"Lightning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... April in that year, commenced an extraordinary series of storms. They occurred daily, and sometimes twice a day, accompanied by the most vivid lightning, and awful peals of thunder; the rain poured down in a deluge until it seemed as if another flood was coming to purify the earth. For more than sixty days those terrible scenes recurred, and blighted the whole face of the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... waved their heads on high, And shrunk from the storm's fierce stroke; The lightning flash'd as from GOD'S own eye, The thunderbolt crash'd through the startled sky, As it ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... wild words, when the door of the banquet hall opens, and we see the head of an old man, wearing a bonnet and a garment of rough cloth; we see the dust and sweat trickling down his tanned cheeks. The bridegroom, with a terrible glance, like the lightning flash of a fearful storm, turns suddenly pale, and seeks to stop him; but he, whom the glance cannot harm, calmly, impassively, like God when he clothes himself like a poor man, to confound sometimes some rich evil-doer, slowly ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... dripping trees surrounding the hollow jumped into view to be blotted from sight as the succeeding crash of thunder diminished to far titanic echoes. Where Soper's cabin had stood there was a wet, glistening heap of fallen logs and rafters, charred and twisted. The lightning flash had revealed more to the rider than the desolation of the burned and abandoned homestead. He saw with instant vividness the wrecked framework of his own plans. He heard the echo of Fadeaway's sneering laugh in the fury of the wind. He told himself that he had been duped ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... a journey. She was standing before a mirror, dabbing her neck with a powder-puff—histronic to the last; she was showing me how she had to resort to this to cover up the marks of my assault. I have failed in my picture of her if I have not portrayed her as a woman of moods and lightning changes. There was no trace of the late volcanic outburst in her manner when she greeted me and handed me a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to the Denver chief ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... She was speared to death before Hearne's eyes. On that scene of indescribable horror the white man could no longer bear to look. He turned toward the river, and there was a spectacle like a nightmare. Some of the Eskimo were escaping by leaping to their hide boats and with lightning strokes of the double-bladed paddles dashing down the current to the far bank of the river; but sitting motionless as stone was an old, old woman—probably a witch of the tribe—red-eyed as if she were blind, deaf to all ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... suspicious stranger drew his dagger; but I had time to explain the matter to the woman, who explained in a word or two to him in a low voice. On hearing my opinion, a quick, slight shudder ran through him from head to foot like a lightning flash; I fancied I could see him turn pale ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... not get to his home because the bird Wochowsen blew so hard that he could make no progress against it. As the Thunder-Bird is an Indian, the lightning from him never ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... beautiful face darkened with a baleful cloud. "No fury like a woman scorned," wrote one who seemed to know. Her face darkened like a thunder-storm, and from its cloud her eyes shot forked lightning. She set her teeth, and clinched her little fist and shook ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... when he was in the depths, regarding his life as practically finished, had given him the greatest happiness he had ever known. Memory flashed away at lightning speed over their travels together, their adventures. Somerled's wife would not write novels. And deep in his heart Basil knew that Aline's soul was not in the books, as his was. He would not acknowledge this difference between them, but ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... suddenly the cry ran, fore and aft that the captain was lost overboard! This added to the general gloom; and now a cry was heard "there goes the Flying Dutchman," as was seen by several on board the Indiaman, during the interval of the vivid lightning, a large ship dash by them almost within cable's length, with a single topsail close reefed running before the gale with the speed of the wind. It did indeed look like a phantom craft. All was snug on board, not a soul was in sight, everything battened down, save ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes PECULIAR TO HIM; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself—but ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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 hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... link us sometimes with the agitated reservoirs of electricity trembling in the bosom of yet distant clouds? Do not our own highly charged nervous batteries occasionally give the first premonition of coming thunderstorms? Long before the low angry growl that came suddenly from some lightning lair in the far south, below the sky-line, Regina anticipated the approaching war of elements, and settled ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... he said. 'An angel need not necessarily be a mystic, else Fan were no angel, but even to angels it adds something. It is not that splendour of virtue and immortality which makes their faces shine like lightning and gives whiteness to their raiment; but it is the rainbow tint on their wings, the spiritual melody which they eternally make, which the old masters symbolised by placing harps and divers strange instruments in their hands—that ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... returned to the two women. From their feet two long streaks of black shadow darted back into the room, and vanished. Overhead an octopus of lightning snatched the whole heavens in its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... well as of men are constituted. Orderly and harmoniously they worked together. Out of the same fiery globe, from the same throne of God, they came forth all alike. They turned not when they went; whithersoever the Spirit was to go, they went, and ran and returned like a flash of lightning. Nay, in one place he speaks as if all the four creatures were but one creature: 'This is the living creature which I saw by the river ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and delight he might have been expected to display, but next moment the light died out of his face, and he knew that the bolt had fallen. Even those who blamed him most must have commiserated the man upon whom fell that lightning glance of unutterable loathing ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... sufficiently explicable. But the third has its roots apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, and strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, like a man, I trust, with your feminine intuition, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... being gone, though rain still fell and the wind whistled in his ears, Jean climbed across bent or broken saplings nearer the bluff's edge to look at Kaskaskia. The rows of lights were partially blotted; and lightning, by its swift unrollings, showed him a town standing in a lake. The Mississippi and the Okaw had become one water, spreading as far as the eye could see. Now bells began to clamor from that valley of foam. The ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of a heat-lightning flash, Kitty wickedly entertained the thought of marrying Mr. Arbuton for the sake of a bridal trip to Europe, and bade love and the fitness of things and the incompatibility of Boston and Eriecreek traditions take care of themselves. But then she ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... outer lake beneath the lash Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing, And the incessant hail with stony clash Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash 445 Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering Fragment of inky thunder-smoke—this haven Was as a ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... for rain (rain comes to Asisi only from that direction). In vain were prayers in the churches, processions and promises. We saw the gray showers sail around the horizon, heard their far-off thunders, saw the lightning zigzag down through the slanting torrents, and almost saw the hills grow green under them. The only tempests we had were those we saw brooding on the brows of scowling contadini. They talked openly of a republic, they were sick of the devouring taxes, they regretted the papacy: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... for the result of this remark, but with a sudden dart he passed like a streak of lightning through the doorway, and fled into ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... eagle closes its wings and falls through space like a rocket from some unknown world, uttering a scream that resounds like a crash of lightning. The Big Horn, proudly perched on yonder crag, bids defiance to all living creatures. For fifteen miles this box canyon has cut through the backbone of the mountains and holds the clear waters as in the palm of one's hand. At the mouth of the canyon, where the waters flow calm as a summer lake, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... and lightning bugs to school," spoke Uncle Wiggily, and Billy smiled. He was beginning to see that there were more things in the woods than he had dreamed of, even if he had scampered here and there among the trees ever since he was ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... and Harley saw his great figure gather as if for a spring. But Harley, quick as lightning, seized the man in a powerful grasp, and cried in his ear: "Not now, Mr. Plummer, not now, for God's sake! Wait until ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... England for several days after Napoleon's overthrow. Now ocean leviathans keep pace with the storms that move across the waters, and the cable and the wireless flash their messages with the speed of the lightning. Power to put a girdle around the earth in a few minutes has made modern news agencies possible, and they have made the modern newspaper essential. The newspaper requires the railroad and the steamship for its distribution, and business men depend upon them all to carry out their plans. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... replied Robert, "there is not the least doubt in my mind that my dream was a vision of what will happen. There is no question but that after Sunday I shall not be with you. This is Wednesday. How lightning-like the days have flown! How precious the moments are! How many of them I have wasted in foolish selfishness! Mary, I should go mad with the thought if I did not feel the necessity of making this week the best week of all my life; only, I do not know what is most important ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... and also of the other Evangelists, was an Angel of God. And therefore Matthew said: "The Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow." The Angel is this Nobility of ours which comes from God, as it has been said, of which our argument speaks, and says to each one of these sects, that is, to whoever seeks perfect Happiness in the Active ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... tears of his audience might compose the eulogy of his sermons. We shall find in the tears of Felix occasion to applaud the eloquence of our apostle. We shall find that his discourses were thunder and lightning in the congregation, as the Greeks used to say concerning one of their orators. While St. Paul preached, Felix felt I know not what agitations in his mind. The recollection of his past life; the sight of his present sins; Drusilla, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... to be sympathy, not vulgar praise,) that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we were talking; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and the thunder broke; but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those of my companions. Women are the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... singer says that the gods generated him to be a light for the Aryans, another that he is the father of the gods. This multiple origin becomes more definite in the theory of Agni's three births: he is born on earth from the friction of fire sticks, in the clouds as lightning, and in the highest heavens as the Sun or celestial light. In virtue of this triple birth he assumes a triune character: his heads, tongues, bodies and dwellings are three, and this threefold nature has perhaps something to do with the triads of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... life. Not that Stingaree had much opinion of the police; he had slipped through their hands too often; but it was an unfortunate circumstance that two of the present trio were among those whom he had eluded most recently, and who therefore would be least likely to give him another chance. A lightning student of his kind, he based his only hope upon an accurate estimate of these men, and applied his whole mind to the triple task. But it was a single task almost from the first; for the policeman in charge of him was none other than his credulous old friend, Sergeant Cameron from Clear Corner; ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... and the vertical ascent. The anapesmata were cords for the sudden appearance of furies, when fastened to the lowest steps; and to the ascension of rivers, when attached to the stage. The ceraunoscopium was a kind of moveable tower, whence Jupiter darted lightning, supposed to be the Greek fire, as in Ajax Oielus. The machine for thunder (bronton) was a brazen vase, concealed under the stage, in which they rolled stones. Festus calls it the Claudian thunder, from Claudius Pulcher, the inventor. The most dreadful machines were, however, the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... wounded and slain were being removed. The combat was as fierce as before, and precisely similar. The African was agile, the Batavian cautious. But finally the former made a desperate thrust; the Batavian parried it, and returned a stroke like lightning. The African sprang back and dropped his sword. But he was too late, for the stroke of his foe had pierced his left arm. As he fell a roar of joy arose from one hundred thousand human beings. But this was not to be the end, for even while the conqueror stood over his victim the ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... charming petulance, she would break off in the middle of the piece, lay down her violin, and, with a pretty imperiousness, command a younger sister to fetch her zither, on which to complete the subjugation of her adorers. And then her caricatures—summer-lightning flashes of pencilled wit, as I heard the Reverend SIMEON COPE describe them in a moment of enthusiasm after she had shown us her sketch of his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... belched water without end, till everything had been beaten down as with sledge hammers! She had used every morning to go to mass and had diligently prayed for divine protection against flood. Now the thunder might crash and the lightning strike and hailstones come rattling down as big as hen's eggs—why did ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Flag (navy) flago. Flagon botelego. Flagstone sxtonplato. Flagrant flagranta. Flail drasxilo. Flake negxero, floko. Flambeau torcxo. Flame flami. Flame flamo. Flank flanko. Flannel flanelo. Flap klapo. Flare brilego. Flash (lightning) fulmo. Flash (of wit) spritajxo. Flask boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... flames of the distant storm still lighted everything at intervals with an intensity now greater and now less. When the sheet lightning flashed strong, the square cage formed by the wire outside the window-seat and the fish-net within stood out clear against the northern sky. With dilated pupils I began to examine the inclosed cube of air. During one particularly ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... man who thought, lived, and acted on a very high plane. He was, in other words, an idealist, but unlike too many idealists he was sternly practical. His mind worked with the rapidity of flashes of lightning, particularly when he was aroused. This led him at times to feel and show impatience in dealing with slower-minded people, particularly his subordinates. He was often stirred to righteous indignation by injustice, but always ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... interest from the moment he had first caught sight of it, seeing the fugitive make for an opening in a wall, ran along at the foot of the wall on the other side, and, just as Francezet dashed through the opening like a flash of lightning, struck him such a heavy blow on the head with his hoe that the skull was laid open, and he fell ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... than by actual vision, Maude flew like lightning to his side, and kneeling before him hid her face in his lap, while he bent fondly over her, beseeching her to say if she could see. It was a most touching sight, and drawing near, Maude Glendower mingled her tears with those of the unfortunate ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side. No amount of calamity which merely befell a man, descending from the clouds like lightning, or stealing from the darkness like pestilence, could alone provide the substance of its story. Job was the greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions were well-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... hers which might not have been intended for him, but which Amelie suffered him to intercept and hide away among the secret treasures of his heart. A glance of true affection—brief, it may be, as a flash of lightning—becomes, when caught by the eyes of love, a real thing, fixed and imperishable forever. A tender smile, a fond word of love's creation, contains a universe of light and life and immortality,—small things, and of little value to others, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... engineers had repaired the torn-up right-of-way and installed a complete acetylene outfit, and already they were dispatching trains of troops and munitions clear across southeastern Belgium to and from the German frontier. When we heard this we quit marveling. We had by now ceased to wonder at the lightning rapidity and un-human efficiency of the German military ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... can spell it.' 'Draw a straight line, then,' said I. 'I'll be content with a single line an inch long.' She laughingly retorted: 'It's hard to draw a straight line.' 'Very well, draw a crooked line. Draw a zigzag—like a stroke of lightning. Draw it in yellow. Draw a circle.' She said no more, but became silent, and we waited without change of position. Remember that I was holding the slate during all this talk. It did not ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... nature. For what is a master? Man is not the master of man; but death is, and life and pleasure and pain; for if he comes without these things, bring Caesar to me and you will see how firm I am. But when he shall come with these things, thundering and lightning, and when I am afraid of them, what do I do then except to recognize my master like the runaway slave? But so long as I have any respite from these terrors, as a runaway slave stands in the theatre, so do I. I bathe, I drink, I sing; but all this ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... of the world besides, should alone be alive to one, and that, too, a sound which is likely to sooth the sleep of the citizens, or at most, to set them dreaming of their loves. But so it is: the first note of the melodious bugle places the soldier on his legs, like lightning; when, muttering a few curses at the unseasonableness of the hour, he plants himself on his alarm post, without knowing or caring ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... objective of United States foreign policy is to build and preserve a just peace. The peace we seek is not peace for twenty years. It is permanent peace. At a time when massive changes are occurring with lightning speed throughout the world, it is often difficult to perceive how this central objective is best served in one isolated complex situation or another. Despite this very real difficulty, there are certain basic propositions ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen the lightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim, airless little room with ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... with a very curious sensation. I don't believe that I am in love with Wanda; I am sure that at our first meeting, I felt nothing of the lightning-like flashes of passion. But I feel how her extraordinary, really divine beauty is gradually winding magic snares about me. It isn't any spiritual sympathy which is growing in me; it is a physical subjection, coming on slowly, but for that ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... The only distinction between the periods is, that one gave the impulse, and that the other only continues it. When peril comes again, we shall again see the development of power. We might as well doubt the existence of lightning, because the day is serene, the sun shining, and no cloud rolls across the heaven. But when the balance of the elements demands to be restored, we shall again be dazzled by the flash, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... "In fact, a fair dame at whose shrine I, the priest of the Nine, offer up the incense of Parnassus; a dame whom the Graces have attired in witchcraft, and whom the Loves have armed with lightning; a fair one, herself the heroine of the song, insists on the amendment, and dispute her ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... I do think I should be lucky this time. Henley is a long way from Barkington, but it is a pretty place; all the ladies admire it, and like to see both the universities out and a stunning race.' Oh, well, there is an epithet. One would think thunder was going to race lightning, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pretty long residence in India I have heard of only one instance of an Englishman being killed by a snake. It was in Manipur, and I read of it in the newspapers. During the same time I have heard of only one death by lightning and one by falling into the fermenting vat of a brewery, so I suppose these accidents are equally uncommon. Eating oysters is much more fatal: I have heard of at least four or five ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... retreating party, who slowly returned towards the camp, and were soon apparently in safety. But suddenly a fresh party of the enemy appeared upon the wall, and the instant afterwards three retainers dropped, as if struck by lightning. They had been hit by sling stones, whirled with great force by practised slingers. These rounded pebbles come with such impetus as to stun a man at two hundred yards. The aim, it is true, is uncertain, but where there is a body of troops they are sure to strike some one. Hastening on, leaving the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... words, the maiden sank to the ground as if struck by lightning, and, writhing like a worm, crept to her father's feet, and laid hold of his garment. He pushed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... appears more probable that the water is condensed into clouds by the eduction of its heat, and that then the surplus of electricity prevents their coalescence into larger drops, which immediately succeeds the departure of the lightning. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... came to her, the wildest idea conceivable, not one chance in a million of its succeeding, yet now, in the face of extinction, anything was worth trying. She had nothing to lose. Quick as lightning she seized the needle, squirted its contents on the floor back of the bed, then with the same speed refilled it from the tumbler. She laid it down again exactly where it had been before, looked to see that there were no drops spilled. Then once more she lay down, trying ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... in the tones of his voice, a despair in the expression of his face, and a lurid glare in his eyes, that explained all his previous conduct, and revealed to the unhappy girl the full danger of her situation; even as in a dark night a sudden flash of lightning apprises the startled traveller of a precipice over which his foot has already advanced, and the gleam serves only to show ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... said, I was in a particularly bad temper, and went up on the roof to cool off. Heavy black clouds hung low overhead, and lightning flickered ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... with a swift and ductile power of appreciation, that made her feel to the quick the varying moods of different speakers, and yet the while with coolest self-possession. Now and then a slight smile, flickering over her countenance, as lightning plays on the surface of a cloud, marked the inward process whereby she was harmonizing in equilibrium opposing thoughts. And, as occasion offered, a felicitous quotation, pungent apothegm, or symbolic epithet, dropped unawares in undertone, showed how swiftly scattered ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the powder-ship, the Morning Star, where she swung at her moorings off from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that shook the shoreward ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... quantity of electricity necessary to produce a strong flash of lightning would result from the decomposition of a single grain of water, and Dr. de la Rue's experiments confirm this extraordinary statement. He has calculated that this quantity of electricity would be 5,000 times ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... amongst the Swiss mountains. When he sent the book of the Ring to Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is. The Rhinegold ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in each Act of the Valkyrie there is a storm; the Third Act of Siegfried opens with a storm; there is one storm in the Dusk of the Gods. Wind screaming through the pines, the plash of rain, the driving of thunder-clouds—these are the pictorial inspiration ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a little cup (without which no one should ever take a journey), and was just about to dip it in the water, when a lovely little green frog, much prettier than frogs generally are, jumped into the cup. Far from admiring its beauty, Saphir shook it impatiently off; but it was no good, for quick as lightning the frog jumped back again. Saphir, who was raging with thirst, was just about to shake it off anew, when the little creature fixed upon him the most beautiful eyes in the world, and said, 'I am a friend of the bird ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... upon the distress of Joseph, and He sent darkness to enshroud the land once more. A storm raged, the lightning flashed, and from the thunderbolts the whole earth trembled, and the Ishmaelites lost their way in their terror. The beasts and the camels stood still, and, beat them as their drivers would, they refused to budge from the spot, but crouched down upon the ground. Then the Ishmaelites spake ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of Nature. He boasts loudly of conquering it; the earth gives a little shiver and his cities collapse like the house of cards a child sets up. A French panegyrist said of our own Franklin: "He snatched the scepter from tyrants and the lightning from the skies," but the lightning strikes man dead and consumes his home. He thinks he has mastered the ocean, but the records of Lloyds refute him. He declares his independence of the winds upon the ocean, and the winds upon the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... reaching out to them in his moaning. Then, of a sudden, he gave a strange cry, as if defiance had taken the place of grief, and he hurried across the meadow and disappeared into the timber where a great lightning-riven spruce gleamed dully white through the settling veil ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... gushing ecstacies of song For these wild headlands and the sea mew's clang— With thee beneath my window, pleasant Sea, I long not to o'erlook Earth's fairest glades And green savannahs—Earth has not a plain So boundless or so beautiful as thine; The eagle's vision cannot take it in. The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;— It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their host within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can see themselves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... MAIL has new editions, but never a new idea. Everything in a newspaper that is not the old human love of altar or fatherland is the old human love of gossip. Modern writers have often made game of the old chronicles because they chiefly record accidents and prodigies; a church struck by lightning, or a calf with six legs. They do not seem to realise that this old barbaric history is the same as new democratic journalism. It is not that the savage chronicle has disappeared. It is merely that the savage chronicle now ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... being unlike each other; yet each have their peculiar merits, which should entitle them to each other's esteem. The French intellect is quick and active. It flashes its way into a subject with the rapidity of lightning; seizes upon remote conclusions with a sudden bound, and its deductions are almost intuitive. The English intellect is less rapid, but more persevering; less sudden, but more sure in its deductions. The quickness and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... met us at the front door. She has a trick of doing things by lightning. We started; Barbara and Jaffery at the back, I sideways to them on one of the little chair seats. We had the car open, as it was a muggy day. . . . It is astonishing how such trivial matters stick in one's mind. . . . We went, as I had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... peal of thunder interrupted our conversation and caused us to glance towards the west. There we saw a mass of dark clouds rolling down upon us. Bolt after bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky and from sky to earth, and peal after peal of thunder crashed upon ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... day after this we had an awful thunderstorm, in which the lightning flashed from all points of the compass, and heaven's artillery pealed as if the sky was ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... wood, when Donald and Allen suddenly came over the bank, as they had done on the morning before. Their packs were as large as ever, and they had Hubbard's rifle. I knew at once that the worst had happened. "His wife and mother!"—like lightning the thought flashed through my mind. A dizziness came over me, and for a moment I could not breathe. ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Silvius by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or superior of Jupiter. To support his pretensions and overawe his subjects, he constructed machines whereby he mimicked the clap of thunder and the flash of lightning. Diodorus relates that in the season of fruitage, when thunder is loud and frequent, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of heaven's artillery by clashing their swords against their shields. But he paid the penalty of his impiety, for he perished, he and his house, struck by a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... might have been misled. One can hear him explaining the thing to Watson in one of those lightning flashes of inductive reasoning of his. "It is the only explanation, my dear Watson. If the lady were merely complimenting the gardener on his rose-garden, and if her smile were merely caused by the excellent appearance of that rose-garden, there would be an answering smile ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... strange hiding place—tucked into a leather sheath sewn to the inside of his shirt collar, between his shoulder blades. That knife had rescued Kid Wolf from many a tight situation, and he had practiced until he could draw it with all the speed of heat lightning. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... again, the jets of spray all beaten down, and regular waves, of dull lead-color, breaking higher on the shore. All the depth of blackness had left the sky, and there remained only an obscure and ominous gray, through which the lightning flashed white, not red. Boats came driving in from the mouth of the bay with a rag of sail up; the men got them moored with difficulty, and when they sculled ashore in the skiffs, a dozen comrades stood ready to grasp and haul them in. Others launched skiffs in sheltered places, and pulled out ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... hermits of this name, often confounded; and all alike famous (as were Julian, Daniel, and other Stylites) for standing for many years on pillars. One of the Simeons is said by Moschus to have been struck by lightning, and his death to have been miraculously revealed to Julian the Stylite, who lived twenty-four miles off. More than one Stylite, belonging to the Monophysite heresy of Severus Acephalus, was to be found, according to Moschus, in the East at the beginning of the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... rear, had caught the scent, and leaving their original object of pursuit, were now in rapid chase of the frightened stags. In vain his grooms exerted themselves to the utmost, the terrified animals bounded away with the swiftness of lightning, and entered Newmarket at full speed. They made immediately for the Ram Inn, to which his lordship was in the habit of driving, and, having fortunately entered the yard without any accident, the stable-keepers huddled his lordship, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... thousand trees to obtain a passage through the impenetrable thickets. All these difficulties, however, were surmounted, and the engineer had at last the satisfaction of seeing the trees descend from the mountain with the rapidity of lightning. The larger pines, which were about a hundred feet long, and ten inches thick at their smaller extremity, ran through the space of three leagues, or nearly nine miles, in two minutes and a half, and during their descent, they appeared to be only a ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... struggling spirit. The slow notes of the clock fell upon the multitude; peal on peal, peal on peal, rolled over the prostrate throng, in tones of angels' voices, thrilling among the desolate chords and weary heart strings. Scarce had the clock sounded its last note, when the lightning flashed vividly around, and a loud peal of thunder roared along the sky—God's pillar of fire, and trump of jubilee! A moment of profoundest silence passed—then came the burst—they broke forth in prayer; they shouted, they sung, "Glory," ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... feed therewith your beggars; kings are we!' The Bishop answered, 'Be, like them, baptized, Sons of God's Church, His Sacrament with man, For that cause Mother of Christ's Sacraments, So shall ye share her Feast.' With lightning speed Their swords leaped forth; contemptuous next they cried, 'For once we spare to sweep a witless head From worthless shoulders. Ere to-morrow's dawn Hence, nor return!' He sped to Rochester: Her bishop, like himself, was under ban: The twain to Canterbury ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the King and Madame de Maintenon, did not appear to me to be favourable. I was confirmed in this view by what had just happened with regard to her sovereignty; but I was a thousand leagues from the thunderbolt which this lightning announced, and which only declared itself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... can be poured over the land the crops are stunted and uncertain. For six or seven months in the year scarcely any rain falls, and scarcely a cloud darkens the sky. In October the early rain commences, with much thunder and lightning; and in April the latter rain becomes light and uncertain, and generally ceases altogether. Then the sky becomes intensely blue, and the sun comes out in all his glory, or rather in all her glory, for with the Arabs the sun is feminine. Suddenly ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of - Drummond Street. It came on me like a flash of lightning: I simply returned thither, and into the past. And when I remember all I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford's in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far less ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished into so many months. By branching out the candlestick into seven parts, he intimated the seven divisions of the planets.... The vestments of the high priest, being made of linen, signified the earth, the blue color thereof denoted the sky, the pomegranates symbolized lightning, and the noise of the bells resembled thunder. And the fashion of the ephod showed that God had made the world of ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... back—as in lightning, his love came back! Not the love of one that he had known—that was good, inevitable, even the restless agony of it. Through the love of one, comes the love of many.... But this was love of the world! It surged over, through him—like the fire of the burning bush—that did not devour.... He ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... it move like a line of silvery light, almost, swifter in its motion than his instrument could follow. But even in that swift flight Danny's eyes observed one fact: the enemy ship was coming down; it slanted in on that long volplane that must have ripped the air apart like a bolt of lightning. And Danny's red rocket swept out and around in a long, looping flight, while he laid the ship on the course ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... thunder succeeded. It was one long, continuous roll, for an hour or more, without pause, and the rain poured down as he never saw it in any shower east; it seemed as if the heavy clouds were literally emptying their contents upon prairie and forest, while flash followed flash of vivid lightning. Throughout the whole night it rained, and the next day, and the next; and, were it not for the ancient promise, one might have thought that a second flood was to sweep the inhabitants of the world away. About midnight of the third day ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... together, when out he burst in a fury from behind a bush. With his huge club he aimed a terrific blow at Narcissus, which must certainly have killed him but for the adroitness of the Fairy Melinette, who arrived upon the scene just in time to snatch him up and carry him off at lightning speed to her castle in the air. Poor Potentilla, however, had not the comfort of knowing this, for at the sight of the Enchanter threatening her beloved Prince she had given one shriek and fallen back insensible. When she recovered her senses she was more than ever convinced ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... blowing his shrill whistle," all of which so terrified his horse, he had great difficulty in keeping his seat, but yet, how tremendously impressed he was by the "gallant way in which the gentlemen seated in the coach raised their stovepipe hats in greeting as they passed by like a streak of lightning." ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... the surface at High Wycombe, and very strong language has been used in the locality concerning this gross example of food-hoarding. The weather, too, has been behaving oddly. On one day of Eastertide there was an inch of snow in Liverpool, followed by hailstones, lightning, thunder, and a gale of wind. Summer has certainly arrived very early. But at least we are to be spared a General Election this year—for fear that it might clash with ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... down as I tottered across it to the vestibule. A strapping door-girl guarded the entrance. Grouped upon the long flight of marble steps two men impatiently awaited me. The one with the twitching mustache was Dr. Denbigh. But he, oh, he with the lightning in his eyes, he was ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... with a single flash About the summit of the hill, and heads And arms are sliver'd off and splinter'd by Their lightning—and they fly—the Norman flies. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... plan lie by for a day or two, some of the children will come to the teacher, and say, "Please, sir, may we say the picture alphabet up in the gallery?" If the other children overhear the question, it will go through the school like lightning: "Oh yes—yes—yes, sir, if you please, do let us say the letters in the gallery." Thus a desire is created in the children's minds, and it is then especially that they may be ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... about it, it was just twenty minutes after nine, Monday morning, April the eighth, 1912, the day after Easter, and it was raining something fierce outside. The whirling raindrops pattered against our second-story windows, and occasional thunder and lightning ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... that when the lightning begins on deadly work; a surging, helpless tossing from side to side, when the hands strike blindly out on either side for something to cling to; a sudden fall, down, down, to unknown depths; a confused medley of shouts, and ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... once patriarchally respectable old man. I feel even more abashed at the incredible audacity, I should almost say sacrilegious madness, of the vile old creature. But still the coincidence is strange and uncomfortable. Last week the lightning struck a huge olive in the orchard of Sor Agostino's house above Sarzana. Under the olive was Sor Agostino himself, who was killed on the spot; and opposite, not twenty paces off, drawing water from the well, unhurt and calm, was Dionea. It ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... will see the effect. We saw a cloud of flame, apparently in one body; but that rushing noise [referring to the sound produced by the burning] was a proof that the combustion was not a continuous or regular one. This is the lightning of the pantomimes, and a very good imitation. [The experiment was twice repeated by blowing lycopodium from a glass tube through a spirit-flame.] This is not an example of combustion like that of the filings I have been speaking of, to ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... his soul, "Go on!" So on he went, not in unreflecting exaltation, but in exaltation based on knowledge and on skill. Like Cromwell, he might well have said, "Trust in the Lord and keep your powder dry!" For he had done all that naval foresight could have done to ensure success. And now, in one lightning flash of genius, he reviewed the situation. He knew the torpedoes of his day were often unreliable, that they exploded only on a special kind of shock, that those which did explode could not be replaced in action, that they were all fixed to their own spots, and that ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... moment heard that it is reported at the Institute you are about to return to France, taking with you Monge, Berthollet, Berthier, Lannes, and Murat. This news has spread like lightning through the city, and I should not be at all surprised if it produce an unfavourable effect, which, however, I ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... laws ever stop to consider the misery, crime and destruction that flow out of the liquor traffic? I have done all I could to induce him to abstain, and he has abstained several months at a time and then suddenly like a flash of lightning the temptation returns and all his resolutions are scattered like chaff before the wind. I have been blamed for living with him, but Miss Belle were you to see him in his moments of remorse, and hear his bitter self reproach, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... mistress, do not scold the lightning. She is your friend, This golden cord that trembles on the breast Of great Airavata; upon the crest Of rocky hills this banner all ablaze; This lamp tn Indra's palace; but most blest As telling where your most ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... hands. It was a threat, but how much of it he meant to be taken literally she did not know. Again every ghastly detail of the afternoon passed with lightning speed through her mind. When he punished he punished mercilessly. To what lengths would he go? The Arab standards were not those of the men amongst whom she had lived. The position of a woman in the desert was a very ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... lie, or at least exaggerate. Only to his watchers did his actions appear to take place that fast; they were older, and less alert, and had not had the advantage of Pyrran survival training. So to their point of view the sacred portal was opened and Jason vanished in a flurry of activity. Two lightning blows sent his guardians spinning, and before they had fallen to the floor their supposed captive was through the door and it was slammed in their faces. Before the first dumfounded Persson could jump forward the bolt grated home inside and ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... were being quickly handed. The officer had ordered topgallant-yards to be sent down, and topgallant-masts struck, when a vivid flash of forked lightning darted close ahead, across the ship's course, followed by a terrific crash of thunder, which startled all on board. Many thought the electric fluid had struck the ship. The captain sprang on deck. He was just in time to see the ship taken aback by the long threatening ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Quick as lightning the demon rose again, and tilted fiercely at him once more. It was a death fight between those two for that rocky platform. Should Satan thus usurp St. Michael's Tor? Ten thousand times, no! Yield, yield! No surrender! ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... sweet As when green leaves and raindrops meet. I'll hear the Nightingale's fine mood, Rattling with thunder in the wood, Made bolder by each mighty crash; Who drives her notes with every flash Of lightning through the summer's night. No more I'll walk in that pale light That shows the homeless man awake, Ragged and cold; harlot and rake, That have their hearts in rags, and die Before that poor wretch they pass by. Nay, I have found a life so fine That every moment seems divine; ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... Sekeletu and I, with about forty young men, waited outside the tsetse till dark. We then went forward, and about ten o'clock it became so pitchy dark that both horses and men were completely blinded. The lightning spread over the sky, forming eight or ten branches at a time, in shape exactly like those of a tree. This, with great volumes of sheet-lightning, enabled us at times to see the whole country. The intervals between the flashes were so densely ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Germanicus: the atmosphere that made him fall into a syncope exhaled from the head of a wild boar. A live, complete, whole wild boar produced no effect; but on perceiving the head of the animal detached from the body, the Marechal was struck as if with lightning. You see, gentlemen, to what sad trials military men would be exposed, if the Mesmerian theory of atmospheric conflicts were to regain favour. We ought to be carefully on our guard against a ruse de guerre, of which no one till then had ever thought,—that is, against cocks, wild boars, &c.,—for ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... so, for he had seen the peril. The road immediately in front was filled with heavy smoke, which, as it rolled forward, caused them to cough almost to the strangulation point. At the same time, a crimson streak of flame shot in and out of the murky vapor, like the flashing of lightning: the fire was burning immediately in front and it would not do ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is most probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had Franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at the hazard of expiring for ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... night of his career,—having seen him a laborer, a deserter, a General, a Dictator, a fugitive; but much remains to be narrated. Passing over, with the barest mention, his temporary return to power, which he accomplished by one of those lightning-like expeditions that even among Gaucho horsemen rendered him conspicuous, let us hasten on to the great dramatic crisis of his history; and taking no notice of the five years of marching and countermarching, scheming, fighting, and negotiating, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... go out if you like," Eyre said, "but I shall take very good care to run in before the squall comes, if there's any about. I don't think there will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash of lightning about half an hour ago down in the south, but nothing has come of it. There are some curlew about, and the guillemots are in thousands. You don't seem to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... permission to go over to Holland to see her. But on May 14 he forwarded to Temple one of her letters. 'Could,' he said, 'any actress at any of the theatres attack me with a keener—what is the word? not fury, something softer. The lightning that flashes with so much brilliance may scorch, and does not her esprit do so?' Letters ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the bird perch on his finger. It looked about for an instant, and then expanding its glossy wings, off it flew, its long tail gleaming like a flash of lightning in the air, and was in an instant lost to sight. Isoro had, I believe, caught the little creature by the bill, with a sort of bird-lime, placed in the lower part of a flower, where it was held captive long enough to enable him ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... seeing a house, it is surprising to be told that on such a day you took such a drive and were at such a spot; yet this has happened to me more than once. And if even this is watched and noted, with what lightning rapidity would the news spread that I had been seen stalking down the garden path with a hoe over my shoulder and a basket in my hand, and weeding written large on every feature! Yet I should love ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... which Egypt was liable: drought, flood, flies, lice, frogs, disease. The Israelites very naturally declared that these things were sent as a punishment by the Israelitish god. I remember a farmer, in my childhood days, who was accounted by his neighbors as an infidel. He was struck by lightning and instantly killed, while standing in his doorway. The Sunday before, this man had worked in the fields, and just before he was killed he had said, "dammit," or something quite as bad. Our preacher explained at length that this man's ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... trade and travel, peace and harmony among nations. It would be in line with the civilization of our age. It is by such measures statesmen may keep pace with the marvellous inventions, improvements, and discoveries which have quadrupled the capacity of man for production, made lightning subservient to his will, revealed to him new agencies of power hidden in the earth, and opened up to his enterprise all the dark places of the world. The people of the United States boast that they have done their full share in all this development; that they have grown in population, wealth, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... muses the fire burns, and, like the Psalmist, he speaks with his tongue. Dates and details, facts and traditions, cantos and poetry, reams of prose, English and Latin and Greek and French, come tumbling out in headlong but not disorderly array. He jumps at an opening, seizes an illusion, replies with lightning quickness to a conversational challenge, and is ready at a moment's notice to decide any literary or historical controversy in a measured tone of deliberate emphasis which is not wholly free from exaggeration. Like his uncle ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell |
