"Meteor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... momentary delay before the answer came. "Captain, we've taken a meteor strike aft, apparently a metallic body. It must have hit us a tremendous wallop because it's set up a rotation. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... little cottage ornee. He gave himself up freely to his new passion. With his comfortable fortune and good connections, the future seemed bright and possible enough as to circumstances. He knew that Argemone felt for him; how much it seemed presumptuous even to speculate, and as yet no golden-visaged meteor had arisen portentous in his amatory zodiac. No rich man had stepped in to snatch, in spite of all his own flocks and herds, at the poor man's own ewe- lamb, and set him barking at all the world, as many a poor lover has ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... majority of the gentry or lairds, and the preachers on one side; and the great Catholic families of Huntly, Morton (the title being now held by a Maxwell), Errol, and Crawford on the other. Bothwell (a sister's son of Mary's Bothwell) flitted meteor-like, more Catholic than anything else, but always plotting to seize James's person; and in this he was backed by the widow of Gowrie and the preachers, and encouraged by Elizabeth. In her fear that James ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... gospel may be divided into two classes. There is the warm, enthusiastic, emotional evangelist, who flashes across the ecclesiastical horizon like a meteor, and creates a temporary "sensation," so to speak, among the dry bones in the valley of vision. Then there is the more steady-going preacher of the Word, who maintains an even pace throughout, turning neither to the right nor to the left—whose ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... nights, and I will cut Sheer through the ebon gates that yet will shut On every set of day; or as a sledge Drawn over snowy plains; where not a hedge Breaks this Aurora's dancing, nothing but The one cold Esquimaux' unlikely hut That swims in the broad moonlight! Lo, a wedge Of the clean meteor hath been brightly driven Right home into the fastness of the north! Anon it quickeneth up into the heaven! And I with it have clomb and spreaded forth Upon the crisp and cooling atmosphere! My soul is all abroad: I cannot find ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... passer-by. Chance unites these individuals physically, the occasion unites them psychologically; they do not know each other, and after the moment when they find themselves together, they may never see each other again. To use a metaphor, it is a psychological meteor, of the most unforeseen, ephemeral, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... not only gained a half-mile lead, but his car was apparently swifter. He knew its every trick and ounce of power. He drove superbly. He was reckless now, for he had not missed the knowledge that behind him was a meteor ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... I can recognise merit even in my enemies; and though I was so soon to be his victim, I could not but admire the thoroughly professional manner, indicative of past mastership, with which he set about his business. So far all his plans, generated with meteor-like quickness, had been successful; he was now showing how devoted he was to his vocation, and how richly he appreciated the situation, by abandoning himself to a short period of greedy, voluptuous anticipation, fully expressed in his staring eyes and thinly lipped mouth, before ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... any single incident can almost invariably be "explained away." It is the weight of a great mass of cumulative evidence which tells the tale. The most expert and exact description of the fall of a meteor would not have forced an acceptance from the scientific world; the relative improbability of the whole of the past experience of the human race would have been so much greater than the fact that the latter would have been discredited. Gradually it would have receded in the mind, and ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... a bit of animated flame made a tiny meteor streak against the blackness of the foliage—where a firefly quested for its mate, switching on its marvelous little searchlight. Beyond, on the smooth, broad roadways, four-eyed chariots of power shot silently through ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... further down the steep roof where it could not be reached. Above all, there was not a moment to spare. He did not hesitate, but with sufficient presence of mind to use his left instead of his right hand, he seized the fatal brand and hurled it, a fiery meteor, clear of the house. It hurt him cruelly, and for a moment he felt sick and faint; but a round of applause from those below (for now Miss Eulie and the children were out, looking tremblingly on), and Annie's cry of joy and encouragement, again gave ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... who wish to know more of this subject, will find all the latest information in "Appleton's Cyclopaedia," under the items "Aerolite" and "Meteor," where admirably clear and condensed accounts are given of all that is known about these bodies. C.A.R.'s extract states the theory ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... on the point of bespeaking a new connection. This is very unlike the daring criminal who has reduced the powers of nature to minister to her ungovernable passions, and speeds from land to land like a desolating meteor;—the Medea who, abandoned by all the world, was still sufficient for herself. Nothing but a wish to humour Athenian antiquities could have induced Euripides to adopt this cold interpolation of his story. With this exception ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... tear the tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle-shout, And burst the cannon's roar— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... The people at large adhered to their traditional cult and were easily swayed by superstitions. The first half of the seventh century was marked by abnormal occurrences well calculated to disturb men's minds. There were comets (twice); there was a meteor of large dimensions; there were eclipses of the sun and moon; there were occultations of Venus; there was snow in July and hail "as large as peaches" in May, and there was a famine (621) when old people ate roots of herbs and died by the wayside, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... myself to believe that a heart, the seat of so many virtues, could possibly become inhuman and unjust. I had been taught from my infancy to believe that elevated stations are surrounded by delusive visions, which glitter but to dazzle, like an unsubstantial meteor, and flatter to betray. With legions of these phantoms it has been my fate to encounter; I have been unceasingly marked by their persecutions, and shall at length become ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... conceit— The fancy made him glad! Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish! 5 The boon, prefigured in his earliest wish, The fair fulfilment of his poesy, When his young heart first yearn'd for sympathy! But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain Unnourished wane; 10 Faith asks her daily bread, And Fancy must be fed! Now so it chanced—from wet or dry, It boots not how—I know not why— She missed her wonted food; and quickly 15 Poor Fancy stagger'd and grew sickly. Then came ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... grandiose great, How many a servant of the State Had left a more enduring name. But all is not for all; 'tis far From flaming meteor to fixed star, From ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... Joe calmly, "at six and a quarter miles per second. Pretty thin, though. At that, we may have left a meteor-trail for the ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... hole, but I fear to do so," answered the inventor. "The Monarch is not under control, and if I attempt to make a landing I may smash her all to pieces. She may settle down until within a few hundred feet of the earth and then plunge like a meteor. We ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... both in character and in the lesson which it teaches, is the Book of Job. Of unknown date, as we said, and unknown authorship, the language impregnated with strange idioms and strange allusions, un-Jewish in form, and in fiercest hostility with Judaism, it hovers like a meteor over the old Hebrew literature, in it, but not of it, compelling the acknowledgment of itself by its own internal majesty, yet exerting no influence over the minds of the people, never alluded to, and scarcely ever quoted, till at last the light ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... everybody danced who could, and those who couldn't admired their neighbors with uncommon warmth. The air was dark with Davises, and many Joneses gamboled like a flock of young giraffes. The golden secretary darted through the room like a meteor with a dashing French-woman who carpeted the floor with her pink satin train. The serene Teuton found the supper-table and was happy, eating steadily through the bill of fare, and dismayed the garcons by the ravages he committed. But the Emperor's ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... a meteor, Clarence Tresillian had flashed upon the world of football. In the opening game he had behaved in the goal-mouth like a Chinese cracker, and exhibited an absolutely impassable defence; and from then onward, except for an occasional check, Houndsditch ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... and in vain had I striven, For hope ceased a ray to impart; When thou cam'st, like a meteor from heaven, And gave peace to ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... wished to go to her father, to throw herself on his breast, to pour out to him all her happiness, her affection, her joy, in words of thankfulness, of tender child-like love. How the white satin dress rustled and shone! how the diamonds sparkled and glittered, as, meteor-like, they flitted down the dark corridor! With a bright, happy smile, holding the wreath in her hand, she stepped into her father's room. But the apartment was empty. She crossed it in haste to seek him in his study. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... find it in Lord Byron's writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath his strength, tenderness sometimes joined with the phrenzy of despair. A flash of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil, like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over charnel-houses and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... fog until eight o'clock. As the misty cloud lifted above the horizon, the enemy opened up a terrific fire from his three batteries in front, mounting respectively two, eight, and eight pieces of heavy cannon. A meteor-like shower of Congreve rockets accompanied the balls, filling the air for fifteen minutes with these missiles of terror. The two batteries nearest the river directed their fire against McCarty's house, some hundreds of yards behind our ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... As a meteor at night lights up with its greenish glare flowers and blades of grass, twisting long shadows behind them, lights up lawns and bushes and the deep places of woods, scattering quiet night for a moment, ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... the young man, likewise laughing, "why, Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni must have come to see you in his ominous conical nightcap; and, do you know, you may see it flashing every morning from his window in the Spanish Square like a portentous meteor. But it's not by any means owing to this cap that he's called the Pyramid Doctor; for that there's quite another reason. Doctor Splendiano is a great lover of pictures, and possesses in truth quite a choice collection, which ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... right little black man." But there was no time for celebration. I must first answer my enemy. "You will remember that I kicked you once," said I, "and if you have a memory as long as my finger be careful I do not kick you again, else even people as far away as the French will think you are a meteor. But I would not be bandying words at long ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... successors who made these things possible, and all kingdoms and races, all nations, will revere the name of James Watt, the genius to whom the world is most indebted for the beginnings of all this later and grander civilization which has converted the slow progress of earlier centuries into the meteor-like advance of to-day toward a future as grand and as mighty and as noble as humanity shall choose to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... lady, he from a tailor's shop-board; and she from a milliner's hack room,—the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest of us, but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's day? Here is a tin-peddler, whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders, like a travelling meteor, or opposition sun; and on the other side a seller of spruce-beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here comes a party of ladies on horseback, in green riding-habits, ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will it be before your voice, already weakened, and almost always forced beyond the limits of beauty, shall degenerate into a hollow, dull, guttural tone, and even into that explosive or tremulous sound, which proclaims irremediable injury? Is your beautiful voice and your talent to disappear like a meteor, as others have done? or do you hope that the soft air of Italy will in time restore a voice once ruined? I fall into a rage when I think of the many beautiful voices which have been spoiled, and have dwindled away ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... slow work, but the greater facility ought to serve instead; and besides, there is no urgent necessity for me to write encyclopedias, like Littre. He who cannot shine with the steady light of a sun might at least dazzle as a meteor. But oh! that nothingness of the past,—the most probable nothingness of the future! I am growing peevish—and tired; and will leave ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... from the field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue long to interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the world goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives and so ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... closed, were suddenly thrown wide open and the terrible God of War marched forth, the whole earth trembling beneath his feet. It was the breaking of a mighty storm in a placid sky, the fall of a meteor which spreads terror and destruction on all sides, the explosion of a vast bomb in a great assemblage; it was everything that can be imagined of the sudden and overwhelming, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... her. It was only a few nights before that I had seen Carita at one of the midnight revues, doing a dance which was described as the "hypnotic whirl," a wild abandon of grace and motion. Carita Belleville had burst like a meteor on the sky of the "Great White Way," blazing a gorgeous trail among the fixed stars of that gay firmament. She had even been "taken up" by society, or at least a certain coterie of it, had become much sought after to do exhibition dancing at social affairs, and now was well ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... says the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery of this great man—"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face, and frightened America more than any comet that appeared there in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons into small tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and turn them about his ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... a moment in Coleridge's history, and think of him at this period! Butler! Keate! Bethell! and Coleridge!! How different the career of each in future life! O Coleridge; through what strange paths did the meteor of genius lead thee! Pause a moment, ye distinguished men! and deem it not the least bright spot in your happier career, that you and Coleridge were once rivals, and for a moment running abreast ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift flying meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passeth from life to ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... been an intelligent direction of social processes. Many men in many ages have had ideals and aspirations, coupled, in some cases, with a limited knowledge of social practice, but social changes have come upon mankind for the most part, as a meteor comes upon the earth's atmosphere—unexpected and unheralded, startling those who have seen it by the suddenness of its appearance. Nor has there been any attempt on the part of the ruling powers to instill ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... went on smoothly. So long, he had a word and a smile, and a flick of his whip, for all the peasant girls, and odds and ends of the Sonnambula for all the echoes. So long, he went jingling through every little village, with bells on his horses and rings in his ears: a very meteor of gallantry and cheerfulness. But, it was highly characteristic to see him under a slight reverse of circumstances, when, in one part of the journey, we came to a narrow place where a waggon had broken down and stopped up the road. His ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... motion, acts the soul; Reason's comparing balance rules the whole. Man, but for that, no action could attend, And but for this, were active to no end: Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot; Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void, Destroying others, by himself destroyed. Most strength the moving principle requires; Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires. Sedate and quiet the comparing lies, Formed but to check, deliberate, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... of those hardened portions of the epidermis, usually occurring upon the feet, and vulgarly known as corns, Pliny the Elder, in his "Natural History," recommends the sufferer, after observing the flight of a meteor, to pour a little vinegar upon the hinge ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... resented the liberty as an unpardonable affront. The poet says Belinda wore on her neck two curls, one of which the baron cut off with a pair of scissors borrowed of Clarissa, and when Belinda angrily demanded that it should be delivered up, it had flown to the skies and become a meteor there. (See BERENICE.) ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... AEROLITE.—The Galt Gazette (California) describes the fall of a meteor in that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... become a forge of snow-white fire, A crucible of molten steel, O France! Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn And fade in light for you, O glorious France! They pass through meteor changes with a song Which to all islands and all continents Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame, Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child, Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power, Nor ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... his royal progress, pays but one visit and departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of—but we never love again. A man's heart is a firework that once in its time flashes heavenward. Meteor-like, it blazes for a moment and lights with its glory the whole world beneath. Then the night of our sordid commonplace life closes in around it, and the burned-out case, falling back to earth, lies useless and uncared for, slowly smoldering into ashes. Once, breaking loose from our prison bonds, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Gray Pendleton closed his college career as he had gone through it—like a meteor—and Jason went for the summer to the mountains, while Mavis stayed with his mother, for again Steve Hawn had been tried and convicted and returned to jail to await a new trial. In the mountains Jason got employment ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... arrived, in the best of spirits, very much inclined to consider the night as still young; but his enthusiasm met with no response, and presently he departed with his wife and Marion in their big Mercedes, wheeling into the avenue at a reckless pace, and streaming away through the night like a meteor run mad. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the day sailed on, like a dainty boat with silent oar on a calm-flowing stream, to evening, when, as though it had been a new-born meteor or great will-o'-the-wisp, there appeared on the edge of the twilight, along the distant horizon, a silvery glitter, which, drawing nearer and nearer, presently disclosed a servant in a shining band mounted on a great coach, with horses in burnished harness; with champing speed, which it seemed ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... that Maria had kept concealed in one corner of her heart ever since their first meeting. If he had known that her only desire was to be chosen and loved by this handsome Maurice, who had gone through their house and among poor Papa Gerard's bric-a-brac like a meteor! Why not, after all? Did she not possess that great power, beauty? Her father, her mother, and even her sister, the wise Louise, had often said so to her. Yes! from the very first she had been charmed by this young man with the golden moustache, and the ways of a young lord; she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... all about the voyage and the tunnies, the flight of the birds, the alarm of the crew when the meteor appeared, their disappointment when the fancied land vanished in the morning, their wonder at the distant moving light, their impatience and their turbulence. All this he did, still sitting on his seat and gesticulating. ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... discharged not merely balls of stone and iron to demolish the walls, but flaming balls of inextinguishable combustibles designed to set fire to the houses. One of these, which passed high through the air like a meteor, sending out sparks and crackling as it went, entered the window of a tower which was used as a magazine of gunpowder. The tower blew up with a tremendous explosion; the Moors who were upon its battlements were hurled into the air, and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... high road that led from Great Mallowes to Perrythorpe. The hoot of a motor-horn caused Rupert to prick his ears, and his master reined him back as two great, shining head-lights appeared round a curve. They drew swiftly near, flashed past, and were gone meteor-like ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... banks of the Po, reducing the cities he passed to stones and ashes; but there his ravages ceased. He concluded a peace with the Romans in the year of his invasion of Italy (451), and the next year he died. Thus he appeared like a fiery meteor, exerted his appointed influence upon the tongues and people, who were tributary to the Romans,—as rivers and fountains of waters are to the sea; and like a burning star, he as suddenly expired. As a specimen ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... being in Sayd bin Majid's boat, which was a third or so shorter than the one under my command, took the lead, with the British flag, held aloft by a bamboo, streaming behind like a crimson meteor. My boat-manned by Wajiji sailors, whom we had engaged to take the canoes back from Tongwe Cape to Ujiji Bunder— came astern, and had a much taller flagstaff, on which was hoisted the ever-beautiful Stars and Stripes. Its extreme height drew from the Doctor—whose patriotism ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... linger over this reminiscence. I was suddenly bowled over, thrown to the ground, as if by a sort of meteor. The corridor was dark; I could see nothing. I heard only ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... possessed the truer vision. Calhoun died in 1850; Clay and Webster in 1852. For the forty years previous to that, these three men were in every way the most famous and conspicuous in America. Others flashed, meteor-like, into a brief brilliance; but these three burned steady as the stars. They had no real rivals. And yet, though each of them was consumed by an ambition to be President, not one was able to realize that ambition, and their last ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... those pleasing imaginations with which we had entertained our minds during its appearance. The rest of the night we passed in melancholy conjectures on the light which had deserted us, which the major part of the sailors concluded to be a meteor. In this distress we had one comfort, which was a plentiful store of provisions; this so supported the spirits of the sailors, that they declared had they but a sufficient quantity of brandy they cared not ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... hims'ef, 'it's needless to go over that hunt in detail. We hustles the flyin' demon full eighteen miles, our faithful dogs crowdin' close an' breathless at his coward heels. Still, they don't catch up with him; he streaks it like some saffron meteor. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... within and war without. In this dark hour, one day, four sails appeared, steering toward the mouth of the river. Was this the long-expected relief from France? Or were these Spanish vessels? Presently "the meteor flag of England" floated out on the breeze, and soon a boat brought a friendly message from the commander, the famous Sir John Hawkins. Being a strenuous Puritan, he was a warm sympathizer with the Protestants of France. Returning from selling a cargo of Guinea ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... were the kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria. Each exercised an influence on the Israelites and their neighbours, though in a different way and with different results. The influence of Assyria was ephemeral. It represented the meteor-like rise of a great military power, which crushed all opposition, and introduced among mankind the new idea of a centralised world-empire. It destroyed the northern kingdom of Samaria, and made ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... we were on the brink. I shut my eyes, clung tightly to the arch, and took the plunge. About half-way down, the descent became suddenly steeper, and the lead-dog swerved to one side, bringing the sledge around like the lash of a whip, overturning it, and shooting me like a huge living meteor through the air into a deep soft drift of snow at the bottom. I must have fallen at least eighteen feet, for I buried myself entirely, with the exception of my lower extremities, which, projecting above the snow, kicked a faint signal for rescue. Encumbered with heavy furs, I extricated ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... tortur'd! Yes, Thor, my friend, thy words were truth and wisdom; That pity that she showed was thanks for sparing Hother: She trembled but for Hother—for the lov'd one: Each tear but begged his life. What cruel delusion Has led my soul astray? Ah, wretched meteor Of empty hope! thou, thou for me couldst glitter, As if I had been ignorant of her hatred. Ha! she has ever fled my path, my shadow; And when, to my own torment, once I wrested From the proud maid some sort of heed and answer, 'Twas mockery mere: she called herself ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter—the letter A—marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... back to me. The unpredictable, the wild chance, the impossible possibility. That was all that could save me now. But what? Maybe another meteor would come along and plug the hole the first one had made. No. I had to think my way out of this one. But what if there was no ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail— There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and Yale; And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint, And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... admitted that he was a poet, yet he was not one of settled grandeur of soul, brightened by study. Burns was probably aware of this; he takes occasion in some of his letters to suggest, that the hour may be at hand when he shall be accounted by scholars as a meteor, rather than a fixed light, and to suspect that the praise bestowed on his genius was partly owing to the humility of his condition. From his lingering so long about Edinburgh, the nobility began to dread a second ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... battered city still around you. Jack has the far finer mind, Burly the far more honest; Jack gives us the animated poetry, Burly the romantic prose, of similar themes; the one glances high like a meteor and makes a light in darkness; the other, with many changing hues of fire, burns at the sea-level, like a conflagration; but both have the same humour and artistic interests, the same unquenched ardour in pursuit, the same gusts of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him, mechanicall-salt-butter rogue; I wil stare him out of his wits: I will awe-him with my cudgell: it shall hang like a Meteor ore the Cuckolds horns: Master Broome, thou shalt know, I will predominate ouer the pezant, and thou shalt lye with his wife. Come to me soone at night: Ford's a knaue, and I will aggrauate his stile: thou ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... other! Loving one another made them love God the more, and love cast out all fear. If this was the Last, they would face it together, and if it proved the Beginning, they would rejoice together. At sight of every shooting meteor, Julia clung almost convulsively ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... at night to watch the trenches at Fromelles. As far as the eye could see from the North Sea, away past Bethune and death-stricken La Bassee, streamed the meteor flares like a great Milky Way, the flares crossing and recrossing each other. In front of us the German Mausers sound with their constant "to-ho," "to-ho," for the Mauser has a double report. On the right the wicked bark ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... toward the structure, half their fleet behind it, with part still emerging from the water-tunnel. Rala boats rose before them, but nothing could stop them now, their force-shells raining ahead to clear a path for their meteor-flight. They shot down toward the block-structure, and Norman, half-crazed by now, saw that to descend and enter was suicide in the face of the frog-forces rising now over all the city. He cried to Fellows, and with two ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Spitfire, Fury, Albion, Queen, Dart, Hawk, Margaret, and Hero-all vessels having flat floors and round bilges, where the coefficient became 1160. The third set of experiments was made upon the vessels Lightning, Meteor, James Watt, Cinderella, Navy Meteor, Crocodile, Watersprite, Thetis, Dolphin, Wizard, Escape, and Dragon-all vessels with rising floors and round bilges, and the coefficient of performance was found to be 1430. The fourth set of experiments was made ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... sick chamber, or from the cabin window of some vessel at anchor in the stream. Not a cloud obscured the deep, starry firmament, the lights of which wavered on the surface of the placid river, and a shooting meteor, streaking its pale course in the very direction they were taking, was interpreted by the doctor into a most ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... these prophetic visions, the Roman hero was fast declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people, who had gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor, began to mark the irregularity of its course, and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. More eloquent than judicious, more enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not balanced ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... rationalism, could from the latter spread itself immediately over the whole land. The result was that a somewhat superstitious generation was followed by an excessively overwise one; for it is astonishing how the grandchild feels when he knows that a nocturnal fiery meteor is composed merely of inflammable gases, while his grandfather sees in it the devil trying to enter some chimney or other with his shining ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... his wit is very brilliant, lighting up its surroundings like the sudden appearance of a meteor. The essence of humor consists in a contrast which places the object or person compared at a disadvantage. If the contrast is a dignified one we have high comedy; but if the reverse, low comedy. Some of Holmes's ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... nothing. Yes, far better, instinct told him that. Miss Howland had come into his existence, radiant, pure, beautiful, and so utterly feminine; as a meteor flashing across the night pauses for a brief instant in the sky before shivering to nothingness. This simile occurred to Dan, who, though no poet, was at least a sailor and as such a student of the heavenly bodies. Yes, a meteor which ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Jesus himself, a "new birth,"[1] preceded by dark calamities and heralded by strange phenomena.[2] In the great day, there will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of man; it will be a startling and luminous vision like that of Sinai, a great storm rending the clouds, a fiery meteor flashing rapidly from east to west. The Messiah will appear in the clouds, clothed in glory and majesty, to the sound of trumpets and surrounded by angels. His disciples will sit by his side upon thrones. The dead will then arise, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... to his well-being; and her true relationships must be the constant object of our search. Before the knowledge of her true relationships disappear superstition and fear and mystery. The lightning's flash, the thunder's roar, the falling meteor and the sun's eclipse cease to terrify and alarm. Witches, hobgoblins and demons come no longer to trouble us; the most unusual phenomena awaken only philosophical research and curiosity. And what is true of the full-grown man is not ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... o'er him with an eye of fire and pride, Her pinions strong, with one short pull, are gather'd to her side, When like a stone from off the sling, or bolt from out the bow, In meteor flight, with sudden dart, she stoops upon ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... driven his car at a fine rate during the day; but that night the pace became vertiginous. A very meteor flashed through the suburbs of Le Mans and hurled itself along the highroad. Perenna had but one thought in his head: to reach the next station, which was Chartres, before the two accomplices, and to fly at Sauverand's throat. He saw nothing but that: the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of Cleopatra must have been something like catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Proudly stood in all his glory; Pope, as if his claims to speak Rested on the ancient Greek; And that prince of merry-men, Laughing, quaffing, "rare old Ben," Whose quaint conceits, so gay, so wild, Have oft my heart from woe beguil'd, Shone like a meteor 'midst the throng, The envy of each son of song. There too were those of later years, Who've moved the mind to mirth or tears: Byron, with his radiant ray— Scott, with many a magic lay— The gay and gorgeous minstrel, Moore, Rich in the charms of Eastern lore— Campbell, like a brilliant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... the retardation of the earth (which is hypothetically assumed to exist) may be due in part, or wholly, to the increase of the moment of inertia of the earth by meteors falling upon its surface. This suggestion also meets with the entire approval of Sir W. Thomson, who shows that meteor-dust, accumulating at the rate of one foot in 4,000 years, would account ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... reefs began once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around the Marie had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor burning on the flat, black belt ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... and revived; and the personal glory which he acquired by his own deeds of arms, was far more dear to his excited imagination, than that which a course of policy and wisdom would have spread around his government. Accordingly, his reign was like the course of a brilliant and rapid meteor, which shoots along the face of Heaven, shedding around an unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness; his feats of chivalry furnishing themes for bards and minstrels, but affording none of those solid ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... yield in part to his wishes. She could not disguise to herself that any change would separate her from him; now she saw him each day. His connection with Adrian and Perdita was never mentioned; he was to her a meteor, a companionless star, which at its appointed hour rose in her hemisphere, whose appearance brought felicity, and which, although it set, was never eclipsed. He came each day to her abode of penury, and his presence transformed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... triumph high! When speaks the signal-trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on, (Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, Has dimmed the glist'ning bayonet), Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn To where thy meteor-glories burn, And, as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance! And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall! There shall thy victor-glances ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... the Complicated Space-Time of the Fourth Dimension Goes Charlie King in an Attempt to Rescue the Meteor Girl. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... light was thrown upon the little world, the Yerkes observatory and Greenwich both uttering their voice, the Astronomer Royal announcing that the so-called planet was merely a meteor—not more than 400 yards in diameter, with a low velocity of two miles a second; and its distance was less than a tenth of that estimated by Tissot. The Yerkes observatory fixed the diameter at 230 yards. All, however, agreed in the opinion ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... sleep, hushed for a few brief hours in their humble moorland nests. The fall of waters from the weir at the Bridge Factory came up from the valley in dreamy cadences; a light dimly burned in old Joseph's window; and a meteor swept with a mighty arc the western sky. The soul of ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... have turned most of them greyish, with dates decayed, and names scarcely legible. But there is one upon which the paint shows fresh and white; in the clear moonlight gleaming like a meteor. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... falls: the Muse obeys the Pow'r. She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old! Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, 5 And all its varying Rain-bows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain; 10 As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... from the broad bosom of the river, leaving it a dead man's hue. Awhile ago, and for many evenings, it had been crimson,—a river of blood. A week before, a great meteor had shot through the night, blood-red and bearded, drawing a slow-fading fiery trail across the heavens; and the moon had risen that same night blood-red, and upon its disk there was drawn in shadow a thing most marvelously like a scalping knife. Wherefore, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. Then, then, ye ocean warriors! Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow: When the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... my birth-day, and I'll keep it With double pomp of sadness. 'Tis what the day deserves, which gave me breath. Why was I raised the meteor of the world, Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travelled, Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward, To ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... underhand intrigues delayed the relief of Cyprus, and the standard of the Sultan soon was hoisted over the walls of Famagusta—to remain there until replaced in our times—thanks to the wisdom of a great statesman—by the "meteor flag ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... had felt her coldness to him much more severely than he had that of Mary Bonner. He had taught himself to look upon that little episode with Mary as though it had really meant nothing. She had just crossed the sky of his heaven like a meteor, and for a moment had disturbed its serenity. And Polly also had been to him a false light, leading him astray for awhile under exceptional, and, as he thought, quite pardonable circumstances. But dear little Clary had been his own peculiar star,—a star that was ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... that it was my fortune to see the shower of falling stars in November, 1833. From the time I arose until after daylight there was no part of the heavens that was not illuminated—not with one meteor merely—but with many hundreds. Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard's window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... was listening, with a curled lip, to an animated discussion between Lady Mabel, Sir Charles Moreton, and another gentleman, as to the merits of a new actress, a dramatic meteor, then briefly eminent on the London boards. The Honorable Mr. L——, who was a savant in the small sciences that cater to amusement, pronounced her the Siddons of the day; Lady Mabel called her a ranter, then, as if alarmed at her ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... I had got the first plan well-going and was deciding whether to wear the mauve meteor or the white chiffon with the rosebud embroidery as a first julep for my friends, a sweetness came in through my window that took my breath away and I lay still with my hand over my heart and listened. It was Billy ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... you a mother? were you England's queen? Were Henry, Richard, Geoffery, your sons? All sons but Richard—sun of all those sons And can you let this little meteor, This ignis fatuus, this same wandering fire, This goblin of the night, this brand, this spark, Seem through a lanthorn greater than he is? By heaven, you do not well: by earth, you do not? Chester, nor you, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... a fallen meteor or star, a mass of metal that has fallen upon the earth from space. It is often called ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 48, October 7, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passeth from life to his rest ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... from place to place—like the hill-climber who on reaching one crest ever feels himself drawn on to gain the next—far beyond the zone which had in the first instance been regarded as the objective of the Expeditionary Force. The meteor of conquest appeared to be alluring "D" Force too far. Without examining the position of affairs closely, it was obvious that the farther our troops proceeded up the Tigris the longer became their line of communications, the shorter ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... or rather as the clouds dispersed, the blue hazy sky extended beyond the ring of light, and while the day advanced, and the heavens grew more clear, the whole meteor gradually disappeared, the circle vanishing first, and then the imitative suns. My companions assured me they had never before witnessed a similar exhibition during voyages in these seas; but more learned Thebans describe them as phenomena frequently witnessed in high latitudes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... this country, and with a rattle and a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected. Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at one another ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... powerful army of General Sherman. This daring and self-reliant officer, after his brilliant triumph at Atlanta the previous fall, had pushed on to Savannah and captured that city also; then turning his veteran columns northward, he had swept like a dread meteor through South Carolina, destroying the proud city of Charleston, and then Columbia, the State capital. General Johnston, with a strong force, vainly tried to stay his progress through North Carolina; but after a desperate ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... your reach now. We cannot give them to you until you are purified and have come up higher. The conditions are God's; the will is with you." These last words seemed to be repeated from the sky overhead, and again from beneath my feet. And at the instant I fell, as if shot down like a meteor from a vast height; and with the swiftness and shock of the fall I awoke. —Hinton, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... soundness was ultimately established, and its fundamental importance to this branch of celestial theory has only developed further with time. For these researches the Royal Astronomical Society awarded him its gold medal in 1866. The great meteor shower of 1866 turned his attention to the Leonids, whose probable path and period had already been discussed by Professor H. A. Newton. Using a powerful and elaborate analysis, Adams ascertained that this cluster of meteors, which belongs to the solar system, traverses an elongated ellipse in 33 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so furiously that drifts of sixteen, twenty, and even twenty-four feet were recorded in various places. An inch an hour is thought to be the average rate of deposit, though four inches are said to have fallen during the severe storm of January 3d, 1859. When thus intensified, the "beautiful meteor of the snow" begins to give a sensation of something formidable; and when the mercury suddenly falls meanwhile, and the wind rises, there are sometimes suggestions of such terror in a snowstorm as no summer thunders can rival. The brief and singular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... now rapidly advancing, now suddenly pausing, turning aside, or receding. They came and struck like lightning; like lightning they vanished; and unhappily, in the dull age in which they appeared, there was no observer who deemed it worth while accurately to describe the marvellous meteor. When men afterwards began to trace the chain, of which this emigration, the first Germanic movement which touched the orbit of ancient civilization, was a link, the direct and living knowledge of it ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... our rigging, and the sobbing wash of the sea. The sound and the light so obviously came from overhead that we both involuntarily halted and directed our gaze aloft, when we became aware of an enormous meteor, fully four times the apparent diameter of the moon, and of such dazzling effulgence that our eyes could scarcely endure the brightness of it, while the whole ship, with every minutest detail of spars, rigging, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood |
