matter of old Horace MacNair's coming in on them once during a thunder-storm. The family were sitting in the big hall; the ladies with their feet up on chairs to insulate them from the lightning; young Vincent Ezekiel teasing them by putting his on the mantelpiece. At one point in the storm came a terrible crash, and Auber jumped up, starting toward the door. Then he came back and sat down quietly. They laughed, and asked if ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... very evil turn,' he said. 'Ye spoke stiff-necked folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I be the flail of the monks I may be a hail, a lightning, a bolt from heaven upon ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... whitened, and bent towards the stream; and muttered threats of the strife-breeding spirits in nature seemed to issue from caverns half hidden by sombre foliage. As the gorge darkened, the gusts grew stronger, and the moaning rose at times to a shriek. Now the thunder groaned, the lightning flashed, and the face of the river gleamed. I returned to the inn just as the hissing rain began to fall. I was by this time alone, for the party from Severac had left at ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... him. He jumped like lightning from his horse, threw the reins over the animal's head so he would stand, and ran ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... no ground, no sound and sufficient ground, to build a charge against the child upon, I mean, as to eternal condemnation; for that is the thing contended for; then, as I said, Satan must fall "like lightning to the ground," and be cast over the bar, as a corrupt and illegal pleader. But this is so, as in part is proved already, and will be further made out by that which follows. They that have indeed Christ ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... spring. Their thoughts of home. Preparations to continue their journey. Escape of the Wild Man. They suffer from want of water. A party of Indians. A beautiful Landscape. A terrific storm. The chief rendered insensible by a stroke of lightning. He recovers and returns to the ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... borrowed no doubt from the current mystical theology of his day, makes this absence of any suggested object a criterion of "consolation" coming from God alone—a criterion always difficult to apply owing to the lightning subtlety of thoughts that flash across the soul and are forgotten even while their emotional reverberation yet remains. Where there was a preceding thought to account for the emotion, he held that the "consolation" might be the work of spirits (good or evil) who could not ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... gay ribbons fluttering from a booth. She was flying from worse than death, with dim projects of begging her way to the North, to the brother she had parted from when a child; and ghastly suggestions, too, like lightning flashes, of seizing a knife from the first butcher's block and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... and then, quick as lightning, for she had seen displeasure on his face, she broke into a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... may reveal itself under a plurality of aspects to those who seek it, strange to say, the world knows very little about it. We speak of it as of some regretted treasure that has been long lost to humanity. We are half convinced that the lightning speed of modern civilization has been too much for it, and that it is destined for time to come, to creep on apace within the range of our backward glance, but never within reach ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... himself? But before I could make any comment on my companion's information, my attention to the subject was diverted. All that afternoon the weather had been threatening to break—there was thunder about. And now, with startling suddenness, a flash of lightning was followed by a sharp crack, and that on the instant by a heavy downpour of rain. I glanced at Miss Raven's light dress—early spring though it was, the weather had been warm for more than a week, and she had come out in things that would be soaked through in a moment. But just ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... I found the outfit in the saddle, ironing up a big calf crop, while the improved herd was the joy and pride of my foreman. An altitude of about four thousand feet above sea-level had proved congenial to the thoroughbreds, who had acclimated nicely, the only loss being one from lightning. Two men were easily holding the isolated herd in their canon home, the sheltering bluffs affording them ample protection from wintry weather, and there was nothing henceforth to fear in regard to the experiment. I spent a week with the outfit; my ranch foreman ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... obscured, and, as they proceeded, rain set in, followed by thunder and lightning; then a fearful tempest ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... a good deal about this Mysterious Pete. He was a killer of the most deadly kind because he never gave warning of his purpose. The man was said to be a crack shot, quick as chain lightning, without the slightest regard for human life. He moved furtively, spoke little when sober, and had no scruples against assassination from ambush. Nobody in the Southwest was more ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... watched in agonized suspense, he saw the shark's jaws open and shut in a lightning snap at Mel's outstretched arm. Its razor-sharp teeth missed ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... birds with terror. When it approaches its victim its scream changes to a quick kik-kak-kak, resembling the barking of a dog, and gradually sinking until sufficiently near, it darts in a straight line with the rapidity of lightning upon its prey. None of the smaller birds and beasts are safe from its clutches. Fawns, rabbits, and hares, young sheep and goats, wild birds of all kinds, fall helpless victims, for neither the swiftest running nor the most rapid flight ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... playing, Tancred cometh forth, and draweth Gismunda's curtains, and lies down upon her bed; then from under the stage ascendeth Guiscard, and he helpeth up Gismunda: they amorously embrace and depart. The king ariseth enraged. Then was heard and seen a storm of thunder and lightning, in which the furies rise up, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... discharging the obligation, by mounting guard over the hereditary tailor of Sliochd nan Ivor; and, as he expressed himself, 'targed him tightly' till the finishing of the job. To rid himself of this restraint, Shemus's needle flew through the tartan like lightning; and as the artist kept chanting some dreadful skirmish of Fin Macoul, he accomplished at least three stitches to the death of every hero. The dress was, therefore, soon ready, for the short coat fitted the wearer, and the rest of the apparel ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... dark emblems of mortality were reflected, as it were, on the sky, from the terrible work of pestilence and famine, which was going forward on the earth beneath them. To all this, the thunder and lightning too, were constantly adding their angry peals, and flashing, as if uttering the indignation of Heaven against our devoted people; and what rendered such fearful manifestations ominous and alarming to the superstitious, was the fact of their ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... is far more convenient to blame some supernatural source for them than to take the blame upon ourselves. In support of this, take the attitude of employers toward strikes and lockouts, their most outbreaking and violent troubles. These are named in all of our contracts along with lightning, tornadoes, floods, and other "acts of God," if not directly, at least by inference It is plain enough, at any rate, that those who draw up the contract consider strikes and lockouts as wholly outside of their control, as they do the elements. It is the same old ignorance, the same desire ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... guards round the Temple, so that none could issue out thence to communicate with the Idumeans. At night a terrible storm set in, with lightning, thunder, and rain, so that the very earth seemed to shake. A great awe fell upon all, within and without the city. To all, it seemed a sign of the wrath of God at the civil discords; but though, doubtless, it was the voice of the ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... to infer that they paid a superstitious respect to the winds and the other elements. But why should this feeling pass beyond that which even the Christian experiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as well as the supernatural order? The awe-struck pagan saw the lightning leap, the tempest gather and break over him in majestic fury; heard the great voice of the mighty ocean which laved or lashed his shores: he witnessed these wonderful effects; he knew not whence the tempests or the lightnings came, or the voice of the ocean; he trembled at the unseen ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... repeated day after day, for some time, seeming to enjoy the fun of disappointing her so nicely and easily. But after a while the little fellow thought he would like a play-mate nearer his own size, and went off to find one. But he came back all alone, and perched himself on the very tip-top of a lightning-rod on a high barn at the back of the yard; and there he would sing his sweet little trilling song, hour after hour, hardly stopping long enough to find food for his meals. We wondered that he ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... the world? I have wondered in what kind of exaltation Shakespeare wrote his storm in 'Lear.' There must have been a first conception greater even than his accomplishment. Did he look from his windows at a winter tempest and see miserable old men and women running hard for shelter? Did a flash of lightning bare his soul to the misery, the betrayal and the madness of the world? His supreme moment was not when he flung the completed manuscript aside, or when he heard the actors mouth his lines, but in the flash and throb of creation—in the moment when he knew ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the man, and disappeared in the muddy water. He rose to the surface under the ship's quarter, and the mate, quick as lightning, dumped the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on to the top of him. In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the mate and the steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung with the tenacity and somewhat the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... so soon leave the outer air. He remained gazing out at the wild scene about him, at the rolling waves dashing on the shore, their crests whitening in the glare of the lightning, now approaching more closely. He harkened to the roll of the far-off thunder reenforced by the thunder of the waves upon the shore, and noted the sweep of the black forest about, of the black sky overhead, unlit save for one ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... to that previously fought by Fadrique with Lucila's husband. The two young soldiers well understood their weapons, and strove with each other with equal boldness, their swords flashing like rays of light as now this one now that one hurled a lightning thrust at his adversary, which was with similar speed and dexterity turned aside. Firmly they pressed the left foot, as if rooted in the ground, while the right advanced to the bold onset and then again they quickly retired to the safer attitude ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... lightning greeted her, illumining the world outside, flashing into bold relief the familiar objects of the little room. She knelt down by the window, regardless of danger, and lifted her face ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... heaviest volume from the southeast in parallel lines, like lines of battle swooping over the city. There were at the same time shorter and fuller lines from the southwest, and others from the north. The meeting of these was followed by tremendous clashes of lightning and thunder; and between the pauses of the artillery of the elements above, the thunder of artillery on earth could be distinctly heard. Oh that the strife were ended! But Richmond is to be defended at ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... as if a sharp blow had struck me. I had been thinking far less of my mother than of Julia; but I saw, as with a flash of lightning, what a complete uprooting of all her old habits and long-cherished hopes this would prove to my mother, whose heart was so set upon this marriage. Would Julia marry me if she once heard of my unfortunate love for Olivia? And, if not, what would become of our home? My mother ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword— ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon |
