"Phenomenon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the young soldier was on the edge of a stupendous bergschrund, as the phenomenon is termed by Swiss climbers—a deep chasm formed by the ice and snow shrinking or falling away from the side of a mountain, where the latter is too steep for it to cling. And then, after a little examination to right and left, Gedge, with beating heart, found the place ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... Notably was this the case with Gatienne. We could each be Gatienne for a space (though never both of us together), and when we resumed our own personality again we carried back with it a portion of hers, never to be lost again—a strange phenomenon, if the reader will but think of it, and constituting the germ of a comparative personal ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... them he had no doubt, nor had he any fear that she would hesitate to leave her native land for him. O'Reilly's love was unlimited; his trust in the girl was absolute. He knew, moreover, that she loved and trusted him. This, to be sure, was a miracle—a unique phenomenon which never ceased to amaze him. He did not dream that every man had felt the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, dates its origin from him:" so of portrait, he says—"He is the father of portrait painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity, and costume with subordination." The yet wanting charm ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Nilgiris is considerably smaller than that of the Himalayas. This phenomenon is easily explained. The Nilgiris occupy a far less extensive area; they display less diversity of climate and scenery; the lofty peaks, covered with eternal snow, which form the most conspicuous feature of the Himalayan landscape, are wanting in ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... pointing towards the entry. Kotterin blundered into the entry, and stood gazing with a look of stupid wonder at the bell ringing without hands, while I went to the door and let in the company before she could be fairly made to understand the connection between the ringing and the phenomenon of admission. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... consisting of many members, all chosen for integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... which he resided, during the whole of Monday. He spoke but little—was full of thought, now praying, now walking about the room, next sitting in a crouching posture—then suddenly starting up and going to the door, turning his eyes toward heaven, as if looking for some celestial phenomenon, when he would return again, groan in spirit, and resume his seat. The family, being impressed with his movements, asked him whether there was anything the matter with him or whether he expected any person, as the occasion of his going to ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... through vast spaces. Whether now the electric matter of the atmosphere had become so tense by the unexampled fall of snow that it resulted in this silent, splendid efflorescence of light, or whether some other cause of unfathomable nature may be assigned as reason for the phenomenon—however that be: gradually the light grew weaker and weaker, first the sheaves died down, until by unnoticeable degrees it grew ever less and there was nothing in the heavens but the thousands ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... acutely, she was by no means prepared to permit this vile thing to conquer. She would fight it and root it out. It had come upon her so suddenly. What was the cause? Was it merely a freak of that incomprehensible phenomenon the human mind that had twisted the chain of her affection into so mischievous a knot, or merely a figment of the brain springing from inner consciousness to torment her with devilish ingenuity? or did the fault lie with her ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... This peculiar effect of the setting sun on snow-covered mountains has been observed by other travellers in other regions. In Switzerland the phenomenon is by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... bottle here. They had taken things out of the room. And they had taken Effie out of the room—picked up Effie and carried her out like a—an orgasm of terrible emotion surged enormously within him; a bursting thing was in his throat—No, it was gone. What phenomenon had suddenly possessed him? What was the matter? Effie had killed herself. No, he could not get hold of it. He turned away and began to wander from room to room. In some he lit lights because you naturally lit lights when it was ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... but there was the phenomenon before me. Mohun was certainly a new man, and looked on life and the world around him with a gentleness and kindness of which I had believed ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... this phenomenon it is not, I think, difficult to assign. The division of labour operates on the productions of the orator as it does on those of the mechanic. It was remarked by the ancients that the Pentathlete, who divided his attention between several exercises, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain. You may take my dinner from me if I give it you, my flowers, my friendship, my,—my,—my everything, but my money! Explain to me the cause of the phenomenon. If I give to you a thousand pounds, now this moment, and you take it, you are base;—but if I leave it you in my will,—and die,—you take it, and are not base. Explain to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... wondering at such a phenomenon in female nature. But, with this fact understood between them to be a fact,—namely, that Lucinda would be sure to hate any man whom she might accept,—they both agreed that the marriage had better ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... light was seen to twinkle in the direction in which he pointed, and gradually increasing in size and lustre, seemed to flicker like a meteor upon the verge of the horizon. While Edward watched this phenomenon, the distant dash of oars was heard. The measured sound approached near and more near, and presently a loud whistle was heard in the same direction. His friend with the battle-axe immediately whistled clear and shrill, in reply to the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... guard's horn; tradespeople looked out from behind their counters with a smile, as, with a dart and rattle, the four thoroughbred greys pulled the well-known fast coach up the street, loaded inside and out. They became proud of their Tally-ho, or Phenomenon; they got their newspapers and parcels "with accuracy and despatch," and enjoyed the natural advantages of their situation. Now the case is altered; a two-horse coach, or perhaps an omnibus, jumbles occasionally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... crying evils of our day, among both boys and girls. Every thing is done to make labor less, or to turn it completely into pleasure,—to shirk it, or to scorn it. The sewing-machine has made the good sewer a phenomenon. Our grandmothers used to rip their dresses and linings with sharp scissors: a good jump from a carriage will send us right out of a modern costume. Teachers learn the lessons now, and the pupils take notes and ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... a most curious noise under the floor of his prison. At first it did not awaken him, but partially doing so, caused him to move slightly, and in at half conscious, half dreamy state, to suggest some cause for the unusual phenomenon. It evidently worked upon his brain and nervous system, and he dreamed that the executioner had come for him, that his time for life had already expired, and the noise he heard was that of the officers and men, come to execute the sentence that had been pronounced ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... down the dip and variation of the magnetic needle, and the intensity of the magnetic force; and should take particular notice whether any, and what kind or degree of, influence the Aurora Borealis might appear to exert on the magnetic needle; and to notice whether that phenomenon were attended with any noise; and to make any other observations that might be likely to tend to the further development of its cause, and the laws by ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... self-preservation that drives the child to blink its eyes at a blinding flash of light; it is solely and simply the very direct and immediate tendency to blink its eyes in just that way whenever such a phenomenon occurs. It is no deliberate intent to inhale the oxygen necessary to the sustenance of life that causes us to breathe. No more is it a conscious plan to provide the organism with nourishment that prompts us to eat our breakfast ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... essentially a class phenomenon. While it pretends to the role of inner monitor and guide to conduct for all mankind, it interprets good and evil in class terms. It manifests a special solicitude for the welfare of one social group, and a mute hostility toward another. Labor is its Esau, Capital its Jacob. Let ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... conditions. Then, there is the science of phenomenology, treating of the steps by which mind rises from the stage of mere feeling and sense-perception to that of self-consciousness, i.e., to a recognition of mind as true substance, and of matter as mere phenomenon created by Mind (God). Then, there is psychology, including the treatment of the stages of activity of mind, as so-called "faculties" of the mind, e.g., attention, sense-perception, imagination, conception, understanding, judgment, reason, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... had observed the phenomenon more than once, told them all he knew about it. There were differences of opinion, he said, as to the cause, for men of physical science, not less than doctors, were prone to differ. For himself, he had only noted the facts and knew not the cause. The luminous trees appeared ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... accompanying this phenomenon—at least none produced by the lightning itself. It caused some noise, however, among the wild creatures of the woods. It woke the white-headed haliaetus, perched upon the head of the tall taxodium, and his maniac ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... cyclones (typhoons) in southeast and east Asia from May to December (most frequent from July to October); tropical cyclones (hurricanes) may form south of Mexico and strike Central America and Mexico from June to October (most common in August and September); cyclical El Nino/La Nina phenomenon occurs in the equatorial Pacific, influencing weather in the Western Hemisphere and the western Pacific; ships subject to superstructure icing in extreme north from October to May; persistent fog in the northern Pacific can be a maritime ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of fact could possibly ensue; and the quarrel was as unreal as if, theorizing in primitive times about the raising of dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a 'brownie,' while another insisted on an 'elf' as the true cause of the phenomenon." [Footnote: 'Theorie und Praxis,' Zeitsch. des Oesterreichischen Ingenieur u. Architecten-Vereines, 1905, Nr. 4 u. 6. I find a still more radical pragmatism than Ostwald's in an address by Professor W. S. Franklin: "I think that the sickliest notion of physics, even if a student gets it, is ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... atoms,—not the forces that form, but those that dissolve them? Trust me, gentlemen, the command which is stringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less against adoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be reformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We have ceased from the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;—it is well,—if indeed we have also ceased from making them in our thoughts. We have learned to distrust the adorning of fair fantasms, to which we once sought for succor;—it is well, if we learn ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... at the head of it, and is well known as a writer on meteorological subjects. He is a most agreeable man, and we talked much about the comet, meteoric stones, &c.; we asked him what he thought of Professor Silliman's notion about the comet's tail being an electric phenomenon, but he seemed to think little was known on the subject. He said this comet had never been seen before, and might never return again, as its path seemed parabolic, and not elliptical; but he said that what was peculiarly remarkable about it was the extreme agitation observed ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... vessels, and forcing the blood perhaps even to the point of extravasation to irrigate newly growing fibers, cells, and organs which atrophy if not thus fed. When maturity is complete this need abates. If this be correct, the phenomenon of second breath, so characteristic of adolescence, and one factor in the inebriate's propensity, is ontogenetic expression of a rhythm trait of a long racial period. Youth needs overexertion to compensate for underexertion, to undersleep in order to offset oversleep at times. This seems to be ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and more disgraceful phenomenon was the growth of piracy, with the skirts of which Caesar had come in contact at Pharmacusa. The Romans had become masters of the world, only that the sea from one end of their dominions to the other should be patrolled by organized rovers. For many years, as Roman commerce extended, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... 1788. About half after six in the evening, we saw an Aurora Australis, a phenomenon uncommon in the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... arrived at the village, he found all of the people's minds still agitated with fear at the late phenomenon. Every one was talking of it with wonder and amazement, and the chief's opinion was demanded at once; they were expecting it, and wanted to know what the consequences were to be. Admonished by his recent defeat, Beckwourth now had no trouble in reading the stars. He told his warriors ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... that kings have chosen to live with dancers. While such conduct is not, perhaps, strictly laudable, we can disregard it if it be accompanied by a certain measure of decorum. Still, a combination of ruler-ship and dalliance with a vagrant charmer is a phenomenon that is as much out of place as is an attempt to govern a country ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... third reason for the phenomenon in question is that the Jews were the pupils of the Arabs and followed their lead in adapting Greek thought to their own intellectual and spiritual needs. It so happens therefore that even in the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... supernaturally alert, catching the faintest sound. Kinglake, who heard in the Syrian desert while dozing on his camel and for ten minutes after awakening "the innocent bells of Marlen," attributed the phenomenon to the heat of the sun, the perfect dryness, the deep stillness, "having rendered the ears liable to tingle under the passing touch of some mere memory that may have swept across my brain in a moment of sleep." Homesick sailors, too, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... smallest peculiarity among such "sportive" objects should not be neglected. Carefully he put the yellow stalk aside—the only one among thousands, one might say myriads, since C. insigne is one of our oldest and commonest orchids, and it never showed this phenomenon before. In due course the flower opened, and proved to be all golden! Mr. Sander cut his plant in two, sold half for seventy-five pounds to a favoured customer, and the other half, publicly, for one hundred guineas. One of the purchasers has divided his ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... commonly accepted belief that a particularly fine, clear day is apt to be followed by a storm. Meteorologists can probably give satisfactory scientific reasons for this phenomenon, but, be that as it may, how often do we find a parallel in human affairs. A period of prosperity and happiness in the life of a man or of a nation is almost invariably followed by calamities, small or ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... is a very pretty, very poetical, and very convenient way of accounting for a phenomenon that, if examined with common care, suggests a solution more accurate and complete, if not exactly so complimentary. In sober truth, a positive incapacity clearly to point out the precise manner in which a conviction has ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... among you who hold a little more indulgent opinion with regard to religion, and deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of the mind, an insignificant rather than a dangerous phenomenon, cherish quite as unfavorable impressions of all social organization for its promotion. A slavish immolation of all that is free and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism and barren ceremonies—these, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... "I dare say that sixty and twenty-five would agree to a charm on such a subject; but pray, how the deuce came this well born, well educated, white, protestant damsel in the Pacific, where the devil himself would never dream of looking for such a phenomenon?" ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... diluted to the requisite weakness, and had consequently got into his head; but, whatever the exciting cause might be, the alteration that had taken place since nine o'clock, in his voice, looks, and manners, was remarkable enough to be of the nature of a moral phenomenon. He now talked incessantly about nothing but the fine arts; he differed with both his companions, and loftily insisted on his own superior sagacity, whenever either of them ventured to speak a word; he was by turns as noisy as Zack, and ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... swiftly, shut off the noonday glare. The shadows deepened below this strange un-cloud-like cloud, not dark, but dense. The few chickens in the settlement mistook the clock and went to roost. At every settler's house, wondering eyes watched the unheard-of phenomenon, so like, yet utterly unlike, the ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... man, was a Boston sailor, who had come in a trading vessel to California, and taken the fancy to return across the continent. The journey had already made him an expert "mountain man," and he presented the extraordinary phenomenon of a sailor who understood how to manage a horse. The third of our visitors named Ellis, was a Missourian, who had come out with a party of Oregon emigrants, but having got as far as Bridge's Fort, he had fallen home-sick, or as Jim averred, love-sick—and ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... dare not offer any speculations on this grand and awful subject. We can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple atmospheric phenomenon, such as the fall of a heavy body from a meteor; we cannot even embrace in one view the millionth part of the objects surrounding us, and yet we have the presumption to reason upon the infinite universe and the eternal mind by which it was created and is governed. On ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... defense, and hence it is only in times of war there is any real manifestation of national spirit. It is only then that the citizens of the Iron Age feel a transitory brotherhood. It is a paradoxical phenomenon, possible only in the Iron Age, that the highest instances of national sacrifice are evoked by warfare—the most barbarous of human enterprises. To make normal that spirit of unity which is now only manifested in abnormal ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... on the new skates which he had bought in Bennington where they had gone for a visit with old friends. They were out on the clear ice, far from either shore, when they heard an alarming peal of "river thunder"—a name which Binkus applied to a curious phenomenon often accompanied by great danger to those on the rotted roof of the Hudson. The hidden water ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... hurricane—or typhoon as they call it in these seas," said I: "and I am very glad that you called me, for I will take the hint and have the schooner battened down forthwith; also this is the first time I have ever witnessed such a phenomenon, and I would not have missed it on any account. You might as well turn in now, if you care to do so," I added, "for I see it is not far off eight bells, and I shall not attempt ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... river beneath appears no longer a mighty torrent, but resembles a rippling brook. When standing on the bridge, the optical delusion is very singular: the torrent of water appears to run up a hill towards the bridge, and the same phenomenon takes place when viewed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... magnetic field. I must, however, refer the reader to the paper itself for fuller details. In his greatest work,[35] writing on this subject, he says: "I think we have good evidence for the opinion that some phenomenon of rotation is going on in the magnetic field, that this rotation is performed by a great number of very small portions of matter, each rotating on its own axis, being parallel to the direction of the ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... of its inhabitants. The people in their darkened dwellings fell a prey to the helpless bewilderment which comes over men before the floods, the devastating upheavals of the earth, against which all wisdom and all force are unavailing. The same phenomenon occurs each time that the established order of things is overthrown, when public security is at an end, and when all that the laws of man or of nature protect is at the mercy of some blind elemental force. The earthquake burying an entire population under its falling houses; the flood ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... strange phenomenon witnessed by myself in this strange abode. I saw, just before me, the print of a foot suddenly form itself, as it were. I stopped, caught hold of my servant, and pointed to it. In advance of that footprint as suddenly dropped another. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... portion of it is permitted to escape from an aperture in the bottom of the circular vessel containing it; if they will do so in the right spirit, I am fain to think they will arrive at the same conclusion as the contemplation of this familiar phenomenon has ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... 's a phenomenon, one knows not what, And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure; 'T is pity though, in this sublime world, that Pleasure 's a sin, and sometimes sin 's a pleasure; Few mortals know what end they would be at, But whether glory, power, or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... west, it is a sign to the weather-wise that the next day will be fair. To the devotee of the sacramental life it holds a richer promise. To him the sun is a symbol of the love of God; the clouds, those worldly preoccupations of his own which hide its face from him. This purely physical phenomenon, therefore, which brings to most men a scarcely noticed augmentation of heat and light, and an indication of fair weather on the morrow, induces in the mystic an ineffable sense of divine immanence and beneficence, and an assurance of their continuance ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... laugh in the Den as the joke passed round, and the phenomenon of the "green new kid" blushing scarlet all over attracted general curiosity, and stopped the proceedings ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... interest at Ethelberta: the old county fathers hard, as at a questionable town phenomenon, the county sons tenderly, as at a pretty creature, and the county daughters with great admiration, as at a lady reported by their mammas to be no better than she should be. It will be seen that Ethelberta was the sort of woman that well-rooted ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... inch thick, covered the whole of the shore, and hung suspended over the stunted bushes which, on my first visit, had been under water. I have never either seen elsewhere, or heard any one mention, a similar phenomenon. This stuff, which could be had for nothing, was excellent for rifle-stoppers and for the stuffing of birds, so I took a great quantity of it with me. This time ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... an affinity for individual men equal and reciprocal to that which men certainly feel toward individual umbrellas—we took the trouble of consulting a scientific friend as to whether there was any possible physical explanation of the phenomenon. He was unable to supply a plausible theory, or even hypothesis; but we extract from his letter the following interesting passage relative to the physical peculiarities of umbrellas: 'Not the least important, and by far the most curious property of the umbrella, is the energy ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the foliage, the colour of the water, the turrets of the castle, in fine, all the details of the place. . . . I relate this event," he continues, "first because each man can find in his existence some phenomenon of sleeping or waking analogous to it; and next, because it is true and gives an idea of Lambert's prodigious intelligence. In fact, he deduced from the occurrence an entire system, possessing himself, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... soror! I hope to have a letter sororis to answer sorori, then to see sororem," etc. Later, after his sister is married, he addresses her as "the box that contains everything pleasing; the elixir of virtue, grace, and beauty; the jewel, the phenomenon of Normandy; the pearl of Bayeux, the fairy of St. Lawrence, the virgin of the Rue Teinture, the guardian angel of Caen, the goddess of enchantments, the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... surrounded on all sides with a glory; and was impressed as if a voice, or something equivalent to a voice, had come to him, to this effect (for he was not confident as to the words), "Oh, sinner! did I suffer this for thee, and are these thy returns?" Struck with so amazing a phenomenon as this, there remained hardly any life in him, so that he sunk down in the arm-chair in which he sat, and continued, he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... small boats are observed crossing the river, and in rather uncomfortable proximity. With these exceptions the inhabitants are evidently in the enjoyment of undisturbed repose, and quite unconscious of the phenomenon of such a notorious personage passing their doors with triumphant success. Scarcely a word was heard, it was like a city of the dead. Who can imagine the internal raptures of our lucky hero, on leaving behind him, in the distance, that spot upon ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... on shore, and went in the direction of the tree. He found her climbing down one of the branches, towards the stem. But in the darkness of the wood, the prince continued in some bewilderment as to what the phenomenon could be; until, reaching the ground, and seeing him standing there, she caught ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... new principle of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe; in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities, at the moment of attaining ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... for a moment we admit the explanation, and then seriously ask ourselves how much the wiser are we; what does the explanation explain? Is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announcing the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter? A phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a case of some general law of Nature; but the supernatural interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the case, exemplify no law, and if species have really arisen in this way, it is absurd to attempt ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... something so different to themselves. These men have a great weight to carry, and cannot always shake off the burden of their origin and live among begotten statesmen as though they too had been born to the manner. But perhaps the most wonderful ministerial phenomenon,—though now almost too common to be longer called a phenomenon,—is he who rises high in power and place by having made himself thoroughly detested and also,—alas for parliamentary cowardice!—thoroughly feared. Given sufficient audacity, a thick skin, and power to bear for a few ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... while at large angles the centre of pressure moves forward as the angle decreases, when a certain limit of angle is reached it travels suddenly backwards and causes the machine to dive. The Wrights had known of this tendency from Lilienthal's researches, but had imagined that the phenomenon would disappear if they used a fairly lightly cambered—or curved—surface with a very abrupt curve at the front. Having discovered what appeared to be the cause they surmounted the difficulty by 'trussing down' the camber ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... flourishing his scalpel as if it were a walking-stick, who could overpower Emilia by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen's-Head grimness; who could be a boon companion without ipso facto warning all beholders off by the portentous phenomenon; who could sing a song and clink a can naturally enough, and stab men really in the dark,—not in a transparent notification of himself as going about seeking whom to stab. Mr. Fechter's Iago is no more in the conventional psychological mode than ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... phenomenon, we must consider the previous condition and acquirements of those who pronounced such discourses. Montgeron, while declaring that among the convulsionists there were occasionally to be found persons of respectable standing, adds,—"But it must be confessed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... backsliding in the dentist. There would have been much pleasant discussion in kitchens and back-parlours if Mr. Sheldon had been particularly attentive to his fair guest; but it speedily became known, always by the agency of Mrs. Woolper and that phenomenon of idleness and iniquity, the London "girl," that Mr. Sheldon was not by any means attentive to the pretty young woman from Yorkshire; but that he suffered her to sit alone hour after hour in her husband's absence, with no amusement but her needlework wherewith to "pass the time," while ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... and tones of my voice! We were never so taken back in our lives. All hands were called in to witness the phenomenon and, recovering from their astonishment, the boys joined hands and danced around me, singing and shouting in their excitement. Then each yelled something at the machine—bits of slang or slurs—and it made them roar to hear that ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... been long eminent for piety, lived a year of stupid unconcern, under such enormous guilt, it must have been a very strange event! A phenomenon in the history of man, unequalled in the annals of the world! Whether there is evidence to justify so strange a ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... It was because,—strange phenomenon, and one which was possible only in the situation in which he found himself,—in stealing the money from that child, he had done a thing of which he was no ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... giving its name to other productions, bound up with them. We shall find nothing to object to in that somewhat heterogeneous collection of styles, which even a single Play sometimes exhibits, when once the history of this phenomenon accompanies it. The Cathedrals that were built, or re-built throughout, just at the moment in which the Cathedral Architecture had attained its ultimate perfection, are more beautiful to the eye, perhaps, than those in which the story of its growth is told from the rude, massive Anglo-Saxon ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... There was something calculated to make an unbeliever very uneasy in the quiet confidence of these people, and the business-like way in which they went to work to make it impossible to account for any phenomenon that might appear, on any other but a supernatural theory. No doubt whatever now remained in the mind of Miss Ludington or Paul that the wonderful mystery which they had hardly dared to dream of was about to be enacted before them. They followed Dr. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... almost as to understand how a certain amount of inorganic molecules will sometimes suddenly seem to obey an impulse from within, and become an organism, a yeast plant, or a microscopic animal; but whether or not we succeed in understanding the how and why of the phenomenon, the phenomenon nevertheless took place; and this unorganised mass of passions called Vittorio Alfieri, this chaotic thing without a higher life or a purpose in the world, only partially sensitive, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... surrounded by the hunters and gently driven towards this pen, in which they imperceptibly find themselves inclosed and are then at the mercy of the hunters. The weather is cloudy and the wind moderate from the northwest. Late at night we were awaked by the sergeant on guard to see the beautiful phenomenon called the northern light: along the northern sky was a large space occupied by a light of a pale but brilliant white colour: which rising from the horizon extended itself to nearly twenty degrees above ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... Snap, against whom he resolved to put Titmouse on his guard, and infinitely astonished at the extraordinary change which had taken place in the color of Titmouse's hair. Partly influenced by the explanation which Gammon had given of the phenomenon, Tag-rag resigned himself to feelings of simple wonder. Titmouse was doubtless passing through stages of physical transmogrification, corresponding with the marvellous change that was taking place in his circumstances; and for all he (Tag-rag) knew, other and more extraordinary ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... your question by asking another: If we reject the spiritual side of man's nature, then we have nothing left of him but the material. Now I ask you as a physicist, what is there in the laws governing matter that could in any degree account for the phenomenon that I have ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... had now for the first time created a British party in the Cape Colony—the Progressives—strong enough to act in independence of the Bond. The existence of this British party, not only free from the Bond, but determined (although it was in a minority) to challenge the Bond predominance, was a new phenomenon in Cape politics. In itself it constituted an appreciable improvement upon the previously existing state of affairs; since the British population was thus no longer hopelessly weakened by being divided into two parties of almost equal ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... this curious phenomenon in America, I am not able to give your correspondent, J. G. T. of Hagley, any information; but it may interest him and others among the readers of "N. & Q." to have some account of what appears to be the first recorded experiment, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... astonishment from the saddle, dire had been the anticipations that our mules,—one of them already required driving with the spear,—would, after another night of starvation, leave us to carry their loads upon our own hacks. The cause of the phenomenon soon revealed itself. In the rock was a hole about two feet wide, whence a crystal sheet welled over the Fiumara bank, forming a paradise for frog and tadpole. This "Ga'angal" is considered by the Somal ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... ignore the significance. In the first place, while it maintained the belief in degeneration, endorsed by Hebrew mythology, it definitely abandoned the Greek theory of cycles. The history of the earth was recognised as a unique phenomenon in time; it would never occur again or anything resembling it. More important than all is the fact that Christian theology constructed a synthesis which for the first time attempted to give a definite meaning to the whole course of human events, a synthesis which represents ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... seen sweeping over the bosom of the Atlantic, half-descending from the skies, and half-ascending from the deep; every second man whom one met gave it credit for a different origin, some looking at the upper portion and some at the lower; while, in the mean time, the huge phenomenon was blackening, gathering, and rushing onward, threatening to turn all above into darkness and all below into storm. It made the grand subject of parliamentary eloquence, and parliament was never more eloquent; it filled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... heat of the war, a strange phenomenon in the Alban lake, which, in the absence of any known cause and explanation by natural reasons, seemed as great a prodigy as the most incredible that are reported, occasioned great alarm. It was the beginning of autumn, and the summer now ending had, to all observation, been neither ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Modern philosophy says that all things in nature are dependent on one another; the ancient philosopher had the same truth latent in his mind when he affirmed that out of one thing all the rest may be recovered. The subjective was converted by him into an objective; the mental phenomenon of the association of ideas (compare Phaedo) became a real chain of existences. The germs of two valuable principles of education may also be gathered from the 'words of priests and priestesses:' (1) that true knowledge is a knowledge ...
— Meno • Plato
... four o'clock in the afternoon, at Messoudiah, or, "the Fortunate Spot." Here we witnessed a kind of phenomenon, which was not a little agreeable to us. Messoudiah is a place situated on the coast of the Mediterranean, surrounded with little dunes of very fine sand, which the copious rains of winter readily ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Prime Minister into an insurgent chief, though a remarkable phenomenon, is no matter for surprise. M. Venizelos sprang from people among whom insurrection formed the traditional method of asserting political opinions. His father was a veteran of the Greek Revolution of 1821, and passed most of his life plotting. His grandfather is supposed to have been a refugee of ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... he flew down to the river and had a bath. "What a remarkable phenomenon," said the Professor of Ornithology as he was passing over the bridge. "A swallow in winter!" And he wrote a long letter about it to the local newspaper. Every one quoted it, it was full of so many words that ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... found apologists: one set of men exalts the Girondists; another set justifies Danton; a third deifies Robespierre; but Barere has remained without a defender. We venture to suggest a very simple solution of this phenomenon. All the other chiefs of parties had some good qualities; and Barere had none. The genius, courage, patriotism, and humanity of the Girondist statesmen more than atoned for what was culpable in their conduct, and should have protected them from the insult of being compared ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had been intensely prosecuting, in Spain and everywhere, his inquiry into the Bussy phenomenon of July 15th; which he, from the first glimpse of it, took to mean a mystery of treachery in the pretended Peace-Negotiation, on the part of Choiseul and Catholic Majesty;—though other long heads, and Pitt's Ambassador at Madrid ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... spectral looking-glass, set there in the half-darkened waste. It was evidently what gave the name to the creek, and I have since noticed the same name elsewhere in the Western country, and I suppose the phenomenon is not uncommon. For an hour or more it remained; we never seemed to get nearer to it; it was an eerie thing—the earth-light of the moon on that side,—I saw ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... the bottom of the social pyramid, however, who stand with their feet upon the earth, Nature is not a curious phenomenon to be looked down at and studied, but a living force to be obeyed. They front grim, naked Life, face to face, and wrestle with it through the darkness; and, as did the angel that strove with Jacob, it leaves its stamp ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... portion of the city under its protection, would depart for ever. All the machinery of the arsenal is stamped with the name of Greenwood, Battley and Co., Leeds. Rust and dirt are everywhere, and the 100 workmen for whom pay is drawn never number on the rare pay days more than sixty persons, a phenomenon observed in most establishments in China worked by government. Yet with a foreigner in charge excellent work could be turned out from the factory. The buildings are ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... second efflorescence in the spring. The celebrity of the tree arises from the fact that every year at Christmas time it is seen covered with flowers, and the tradition at St. Patrice, handed down from father to son, affirms that for fifteen hundred years this phenomenon has been repeated at the same sacred season. It matters not how intense the cold of any particular winter; while the ground beneath and the country around lie covered in their white shroud, the "flowers of St. Patrice" unfold their blossoms and bid defiance to the fierce ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... what precedes that, after twenty years of effort, his aim has been attained. What a rapid progress for so short a time! In 1838, the first locomotive that was not of English origin appeared to us like a true phenomenon; a few years afterward the Creusot locomotives were crossing the Channel in order to roll proudly over the railways ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... cause, or a concurrence of moral tendencies; given the cause, it appears; the cause withdrawn, it disappears; the weakness or intensity of the cause is the measure of its own weakness or intensity. It is bound to that like any physical phenomenon to its condition, like dew to the chilliness of a surrounding atmosphere, like dilatation to heat. Couples exist in the moral world as they exist in the physical world, as rigorously linked together and as universally diffused. Whatever in one case produces, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... people not only in the celestial ceremonies, but also in (the manner of performing) funeral solemnities, and of appeasing the manes of the dead; and what prodigies sent by lightning or any other phenomenon were to be attended to and expiated. To elicit such knowledge from the divine mind, he dedicated an altar on the Aventine to Jupiter [28]Elicius, and consulted the god by auguries as to what (prodigies) should ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... humor in it is not always of a high order; it would hardly pass for humor today at all. That the same man who wrote the Hawaiian letters in 1866 (he was then over thirty years old) could, two years later, have written that marvelous book, the Innocents Abroad, is a phenomenon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the mulatto Ned. His birthday-celebration dinner, at which the New Year's piscatory phenomenon figures in the bill of fare. A total disregard of dry laws at the dinner. Excitement over reported discovery of quartz-mines. A complete humbug. Charges of salting. Excitement renewed upon report of other new quartz-mines. Even if rich, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... this,—a large portion of Jewish mysticism was the work of lawyers. Some of the foremost mystics were famous Talmudists, men who were appealed to for decisions on ritual and conduct. It is a phenomenon that constantly meets us in Jewish theology. There were antinomian mystics and legalistic opponents of mysticism, but many, like Nachmanides (1195-1270) and Joseph Caro (1488-1575), doubled the parts of Cabbalist and Talmudist. That Jewish ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... of a Harper clansman whom some men called a leader to the conclave of the Doane chieftains was so astounding a phenomenon that it would be a pity to cut it short until its intent was made manifest. So the sentinels along the way held ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... pillars seemed to brighten on either side, their steps were as buoyant as if they mistook the church for a ball-room and were ready to dance hand in hand to the altar. So brilliant was the spectacle that few took notice of a singular phenomenon that had marked its entrance. At the moment when the bride's foot touched the threshold the bell swung heavily in the tower above her and sent forth its deepest knell. The vibrations died away, and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the economic organism of Italy is swathed and pressed and choked by this German isolator, which nobody dares to pull away. For if we turn from the economic to the political aspect of this curious phenomenon, we shall find that the companies enumerated give work to scores of thousands of operators and employees, through whose willing instrumentality they become vast electoral agencies. "It is obvious," we are authoritatively assured, "that the influence of such companies in administrative and political ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the Harrat Rjil, as it is called from an adjoining valley, may not have taken place within the historic period; and he referred to Psalm xviii. as seeming to note the occurrence, during David's reign, of such a phenomenon in or near Palestine. Humboldt deemed it probable that the Koranic legend (chap. iv.) of the Abyssinian host under Abraha destroyed by a shower of stones baked in hell-fire, referred, not to small-pox as is generally supposed, but to an actual ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... perceived between the visible taps of a hammer, is, to my mind, exactly like the relation of succession between the tangible taps; the unlikeness between red and blue is a mental phenomenon of the same order as the unlikeness between rough and smooth. Two points visibly distant are so, because one or more units of visible length (minima visibilia) are interposed between them; and as two points tangibly distant are so, because one or more units of tangible length (minima ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Parson, Bosher, King, and Co. standing up in defence of Riddell against them was a phenomenon so wonderful, when they came to think of it, that they were inclined to imagine they themselves were the only sane boys left out of a house of lunatics. And this was the only consolation that mixed with ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... will be easily grasped by the reader if we take the example of the rainbow. The phenomenon of the rainbow, then, teaches us that what we know to be white light, or daylight, is composed of rays of various colors. If an object, say the hull of a vessel at sea, prevents these rays from coming to the eye, that hull, or other object, ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... neglected stories, "L'Amie Inconnue" not only may be useful as a warning to the too open-hearted but has probably had not a few parallels in fact. Generally, of course, the uninvited correspondent is merely a passing phenomenon—rarely perhaps welcome except to persons of very much self-centred temperament with a good deal of time on their hands; tolerated and choked off placably by the good-natured and well-mannered; answered snappishly or not answered at all ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... will show that humbug is an astonishingly wide-spread phenomenon—in fact almost universal. And this is true, although we exclude crimes and arrant swindles from the definition of it, according to the somewhat careful explanation which is given in the beginning of the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... and study this patriarchal personage with, I think, livelier curiosity than any other form of humanity there presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
