"Sirius" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a practised advocate, and seemed to delight in nothing so much as discussion, whether on the unconfirmed parallactic angle of Sirius, or the comparative weight of two straws. Amid the circle in which he occasionally found himself, ample scope was often given him for the exercise of this faculty. I once invited him, for the first time, to meet the late Robert Hall. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... merits of his countryman. Our author was undoubtedly possessed of that power which they wanted, and was cautious not to indulge too far the sallies of a lively imagination. Omitting, therefore, any mention of sultry Sirius, sylvan shade, sequestered glade, verdant hills, purling rills, mossy mountains, gurgling fountains, &c., he simply tells us that it was "All on a summer's day". For my own part I confess that I find myself rather flattered than disappointed, ...
— English Satires • Various
... believe that these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,—ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,—looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which are ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... immediately ahead of the VICTORY, and across her bows, fired single guns at her, to ascertain whether she was yet within their range. As soon as Nelson perceived that their shot passed over him, he desired Blackwood and Captain Prowse, of the SIRIUS, to repair to their respective frigates; and, on their way, to tell all the captains of the line-of-battle ships that he depended on their exertions; and that if, by the prescribed mode of attack, they found it impracticable to get into action immediately, they might adopt whatever ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... place. Clerk Maxwell concludes a masterly statement of this aspect of the hypothesis by asking: "Who can restrain the ulterior question, Whence then these myriad types of the same letter imprinted on the earth, the sun, the stars, as if the very mould used here had been lent to Sirius, and passed on through the constellations? No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of the molecules throughout all time, and throughout the whole region of the stellar universe; for evolution ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... sunset, the sky darkened rapidly—there was a very brief twilight interval indeed—and the stars shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... a path cut in a mountain of very red marble, having on the left a marble wall forming a parapet about five feet high. At intervals solid pedestals rise from this wall, bearing every token of having served to support colossal statues of Sirius, the barking Anubis, or the Dog star. One hundred and thirty-three of these pedestals with the marks just mentioned are still in their places, but only two figures of the dog were recognizable when I was there; these, however, though much mutilated, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... existence timeless, null, Sirius they watched above where armies fell; He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull Plunge of a stone dropped into ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Long Island coast. The successful establishment of steam as a means of conveying a vessel across the Atlantic did not come until the spring of 1838, when, on the same day, April 23rd, two ships from England reached New York. They were the "Sirius," which had sailed from Cork, Ireland, April 4th, and the "Great Western," which had left Bristol April 8th. The following year marked the founding of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... to amuse myself, from their contents," said he. "They maybe of use to you, brother author. I have told Mrs. Goodyer to place them in your room. Amongst those papers is a sort of journal,—a woman's journal; it moved me greatly. A man gets into another world, strange to him as the orb of Sirius, if he can transport himself into the centre of a woman's heart, and see the life there, so wholly unlike our own. Things of moment to us, to it so trivial; things trifling to us, to it so vast. There was this journal, in its ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that pass so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties—the fit companions of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit. The eclipses are not our conceit. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... the shelter of thy garden-bower, "Priapus, from the harm of suns or snows, "With beard all shag, and hair that wildly flows,— "O say! o'er beauteous youth whence comes thy power? "Naked thou frontest wintry nights and days, "Naked, no less, to Sirius' burning rays." ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... night. Casseopeia's Chair and Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... profound, what speculations, far-reaching and sublime, must there have been, when one of the most gifted of mortals from that spot looked out upon the heavens, and in thought went forth on voyages of discovery into the distant regions of the universe! At the calm, still hour of midnight, Sirius watching over the city of sleepers, Jupiter carrying his brilliant lamp along his ancient pathway, every one of the luminaries in the place appointed by Him who calleth them all by their names—there stood the thoughtful man, with his reflecting telescope, occupied with thoughts which we common ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... pass'd: at noon of day The sun with sultry beams began to play: Not Sirius shoots a fiercer flame from high, When with his poisonous breath he blasts the sky: Then droop'd the fading flowers (their beauty fled) And closed their sickly eyes, and hung the head; And rivell'd up with heat, lay dying in their bed. The ladies gasp'd, and scarcely ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... narrow circles to the Central Fire of Silent Love from which the angels shrink in spiral messages of inspiring flame, and toward which humanity aspires in narrowing and advancing circles of expiring flesh. But depth is outward to the hearts of men. Sirius sings to my living stars tonight its light in the music of the ancient winds, telling me of the crucifixion in burning colors of a dying world. Why am I unworthy of an equal death? The blood runs toward it in a passion of harmony. The day is near when my morning stars shall sing their ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... group of the first magnitude, which include all the brightest stars visible, as Sirius, Canopus, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... a star of the Lion and the Sun on my coat. But I was positively afraid of doing it, for you'd have thrashed me for daring to pin the Lion and the Sun on my coat, instead of, at least, the Polar Star or the Sirius. And you keep on saying I am stupid, but, mercy on us! I make no claim to be equal to you in intelligence. Mephistopheles declared to Faust that he desired evil, but did only good. Well, he can say what he likes, it's quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... North Star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars—oftener read of than seen in England—was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... thought," continued the dreamy archdeacon, "that it would be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But 'tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the simultaneous presence of other stars whose rays mingle with it. Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire. Flamel! ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine Providence, is also fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a meaning comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-star, the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion of Isis in her search for the body of OSIRIS, her brother and husband. Then it became the image of HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized also by the Sun, the author of the Seasons, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... one feels, naturally, rounder in his orbit, and a little more likely to see stars, after such a dinner as this, than before. Do I not, indeed, see around me now, all the stars of the intellectual firmament? Are not SIRIUS and ARCTURUS here, in their glory, as well as ORION and the rest? As my old friend CRISPIN would say, their name is legion! I would blaze, gentlemen, too, if possible, in honor of the occasion; but, as I can't Comet, meteors fall in lamentation ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... reason to believe that the great star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through the telescope, he has ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... 2. Sirius. This comparison, among many others, shows how constantly the poet's attention was directed ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... "Those who know Sirius and Betel do not at once perceive that one shines with a brilliant white light and the other burns with a glowing red, as different in their brilliancy as the precious stones on a lapidary's table, perhaps for the same reason. And so there is an endless ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... the travellers. Nay, the Moon, realizing the weird fancy of the Arabian poet, who calls her a "giant stiffening into granite, but struggling madly against his doom," might shriek, in a spasm of agony, loudly enough to be heard in Sirius. But our travellers could not hear it. Their ears no sound could now reach. They could no more detect the rending of a continent than the falling of a feather. Air, the propagator and transmitter of sound, was absent from her surface. Her cries, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... war may be of interest at this time. Some one has called attention to the illuminating discourse between Micromegas, gigantic dweller on one of the planets revolving about Sirius, and a company of our philosophers, as reported in the seventh chapter of the amusing fantasy bearing the name of the above-mentioned Sirian visitor. A free translation of a part of this conversation is here offered. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... the size of the sun! Yet, notwithstanding this immense size, our sun is quite a small body as compared with some of the fixed stars, which, as perhaps you may know, are really suns at an inconceivable distance from us. The bright star Sirius, which is visible during our winter time, is not only very much brighter in reality than our sun, but must be many times larger; and there are others known to be very much larger than Sirius. It ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the night of April 22d, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the expedition. These were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis and Vindictive. The Vindictive carried storming parties to destroy the stone mole at Zeebrugge; the remaining five cruisers were filled with concrete, and it was intended that they should be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. A large force of monitors and small ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Arcot grinned. "That means we're within two light years of Sirius, since we were headed in that direction. Let's turn the ship so we can take a look ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... almost the very subsistence of its inhabitants, depended on the annual overflowing of the Nile; and they looked for it with the utmost anxiety. Its approach was announced by the appearance of a certain star—SIRIUS. As soon as that star was seen above the horizon, they hastened to remove their flocks to the higher ground, and abandoned the lower pastures to the fertilizing influence of the stream. They hailed it as their guard and protector; ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... meteors glare, And Hell invade the spheral school; But Law and Love are sovereign there, And Sirius and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... lifeboat, which they aptly call "Forlorn Hope," and finally make a safe landing on Ganymede, where Stevens plans to build a power-plant and a radio transmitter, to enable him to communicate with the earth or with the IPV Sirius, which is used by Westfall and Brandon (two of the world's best scientists) as ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... Orion, had been found to move in an exceedingly small orbit, one too small to be detected except through the most refined observations of modern precision. The same thing had been found in the case of Sirius, and had been traced to the action of a minute companion revolving around it, which was discovered by the Clarks a dozen years before. There could be no doubt that the motion of Procyon was due to the same cause, but no one had ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... orbits—the latter nearly three thousand millions of miles away from the centre of our system. . . But the true awfulness is yet untouched. What of the millions of millions of suns that blaze in immeasurable space beyond our comparatively little solar sphere? Sirius alone, at the foot of the constellation of Orion, is 125 times larger than our sun. Fifteen hundred millions of millions of miles away, where ordinary eyes dimly descry half a dozen points of light, the telescope reveals more than a ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... to the Sirius caught near fifty large fish, which were called light-horsemen from a bone that grew out of the head like ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... of the providence of an Almighty that hung out moon and stars, the youth glanced around the darkening horizon and presently observed a tiny light far to the south. He stared at it quite surprised, and then he chanced to see a star just above it. It was the reflection of Sirius in ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... seen a negro town in the West Indies with half such a wretched appearance. The grain here and there displayed a promising appearance, and swine were in some considerable numbers; but the coast was dangerous, Governor Hunter being himself once wrecked upon it in the Sirius, and nearly lost with all his ship's crew; and this circumstance is calculated to deter vessels from touching at the island in quest of wood and water, which are both plentiful, but which may be procured in equal abundance in any of the other islands of the Pacific ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... its proper eastward motion had carried it some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius and the pointers of the Bear. It was very white and beautiful. In many parts of the world that night a pallid halo encircled it about. It was perceptibly larger; in the clear refractive sky of the tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of suns. And as for the size of these suns, Sir Robert Ball says Sirius is ten times as large as our Sun; and a well-known astronomer, writing in the English Mechanic about a week ago, remarks that Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuze) has probably 700 times ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... of the surcharged lily Beneath the buffets of the surly storm, Or the soft petals of the daffodilly, When Sirius is uncomfortably warm, So drooped his head upon his manly form, While floated in the breeze his tresses brown. He hung the stated time, and then ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... "Naturally it would, seeing we're so far away from there. But I never get tired of looking at it, and trying to see if I can figure out some of the brighter suns." He pointed to one bright star directly overhead. "That's Sirius, I know. It's always directly ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... opponents by that bright pugnacity which a true Briton loves better than anything else in politics. I appreciate, too, the compliment he pays me. But I wish he would not choose to put his ardour in competition with Sirius and the dog-days; and I heartily wish he had not brought down Mr. Blank, M.P., to address us in ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fixed his eyes on it. It was a very white star, and for a space of minutes it seemed in no wise different from its fellows. But it grew brighter. Presently it was very bright. It was brighter than Sirius. In seconds more it was brighter than Venus. It increased more and more rapidly in its brilliance. It became the brightest object in all the heavens except the crescent moon, and the cold intensity of its light was ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... When the piercing power and sultry heat of the sun abate, and almighty Zeus sends the autumn rains [1312], and men's flesh comes to feel far easier,—for then the star Sirius passes over the heads of men, who are born to misery, only a little while by day and takes greater share of night,—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. Then remember to hew ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals, pp. 331-341.—Theory that the fire-festivals are charms to ensure a supply of sunshine, 331; coincidence of two of the festivals with the solstices, 331 sq.; attempt of the Bushmen to warm up the fire of Sirius in midwinter by kindling sticks, 332 sq.; the burning wheels and discs of the fire-festivals may be direct imitations of the sun, 334; the wheel which is sometimes used to kindle the fire by friction may also be an imitation of the sun, 334-336; the influence which the bonfires are supposed ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... of spectral lines towards the red end of the spectrum was definitely established by Adams in 1924, by observations on the dense companion of Sirius, for which the effect is about thirty times greater than for ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... that thrilled me—a name that, in those days, could thrill Europe. It is hushed now: its once restless echoes are all still; she who bore it went years ago to her rest: night and oblivion long since closed above her; but then her day—a day of Sirius—stood at its full height, light ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... earth, and some that we had not discovered when the sun wrote their names, or rather made their mark, in the spectrum. Thus, also, we find that Betelguese and Algol are without any perceivable indications of hydrogen, and Sirius has it in abundance. What a sense of acquaintanceship it gives us to look up and recognize [Page 30] the stars whose very substance we know! If we were transported thither, or beyond, we should not be altogether strangers in an ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... bodies in the solar system had one genesis, and were part of the same nebulous mass. But this does not include the other systems and nebulae; for, compared with them, our sun, as we have seen, is itself advanced and small beside such stars as Sirius having diameters of twelve million miles." As they left Pallas between themselves and the sun, it became a crescent and finally disappeared. Two days later they sighted another asteroid exactly ahead. They examined it closely, and concluded it must be Hilda, put down ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... land; And I myself new marriages promote, Give laws, and dwellings I divide by lot; When rising vapors choke the wholesome air, And blasts of noisome winds corrupt the year; The trees devouring caterpillars burn; Parch'd was the grass, and blighted was the corn: Nor 'scape the beasts; for Sirius, from on high, With pestilential heat infects the sky: My men- some fall, the rest in fevers fry. Again my father bids me seek the shore Of sacred Delos, and the god implore, To learn what end of woes we might expect, And to what clime our weary ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Lee, you would visit the Observatory with me some evening, and look at Sirius. Did you ever make the acquaintance of a fixed star? I believe astronomers reckon about twenty millions of them in sight, and an infinite possibility of invisible millions, each one of which is a ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... "And Sirius and the Bull and the River," added Gladys. "It's just like getting a peep at the actors in their dressing-rooms before it is time for them to come out on the stage, to see ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... reported, but we hope without foundation, that Saturn, and several other discontented planets, have accepted an invitation from Sirius to join his system, on the most liberal appointments. We believe the report to have originated in nothing more than the discovery of the annual parallax of Sirius from the orbit of Saturn; but ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of the history of stars in general. And when we consider that all other visible stars and nebulae are cooling and contracting bodies, like our sun, to what other conclusion could we very well come? When we look at Sirius, for instance, we do not see him surrounded by planets, for at such a distance no planet could be visible, even Sirius himself, though fourteen times larger than our sun, appearing only as a "twinkling little star." But a comparative survey of the heavens ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... On the first day of April of the year of our Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Moebius coincidence field and established multiple contact with the twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble race that once inhabited this fair planet left behind them ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... the inundations began and coincided with the actual time of inundation. The more precise fixing of new year's day was accomplished through observation of the time of the so-called heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the Egyptian name Sothis. It chances that, as viewed from about the region of Heliopolis, the sun at the time of the summer solstice occupies an apparent position in the heavens close to the dog-star. Now, as is well known, the Egyptians, seeing divinity ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... your charts, the charts you use and you at sea, the charts of the heavens, where what stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog star, and Saturn, and the star you steer your ship by, the polar star.... And all the constellations, the Milky Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the Great Bear and the great glory you see when you pass the line, the Southern Cross ... and the little ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... the attack on the Zeebrugge Mole: Vindictive, Iris, Gloucester. To block the Bruges canal: Thetis, Interprid and Iphigenia. To block the entrance to Ostend: Sirius and Brilliant. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... RELIGION OF PERSIA.—The ancient literature of Persia is mainly the exposition of its religion. Persia, Media, and Bactria acknowledged as their first religious prophet Honover, or Hom, symbolized in the star Sirius, and himself the symbol of the first eternal word, and of the tree of knowledge. In the numberless astronomical and mystic personifications under which Hom was represented, his individuality was lost, and little is known of his history or of his ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the clear crystal roof of his jet boat. He breathed as lightly as he could, taking short, slight breaths, holding them as long as he could and then exhaling only when his lungs felt as if they would burst. He could see Regulus overhead, and Sirius, the two great stars shining brilliantly in the absolute blackness of space. He raised himself slowly on one elbow and looked at the oxygen indicator. He saw that the needle had dropped past the empty mark. He knew it wouldn't be long now. And he knew what he ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... evening from his laboratory to his dwellinghouse, was surprised to find a group of country people gazing at a star which he was sure did not exist half an hour before. This was the star in question. It was then as bright as Sirius, and continued to increase till it surpassed Jupiter when brightest, and was visible at midday. It began to diminish in December of the same year, and in ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... which leads to that valley, filled with grey shadow, out of which none return. To them I hold out a hand of greeting in the spirit. Perhaps, when the Great Cycle has been traversed, we may meet again. Perhaps in another Argo we may voyage from Sirius to Mazaroth, through seas of golden ether adventurers from world to world instead ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... spheroidal bodies. The cluster of stars, to which our cosmical island belongs, forms a lens-shaped, flattened stratum, detached on every side, whose major axis is estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor one at a hundred and fifty times the distance of Sirius. It would appear, on the supposition that the parallax of Sirius is not greater than that accurately determined for the brightest star in the Centaur (0".9128), that light traverses one distance of Sirius in three ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the 6th of June, 1789, that Phillip resumed his labours in the field of exploration. The Sirius had then returned from the Cape of Good Hope, and he could reckon on the assistance of his friend, Captain Hunter, to re-investigate Broken Bay with the vessel's boats. Accordingly, two boats were sent on to Broken Bay with provisions, where they were joined by ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... his arms): I fall, Sir, out of heaven! Now, would you credit it, that as I fell I saw that Sirius wears a nightcap? True! (Confidentially): The other Bear is still too small to bite. (Laughing): I went through the Lyre, but I snapped a cord; (Grandiloquent): I mean to write the whole thing in a book; The small gold stars, that, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... abounds' beneath high Jupiter Unvexed by storms abides a temperate air; And fruitful Venus' star contains the seeds Of all things. Ruler of the boundless deep The god (11) Cyllenian: whene'er he holds That part of heaven where the Lion dwells With neighbouring Cancer joined, and Sirius star Flames in its fury; where the circular path (Which marks the changes of the varying year) Gives to hot Cancer and to Capricorn Their several stations, under which doth lie The fount of Nile, he, master of ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of beauty, which begun To warm us so when thou wert here, Now scorches like the raging sun, When Sirius does first appear. Oh, fix this flame! and let despair Redeem the rest ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... meet. The underside of the mantel-shelf was flushed with the high-coloured light, and the legs of the table nearest the fire. Tess's face and neck reflected the same warmth, which each gem turned into an Aldebaran or a Sirius—a constellation of white, red, and green flashes, that interchanged their hues ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... stars, Sirius is the brightest; but twenty thousand millions of such stars would be required to transmit to the earth a light equal to that of the sun. And if it were difficult to ascertain the nature and quality of the sun, it would appear to be still more so to determine ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... matter is built up of {69} molecules. These molecules, according to the most competent judgment, were incapable of sub-division without change of substance, and were absolutely fixed for each substance. "A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius, or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time." The relations of the parts and movements of the planetary systems may and do change, but "the molecules—the foundation-stones of the natural universe—remain unbroken ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... lesson of what can be done in the safe construction of huge floating structures, and a warning that the highest flights of constructive genius may prove abortive if not strictly subordinated to the practical conditions and commercial requirements of the times. The Sirius and Great Western crossed the Atlantic in 1838, and in 1840 the first ship of the since celebrated Cunard Company made her first voyage. This was the Britannia, which, with her sister ships, the Arcadia, Caledonia, and Columbia, kept up the mail service regularly at a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... Sirius, itself a vast flaming sun, has a companion which is also a sun,—nearly seven times as large as our own,—but which is dark, and gives no light at all. This dark sun was seen through a very powerful telescope in 1862, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... arisen, but there was a beautiful clear sky. The great Southern Cross hung in the heavens like a giant lantern. On one side, and on line with each other, shone the two brightest stars in the heavens, the first being the Dog Star Sirius, and the next in order, Canopus, the one white, and the other a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... turned back to Ronny and grinned at him. He motioned to the report again. "What a name for a planet. Republic. Bunch of screw-balls, again. Out in the vicinity of Sirius. Based their system on Plato's Republic. Have to go the whole way. Don't even speak Basic. Certainly not. They speak Ancient Greek. That's going to be a neat trick, finding interpreters. How'd you like the ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a museum collected by a madman. A dog with a tin kettle at his tail rushes mad and jingling across the street, leaving behind him a new view of the wild tyranny of Ambition. A great personage loses much sawdust through a rent in his unfortunate nether garments. Sirius and the Pleiades look down from above. The book is everywhere, and everywhere at once. The asides seem to occupy more space than the main thesis, whatever that may be. Just when you think you have found the meaning of the author at last, another display of these fireworks distracts ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... you home to yourself, do you hear? You've been poaching in my private atmospheric grounds long enough, identifying yourself with me and me with everybody. A nice row there'd be in heaven if Aldebaran caught Sirius by the tail and said, "Look here, you're not to look so green, you damm dog-star! It's an offense ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... stop the way. With powdered lacquey and with charming bay; She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair. Her arduous function solely "to be there." Like Sirius rising o'er the silent sea. She hides ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... feel the heat That blazes in the days of Sirius, But men shall quaff thy soda sweet, And ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... which rose every night and glittered in the south, he discovered seven small stars that were set in a cluster, and called the Pleiades. Then, underneath Orion, he discovered another glittering star, called Sirius, or the Dog-star. All these, he continually observed, journeyed every night from east to west, and then appeared the evening after in their former places. "How strange it is," observed Tommy, one day to Mr Barlow, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... mind is a puddle in the street reflecting green Sirius; In thick dark groves trees huddle lifting their branches like beckoning hands. We eat the grain, the grain is death, all goes back to the earth's dark mass, All but a song which moves across the plain like the wind's deep-muttering breath. Bowed down upon the earth, man sets his plants and watches ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... of this religion is difficult to discern clearly: but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications of natural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all the ancient nations of Western Asia—the stars, Sirius, the moon, the sun, water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cow and the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficent or malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, and reduced to sacerdotal principles, according ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and calling me a voluptuous Mahometan; but I am certain I would be a happy creature, beyond anything we call bliss here below; nay, it would be a paradise congenial to you too. Don't you see us, hand in hand, or rather, my arm about your lovely waist, making our remarks on Sirius, the nearest of the fixed stars; or surveying a comet, flaming innoxious by us, as we just now would mark the passing pomp of a travelling monarch; or in a shady bower of Mercury or Venus, dedicating the hour to love, in mutual converse, relying honour, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... French state had lost those divisions of caste and prejudice, of landed aristocracy and moneyed interest, institutions in which the vulgar see only barriers to Liberty but which are indeed the only possible defences against the coming of that periodic Sirius of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress in the warmer solstice is pitiable. During the months of July and August she usually renteth a cool cellar, where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when Sirius rageth. She dates from a hot Thursday, some twenty-five years ago. Her apartment in summer is pervious to the four winds. Two doors in north and south direction, and two windows fronting the rising and the setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal point catch the contributory breezes. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... not. This," I said, waving my hand with graceful and comprehensive gesture around the orb where I am temporarily located, "this is Sirius." ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... Rear-Admiral Louis, your information respecting the intended movements of the enemy. I am momentarily expecting the Phoebe, Sirius, Naiad, and Niger, from Gibraltar; two of them shall be with you, directly as I can get hold of them: and, if you meet them, and there is any way of sending information, and their dispatches from Gibraltar, keep Naiad and Phoebe. Juno is a fixture between Capes ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... simply "[Greek: os gar ameinon]." That is like Homer. The stars continue their signals. Vintage time is when Orion and Sirius are come to mid-heaven, and rosy-fingered ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... he rushed, his ear Drawn by the immortal horses of his sire. As from the ocean-verge upsprings the sun In glory, flashing fire far over earth— Fire, when beside his radiant chariot-team Races the red star Sirius, scatterer Of woefullest diseases over men; So flashed upon the eyes of Ilium's host That battle-eager hero, Achilles' son. Onward they whirled him, those immortal steeds, The which, when now he longed to chase the foe Back from the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... about one million times as far from us as the sun. If we take the distance of Sirius from the earth and subdivide it into one million equal parts, each of these parts would be long enough to span the great distance of 92,700,000 miles from the earth to the sun,' yet Sirius is one of the NEAREST ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... mighty dead—of giants, kings, or princes, or princesses, or of pious people whom the gods loved, or of animals which were worshipped. A few instances may be selected at random. When the Teutonic gods slew the giant Thjasse, he appeared in the heavens as Sirius. In India the ghosts of the "seven Rishis", who were semi-divine Patriarchs, formed the constellation of the Great Bear, which in Vedic times was called the "seven bears". The wives of the seven Rishis were the stars of the Pleiades. In Greece the Pleiades were the ghosts of the seven daughters ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Morey. "We can—and we can move faster than your ship, if not faster than they. The people of the dead star have moved to a very live star—Sirius, the brightest in our heavens. And they are as much alive now as their new sun. They can move faster than light, also. We had a little misunderstanding a while back, when their star passed close to ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... has never yet proved to my entire satisfaction that the reason why my copy of Justinian has faded from a royal purple to a pale blue is, first, because the binding was renewed at the wane of the moon and when Sirius was in the ascendant, and, secondly, because (as Dr. O'Rell has discovered) my binder was born at a moment fifty-six years ago when Mercury was in the fourth house and Herschel and Saturn were aspected in conjunction, with Sol ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... such As tawny tigers feel in matted shades, Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... appeared as bright as what we call a first-magnitude star, its companion, Jupiter, would have shone as a sixth-magnitude star. Many stars have companions proportionally much fainter than that. The companion of Sirius, for instance, is at least ten thousand times less bright ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... falls on Sirius by the same law of gravitation as on the earth; the distances of the planets, the combinations of chemical elements are based on arithmetical ratios, and everywhere the same causes produce the same effects. Nowhere in nature is there anything arbitrary, but everywhere law. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... speed of 13 or 14 knots. In 1858 ten and a half to twelve and a half days was allowed for the passage between Liverpool and New York. So as we recede we finally arrive at the pioneer vessels, the Sirius and Great Western, crossing in fourteen to eighteen days at a speed of 6 to 8 knots. For these historical details an interesting paper may be consulted, "De Toenemende Grootte der Zee-Stoombooten," 1888, by Professor A. Huet, of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... south the River (Eridanus) makes now its best show. Its leading brilliant, Achernar, is, however, never seen in the United States. In the southeast the Great Dog, with the splendid Sirius ("which brightliest shines when laved of ocean's wave"), shows resplendently. Above is Orion now standing upright, treading on the Hare (Lepus) and facing the Bull (Taurus), now at its highest. The Dove (Columba) below the Hare is a modern and ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor
... carpenters were cutting a keel for the boat. The crew fishing and making nets. This evening there was a cry that a ship's light was seen in the offing, which produced a considerable sensation for the moment; but it turned out to be only Sirius rising. ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... Moreau, in the cemetery Montparnasse; bust of Taglioni, in the foyer of the Grand Opera House, Paris; bust of the astronomer Leverrier, at the Institute, Paris; a statue, "The Spring," Museum of Bourges; "Sirius," in the Palais of the Governor of Algiers. Also busts of Prince Napoleon, General Boulanger, the Countess de Choiseul, the Countess de Vogue, and numerous statuettes and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... exhibit changes of complexion in themselves. Sirius, as before stated, was once a ruddy, or rather a fiery-faced orb, but has now forgotten to blush, and looks down upon us with a pure, brilliant smile, in which there is no trace either of anger ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... in the skies. Sirius held the ascendant, and under his influence even the radiant band of the Celestials began to droop, while the great ball-room of Olympus grew gradually more and more deserted. For nearly a week had Orpheus, the leader of the heavenly orchestra, played to a deserted floor. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Conclusions are drawn. 3. Industry will enrich. 4. Stars have disappeared. 5. Twilight is falling. 6. Leaves are turning. 7. Sirius has appeared. 8. Constantinople had been captured. 9. Electricity has been harnessed. 10. Tempests have been raging. 11. Nuisances should be abated. 12. Jerusalem was destroyed. 13. Light can be reflected. 14. Rain must have fallen. 15. Planets have been ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... once, and would have spoken, but she cried out, 'What have you done with Lida?' I answered that she was safe, and demanded in my turn where were O'Leary and Jellicoe. 'Drowned, drowned,' she said, 'in the wreck of the Sirius. They'll never trouble you more. But Lida!' I thought that it was safe to take her into the saloon to see Lida, when they fell into each other's arms, and afforded the spectators a romantic spectacle. Don't think I am making ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... We moved out beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and then we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey, the Lud. We tried Terrestrial know-how, we tried Production Miracles, we tried patriotism, we tried damning the torpedoes and full speed ahead ... and we were smashed back like mayflies in the ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... conceal from you that your alarm was justified. You are suffering from one of the commonest and one of the gravest mental derangements. I'm surprised, but there it is. You haven't yet discovered that it's the earth you're living on. You fancy it may be Sirius, Uranus, Aldebaran or Jupiter—let us say Jupiter. Perhaps in one of these worlds matters are ordered differently, and their truth is not our truth; but let me assure you that the name of your planet is the Earth and that on the earth one great unalterable truth prevails. Namely:—You can't ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... on to the other constellations, and talked of suns of the first and second magnitude, and pointed out Sirius, in whose honor great temples had once been built in Egypt, and Arcturus, the same old Arcturus that a Hebrew poet by the name of Job had sung about, and Vega and Capella and Rigel, which he said sent out eight thousand times more light ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... looking at the Milky Way. Through his perma-glas canopy, he could see it trailing across the black velvet of space like a white bridal veil. Below his SC9B scout-ship stretched the red dust deserts of Sirius Three illuminated by the thin light of two ice moons. He ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... the planet is no longer a glistening point low down; it has risen high above the horizon, and continues a brilliant object long after the shades of night have descended. Again a little longer and Venus has gained its full brilliancy and splendour. All the heavenly host—even Sirius and Jupiter—must pale before the splendid lustre of Venus, the unrivalled queen of ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... formerly served with, but was rebuffed. He realises that the present First Sea Lord, the title of the Admiral in command of the whole navy, is someone he used to serve with in former days, so they go to see this eminent officer. The outcome is that Syd's father is appointed to command the Sirius, and is invited to take Syd with him ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... any hear, or will no one assist me? Why do ye delay? The women have destroyed me, the captive women. Horrible, horrible treatment have I suffered. Alas me for my ruin! Whither can I turn? Whither can I go? Shall I soar through the ethereal skies to the lofty mansions where Orion or Sirius dart from their eyes the flaming rays of fire: or shall I hapless rush to the gloomy ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Out beyond Sirius, far in the deeps of space, beyond the flight of a cannon-ball flying for a billion years, beyond the range of unaided vision, blazes the star that is our Utopia's sun. To those who know where to look, with a good ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Orion resplendit; L'essaim prodigieux des Pleiades grandit; Sirius ouvre son cratere; Arcturus, oiseau d'or, scintille dans son nid; Le Scorpion hideux fait cabrer au zenith Le poitrail bleu ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... round her. "We'd no idea of it!" "Capital!" "A great hit!" they exclaimed. "Mother Hubbard is the star of the evening," said Leonard Brookhouse. "No, indeed," returned Leslie, patting Sir Charles's head,—"this is the dog-star." "Rather a Sirius reflection upon the rest of us," rejoined Brookhouse, shrugging his shoulders, as he walked off to take his place in the "Oath," and Leslie disappeared to make ready ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... soul away from earth, and send it on a mission of research among other worlds. Let it soar far away to where the dog-star, Sirius, holds its course; and then, though nineteen billion two hundred million miles from earth, a distance so great, that light, travelling, as it does, at the rate of six million six hundred and twenty thousand miles a minute, would ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... ascertain if they saw it, and found them gazing at it with as much astonishment as himself. He went to his instrument, and fixed its place, from which it never after appeared to deviate. For some time it increased in brightness—greatly surpassed Sirius in luster, and even Jupiter. It was seen by good eyes in the daytime; a thing which happens only to Venus, under very favorable circumstances; and at night it pierced through clouds which obscured the rest of the stars. After reaching its fullest ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... preached to you, Rachel," said he, as he lay back on his chair, "that all these things were fixed ere Sirius was born? Yea," he added, as a smile played amid the seriousness of his face, "ere yet there was a space for the dog-star to wag his tail. The croppings out will now come thick, and you will know whether you are to be a lady ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... grew, and Lance kept his head tilted backward. Alpha Centauri, the most popular target, was not visible at this latitude; and Barnard's star, besides being far too faint, lay on the other side of the sun. But there shone Sirius, just as bright as it had glittered for the Greeks, and frosty Procyon, a little to the north. Both orbs twinkled and beckoned, evoking strange and ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... the day of trial came, all this imposing force was of no use whatever, and might as well have not existed. Their ruin could not have been more complete or more rapid if they had not possessed an ironclad or a regiment. And all this was accomplished by me, Captain John Sirius, belonging to the navy of one of the smallest Powers in Europe, and having under my command a flotilla of eight vessels, the collective cost of which was eighteen hundred thousand pounds. No one has a better right to tell ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the end. Matter and spirit will then be one at last in glorious harmony, and the reign of freedom will begin on earth. But this can only come to pass by slow degrees, when after countless eons the moon and earth and shining Sirius himself shall fall to dust. Until that hour, oh, horror! horror! horror! [A pause. Two glowing red points are seen shining across the lake] Satan, my mighty foe, advances; I see ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... a sound Disturbed the icy air; No watchman on his midnight round Or traveller was there; But over All-Saints', high and bright, Pulsed to the music Sirius white, The ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... only had some evidence of that; but it is all dark, dark, on the other side of death, and on the other side of life too. Whence came we—whither do we tend? What power sent Sirius and all that galaxy of suns marching serenely through space? We, in our little planet-ship, falling into line, going like comets one day, and then vanishing; but the worlds moving on unconscious of our departure, and yet some power controls them and us. Medoline, to have my faith anchored as yours ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... uncovering secrets of upper-air electricity. But the interior of the earth is still one of the great mysteries. It is a paradox of astronomy that much more is known about the center of the sun or a star like Sirius than about the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various |
