"Sirius" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conversation. But it was late, for Isaacs, like a true Oriental, had not hurried himself over his narrative, and it had been nine o'clock when we sat down to smoke. So I bade him good-night, and, musing on all I had heard and seen, retired to my own apartments, glancing at Sirius and at the unhappy-looking moon before I ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... simply "[Greek: os gar ameinon]." That is like Homer. The stars continue their signals. Vintage time is when Orion and Sirius are come to mid-heaven, and rosy-fingered ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... honourable felicity Of comradeship I can be chivalrous, And through love's transmutations fierily Constant as the gemmed paladin Sirius To that fair pact. We go, gay challengers, Beneath dark rampires of forbidden thought, Thread life's dim gardens masked like revellers Where dreams of roses red are dearly bought. We shall ride haughtily as bright Crusaders, As hooded palmers fare with humbled hearts, And we shall find, ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... from that grove and along the river. When the sun shed its first rays upon snowy Caucasus she stood outside the temple of Hecate. She waited, but she had not long to wait, for, like the bright star Sirius rising out of Ocean, soon she saw Jason coming toward her. She made a sign to him, and he came and stood beside her in the portals of ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Whatever dreams it has brought him— [Looks at the plans.] If he knows what those hieroglyphics mean, He's wiser than one who taught him. Why does he number the Pole-star thus? Or the Pleiades why combine? And what is he doing with Sirius, In the devil's name or in mine? Man thinks, discarding the beaten track, That the sins of his youth are slain, When he seeks fresh sins, but he soon comes back To ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... said" writes Walter Bagehot, [Footnote: On the Emotion of Conviction, Literary Studies, Vol. Ill, p. 172.] "that if you can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are 'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... rapidly—there was a very brief twilight interval indeed—and the stars shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... Feb. 20th my Syllabus of Lectures was finished: this in subsequent years was greatly improved. I applied to the Royal Society for the loan of Huyghens's object-glass, but they declined to lend it. About this time I find observations of the spectrum of Sirius. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... to believe that the great star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through the telescope, he has no measurable diameter; ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Unvexed by storms abides a temperate air; And fruitful Venus' star contains the seeds Of all things. Ruler of the boundless deep The god (11) Cyllenian: whene'er he holds That part of heaven where the Lion dwells With neighbouring Cancer joined, and Sirius star Flames in its fury; where the circular path (Which marks the changes of the varying year) Gives to hot Cancer and to Capricorn Their several stations, under which doth lie The fount of Nile, he, master of the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Paul Vence, "I shall not say like Renan, my beloved master: 'What does Sirius care?' because somebody would reply with reason 'What does little Earth care for big Sirius?' But I am always surprised when people who are adult, and even old, let themselves be deluded by the illusion of power, as if hunger, love, and death, all the ignoble or sublime necessities of life, did not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Vol. II. p. 647. [19] Op. cit. p. 115. Much of the uncertainty as to date is doubtless due to the reflective influence of other forms of the cult; the Tammuz celebrations were held from June 20th, to July 20th, when the Dog-star Sirius was in the ascendant, and vegetation failed beneath the heat of the summer sun. In other, and more temperate, climates the date would fall later. Where, however, the cult was an off-shoot of a Tammuz original (as ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... the skies. Sirius held the ascendant, and under his influence even the radiant band of the Celestials began to droop, while the great ball-room of Olympus grew gradually more and more deserted. For nearly a week had Orpheus, the leader of the heavenly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... break the dead brooding silence that surrounded the travellers. Nay, the Moon, realizing the weird fancy of the Arabian poet, who calls her a "giant stiffening into granite, but struggling madly against his doom," might shriek, in a spasm of agony, loudly enough to be heard in Sirius. But our travellers could not hear it. Their ears no sound could now reach. They could no more detect the rending of a continent than the falling of a feather. Air, the propagator and transmitter of sound, was absent from her ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... OF PERSIA.—The ancient literature of Persia is mainly the exposition of its religion. Persia, Media, and Bactria acknowledged as their first religious prophet Honover, or Hom, symbolized in the star Sirius, and himself the symbol of the first eternal word, and of the tree of knowledge. In the numberless astronomical and mystic personifications under which Hom was represented, his individuality was lost, and little is known of his history or of his doctrines. It appears, however, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... in the shelter of thy garden-bower, "Priapus, from the harm of suns or snows, "With beard all shag, and hair that wildly flows,— "O say! o'er beauteous youth whence comes thy power? "Naked thou frontest wintry nights and days, "Naked, no less, to Sirius' burning rays." ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... Sirius caught near fifty large fish, which were called light-horsemen from a bone that grew out of the head like ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in our flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole forest. Now what do you see, Lady Constantine?' He levelled the achromatic at Sirius. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... when, in 1838, the Admiralty had requested proposals for a steam service to America. This demand was prompted by the voyages of the Sirius and Great Western, wooden-hulled sidewheelers which thrashed along at ten knots' speed and crossed the Atlantic in fourteen to seventeen days. This was a much faster rate than the average time of the Yankee packets, but America was unperturbed and showed no interest in steam. In 1839 ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... up on a belief in a God were collapsing, Europe had long inclined towards the religion of Progress as the last tenable. Now I perceived as I raised my eyes to the starry expanse and rejoiced in my favourite stars, Sirius in the Great Dog, and Vega in the Lyre or Altair in the Eagle, that it, too, was tottering, this ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... these bounds all things are known, all things are explained; there are no mysteries but the whims of the gods. But when the plain on which we tread becomes a portion of the surface of a great globe, and the domed firmament becomes the heavens, stretching beyond Alcyone and Sirius, with this enlargement of the realm of philosophy the verity of philosophy is questioned. The savage is a positive man; the ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... power and sultry heat of the sun abate, and almighty Zeus sends the autumn rains [1312], and men's flesh comes to feel far easier,—for then the star Sirius passes over the heads of men, who are born to misery, only a little while by day and takes greater share of night,—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... valley, filled with grey shadow, out of which none return. To them I hold out a hand of greeting in the spirit. Perhaps, when the Great Cycle has been traversed, we may meet again. Perhaps in another Argo we may voyage from Sirius to Mazaroth, through seas of golden ether adventurers from world to world instead of from ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... proved to my entire satisfaction that the reason why my copy of Justinian has faded from a royal purple to a pale blue is, first, because the binding was renewed at the wane of the moon and when Sirius was in the ascendant, and, secondly, because (as Dr. O'Rell has discovered) my binder was born at a moment fifty-six years ago when Mercury was in the fourth house and Herschel and Saturn were aspected in conjunction, with ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... beaten. We moved out beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and then we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey, the Lud. We tried Terrestrial know-how, we tried Production Miracles, we tried patriotism, we tried damning the torpedoes and full speed ahead ... and we were smashed back like mayflies in the wind. We died in droves, ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... gloom And sits in Sirius' disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight, With smell of burning on every plume, Back past the ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... searching, exhaustive and sincere than any of our feeble ogles; if I have ever committed these or any other impertinences, it was only to retire beaten and discomfited, and to confess that masculine philosophy, while it soars beyond Sirius and the ring of Saturn, stops short at the steel periphery ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... colony, while Captain Phillip should be engaged in his government. For this purpose an order was signed by his Majesty in Council, directing the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to appoint John Hunter esquire (then a master and commander) second captain of the Sirius, with the rank of post. Although this ship mounted only 20 guns, and those but six-pounders, yet on this particular service her establishment was not confined to what is usual in a ship of that class; but, with a first and second captain, she ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... sorrow-nurtured, (One with nothingness though all things be,— Great lord Sirius and the moving planets Fleet as ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... war may be of interest at this time. Some one has called attention to the illuminating discourse between Micromegas, gigantic dweller on one of the planets revolving about Sirius, and a company of our philosophers, as reported in the seventh chapter of the amusing fantasy bearing the name of the above-mentioned Sirian visitor. A free translation of a part of this conversation is here offered. After congratulating his terrestrial hearers on being so small and adding that, ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... 60's classified the spectra of the brighter stars, according to the absorption lines in their spectra, into Types I, II III and IV, which correspond: Type I, to the very blue stars, such as Spica and Sirius; Type II, to the yellow stars similar to our Sun; Type III, to the red stars such as Aldebaran; and Type IV, to the extremely red stars, of which the brightest representatives are near the limit of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... to which our cosmical island belongs, forms a lens-shaped, flattened stratum, detached on every side, whose major axis is estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor one at a hundred and fifty times the distance of Sirius. It would appear, on the supposition that the parallax of Sirius is not greater than that accurately determined for the brightest star in the Centaur (0".9128), that light traverses one distance of Sirius ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Lachaise; that of the Poet Moreau, in the cemetery Montparnasse; bust of Taglioni, in the foyer of the Grand Opera House, Paris; bust of the astronomer Leverrier, at the Institute, Paris; a statue, "The Spring," Museum of Bourges; "Sirius," in the Palais of the Governor of Algiers. Also busts of Prince Napoleon, General Boulanger, the Countess de Choiseul, the Countess de Vogue, and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... exhibit changes of complexion in themselves. Sirius, as before stated, was once a ruddy, or rather a fiery-faced orb, but has now forgotten to blush, and looks down upon us with a pure, brilliant smile, in which there is no trace either of anger or ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... astronomical staff. There are to be found assembled all the most eminent men of science. Here is to be seen at work that powerful telescope which enabled Bond to resolve the nebula of Andromeda, and Clarke to discover the satellite of Sirius. This celebrated institution fully justified on all points the confidence reposed in it by the Gun Club. So, after two days, the reply so impatiently awaited was placed in the hands ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... grew, and Lance kept his head tilted backward. Alpha Centauri, the most popular target, was not visible at this latitude; and Barnard's star, besides being far too faint, lay on the other side of the sun. But there shone Sirius, just as bright as it had glittered for the Greeks, and frosty Procyon, a little to the north. Both orbs twinkled and beckoned, ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... soul away from earth, and send it on a mission of research among other worlds. Let it soar far away to where the dog-star, Sirius, holds its course; and then, though nineteen billion two hundred million miles from earth, a distance so great, that light, travelling, as it does, at the rate of six million six hundred and twenty thousand miles a minute, would require three years to pass it,—even then, when the journeying ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... great cordiality and good-fellowship, and at the international congresses so far these feelings have at times risen to fever heat. It is easy to make fun of this by saying that the conjunction of Sirius, the fever-shedding constellation of the ancients, with the green star[1] in the dog days of August, when the congresses are held, induces hot fits. Those who have drunk enthusiastic toasts in common, and have rubbed shoulders and compared notes with various foreigners, and gone ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... promote, Give laws, and dwellings I divide by lot; When rising vapors choke the wholesome air, And blasts of noisome winds corrupt the year; The trees devouring caterpillars burn; Parch'd was the grass, and blighted was the corn: Nor 'scape the beasts; for Sirius, from on high, With pestilential heat infects the sky: My men- some fall, the rest in fevers fry. Again my father bids me seek the shore Of sacred Delos, and the god implore, To learn what end of woes we might expect, And to what clime ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... through and through. From this I conclude that all bodies in the solar system had one genesis, and were part of the same nebulous mass. But this does not include the other systems and nebulae; for, compared with them, our sun, as we have seen, is itself advanced and small beside such stars as Sirius having ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... a sound Disturbed the icy air; No watchman on his midnight round Or traveller was there; But over All-Saints', high and bright, Pulsed to the music Sirius white, The ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... very subsistence of its inhabitants, depended on the annual overflowing of the Nile; and they looked for it with the utmost anxiety. Its approach was announced by the appearance of a certain star—SIRIUS. As soon as that star was seen above the horizon, they hastened to remove their flocks to the higher ground, and abandoned the lower pastures to the fertilizing influence of the stream. They hailed ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... first step in that garret. During her entire stay there, he had lived that life of ecstasy which suspends material perceptions and precipitates the whole soul on a single point. He contemplated, not that girl, but that light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet bonnet. The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he would not have ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... "With crest of gold should sultry SIRIUS glare, And with his kindling tresses scorch the air; With points of flame the shafts of Summer arm, 500 And burn the beauties he designs to warm;— —So erst when JOVE his oath extorted mourn'd, And clad in glory to the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... it; and, because of the hot blood of youth, I forgive thee, Harmachis. But now listen to me, and let my words sink into thy heart like the waters of Sihor into the thirsty sand at the rising of Sirius.[*] Listen to me. The boaster was sent to thee as a temptation, he was sent as a trial of thy strength, and see! it has not been equal to the burden. Therefore thy hour is put back. Hadst thou been strong in this matter, the path had been made plain to thee even now. But thou hast ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... when Venus comes out in the evenings, she is called Ntanda, the eldest or first-born, and Manjika, the first-born of morning, at other times: she has so much radiance when shining alone, that she casts a shadow. Sirius is named Kuewa usiko, "drawer of night," because supposed to draw the whole night after it. The moon has no evil influence in this country, so far as we know. We have lain and looked up at her, till sweet sleep closed our eyes, unharmed. Four or five of our men were affected with moon-blindness ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... England and America by steam, Dr. Lardner delivered a lecture before the Royal Society "proving" that steamers could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry coal enough to produce steam during the whole voyage. The passage of the steamship Sirius, which crossed in nineteen days, was fatal to Lardner's theory. When it was proposed to build a vessel of iron, many persons said: "Iron sinks—only wood can float:" but experiments proved that the miracle of the prophet in making iron "swim" could ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... you would visit the Observatory with me some evening, and look at Sirius. Did you ever make the acquaintance of a fixed star? I believe astronomers reckon about twenty millions of them in sight, and an infinite possibility of invisible millions, each one of which is a sun, like ours, and may have satellites like our planet. Suppose you see one of these fixed ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... as much there as here; and this double eminence now dominates the entire globe, and we are beginning at last to realize everywhere that this bright luminary in our firmament is no planet, like Mars or Jupiter, but, like Sirius, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... SIRIUS or THE DOG-STAR, the brightest star in the heavens, one of the stars of the Southern constellation of Canis Major; is calculated to have a bulk three times that of the sun, and to give 70 times as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the size of the moon to make one globe the size of the sun! Yet, notwithstanding this immense size, our sun is quite a small body as compared with some of the fixed stars, which, as perhaps you may know, are really suns at an inconceivable distance from us. The bright star Sirius, which is visible during our winter time, is not only very much brighter in reality than our sun, but must be many times larger; and there are others known to be very much larger than Sirius. It has been computed ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... "And Sirius and the Bull and the River," added Gladys. "It's just like getting a peep at the actors in their dressing-rooms before it is time for them to come out on the stage, to ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... for them," said Morey. "We can—and we can move faster than your ship, if not faster than they. The people of the dead star have moved to a very live star—Sirius, the brightest in our heavens. And they are as much alive now as their new sun. They can move faster than light, also. We had a little misunderstanding a while back, when their star passed close to ours. They came off second best, and we haven't spoken to them since. But I think we ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... the charts you use and you at sea, the charts of the heavens, where what stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog star, and Saturn, and the star you steer your ship by, the polar star.... And all the constellations, the Milky Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the Great Bear and the great glory you see when you pass the line, the Southern Cross ... and the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars—oftener read of than seen in England—was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... travelling at the stupendous rate of about 186,000 miles per second, takes about 4-1/4 years to reach our earth, or, to speak astronomically, Alpha Centauri is about 4-1/4 "light years" distant from us. Sirius—the brightest star in the whole sky—is at twice this distance, i.e. about 8-1/2 light years. Vega is about 30 light years distant from us, Capella about 32, and Arcturus ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... stars, Sirius is the brightest; but twenty thousand millions of such stars would be required to transmit to the earth a light equal to that of the sun. And if it were difficult to ascertain the nature and quality of the sun, it would appear ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... present First Sea Lord, the title of the Admiral in command of the whole navy, is someone he used to serve with in former days, so they go to see this eminent officer. The outcome is that Syd's father is appointed to command the Sirius, and is invited to take Syd with him as ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... far away the brilliant Sirius—the Dog Star, Cygnet, Centauri, the Great Bear, and a ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway, And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way. Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair They hover and squeak in the empty air. Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion; Up, then, and over to wheel amain, Under the silver, ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... history of stars in general. And when we consider that all other visible stars and nebulae are cooling and contracting bodies, like our sun, to what other conclusion could we very well come? When we look at Sirius, for instance, we do not see him surrounded by planets, for at such a distance no planet could be visible, even Sirius himself, though fourteen times larger than our sun, appearing only as a "twinkling little star." But a comparative survey of the heavens assures ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the Milky Way. Through his perma-glas canopy, he could see it trailing across the black velvet of space like a white bridal veil. Below his SC9B scout-ship stretched the red dust deserts of Sirius Three illuminated by the thin light of two ice moons. He looked ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... came the Stalk-fungi, 10,000 heavy-armed troops for close quarters; the explanation of their name is that their shields are mushrooms, and their spears asparagus stalks. Their neighbours were the Dog-acorns, Phaethon's contingent from Sirius. These were 5,000 in number, dog-faced men fighting on winged acorns. It was reported that Phaethon too was disappointed of the slingers whom he had summoned from the Milky Way, and of the Cloud-centaurs. These latter, however, arrived, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... far faint ray from Sirius rising, When through space first was hurled The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... the radiation. This varies within wide limits. The faintest star which can give an impression on the photographic plates of the greatest instrument of the Mount Wilson observatory (100 inch reflector) is nearly 100 million times fainter than Sirius, a star which is itself more than 10000 million times fainter than the sun—speaking ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... comet die, The brood of blazing Sirius fly: God's orb shall quench their sultry heats And drive them ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... the patch of sky where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph ... And higher yet—and there ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... we pass to Canis Major (map No. 2). There is no hope of our being able to see the companion of alpha (Sirius), at present (1901), even with our five-inch. Discovered by Alvan Clark with an eighteen-inch telescope in 1862, when its distance was 10" from the center of Sirius, this ninth-magnitude star has since been swallowed up in the blaze of its great primary. At first, it ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... the stars was possible. Without the Fitzgerald Contraction, the crew of a spaceship would age five years en route to Alpha C, eight to Sirius, ten to Procyon. More than two centuries would elapse in passage to a ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... "proving" that steamers could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry sufficient coal to raise steam enough during the voyage. But this theory was also tested by experience in the same year, when the Sirius, of London, left Cork for New York, and made the passage in nineteen days. Four days after the departure of the Sirius, the Great Western left Bristol for New York, and made the passage in thirteen days five hours.[1] The problem was solved; and great ocean steamers have ever since passed in continuous ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... /imp./ 1. Commonly found at the end of software release announcements and {README file}s, this phrase indicates allegiance to the hacker ethic of free information sharing (see {hacker ethic}, sense 1). 2. The motto of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent {suit}s) in Douglas Adams's "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". The irony of using this as a cultural recognition signal ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... place during the night of April 22d, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the expedition. These were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis and Vindictive. The Vindictive carried storming parties to destroy the stone mole at Zeebrugge; the remaining five cruisers were filled with concrete, and it was intended that they should be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. A large force of monitors ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... if to go overboard, and I went up to her at once, and would have spoken, but she cried out, 'What have you done with Lida?' I answered that she was safe, and demanded in my turn where were O'Leary and Jellicoe. 'Drowned, drowned,' she said, 'in the wreck of the Sirius. They'll never trouble you more. But Lida!' I thought that it was safe to take her into the saloon to see Lida, when they fell into each other's arms, and afforded the spectators a romantic spectacle. Don't think I am making a joke of it, for it was tragic enough in the result of the agitation. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conjectures. It has been suggested fancifully, that, if we consider the universe to be infinite, time is the same as eternity, and the past is perpetually present. Light takes nine years to come to us from Sirius: those rays which we may see to-night, when we leave this place, left Sirius nine years ago; and could the inhabitants of Sirius see the earth at this moment, they would see the English army in the trenches before Sebastopol, Florence Nightingale watching at Scutari ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... the heat That blazes in the days of Sirius, But men shall quaff thy soda sweet, And girls imbibe ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... went out. The night was flashing with stars. Sirius blazed like a signal at the side of the hill, Orion, stately ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... mighty bone she hath a pinguitude withal which makes the depth of winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress in the warmer solstice is pitiable. During the months of July and August she usually renteth a cool cellar, where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when Sirius rageth. She dates from a hot Thursday, some twenty-five years ago. Her apartment in summer is pervious to the four winds. Two doors in north and south direction, and two windows fronting the rising and the setting sun, never closed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... he watched the Six Flying Stars speed across the night sky—six glowing stars that moved in a direction opposite to the march of the other stars. Bright as Sirius seen from Earth, strung out one behind the other like jewels on a velvet string, ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... the attack on the Zeebrugge Mole: Vindictive, Iris, Gloucester. To block the Bruges canal: Thetis, Interprid and Iphigenia. To block the entrance to Ostend: Sirius and Brilliant. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... sky was a low dust haze, as always. I don't remember what a high sky looks like. Three years ago I think I saw Venus. Or it may have been Sirius or Jupiter. ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... bodies, indeed altogether terrestrial, one feels, naturally, rounder in his orbit, and a little more likely to see stars, after such a dinner as this, than before. Do I not, indeed, see around me now, all the stars of the intellectual firmament? Are not SIRIUS and ARCTURUS here, in their glory, as well as ORION and the rest? As my old friend CRISPIN would say, their name is legion! I would blaze, gentlemen, too, if possible, in honor of the occasion; but, as I can't Comet, meteors fall in lamentation ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... huddled together, helpless with mirth, while Berry, calling upon Sirius, clung desperately to the bookcase, and Nobby, clearly interpreting our merriment as applause, stood immediately below his victim, panting a little with excitement and wagging ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Mantillas, and the small obelisk on a rock above, we follow a path cut in a mountain of very red marble, having on the left a marble wall forming a parapet about five feet high. At intervals solid pedestals rise from this wall, bearing every token of having served to support colossal statues of Sirius, the barking Anubis, or the Dog star. One hundred and thirty-three of these pedestals with the marks just mentioned are still in their places, but only two figures of the dog were recognizable when I was there; these, however, though much mutilated, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the cup of the surcharged lily Beneath the buffets of the surly storm, Or the soft petals of the daffodilly, When Sirius is uncomfortably warm, So drooped his head upon his manly form, While floated in the breeze his tresses brown. He hung the stated time, and ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... swell! you power that does this work! You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread, Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius'? what Capella's? What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what boundless aggregate of all? What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in you? what fluid, vast identity, Holding the universe with all its parts ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of some of the comets), is insignificant compared to the distances of the stars. One of the nearest stars to the earth that we know of is Alpha Centauri, estimated to be some twenty-five million millions of miles away. Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, is double this distance from ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... which may be well seen in the winter evenings above Orion, had been found to move in an exceedingly small orbit, one too small to be detected except through the most refined observations of modern precision. The same thing had been found in the case of Sirius, and had been traced to the action of a minute companion revolving around it, which was discovered by the Clarks a dozen years before. There could be no doubt that the motion of Procyon was due to the same cause, but no one had ever seen the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... that the problem was solved. On April 23d of that year a most significant event took place. Two steamships dropped anchor in the harbor of New York, the Sirius and the Great Western. Both of these had made the entire voyage under steam, the Sirius, in eighteen and a half and the Great Western in fourteen and a half days, measuring from Queenstown. The Sirius had taken on board 450 tons of coal, but all this was burned by the time Sandy ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... stars comprise the group of the first magnitude, which include all the brightest stars visible, as Sirius, Canopus, Alpha, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... said that on the first voyage of the Sirius steamship to America, only five letters were received at the post-office to go by her, while at least 10,000 were sent in a bag from the ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... of Atlas, saw him coming and they fled away so fast that they were changed into doves. You can find the place where they alighted in the sky, just ahead of Orion. He still follows them, and his dog Sirius, who carries the famous dog star, is close at his side; but the Pleiads never allow Orion to overtake them in their long journey through the regions of the sky. The Pleiads are so beautiful that you must learn to find them, and this cluster of six twinkling stars, "a ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... apart; or, in other words, from a point in space where the sun appeared as bright as what we call a first-magnitude star, its companion, Jupiter, would have shone as a sixth-magnitude star. Many stars have companions proportionally much fainter than that. The companion of Sirius, for instance, is at least ten thousand times less bright than ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... that thrilled me—a name that, in those days, could thrill Europe. It is hushed now: its once restless echoes are all still; she who bore it went years ago to her rest: night and oblivion long since closed above her; but then her day—a day of Sirius—stood at its full ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... million times bigger than the earth; Sirius is twelve times the size of the sun; comets measure thirty-four millions ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... of huge floating structures, and a warning that the highest flights of constructive genius may prove abortive if not strictly subordinated to the practical conditions and commercial requirements of the times. The Sirius and Great Western crossed the Atlantic in 1838, and in 1840 the first ship of the since celebrated Cunard Company made her first voyage. This was the Britannia, which, with her sister ships, the Arcadia, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... they again crouch round the fire. Officers and privates press together for warmth. Other stragglers arrive, and sit at the backs of the first. With the progress of the night the stars come out in unusual brilliancy, Sirius and those in Orion flashing like stilettos; ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the boat. The crew fishing and making nets. This evening there was a cry that a ship's light was seen in the offing, which produced a considerable sensation for the moment; but it turned out to be only Sirius rising. ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... of course, four months in extent. Originally, as just mentioned, the season of the inundations began and coincided with the actual time of inundation. The more precise fixing of new year's day was accomplished through observation of the time of the so-called heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the Egyptian name Sothis. It chances that, as viewed from about the region of Heliopolis, the sun at the time of the summer solstice occupies an apparent position in the heavens close ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... arisen, but there was a beautiful clear sky. The great Southern Cross hung in the heavens like a giant lantern. On one side, and on line with each other, shone the two brightest stars in the heavens, the first being the Dog Star Sirius, and the next in order, Canopus, the one white, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... sacrifices. (Yasnas.) He is the greatest and best, the most powerful and wise. I pay homage, also, to the bountiful immortals (the Amensha-Spentas), the guardians of the world. And to the body of the sacred cow and its soul; (i) to Ahura (Jupiter), Mithra the sun, to the star Sirius; and to the Fravashis (guardian angels of the saints). If I have offended thee, oh thou greatest one, Ahura-Mazda, or if I have diminished ought of the sacrifices (Yasnas) due to thee, forgive me, O forgive me, thou unerring one. I declare myself ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... battle-field, was pricked by his conscience for sitting at table where the guests numbered thirteen. But he was afraid to die at the dinner-table. He believed that the great God who makes suns and stars and blazing planets to fly from His hand as sparks beneath the hammer of a smith, the god of Sirius and Orion, always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around each table, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lift his arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the elementary science of those days a little closer. How without Almanacs or Calendars could the day, or probable day, of the Sun's rebirth be fixed? Go out next Christmas Evening, and at midnight you will see the brightest of the fixed stars, Sirius, blazing in the southern sky—not however due south from you, but somewhat to the left of the Meridian line. Some three thousand years ago (owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes) that star at the winter solstice ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and meteors glare, And Hell invade the spheral school; But Law and Love are sovereign there, And Sirius and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Deities upon those stars, which appeared the brightest in their hemisphere. One of the most remarkable and brilliant they called Cahen Sehor; another they termed Purcahen; a third Cahen Ourah, or Cun Ourah. These were all misconstrued, and changed by the Greeks; Cahen-Sehor to Canis Sirius; P'urcahen to Procyon; and Cahen Ourah to Cunosoura, the dog's tail. In respect to this last name I think, from the application of it in other instances, we may be assured that it could not be in acceptation what the Greeks would ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant |
