"Pyrotechnics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his rod taking the children of Israel through the Red Sea, bringing water out of a rock and manna from heaven, going up into a mountain and there surrounding himself with a cloud of smoke, sending out all manner of pyrotechnics, thunder and lightning, and deluding the people into the idea that there he met and talked with Jehovah, should have been more merciful in his judgments of all witches, necromancers and soothsayers. One would think witches, charmers and necromancers possessing the same power ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... politics, just futile display of pyrotechnics to amuse the populace and give heroically inclined young men a chance to strut in uniforms—but after the election this fall ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... continued, "nothing is wanted but the mind." Then there is the famous quip that runs back to Tudor times, although it has been attributed to various later celebrities, including Doctor Johnson: A concert singer was executing a number lurid with vocal pyrotechnics. An admirer remarked that the piece was tremendously difficult. This drew ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... design the entire load of pyrotechnics was simultaneously ignited, and the street immediately filled with a perfect fusillade of rockets ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa
... while the composer dips his finger in the air, making endless sound-scrolls—noises with long tails and whirligig decorations like foolish fireworks—though I think the art of the future will be pyrotechnics. Mad, mad, I tell you! But whether mad or not matters little in our land of freedom, where all men are born unequal, where only the artists are sad. They are useless beings, openly derided, and when one is caught napping, doing something that offends church or State or society, he ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... similar to that of many parts of Southern Europe. There is a good deal of snow in the valley in winter. Spring is charming, the brilliant days only varied by frequent thunderstorms—which, however, are almost invariable in keeping their pyrotechnics till about five in the afternoon. July and August are hot and steamy in the valley, and it is necessary to seek one of the cool "Margs" which form ideal camping-grounds on all the lofty mountain ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... over his question, and finally let it fall? And why, above all, was Kerr so brilliantly talking at Ella, in the same way he had begun at Flora herself? Talking at Ella as if he hardly saw her, but like some magician flinging out a brilliant train of pyrotechnics to hypnotize the senses, before he proceeds with his trick. And the way Ella was looking at him—her bewildered alacrity, the way she was struggling with what was being so rapidly shot at her—appeared to ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... either, unless somebody's barn burns up. Don't I just wish there would," gloomily responded another youth who had so rashly indulged in pyrotechnics on a former occasion that a neighbor's cow ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... yet so inconsistent as to invoke it. So all through life, when he did not have a lawsuit on hand, existence seemed tasteless and insipid. After he had lectured in a town, there was the usual theological and oratorical pyrotechnics in reply, with sermons from that indelicate text, "The fool saith in his heart, there is no God," and challenges that he should come back and fight it out. The number of people who won tuppence worth of fame by replying to Ingersoll were as naught ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... sallies, jests, that French thing which is called entrain, and that English thing which is called humor, good and bad taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild pyrotechnics of dialogue, mounting together and crossing from all points of the room, produced a sort of merry bombardment over ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and set up their teepees hard by. When the birthday of the Governor came, the party celebrated it with a display of fireworks and vociferous shouts of Vive le Roi, Vive Charles de Beauharnois, while the Indians yelped in fright and amazement at the pyrotechnics, or stood pressing their hands upon their mouths in silent amazement. The French called their fort Fort Beauharnois, and invited the aid of Saint Michael the Archangel by naming the mission in his honor. All went well till April, when the water rose with the spring floods and ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... thing to read, and that he's to let me hear from him when he's read it. When that will be nobody knows, and I should be the last to ask. But he seemed interested in my sketch of it, and he had an intelligence about it that was consoling. And it was a great comfort, after Godolphin, and Godolphin's pyrotechnics, to have him take it in a hard, business way. He made no sort of promises, and he held out no sort of hopes; he didn't commit himself in any sort of way, and he can't break his word, for he hasn't given it. I wish, now, that I had ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... will be absent from the school we shall choose. I doubt it would work very well with you, Beverly. Sparks and gunpowder are apt to lead to pretty serious explosions and I dislike pyrotechnics which are likely to spread disaster. Now go change your clothes and make yourself presentable for I hear Uncle Athol calling and I dare say the momentous question is about to be answered. But what am I going to do without my little whirlwind to keep things stirring?" ended Mrs. Ashby, tenderly ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... neither on the one account nor on the other are we able to receive the facts of the cable's success and existence with the effusion with which we hailed them in 1858. Blighting De Sauty, suspense, and scepticism succeeded the rapture and pyrotechnics of those joyful days; and in the mean time we have grown so much that to be electrically united with England does not impart to us the fine thrill that the hope of it once did. Indeed, the jubilation over the cable's success ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... now, having distorted a little knowledge into a great flow of verbal pyrotechnics which hopelessly confused and downed Miss Liz, turned back to Nancy with a ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the world is so susceptible to atmospheric conditions as stock-gamblers. Many a stout-hearted one has been known to postpone the inauguration of a long-planned coup merely because the air filled his blood with the dank chill of superstition. Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics, Stock Exchange members had gathered early; the brokers' offices were crowded to overflowing before ten; the morning papers, not only in New York but in Boston, Philadelphia, and other centres, were ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... have transfigured life into the greatest adventure ever attempted in time and space. But we find ourselves merely another experiment, intricate and rather long drawn out, to be sure, with marvelous pyrotechnics, magnificent effects here and there, but bound to eliminate itself in the end, to make stuff for the museums of the real conqueror of the stars yet to come. We are condemned to be classed with the dodo and the mammoth by the coming discoverer of an escape from the slave and ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... which the best lights of the age were brought to bear upon the great problem which Parma had undertaken to solve. All the science then at command was applied both by the Prince and by his burgher antagonists to the advancement of their ends. Hydrostatics, hydraulics, engineering, navigation, gunnery, pyrotechnics, mining, geometry, were summoned as broadly, vigorously, and intelligently to the destruction or preservation of a trembling city, as they have ever been, in more commercial days, to advance a financial or manufacturing purpose. Land converted into water, and water ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... quote the exact phrase of an over-seas admirer.) Well, if Mozart's music is worth thirty cents, then the Zerbinetta aria is worth five; that is the proportion. The fact is the composer burlesques the old-fashioned scene and air with trills and other vocal pyrotechnics, but overdoes the thing. Frieda Hempel was to have sung the part and did not. Margarethe Siems (Dresden) could not. She was as spiritless as corked champagne. To give you an idea of the clumsy humour of the aria it ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... lasted two days." Of another visit Edison says: "Sitting Bull and fifteen Sioux Indians came to Washington to see the Great Father, and then to New York, and went to the Goerck Street works. We could make some very good pyrotechnics there, so we determined to give the Indians a scare. But it didn't work. We had an arc there of a most terrifying character, but they never moved a muscle." Another episode at Goerck Street did not find the visitors quite so stoical. "In testing dynamos ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Charteris remarked, "As you are perfectly aware, all that I vented was just a deal of skimble-scamble stuff, a verbal syllabub of balderdash. No, upon reflection, I think I should rather describe it as a conglomeration of piffle, patriotism and pyrotechnics. Well, Madam Do-as-you-would-be-done-by, what would you have? You must give people what ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... importance, in the eyes of the young gentlemen, by the announcement that various pyrotechnical wonders were to be obtained at her shop. There are few boys who have not at some time of their boyhood had a mania for pyrotechnics—in plain English, fire-works—and there are few parents, and parents' neighbours, who can say that they relish the smell of gunpowder ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... not once but continually and on principle, then it is my duty to tell him: "We cannot remain in office, both of us." This, too, is a task which I have never shirked when it has presented itself. It is simply my duty. I have never had need of such artful machinations and pyrotechnics as people claimed I instituted very wilfully last week. You need not think that ministers stick to their posts like many other high officials, whom not even the broadest hints can convince that their time has come. I have not yet found a minister ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... us with pyrotechnics in the finale of Com' e bello or Qui la voce, but the simple feeling of Vedrai carino is beyond their grasp. Firmly sustained tones, careful phrasing, flowing grace in the melody, and just, dramatic expression, are the great requisites; without them the brilliant flourishes of a modern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Boat Race having taken place on August 27, the London Rowing Club invited the Crews to a Dinner at the Crystal Palace on the following Monday. The dinner was followed by a grand display of pyrotechnics. Mr. Dickens, in proposing the health of the Crews, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... deluge, the elemental battle began in desperate earnest. Peal after peal of thunder crashed directly overhead, and with it came such a display of heavenly pyrotechnics that in their wildest moments these men had never dreamed of. Their eyes were blinded, and their ear-drums were bursting with the incessant ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... said Jack, lighting what is technically termed an artichoke, but better known as a zig-zag cracker; "if they do not understand English, perhaps they may comprehend pyrotechnics." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... both saw that return. They watched from the crest of Bun Hill, from which they had so often surveyed the pyrotechnics of the Crystal Palace. Bert was excited, Tom kept calm and lumpish, but neither of them realised how their own lives were to be invaded by the fruits of that beginning. "P'raps old Grubb'll mind the shop a bit now," he said, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Henley on the Thames, From Berwick on the Tweed, And at the mercy of the flames They left their children and their dames, To come and play their little games On Morrell's dewy mead. Yet feared they not with fire to play— The pyrotechnics (so they say) Were very ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Pure pyrotechnics, your honor," said Steger, rising to his feet on the instant. "All intended to prejudice the minds of the jury. Acting. I wish you would caution the counsel for the prosecution to confine himself to the evidence in hand, and not act for the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... you fellows are wrong," said Hollis. "Plain, every-day talk is what goes. Your captain would very likely have kicked the cat, lit a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer, instead of getting off those Robert Mantell pyrotechnics." ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... proof against rifle fire and which could reflect and neutralize for some little time even the terrific beam Costigan was employing. Nor was the pirate unarmed—a vicious flare of incandescence leaped from his Lewiston, to spend its force in spitting, crackling pyrotechnics against the ether-wall of the squat and monstrous Standish. But Costigan's infernal machine did not rely only upon vibratory destruction. At almost the first flash of the pirate's weapon the officer touched a trigger; ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... is the author of its existence. Books he detested, one and all, excepting only such as he happened to write himself. And these were not a few. On all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of our English church down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white, thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world (which world was the nursery where I lived amongst my sisters) with his select opinions. On this last subject ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey |
