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More "Meteor" Quotes from Famous Books



... passer-by. Chance unites these individuals physically, the occasion unites them psychologically; they do not know each other, and after the moment when they find themselves together, they may never see each other again. To use a metaphor, it is a psychological meteor, of the most unforeseen, ephemeral, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... not only gained a half-mile lead, but his car was apparently swifter. He knew its every trick and ounce of power. He drove superbly. He was reckless now, for he had not missed the knowledge that behind him was a meteor ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... I can recognise merit even in my enemies; and though I was so soon to be his victim, I could not but admire the thoroughly professional manner, indicative of past mastership, with which he set about his business. So far all his plans, generated with meteor-like quickness, had been successful; he was now showing how devoted he was to his vocation, and how richly he appreciated the situation, by abandoning himself to a short period of greedy, voluptuous anticipation, fully expressed in his staring eyes and thinly lipped mouth, before ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... any single incident can almost invariably be "explained away." It is the weight of a great mass of cumulative evidence which tells the tale. The most expert and exact description of the fall of a meteor would not have forced an acceptance from the scientific world; the relative improbability of the whole of the past experience of the human race would have been so much greater than the fact that the latter would have been discredited. Gradually it would have receded in the mind, and ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... a bit of animated flame made a tiny meteor streak against the blackness of the foliage—where a firefly quested for its mate, switching on its marvelous little searchlight. Beyond, on the smooth, broad roadways, four-eyed chariots of power shot silently through ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... further down the steep roof where it could not be reached. Above all, there was not a moment to spare. He did not hesitate, but with sufficient presence of mind to use his left instead of his right hand, he seized the fatal brand and hurled it, a fiery meteor, clear of the house. It hurt him cruelly, and for a moment he felt sick and faint; but a round of applause from those below (for now Miss Eulie and the children were out, looking tremblingly on), and Annie's cry of joy and encouragement, again gave ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... who wish to know more of this subject, will find all the latest information in "Appleton's Cyclopaedia," under the items "Aerolite" and "Meteor," where admirably clear and condensed accounts are given of all that is known about these bodies. C.A.R.'s extract states the theory ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... on the point of bespeaking a new connection. This is very unlike the daring criminal who has reduced the powers of nature to minister to her ungovernable passions, and speeds from land to land like a desolating meteor;—the Medea who, abandoned by all the world, was still sufficient for herself. Nothing but a wish to humour Athenian antiquities could have induced Euripides to adopt this cold interpolation of his story. With this exception ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... tear the tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle-shout, And burst the cannon's roar— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... The people at large adhered to their traditional cult and were easily swayed by superstitions. The first half of the seventh century was marked by abnormal occurrences well calculated to disturb men's minds. There were comets (twice); there was a meteor of large dimensions; there were eclipses of the sun and moon; there were occultations of Venus; there was snow in July and hail "as large as peaches" in May, and there was a famine (621) when old people ate roots of herbs and died by the wayside, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... myself to believe that a heart, the seat of so many virtues, could possibly become inhuman and unjust. I had been taught from my infancy to believe that elevated stations are surrounded by delusive visions, which glitter but to dazzle, like an unsubstantial meteor, and flatter to betray. With legions of these phantoms it has been my fate to encounter; I have been unceasingly marked by their persecutions, and shall at length become ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... conceit— The fancy made him glad! Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish! 5 The boon, prefigured in his earliest wish, The fair fulfilment of his poesy, When his young heart first yearn'd for sympathy! But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain Unnourished wane; 10 Faith asks her daily bread, And Fancy must be fed! Now so it chanced—from wet or dry, It boots not how—I know not why— She missed her wonted food; and quickly 15 Poor Fancy stagger'd and grew sickly. Then came ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... grandiose great, How many a servant of the State Had left a more enduring name. But all is not for all; 'tis far From flaming meteor to fixed star, From ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various

... Joe calmly, "at six and a quarter miles per second. Pretty thin, though. At that, we may have left a meteor-trail for the ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... hole, but I fear to do so," answered the inventor. "The Monarch is not under control, and if I attempt to make a landing I may smash her all to pieces. She may settle down until within a few hundred feet of the earth and then plunge like a meteor. We ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood

... both in character and in the lesson which it teaches, is the Book of Job. Of unknown date, as we said, and unknown authorship, the language impregnated with strange idioms and strange allusions, un-Jewish in form, and in fiercest hostility with Judaism, it hovers like a meteor over the old Hebrew literature, in it, but not of it, compelling the acknowledgment of itself by its own internal majesty, yet exerting no influence over the minds of the people, never alluded to, and scarcely ever quoted, till at last the light ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... everybody danced who could, and those who couldn't admired their neighbors with uncommon warmth. The air was dark with Davises, and many Joneses gamboled like a flock of young giraffes. The golden secretary darted through the room like a meteor with a dashing French-woman who carpeted the floor with her pink satin train. The serene Teuton found the supper-table and was happy, eating steadily through the bill of fare, and dismayed the garcons by the ravages he committed. But the Emperor's ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... a meteor, Clarence Tresillian had flashed upon the world of football. In the opening game he had behaved in the goal-mouth like a Chinese cracker, and exhibited an absolutely impassable defence; and from then onward, except for an occasional check, Houndsditch ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... and in vain had I striven, For hope ceased a ray to impart; When thou cam'st, like a meteor from heaven, And gave peace to ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... wished to go to her father, to throw herself on his breast, to pour out to him all her happiness, her affection, her joy, in words of thankfulness, of tender child-like love. How the white satin dress rustled and shone! how the diamonds sparkled and glittered, as, meteor-like, they flitted down the dark corridor! With a bright, happy smile, holding the wreath in her hand, she stepped into her father's room. But the apartment was empty. She crossed it in haste to seek him in his study. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... find it in Lord Byron's writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath his strength, tenderness sometimes joined with the phrenzy of despair. A flash of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil, like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over charnel-houses and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... fog until eight o'clock. As the misty cloud lifted above the horizon, the enemy opened up a terrific fire from his three batteries in front, mounting respectively two, eight, and eight pieces of heavy cannon. A meteor-like shower of Congreve rockets accompanied the balls, filling the air for fifteen minutes with these missiles of terror. The two batteries nearest the river directed their fire against McCarty's house, some hundreds of yards behind our ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... As a meteor at night lights up with its greenish glare flowers and blades of grass, twisting long shadows behind them, lights up lawns and bushes and the deep places of woods, scattering quiet night for a moment, ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... the young man, likewise laughing, "why, Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni must have come to see you in his ominous conical nightcap; and, do you know, you may see it flashing every morning from his window in the Spanish Square like a portentous meteor. But it's not by any means owing to this cap that he's called the Pyramid Doctor; for that there's quite another reason. Doctor Splendiano is a great lover of pictures, and possesses in truth quite a choice collection, which ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... right little black man." But there was no time for celebration. I must first answer my enemy. "You will remember that I kicked you once," said I, "and if you have a memory as long as my finger be careful I do not kick you again, else even people as far away as the French will think you are a meteor. But I would not be bandying words at long ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... successors who made these things possible, and all kingdoms and races, all nations, will revere the name of James Watt, the genius to whom the world is most indebted for the beginnings of all this later and grander civilization which has converted the slow progress of earlier centuries into the meteor-like advance of to-day toward a future as grand and as mighty and as noble as humanity shall choose to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... lady, he from a tailor's shop-board; and she from a milliner's hack room,—the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest of us, but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's day? Here is a tin-peddler, whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders, like a travelling meteor, or opposition sun; and on the other side a seller of spruce-beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here comes a party of ladies on horseback, in green riding-habits, ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... will it be before your voice, already weakened, and almost always forced beyond the limits of beauty, shall degenerate into a hollow, dull, guttural tone, and even into that explosive or tremulous sound, which proclaims irremediable injury? Is your beautiful voice and your talent to disappear like a meteor, as others have done? or do you hope that the soft air of Italy will in time restore a voice once ruined? I fall into a rage when I think of the many beautiful voices which have been spoiled, and have dwindled away ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... slow work, but the greater facility ought to serve instead; and besides, there is no urgent necessity for me to write encyclopedias, like Littre. He who cannot shine with the steady light of a sun might at least dazzle as a meteor. But oh! that nothingness of the past,—the most probable nothingness of the future! I am growing peevish—and tired; and will leave ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... from the field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue long to interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the world goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives and so ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... closed, were suddenly thrown wide open and the terrible God of War marched forth, the whole earth trembling beneath his feet. It was the breaking of a mighty storm in a placid sky, the fall of a meteor which spreads terror and destruction on all sides, the explosion of a vast bomb in a great assemblage; it was everything that can be imagined of the sudden and overwhelming, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... her. It was only a few nights before that I had seen Carita at one of the midnight revues, doing a dance which was described as the "hypnotic whirl," a wild abandon of grace and motion. Carita Belleville had burst like a meteor on the sky of the "Great White Way," blazing a gorgeous trail among the fixed stars of that gay firmament. She had even been "taken up" by society, or at least a certain coterie of it, had become much sought after to do exhibition dancing at social affairs, and now was well ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... says the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery of this great man—"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face, and frightened America more than any comet that appeared there in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons into small tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and turn them about his ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... a moment in Coleridge's history, and think of him at this period! Butler! Keate! Bethell! and Coleridge!! How different the career of each in future life! O Coleridge; through what strange paths did the meteor of genius lead thee! Pause a moment, ye distinguished men! and deem it not the least bright spot in your happier career, that you and Coleridge were once rivals, and for a moment running abreast ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift flying meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passeth from life to ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln

... been an intelligent direction of social processes. Many men in many ages have had ideals and aspirations, coupled, in some cases, with a limited knowledge of social practice, but social changes have come upon mankind for the most part, as a meteor comes upon the earth's atmosphere—unexpected and unheralded, startling those who have seen it by the suddenness of its appearance. Nor has there been any attempt on the part of the ruling powers to instill ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... went on smoothly. So long, he had a word and a smile, and a flick of his whip, for all the peasant girls, and odds and ends of the Sonnambula for all the echoes. So long, he went jingling through every little village, with bells on his horses and rings in his ears: a very meteor of gallantry and cheerfulness. But, it was highly characteristic to see him under a slight reverse of circumstances, when, in one part of the journey, we came to a narrow place where a waggon had broken down and stopped up the road. His ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... motion, acts the soul; Reason's comparing balance rules the whole. Man, but for that, no action could attend, And but for this, were active to no end: Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot; Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void, Destroying others, by himself destroyed. Most strength the moving principle requires; Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires. Sedate and quiet the comparing lies, Formed but to check, deliberate, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... of those hardened portions of the epidermis, usually occurring upon the feet, and vulgarly known as corns, Pliny the Elder, in his "Natural History," recommends the sufferer, after observing the flight of a meteor, to pour a little vinegar upon the hinge ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... resented the liberty as an unpardonable affront. The poet says Belinda wore on her neck two curls, one of which the baron cut off with a pair of scissors borrowed of Clarissa, and when Belinda angrily demanded that it should be delivered up, it had flown to the skies and become a meteor there. (See BERENICE.) ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... AEROLITE.—The Galt Gazette (California) describes the fall of a meteor in that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various

... become a forge of snow-white fire, A crucible of molten steel, O France! Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn And fade in light for you, O glorious France! They pass through meteor changes with a song Which to all islands and all continents Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame, Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child, Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power, Nor ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... his royal progress, pays but one visit and departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of—but we never love again. A man's heart is a firework that once in its time flashes heavenward. Meteor-like, it blazes for a moment and lights with its glory the whole world beneath. Then the night of our sordid commonplace life closes in around it, and the burned-out case, falling back to earth, lies useless and uncared for, slowly smoldering into ashes. Once, breaking loose from our prison bonds, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... Gray Pendleton closed his college career as he had gone through it—like a meteor—and Jason went for the summer to the mountains, while Mavis stayed with his mother, for again Steve Hawn had been tried and convicted and returned to jail to await a new trial. In the mountains Jason got employment ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... arrived, in the best of spirits, very much inclined to consider the night as still young; but his enthusiasm met with no response, and presently he departed with his wife and Marion in their big Mercedes, wheeling into the avenue at a reckless pace, and streaming away through the night like a meteor run mad. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... the day sailed on, like a dainty boat with silent oar on a calm-flowing stream, to evening, when, as though it had been a new-born meteor or great will-o'-the-wisp, there appeared on the edge of the twilight, along the distant horizon, a silvery glitter, which, drawing nearer and nearer, presently disclosed a servant in a shining band mounted on a great coach, with horses in burnished harness; with champing speed, which it seemed ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... that Maria had kept concealed in one corner of her heart ever since their first meeting. If he had known that her only desire was to be chosen and loved by this handsome Maurice, who had gone through their house and among poor Papa Gerard's bric-a-brac like a meteor! Why not, after all? Did she not possess that great power, beauty? Her father, her mother, and even her sister, the wise Louise, had often said so to her. Yes! from the very first she had been charmed by this young man with the golden moustache, and the ways of a young lord; she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... all about the voyage and the tunnies, the flight of the birds, the alarm of the crew when the meteor appeared, their disappointment when the fancied land vanished in the morning, their wonder at the distant moving light, their impatience and their turbulence. All this he did, still sitting on his seat and gesticulating. ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... discharged not merely balls of stone and iron to demolish the walls, but flaming balls of inextinguishable combustibles designed to set fire to the houses. One of these, which passed high through the air like a meteor, sending out sparks and crackling as it went, entered the window of a tower which was used as a magazine of gunpowder. The tower blew up with a tremendous explosion; the Moors who were upon its battlements were hurled into the air, and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... high road that led from Great Mallowes to Perrythorpe. The hoot of a motor-horn caused Rupert to prick his ears, and his master reined him back as two great, shining head-lights appeared round a curve. They drew swiftly near, flashed past, and were gone meteor-like ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... banks of the Po, reducing the cities he passed to stones and ashes; but there his ravages ceased. He concluded a peace with the Romans in the year of his invasion of Italy (451), and the next year he died. Thus he appeared like a fiery meteor, exerted his appointed influence upon the tongues and people, who were tributary to the Romans,—as rivers and fountains of waters are to the sea; and like a burning star, he as suddenly expired. As a specimen ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... being in Sayd bin Majid's boat, which was a third or so shorter than the one under my command, took the lead, with the British flag, held aloft by a bamboo, streaming behind like a crimson meteor. My boat-manned by Wajiji sailors, whom we had engaged to take the canoes back from Tongwe Cape to Ujiji Bunder— came astern, and had a much taller flagstaff, on which was hoisted the ever-beautiful Stars and Stripes. Its extreme height drew from the Doctor—whose patriotism ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... linger over this reminiscence. I was suddenly bowled over, thrown to the ground, as if by a sort of meteor. The corridor was dark; I could see nothing. I heard only ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... possessed the truer vision. Calhoun died in 1850; Clay and Webster in 1852. For the forty years previous to that, these three men were in every way the most famous and conspicuous in America. Others flashed, meteor-like, into a brief brilliance; but these three burned steady as the stars. They had no real rivals. And yet, though each of them was consumed by an ambition to be President, not one was able to realize that ambition, and their last ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... those pleasing imaginations with which we had entertained our minds during its appearance. The rest of the night we passed in melancholy conjectures on the light which had deserted us, which the major part of the sailors concluded to be a meteor. In this distress we had one comfort, which was a plentiful store of provisions; this so supported the spirits of the sailors, that they declared had they but a sufficient quantity of brandy they cared not ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... hims'ef, 'it's needless to go over that hunt in detail. We hustles the flyin' demon full eighteen miles, our faithful dogs crowdin' close an' breathless at his coward heels. Still, they don't catch up with him; he streaks it like some saffron meteor. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... within and war without. In this dark hour, one day, four sails appeared, steering toward the mouth of the river. Was this the long-expected relief from France? Or were these Spanish vessels? Presently "the meteor flag of England" floated out on the breeze, and soon a boat brought a friendly message from the commander, the famous Sir John Hawkins. Being a strenuous Puritan, he was a warm sympathizer with the Protestants of France. Returning from selling a cargo of Guinea ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... were the kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria. Each exercised an influence on the Israelites and their neighbours, though in a different way and with different results. The influence of Assyria was ephemeral. It represented the meteor-like rise of a great military power, which crushed all opposition, and introduced among mankind the new idea of a centralised world-empire. It destroyed the northern kingdom of Samaria, and made ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... we were on the brink. I shut my eyes, clung tightly to the arch, and took the plunge. About half-way down, the descent became suddenly steeper, and the lead-dog swerved to one side, bringing the sledge around like the lash of a whip, overturning it, and shooting me like a huge living meteor through the air into a deep soft drift of snow at the bottom. I must have fallen at least eighteen feet, for I buried myself entirely, with the exception of my lower extremities, which, projecting above the snow, kicked a faint signal for rescue. Encumbered with heavy furs, I extricated ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... tortur'd! Yes, Thor, my friend, thy words were truth and wisdom; That pity that she showed was thanks for sparing Hother: She trembled but for Hother—for the lov'd one: Each tear but begged his life. What cruel delusion Has led my soul astray? Ah, wretched meteor Of empty hope! thou, thou for me couldst glitter, As if I had been ignorant of her hatred. Ha! she has ever fled my path, my shadow; And when, to my own torment, once I wrested From the proud maid some sort of heed and answer, 'Twas mockery mere: she called herself ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald

... solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter—the letter A—marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... back to me. The unpredictable, the wild chance, the impossible possibility. That was all that could save me now. But what? Maybe another meteor would come along and plug the hole the first one had made. No. I had to think my way out of this one. But what if there was no ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew

... we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail— There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and Yale; And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint, And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... admitted that he was a poet, yet he was not one of settled grandeur of soul, brightened by study. Burns was probably aware of this; he takes occasion in some of his letters to suggest, that the hour may be at hand when he shall be accounted by scholars as a meteor, rather than a fixed light, and to suspect that the praise bestowed on his genius was partly owing to the humility of his condition. From his lingering so long about Edinburgh, the nobility began to dread a second ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... battered city still around you. Jack has the far finer mind, Burly the far more honest; Jack gives us the animated poetry, Burly the romantic prose, of similar themes; the one glances high like a meteor and makes a light in darkness; the other, with many changing hues of fire, burns at the sea-level, like a conflagration; but both have the same humour and artistic interests, the same unquenched ardour in pursuit, the same gusts of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... him, mechanicall-salt-butter rogue; I wil stare him out of his wits: I will awe-him with my cudgell: it shall hang like a Meteor ore the Cuckolds horns: Master Broome, thou shalt know, I will predominate ouer the pezant, and thou shalt lye with his wife. Come to me soone at night: Ford's a knaue, and I will aggrauate his stile: thou ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... other! Loving one another made them love God the more, and love cast out all fear. If this was the Last, they would face it together, and if it proved the Beginning, they would rejoice together. At sight of every shooting meteor, Julia clung almost convulsively ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... at night to watch the trenches at Fromelles. As far as the eye could see from the North Sea, away past Bethune and death-stricken La Bassee, streamed the meteor flares like a great Milky Way, the flares crossing and recrossing each other. In front of us the German Mausers sound with their constant "to-ho," "to-ho," for the Mauser has a double report. On the right the wicked bark ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... toward the structure, half their fleet behind it, with part still emerging from the water-tunnel. Rala boats rose before them, but nothing could stop them now, their force-shells raining ahead to clear a path for their meteor-flight. They shot down toward the block-structure, and Norman, half-crazed by now, saw that to descend and enter was suicide in the face of the frog-forces rising now over all the city. He cried to Fellows, and with two ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... Spitfire, Fury, Albion, Queen, Dart, Hawk, Margaret, and Hero-all vessels having flat floors and round bilges, where the coefficient became 1160. The third set of experiments was made upon the vessels Lightning, Meteor, James Watt, Cinderella, Navy Meteor, Crocodile, Watersprite, Thetis, Dolphin, Wizard, Escape, and Dragon-all vessels with rising floors and round bilges, and the coefficient of performance was found to be 1430. The fourth set of experiments was made ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... sick chamber, or from the cabin window of some vessel at anchor in the stream. Not a cloud obscured the deep, starry firmament, the lights of which wavered on the surface of the placid river, and a shooting meteor, streaking its pale course in the very direction they were taking, was interpreted by the doctor into a most ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... these prophetic visions, the Roman hero was fast declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people, who had gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor, began to mark the irregularity of its course, and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. More eloquent than judicious, more enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not balanced ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... rationalism, could from the latter spread itself immediately over the whole land. The result was that a somewhat superstitious generation was followed by an excessively overwise one; for it is astonishing how the grandchild feels when he knows that a nocturnal fiery meteor is composed merely of inflammable gases, while his grandfather sees in it the devil trying to enter some chimney or other with his shining ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... his wit is very brilliant, lighting up its surroundings like the sudden appearance of a meteor. The essence of humor consists in a contrast which places the object or person compared at a disadvantage. If the contrast is a dignified one we have high comedy; but if the reverse, low comedy. Some of Holmes's ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... nothing. Yes, far better, instinct told him that. Miss Howland had come into his existence, radiant, pure, beautiful, and so utterly feminine; as a meteor flashing across the night pauses for a brief instant in the sky before shivering to nothingness. This simile occurred to Dan, who, though no poet, was at least a sailor and as such a student of the heavenly bodies. Yes, a meteor which ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... Jesus himself, a "new birth,"[1] preceded by dark calamities and heralded by strange phenomena.[2] In the great day, there will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of man; it will be a startling and luminous vision like that of Sinai, a great storm rending the clouds, a fiery meteor flashing rapidly from east to west. The Messiah will appear in the clouds, clothed in glory and majesty, to the sound of trumpets and surrounded by angels. His disciples will sit by his side upon thrones. The dead will then arise, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... to his well-being; and her true relationships must be the constant object of our search. Before the knowledge of her true relationships disappear superstition and fear and mystery. The lightning's flash, the thunder's roar, the falling meteor and the sun's eclipse cease to terrify and alarm. Witches, hobgoblins and demons come no longer to trouble us; the most unusual phenomena awaken only philosophical research and curiosity. And what is true of the full-grown man is not ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands

... o'er him with an eye of fire and pride, Her pinions strong, with one short pull, are gather'd to her side, When like a stone from off the sling, or bolt from out the bow, In meteor flight, with sudden dart, she stoops upon ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... driven his car at a fine rate during the day; but that night the pace became vertiginous. A very meteor flashed through the suburbs of Le Mans and hurled itself along the highroad. Perenna had but one thought in his head: to reach the next station, which was Chartres, before the two accomplices, and to fly at Sauverand's throat. He saw nothing but that: the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... of Cleopatra must have been something like catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... Proudly stood in all his glory; Pope, as if his claims to speak Rested on the ancient Greek; And that prince of merry-men, Laughing, quaffing, "rare old Ben," Whose quaint conceits, so gay, so wild, Have oft my heart from woe beguil'd, Shone like a meteor 'midst the throng, The envy of each son of song. There too were those of later years, Who've moved the mind to mirth or tears: Byron, with his radiant ray— Scott, with many a magic lay— The gay and gorgeous minstrel, Moore, Rich in the charms of Eastern lore— Campbell, like a brilliant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... the retardation of the earth (which is hypothetically assumed to exist) may be due in part, or wholly, to the increase of the moment of inertia of the earth by meteors falling upon its surface. This suggestion also meets with the entire approval of Sir W. Thomson, who shows that meteor-dust, accumulating at the rate of one foot in 4,000 years, would account ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... reefs began once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around the Marie had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor burning on the flat, black belt ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... and revived; and the personal glory which he acquired by his own deeds of arms, was far more dear to his excited imagination, than that which a course of policy and wisdom would have spread around his government. Accordingly, his reign was like the course of a brilliant and rapid meteor, which shoots along the face of Heaven, shedding around an unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness; his feats of chivalry furnishing themes for bards and minstrels, but affording none of those solid ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... yield in part to his wishes. She could not disguise to herself that any change would separate her from him; now she saw him each day. His connection with Adrian and Perdita was never mentioned; he was to her a meteor, a companionless star, which at its appointed hour rose in her hemisphere, whose appearance brought felicity, and which, although it set, was never eclipsed. He came each day to her abode of penury, and his presence transformed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... triumph high! When speaks the signal-trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on, (Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, Has dimmed the glist'ning bayonet), Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn To where thy meteor-glories burn, And, as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance! And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall! There shall thy victor-glances ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... the Complicated Space-Time of the Fourth Dimension Goes Charlie King in an Attempt to Rescue the Meteor Girl. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... light was thrown upon the little world, the Yerkes observatory and Greenwich both uttering their voice, the Astronomer Royal announcing that the so-called planet was merely a meteor—not more than 400 yards in diameter, with a low velocity of two miles a second; and its distance was less than a tenth of that estimated by Tissot. The Yerkes observatory fixed the diameter at 230 yards. All, however, agreed in the opinion ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... sleep, hushed for a few brief hours in their humble moorland nests. The fall of waters from the weir at the Bridge Factory came up from the valley in dreamy cadences; a light dimly burned in old Joseph's window; and a meteor swept with a mighty arc the western sky. The soul of ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... have turned most of them greyish, with dates decayed, and names scarcely legible. But there is one upon which the paint shows fresh and white; in the clear moonlight gleaming like a meteor. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... falls: the Muse obeys the Pow'r. She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old! Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, 5 And all its varying Rain-bows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain; 10 As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... from the broad bosom of the river, leaving it a dead man's hue. Awhile ago, and for many evenings, it had been crimson,—a river of blood. A week before, a great meteor had shot through the night, blood-red and bearded, drawing a slow-fading fiery trail across the heavens; and the moon had risen that same night blood-red, and upon its disk there was drawn in shadow a thing most marvelously like a scalping knife. Wherefore, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. Then, then, ye ocean warriors! Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow: When the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... my birth-day, and I'll keep it With double pomp of sadness. 'Tis what the day deserves, which gave me breath. Why was I raised the meteor of the world, Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travelled, Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward, To ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... underhand intrigues delayed the relief of Cyprus, and the standard of the Sultan soon was hoisted over the walls of Famagusta—to remain there until replaced in our times—thanks to the wisdom of a great statesman—by the "meteor flag ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... had felt her coldness to him much more severely than he had that of Mary Bonner. He had taught himself to look upon that little episode with Mary as though it had really meant nothing. She had just crossed the sky of his heaven like a meteor, and for a moment had disturbed its serenity. And Polly also had been to him a false light, leading him astray for awhile under exceptional, and, as he thought, quite pardonable circumstances. But dear little Clary had been his own peculiar star,—a star that was ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... that it was my fortune to see the shower of falling stars in November, 1833. From the time I arose until after daylight there was no part of the heavens that was not illuminated—not with one meteor merely—but with many hundreds. Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard's window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... was listening, with a curled lip, to an animated discussion between Lady Mabel, Sir Charles Moreton, and another gentleman, as to the merits of a new actress, a dramatic meteor, then briefly eminent on the London boards. The Honorable Mr. L——, who was a savant in the small sciences that cater to amusement, pronounced her the Siddons of the day; Lady Mabel called her a ranter, then, as if alarmed at her ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... I had got the first plan well-going and was deciding whether to wear the mauve meteor or the white chiffon with the rosebud embroidery as a first julep for my friends, a sweetness came in through my window that took my breath away and I lay still with my hand over my heart and listened. It was Billy ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... you a mother? were you England's queen? Were Henry, Richard, Geoffery, your sons? All sons but Richard—sun of all those sons And can you let this little meteor, This ignis fatuus, this same wandering fire, This goblin of the night, this brand, this spark, Seem through a lanthorn greater than he is? By heaven, you do not well: by earth, you do not? Chester, nor you, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... a fallen meteor or star, a mass of metal that has fallen upon the earth from space. It is often called ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 48, October 7, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passeth from life to his rest ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... from place to place—like the hill-climber who on reaching one crest ever feels himself drawn on to gain the next—far beyond the zone which had in the first instance been regarded as the objective of the Expeditionary Force. The meteor of conquest appeared to be alluring "D" Force too far. Without examining the position of affairs closely, it was obvious that the farther our troops proceeded up the Tigris the longer became their line of communications, the shorter ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... or rather as the clouds dispersed, the blue hazy sky extended beyond the ring of light, and while the day advanced, and the heavens grew more clear, the whole meteor gradually disappeared, the circle vanishing first, and then the imitative suns. My companions assured me they had never before witnessed a similar exhibition during voyages in these seas; but more learned Thebans describe them as phenomena frequently witnessed in high latitudes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... this country, and with a rattle and a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected. Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at one another ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... powerful army of General Sherman. This daring and self-reliant officer, after his brilliant triumph at Atlanta the previous fall, had pushed on to Savannah and captured that city also; then turning his veteran columns northward, he had swept like a dread meteor through South Carolina, destroying the proud city of Charleston, and then Columbia, the State capital. General Johnston, with a strong force, vainly tried to stay his progress through North Carolina; but after a desperate ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... your reach now. We cannot give them to you until you are purified and have come up higher. The conditions are God's; the will is with you." These last words seemed to be repeated from the sky overhead, and again from beneath my feet. And at the instant I fell, as if shot down like a meteor from a vast height; and with the swiftness and shock of the fall I awoke. —Hinton, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... soundness was ultimately established, and its fundamental importance to this branch of celestial theory has only developed further with time. For these researches the Royal Astronomical Society awarded him its gold medal in 1866. The great meteor shower of 1866 turned his attention to the Leonids, whose probable path and period had already been discussed by Professor H. A. Newton. Using a powerful and elaborate analysis, Adams ascertained that this cluster of meteors, which belongs to the solar system, traverses an elongated ellipse in 33 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... so furiously that drifts of sixteen, twenty, and even twenty-four feet were recorded in various places. An inch an hour is thought to be the average rate of deposit, though four inches are said to have fallen during the severe storm of January 3d, 1859. When thus intensified, the "beautiful meteor of the snow" begins to give a sensation of something formidable; and when the mercury suddenly falls meanwhile, and the wind rises, there are sometimes suggestions of such terror in a snowstorm as no summer thunders can rival. The brief and singular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... now rapidly advancing, now suddenly pausing, turning aside, or receding. They came and struck like lightning; like lightning they vanished; and unhappily, in the dull age in which they appeared, there was no observer who deemed it worth while accurately to describe the marvellous meteor. When men afterwards began to trace the chain, of which this emigration, the first Germanic movement which touched the orbit of ancient civilization, was a link, the direct and living knowledge of it ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... our rigging, and the sobbing wash of the sea. The sound and the light so obviously came from overhead that we both involuntarily halted and directed our gaze aloft, when we became aware of an enormous meteor, fully four times the apparent diameter of the moon, and of such dazzling effulgence that our eyes could scarcely endure the brightness of it, while the whole ship, with every minutest detail of spars, rigging, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... all go To the grocer, and so do the dimes, But, O, for the little crepe meteor dress I saw down ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... what you considered your honest duty. You do not need to assure me. But you might be convinced, Mr. Thornton—convinced by good reasons—that it is not a young man's duty to ruin his own prospects and his own influence by undertaking something as impracticable as though he tried to be a meteor by holding a candle in his hand and jumping off a roof. I could praise his imagination, but not ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... superstitious notions, and they were strongly disposed to credit and propagate accounts of prodigies, and for that reason more were reported. It was said, "that two suns had been seen; that it had become light for a time during the night; that at Setia a meteor had been seen, extending from the east to the west; that at Tarracina a gate, at Anagnia a gate and the wall in many places, had been struck by lightning; that in the temple of Juno Sospita, at Lanuvium, a noise had been heard, accompanied with a tremendous crash." There was a supplication ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... fly, The sign of hope and triumph high! When speaks the signal-trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on, (Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, Has dimmed the glist'ning bayonet), Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn To where thy meteor-glories burn, And, as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance! And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall, Like shoots of flame on midnight's ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... wise, were grandiose great, How many a servant of the State Had left a more enduring name. But all is not for all; 'tis far From flaming meteor to fixed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various

... everything away, if possible, but it seems that I can't. Well, I've been ordered by Virgil Samms to report to the Captain, at once. See this? Touch it!" He held out a flat, insulated disk, cover thrown back to reveal a tiny golden meteor, at the sight of which the officer's truculent manner ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... deserves the Bays. We grant a Genius shines in Jaffeir's Part, And Roman Brutus speaks a Master's Art. But still we often Mourn to see their Phrase An Earthly Vapour, or at Mounting Blaze. A rising Meteor never was design'd, T'amaze the sober part of Human kind. Were I to write for Fame, I would not chuse A Prostitute and Mercenary Muse. Which for poor Gains must in rich Trappings go, Emptily Gay, magnificently Low, Like Ancient Rome's Religion, Sacrifice and Show. ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb

... the order and stability of the universe, extending as it does to all material bodies existing in space, guiding, controlling, and retaining them in their several paths and orbits, whether it be a tiny meteor, a circling planet, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... the weather had cleared up, and was as fine as before the squall. The change came just in time for me to secure a meridian altitude of Achernar, which, with a set of sights for time, completed the requisite observations. We noticed a singular meteor in the East-South-East about 8 o'clock this evening, darting perpendicularly UPWARDS: it lasted for ten seconds: between the hour mentioned and midnight, we saw a great many, passing chiefly from south-east to north-west. At nine, having ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... without the other! Loving one another made them love God the more, and love cast out all fear. If this was the Last, they would face it together, and if it proved the Beginning, they would rejoice together. At sight of every shooting meteor, Julia ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... times again. It is merely a matter of altering the valence of the atoms in an old element; whereupon it shifts its position in the periodic scale and becomes a new element. Nature accomplishes this alchemy by means of great heat, which is certainly to be found in a meteor." ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich

... was as regular in the delivery of news as the postman; nay, he often forestalled that government official in bringing down the latest intelligence of a landing on the French coast; of an execution at Tyburn; of a meteor in the sky; of a strike at Spitalfields; and of prices in the London markets. He was a favourite with the village crones, for he brought down with him the latest medicines for ague, rheumatism, and the evil. He wrote love-letters for village beauties. He instructed ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... Corresponding Numbers of Elevation in R. Obs. (Also English Feet, and of Readings of Aneroid Meteor. Soc. or Corrected Barometer in English ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay, Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet long, Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing; Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads, (A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads, Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—with ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... that Lady Mary was coming to Florence came to the ears of Horace Walpole, who was staying there. If he had not yet made her acquaintance, he certainly knew much about her. "On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor," he wrote to Richard West, July 31, 1740. "Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole[9] are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... Hang him, mechanicall-salt-butter rogue; I wil stare him out of his wits: I will awe-him with my cudgell: it shall hang like a Meteor ore the Cuckolds horns: Master Broome, thou shalt know, I will predominate ouer the pezant, and thou shalt lye with his wife. Come to me soone at night: Ford's a knaue, and I will aggrauate his stile: thou (Master ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Though we all took it for a jest: Partridge is dead; nay more, he died Ere he could prove the good 'squire lied. Strange, an astrologer should die Without one wonder in the sky! Not one of his crony stars To pay their duty at his hearse! No meteor, no eclipse appear'd! No comet with a flaming beard! The sun has rose, and gone to bed, Just as if Partridge were not dead; Nor hid himself behind the moon To make a dreadful night at noon. He at fit periods walks ...
— English Satires • Various

... eventually came under his control; an organizer of trusts, a patron saint of political lobbyists, a product of the worst and of the best of modern business! This girl who had fallen like a bright meteor across Markham's sober sky this morning was Peter Challoner's daughter. He remembered now the stories he had heard and read of her caprices, the races on the beach at Ormonde, her fearlessness in the hunting field and the woman's polo team she had organized at Cedarcroft which she ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... shot up from St. Mary's Tower, and poured its clear light upon the deepening twilight, like a starry meteor, and, at the same instant, the deep bay of ten or twelve blood-hounds resounded fearfully across the meadow where the horses were grazing, and the dogs flew on them, and tore some of them to the ground, and bit others, so ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... indulged for a short space in several feats of horsemanship, he sped towards the honored tree on which was suspended victory or defeat. His horsemanship was so perfect that, excepting the feather on his head which streamed before the wind, all appeared like the figure of a centaur, flying meteor-like along the plain. His lance, however, missed the middle of the ring, and touching one of its edges, such was the rapidity of Don Antonio's motion that the ring sprung high in the air, when the dexterous cavalier, to the admiration of the surrounding multitude, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... I am, to love is dangerous. For such as I am, nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite's shaft, or marks its passage by more direful ruin. But you do not know Euripides?—a fidgety-footed liar, Messire the Comte, who occasionally blunders into the clumsiest truths. Yes, he is perfectly right; all things this goddess ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... capital circumstance a joint interest with Greece, or specially authorized, by visible right and power, to interfere as her protector. The semi-Asiatic power of Russia, from the era of the Czar Peter the Great, had arisen above the horizon with the sudden sweep and splendor of a meteor. The arch described by her ascent was as vast in compass as it was rapid; and, in all history, no political growth, not that of our own Indian empire, had travelled by accelerations of speed so terrifically marked. Not that even Russia could have really grown in strength according ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... phenomenon. The Aurora Borealis has been generally considered to be in some way connected with the magnetism of the earth, and with the position of the magnetic pole. It is certain that the appearance of this meteor does affect the needle in a way not to be mistaken, and (although not invariably) the vertex of the luminous arch will usually conform to the magnetic meridian. Yet (and this is worthy of attention), ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... hearts are pure while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is nothing to be given. While such ideas are formed they are felt, and self-love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of fancy. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... expanse, blazed from the very zenith, and sped with incredible velocity down, down, till it disappeared in the depths of the ravine. "Ah," said she, with eyes still fixed upon the spot whence had gleamed the meteor, "p'rhaps it was an angel flying down to me! I won't be afraid, 'cause I know God will take care of me." Drawing the small plaid shawl from her shoulders, she spread it over herself like a blanket; sparing a corner for Fudge, however, who stationed himself upon it, prepared to ward ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... would have it, this human meteor descended upon one of Jack's assailants, and the pair went down to the ground together. At this, the other man turned and fled ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... shop-board; and she from a milliner's hack room,—the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest of us, but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's day? Here is a tin-peddler, whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders, like a travelling meteor, or opposition sun; and on the other side a seller of spruce-beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here comes a party of ladies on horseback, in green riding-habits, and gentlemen attendant; and there a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... so with the negroes. In their own country, or abroad, if they have ever discovered a desire to emerge from slavery this flame as resembled a meteor which appears only for a moment. And even, the scenes, which have been witnessed in the French colonies, and, particularly, the island of Saint Domingo,[229] serve to corroborate and support my theory. It is undeniable that the negroes of that colony have never ceased ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... 15 a meteor fell, which might be another omen—nobody could say exactly what it meant. Then about three hundred and sixty leagues from the Canaries the ships began to encounter patches of floating yellow-green sea-weed, which grew more numerous until the fleet was sailing in a vast level expanse of green ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... so and had all about the voyage and the tunnies, the flight of the birds, the alarm of the crew when the meteor appeared, their disappointment when the fancied land vanished in the morning, their wonder at the distant moving light, their impatience and their turbulence. All this he did, still sitting on his seat and gesticulating. When he came to the ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... General Sherman. This daring and self-reliant officer, after his brilliant triumph at Atlanta the previous fall, had pushed on to Savannah and captured that city also; then turning his veteran columns northward, he had swept like a dread meteor through South Carolina, destroying the proud city of Charleston, and then Columbia, the State capital. General Johnston, with a strong force, vainly tried to stay his progress through North Carolina; but after a desperate though unsuccessful ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... courtesy extended to the humblest junior by the Queen's Bench, and curiously unequal both with himself and his brother magistrates in adjusting punishment. It will be most convenient to insert the report of the Daily Electric Meteor:— ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... with that glowing face, A meteor shining in this sober place! Vast sums were paid, and many years were past, Ere gems so rich around their radiance cast! Such was the fiery front that Bardolph wore, Guiding his master to the tavern door; There first that meteor rose, and there alone, In its due ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... them there at Montpellier, like a brilliant meteor, flashed this wonderful Rabelais, in the year 1530. He had fled, some say, for his life. Like Erasmus, he had no mind to be a martyr, and he had been terrified at the execution of poor Louis de Berquin, his friend, and the friend of Erasmus likewise. This Louis de Berquin, a man well known ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... and round unceasingly, and with a rushing and roaring noise. Only to the right and left extremities of the cavern, the space between the pillars was left bare, and the apertures stretched away into galleries—not wholly dark, but dimly lighted by wandering and erratic fires, that, meteor-like, now crept (as the snake creeps) along the rugged and dank soil; and now leaped fiercely to and fro, darting across the vast gloom in wild gambols—suddenly disappearing, and as suddenly bursting into tenfold brilliancy and power. And while he gazed wonderingly upon the gallery ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... knew his surname, or maybe it was his given name, for Gregory could function as well in one respect as the other. He would boast continually of what he would do to wine, women, and song once we returned to Earth. Poor Gregory. The meteor that hulled our ship struck squarely through the engine room where he was on duty. Probably he never knew that he had died. At least his fate had the mercy of being brief. Certainly it is not like mine. It was ... ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone

... genius and a broader culture; and Webster was a greater man than Calhoun, because he possessed the truer vision. Calhoun died in 1850; Clay and Webster in 1852. For the forty years previous to that, these three men were in every way the most famous and conspicuous in America. Others flashed, meteor-like, into a brief brilliance; but these three burned steady as the stars. They had no real rivals. And yet, though each of them was consumed by an ambition to be President, not one was able to realize that ambition, and their last years ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... transitory passions. He will soon be more closely viewed, or more attentively examined; and what folly has taken for a comet, that from its flaming hair shook pestilence and war, inquiry will find to be only a meteor, formed by the vapours of putrefying democracy, and kindled into flame by the effervescence of interest, struggling with conviction; which, after having plunged its followers in a bog, will leave us, inquiring ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... not!' thought Minns, as the first gleam of pleasure he had experienced that morning shone like a meteor through ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... the ambitious man's pursuit would be, he is often striving for something more substantial than fame—that indeed would be the veriest meteor, the wildest fire that could lure a man to ruin. What! renounce the most trifling gratification to be applauded when he should be no more! Wherefore this struggle, whether man is mortal or immortal, if that noble passion did not really raise ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... blessed home— Adieu! adieu! Thou sawest how that she Sleeps in her holy beauty, tranquilly; And when the fair and floating vision breaks From her pure brow, and Agathe awakes— Till then, we meet not; so adieu, adieu!" Still on before the sullen tempest flew, Fast as a meteor star, the lonely bark: And Julio bent over to the dark, The solitary sea, for close beside Floated the stringed harp of one that died In that wild shipwreck, and he drew it home, With madness, to his bosom: the white foam Was o'er ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... orders to direct their movements. The little schooner slowly obeyed the impulse of her helm, and fell off before the wind, when the folds of her square-sail, though limited by a prudent reef, were opened to the blasts, and she shot away from her consort, like a meteor dancing across the waves. The black mass of the frigate's hull soon sunk in distance; and long before the sun had fallen below the hills of England, her tall masts were barely distinguishable by the small cloud of sail that held the vessel ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the war-cry, "It is God's will! It is God's will!" The Turkish general, fearing nothing from an army so scantily provided with the means of war, was taken by surprise, but hastily arranged his troops in order of battle. The sight of several natural prodigies, such as the sudden appearance of a meteor, and the favorable direction of the wind, acting upon the superstitious fancy of the Christians, impelled them to extraordinary exertions. The Moslem forces, on the other hand, were weakened by the existence of rivalries and discords in their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... other people their condition, because the possession of that condition would have necessitated a different personality, when he desired no other than his own. He had not minded the peculiarities of his birth, the vicissitudes of his life, the meteor-like uncertainty of all that related to him, because these appertained to the hero of his story, without whom there would have been no story at all for him; and it seemed to be only in the nature of things that matters would right themselves at some proper date and wind up well. This ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... engineering. Basil drew a pretty moral from their experience. "If you rode upon a comet you would be disappointed. Take my advice, and never ride upon a comet. I shouldn't object to your riding on a little meteor,—you would n't expect much of that; but I warn you against comets; they are ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... of Sans-Souci seemingly, in his choicest manner. Curiosity, which is now nothing like so vivid as it then was, would be glad to listen a little, in this meeting of two Suns, or of one Sun and one immense Tar-Barrel, or Atmospheric Meteor really of shining nature, and taken for a Sun. But the Books are silent; not the least detail, or hint, or feature granted us. Only Fancy;—and this of Smelfungus, by way of long farewell to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... in that battle, irradiating the welkin, O Bharata, frequently caused sparks of fire (to fly around). Similarly, the mace hurled by Bhimasena at the foe scorched his antagonist's forces like a fierce meteor falling down (from the firmament). And both those best of maces, striking against each other, resembled sighing she-snakes and caused flashes of fire. Like two large tigers attacking each other with their claws, or like ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... plumed, while among the half-dozen pairs of brilliant eyes that were turned with their owner's smiling faces on us, I saw one which never could be forgotten by me, that belonged to Anneke Mordaunt. I question if we were recognised, for the passage was like that of a meteor; but I could not avoid turning to gaze after the gay party. This change of position enabled me to be a witness of a very amusing consequence of Mr. Worden's experiment. A sleigh was coming in our direction, and the party in it seeing one who was known for a clergyman, walking on the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... Morris's deepest claim to the name of a great reformer: that he left his work incomplete. There is, perhaps, no better proof that a man is a mere meteor, merely barren and brilliant, than that his work is done perfectly. A man like Morris draws attention to needs he cannot supply. In after-years we may have perhaps a newer and more daring Arts and Crafts Exhibition. In it we shall not decorate ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... air, ready to alight upon the head of the person who provoked the malediction. It hovers over him, like a kite over its prey, watching the moment when he may be abandoned by his guardian angel: if this occurs, it shoots with the rapidity of a meteor on his head, and clings to him in the shape of illness, ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... a maid whose hazel eye Outshines the light gazelle's, And hid beneath its brilliancy, A pensive shadow dwells. But I've seen it illumed with a mischievous light, Which the sparkles displayed in the meteor's flight Cannot meet, as her laughter reverberates round, And merrily echo responds ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery of this great man—"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face, and frightened America more than any comet that appeared there in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons into small tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and turn them about his ears. In time of action ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... is that? Who rides on that meteor of fire! Green are his airy limbs. It is he! it is the ghost of Malcolm!—Rest, lovely soul, rest on the rock; and let me hear thy voice!—He is gone, like a dream of the night. I see him through the trees. Daughter ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson

... the pteranodon spread its huge brown pinions and took off. Then Nelson gasped in alarm, for, unaccustomed to the heavy weight it now bore, the pteranodon scaled earthwards with the speed of a meteor, wildly flapping its bat-like-wings. Down! Down! Nelson had an impression of people scattering ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... are often dull and inert in society, as the blazing meteor when it descends to earth ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... stretch of wing the robin is admirably adapted to the life of a mountaineer. You find him from the plains to the timber-line, sometimes even in the deepest canyons and on the most precipitous mountain sides, always the same busy, noisy, cheery body. One day I saw a robin dart like a meteor from the top of a high ridge over the cliffs to the valley below, where he alighted on a cultivated field almost as lightly as a flake of snow. He—probably she (what a trouble these pronouns are, anyway!)—gathered a mouthful of worms for his nestlings, then dashed up to ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... fixed, the least or nearest of which is for distance too remote, and for bulk too enormous, to point out any particular house or city like Bethlehem, as St. Chrysostom well observes; who supposes it to have been an angel assuming that form. If of a corporeal nature, it was a miraculous shining meteor, resembling a star, but placed in the lower region of our atmosphere; its motion, contrary to the ordinary course of the stars, performing likewise the part of a guide to these travellers; accommodating itself to their necessities, disappearing or returning as they could best or least dispense ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... relative proportions of sensibility and judgment in the various minds which contemplated the subject. In Germany, the enthusiasm which the Robbers excited was extreme. The young author had burst upon the world like a meteor; and surprise, for a time, suspended the power of cool and rational criticism. In the ferment produced by the universal discussion of this single topic, the poet was magnified above his natural dimensions, great as they were: and though the general sentence ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... saw a dark mass of rock, weighing hundreds of tons, descending like a prodigious meteor, hurled from the heavens. It had been loosened on the mountain crest a half mile above, and was plunging downward with inconceivable momentum. Striking some obstruction, it rebounded like a rubber ball against the opposite side of the gorge, then ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... tell me, 'tis my birth-day, and I'll keep it With double pomp of sadness. 'Tis what the day deserves, which gave me breath. Why was I raised the meteor of the world, Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travelled, Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward, To ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... what a lovin' little home body she wuz. And how her sweet nater, like the sun, would love to light up one bright lovin' home, and shine kinder stiddy there, instead of glancin' and changin' about from one place to another, like a meteor. ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... heart he left his home for that bright wond'rous land Where gold ore gleams in countless mines, and gold dust strews the sand; And youth's dear ties were riven all, for as wild, as vain, a dream As the meteor false that leads astray the traveller ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... Like a roaring black meteor the plane hurtled over the banks of the spillway, the eyes of its pilot scouring the ground. It zoomed just in time to miss the wall of the dam, banked, doubled like a scared jack-rabbit, dove down again, coming within feet of the spillway channel. Mad, inspired flying! But ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall

... words, the very reticence of which enhances their significance, did Collingwood sum up the greatness and the weakness of Nelson. Gifted, brilliant, faulty by reason of his emotional temperament, strong by reason of his enthusiasm—his all-enthralling sense of duty, Nelson flashed like a meteor across the ken of his generation to vanish in a haze of glory. He died at the psychological moment—his life, according to this account, the sacrifice to a dazzling folly. And the man whom he loved—the man whose sterling worth is swamped by Nelson's more vivid personality, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... no portentous, fearful meteor, there, Should blaze, and blacken, and create dismay, Shaking fierce furies from its snaky hair; No!—thou should'st light the Nations on their way, And be to them a watchword to fight well; And should they fall, as Poland's patriots fell. Oh! cheer them with their ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... almost buried in snow. Off to one side of the main building a faint yellowish glow was the plastic dome of the meteor-watch radar instrument. Inside Brad Soames displayed his special equipment to a girl reporter flown down to the Antarctic to do human-interest ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... the shaft One moment did remain; And then the harness snapped, and he Went flying through the rain; And fell, a four-legged meteor, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various

... steadily rising whizz and a series of most unearthly toots. Motor cars often passed the house and ran down the Boulevard St. Antoine at frightful speed, for the beautiful road is generally clear; but something, perhaps a small meteor again, warned her that this one was going to stop at the gate ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... Court dangerous illness must affect each member of the large and as a rule deeply attached family. Betty Vivian had come like a bright meteor into the midst of the school. She had delighted her companions; she had fascinated them; she had drawn forth love. She could do what no other girl had ever done in the school. No one supposed Betty to be free from faults, but every one also knew that her faults ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... acquired by his own deeds of arms, was far more dear to his excited imagination, than that which a course of policy and wisdom would have spread around his government. Accordingly, his reign was like the course of a brilliant and rapid meteor, which shoots along the face of Heaven, shedding around an unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness; his feats of chivalry furnishing themes for bards ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Harvard supplemented its account by recording the falling, just before dawn of the 11th, of an extraordinarily brilliant meteor that flamed with a curious red and green light as it entered the earth's atmosphere. This meteor did not burn itself out, but fell, still retaining its luminosity, from a point near the zenith, to ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... assisted me in making the observations and in the daily conduct of the Expedition. The observations made by Mr. Hood, on the various phenomena presented by the Aurora Borealis[1], will, it is presumed, present to the reader some new facts connected with this meteor. Mr. Back was mostly prevented from turning his attention to objects of science by the many severe duties which were required of him, and which obliged him to travel almost constantly every winter that ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... usual, discharged not merely balls of stone and iron to demolish the walls, but flaming balls of inextinguishable combustibles designed to set fire to the houses. One of these, which passed high through the air like a meteor, sending out sparks and crackling as it went, entered the window of a tower which was used as a magazine of gunpowder. The tower blew up with a tremendous explosion; the Moors who were upon its battlements were hurled into ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... though we were on a meteor hurtling through space. The split air shrieked and shrilled, a keening barrier against the avalanche of the thunder. The blast bent us far back on thighs held rigid by the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... away too soon! High hints at least, of the young meteor finding its way through space. Here was another of those, with a vast fund of wishing in her brain, and the briefest of hours in which to set them roaming. Brevities that whirl through the mind as you read those ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... points where the chief difficulties met them. There the cab and van drivers turned into or crossed the great thoroughfare, all ignorant of the thunderbolt that was rushing on like a fiery meteor, with its lamps casting a glare of light before, and the helmets of its stern charioteers flashing back the rays of street-lamps and windows; for, late though the hour was, all the gin-palaces, and tobacconists' shops, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... only a little superfluous gas—nothing I cared to show you. Read the newspapers to-morrow, and you will learn that a big meteor burst off the north coast the night before, and fell into the sea." Then he moved closer ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... fall, wink, and are overpast and renewed, while the gentle eyes of man hesitate and mingle the beginning with the close. These inexpert eyes, delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image that puzzles them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, and part slowly from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, whose moments are not theirs. There seems to be such a difference of instants as invests all swift movement with mystery in man's eyes, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... tenderness and gentleness, as will never be erased from my mind. Ah foolish girl, wilt thou for ever delude thyself, wilt thou be for ever extracting comfort from despair? No! Long enough hast thou been misguided by the meteor of hope. Long enough hast thou been cheated by the visions of youthful fancy. There is now no ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... licence which they had enjoyed under Prince Rupert's flag. They gloried in following a leader sans peur et sans reproche—one with whose renown the whole country speedily rang—the renown of a man who had revived the traditional glories of the English navy, and proved that its meteor ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... character of Cleopatra must have been something like catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... festival by a picnic, and were now hastening home, drenched, bedraggled, and in a sorry plight. They had scarcely reached the convent yard, however, where Sherasmin fancied all would be quite safe from further enchantment, when Oberon suddenly appeared in their midst like a brilliant meteor. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... fourth cylinder fell—a brilliant green meteor—as I learned afterwards, in Bushey Park. Before the guns on the Richmond and Kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far away in the southwest, due, I believe, to guns being fired haphazard before the black vapour ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... surprise, Koa thrust out his hand. "Shake, Lieutenant." His grin showed strong white teeth. "You're the first junior officer I ever met who admitted he didn't know everything about everything. You can depend on me, sir. I won't steer you into any meteor swarms." ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... when a child, to old Nostradamus, who antiquaries esteem more for his Chronicle of Provence than for his vaticinating powers. The sight of the revered seer, with a heard which "streamed like a meteor in the air," terrified the future hero, who dreaded a whipping from ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... early age of twenty-six, having suddenly disappeared from Florence, leaving certain work unfinished. A strange portentous meteor in art. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... alarm. The bulletin went on to say that there was no justification for the alarming reports now spreading through the country. This happening was not—repeat, was not—in any way associated with the cold war of such long standing. It was simply a very large meteor arriving from space and very fortunately falling in a national park area, and even more fortunately into a deep crater lake so that there was no damage even to the forests of ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... open casement, fanned My brow and Helen's, as we, hand in hand, Sat looking out upon the twilight scene, In dreamy silence. Helen's dark blue eyes, Like two lost stars that wandered from the skies Some night adown the meteor's shining track, And always had been grieving to go back, Now gazed up, wistfully, at heaven's dome, And seemed to recognize and long for home. Her sweet voice broke the silence: "Wish, Maurine, Before you speak! you know the moon is new, And anything ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... are all of short period and the changes of light show a noteworthy tendency to uniformity. The first thought is that these phenomena must be due to collisions among the crowded stars, but, if so, the encounters cannot be between the stars themselves, but probably between stars and meteor swarms revolving around them. Such periodic collisions might go on for ages without the meteors being exhausted by incorporation with the stars. This explanation appears all the more probable because one would naturally expect that flocks of meteors would abound ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... Spike, treading on one of these islands, was instantly undone. No power of will or muscle can save a man in such a case. Spike skidded. His feet flew from under him. There was a momentary flash of red head, as of a passing meteor. The next moment, he had fallen on his back with a thud that shook the house. Even in the crisis, the thought flashed across Jimmy's mind that this ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... superior vessels Venus, Swiftsure, Dasher, Arrow, Spitfire, Fury, Albion, Queen, Dart, Hawk, Margaret, and Hero-all vessels having flat floors and round bilges, where the coefficient became 1160. The third set of experiments was made upon the vessels Lightning, Meteor, James Watt, Cinderella, Navy Meteor, Crocodile, Watersprite, Thetis, Dolphin, Wizard, Escape, and Dragon-all vessels with rising floors and round bilges, and the coefficient of performance was found to be 1430. The fourth set of experiments ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... trumpet-tongued whistle—or rather horn—booms far away in the breeze, and finds no echo; the giant monarchs of the forest line the road on either side, like a guard of Titans, their nodding heads inquiring, as it were curiously, why their ranks were thinned, and what strange meteor is that which, with clatter and roar, rushes past, disturbing their peaceful solitude. Patience my noble friends; patience, I say. A few short years more, and many of you, like your deceased brethren, will bend your proud heads ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... extending as far as the farthest planet at present. We may as well suppose its materials to have been a swarm of meteorites as to suppose a chaotic fire-mist. Mr. Lockyer supposes the clash of meteor swarms to have produced new stars, and suggests the possibility of stellar or planetary bodies coming into collision, though no observations ever made yet ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various

... ecstasy, consoled, And my gaze trembles toward the azure arc, When in the wide world-records I behold Flame like a meteor God's finger thro' the dark But if, at times, bowed over the abyss Wherein man crawls toward immortality,— Beholding here how sore his suffering is, I make my prayer with tears, it ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... call Lucretius vapid next." Not I. 140 Some find him tedious, others think him lame: But if he lags his subject is to blame. Rough weary roads thro' barren wilds he tried, Yet still he marches with true Roman pride: Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright, 145 He streams athwart the philosophic night. Find you in Horace no insipid Odes?— He dar'd to tell us Homer sometimes nods; And but for such a aide's hardy skill Homer might slumber ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... Forward, a phenomenon occurred which excited the astonishment of the doctor; it was a very rain of shooting stars; they could be counted by thousands, like rockets in a display of fireworks. They paled the light of the moon, and the admirable spectacle lasted several hours. A like meteor was observed at Greenland by the Moravian brothers in 1799. The doctor passed the whole night watching it, till it ceased, at seven in the morning, amidst the profound ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... hate it sorely." . . . "The heresy was seen glimmering here and there," says another contemporary witness [Florimond de Raimond in his Histoire de l'Heresie], "but it appeared and disappeared like a nightly meteor which has but a flickering brightness."—At bottom this reserve was quite in conformity with the mental condition of that class, or as one might he inclined to say, that circle of Reformers at court. Luther and Zwingle had distinctly declared war on the papacy; Henry VIII. had with a flourish ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning; yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own color who have presented themselves ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... of a meteor ship held steady without the touch of the pilot's hand. Chet Bullard was staring at a radiocone on the instrument board in the control room where a voice from some super-powered station was calling. His own radio had been crackling a call, and now this ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... of wisdom. It flashes in the eye of love. It breathes in the spirit of piety. It is the Beauty of the heaven of heavens—the Beauty of God and his Son—the Beauty of "eternal life," "incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." It is not a meteor flashing to deceive; not a glow-worm, shining to fade; not a glitter, leading to bewilder; not a charm, working to tempt. No. It is positive, real, lovely, delightful, glorious, and eternal. It is the life of goodness, the spirit of love, the brilliance ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... peep into Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of some long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment my goodly aerial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to tell the destined name of my abortive play; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... most solemnly declared, the meeting-house was not only seen all alight, but a bell was ringing as a signal somewhere off across the darkness of the water, where, as he protested, there suddenly appeared a red star, that, blazing like a meteor with a surpassing brightness for a few seconds, was presently swallowed up into inky darkness again. Upon another occasion a fiddler, returning home after midnight from Sprowle's Neck, seeing the church alight, had, with a temerity inflamed by rum, approached to a ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... and patch up the hole, but I fear to do so," answered the inventor. "The Monarch is not under control, and if I attempt to make a landing I may smash her all to pieces. She may settle down until within a few hundred feet of the earth and then plunge like a meteor. We would all be ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood

... for the Queen of Sheba which exalts the whole conception and enlarges the reader's imagination through all the legends of the great King—and then it makes, for fresh adornment, the splendid piling up of the sounds into walls of gold, pinnacles, splendours and meteor moons; and lastly, with upward sweeping of its wings, bids the sky to fall in love with the glory of the palace, and the mighty forms of the noble Dead to walk in it. This is the imagination at play with its conception, adorning, glorifying, heightening ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... blown off the earth by that awful volcanic eruption, and that we are now floating on a torn-away world, or a new planet, in space, doubtless hanging between the earth and the sun. We are as unsafe as though we were on a wandering star, or meteor—only this island is not afire. But in time we shall fall into one or the other greater bodies of our system—of that end there ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... so summoned that it was my fortune to see the shower of falling stars in November, 1833. From the time I arose until after daylight there was no part of the heavens that was not illuminated—not with one meteor merely—but with many hundreds. Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard's window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The butcher of the town, Abijah Whitney, came out to ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... traveled and preached from the Cascade Mountains to Idaho, thrilling, melting, and amusing, in turn, the crowds that came out to hear the wild-looking man whose coming was so sudden, and whose going as so rapid, that they were lost in wonder, as if gazing at a meteor that ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... more than eleven years separated the two dates, and this brief period was crowded with triumphs for Britain on the sea. The "First of June," St. Vincent, Camperdown, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar are the great names in the roll of victory; but "the meteor flag of England" flew victorious in a hundred fights on all the seas ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... maintained, with credit, during a very long period. Johnson himself afterwards honestly acknowledged the merit of Walpole, whom he called 'a fixed star;' while he characterised his opponent, Pitt, as 'a meteor[376].' But Johnson's juvenile poem was naturally impregnated with the fire of opposition, and upon every account was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... death—half its inhabitants in sleep, hushed for a few brief hours in their humble moorland nests. The fall of waters from the weir at the Bridge Factory came up from the valley in dreamy cadences; a light dimly burned in old Joseph's window; and a meteor swept with a mighty arc the western sky. The soul of Moses ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... various places. An inch an hour is thought to be the average rate of deposit, though four inches are said to have fallen during the severe storm of January 3d, 1859. When thus intensified, the "beautiful meteor of the snow" begins to give a sensation of something formidable; and when the mercury suddenly falls meanwhile, and the wind rises, there are sometimes suggestions of such terror in a snowstorm as no summer thunders can rival. The brief and singular tempest of February ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... this he had with him the whole French people. But let it be said on the other hand that he did not make the mistake of trusting Bonaparte, whose blandishments he resisted during the whole passage of that meteor. And he was making no mistake when, to the very end of his life, he remained true to his love for the land he had aided in his youth. His visions did not all come true in exactly the shape he devised, but to the last he retained a glorious ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow

... in the gallery except faint up-and-down glimmers from the glass of the cases, and here and there the little spark of an eye. Outside there was a whole world of light, the milky way of the street with the meteor roar of the Elevated going by, processions of small moons marching below them across the park, and blazing constellations in the high windows opposite. Tucked into one of the window benches between the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... these, which is the glow-worm beside the path. You may get a very faint real illumination from him, lighting perhaps the space of your fingernail as he crawls along. He, too, merely serves to make the darkness visible. The firefly of the tropics is more spectacular. He blazes forth like a meteor, setting all the thicket aglow for a moment. The lights of our fireflies are more like a frosting of the darkness, as when the moon shines in winter and the light glints from ice crystals hung on the frozen ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... and gloomy dark There moves what seems a fiery spark,— A lonely spark with silvery rays Piercing the coal-black night,— A Meteor strange and bright: Hither and thither the vision strays, A ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... had been enough excitement in the air to start with when the hijacker crowd boarded the rum-runner and joined issues with the crews of the two allied boats but when from out of the skies there descended a swooping monster, apparently about to fall upon them as might a stray meteor from unlimited space in the firmament, and that strange, racking pain gripped their eyes, nothing but panic could describe their condition ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... and skill in discussion first appeared in his "Pensees sur la Comete." In December, 1680, a comet had appeared, and the public yet trembled at a portentous meteor, which they still imagined was connected with some forthcoming and terrible event! Persons as curious as they were terrified teased Bayle by their inquiries, but resisted all his arguments. They found ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... the intervening years till now that he took up the search. A third, being encamped on a hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all adventurers, though it might seem so easy ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in it! You can't live among people unless you live like them so the saints all leave the rest of the world in some way or other; the children die, and the grown ones go missionaries or become nuns they are a sort of human meteor shine and disappear, but don't really accomplish much, because no one wants to be meteors. So your old woman can't be a saint, Daisy, or she would have quitted ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... thinkable one fell to him, he was jubilant over the isolate thing, and with his joy value had nothing to do. He would stand wrapped in the delight of what he counted its beauty, and yet more in the delight that his was the mind that had generated such a meteor! To be able to think pretty things was to him a gigantic distinction! A thought that could never be soul to any action, would be more valuable to him than the perception of some vitality of relation demanding the activity of the whole ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... the literary world that had taken place quite recently. He was puzzled and tried to fix the precise point round which his thoughts strayed so hesitatingly, but he could arrive at no definite conclusion. The brilliant, meteor-like Sah-luma meantime flashed hither and thither about the room, selecting certain volumes from his loaded book-stands, and bringing them in a pile, he set them on a small ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... quite a turn, for she thought no one was hearing her but the old lady dozing by the fire. "I can't sing any more; I'm tired," she said, and walked away to Madam in the other room. The red head vanished like a meteor, for Polly's tone had ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... never gave way to weak repining; and when he entered those halls,—when he saw the deep fire in the eyes of Webster, and heard the superb thunder of his voice,—when he listened to the witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,—when charmed by this speaker, or convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,—there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... mercedusted, you (lit. your worship, excellency). merecedor, -a deserving. merecer to deserve. merendar to lunch. meridional southern. merito merit. meritorio meritorious. mermar to waste, diminish. mero mere. mes m. month mesa table. Mesias Messiah. meteoro meteor. meter to put. mezclar to mix. mi my; mi, me. miedo fear. miente f. (often pl.) thought, mind. mientras while. miercoles m. Wednesday. miguelete soldier, guard. mil thousand. milagro miracle. militar military; m. soldier. milite soldier. milla ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... darkness of the hulls of the distant steamers. And then, as they watched, some order seemed to grow out of that confusion of coloured lights; the high golden mass drew away; and then the others followed, until the long undulating line seemed like some splendid meteor in the night. There was no sound. Cadenabbia, with all its yellow fire, was as clearly deserted as this Bellagio here, with all its paper lanterns and coloured cups. The procession had slowly departed. The Serenata was taking place somewhere else. The gardens of ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... the brilliant sunlight. There stood the Queen, her meteor scarred side reflecting the light of her native sun. And ringed around her at a safe distance was what seemed to be a small mechanized army corps. The authorities were making very sure that no more rebels would burst from ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... too deep, to bear the probing of word or argument; He speaks, therefore, in the touching pathos of her own silent grief. Her melting emotion has its response in His own. In one word, Martha was one of those meteor spirits rushing to and fro amid the ceaseless activities of life, softened and saddened, but not prostrated and crushed by the sudden inroads of sorrow. Mary, again, we think of as one of those angel forms which now and then seem to walk the earth from ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... forth in his morning clothes, And yet, despite their misty blue, They mark no sombre custom-growths That joyous living loathes, But a meteor act, that left in its queue A train of sparks my ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... vow he firmly kept, And most devoutly wore A grizly meteor on his face Till they were ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... miles of comfortable wading through soft sand, I became aware of a ghostly radiance that hovered over the pallid expanse of the Chott. Abruptly, with the splendour of a meteor, the morning star shot up. Then the sun's disk rose, more sedately, at the exact spot where Lucifer had shown the way; and climbing upwards, produced a spectacle for which I was ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas









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