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Heavens   /hˈɛvənz/   Listen
Heavens

noun
1.
The apparent surface of the imaginary sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected.  Synonyms: celestial sphere, empyrean, firmament, sphere, vault of heaven, welkin.






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"Heavens" Quotes from Famous Books



... half way up the heavens, the dew had not yet dried from the leaves, owing to the very late spring the freshness of springtime had not yet passed into the fullness of early summer. Through the tender green of the young leafage, starry with drops of moisture, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... Pigs! Good heavens! had we come out from among the swinish multitude for this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising early vegetables for the market:—"We shall never make any hand at market gardening," said Silas Foster, "unless the women ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... must be patient till the Heavens look With an aspect more favourable * * * * * * I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance, shall dry your pities, but I have That honourable grief lodged here, which bums ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... Don ate a supper of healthy size. Afterward he went out to the porch and squinted up at the sky. Stars dotted the black heavens like so many small windows. Now, ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... up a throne in the heavens," chanted mad Barbara Allen as Gregory went out; "and One sits upon it—and my Gracie's there, clothed in white robes, an' a palm in her hand. And you'll be there, young man," she cried after him, "and I'll be there. There's a cry ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... oppressed people of the Jews in a right state of mind. They were ignorant and stupid, given to worship false gods. They had eyes, and yet could not use them to see that, as the psalm told us this morning, the heavens declared the glory of God, and the firmament showed His handiwork. They were worshipping the sun, and moon, and stars, in stead of the Lord God who made them. They were brutish too, and would not listen to teaching. ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... the new court-house. It is a warm summer night of full moon. The paper lanterns which hang among the trees are foolish toys, only dimming, in little lurid circles, the great softness of the lunar light that floods the blue heavens and the high plateau. To the east the sand hills shine white as of old, but the empire of the sand is gradually diminishing. The grass grows thicker over the dunes than it used to, and the streets of the town are harder and firmer ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... sense of freshness penetrated and awoke me. I saw that we had already begun climbing a mountain path, in the midst of a dense forest, rifts in which occasionally opened to our admiring gaze ravishing vistas, impetuous torrents; distant mountains; cloudless heavens; a landscape, far below, of wondrous beauty. All about us were the songs of numberless brilliantly plumaged birds. We came out of the forest toward noon, descended to a little hamlet on the bank of the river, ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... with the luminous darkness of an Australian summer night. The tender sky was scattered with star-dust, a baby-moon peeped over the hill-top and the leaves and branches of the great bush trees lay like dark fretwork over the heavens. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner

... Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were ...
— The Republic • Plato

... hit. A general purpose is not enough. The arrow shot from the bow does not wander around to see what it can hit on its way, but flies straight to the mark. The magnetic needle does not point to all the lights in the heavens to see which it likes best. They all attract it. The sun dazzles, the meteor beckons, the stars twinkle to it, and try to win its affections; but the needle, true to its instinct, and with a finger that never errs in sunshine or in storm, points steadily ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... November the heavens changed. Their azure disappeared. The army marched enveloped in a chilling mist. This mist became thicker, and presently a blinding storm of snow descended upon it. It seemed as if the sky itself were falling, and uniting with the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... tongues of all the birds, and, had the Prince only known what they were saying, or the maiden been listening, they might have been spared much sorrow, but they were thinking only of each other, and when they came out of the forest the sun was high in the heavens. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... hearing what he said; he stared at objects without perceiving them. The result was that not till he had got home, with his easy old footgear under his arm, did he become aware that the new boots pinched him most horribly. They creaked too: heavens! how they creaked! But doubtless all new boots had these faults; he had forgotten; it was so long since he had bought a pair. The fact was, he felt dreadfully tired, utterly worn out. After munching a mouthful of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... "Good Heavens! Don't make me Queen's evidence, my dear fellow. Hartopp is equally incriminated. If they ever found out that I had sneaked, our relations would ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... it be, gracious Heavens! Don't they well know—dukes and princes—that they are all alike inferior to the shabbiest of the cardinals? The day that a Capuchin receives the red hat, he acquires the right to splash the mud in their faces as he rides past in his ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... her in a sort of quick, horrified arraignment. "What do you mean?" His eye fell upon the clock, and conviction seemed to steal upon him against his will. "Heavens and earth, why wasn't I called? On this morning of all others, when every moment's of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... must look for the coming of my Lord in my own affection. He must come in the clouds of my spiritual heavens, or he cannot come for ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... would be dark and then flash on continuous flash would follow, the wild-fire running about the tree-tops and glinting up through the recesses of the woods as if the heavens themselves were ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... the Lord Mayor, "he is going to do Lal some harm with it! Good heavens! he's swarmed up the pedestal and he is positively contemplating cutting Lal's eyes out. Stop, you villain," shouted the Lord Mayor, whilst he ran towards the spot. "Come down at once; how dare you touch that beautiful ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... to me, and you seem, Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea, To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck, With only light between the heavens and me. I feel your spirit and I close my eyes, Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun, The eager ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale

... went a great while this way; and the Maid to have an utter wonder and excitement of all that I to tell; for truly, it did be as that a man of this age should come downward from a great star in the heavens, and to tell of wonders and new things; and you to ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... "Good heavens, no!" cried the Canadian, throwing down his dishcloths and coming forward into the circle of firelight. "Surely there can be no question of this poor starved ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... between the bars, and my hands folded; the church of St. Mark lay below me, an immense flock of pigeons, free as the air, were flying about, were cooing and billing, or busied in constructing their nests upon the leaden roof; the heavens in their magnificence were before me; I surveyed all that part of Venice visible from my prison; a distant murmur of human voices broke sweetly on my ear. From this vast unhappy prison-house did I hold communion with Him, whose eyes alone beheld me; to Him I recommended my father, ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... ocean shuddered, the earth shook, the heavens were on fire, the universe rejoiced visibly; a strange transport mingled with fear moved the enraptured nations. They sing sweet verses and dance in harmonious motion at the sign of the salvation prepared for the French ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... with the magnificence of their proportions, their decoration, and their color. There the Oriental hues of the Exposition are carried upward, to meet and blend with the sky, and magically to make the heavens above them bluer than ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... covered the ground rapidly. After some ten miles of riding, he came to a ford where the track crossed the river, and entered rougher country. As he drew rein at the verge of the water to let his horse drink, he noticed that the heavens had suddenly become dark. Looking at the strip of sky revealed by the treeless stretch above the waters, he saw a phenomenon in the upper air. Across the tranquil blue expanse advanced a mighty thunder-cloud; ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... was over, and I was seized with fright. Every one gazed at me in a bewildered way, and that increased my terror. My sister went into hysterics, and my dear Guerard groaned in a heartrending way, "Oh heavens, my dear Sarah, oh heavens!" An artist was making sketches; fortunately the members of our company had gone up again in order to go and see the Rapids. Abbey besought me to return; poor Jarrett besought me. But I felt dizzy, and ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... her order. He studied those patches of light which had seemed so vaguely familiar at his first sighting, studying them closely to know them for what they were. A star map! A map of the heavens as they could be seen from ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... my child," she returned, with a pitiful accent. "Sit down beside me here, and I will explain why I am so disturbed. Good heavens! we have always supposed that Sir William was a man ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... Nabendu, before his bath, had finished rubbing oil over his chest, and was trying various devices to reach the inaccessible portions of his back, the bearer brought in a card inscribed with the name of the District Magistrate himself! Good heavens!—What would he do? He could not possibly go, and receive the Magistrate Sahib, thus oil-besmeared. He shook and twitched like a koi-fish, ready dressed for the frying pan. He finished his bath in a great hurry, tugged on his clothes somehow, ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... object in a scene of the most exquisite and delicate colour. Right and left of him stretched the low grey salted shore, pale banks of marly earth surmounted by green-grey wiry grass that held and was half buried in fine blown sand. Above, the heavens made a complete hemisphere of blue in which a series of remote cumulus clouds floated and dissolved. Before him spread the long levels of the sands, and far away at its utmost ebb was the sea. Eleanor had gone to explore the black ribs of a wrecked fishing-boat ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... magic was in the air. With the people it was as if all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood. Order and law had passed away from the universe; but the sun still shone, the wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed—that was the amazing thing about it. That water should continue to run downhill was a ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... the men moved forward before the enemy the heavens were opened. From the eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... a yet more important religious influence exerted by India upon the West. As is well known, Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the S[a]nkhya system before they become so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous 'three qualities' ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... "Heavens!" breathed Mr. Prohack to himself. "The little thing is taking me seriously. With all her experience of the queer world, and all her initiative and courage, she is taking me seriously!" He was touched; ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... the last days of his age, broken down by weight of years and a-weary of the road, he draggeth along as best he may by force of willing spirit his old and tottering limbs, and cometh to Rome to fulfil his desire of seeing the image of Him whom he hopeth to see ere long up yonder in the heavens." The success of the measure and the solemn homage of Christendom filled with joy and proud confidence the heart of the septuagenarian pontiff. He had three years before decreed to Louis IX., the most Christian of the Kings of France, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Street, fearing lest it might "trust the churches" too much, had not the faith which could take hold of these castles in the air and anchor them to the soil of Pleasant Hill; but Brother Dodge got his grapples out and pulled down a church building from the heavens. Well done; now surely he should rest from his labors and give himself and us time to breathe. No; a visible church only stimulated his faith, it did not satisfy it. This church was a place in which he could read the eleventh chapter of Hebrews every Sunday. The result ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 5, May, 1889 • Various

... northwesterly course in the canoe in search of the lake's outlet to Michikamau. While paddling we got a seven-pound namaycush, which enabled us to eat that night. Our camp was on a rock-bound island, partially covered with stunted gnarled spruce and fir trees. The weather had cleared and the heavens were bright with stars when we drew our canoe high upon the boulder-strewn shore, clear of the breaking waves. The few small trout we had caught we stowed away in the bow of the canoe, as they were to be ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... not unlikely, but that the meliorating of Telescopes will afford as great a variety of new Discoveries in the Heavens, as better Microscopes would among small terrestrial Bodies, and both would give us infinite cause, more and more to admire the omnipotence ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... himself in his whimsical way, "It is my destiny—is it not written in the book of fate? The Parcae Sisters three have willed it so. Good heavens, what an enigma life is! Some winged insect whirling in a cyclone would have as much chance of escaping its doom as a human being under such circumstances." Then he stopped, and looked with blank, unseeing eyes down ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... car at the crossing Muriel had carefully described, waited for the car to vanish, and warily entered the Wilton estate through a gate set in the stone wall. The clouds of the early evening had passed and the stars marched through the heavens resplendently, proclaiming peace on earth and good-will toward men. They were almost oppressively brilliant, seen through the clear, cold atmosphere, and as The Hopper slipped from one big tree to another on his tangential course to the house, he fortified his ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson

... "Merciful heavens" he exclaimed, wiping his red face with a red handkerchief, "is the Ole Boy done gone an' turned hisself loose? I hearn the racket, an' I sez to the ole woman, sez I: 'I'll fling the saddle on the gray mar' an' canter to town an' see ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... without his perpetual overstrain of expression. Other passages, showing the same mental force, occur in the Astronomica; one might instance the fine passage on the power of the human eye to take in, within its tiny compass, the whole immensity of the heavens; or another, suggested by the mention of the constellation Argo, on the influence of sea-power on history, where the inevitable and well- worn instances of Salamis and Actium receive a fresh life from the citation ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... "My heavens, John, I had no idea he got such a clean sweep at you!" he said, as he approached the bed. "Ef I'd a-knowed this I'd 'a' killed the ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... for a common man to set up his opinion again' a gentleman wot have profesh'nal knowledge of the heavens, as one may say," said the man, "but I would 'umbly offer to bet my umbrellar to his wideawake that it don't cease raining this side of ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... whither he was going to take his Philistine wife; Herakles, while still a youthful herdsman, slew the Thespian lion and afterward strangled the Nemean lion with his hands. Samson carried off the gates of Gaza and bore them to the top of a hill before Hebron; Herakles upheld the heavens while Atlas went to fetch the golden apples of Hesperides. Moreover, the feats of Herakles show a higher intellectual quality than those of Samson, all of which, save one, were predominantly physical. The exception was the trick of tying 300 foxes by their tails, two by two, with firebrands between ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... softening all brutal details. The broad horizon above the lake was piled deep with clouds. Beyond the oak trees, in the southern sky, great tongues of flame shot up into the dark heavens out of the blast furnaces of the steel works. Deep-toned, full-throated frogs had begun ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... "Tell us Godspeed, and we are glad to get rid of you." Dr. Seaver felt that the local people were the recipients, and the visitors the benefactors in what had been done. The President had inspired them with his spirit; he had not withdrawn his presence, and very late might he return to the heavens. Students and young ministers had been benefited by listening to those many learned men and devoted servants of God, and were inspired for future usefulness. "We are not the benefactors, we are the recipients, and we ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a full.... Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious ...
— Candide • Voltaire

... the teeming work-days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired historian "of the generations of the heaven and earth, in the days that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." And who that hath watched their ways with an understanding heart, could, as the vision evolving still advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee; the home building, wedded, and divorceless swallow; and, above all, the manifoldly intelligent ant tribes, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... doctor's impression of the great fuel specialist grew ever darker, leaner, taller and more impatient. Sir Richmond took on the likeness of a monster obdurate and hostile, he spread upwards until like the Djinn out of the bottle, he darkened the heavens. And he talked too much. He talked ever so much too much. Sir Richmond also thought that the doctor talked too much. In addition, he read into his imperfect memory of the doctor's face, an expression of protruded curiosity. What was all this problem ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... for her to enjoy herself in. There had been a patter of rain the night before, which had kept the leaves awake talking to each other till nearly morning; but by dawn the small winds had blown brisk little puffs, and whisked the heavens clear and bright with their tiny wings, as you have seen Susan clear away the cobwebs in your mamma's parlour; and so now there were only left a thousand blinking, burning water-drops, hanging like convex mirrors ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of horror, could scarcely have been greater if Cornelia had suggested a leap down to the street beneath. "Good heavens! what an idea! You can't realise what you are talking about, Miss Briskett. That house has been in the possession of my family since the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... and brave Prince Sigismund (For thy bearing doth convince us Thou art he, although on faith We proclaim thee as our prince here). King Basilius, thy father, Fearful of the Heavens fulfilling A prediction, which declared He would see himself submitted At thy victor feet, attempts To deprive thee of thy birthright, And to give it to Astolfo, Muscovy's duke. For this his missives ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... might make. No man could be more independent or more clearly justified in pleasing himself than was this lover. And then he himself proposed that the second daughter, Nora, should come and live with them in London. What a lover to fall suddenly from the heavens into such a dovecote! ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... "Great heavens!" he muttered, waving his hand toward the marble halls of finance around him, "my country's got you backed into East River when it comes ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... Ellen,—no bungling. We've got to spin some sort of a yarn that won't break, nor have any weak places; and of course, as far as the real work of the farm is concerned, we'll still do the most of it. But the place'll be theirs. See?—theirs! Working out—good Heavens!" ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... created things as part of that purpose coming in many cases out of that very survival of the fittest of which Darwin has spoken, and yet a distinct object in itself. For this beauty there is no need in the economy of nature whatever. The beauty of the starry heavens, which so impressed the mind of Kant that he put it by the side of the Moral Law as proving the existence of a Creator, is not wanted either for the evolution of the world or for the preservation of living creatures. Our enjoyment of it is a super-added ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... as it appears, may be,' said Alfred, shaking hands heartily with the Doctor, and also with Snitchey and Craggs, and then looking round. 'Where are the - Good Heavens!' ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... very strange and fair With all the roses summer never brings. The snowy blossom of immortal Springs Lighted its boughs, and I, even I, was there. There were new heavens, and the earth was new, And still I told my ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit

... at thought of the legendary Dunkelbergs. Uncle looked me over from top to toe. "Heavens!" he exclaimed. "Go down to the brook and wash the mud ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... speaker's wit, while the Indian moved neither eye, limb, nor muscle. The girl, irritated, opened upon him with all that volubility of tongue which so strongly characterises their race. It was, however, in vain. The sun in the heavens was not more unmoved—a marble statue would have been life behind him—not a look or sound, not a glance, testified that he even heard what was passing. Wearied at length with their vain efforts, the bevy rushed forth into the open air, and, joining hands, commenced, with loud cries and ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... of the Romans, borrowed from the Sabines and Etruscans, bears everywhere, in distinction to that of the Greeks, the marks of the practical and political character of the Roman people. The oldest national divinities are, first, Jupiter or Jovis, the god of the heavens, Mars or Mavors, the god of the field and of war, Quirinus (Janus?) the protector of the Quirites, afterwards, together with Juno (Dione) and Minerva, worshiped in the Capitol, (Dii Capitolini); second, Vesta, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... the loneliness of the far-flung line of desert waste—the flat and sombre serenity of sand and sage and cactus. Clouds of dust are lifted from the immensity of the arid stretches, like smoke signals to the matchless immensity of the sky. The burning haze, the molten heavens, the weird and spearlike cactus, the valiant horsemen, hold the eye. We follow their trail until they are almost lost to view in the drapery that enshrouds sand and sage and riders. There seems now ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... possibility of failure he never dreamed. His star was in the heavens and Destiny had spoken. Just as the cork plunged to the bottom of the pail must inevitably rise to the top, so he must rise. He was of the oligarchy of the great, of the chosen of the gods, and now the voices of Destiny were calling him to the undertaking of his mission. Tonight the question ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... eyes, your slim And delicate form, or some such other whim, The simple pretexts of all lovers;—I For other reason. Listen whilst I try To say. I joy to see the sunset slope Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, In mildly modulated phrases; thus Your life shall fade like a voluptuous Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die Like some soft evening's sad serenity.... I would possess your dying hours; indeed My love is worthy of the gift, I plead ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... army was but three days from Smolensk when the heavens became dark, and snow began to fall in great flakes, in such a quantity that the air was obscured. The cold was then felt with extreme severity; the northern wind blew impetuously into the faces of ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are like the earth—durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspective begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... be loyal and true. He was, or might be, a king, as I knew, though he thought that I did not. I married him and the holy Tanofir laughed but he did not say me nay, and I became a queen. And now I wish sometimes that I were dead, or back holding the cup of the holy Tanofir with the wisdom of the heavens flowing round me and the soft darkness of the tombs about me. It seems that in this world we never ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... to the prosperous Throne of Our Predecessors, do humbly and solemnly swear to the Imperial Founder of Our House and to Our other Imperial Ancestors that, in pursuance of a great policy co-extensive with the Heavens and with the Earth, We shall maintain and secure from decline the ancient ...
— The Constitution of the Empire of Japan, 1889 • Japan

... a sunset, I find it to be a splendid fact, une jouissance vraie, Monsieur, to think that men can paint,—that these shades, which are spontaneous in the heavens, and fleeting, can be rivalled by us and made permanent,—that man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... given to the part of the heavens directly under our feet, as zenith to that directly over ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... there may be discerned three fairly independent streams of religious or quasi-religious enthusiasm: (1) that connected with the phenomena of the heavens, the movements of the Sun, planets and stars, and the awe and wonderment they excited; (2) that connected with the seasons and the very important matter of the growth of vegetation and food on the Earth; and (3) that connected with the mysteries ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... the telescopes of the Intelligence Staff, and seemed to have as little power of influencing it as an observer at Greenwich has of changing the orbit of a planet. The astronomer can at least forecast with certainty the path which it will follow in the heavens, but there were no observations available from which the course of De Wet could be predicted for more than a few hours. He seemed to defy the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... earth made the search a long and tantalizing one. At the moment when the colonel, attracted by something glistening in the large frying-pan which he was agitating at the edge of the stream, uttered an exclamation which drew all heads into the cavity of his receptacle, an answering sound from the heavens caused everybody suddenly to look up. An equatorial storm had gathered unnoticed over their heads. In a few minutes a solid sheet of warm rain, accompanied by a furious tornado sweeping through the valley, caused whites and Indians to scatter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... their conduct—flighty, fainting, blushing, gushing, giggling, and shaking their curls. They knew no reserve in the first days of the Victorian era. No thought was held too trivial, no emotion too silly, to express. To Nature everything was sacrificed. Great heavens! And in those barren days what influence did women exert! By men they seem not to have been feared nor loved, but regarded rather as 'dear little creatures' or 'wonderful little beings,' and in their relation to life as foolish and ineffectual as the landscapes they ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... precious boon eternally To such as fondly cherish her; once go Driven by mad passion, strike but at her peace, And, though she step aside from broad reproach, Yet every softer virtue dies away. Beaming with virtue inaccessible Stood Egilona; for her lord she lived, And for the heavens that raised her sphere so high: All thoughts were on her—all, beside her own. Negligent as the blossoms of the field, Arrayed in candour and simplicity, Before her path she heard the streams of joy Murmur ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... than the giver, that she believed, with all the strength of an irresistible conviction, that even so lowly a thing as her own heart was indeed a theatre for the constant display of her Maker's guiding and controlling power, not less than the starry heavens; that her own sanctification, and the providential means to effect it, even in their minutest details, were ordered by sovereign grace and wisdom; and from this time ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... body of water as beautiful as any that mortal eyes have ever seen. Huge palms rose high in air, their long feathery leaves swaying softly in the golden light. Darkness fell like a curtain; but the waters now gleamed like nether heavens with their own stars of ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... three,' said Frank. 'What a gloomy place to take you to! Good heavens, we have one day together, and I take you to a cemetery! Shall we go to a matinee ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... with him. A red sun had dipped below the sea line two hours before, and a faint breeze sprang up at his setting. Now the Barang leaned slightly to full canvas and snored easily through the phosphorescent seas with a pleasant tinkling of running wavelets along her sides. Overhead the heavens were luminous with sparks of ultra brilliance; the decks and sails of the ancient brigantine were bathed in soft radiance, ruled across and along with bars of blackest shadow. A softly noisy chorus of sea voices kept rhythm to the swaying of the tall spars, and from somewhere ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... the interior of the submarine, out over the sea, sparkling in the moonlight, then up to the heavens, bright ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... poor Mrs. Peony? She is good-looking, soft-hearted, and unaffected; she laughs when she is pleased, and cries when she is touched. She is altogether frank, and natural, and womanly. Can these be good reasons for running her down? Heavens knows! but run down she is, just as the hypocritical Lady Straitlace is cried up. Well, we must take things as they are and make the best of them. So Frank and I walked on through the pleasant fields in the darkening twilight, and ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... betrayed remembrance and he drew me into his arms and our lips met. Thus we remained, languidly content, until long after the sky man had studded the heavens with millions of silver nails. And there, near a field of cattle, like Paul Potter painted, under a sky worthy of Raphael, in a cove overhung with trees like a picture by Hobbema, he asked me to be his wife. And then the sweetest ceremony ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... prepared and enjoyed by the hungry ones. Then they quickly rolled themselves up in their blankets, and were soon away in the land of dreams. Nothing softer had they under them than the rocks, and no roof over them but the starry heavens, yet they slept in a way that thousands of excited, weary, restless ones, tossing about in comfortable beds, might well envy, but ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... possible, gabbling Cornish legends. When I say the "others," I mean Sir Lionel and Ellaline Lethbridge. I didn't know any legends, but I made up several on the spur of the moment, much more exciting than theirs, and that pleased Sir Lionel, as he is a Cornishman. Heavens, how I did take it out of myself admiring his native land when we'd got across that ferry! Said the scenery was quite different from that of Devonshire, at the first go off; and I'm not sure there weren't differences. The road coming toward ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... opened in one's face, not a breath of wind stirring to agitate the still atmosphere; but, neither did this fact, nor did the blazing power of the glowing orb of day, which looked like a globe of fire in the centre of the heavens, affect the wild luxuriance of ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... heavens! More blue than any colour that tinges the flowers of earth—like the violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The stillness of those lofty clouds makes them seem whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to thy ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... Heavens! have I done the like? 'Clarify and strain,' indeed? 'Make it like Marvell,' no less. I'll tell you what - you may go to the devil; that's what I think. 'Be eloquent' is another of your pregnant suggestions. I cannot sufficiently ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was as damp as a vault of the dead; cold even when the dog-star reigned in the heavens. The brasses and bronzes were rusted with moisture, and the marbles were black with the spores of mould; rain dripped through the joints of the roof, and innumberable sparrows made their nests there; the mosaics ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... then sat there spellbound. The sound of their wings and voices filled my ears, and their numbers more than filled my eyes. Why I did not shoot was never very clear to me. Maybe I thought the world was all turning to pigeons, as they still came pouring down from the heavens, and I did not want to break the spell. There I sat waiting, waiting, with my eye looking along the gun-barrel, till, suddenly, the mass rose like an explosion, and with a rush and a roar they were gone. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... camp-fire blazed deserted. Gradually its light diminished to a twinkling spark in the blackness. For a while no word was spoken, the man bending to his task, the girl crouching with averted face in the extreme bow. Then a little new moon peered over the distant pine tops, the heavens spread their starry veil, and the hour of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... my astonished gaze. It was a summer evening, and the dome of the heavens seemed ablaze with the light of myriads of diamonds, so countless were the stars to be seen and so brilliant did they appear in this rarefied atmosphere. Below me stretched out what appeared to be a magnificent park, with white marble buildings scattered here and there, while ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... is now become the land of obliviousness, and doteth. Her ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath vanished as a phantasma. Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and tetric. She poreth not upon the heavens; astronomy is dead unto her, and knowledge maketh other cycles. Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... postures, as if they would have taken him away, or torn him in pieces. At some times they seemed to belch flame, at other times a continuous smoke, with horrible noises and roaring. Once he dreamed he saw the face of the heavens, as it were, all on fire; the firmament crackling and shivering with the noise of mighty thunders, and an archangel flew in the midst of heaven, sounding a trumpet, and a glorious throne was seated in the east, whereon sat one in brightness, like the morning ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Mammon took him by the hand. Am I to understand that if you give the parson 12s. in the acre for potatoes and 10s. for wheat, the Protestant religion is safe on its rock? But if you reduce him to 6s. the acre for potatoes and wheat, then Jupiter shakes the heavens with his thunder, Neptune rakes up the deep with his trident, and Pluto leaps from his throne! See the curate—he rises at six to morning prayers; he leaves company at six for evening prayer; he baptises, he marries, he churches, he buries, he follows ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... us and to the far left shells were falling, bursting and brilliantly lighting up the heavens for a lurid moment. In our immediate sector there were no shells. It was all the more dark and all the more silent, for the noise and uproar and blazing flame ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... of Geneva. The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in Amadis de Gaul. All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him in his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him; while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and spiritual champion of "the chosen people," stood ever ready for battle, with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... 'Good heavens, I'd never try. Haven't you discovered that women know by instinct what men they can make fools of, and they only try their arts on them? They've gained their reputation for omnipotence only on account of their robust common-sense, which ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward," but everywhere, spread all over with living light, blazing in all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every American heart—"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... low, On its westward windows dashes Primrose or pomegranate glow; And above, in glimmering splashes, Lilac stars the heavens sow. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... not need a telescope, because, even if learning were general, there are people who prefer to examine things through a microscope to studying the starry heavens. Some like statues, some like pictures. A particular individual has no other ambition than to possess a good piano, while another is pleased with an accordion. The tastes vary, but the artistic needs exist in all. In our present, poor ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... clouds—great hills, mysterious distances, flaming sunsets, the still, vast darkness of night! These are the mighty works of the Lord, and of none other—unspoiled and unobscured. In them He proclaims Himself. They who have not known before that the heavens and the earth are the handiwork of God, here discover it: and perceive the Presence and the Power, and are ashamed and overawed. Thus our land works its marvel in the sensitive soul. I have sometimes thought that in the waste is sounded the great keynote of life—with which true hearts ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... machines promise better results as to speed, but yet will be of limited commercial application. They may carry mails and reach other inaccessible places, but they cannot compete with railroads as carriers of passengers or freight. They will not fill the heavens with commerce, abolish custom houses, or revolutionise the world, for they will be expensive for the loads which they can carry, and subject to too many weather contingencies. Success is, however, probable. Each experimenter has added something ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... with a finely cut face and a blond complexion. His pity was visible, quivering a little under his mask of impassivity. Adelaide's first thought on seeing him was, "Good Heavens! another man to be emotionally calmed before I can get at the truth!" She had to be tactful, to let him see that she was not going to make a scene. She knew that he felt it himself, but she was not grateful to him. What business had he to feel it? His feeling was ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... looked up at the stars now shining clear and bright. Once she started impatiently and her eyes filled with angry tears. Then she grew calm again, and soon the girlish face was worthy of a master's brush as she gazed reverently into the beautiful heavens, her lips moving in a whispered prayer; a softly whispered prayer for Dick. And as she prayed, in the shadow of the Catalpa trees, unseen by her, a man walked slowly down the street. Reaching the corner, he turned and slowly passed the house again; ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... pedestrians seemed to have vanished from the streets, and our immediate quietude grew more profound; though the gigantic caldron continued to bubble in the distance, dull roars of explosions came to us from all directions, and the smoke-pillars were towering more ominously in the heavens. ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... pause. I wondered what was coming—and soon knew. The choleric old party in the street had to appear for one passing instant more, and fire off one more passing sentence. Which he did—with the same results. Good heavens! what an ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... who created the heavens, the earth, the angels, the stars, the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, or all the four elements, and all things of the two worlds; that God we believe in. Him we worship, him we invoke, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... a vertuous kind of creature, But doth not coin command Virginitie? And beautie hath a strange bewitching feature, But gold reads so much world's divinitie, As with the Heavens hath no affinitie: So that where Beauty doth with vertue dwell, If it want money, yet it ...
— English Satires • Various

... decided that in the Channel should be played the last great scene. Drake had not been two days out when a storm struck his fleet and scattered it over the face of the sea. For three days it raged with extraordinary fury. Drake's own flag-ship was in dire peril, and, when the heavens cleared, only three of the battle-ships and half a dozen smaller craft were together. Not a single merchant-ship was to be seen, and the Lion, Borough's flag-ship, on which he was still a prisoner, was missing too. Before leaving St. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... rockets and red light flashed forth, a never-to-be-forgotten sight of lights and shadows. The tall pines rose in the background like dark sentinels guarding the happy spirits in their nightly revels. It was after ten o'clock when the last shower of rockets went up and lighted the heavens with the beautiful gold and silver showers, a befitting close for such an eventful ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... of Salvation from its beginnings. So many things that man does not himself contrive or desire are always happening: death, plagues, tempests, blights, floods, sunrise and sunset, growths and harvests and decay, and Kant's two wonders of the starry heavens above us and the moral law within us, that we conclude that somebody must be doing it all, or that somebody is doing the good and somebody else doing the evil, or that armies of invisible persons, benefit-cut and malevolent, are ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... thunder. Surely Mungo Mah Lobeh himself, of all the thousands he annually turns out, never made one more lovely than this. Soon the white mists rose from the mangrove-swamp, and grew rose-colour in the light of the setting sun, as they swept upwards over the now purple high forests. In the heavens, to the north, there was a rainbow, vivid in colour, one arch of it going behind the peak, the other sinking into the mist sea below, and this mist sea rose and rose towards me, turning from pale rose-colour to lavender, and where the shadow of Mungo lay across it, to a dull leaden grey. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... life: one is for cod-liver oil and the other for spinach, neither popular in our nursery. Some time ago—before I came, in fact—he had ordered cod-liver oil for all {aenemic} of the{ }—Heavens! there's that word again! {aneamic} —children, and had given instructions as to its application to Miss Snaith. Yesterday, in his suspicious Scotch fashion, he began nosing about to find out why the poor little rats weren't fattening up as fast as he thought they ought, and he un earthed a hideous ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... enquiry brought us face to face again. But this time the ill-starred dancing-skirt and bells had been locked away; and in their stead we saw the silken jacket, the spangled pale-blue sari, covered by a diaphanous black veil, like a thin cloud half-veiling the summer heavens, the necklace of pearls round the olive pillar of her throat, and above them the calm face and the wealth of dark hair that scorned all artificial adornment. There she sat in her own house, singing to two rich Arabs and a subordinate agent of one of the greatest ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... constitution of man and its tendencies, it would seem as if there were two definite directions in which he grows. He is like a tree which strikes its roots into the ground while it throws up young branches towards the heavens. These two lines which go outward from the central personal point are to him clear, definite, and intelligible. He calls one good and the other evil. But man is not, according to any analogy, observation, or experience, a straight line. Would that he were, and that life, or progress, ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... heavens tell of the depth of the atmosphere by the angle the meteor makes in falling, but perhaps you can not understand that now. So you see, children, we live on the bottom of a great ocean of air, and that air, or atmosphere, is a part of our ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm



Words linked to "Heavens" :   solar apex, surface, zodiac, firmament, nadir, apex, celestial point, apex of the sun's way, zenith



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