"Lightning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... stall-man saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.—There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom—said the stall-man, except what are chain'd up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung down the money as quick as lightning—took Bruscambille into his bosom—hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... an interlude the fugitive hoped with confidence to have lost himself in a taciturn and apathetic wilderness of peak-broken land where his discovery would be as haphazard an undertaking as the accurate aiming of a lightning bolt. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... for you, if you like it more better than the thunder-and-lightning marbles, as Cousin Penny calls the one you were ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... you die of laughing to see him. The only trouble is he can't bear going to bed; but I tell him if he don't the KAISER'll catch him, and then he's off with his clothes and into his cot like a flash of lightning. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... told me your cousin's name was Darrell: not that I should have been much wiser if you had; but, thunder and lightning, Lionel! do you know that your cousin Darrell is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strange and blackened pillar, which once stood in the middle of the Forum of Constantine; and this too was there in the days of Theodoric. It is called the Burnt Column, because it has been more than once struck by lightning, and is blackened with the smoke of the frequent fires which have consumed the wooden ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... two—Lindsley and his daughter. The old man had tried to make a fortune in many ways. There was no sort of useless invention that he had not attempted, and you will find in the Patent Office models without number of beehives and cannons, steam cut-offs and baby jumpers, lightning churns and flying machines on which he had taken out patents, assured of making a fortune from each one. He had raised fancy chickens, figured himself rich on two swarms of bees, traveled with a magic lantern, written a philosophic novel, and started a newspaper. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... earth; and it seemed to Oriana's troubled spirit that the wrath of heaven was poured upon her benighted race. Peal after peal resounded in quick succession, and reverberated from the distant kills; while flashes of forked lightning followed one another rapidly, and dispelled, for a moment, the unnatural darkness. The young Indian clung trembling and terrified to her companion, and hid her face on his shoulder, to shut out the fearful scene, while Henrich spoke to her words of comfort and encouragement, and at length succeeded ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... so that they should not hurt us, and went up into the oaks and whistled such beautiful sweet low whistles. Not in those oaks, dear, where the blackbirds whistle to-day; even the very oaks have gone, though they were so strong that one of them defied the lightning, and lived years and years after it struck him. One of the very oldest of the old oaks in the copse, dear, is his grandchild. If you go into the copse you will find an oak which has only one branch; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... interval of silence. Bit by bit the sky became overcast. Vague, fleecy rifts of clouds appeared in the heavens. A wind sprang up, murmuring about them, there came a distant roll of thunder, while along the horizon the lightning rushed in broken, jagged lines of fire. In the east there was a pale flush that showed the black, hurrying clouds the winds had summoned out ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... on the way I showed you yesterday, till you come to a tree scathed and blasted by lightning. To the right of it is a thicket; on the farther side, midway down it, you will find some dried brambles; remove them, and you will perceive a narrow passage. Half-way down it the ground beneath your feet will sound hollow. On your right hand, by bending aside the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... north-wind with his airy forces, Bears up the Baltic to a foaming fury; And the red lightning with a storm of ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... half revealed. He does not see those things in the eyes of women he is not in love with; but when in after years he is carelessly regarding this or the other woman, some chance look, some brief and sudden turn of expression, will recall to him, as with a stroke of lightning, all the old wonder-time, and his heart will go nigh to breaking to think that he has grown old, that he has forgotten so much, and that the fair, wild days of romance and longing are passed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... for some hours after nightfall. A night bombardment is a stirring scene. The passionate and spiteful glare of the cannon-flashes; the unceasing roar of the explosions; the demoniac shriek of the shells in the air, followed by their explosion with a lightning flash, and crash like thunder; the volumes of gray smoke rising upon the dark air,—make up a wonderful and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... did you come here to the Temple of Death?" Paullinus had a sudden access of dread at the words. "Is this the Temple?" he said; "it is the place I was bidden to avoid." At this the man gave a fearful kind of smile, like a flash of lightning out of a sombre cloud, and he said, with a certain dark pride, "Ay, there are few that come willingly; but now you must abide with me to-night—unless," he added, with a savage look, "you have a ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him on the floor of the dining-room, and he was too exhausted to move for a while. By degrees, however, he recovered sufficiently to stand; and as soon as he could do so by himself, with devilish cunning he made for the lamp, which he struck, quick as lightning, with a stick that had been lying on the table. In an instant the great round globe fell to pieces, but luckily the chimney was not broken, and the lamp remained alight, and before he could strike another blow at it I had grappled with him again. This time he struggled violently for ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... over the slippery rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in the unresponsive trout. The way grew wilder and more grewsome. The thunder began again, rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge: the lightning also darted down into the darkening passage, and then the rain. Every enlightened being, even if he is in a fisherman's dress of shirt and pantaloons, hates to get wet; and I ignominiously crept under the edge of a sloping ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... often necessary to follow them forward from behind by means of map and compass. Seen by pale moonlight, these derelict roads, in places pitted with huge craters or flanked by shattered trees, wore a mysterious charm. More eloquent of catastrophe than those thrown down by gale or struck by lightning are trees which shells have hit direct and sent, splintered, in headlong crash from the ranks of an avenue. If wood and earth could speak, what tales the sunken roads of France could find ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... jeje-panari, properly, the ears (panari) of a tree (jeje); the veins of the hand, amgna-mitti, properly, the ramified roots; leaves, prutpe-jareri, properly, the hair at the top of the tree; puirene-veju, properly, the sun (veju), straight or perpendicular; lightning, kinemeru-uaptori, properly, the fire (uapto) of the thunder, or of the storm. (I recognise in kinemeru, thunder or storm, the root kineme black.) In Biscayan, becoquia, the forehead, what belongs (co and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... power of letters on character could be missed by no historian and by no biographer who had his wits about him—even if he had less striking examples at hand than that letter of the Emperor Tiberius to the Senate which is one of the Tacitean flashes of lightning through the dark of history. But the credit of using letters as a main constituent of biography—of originating the "Life-and-Letters" class of books which fills so large a part of modern library-shelves—has been given, as ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... tiny butter plate, and should properly match the meat set. A touch of gold with any china decoration gives it a certain character and richness. The chop platter—among the nice-to-haves and bought as an odd piece—belongs in the lightning change category, for it may serve us our chops and peas during the first course, our molded jelly salad during the second, and our brick of ice cream or other dessert during the third. The range in price is from $1 up to $5 and $6 for ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... also, I entreat you, whether it is credible that Inspiration should be a thing of such a nature, that it comes and goes,—is here and is gone,—once and again in the course of a single page. What? does it vanish, like lightning, when the Evangelist's pen has to record the title on the Cross,—to re-appear the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... symptoms of silent awe and astonishment during the storm, and man's ultimate source of confidence is in the divine protection. In every quarter you meet with the blasted trees of the forest, which wither and decay at the lightning's stroke. No earthquakes, such as are commonly known in the West-India islands, have ever been felt here; but whirlwinds sometimes have made avenues through the thick forest, by levelling the loftiest trees, or sweeping them ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... Chimaera, in which there is an under story about the vain subduing of passion and treachery, and the end of life in fading melancholy,—which, I hope, not many of you could understand even were I to show it you (the merely physical meaning of the Chimaera is the cloud of volcanic lightning connected wholly with earth-fire, but resembling the heavenly cloud in its height and its thunder). Finally, in the AEolic group, there is the legend of Sisypus, which I mean to work out thoroughly by itself; its root is in the position ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... steeds of fairy fable, that could, transport a single favoured rider over wide distances in little time. The subjugated, serviceable nature-power Steam, with its fellow-servant the tamed and tutored Lightning, has wonderfully contracted distance during these fifty years, making the earth, once so vast to human imagination, appear as a globe shrunken to a tenth of its ancient size, and bringing nations divided by half the ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... however, they kept their feet constantly on the watch for any disturbance on the webs; and the instant any unhappy little fly got entangled in their meshes, the ever-watchful spider was out like a flash of lightning, and down at once in full force upon that incautious intruder. I was convinced after many observations that it is by touch alone the spider recognizes the presence of prey in its web, and that it hardly derives any indications worth speaking of from its numerous little eyes, at least as ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... inner self could not ignore, however much her living mind might cancel it. She could run for shelter from it, but the storm would come. She flinched from hearing another word of Mr. Barlow's woundy chatter, and fled into the house, actually bearing in her hand the lightning-flash whose thunder-clap was in a moment to shake ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... in the earth, into which he threw many heated stones, the while muttering many words, which no one but himself understood. Then he filled his pipe with tobacco, kindling it with the rays from a flash of lightning. When this was done, he bowed once to the rising sun, twice to the North Star, blew thrice in a conch-shell, muttered more unintelligible words, and commenced smoking at a great rate. In a few minutes it was as dark as the darkest night, and a terrible ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... thing was over so quickly that the rifle fire had practically ceased before the Artillery behind had time to get to work, and by the time they had flung a few shells to burst in thunder and lightning roar and flash over the German parapet, the storm of rifle fire had slackened and passed. Hearing it die away, the gunners also stopped, reloaded, and laid their pieces, waited the reports of their Forward Officers, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... I said reassuringly, "and he's going too fast to hear me if I did call him. If you can stop the dog, Mr. Bennett, I'll guarantee to make William Adolphus listen to reason, but there's no use trying to argue with a lightning flash." ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... faith in the people, and because he cherished it he never flattered the mob, nor hung upon its neck, nor pandered to its passion, nor suffered its foaming hate or its exulting enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of his regnant soul. He moved in solitary majesty, and if from his smooth speech a lightning flash of satire or of scorn struck a cherished lie, or an honored character, or a dogma of the party creed, and the crowd burst into a furious tempest of dissent, he beat it into silence with uncompromising iteration. If it tried to drown ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... Quick as lightning there was another order as we began to leave the three low vessels behind, and I involuntarily grasped the rail before me as all the men on board lay down—crews of the guns, marines, and those who had doubled forward under the command ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... having prayed, spat upon the enemy. By God's will that drop of his saliva was followed by all the raindrops in the sky. A tempest arose: the rain fell in such torrents on the barbarians that their camp was flooded; their tents were overturned by the power of the winds, and many among them perished by lightning. The rain lasted for three days, after which time Attila assailed the ramparts with powerful engines of war. When they saw the walls fall down the inhabitants were terrified. All hope of resistance being at an end, the holy bishop, clad in his episcopal robes, went ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... belched water without end, till everything had been beaten down as with sledge hammers! She had used every morning to go to mass and had diligently prayed for divine protection against flood. Now the thunder might crash and the lightning strike and hailstones come rattling down as big as hen's eggs—why did not ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... something like the twentieth century before Christ. Priority, however, belongs beyond all doubt to T'ien, which it would have been more natural to find meaning, first the visible heavens, and secondly the Deity, whose existence beyond the sky would be inferred from such phenomena as lightning, thunder, wind, and rain. But the process appears to have been the other way, so far at any rate as the written language is concerned. The Chinese script, when it first came into existence, was purely pictorial, and confined ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... may feast your eye on gloriously illuminated manuscripts and wonder at the ingenious inventions of one or other good brother who sojourned here a while on his way to the "Abiding City." There is, for instance, a model of the first lightning-conductor. Country folk, when they first saw it, crossed themselves, thinking this the work of the devil. The visitors' book in the library shows signatures of men famous in history, among them our Nelson, who, in company of Sir William and Lady Hamilton, visited Strahov on September 29, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... it always comes in a lion hunt, unerringly, unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three men were nearing the bottom of the second hollow, well spread out, lassos taut, facing one another. Jones stumbled and the lioness leaped his way. The weight of both brought Jim over, sliding and slipping, with his rope slackening. The leap of the lioness carried ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... of her frenzy was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Andrew's, Holborn. It became necessary for Charles and his father to make an immediate change of residence, and they took lodgings at Pentonville. There is a pregnant sentence in one of Lamb's letters that flashes with the vividness of lightning into the darkest recesses of those early troubles and embarrassments. "We are," he wrote to Coleridge, "in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... regarding the status of certain spirits. In the village of Manabo, thunder is known as Kidol; in Likuan and Bakaok, as Kido-ol; and in each place he is recognized as a powerful spirit. In Ba-ay, two types of lightning are known to be spirits. The flash from the sky is Salit, that "from the ground" is Kilawit. Here thunder is Kadaklan, but the sun is the all powerful being. He is male, and is "so powerful that he does not need or desire ceremonies ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... forward. Lead out the Graces, Call Artemis out; Then her brother, the Dancer of Skies, That gracious Apollo. Invoke with a shout Dionysus out of whose eyes Breaks fire on the maenads that follow; And Zeus with his flares of quick lightning, and call, Happy Hera, Queen of all, And all the Daimons summon hither to be Witnesses of our revelry And of the noble Peace we have made, Aphrodite our aid. Io Paieon, Io, cry— For victory, leap! Attained by me, leap! Euoi Euoi ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... lips were vain indeed, Nor word nor even kiss could e'er confess What sighs and joy and grief and happiness Would flash from me to you with lightning speed. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... gets there, he'll just toss the letter bag to the next man, who is sitting on a fresh horse waiting for it, and away he'll go like lightning. That's the way the news is carried to the very end of the empire ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... the swords of the men behind the prisoners gleamed in the afternoon sunshine, they drew back the white sleeves from their dark arms, and one by one, and in nearly every case at a single blow, following what seemed like a lightning flash, head after head dropped upon the sand, and the quivering bodies fell forward amidst the triumphant shouts of the ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Ferdinand and Isabella was first raised, in token of the Spanish conquest of Granada, on the 2nd of January 1492. A turret containing a huge bell was added in the 18th century, and restored after being injured by lightning in 1881. Beyond the Alcazaba is the palace of the Moorish kings, or Alhambra properly so-called; and beyond this, again, is the Alhambra Alta (Upper Alhambra), originally tenanted by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the countess for a sign of maternal weakness, saw none, and understood that a duel was down in the morrow's bill of entertainments, as well as a riot possibly before dawn. The house had revealed its temper in that short outburst, as a quivering of quick lightning-flame betrays the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the old struggle of man against the wild beast for his meat, against the stern earth for his bread, against the cold that cracks his skin and wracks his bones, against the wind that whirls his ship over in the sea, the wave that drowns him, the lightning that ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... life straight. The one pooh-poohed the enthusiasm of the other, derided his belief in humanity and assured him of failure: the other felt as if he had been taken behind the scenes and shown the blue fire of which the awful lightning of his youth was made. Mr. Birkett could not quite forbid the greater faith, the more loving endeavor which the young man threw into his ministrations, but he was the Sadducee who scoffed and made the work heavy and uphill throughout. He gave a grudging assent to the Bible-classes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... had fallen into decay. It stood gaunt against the hillside upon a natural plateau, the pathway to it, long and zig-zag, cut out in the hillside. Vegetation had taken root in the crevices of its broken walls, and some of the stonework, shivered by the lightning stroke perhaps, lay in the roadway at the foot of the hill. Silence reigned, and an eagle hovering on the heights above doubtless had his eyrie there. A thin stream of water trickled down the hillside, finding its way from the snow on the mountains, which reared ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Suddenly, as if by magic, from all quarters came hurrying up dark lowering clouds, covering the whole concave of heaven, a lurid light only gleaming out from near the horizon. Then, amidst the most terrific roars of thunder, the brightest flashes of lightning, and the rushing, rattling, crashing sound of the tempest, there burst upon us a wind, which made the ship reel like a drunken man, and sent the white foam, torn off the surface of the harbour, flying over the deck in sheets, which drenched us through and through. In an instant, the surrounding ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Like lightning this wonderful news spread through the crowd, and in the delirious joy that followed there was much disorder which the Germans scarcely tried to suppress. They were stunned by the catastrophe. The Crown Prince a prisoner! Von Hindenburg a prisoner! By what miracle ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... meanwhile the sea became rougher and rougher. The whole surface of the ocean seemed a vast plain furrowed with huge blackish waves fringed with white foam. The thunder growled around us, and the lightning discovered to our eyes all that our imagination could conceive most horrible. Our boat, beset on all sides by the winds, and at every instant tossed on the summit of mountains of water, was very nearly sunk in spite of our every effort in baling it, when we discovered a large ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... spoke, the still and vast features of the goddess seemed suddenly to glow with life; through the black marble, as through a transparent veil, flushed luminously a crimson and burning hue; around the head played and darted coruscations of livid lightning; the eyes became like balls of lurid fire, and seemed fixed in withering and intolerable wrath upon the countenance of the Greek. Awed and appalled by this sudden and mystic answer to the prayer of his ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... bed, as I had asked her to do. But after a while I had to put out my candle, for Grandmamma is rather particular about it, and then I was so sleepy I fell asleep. I was awakened by a noise and a sort of a flashing, and I thought it was thunder and lightning, but it was only Jael; she had come stumping in, and was flashing the Rushlight about before my eyes to see if I was asleep, and when she saw I was, she wanted to take it away again, but I begged and prayed, and then I said Grandmamma had promised, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of attention, I saw his mind traveling at lightning speed in search of my hidden purpose along every avenue ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... herd of these tremendous animals came to the Big-bone Licks, and began a universal destruction of the bear, deer, elk, buffalo, and other animals, which had been created for the use of the Indians. The Great Man above, looking down and seeing this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighbouring mountain, on a rock, (on which his seat and the prints of his feet are to be seen to this day) and hurled his bolts among them, till the whole ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... but when heaven breathed free. Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out into light From the rims of the storm to the sea's dark edge with flames that were flowerlike and white. The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that laugh as they fade From the cloud's black base to the black wave's brim rejoiced in the light they made. Far westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous tune, Shone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast smile of ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... together. The two ladies huddled together under an inadequate parasol. There was a lightning flash, and Miss Lavish who was nervous, screamed from the carriage in front. At the next flash, Lucy screamed also. Mr. Eager addressed ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Near day—with a record crowd, and hot, bright summer weather. The track was well known to be lightning fast, and the entry list was so big and puzzling that the Far and Near might well prove anybody's race. There were favorites, of course, also rank outsiders. One heard their names everywhere in the massed throng that ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... many years ago, but cannot recollect the authority, "That, when Alexander besieged a certain city in India, the Brachmans, by the power of magic, raised a cloud of smoke around the walls, whence broke frequent flashes of lightning, with thunder, and the thunderbolts slew many of his soldiers." This would infer the very ancient use of fire-arms of some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Wildfire broke that silence with a whistle which to Slone's overstrained faculties seemed a blast as piercing as the splitting sound of lightning. And with the whistle Wildfire plunged up toward the pass. Slone yelled at the top of his lungs and fired his gun before he could terrorize the stallion and drive him back down the slope. Soon Wildfire became again a running black ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... add, in connection with this most important subject, that in order to increase security against the effects of lightning, a magazine should be placed, if practicable, so as not to include a ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... The lightning shone playfully round us; The thunder ferociously growled; The hail beat upon us in bullets; And the wind everlastingly howled. We turned to descend to the Scheideck, Eyes blinded, ears deafened, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... first object below us as the succession of deep columns which I had seen some hours before, and which appeared to have been rooted to the ground ever since. But an aide-de-camp from the circle where the count stood, darted down on the plain, and, as if a flash of lightning had awoke them, all were instantly in motion. The columns on the right now made a sudden rush forward, and to my surprise, four or five strong brigades, which rapidly followed from the centre, took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... a great bunch of the flaming paper and flung it on the serpent's shining coils. In practically the same gesture he reached with lightning quickness ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Bonijol of Geneva[A] is said to have constructed very delicate apparatus for the decomposition of water by common electricity. By connecting an insulated lightning rod with his apparatus, the decomposition of the water proceeded in a continuous and rapid manner even when the electricity of the atmosphere was not very powerful. The apparatus is not described; but ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... and a mile to either side. The road is lined with poplars three feet across and as high as a five-story building. For the four miles the road was piled with branches of these trees. The trees themselves were split as by lightning, or torn in half, as with your hands you could tear apart a loaf of bread. Through some, solid shell had passed, leaving clean holes. Others looked as though drunken woodsmen with axes from roots to topmost branches had slashed them in crazy fury. Some shells had broken ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... Old World.... The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader." This statement will do at least to set against Buffon's account of this part of the ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... streams of gray bleating sheep. Here ungreased bullock carts screamed. From the blue-grass pampas they drove them, where the birds sang, and water rippled, where was the gentleness of summer rain, where was the majesty of great storms, clouds magnificently black and jagged lightning, where were great white moons and life-giving suns, where was the serpent in the grass, and the unique tree, where were swift horses.... Beeves that had once been red awkward calves, and then sullen, stupid little bullocks, and then proud ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... they're coming this way fast now?" observed Bristles, tightening his grip on the club he had selected from many that lay under a tree shattered by a bolt of lightning the ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... I crossed the old bridge, in the opening murmur of a coming storm, I had an illumination which came as suddenly as the first flash of lightning that followed just afterwards. It had been a matter of astonishment to me all day long that nobody, with the exception of the one man at East Ord, had noticed Maisie as she went along the road between Berwick and Mindrum on the previous evening—now I remembered, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... small fore stay-sail, and a close-reefed main top-sail were left standing. The bank of cloud to the south had risen considerably and, when darkness closed in, the upper edge was lit up by the almost incessant flicker of lightning. The upper spars were sent down on deck and then, there being nothing more to be done, the crew, who had all donned ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... Mr. Shaw. Open up and let us in. It's Dave Bank and Ed Hunter. We can't make the cabin before the rain." Shaw could see their faces now and then by the flashes of lightning and he recognized the two woodsmen, who doubtless had been ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... in fact, gone up the lightning-conductor, which runs down a bell-tower remarkably high, Colmoor having been built during the Napoleonic wars for French prisoners at a time when the theory was accepted that a lightning-conductor protects a space whose radius is double the height of the conductor. The tower is a five-sided structure ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... scene was gathering while the sun shone so brightly in the tower apartment. An electric shock will gather and burst a cloud large enough to bring midnight and deluge at noonday. Mr. Gibson understood the importance of lightning arresters, but was not prepared to apply them in his home. The women could do nothing; and, of course, I, the only person in the world who might have transformed the current to a harmless voltage, had been shunned as ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... compelled it to stand. This seemed to him a new and terrible sorcery; but Helga likewise leaped from the saddle, and stood on the ground. The child's short garment reached only to her knee. She plucked the sharp knife from her girdle, and quick as lightning she rushed in ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Aetius abandoned the possession of Pannonia to his faithful confederates. The Romans of the East were not less apprehensive of the arms of Rugilas, which threatened the provinces, or even the capital. Some ecclesiastical historians have destroyed the Barbarians with lightning and pestilence; [3] but Theodosius was reduced to the more humble expedient of stipulating an annual payment of three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, and of disguising this dishonorable tribute by the title of general, which the king of the Huns ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Milt!" he called, cordially, as he came forward with extended hand. His greeting was sincere, but the lightning glance he shot over Dale was not born of his pleasure. Seen in daylight, Beasley was a big, bold, bluff man, with strong, dark features. His aggressive presence suggested that he was a good friend and a ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... the direction of the sky. Instantly the sound of the fluttering and swish of wings was heard, and in a moment a splendid eagle landed gracefully at their feet. Taking their seats upon its back, they found themselves flashing at lightning speed away through the darkness of the night. Higher and higher they rose, till they had pierced the heavy masses of clouds which hung hovering in the sky. Swift as an arrow the eagle still cleft its ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the powder-ship, the Morning Star, where she swung at her moorings off from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that shook ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was any telling what the artistic temperament would do next!" Had we announced an air-ship voyage to the moon, they would have regarded us as comparatively reasonable, but to walk—to walk—some four or five hundred miles in America, of all countries, a country of palace cars and, lightning limited expresses, not to mention homicidal touring automobiles, seemed like—what shall I say?—well, as though one should start out for New Zealand in a row-boat, or make the trip to ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... doors and the shattering of window panes. A violent storm had suddenly blown up and the wind was working havoc with unfastened blinds and shutters. There was no use thinking of holding a candle or a lamp. Besides, the lightning flashed so brightly that I was able to grope my way through the long line of empty rooms, tighten the fastenings, and shut the windows. I had reached the second story without mishap and without hearing the slightest footstep within doors. All my little servants were so exhausted ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... causes inscrutable, she would always re-appear smiling; but, as to any conscience of wrong, she seemed to have no more than Nature herself, who looks out with her smiling face after hours of thunder, lightning, and rain; and, although this treatment brought her out of them sooner, the fits themselves came ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... of lightning, followed immediately by a clap of thunder, startled them. Maurice went to the door and looked out. "It is going to be a ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... little girl you were," the Captain went on. "You have forgotten, I dare say, the old-fashioned sea-songs that he used to be so fond of teaching you. It was the strangest and prettiest contrast, to hear your small piping child's voice singing of storms and shipwrecks, and thunder and lightning, and reefing sails in cold and darkness, without the least idea of what it all meant. Your mother was strict in those days; you never amused her as you used to amuse your father and me. When she caught you searching my pockets for sweetmeats, she accused me of destroying your digestion ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... trunks of trees, and the poor goddess does not want to go with them in the least. All the other gods declare, too, that she shall not go with them, and the giants insist that she shall. The Thunder God is there and he has a wonderful hammer, a blow of which is like a stroke of lightning. He is about to strike the giants with it, and that, you may be sure, would settle the whole matter, big as they are, but the Father of the Gods will not let him harm them. He has promised, and whatever happens ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... for luck: the lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And I never saw a boat ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and Mishutka came back from fishing and had breakfast. At two o'clock they had dinner, and at four o'clock they drove off somewhere in a carriage. The white horses bore them away with the swiftness of lightning. At seven o'clock visitors came to see them—all of them men. They were playing cards on two tables in the verandah till midnight. One of the men played superbly on the piano. The visitors played, ate, drank, and laughed. Ivan Petrovitch ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... servants of the good shepherd who took the lost lamb with double tenderness into his arms! O thou good Shepherd, how have your words been perverted; How have your eternal truths been falsified into their exact contrary. But to-day when I sat amidst the flash of lightning and the roll of thunder in the Tiergarten and certain Berlin hyaenas were prowling about me, I felt the crushed and restless soul of my sister close beside me. How many nights, in her poor life, may she not have sat shelterless on such ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... sorts not far from it. Obsession. Brain-storm. Supernormal excitement. Passing commotion of the senses. Comes as suddenly as a summer tempest—thunder and lightning and ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... to the maid in order to tell her this. Instantly the suspicious stranger drew his dagger; but I had time to explain the matter to the woman, who explained in a word or two to him in a low voice. On hearing my opinion, a quick, slight shudder ran through him from head to foot like a lightning flash; I fancied I could see him turn pale under his ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... mountains of Gilboa, never may dew Descend on your verdure so green; Loud thunder may roar, and fierce lightning may glow But never ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... lightning, in the silence which followed, he went back to his original criticism of himself, that he was a fool. Naturally she would request him to leave. She would ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... lo and behold! Meg was gone and the Beauty too. So I run across here, and found Meg and the Beauty getting their supper as quiet as possible. Meg had heard the toff talking to the policeman—though I didn't know she was standing so near—and whisked her off and away as quick as lightning.' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... poured over the land the crops are stunted and uncertain. For six or seven months in the year scarcely any rain falls, and scarcely a cloud darkens the sky. In October the early rain commences, with much thunder and lightning; and in April the latter rain becomes light and uncertain, and generally ceases altogether. Then the sky becomes intensely blue, and the sun comes out in all his glory, or rather in all her glory, for with the Arabs the sun is feminine. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... looking on from the bank, I do think I should be lucky this time. Henley is a long way from Barkington, but it is a pretty place; all the ladies admire it, and like to see both the universities out and a stunning race.' Oh, well, there is an epithet. One would think thunder was going to race lightning, instead of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... soon burst, and it grew so dark that, except when the lightning flashed, I could not see my hand before my face. Yet on I went, though wondering that the path along which I groped my way led upward, until the lightning showed me that, by mistake, I had taken the road to Greifenstein. I turned back, and while ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... removed, under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the group; and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair and eyes and suit of sables made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves into his stories, while the shifting presence of the Brook-Farmer played like heat-lightning ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... than the darkness. It moved at a great rate, and the loud vibrations followed it. For a moment or two, touched by one of the long rays of light it was revealed—a death-ship, white from stem to stern and crossing the sky like a streak of lightning. It went into the darkness again and its passage could only be seen now by some little flames which seemed to fall from it. They went out like French matches, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... silvery light, almost, swifter in its motion than his instrument could follow. But even in that swift flight Danny's eyes observed one fact: the enemy ship was coming down; it slanted in on that long volplane that must have ripped the air apart like a bolt of lightning. And Danny's red rocket swept out and around in a long, looping flight, while he laid the ship on the ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... roof, and doors And windows in it, and veranda-floors And balusters all 'round it—yes, and at Each end a chimney—painted red at that And penciled white, to look like little bricks; And, to cap all the builder's cunning tricks, Two tiny little lightning-rods were run Straight up their sides, and twinkled in the sun. Who built it? Nay, no answer but a smile.— It may be you can guess who, afterwhile. Home in his stall, "Old Sorrel" munched his hay And oats and corn, and switched the flies away, In a repose of patience good to see, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... the occasional sleepy chirp and flutter of a bird. Off somewhere in the gathering dusk a lonely owl hooted eerily. Still there was storm in the warm, sweet air to-night and back yonder over the hills to the north, the sky brightened fitfully with lightning. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the fellers with the guns, if they have quit," commented Vittum. "They might as well try to lick the lightning in a thundercloud." ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... "we must look to our conduct in the presence of one who talked with Sir William Wyndham and was a visitor in the house of Sir Hans Sloane before we were born; whose tireless intellect has been a confidant of Nature, a playmate of the Lightning and an inventor of ingenious and useful things; whose wisdom has given to Philadelphia a public library, a work house, good paving, excellent schools, a protection against fire as efficient as any in the world and the best newspaper in the colonies. Good health and long life to him ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... with my friend a fortnight, studying the midnight effects of the iron-foundries, and cultivating the acquaintance of Julia. In these two congenial occupations the time passed like lightning, and I woke as from a pleasant dream, to the knowledge of the fact, that my visit was expected to be brought to a close. I had been asked, I remembered, for a week, and I had doubled my furlough. I hinted at breakfast, that I was afraid I must leave my kind friends ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... some twelve thousand years to neolithic man. Squatting in his rude hovel or gloomy cave, he listens to the sounds of a storm without. The howling of the wind, the flashes of lightning, and crashing of thunder give rise to that elemental emotion—fear. Fear was always with him, as he thought of the huge stones that fell and crushed him, and the beasts which were so eager to devour him. All things about him seemed to conspire for his death: the wind, lightning, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... dining-room, imperceptibly smiling. At the door the sight of his wife halted him. The face of that precious and adorable woman flamed out lightning and all menace and offence. Her louring eyes showed what a triumph of dissimulation she must have achieved in the presence of Mr. Duncalf, but now ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... perfect, and every faculty of his mind free from that which would degrade; yet how many drag their purity through the filth of masturbation, revel in the orgies of the debauchee, and worship at the shrine of the prostitute, until, like a tree blighted by the livid lightning, they stand with all their outward form ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... England, France, and Germany, the three great lights of modern civilization, are with us, and every American traveler learns to regret the existence of slavery in his country. The growth of intelligence, the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and lightning are our allies. It would be easy to amplify this summary, and to swell the vast conglomeration of our material forces; but there is a deeper and truer method of measuring the power of our cause, and of comprehending its vitality. This is ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of the species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and Nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... grand and acceptable work in the cause of human enlightenment, and the soul's redemption. The whole vast aura of the earth, the illimitable ether trembles and thrills with the majesty of the word. High above the thunder-roll of human discontent and awful pain, blazes the lightning of thought, and the undying aspiration of the soul. And thus shall we tell our story—thus record the history of the now oncoming race. Not in material emblems only, consecrated to the forces of nature; but in the spiritual records which tell of the freeing ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the lightning of the god. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... this point that the atmosphere, surcharged all day with the electricity of a fierce storm, found relief in a dancing flash of brilliant lightning simultaneously with a crash of loudest thunder. For five seconds every article in the room was visible to me with amazing distinctness, and through the windows I saw the tree trunks standing in solemn ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... with a powder-puff—histronic to the last; she was showing me how she had to resort to this to cover up the marks of my assault. I have failed in my picture of her if I have not portrayed her as a woman of moods and lightning changes. There was no trace of the late volcanic outburst in her manner when she greeted me and handed me a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to the Denver chief ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the most ancient tree in the Forest, and probably four or five hundred years old. It is of the Quercus robur kind, or old English oak, the stalks of its acorns being long, with rarely more than one acorn on a stalk, and the stalks of its leaves short. A few years back it was struck by lightning, which has left a deep groove on its trunk. In 1830 it measured, at 6 feet from the ground, 17 feet 8.75 inches; and in 1846 upwards of 18 feet 3.5 inches: but it has long since passed its prime. {208} Two other oaks, similar in form, and fully as large in girth, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... rout! Let thunder break, Let lightning blast me by the way! Invulnerable Love shall shake His aegis o'er my ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds |
