"Pyrotechnical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for by the fact that he was not obliged to fight his way laboriously upward on the lower rungs of politics—he landed in the Senate from an Idaho law office in one pyrotechnical leap when he was only forty two—and by the fact that in his make-up he is singularly unpolitical. Disassociating him from his senatorial environment it is much easier to imagine him as a devotee of academic culture, a university professor, a moral crusader, ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... the whole entire illuminations began to approach us in a body, I perceived that my Coney Island was merely another craft, but a very important and official craft. An extremely small boat soon detached itself from this pyrotechnical craft and came with a most extraordinary leisureness toward a white square of light that had somehow broken forth in the blackness of our side. And looking down from the topmost deck, I saw, far below, the tiny boat maneuver on the glinting wave into the reflection of ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... but moderate attention to shots. They were usually merely pyrotechnic, and indicated rejoicing rather than death. But here and there she heard a window raised, and then lowered again. The hill had gone back to bed. Anna went into her room and dressed. For the first time it had occurred to her that she might be held by the police, and the thought was unbearable. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... were captured, they disappeared in a great blaze. Then the ship, the symbol of the city of Paris, appeared and took its station between two columns of light. The decoration changed, and first the Temple of Peace was seen, then that of Hymen—a real pyrotechnic masterpiece. After the fireworks the Emperor and Empress went first into the record room, then into the concert hall, where was sung a cantata, with words by Arnault and music by Mehul, which began with this apostrophe ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... either at any price. The long yellow ears, each wrapped in its own kindling, could be handled without crocking the fingers. Each kernel as it crackled sent out a blazing jet of oil and the cobs left a fine bed of coals for the corn popper to be shaken over. Driftwood and the pyrotechnic fuel they make now by soaking sticks in strontium and copper salts cannot compare with the old-fashioned corn-fed fire in beauty and the power of evoking visions. Doubtless such luxury would be condemned as wicked ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... to take a whiff of a smoke-and-fire belching chimney in the Black Country as he flies across that district by night. Haven't got a light? Glad of it. Try a Vesuvian-round, black and tipped with blue. There's a pyrotechnic display for you! Now, in with it, after the approved style illustrated by the two human hands engaged in lighting a cigar on the illuminated cover of the box. 'Ugh!' you say. Just so; you've got a mouthful of choice abominations, which will cost you much ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Quaker City had not arisen with pickaxes and razed this architectural extravaganza to the ground. But Philadelphia is a city startlingly unlike its European reputation. Throughout my too-brief sojourn in it I did not cease to marvel at its liveliness. I heard more picturesque and pyrotechnic wit at one luncheon in Philadelphia than at any two repasts outside it. The spacious gaiety and lavishness of its marts enchanted me. It must have a pretty weakness for the most costly old books and manuscripts. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... of those within, but while I looked an irregular patch of incandescence suddenly splashed the cliff opposite. For a single instant the very substance of the rock glowed white hot; then from the spot a shower of spiteful flakes shot as from a pyrotechnic, and the light was blotted out as suddenly as it came. At the same moment it appeared at another point, exhibited the same phenomena, died, flashed out at still a third place, and so was repeated here and there with bewildering ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... else to do. The bath, as baths will, inspired him with an idea. He set out on foot to Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followed the side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed with lights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of a pyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then he observed that blinds and curtains were being drawn in the noble mansion, shutting out from its superb nobility the miserable, crude, poverty-stricken ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... say—how could this be known? Without doubt it has the advantage of making one rely on the essential interest of a situation and not cocker up and validify feeble intrigue with incidental fine writing and scenery, and pyrotechnic exhibitions of inappropriate cleverness and sensibility. I remember Bob once saying to me that the quadrangle of Edinburgh University was a good thing and our having a talk as to how it could be employed in different arts. I then stated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into an outrageously incandescent, furiously pyrotechnic, raveningly expanding atomic fireball that in seconds seemed to fill ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... new world for me out of primeval chaos, and for aeons of centuries I dizzied myself gazing upon the pyrotechnic marvel. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... had come to an end of all the deep reflections, all the moralizings, small and great, all the bad puns made on a subject already exhausted by Rabelais three hundred and fifty years ago. It was not a little to their credit that the pyrotechnic display was cut short with a final squib ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... has given utterance to the warning words, half a score of the savages can be seen springing to the backs of their horses, each bearing a bow with a bunch of the prepared arrows. And before a single preventive step can be taken by the besieged traders, or any counsel exchanged between them, the pyrotechnic display has commenced. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... eyes, however, gazing out of its great hollow orbits; another consists of a central nucleus, with arms of stars radiating forth in all directions, like a star-fish, or like the scattering fire-sparks of some pyrotechnic wheel revolving; a third resembles a great wisp of straw, or twist or coil of ropes; a fourth, a cork-screw, or other spiral, seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell—many of them scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... the animated forms that encircled them. Far down to the right, the vertical flashes from the cannon vents vivid as lightning itself, instantly followed by horizontal lurid flames, belched forth from their dread mouths, lighting for the instant wood and field, formed the grandest of pyrotechnic displays. Rare spectacle—in one magnificent panorama, gleaming through the dark mantle of night, were the steady lights of peaceful camps, and the fitful flashing ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... not positively raining, you "do not know or need to know." Those soft lamps overhead, which might alike seem let garlanding down from the vault above or flowering up from the gulfs below out of a still greater pyrotechnic richness, supply the defect, if there is any, of moon and stars. Only the air is actual, the air of the New York night, which is as different from that of the London night as from that of the Paris night, or, for all we know, the St. Petersburg night. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... great Sanhedrim!" roared the crowd; and at once let fly a pyrotechnic explosion and dazzle and confusion of stirring remarks ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... grubs likewise. The full-grown females are magnificent light-houses, the adult males retain the glimmer which the grubs already possessed. We can understand the object of the feminine beacon; but of what use is all the rest of the pyrotechnic display? To my great regret, I cannot tell. It is and will be, for many a day to come, perhaps for all time, the secret of animal physics, which is deeper than the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... building and the grounds were illuminated on a lavish scale by the Pain Pyrotechnic Company, of New York city. The entire building was outlined by means of thousands of fairy lamps, and many strings of Japanese lanterns were festooned from the roof line to the veranda balustrade. Fairy lamps were used in profusion about ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... projectiles are not exactly new inventions. About the time of artillery's beginning, the military fireworker came into the business of providing pyrotechnic engines of war; later, his job included the spectacular fireworks that were set off in ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... Mr. Anderson will put that retort into the fire, for it is made of iron, and can stand the heat. Here is a salt called chlorate of potassa, which is now made in large quantities for bleaching, and chemical and medical uses, and for pyrotechnic and other purposes. I will take some and mix it with some of the oxide of manganese (oxide of copper, or oxide of iron would do as well); and if I put these together in a retort, far less than a red heat is sufficient to evolve this oxygen from ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... upside down. One has the salutary amusement in reading him of visualizing the Universe in the posture of a Gargantuan baby, "prepared" for a sound smacking. Mr. Chesterton himself is the chief actor in this performance and wonderful pyrotechnic stars leap into ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... Cleveland was given by the citizens of Brooklyn at the Academy of Music, and was attended by a great multitude. Another striking feature of the celebration at night was the display of fireworks on the Bridge given under the direction of the Board of Trustees. The pyrotechnic exhibition was viewed by almost the entire populace of the two cities, and a vast concourse of visitors from abroad. The East River was fairly blocked with craft of every description bearing legions of delighted ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... copper;" "Steam whistles;" "Mechanism for driving sewing machines;" "Improved material for packing journals and bearings;" "Improvement in the mode of preventing the heating of axles and journals;" in "Pyrotechnic night signals;" in "Paper-bag machines;" in "Railway car safety apparatus;" "Conveyors of smoke and cinders for locomotives;" "Sewing machines;" in "Alloys for hardening iron;" in "Alloys to resemble silver;" in "Devices for removing snow from ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... however, that in the case last cited there is unquestionably an allusion to some crude form of firework, and what more likely or better calculated to impress the ignorant! Our firework makers still manufacture a "little Devil." Pyrotechnic is as old as history itself; we have an excellent description of a rocket in a document at least as ancient as the ninth century. And that a species of pyrotechny was resorted to by those who sought to imitate flight we have proof in the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... and festivities were held, school children treated and banquets spread. Edinburgh excelled itself and some one has said that a pen of fire dipped in rainbow hues would have been needed to describe its pyrotechnic display. Meanwhile, the Prince and Princess of Wales had taken their departure for Osborne, which had been lent them by the Queen, and there the brief honeymoon was spent. At Reading, on the way thither, thirty ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... sense, implies a spherical and round body, whether naturally so or formed into that figure by art. In a military view it comprehends all sorts of bullets for fire-arms, from the cannon to the pistol: also those pyrotechnic projectiles for guns or mortars, whether intended to destroy, or only to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the ridge, he stopped aghast as he looked down the valley toward Emil Crawford's place. Near the site of Crawford's laboratory home was an unearthly pyrotechnic display such as Dixon had never seen before. An area several hundred yards in diameter seemed one vivid welter of pulsing colors, with flashing lances of every hue crisscrossing in and through a great ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the month, he was invested with the insignia of the Order of St. Michael and the Holy Ghost with great pomp, on which occasion a banquet was given by the King in the great hall at Fontainebleau, and in the evening the park was illuminated by bonfires and a pyrotechnic display, which was witnessed by a vast concourse of people. The young prince was baptized privately by the Cardinal de Gondy, but the state ceremonies of his christening were delayed, and appear never ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... a "lightning" pilot with a method of instruction as direct and forcible as it was effective. He was a small man, hot and quick-firing, though kindly, too, and gentle when he had blown off. After one rather pyrotechnic misunderstanding as to the manner of imparting and acquiring information ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... position; and in the orchard, hoops indicated the structure of vases, cone-shaped switches that of pyramids, so well that, in arriving in the midst of them, you imagined you saw pieces of some unknown machinery or the framework of a pyrotechnic apparatus. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... intellectual repast, then succeeded congratulations; the air was made vocal with song; while, through the foresight of the gallant captain, at the evening hour, the sky about the good ship Joseph Whitney was brilliant with those various pyrotechnic displays which must be so grateful to the spirit of patriotic John Adams, of ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... preceding Christmas Day were devoted to the grandest display of fireworks and illuminations I have ever witnessed, and which, possibly, few men see but once in a lifetime. All accounts of China agree that in the pyrotechnic art the Chinese ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... forty-four, and his native province, as far as I could make out, North Holland. After we had exchanged salutations, he asked me whether he might have some conversation with me. He wished to say something to me about the Pyrotechnic Art, as he had read one of my tracts (directed against the Sympathetic Powder of Dr Digby), in which I hinted a suspicion whether the Grand Arcanum of the Sages was not after all a gigantic hoax. He, therefore, took that opportunity of asking me whether I could not believe ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... our tent door the slope fell gently away through a sparse cocoanut grove whose straight stems panelled our view, then rose again to the clear-cut outline of a straight ridge opposite. The crest of this was sentinelled by tall scattered cocoanut trees, the "bursting star" pyrotechnic effect of their tops being particularly ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the trout in their blue tank if we did not see them suffering with surfeit, and hanging in motionless misery amid the clear water under a cloud of bread crumbs. We are such devotees of the special attractions offered from time to time that we do not miss a single balloon ascension or pyrotechnic display. In fact, it happened to me one summer that I studied so earnestly and so closely the countenance of the lady who went up (in trunk-hose), in order to make out just what were the emotions of a lady who went up every afternoon in a balloon, that when we met near ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the vast multitude beheld the waste of so much property with anxiety and regret. Doubtless, also, many thoughtless ones were there who merely enjoyed the excitement, and looked on it as a pyrotechnic display of unwonted splendour. But there was yet another class of men, aye, and women, whose view of the matter was fitted to cause anxiety in the breasts of those who talk of "elevating the masses," and this was by ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne |
