"Comet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the temporal. That which we call reason and science changes like the coats and ties of men. Material science talks loud, its eyes empty, clutching at one restless comet and missing the universe. That thing known as psychology taught to-day in colleges will become even for your generation a curio, sacred only for the preservation of humour. No purpose that confines itself to matter can become a constructive ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... magazine preparation, will have been unfolded or explained at the hour in which they may be read. The national firmament, which at the Christmas season displayed the star of war and not of peace, may at midwinter display the raging comet; or that star of war may have had a speedy setting, to the mutual joy of two nations who only one year ago played the role of Host and Guest, whilst the young royal son of one government rendered peaceful homage at the tomb of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... especially as we are now situated?" asked Mr. Lincoln by way of reply. "I do not want to issue a document that the whole world would see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... essence thou wilt enter the world's mysterious centre," And then the fairy bent her, imploring to the youth— "Thou'lt be free of Death's cold ghastness, and, with a comet's fastness, Thou canst wander through the vastness to the Paradise of Truth, Each day a new joy bringing, which will never leave in sooth The slightest stain of weariness ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... time I seemed to feel the vast immensity of the blackness before me. I think perhaps it may have been that path of light stretching out into the distance. As I looked it seemed like the reversed tail of a comet, or the dim glow of the Milky Way, and penetrating to equally remote realms ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... a laugh. With youth, health, ability and love he felt that it would take more than a stray comet to turn the currents of his life awry. But the woman did not smile; he could see that much through the gauzy yashmak, and her eyes grew grave and ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... shipped again to distant points. Along the same routes passengers are transported, journeying in all directions on a multitude of errands, jostling for a moment as they hurry to and from the means of conveyance, and then swinging away, each on its individual orbit, like comet or giant sun that nods acquaintance but once in a ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... establishments we see and feel every day.—A native of America who cannot read and write, is as rare an appearance as a Jacobite, or a Roman Catholic, i. e. as rare as a comet or an earthquake.—It has been observed, that we are all of us lawyers, divines, politicians, and philosophers.—And I have good authorities to say, that all candid foreigners who have passed through this country, and conversed freely with all sorts of people here, will ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... supposed, a circular nebula. Herschel regarded it as the richest mass of stars in the firmament, but with a small telescope it appears merely as a filmy speck that has sometimes been mistaken for a comet. In 1860 a new star, between the sixth and seventh magnitude in brilliance, suddenly appeared directly in or upon the cluster, and the feeble radiance of the latter was almost extinguished by the superior light of the stranger. The latter disappeared ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... it, a flam, is usually the most ephemeral and evanescent of human devices. Like a boy's soap bubble, it glitters for a brief moment in iridescent rotundity, then ceases to be even a film of air. It is unsubstantial as the tail of Halley's comet. On rare occasions, it is true, its existence is prolonged; many worthy people are beguiled; and some enthusiasts are so effectually hoodwinked as to persist in their delusion, and even to form societies for its propagation. But mankind at ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... And circled in an hundred orbs the throne. Those who o'er states preside, and those whose hand Sheds war, or peace, or famine o'er a land; Who guide the uncertain tempest in the pole, Watch the red comet, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... illness, Tillotson was nursed by his friend with the most affectionate love, and died in his arms. In 1680 Nelson went to France with Halley, his old schoolfellow and fellow member of the Royal Society, and during their journey watched with his friend the celebrated comet which bears Halley's name. While in Paris he received the offer of a place in Charles II.'s Court, but took the advice of Tillotson, who said he should be glad 'if England were so happy as that the Court ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... brandish'd sword of God before them blaz'd Fierce as a comet: which with torrid heat And vapours, as the Libyan air adust, Begun to parch that temperate clime; whereat In either hand the hast'ning angel caught Our ling'ring parents, and to the eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Lincoln, of whom it is well known that he regarded his own now famous proclamation of 1863 freeing the slaves in the seceded States, as an illegal concession to the Anti-Slavery feeling of the North and of Europe, and that he spoke of it with undisguised contempt, as a 'Pope's bull against the comet.' Like Mr. Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was devoted to the Union, but he was a Constitutional Democrat in his political opinions, and the Civil War having ended in the defeat of the Confederacy, he gradually settled down to his constitutional duty, as President of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... through the nights, and many a priest of this church and that would not open his holy building to further what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000—for then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... naturally imagined that these changes had some connection with human affairs, and they endeavored to prognosticate from them the events, whether prosperous or adverse, which were to befall mankind. Whenever a comet or an eclipse appeared, they thought it portended some terrible calamity. The study of the motions and appearances of the stars, with a view to foretell the course of human affairs, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... complaint he suffered from, and there was no more skilful or learned leech in the whole land, the Egyptian guide assured him, than the famous Philip of Memphis. The situation here, outside the town, was very pleasant, and from the river's bank he might observe the comet which had been visible for some nights past—a portent of evil no doubt. The natives of the city had been paralysed with terror; that indeed was evident even here in Nesptah's caravansary, for usually as the evening grew cool, the tables ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... manner alike were alarming to his daughters. Seldom had they seen him so moved, especially over such a seemingly simple matter as the announcement of a new moving picture drama. He and the girls, in common with the other members of the Comet Film Company, had to portray many different scenes in the course of a season's work, and though some of it was distasteful, it was seldom objected to by anyone, unless perhaps by Pepper Sneed, the "grouch," or perhaps by Mr. Wellington Bunn, an actor ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... soar to their ken like a comet. They'll see me with never a stain; But will they reform me?—far from it. We pay for our pleasure with pain; But the dog will return to his vomit, the hog to ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race? On, like the comet's way through infinite space. Stretches the long untravelled path of light, Into the depths of ages; we may trace, Afar, the brightening glory of its flight, Till the receding rays are lost to ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... am married, and have been for upwards of twenty years, and I think I ought to know somethin' about it; and how can it be called a state of perfect rest, when some days I have to pass through as many changes as a comet, and each change a tegus one. I have to wabble round and be a little of everything, and ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Nature informed them that a comet by knocking against the sun had detached one portion of it, which became the earth. First, the poles had cooled; all the waters had enveloped the globe; they subsided into the caverns; then the continents ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... flourished, these feudal princes, bearing for their ensign a silver comet of sixteen rays upon a field of gules—themselves a comet race, baleful to the neighbouring lowlands, blazing with lurid splendour over wide tracts of country, a burning, raging, fiery-souled, swift-handed tribe, in whom a flame unquenchable ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... us that in the Southern heavens, near the Southern cross, there is a vast space which the uneducated call the "hole in the sky," where the eye of man, with the aid of the powers of the telescope, has been unable to discover nebulae, or asteroid, or comet, or planet, or star, or sun. In that dreary, cold, dark region of space, which is only known to be less infinite by the evidences of creation elsewhere, the great author of celestial mechanism has left ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... a Gomez-Dep roadster appeared down the road, stopped at the garage. To Milt it was as exciting as the appearance of a comet to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... comet," said the doctor. "I have astonished Pattaquasset so long, it is time for me to flare up in some other place. I don't know, Linden. Somebody must be here occasionally, to overlook the refitting of the inside of that ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... I think Master Percival might have let me stay to see the fun;" and Jeffy's eyes rolled to and fro in their orbits, as if anxious to strike against some wandering comet. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Van Helstatt, who was a man of learning, and cast horoscopes in consideration of some small fee or honorarium. I have never met so wise a man, for he would talk of the planets and constellations as though he kept them all in his own backyard. He made no more of a comet than if it were a mouldy china orange, and he explained their nature to us, saying that they were but common stars which had had a hole knocked in them, so that their insides or viscera protruded. He ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... if some morning something dropped out of the sky that had had no place upon our earth before, as if there came the summons to man to be something entirely different from what the conditions of his nature prophesied and intended that he should be. The other idea is that religion comet by the utterance of God from the heavens, but comes up out of the human life of man; that man is essentially and intrinsically religious; that he does not become something else than man when he becomes the servant of Jesus Christ, but then for the first ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... slave To mortal passions, whose immortal mind, Whilst here on earth, was not to earth confin'd. He must be gone, the stars had so decreed; As he of them, so they of him, had need. This message 'twas the blazing comet brought; I saw the pale-fac'd star, and seeing thought (For we could guess, but only LILLY knew) It did some glorious hero's fall foreshew: A hero's fall'n, whose death, more than a war, Or fire, deserv'd a comet: th' obsequious star Could do no less than his sad fate ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... The comet, which we had first noticed on the 17th of the month, now appeared much higher and brighter than at first. Its tail had a slight curve, and it seemed to be rather approaching the earth ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... did I ever again meet Mr. Owen or any of his people. I believe, however, that they reached Durban safely and sailed away in a ship called the Comet. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... showing the relative positions and movements of the earth, sun and moon. What governs the tide? What causes an eclipse? What is a comet, a shooting star, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... first bell rang at 2.25 and the girls began to assemble in the big schoolroom, Muriel Burnitt walked in followed by a perfect comet's tail of juniors, some of whom were hanging on to her arms. Each was sucking a peppermint bull's-eye, and each wore a piece of pink ribbon ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... A comet, beyond it infinite things, only dreamed of as yet, a world floating in an ocean and in night, beneath are two hands clasped ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... endurance which befits brothers and lovers at balls; while Emilia's foreign court held out till morning, and one handsome young midshipman, in special, kept revolving back to her after each long orbit of separation, like a gold-laced comet. ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... gold. And behind them shinin' towers wus shadowy mountain ranges of softest color, that melted up into the tender blue of the April sky. And right in the east a full moon wuz sailin', lookin' down tenderly on Josiah and me and the babe—and Jonesville and the world. And the comet sot there up in the sky like a silent and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... judicial officers was impending in Kildeer County when a comet appeared in the July sky, a mysterious, aloof, uncanny presence, that invaded the night and the stereotyped routine of nature with that gruesome effect of the phenomenal which gives to the mind so definite a realization of how dear and secure is ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... strewed on the ground, and some of them lie at considerable distances from any points of eruption. They vary in size from that of an apple to that of a man's body; they are either spherical or pear-shaped, or with the hinder part (corresponding to the tail of a comet) irregular, studded with projecting points, and even concave. Their surfaces are rough, and fissured with branching cracks; their internal structure is either irregularly scoriaceous and compact, or it presents a symmetrical and very curious appearance. An irregular segment of a bomb of ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... upon its surface or in its atmosphere, engenders in ethereal space successive waves of varying nature and intensity, as has been said above, and let us admit that its mechanical waves are traversed obliquely (Fig. 1) by any spherical body—by a comet, for example; then, under the excitation of the waves that it is traversing, and through its velocity, the comet will itself enter into action, and produce mechanical waves in its turn. As the trace produced in the solar waves consists of an agitation of the ether on such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... gross. Comets, out of question, have likewise power and effect, over the gross and mass of things; but they are rather gazed upon, and waited upon in their journey, than wisely observed in their effects; specially in, their respective effects; that is, what kind of comet, for magnitude, color, version of the beams, placing in the reign of heaven, or lasting, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... President; and, with a speech, delivered the Medal to Capt. Smyth for the Bedford Catalogue of Double Stars.—On Jan. 21st I was appointed (with Schumacher) one of the Referees for the King of Denmark's Comet Medal: I have the King's Warrant under his sign manual.—The Tidal Harbour Commission commenced on Apr. 5th: on July 21st my Report on Wexford Harbour (in which I think I introduced important principles) was communicated. One Report was made this year to the Government.—In ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... awful joy at beholding a mortal goddess! The house was crowded with hundreds more than it could hold, with thousands of admiring spectators who went away without a sight. This extraordinary phenomenon of tragic excellence! this star of Melpomene! this comet of the stage! this sun of the firmament of the Muses! this moon of blank verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned dagger! this empress of pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakespeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Juno commanding ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... Calculations, the last Comet that made its Appearance in 1680, imbib'd so much Heat by its Approaches to the Sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than red hot Iron, had it been a Globe of that Metal; and that supposing it as big as the Earth, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... distinct from those by which it transmits radiation, namely, mechanical inertia, whereby it has been supposed to retard the career of the heavenly bodies, as shown especially by the history of Encke's comet. This comet returned sooner than it should, as calculated from the usual data; the difference was ascribed to the influence of a resisting medium in reducing the extent of its orbit; and such a medium may be the ether. If this conjecture (now of ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Californian, with no quarter | |asked or given. Two months before the two had played| |for the Exposition championship at San Francisco, | |and at that time McLoughlin had carried the match | |and title after five of the hardest sets which the | |tournament produced. Then "The Comet" was on his old| |field of asphalt with the ball bounding so high that| |he could bring off his overhanders and where such a | |thing as ground strokes were unknown. | | | |Probably never in all the years of the historic All | |Comers has a player ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... protection and aid." He sent presents of food and wine, etc., to the Portuguese, who expressed their thanks verbally, saying "they had no paper or ink." They promised to do no wrong to the natives, at the request of Goyti, "because they were vassals of his majesty, and our friends." A comet seen next day "nearly above the town of Zebu," was taken by the soldiers as an omen of war and bloodshed. Affairs with the natives continued to improve steadily, and several chiefs came to offer themselves as vassals to the governor, promising to pay ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... out, was the confoundedly awkward part of it. His engagement had been so sudden. Jill had swept into his life like a comet. His mother knew nothing of her. A month ago he had known nothing of her himself. It would, he perceived, as far as the benevolent approval of Lady Underhill was concerned, have been an altogether different ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... this fatal Tuesday all the elements seemed to unite in adding horror to the scene of carnage. Shortly before this a great comet had made men fear and wonder; and now, on this morning the sky was overcast with such dense clouds that the land was in darkness; so black were the heavens that nothing like it had been known within the memory ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... of its vocabulary and its numerous examples of construction, but that it presents the language as it was when the Spaniards first arrived. The precise date of its compilation is indeed not given, but the author speaks of a comet which he saw in 1577, and gives other evidence that he was writing in the first generation ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... and captain as the "Coming Man." We called him "Honion," partly because his head, being perfectly bald, resembled that vegetable, and partly because he enjoyed the prefix "The Hon." before his name. Yes, I am speaking of the Hon. F. Lancaster, who appeared for a few moments like a new comet in the cricket heavens, just as the thundercloud of war blotted everything out. When the cloud should roll away, that new comet would ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... creatures set out a loud wail, thinking that the destruction of the Kurus was at hand. And armed with his discus Vasudeva looked like the Samvarta fire that appears at the end of the Yuga for consuming the world. And the preceptor of the universe blazed up like a fierce comet risen for consuming all creatures. And beholding that foremost of bipeds, that divine personage, advancing armed with the discus, Santanu's son stationed on his car, bow and arrow in hand, fearlessly said, 'Come, Come, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... tree. He stretch'd the ivory arch of his vast neck, Smiting sharp thunders from the marble floor With hoofs impatient of a peaceful earth; Shook the long silver of his burnish'd mane, Until the sunbeams smote it into light, Such as a comet trails across the sky. I love him, Curtius! Such magnanimous fires Leap from his eyes. I do truly think That with thee seated on him, thy strong knees Against his sides—the bridle in his jaws In thy lov'd hand, to pleasure thee he'd spring Sheer from the verge of Earth into the breast Of Death ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and half-way across the room—a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs. Sheridan shrieked ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Halley and other early discoverers of nebulous objects received from their peculiar aspect was that of a phosphorescent vapour (like the matter of a comet's tail), or a gaseous and, so to speak, elementary form of luminous sidereal matter. Admitting the existence of such a medium, Sir W. Herschel was led to speculate on its gradual subsidence and condensation, by the effect of its own gravity, into more or less regular spherical ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... seas of grain, We shoot, a shining comet, through The mountain range, against the blue, And then, below the walls of snow, We blow the desert dust amain, We see the orange groves below, We rest beneath the oaks, and we Have ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... your magic web of hair, lies furled The fire and splendour of the ancient world; The dire gold of the comet's wind-blown hair; The songs that turned to gold the evening air When all the stars of heaven sang for joy. The flames that burnt the cloud-high city Troy. The maenad fire of spring on the cold earth; The myrrh-lit flame that gave both death and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... everything had melted into one gorgeous fire, and we were still helpless before all that glory, the colours faded away to the most delicate combinations of half-tones; soon the stars came out glittering on the deep sky, first of all the Southern Cross. Halley's comet was still ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... terrible! I am afraid even to think of it again. Black, black—oh, thou art black like the everlasting night! I only looked on thee for one dreadful instant. The blaze of the fire fell on your features—you looked like the awful night when a comet swings fearfully into our ken— oh, then I closed my eyes—I could not look on you any more. Black as the threatening storm-cloud, black as the shoreless sea with the spectral red tint of twilight on its ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... for European observers, the other for ourselves. The first, and perhaps the most startling to the Old World watcher of the political skies, upon whose field of vision the flaming sword of our western heavens grew from a misty speck to its full comet-like proportions, perplexing them with fear of change, has been the amazing strength and no less amazing steadiness of democratic institutions. An army twice larger than England, with the help of bounties, drafts, and the purchase of foreign vagabonds, ever set in the field during the direst stress ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... forenoon, Judge," soothingly explained the other welcomer. "Court got it out of the way so's the court room could be open for the speech making this afternoon. Hello! Hear 'em? That's the Yimville Silver Comet Band. Bill—I mean Mister Perry—has given the band the tip you've got here. Come on! ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... but civil, with dignified Italian courtesy she finally invited us in, and I was coward enough to let the Boy lead, I following with a casual air, meant to show that I had been dragged into this business against my will; that I was, in fact, the tail of a comet which must go ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... where is that which is so? From the star To the winding worm, all life is motion; and In life commotion is the extremest point Of life. The planet wheels till it becomes A comet, and destroying as it sweeps The stars, goes out. The poor worm winds its way, Living upon the death of other things, But still, like them, must live and die, the subject Of something which has made it live and die. 30 You must obey what all obey, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... has all his satellites taken, he then becomes a Comet, and can shoot from any part of any of the orbits every time the Sun ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth; Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating, like prisoners assaulting their walls. Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... calculation that an engineer can make as to the behavior of a girder under a strain, or an astronomer as to the recurrence of a comet, more certain than the calculation that under such circumstances we shall be dismembered unnecessarily in all directions by surgeons who believe the operations to be necessary solely because they want to perform them. The process metaphorically called bleeding the rich man is performed ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... fashion shall we of this age of widespread enlightenment write our history on the annals of the planet's life, and evolution. All that has gone before this time—the closing in of the vast cycle—has been, in a way, fragmentary, comet-like; the whole race of mankind has marched around the globe again and again. The leaders—the head—were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the vast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... of stuff here," she said interestedly. "It could be the comet that once followed this orbit, now so old it's lost all its gases and ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... happiness entirely depends on their dress. Sir Dudley Carleton, our minister at Venice, communicates, as an article worth transmitting, the great disappointment incurred by Sir Thomas Glover, "who was just come hither, and had appeared one day like a comet, all in crimson velvet and beaten gold, but had all his expectations marred on a sudden by the news of Prince Henry's death." A similar mischance, from a different cause, was the lot of Lord Hay, who made great preparations for his embassy to France, which, however, were chiefly confined ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... almost reverently, and took it out of its hiding place. It at once unwound in a golden shower that reached to the floor, dense but light; soft and gleaming like the tail of a comet. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... over Jerusalem blazed a great comet, in appearance like a sword of fire. It was true that they had seen it before at Tyre, but never before had it shown so bright. Moreover, there it had not the appearance of a sword. This they thought to be an ill omen, all of them except Benoni, who said that ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... if a certain comet, whose path intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth in some (I forgot what) sign, it would have whirled us along with it, in its eccentric course, into God knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man, (which "from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war," ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the night of St. Laurence's day, and just at that time, according to Bullinger, the famous comet of 1531 first became visible. Zwingli gazed at it from the churchyard of the Great Minster. "What can it portend?" was the question put to him by the abbot George Mueller of Wettingen, in accordance with the belief of the age. "It will cost me, my George, me ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... won into the confidence of China. Boxerism and students of the Government Reform Movement. Author's impressions formed within the danger zone. More Boxerism in China than we know of. Causes of the Chao-t'ong Rebellion. Halley's Comet brings things to a climax. Start of the rioting. Arrival of the military. Number of the rebels. They hold three impregnable positions, and block the main roads. European ladies travel to the city in the dead ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Yours is one of the few that I could wish of a more robust constitution. It is indeed very probable that when I leave this city, we part never more to meet in this sublunary sphere; but I have a strong fancy that in some future eccentric planet, the comet of happier systems than any with which astronomy is yet acquainted, you and I, among the harum scarum sons of imagination and whim, with a hearty shake of a hand, a metaphor and a laugh, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... hair is still growing; for, every time they see her, it is longer than before; and that now such is its length and the head-long speed of the horse, that it floats and streams out behind, like one of those curved clouds, like a comet's tail, far up in the sky; only the cloud is white, and the hair dark as night. And they say it will go on growing till the Last Day, when the horse will falter and her hair will gather in; and the horse will fall, and the hair will twist, and twine, and wreathe itself like a mist of threads about ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... see how I have been obliged to borrow from the outer vocabulary. I give this idea, in a nebular state, trusting that you will consolidate it. Were we, in a figurative sense, to choose a guiding-star, it would be a comet, we are so taken with flash and show. A great truth, though angels heralded its birth, and a star were drawn from its orbit to stand over its cradle, if that cradle were a manger, we would reject it; if it assumed not the 'pomp and circumstance' of royalty, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 shoulders, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... ceaseless struggle of the soul which has not yet found its true aliment, its peace, its faith—art thou not the typical example of a life which feeds upon itself, because it has not found its God, and which, in its wandering flight across the worlds, carries within it, like a comet, an inextinguishable flame of desire, and an agony of incurable disillusion? I also am reduced to nothingness, and I shiver on the brink of the great empty abysses of my inner being, stifled by longing for the unknown, consumed with the thirst for ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Italian, Frangipani, thought the star The lost Electra, that had left her throne Among the Pleiads, and plunged into the night Like a veiled mourner, when Troy town was burned. The German painter, Busch, of Erfurt, wrote, "It was a comet, made of mortal sins; A poisonous mist, touched by the wrath of God To fire; from which there would descend on earth All manner of evil—plagues and sudden death, Frenchmen and famine." Preachers thumped and raved. Theodore Beza in Calvin's pulpit tore ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... desolate his land, the savage derives from them an intensely realised perception of diabolical presence. In the darkness of the night; amid the yawning chasms and the wild echoes of the mountain gorge; under the blaze of the comet or the solemn gloom of the eclipse; when famine has blasted the land; when the earthquake and the pestilence have slaughtered their thousands; in every form of disease which refracts and distorts the reason, in all that is strange, portentous, and deadly, he feels and cowers before ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... few weeks threw me into the seventh heaven of happiness,—I am already on the seventh floor of a pension with not much more of an elevator than the tower of Babel had. Mamma and Papa brought me here and installed me and then shot off to Turkey, Papa like a comet and Mamma like the tail of one, to finish up the bridge that has kept them so busy for ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... occurred. Either Alvah Moon had lost confidence in his chances and had sold the invention to some greenhorn for anything he could get; or else some one else had been so deeply interested in the affair as to risk a great deal of money in it. Mrs. Rushmore's gleam of intelligence was a comet; but her comet had two ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... was there and of course our hero. Never was the arrival of a comet watched by astronomers who had calculated its advent with more anxiety than was the appearance of the young Duke. Never did man pass through such dangers. It was the fiery ordeal. St. Anthony himself was not assailed by more ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... give a similar and equal display of memory.) Dr. Knapp has corroborated several details of "Lavengro" which confirm Borrow's opinion of his memory. Hearing the author whom he met on his walk beyond Salisbury, speak of the "wine of 1811, the comet year," Borrow said that he remembered being in the market-place of Dereham, looking at that comet. {30} Dr Knapp first makes sure exactly when Borrow was at Dereham in 1811 and then that there was a comet visible ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... They were going at a tremendous rate of speed, it seemed to her, like a comet shooting through the air. Then, suddenly, the head of the comet stood still and the tail swung around it, and Anne, who represented the very tip of the tail and who hardly reached to Julia Crosby's shoulder, felt herself carried along with such velocity ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... lady, apparently satisfied with the identification, 'I want my hair cut. It is like a sheaf of corn. It is like a court train. It is like seven horses' manes tied together, if they were red. It is like a comet's tail.' ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... standing in the verandah in profile. As a steward, one of his chief points is to break crystal; he is great on fracture—what do I say?—explosion! He cleans a glass, and the shards scatter like a comet's bowels. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon the Loire at the head of a handful of his newly trained men. He was going to take up his appointment: for he held the command of the whole of the cavalry of General Gilbert's division. These were days of quick promotion, of comet-like reputations and of great careers cut short. De Vasselot had written to Jane de Melide the previous night, telling her of his movements in the immediate future, of his promotion, of his hopes. One hope which he did not mention was that Denise might be at Frejus, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... invisible God working his own will in it all? Was there a driver to that chariot whose multitudinous horses seemed tearing away from the pole in all directions? and was he indeed, although invisible and inaudible, guiding that chariot, sure as the flight of a comet, straight to its goal? Or was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels went grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, matter into man, and man into nothingness? Was there—could there be a living heart to the universe that did positively hear him—poor, misplaced, dishonest, ignorant ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... Jews, Christians, and Mahomedans." Doubly blasphemous as his claims sound in the ears of orthodox Mahomedans, who reckon both Christ and Mahomed as prophets, his sect is now estimated to number at least 10,000, including many educated Mahomedans. Whatever its fate—a mere comet or a new planet in the Indian sky—it indicates the religious stirring of educated India in another province, and the prominence of Christ's personality therein. Mirz[a] Ghol[a]m Ahmad himself recommends the reading of the Gospels. As ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... the elbow of Richmond when struck in this emphatic fashion, and for the instant was bewildered by the unexpected catastrophe. Before he could recover he imagined the comet which was expected at that season had caught him directly between the eyes, and he went backward over Richmond, with his two legs pointing upward, like a pair of ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... rain until it heaved in circles, and then a feeling of faintness awakened me to myself. I did not allow my mind to think, but now and again a word swooped from immense distances through my brain, swinging like a comet across a sky and jarring terribly when it struck: 'Sacked' was one word, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... became a point winner. Slowly it gained in importance, until Maurice E. M'Loughlin, the wonderful "California Comet," burst across the tennis sky with the first of those terrific cannon-ball deliveries that revolutionized the game, and caused the old-school players to send out hurry calls for a severe footfault rule ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... fled as one man. They descended the pass as they had never before descended it; they coursed over the plains like grey-hounds; they passed through their own villages like a whirlwind; drew most of the inhabitants after them like the living tail of a mad comet, and only stopped when they fell exhausted on the damp ground in the remotest depths ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... score of 71.46%, with Jones hybrid a very close second at 71.15%. Bixby is next, then Buchanan. Of the "written-in" varieties, excellent hardiness is reported for Cosford, Hazelbert, Kentish Cob, Early Globe, Burkhardt's Zeller, Comet, Gellatly No. 1, Chinese Corylus, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... was naturally glad of an opportunity to invite the attention of the public. In a word, no sooner was my poor father's back turned than the "Literary Times" was dropped incontinently, and Mr. Peck and Mr. Tibbets began to concentrate their luminous notions into that brilliant and comet-like apparition which ultimately blazed forth under the title of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Napoleon was now within a month of his death, and although he occasionally spoke with the eloquence and vehemence he had so often exhibited, his mind was evidently giving way. The reported appearance of a comet was taken as a token of his death. He was excited, and exclaimed with emotion, "A comet! that was the precursor of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... way back to Paris on foot through the Bois de Boulogne, and by the Mare d'Auteuil, and saw my old friend the water-rat swim across it, trailing the gleam of his wake after him like a silver comet's tail. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... thou never on thy track Turn thee round and hie thee back, Thou wilt wander evermore, Outcast, cold—a comet hoar!" ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... person and the sophisticated person, for the child and the philosopher; the new experience derives its significance from the character and organization of the previous experiences. To the peasant a comet, a plague, and an epileptic person may mean a divine portent, a visitation of God, a possession by the devil; to the scientific man they mean something quite different. The word "slavery" had very different connotations in the ancient ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... they didn't know that time repeats itself over and over again, ages of time being like the years of the earth, it was actually the remains of the age before them that they thought were the remains of their ancestors. In truth, instead of a great comet hitting the earth and destroying the dinosaurs and many other living beings, it was the Great Wars, the nuclear wars, that caused all the damage. And since their perception of the events was backward, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... overpraised and overcensured, and since his death the dust has been allowed to gather over his matchless books. Between the two extremes lies the truth; and the true Byron is just now being discovered. Byron in literature will not die. He is the brightest comet that has darted into our ken since Shakespeare's time; and as comets have no orbit, but are vagrants of the heavens, so was he. Tragedy was in his train, and his destiny was disgrace ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... our voyagers sailed from Oheteroa; and, on the 25th of the same month was celebrated the anniversary of their departure from England. The comet was seen on the 30th. It was a little above the horizon, in the eastern part of the heavens, at one in the morning; and at about half an hour after four it passed the meridian, and its tail subtended an angle of forty-two ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... exemplify and satirize the fashion of the time. The largest is a portrait in the French style of one of the earl's ancestors, who traverses the canvas triumphantly. A cannon explodes below him, a comet is seen above; and in his right hand, notwithstanding his cuirass and voluminous Queen-Anne peruke, he brandishes the thunderbolt of Jupiter. Judith and Holofernes, St. Sebastian, The Murder of Abel, David and Goliath, The Martyrdom of St. Laurence, are some of the rest, all of ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... journey at 6.40 a.m. Followed the Mackenzie south-east through level country with much scrub till 9.25 a.m., when we crossed a large creek from the south, which proved to be the Comet River of Dr. Leichhardt. The whole bed of the Comet did not exceed seventy yards, and the smaller channel only five to six yards wide, and even below its junction the Mackenzie only had a channel ten to thirty yards wide in ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... fiction: now let us look at the sore fact. The "A 1" is, I take it, simply the "Ai!" of the Greek chorus new-vamped for modern wear,—a drear wail well suited to the victims of the Markerstown. As to sailing qualities:—we know, of course, that all speed is relative. For a sea-comet, the Markerstown would be somewhat leisurely, though answering well for an oceanic fixed star, having no perceptible motion. One man on board—the Captain—was accommodated: the kidnapped all suffered. Whether the Markerstown should be reckoned as first-class or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... almost continual rains, and flooding the country to a considerable extent. One was supposed to be the consequence of long-continued drought and excessive heat; one was traced to the influence of an eclipse of the sun; another, to a comet; and a fourth, to a most unusually stormy winter. The reader will have the kindness to remember that we are here expressing the opinions of the writers of the day, and by no means, our own belief ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... themselves, and to think of nothing that is not straightway made into a personal matter. The aim of astrology is to bring the motions of the celestial bodies into relation with the wretched Ego and to establish a connection between a comet in the sky and squabbles and rascalities ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... visible form, thence to withdraw the good, transplanting them, it may be, into the sun, and to punish here the wicked with the demons that have allured them; then the globe of the earth will begin to burn and will be perhaps a comet. This fire will last for aeons upon aeons. The tail of the comet is intended by the smoke which will rise incessantly, according to the Apocalypse, and this fire will be hell, or the second[134] death whereof Holy Scripture speaks. But ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... means opposed to it the short-sighted utilitarianism of art for morality's sake, that winged Pegasus harnessed to the plow. The highest art, the only art which is worthy of the name, is above all temporary laws: it is a comet sweeping through the infinite. It may be that its force is useful, it may be that it is apparently useless and dangerous in the existing order of the workaday world: but it is force, it is movement ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... converging toward a point fifteen thousand miles off-planet and over the sunset line. The Space Scourge bore the device of a mailed fist clutching a comet by the head; it looked more like a whisk broom than a scourge. The Lamia bore a coiled snake with the head, arms and bust of a woman. Valkanhayn and Spasso were taking their time about screening back, and he began to wonder if they ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... that point just now," was Tom's rejoinder. "Right now, you'll please put your hands up over your head." Then as the outlaw obeyed, Tom added—"Way up with 'em. Pick me a star or two out of the sky. Keep 'em up there and watch a comet while one of my friends goes through you for ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... these starres are come so nigh As to seem one, the Comet must appear In biggest show, because more loose they lie Somewhat spread out, but as they draw more near The compasse of his head away must wear, Till he be brought to his least magnitude; And then they passing crosse, he doth repair ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... solemnity, the thrilling fascination of the old unetherized operation upon the human sufferer. Their recorded phenomena, stored away by the physiological inquisitor on dusty shelves, are mostly of as little present value to man as the knowledge of a new comet or of a tungstate of zirconium, perhaps to be confuted the next year, perhaps to remain a fixed truth of immediate value,— ... CONTEMPTIBLY SMALL COMPARED WITH THE PRICE PAID FOR IT IN AGONY ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... cannot feel, but whose heart and brain find the light that they need in the unchanging feelings of all. The truest man will never be he who desires to be other than man. How many there are that thus waste their lives, scouring the heavens for sight of the comet that never will come; but disdaining to look at the stars, because these can be seen by all, and, moreover, are countless in number! This craving for the extraordinary is often the special weakness of ordinary men, who fail to perceive ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... gate on the east, continued on westward, beneath the tower and the parapet of the grounds; beyond extended the wide valley of the Arno, with mountains hemming it in, and to the left of the mountains, every evening, Donati's comet shone, with a golden sweep of tail subtending twenty degrees along the horizon. The peasant folk regarded it with foreboding; and I remember seeing in the book-shops of Rome, before we left, pamphlets in both Italian and English, with such titles as "Will the great comet, now rapidly ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of science supports us. The astronomer has no hesitation in saying that the comet, which has sailed away through space, exists, and will return. The geologist describes for us the world as it was in past ages, when no eye was ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... suddenly, lo! a star from the upper heaven that shot down between them wildly, and my star took lustre from it; and the star of Shagpat trembled like a ring on a tightened rope, and waved and flickered, and seemed to come forward and to retire; and 'twas presently as a comet in the sky, bright,—a tadpole, with large head and lengthy tail, in the assembly of the planets. This I saw: and that the stranger star was stationed by my star, shielding it, and that it drew nearer to my star, and entered its circle, and that the two stars seemed mixing the splendour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in Astronomy, in Natural History, besides acquiring groups of facts, the student has a glimpse of the method by which they were discovered, of the type of inference to which the discovery conforms, so that the discovery of a new comet, the detection of a new species, the invention of a new chemical compound, each becomes a lesson of the most beautiful and impressive kind in the art of reasoning. And it would be superfluous and impertinent for me here to point out how valuable such lessons are in the way of mental discipline, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... Brother Regimental, "it is quite a different thing. But do not send young Samuel to the dragon—the dragon might devour him. For the last five years Samuel is not in a state to show his innocence to monsters. In the year of the comet, the Devil in order to seduce him, put in his path a milkmaid, who was lifting up her petticoat to cross a ford. Samuel was tempted, but he overcame the temptation. The Devil, who never tires, sent him the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... 4.30 A.M.—I am down in Camden county, New Jersey, at the farmhouse of the Staffords—have been looking a long while at the comet—have in my time seen longer-tail'd ones, but never one so pronounc'd in cometary character, and so spectral-fierce—so like some great, pale, living monster of the air or sea. The atmosphere and sky, an hour or ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... none, but when stars appear A reaper wandering home may hear A sigh aloft where the stars are dim, Then a great rush going over him: This was his; it had linked him close To the force by which the comet goes, With the rein none sees, with the lash none feels, But with fire-mane tossing ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... words are ill for him who speaks, and ill alike for him who listens. In such a day as already the end is scored like a comet's tail across the sky, the end shall be, and not before that day. Cease from thy clamour lest the street hear thee, and run to know ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... Munster, gintlemen—glorious Kerry!—yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it. I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system: like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude" (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—"from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... he may brew With such a telescope brand-new At the four-hundredth power? He may bring some new comet down So near that it'll singe the town And do the Burgess-Corps crisp-brown Ere they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink With eager lips the wind of their own speed, As if the thing they loved fled on before, And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they all ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... aid in determining my longitude.—Dr Young, in a letter to me of May 7th, enquires whether I will accept a free admission to the Royal Society, which I declined. On May 9th I was elected to the Astronomical Society.—Towards the end of the year I observed Encke's Comet: and determined the latitude of the Observatory with Sheepshanks's repeating circle.—On my papers I find a sketch of an Article on the Figure of the ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... following: "Mr. Lillie's Prediction concerning the many lamentable Fires which have lately happened, with a full account of Fires at Home and Abroad." 1676. "Strange news from the East, or a sober account of the Comet or blazing star that has been seen several ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Indian, and a very sensible fellow. He sometimes filled minor offices in the government of the place. He used to come very frequently to my house to chat, and was always striving to acquire solid information about things. When Donati's comet appeared, he took a great interest in it. We saw it at its best from the 3rd to the 10th of October (1858), between which dates it was visible near the western horizon just after sunset, the tail extending in a broad curve towards the north, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... 1895, all the planets except Neptune were in this quarter of the heavens, and Halley's comet was in this constellation on ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... in the jet darkness. In the midst of the general auroral glow and the specially vivid flashes made by the frightened fish darting ahead and to right and left of the canoe, our attention was suddenly fixed by a long, steady, comet-like blaze that seemed to be made by some frightful monster that was pursuing us. But when the portentous object reached the canoe, it proved to be only ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... come thou, Lord of all, Unto whom the Three Worlds call; Thou, that didst in angry might, Kansa, like a comet, smite; Thou, that in thy passion tender, As incarnate spell and splendour, Hung on Radha's glorious face— In the garb of Krishna's grace— As above the bloom the bee, When the honeyed revelry Is too subtle-sweet an one Not to hang and dally on; Thou that art the Three Worlds' ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... round in the circle of commonplace, and then to pop out of it like a tailed comet! Such is the history of many a man's life. I have a near friend who went away from town one fall, happy and contented with his lot. And what do you suppose he found when he returned home? He had been nominated ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... indefatigable, doing him yeoman service in this breathless chase of pleasures. On April 11, 1662, he mentions that he went to bed "weary, which I seldom am;" and already over thirty, he would sit up all night cheerfully to see a comet. But it is never pleasure that exhausts the pleasure-seeker; for in that career, as in all others, it is failure that kills. The man who enjoys so wholly and bears so impatiently the slightest widowhood from joy, is just ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the garments of isolation, robed with questioning. Her genius is in this sense essentially local, as much the voice of the spirit of New England as it is possible for one to hold. If ever wanderer hitched vehicle to the comet's tail, it was the poetic, sprite woman, no one ever rode the sky and the earth as she did in this radiant and ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a wood of oaks with canvas leaves, Which form'd a floating forest on the waves, There stood a tower, whose vast stupendous size Rear'd its huge mast, and seem'd to gore the skies, From which a bloody pendant stretch'd afar Its comet-tail, denouncing ample war: Two younger giants, [1] of inferior height, Display'd their sporting streamers to the sight: The base below, another island rose, To pour Britannia's thunder on her foes: 10 With bulk immense, like AEtna, she surveys Above ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... we must wait till we reach the current. If we go outside of that, we may be lost in the intense cold and the poisonous gases, or we may be swallowed up in the vortex of some flaming comet," answered ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... you scientists. You'll pursue the tail of a comet—or a germ—till you're black in the face, but when something really important to the human race comes under your nose you can't ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... after its setting the third part of the night. This it is, which with you [Footnote 14: Appresso di voi. Leonardo had at first written noi as though his meaning had,been: This peak appeared to us to be a comet when you and I observed it in North Syria (at Aleppo? at Aintas?). The description of the curious reflection in the evening, resembling the "Alpine-glow" is certainly not an invented fiction, for in the next lines an explanation ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... world's history he had read, he speculated on the future, he considered philosophies, he lost himself in a study of the stars. Mark Twain's love of astronomy, which never waned until his last day, began with those lonely river watches. Once a great comet blazed in the sky, a "wonderful sheaf of light," and glorified his ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... exclaimed Gulbeyaz, "as you say? I wish to heaven he would not shine till morning! But bid my women form the milky way. Hence, my old comet! give the stars due warning—[ft] And, Christian! mingle with them as you may, And as you'd have me pardon your past scorning——-" Here they were interrupted by a humming Sound, and then by a cry, "The ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... services a showy piece of fireworks attracted the attention of the spectators. "There appeared in the air from Arde a great artificial salamander or dragon, four fathoms long and full of fire; many were frightened, thinking it a comet or some monster, as they could see nothing to which it was attached; it passed right over the chapel to Guisnes as fast as a footman can go, and as high as a bolt from a cross-bow." A splendid banquet ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... dear comet, rainbow of my soul. (Exit Marinette). Heaven be praised, our affairs go on swimmingly. Albert is not a man ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... It kill'd the fear of thunder and of death; 160 The discords that conceit engendereth 'Twixt man and wife, it for the time would cease; The flames of love it quench'd, and would increase; Held in a prince's hand, it would put out The dreadful'st comet; it would ease[78] all doubt Of threaten'd mischiefs; it would bring asleep Such as were mad; it would enforce to weep Most barbarous eyes; and many more effects This picture wrought, and sprung[79] Leandrian[80] sects; Of which was Hero first; for he whose form, 170 Held in her hand, clear'd such ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... addressed to Lucilius. Book ii. was written after A.D. 57, as in ii. 9, 2 an amphitheatre is mentioned which was built by Nero in that year. The work was finished before the end of A.D. 64, for in Book vii. there is no mention among other prodigies of the comet which appeared again at ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... of a comet sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster; The heart of the steed and the heart of the master, Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; Every nerve of the ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... Paris that at all the street corners there they are selling a little pamphlet for a sou entitled "Le seul moyen de ne pas mourir le 13 Juin a 1'apparition de la Comete." ["The only means how not to die on the 13th of June at the appearance of the comet."] The only means is to drown oneself on the 12th of June. Much of the good advice which is given to me by the critics is very like this seul moyen. Yet we will not drown ourselves—not even in the lukewarm waters of criticism—and will ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... piece for the piano, this was it, and if ever there was a divine showman for it, it was Paderewski. You felt at once the personal sympathy of the great pianist for the great pianist. He was no longer reverential, as with Beethoven, not doing homage but taking part, sharing almost in a creation, comet-like, of stars in the sky. Nothing in the bravura disconcerted or even displeased him, no lack of coherence or obviousness in contrasts disturbed him; what was loud, boisterous, explosive, he tossed about as in a colossal game, he bathed luxuriously in what was luscious in the melodies, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... bitter: Thou art not made o' laughter Nor love's smile Can thy vision beguile: Like a black-fiery comet Suddenly, sinisterly, thou comest; Making thy fateful journey, Littering the floor of destiny With wreckages of life, Of love, of heart— Of all visitors thou art the surest; Halting nowhere long, endlessly passest, Dragging behind thee thy train of fire That burneth ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... Constitution, especially when the Constitution could not be enforced in the rebel States, and declared that any emancipation proclamation would at that time be as effective and operative as "the Pope's bull against the comet."[42] What the antislavery group wanted was not granted; but wholesale emancipation was going on by virtue of the provisions of the Confiscation Act, slavery had been abolished in the District of Columbia, and the territories had been restored ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... were not for human utterance now, and we sat together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the coming of the fiery comet that they know is destined to ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield |
