"Atom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me: the rest may land in Sheol and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him, as he pushes along in the crowd! Notwithstanding his millions, he is there a mere atom out of this world's creation. He has not a sympathy beyond himself—not a hope which does not centre in self—no connecting link with anything outside or beyond—no thought, no emotion, no sense, no feeling, which are not produced by a desire to advance the interests ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... result! What is life, what is organic substance in the monstrous universe but an indifferent mass, a passing accident, the corruption of a few epidermic particles? And if this be life, what is that humanity which is so small a fragment of it?—Such is Man in nature, an atom, and an ephemeral particle; let this not be lost sight of in our theories concerning his origin, his importance, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... we climb the rock, picking a spot where limpets are not, and sit in that glorious sunlight, each atom of which seems to melt into the blood. Clasping our hands about our knees, we can watch the glory of the sun climbing higher and higher above the ocean, and, if we choose, fancy ourselves big grapes ripening on "Lusitanian summers," until we are ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... their beating wings in her cool basin! The dead leaves would keep falling year after year to their rest, but she could not fall, must, through the slow ages, stand, until storm and sunshine had wasted her atom by atom away. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of difference to his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that! It's ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Exerting every atom of strength, calling on all the will-power aboard, they shot forward into the night ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... succeed in telling you how selfish I am, but there's no harm in trying." Speech hung fire for a moment, to seek for words; then found them. "I am a thing in the dark, with an object, and I call it Gwen. I am an atom adrift in a huge black silence, and it crushes my soul, and I am misery itself. Then I hear the voice that I call Gwen's, and forthwith I am happy beyond the wildest dreams of the Poets—though really that isn't saying much, because their ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... scowled. "What a preposterous story! I suppose they're going to fly a plane over and drop an atom bomb—just like that!" He snapped ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... and arbitrary. When the natural sciences wish to form themselves into perfect sciences, they must issue from their circle and enter the philosophical circle. This they do when they posit concepts which are anything but natural, such as those of the atom without extension in space, of ether or vibrating matter, of vital force, of space beyond the reach of intuition, and the like. These are true and proper philosophical efforts, when they are not mere words void of meaning. The concepts of natural science are, without doubt, most ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... had never entered the chemist's shop; also, that the assistant had wrongly identified some other lady as Miss Helena Gracedieu; also, that there was not an atom of evidence to connect her with the stealing of the doctor's prescription-paper and the forgery of his writing. Other assertions to the same purpose followed, on which it is needless to dwell. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... Sparkler. 'And I assure you, Amy, that nothing can be a greater happiness to myself, myself—next to the happiness of being so highly honoured with the choice of a glorious girl who hasn't an atom of—' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... suits her. She is delighted with herself for having called Mrs. Bethune "horrid," and given him such a delicious tit-for-tat. She looks full of fun and mischief. There is no longer an atom of rancour about her. Rylton, in spite of himself, acknowledges her charm; but what does she mean by this sudden sweetness—this sudden sauciness? Is she holding out the olive-branch to him? If so, he will accept it. After all, he may have wronged her in many ways; and at ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... excuse with myself—indeed, I feared that he would attack her rudely and be cruelly plain with her—yet knowing in my heart that I went because I could do nothing else, and that when she called, every atom of life in me answered to her summons. So in I went, to find Phineas standing bolt upright in the parlour of the tavern, turning the leaves of his book with eager fingers, as though he sought some text that was in his mind. I passed by him and leant against the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... it is simply removed farther back. The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the universe a less mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... to elemental fire, 'Tis thus the solar atom whirls; The butterfly in aery gyre, On autumn mornings, swarms and swirls, In dance of delicate desire, No other ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... noiselessly, and Steel closed it behind him. A Moorish lantern cast a brilliant flood of light upon a crimson carpet, a chair, and an empty oak umbrella-stand. Beyond this there was no atom of furniture in the hall. It was impossible to see beyond the dining-room door, for a heavy red velvet curtain was drawn across. David's first impression was the amazing stillness of the place. It gave him ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... And as he rose his arms were outstretched and his great guns belched their murderous fire. Two men rolled from their saddles with a death-scream that died down to a hideous gurgle, as the racing hoofs trod the last atom of life out of their bodies. His guns belched a second time, and James' throat was plowed open, and the rich red blood spurted in a ghastly tide. Another shot and another man fell forward, clutching his horse's mane while he was borne from ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... drop of vagabond blood which found comrades for her among every class and color. But there was not an atom of the tramp in her son's well-built and fashionably clothed body. He never had had a single intimate friend even when he was a boy. "He will probably find his companions among the great English scholars," she thought complacently. Of course ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... ordinary standards and ambitions of life become as naught: for neither love, hatred, revenge, honour, money, jewels, or social success will bring a cup of water, a handful of corn or a coal of fire. Under this torture Nature once more becomes king and man again an atom; his judgment clarified, his heart stripped naked, his soul turned inside out. The untamed, mighty, irresistible primitive is now to be reckoned with, and a lie ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... and silver trumpet of Stevenson. But faith is unfashionable, and it is customary on every side to cast against it the fact that it is a paradox. Everybody mockingly repeats the famous childish definition that faith is "the power of believing that which we know to be untrue." Yet it is not one atom more paradoxical than hope or charity. Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... national production than any other people in the free world. For 15 years no other free nation has demanded so much of itself. Through hot wars and cold, through recession and prosperity, through the ages of the atom and outer space, the American people have never faltered and their faith has never flagged. If at times our actions seem to make life difficult for others, it is only because history has made ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... in his hand to destroy those thrones, to the steps of which mankind is chained. He would assuredly use it to overthrow those altars where the truth is hidden by clouds of lying incense. Tear out of your hearts the belief in the existence of God; for as long as an atom of that silly superstition remains in your minds you will never ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... and enjoy it; proceed, Sancho; while she was engaged in her occupation what converse did she hold with thee? What did she ask about me, and what answer didst thou give? Make haste; tell me all, and let not an atom be left behind ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a crossroads. You could jump in either direction, blowing yourself up or taking the big step into space. I think you'll turn out okay, but not everybody agrees—and the Federation can't take even small chances. So you can't be allowed to set off your atom bombs, or worse, where they might get through to another planet. We can't actually interfere with you, so we've ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... as well have had no celebration in such a case, for Polly wouldn't have enjoyed a single bit of it—not an atom!" declared old Mr. King, bringing his walking stick heavily down on ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... the Troy of Priam; these were the stars that shone on Carthage when she sent forth her armies and her fleets, and nigh drove the Greeks from Sicily; and these are the stars which will shine when Rome is as Troy and Carthage. And I—I am an atom, a creature of chance, thrown out of the infinite to flash like a shooting star for a moment across a blackened firmament and then in the infinite to expire. Cui bono? Why should I care how I live my life, since in a twinkling ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... them are members, nor Christians; nor have they an atom of interest in any such matters. They are going for pure ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... reason that neither Mrs. Batholommey nor myself, after mature reflection and dispassionate discussion, can find one atom of the Supernatural in any of the events that transpired there. Perhaps I can best make clear my point of view by rehearsing the case and my own ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... amusement, family life, and civil institutions are attended by faiths, doctrines of philosophy (myths, folklore), and by precepts of right conduct and duty (taboos). The making of folkways is not trivial, although the acts are minute. Every act of each man fixes an atom in a structure, both fulfilling a duty derived from what preceded and conditioning what is to come afterwards by the authority of traditional custom. The structure thus built up is not physical, but ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... thought of occupying a seat here. But were it thrice as great as I now know it to be, and were I back in that old time of struggle in Utah, when I was seeking for this honor, I would not permit the volunteered friendship of President Snow to bestow upon me, even as an innocent recipient, one atom of the church monarch's favor. My ideals have grown with my term of service in this body, and I believe that the man who would render here the highest service to his country must be careful to attain to this place by the purest civic path ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns
... the kindly breach and skirt the fence for some little distance to regain the path. The fence on this side is densely plumed with blackberry vines. What a revel I held there two months ago. The fruit hung around in rich masses of ebony, each little atom composing the cone having a glittering spot upon it like a tiny eye. How the black beauties melted on my tongue in their dead-ripe richness. One bush in particular was heavy with the clusters. After despoiling the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... religious people. Religious sentiments and introspective inclinations were bound to develop and prosper in the Low Lands, where vast plains of fertile land are only limited by the endless sea below, the unfathomable blue of heaven above; where man feels himself an atom, lost in the vastness of creation, yet safe, because he is placed there by the will of ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... sultry day, the close of which found the little party almost at the limits of their endurance. Since the night before they had been unable to eat the dry venison as it greatly increased their thirst. Their tongues and throats were dry and swollen and every nerve and atom of their heated ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... lies in the centre of each man's heart A longing and love for the good and pure, And if but an atom, or larger part, I know that this shall forever endure. After the body has gone to decay— Yes, after the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... second-cousin Charles that were like a woman's for daintiness, and Winthrop Adams had the same touch of refinement and delicacy. It was in the Adams blood, doubtless. Aunt Priscilla had not a large share, but he had noted some of it in Elizabeth. It pervaded every atom of Doris' slender body and every cell of her brain. She never would take to the rougher, coarser things of life; indeed, why should she when there was no need? He had wandered so far from the orthodox faith that he began to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... oxen, rams, swans and eagles, larger than life. Corner niches and recesses have been enriched with the most intricate ornamentation, and in them, still of the same rock, without the introduction of an atom of outside material, the sculptors chiseled the figures of forty or more of the principal Hindu deities. And on each of the four sides is a massive altar carved out of the side of the cliff with the most ornate and elaborate traceries and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... I forbear to take a retrospective view of the manner in which they had been expended. Could I approve of that manner? Could I forget how short a time it was, though I had squandered my own money, since I had forfeited no atom of my independence by accepting the earnings of others? Suppose this parliamentary plan to fail, and fail it must, for there were no hopes that I could honestly retain my seat, to what other means could I resort? While I continued to indulge in wild and extravagant schemes ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... modified by the activity of the bodily functions. Every movement of a muscle, for instance, involves change in its component cells. And since the loss of every atom of the body is in direct relation to its activity, a second process is necessary to repair this constant waste; else the body would rapidly diminish in size and strength, and life itself would soon end. This process of repair is accomplished, as we shall learn in Chapters VI. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... courage to do it. She would let him guess the truth. She accused herself in veiled terms. She wrote obscurely of souls carried away by the flood of life, and of the atom one is on the moving ocean of events. She asked him, with affectionate sadness, to keep of her a fond reminiscence in ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... water rats, and mortgages, glutted markets, and competitions of all kinds, that which had an untellable value to-day, was at a discount to-morrow. His influence in the southern provinces of India maintained the credit of his house while he lived; he died bequeathing no atom of his commanding spirit and exquisite tact, and the house which he had created, together with the Bank he had sustained, fell in the general commercial wreck which afflicted all Calcutta three years ago. Thus ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... adventures and act so business-like that you ought to love it. I did when I read it. Carroll Watson Rankin certainly knows what girls like, for she has innumerable objects in that cottage that I know you would love to have in your room. It is very clean in the cottage, with not an atom of dirt anywhere. The part I like best in the story is where Laura Milligan, a disdainful little girl, moves into the neighborhood. She makes life miserable for the cottagers. When you read the story, be sure you look very carefully for the things Laura does, for ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... their intercourse with him. He needed this evening the sincerities as well as the soothings of nature; and it was with a sense of relief that he cast himself once again upon her bosom, to be instructed, with infantine belief, how small an atom he was in the universe of God—how low a rank he held in the hierarchy of ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... white or colored, is transmitted through ether in waves of measurable length: each atom of the medium, when disturbed, moves around its place of rest in an orbit of variable dimension and eccentricity. On the character of the orbit depends the character of the light; and on the velocity of orbit motion, its intensity. Like the gentle pulsations which circle ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... how many young men in that audience were left without an atom of heart, how many would have given their two ears to be in handsome Landry ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... had not an atom of tact. Any woman might have judged from his remarks that she had been married on account of Maria; but Ida only responded ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... identical with living and reproductive cells, we have the earliest germ of organic life, the first cause of all the species of animated nature which people the earth, the ocean, and the air. Born of electricity and albumen, the simple monad is the first living atom; the microscopic animalcules, the snail, the worm, the reptile, the fish, the bird, and the quadruped, all spring from its invisible loins. The human similitude at last appears in the character of the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Lane's black demon of despair overthrew even his thoughts of Mel, and fettered him there, in darkness and strife of soul. He was an atom under the grinding, monstrous wheels ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... not use that word of the gait of a woman like my friend's grandmother. 'Stately stept she butt the hoose' to Betty. She felt strangely soft at the heart, Robert not being yet proved a reprobate; but she was not therefore prepared to drop one atom of the dignity of her relation ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... ever, of the determination to maintain an uncompromising purity of aim in his work. The incomparable scene stimulated within him a sense of power to produce things rivaling what lay under his eyes; he, atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation of beauty. In her it was a determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider of undeservedly happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her mother had ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... afraid you only waste your time coming to me," he said. "I appreciate the fact that you are a kind-hearted man, but see, I haven't an atom of faith, not an atom. I do not believe in the value of your religion. I am ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... was due the sudden revocation of the edict, which, however, was simply caused by the universal complaining, and the tardy discovery of the fault committed in passing it. The little confidence in Law remaining was now radically extinguished; not an atom of it could ever be set afloat again. Seditious writings and analytical and reasonable pamphlets rained on all sides, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... its wonderful secrets, is governed, from the sun over our heads, to the smallest blade of grass beneath our feet, by God, and by God alone, and neither evil spirit nor magician has the smallest power over one atom of it; and our fortunes, in likewise, do not depend on the influences of stars or planets, ghosts or spirits, or anything else: but on ourselves, of whom it is written, that God shall judge every man according ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... "the free relation," "the rights of sex," "suppressed desires," "love without bonds," "liberty of the individual" do, when jumbled up sufficiently, make a composite picture of strange and lurid aspect. But actually, they are not one atom less moral than any other group of human beings,—in fact, thanks to their unquestionable ideals and their habit of fearless thinking, they are, I think, ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... accuse me of being young," she apodictically pronounced. "I 'm twenty-two. Twenty-two long years—aie, Dio mio! And I look even older. I could pass for twenty-five. If," was her suddenly-inspired concession, "if it will afford you the least atom of consolation, I 'll tell people that I am ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the eyes and souls of men; if we are in this humour individuality after individuality disappears, and ere long, if we are consistent, nothing will remain but one universal whole, one true and only atom from which alone nothing can be cut off and thrown away on to something else; if, on the other hand, we are in a subtle philosophically accurate humour for straining at gnats and emphasizing differences rather than resemblances, we can draw distinctions, and give reasons for subdividing ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... renouncing the King of Spain. Every contract, ordinance, and instruction of the States-General has been in conformity with it, and the States of Utrecht are convinced that the States of not one of their confederate provinces would yield an atom ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... say of this great concourse here, that every atom is solitary, individual, and can claim no kindred with another save the loose bonds of a general fraternity—a ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... your happiness is in anything about yourself—your wealth, or your fame, or your life—you are not free. So long as your happiness is in houses and lands, in sons and in daughters, you are not free. You give one atom of your soul to these things at your own peril; for when your hour comes you tear them from you, though they be as your eyes; and by your will ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... nature of every fact? Nothing is stable under our hands. Of what avail to reduce the universe to one substance, as the monists do? We pry, we peer into that substance—it fades like smoke. Forty years I have probed among the cells of the body—the final mystery remains insoluble. Why? Because the atom, the thing once demonstrated 'the final division of matter,' is itself an illusion, made up of the intangible and the imponderable. This I have given my whole life to discover. Life is an illusion—why not death? Shall we dogmatize, especially on the one thing of which we know nothing? The spirit ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... and reconstructs his belief, tracing it back to its beginning. God, the Infinite, exists. Man, the atom, comprehends him as the conditions of his intelligence permit, but so far truly. Man's mind, like a convex glass, reflects him, in an image, smaller or less small, adequate so far as it goes. As revealed in the order of nature, God is perfect in intelligence ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... in the order in which they lay in their last resting-place. When you have completed that task, you must return to the chapel, and in their coffins you will find the treasures of your forefathers. No one has power over an atom of them, until the bones of those who in spirit keep watch and ward over them shall have been removed from their guardianship. So long as they rest on them, or oversee them, to the dead they belong. It is a glorious prize. 'Twill be the making of ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... it seems to me. Love lightly roused is held as lightly, and one loses one's respect for even the passion in the abstract. Of what value can a thing be which springs into life for a trick of manner, an atom or two more of that negative quality called personal magnetism, while wiser and better men pass by unnoticed? One naturally asks, What is love? A spiritual enthusiasm which a cold-blooded analyst would call sentimentality, or its correlative, a fever of the ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... rim over the desert's horizon, to resume his rule over the baked and blighted land, the big black horse and his rider were traveling steadily, the only life visible in the wide area of desolation—a moving blot, an atom behind which was death and the eternal, whispered promise ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of pontoons, which had been provided; and, forming a junction with General Johnston, crush Sherman or retreat into the Gulf States. All this was, however, reversed by one wretched, microscopic incident. The great machine was to be arrested by an atom in its path. The rations were not found at Amelia Court-House; the army must have food, or die; half the force was dispersed in foraging parties throughout the surrounding country, and the delay gave Grant time to mass heavily in Lee's front, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... leaves to all parts of the plant or tree, to nourish it and continue its growth. Such is the important and wonderful work of the leaf, the tender, delicate leaf, which we crumple so easily in our fingers. It builds up, atom by atom, the tree and the great forests which beautify the world and provide for us a thousand comforts and conveniences. Our houses and the furniture in them, our boats and ships, the cars in which we fly so swiftly, the many beautiful and useful things ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... upon by the solemn influences of Nature! As a patient on whom, slowly and by degrees, the agencies of mesmerism are brought to bear, he acknowledged to his heart the growing force of that vast and universal magnetism which is the life of creation, and binds the atom to the whole. A strange and ineffable consciousness of power, of the something great within the perishable clay, appealed to feelings at once dim and glorious,—rather faintly recognized than all unknown. An impulse that he could not resist led him to seek the ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pretending," said Armine. "Do let us stay, Janet, we'll not make one smallest little atom of ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other vegetables, have the power of suddenly bursting without being touched, Nature having provided them with this means of spreading their seed over a wide extent of ground. The red dust which so disagreeably filled our eyes is composed of imperceptible spores, each atom containing a germ. The shock produced when we fell caused the explosion of some of the largest of these, and they set all the others agoing, though who would have believed that two brave hunters could be put ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... isle's beauty, like a naked bride Glowing at once with love and loveliness, Blushes and trembles at its own excess. Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green, Filling their bare and void interstices. This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed Thee to be lady of the solitude. And I have fitted up some chambers there ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses—to ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... the middle of the swampy level, covering at most some five or six acres, was a dense circular thicket composed of every sort of thorny bush and shrub, matted with cat-briers and wild vines, and overshadowed by a clump of tall and leafy ashes, which had not as yet lost one atom of their foliage, although the underwood beneath them ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... positions, which are neither interesting nor edifying. He is decent or coarse, just as he is dull or amusing, without knowing the difference. The details about the different connections formed by Roxana and Moll Flanders have no atom of sentiment, and are about as wearisome as the journal of a specially heartless lady of the same character would be at the present day. He has been praised for never gilding objectionable objects, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... second illumination; and when we had got away, and gone upon a distant height, and looked towards it two hours afterwards, there it still stood, shining and glittering in the calm night like a jewel! Not a line of its proportions wanting; not an angle blunted; not an atom ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... through the air! Every atom from another Takes thee, gives thee to his brother; Continually, Thou art wetting the wet sea, Bathing its sluggish woods below, Making the salt flowers bud and blow; Silently, Workest thou, and ardently, Waking from the night of nought Into being ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... beyond his reach; for it was evident that her father deemed her worthy of a brilliant marriage—as, indeed, she was. I sometimes thought that she held herself at a like value, for though there was about her a constant crowd of suitors, none of them, seemingly, could win an atom of encouragement. She was waiting, I told myself, waiting; and I had even pictured to myself the grim irony of a situation in which our junior might be called upon to arrange ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... relatively rare, but now, weight for weight, atom for atom, it was the most valuable element on Earth. Indeed, the most valuable in ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and playing with death! How appalling the thought that with her voice ceased her existence! Yet she could not sing forever; her throat was dry and hard; her very breath was a pain; her mouth was hotter than any desert-worn pilgrim's;—if she could but drop upon her burning tongue one atom of the ice that glittered about her!—but both of her arms were pinioned in the giant's vice. She remembered the winding-sheet, and for the first time in her life shivered with spiritual fear. Was it hers? She asked herself, as she sang, what sins she had committed, what life she had led, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... than fair, with an imperious bearing, she had compelling eyes, and there was a grace in her movements which it was difficult to see without admiring, but she was vain, intent upon conquest, and without an atom of moral firmness, if all accounts be true. Her mother was sorely tried by her waywardness, but did not live long enough to appreciate her real lack of moral instinct; and her father, in spite of his several marriages, which were almost as numerous as ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... that he undertook it, not merely in order to vindicate his invention, but to effect a practical result, namely, to make his land speculation pay. And the second was that when he found it difficult to operate his pet invention in this experiment, he laid it aside at once,—without losing an atom of faith in it, but also without persisting (as a typical enthusiast would have done) in risking upon the vindication of his personal opinion in one matter the success of another undertaking, ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... thus outlines the area of His universe. Within that sphere the universe is born, is evolved, and dies; it lives, it moves, it has its being in Him; its matter is His emanation; its forces and energies are currents of His life; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, all-evolving; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, its centre and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and everything in Him. Thus have the Sages ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... came matter if not from the creative word of God? To assign eternity to it is to invest it with an attribute that is Divine, and Pantheists carry such an explanation to its logical conclusion when they affirm that the universe is God. The existence of a single atom is an unfathomable mystery. Man cannot create or destroy even a particle of matter. How overwhelming, then, if we reject the simple statement of the Bible, is the mystery of the great universe, in whose extended space suns, planets, stars, and systems unceasingly revolve, and in which ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... produced a great middle class and security in old age; built unrivaled centers of learning and opened public schools to all; split the atom and explored the heavens; invented the computer and the microchip; and deepened the wellspring of justice by making a revolution in civil rights for African Americans and all minorities, and extending the circle of citizenship, opportunity ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... that he was in the land to which he belonged, the barren land of desolation and failure. The triumphs of the past failed for a moment to thrill his pulses. The memory of his well-lived and successful life brought him not an atom of consolation. The present was all that mattered, and the present had brought him to the gates of failure.—After all, what did a man work for, he wondered? What was the end and aim of it all? Life at Martinhoe Manor, with a faithful but terrified manservant, bookshelves ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... put an end to the profane amusement. The rustics, however, were not to be debarred by his displeasure from pursuing, perhaps, their only pleasure; and though the pious abbot discountenanced their proceedings, they acquiesced not in his views, and their enjoyment was not one atom the less. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... that the method of cleaning them is to have them waxed, and then a manservant with foot brushes drives round your room, dancing here and there like a Merry Andrew. This is calculated to take from your foot every atom of dirt, and leave the room in a few moments as he found it. The house must be exceedingly cold in winter. The dining-rooms, of which you make no other use, are laid with small stones, like the red tiles for shape and size. The servants' apartments ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... my hand and take her to rule over my house, and trample my heart under her pretty feet! When you gave me that note of hers a week ago, and looked so calmly, so coolly in my face, I felt as if all hope were dying in my heart; for I could not believe that, if you had one atom of affection for me, you could be so generous, so unselfish toward one whom you considered your rival. That night I did not close my eyes, and had almost decided to revisit South America; but next morning my mother told me you were going to New York—that all entreaties ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Diana, dance, Endymion, Till calm ancestral shadows lay their hands Gently across mine eyes: in days long gone Have I not danced with gods in garden lands? I too a wild unsighted atom borne Deep in the heart of some heroic boy Span in the dance ten thousand years ago, And while his young eyes glittered in the morn Something of me felt something of his joy, And longed to rule a body, ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... perhaps, had more effect than even his threats. Poots was a miserable little atom, and like a child in the powerful grasp of the young man. The doctor's tenement was isolated, and he could obtain no assistance until within a hundred yards of Vanderdecken's cottage; so Mynheer Poots decided that ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... deprivation; in which it traverses leagues in motion and worlds in thought without consciousness of relief, yet with a dread of pausing. I had nothing to seek, nothing to recover; the whole world could not restore me an atom, could not show me again a glimpse of what I had been or lost, yet I rushed on as if the next step would ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... sort of crack, filled with unattached bowlders, with crevices and passages, sometimes perpendicular, sometimes horizontal. Around and through these was a zigzag road to the top, evidently as familiar to that atom of a bird as Broadway is to some of her fellow-creatures, and more easily traversed, for she ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... I'm much troubled. An Arab chief has come here professing allegiance to my government. But he's a great villain, for such I have found him in the sand." The next day the unfortunate Arab was assassinated. Many an honest man was murdered by the fortuitous throw and fall, and scattering of these atom sands, in the cruel fingers of the tyrant. Who will deny after this that the events of our life are (to us) so many accidents? A Touarghee Sheikh once proposed to Mr. Gagliuffi to sell his country to the Sultan of the English. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Then, into this hopeless and helpless prospect, came the august message of poetry, revealing the transcendent dignity, the solitariness, the majesty of the indomitable soul; bidding one remember that though one was a humble atom in a vast scheme, yet one had the sharp dividing sense of individuality; that each individual was to himself the measure of all things, a fortress of personality; that one was not merely whirled about in a mechanical order; but that each man was ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Nature thought for such as we, What place her human atom fills, The weed-drift of her careless sea, The mist on her unheeding hills? What reeks she of our ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... energy. Woman steps at once into a new sphere of action, and hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, with her stronger but not more resolute companion, enters on that career which looks to the formation of communities and states. It is the household which constitutes the primal atom, the aggregation whereof makes the village, town, or city; the state itself rests upon the household finally, and the household is what the faithful mother ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... threats, half laughter, assured us we should find no other place in Outerard. I inquired for the Priest's house. I was on the point of asking, "Has the Priest any family?" but recollected myself in time, and asked whether the Priest's house was large enough to hold us. "Not an atom of room to spare in it, ma'am." Then I inquired for the Chief of the Police, the Clergyman, or the Magistrate? "Not in it, neither, none; but the Chief of the Police's house is there on the top of the hill; but ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... form some conception of the terror-stricken way in which she listened to every sound that penetrated into the stillness of the dimly lighted room. And ever and again, when her wandering glance reverted to the frail atom of humanity nestling by her side, her brows contracted and her eyes filled with bitter tears, as she weakly reached out her trembling hand to adjust its coverings, faintly murmuring, with quivering lips ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... creatures to have one atom of my love. I wish to give all to Jesus, since He makes me understand that He alone is perfect happiness. All!—all shall be for Him! And even when I have nothing, as is the case to-night, I will give Him this nothing ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... his body; it wafts off behind on a current of air, like a hat—and he is only a soul, a delicious kernel of soul ecstatically drunk, floating like an atom ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight out of both of us as completely as if we had ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... lift these weeds of buried woe,— These relics of a self that died So sadly and so long ago! 'Tis said that seven short years can change, Through nerve and bone, this knitted frame, Cellule by cellule waxing strange, Till not an atom is the same. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... had not been ordered in the first act of the primal atom, and so become inevitable, it would seem a pity now that he must abandon his work half-way, and make another hard, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... depths beyond depths in nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited me from exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary micro-scopes of immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce through all the envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed those imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me to use! How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the object, and which at the same time should be ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... of fine soap, then clean cold water. While they are still wet, put into the palm of each hand a very small piece of almond cream and rub it all over them. This, again, forms a strong lather. After drying the hands, rub them in dry bran or powdered starch till every atom of moisture is absorbed, and finish by dusting off the bran or starch. This will make the hands very soft ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the arbitrary power of multiplying attributes by occult qualities. Besides, it answers no purpose; unless, indeed, a difficulty can be solved by multiplying it, or we can acquire a clearer notion of our soul by being told that we have a million of souls, and that every atom of our bodies has a soul of its own. Far more prudent is it to admit the difficulty once for all, and then let it lie at rest. There is a sediment indeed at the bottom of the vessel, but all the water above it is clear and transparent. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the whole; that the same principles are not applicable to the origin and to the end of a progress; that neither creation nor annihilation, for instance, is inadmissible when we are concerned with the constituent corpuscles of the atom. Thereby they tend to place themselves in the concrete duration, in which alone there is true generation and not only a composition of parts. It is true that the creation and annihilation of which they speak concern the movement or the energy, and not ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... shop for an ordinary prosaic crown. I fear that in thus extolling Francis Thompson's work, I am grossly outraging the canons of criticism. For the man is alive, he gets up of a morning like common mortals, not improbably he eats bacon for breakfast; and every critic with an atom of discretion knows that a poet must not be called great until he is dead or very old. Well, please yourself what you think. But, in time to come, don't say I didn't tell you." A whole generation of men has passed away since these words appeared; but they do not seem to be so fantastic ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... or give does nothing.' It does this, if no more,—it prevents one soul, and that soul your own, from drying and hardening into utter selfishness and insensibility; it enables you to say, I have done something; taken one atom from the great heap of sins and miseries and placed it on the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bodies. Thus a new world, as it were, was revealed for human thought and speculation. We learned that our globe was not, as we had supposed, the centre of the universe. It was assigned its place far from that centre, and was known to be no more than a mere atom, lost amid an incalculable number of other globes. The revelations of the telescope proved that those who formerly were considered wise actually knew nothing. Quickly following these discoveries, extraordinary narratives of ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... caused in the logic of a thought by the mere position of a word as despicable as the word even. A mote, that is itself invisible, shall darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye—the heavens shall be hidden by a wretched atom that dares not show itself—and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judgment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling to the right-hand word, or the left-hand word, shall confound a system.] But we all know, each knows by his own experience, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... a thing as white blood, either, but it all checks up. Someway, somehow, every particle—probably every atom—of free or combined iron in this whole volume of space ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... limits, exhaust my capacity for entertaining you, extract the last atom of amusement ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... educational light, had closed his remarks, and had asked for questions, one lady timidly arose and inquired: "Can an atom be said to be outside or inside ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... burst from me. Upon earth, in the midst of the darkest night, light never abdicates its functions altogether. It is still subtle and diffusive, but whatever little there may be, the eye still catches that little. Here there was not an atom; the total darkness ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Th' inestimable privilege of breathing! Important hazard! What's that airy bubble, When weigh'd with Greece, with virtue, with Aspasia?— A floating atom, dust that falls, unheeded, Into the adverse scale, nor shakes ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... note of indomitable obstinacy in the weak voice. He knew, as he sat looking down upon the fragile atom in the bed, that he could kill her with ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... himself comfortably with his back against the cabin wall. The waves bubbled invisibly in the wake beneath. After sitting for a while in the dense blackness, Helwyse began to feel as though his whole physical self were shrivelled into a single atom, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... tricky thing, of course, to have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... believe. But can I imagine Infinity setting itself to work out such trivialities? What is even a world? A mere grain of dust in endless space! It cannot be. A God who could take interest in man, in such an atom as I, would be no God at all. What avails me to have risen unto more knowledge, more clearness in the sense of the divine, if it is to plunge me into such an abyss as this? Would I had never been awakened from my sleep—the dull stupor of materialism into which I was fast sinking. Then I ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... bodiless, Or but the mutual mockeries of body, Till that same star summoned me back again. Now I could laugh till my ribs ached. Fool! To let a creed, built in the heart of things, Dissolve before a twinkling atom!—Oswald, I could fetch lessons out of wiser schools Than you have entered, were it worth the pains. Young as I am, I might go forth a teacher, And you should see how deeply I could reason Of love in all its shapes, beginnings, ends; Of moral qualities ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... dusty cinders; she loved the crater here hidden from all save birds; she loved the desert, the earth—above all, the sun. She was a product of the earth—a creation of the sun. She had been an infinitesimal atom of inert something that had quickened to life under the blazing magic of the sun. Soon her spirit would abandon her body and go on, while her flesh and bone returned to dust. This frame of hers, that carried the divine spark, belonged to the earth. She had only been ignorant, mindless, feelingless, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... considerable disquiet in families, into which, folk say, they penetrate in the disguise of hens or butterflies. They steal the hearts of children in order to eat them. They strike the child on the left side with a little rod; the breast opens, and the witches tear out the heart, and devour every atom of it. Thereupon the wound closes up of itself, without leaving a trace of what has been done. The child dies either immediately or soon afterwards, as the witch chooses. Many children's illnesses are attributed to this cause. If one of these witches is ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... eyes met. For an instant there was silence. But in that instant, that mere atom of time, there opened up to Stephen a new meaning of life. A virile energy rent the old husk of indifference, and a yearning, startling in its intensity, stabbed his heart, to "make good," to recover lost ground and to do something of which Nellie ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody |
