"Phenomenon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on record, when George I. came to visit his Son-in-law and Daughter at Berlin, his Britannic Majesty, looking out from his new quarters on the morrow, saw Fritzchen "drilling his Cadet Company;" a very pretty little phenomenon. Drilling with clear voice, military sharpness, and the precision of clock-work on the Esplanade (LUSTGARTEN) there;—and doubtless the Britannic Majesty gave some grunt of acquiescence, perhaps even a smile, rare on that square heavy-laden countenance of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... Pyramid contained no apartment other than the King's Chamber, now was past mere wonder, past conjecture. But he could still fear. Dr. Cairn, although he had anticipated this, temporarily also fell a victim to the supernatural character of the phenomenon. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... shepherd?... There are only twelve wanted; there is no need for more; the days of Theocritus and Virgil are past.... More doctors?... There are too many already; they are grumbling about it on earth.... And where are the engineers?... They want an honest man, only one, as a phenomenon.... Where is the honest man?... Is it you?... (THE CHILD nods yes.) You appear to me to be a very poor specimen!... Hallo, you, over there, not so fast, not so fast!... And you, what are you bringing?... Nothing at all, empty-handed?... ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... came with the lustre of a historic reputation around him; there was no need to fawn for orders; and the client's immense and immaculate respectability made him the equal of no matter what ambassador. It was a case of mutual esteem, and of that confidence-generating phenomenon, "an old account." The tone in which a commercial traveller of middle age would utter the phrase "an old account" revealed in a flash all that was romantic, prim, and stately in mid-Victorian commerce. In the days of Baines, after one of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the observatory a timepiece with a double second-hand; one of these could be stopped by a touch, and would, in that way, show an observer the instant when he thought a phenomenon, as an occultation for instance, had occurred, and yet permit him to go on with his count of the seconds, and, if necessary, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... comparable to that experienced in the States of New England, situated at almost the same distance from the equator. In the northern hemisphere, or at any rate in the part occupied by British America and the north of the United States, this phenomenon is explained by the flat conformation of the territories bordering on the pole, and on which there is no intumescence of the soil to oppose any obstacle to the north winds; here, in Lincoln Island, this explanation ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... about to inquire searchingly into the nature of this local phenomenon, but before she could begin the old gentleman turned and saw that ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... she and her sister had seen from their earliest days. And yet this Odeon scene, the audience so quiet and intensely absorbed, occurred at the most enflamed period of the anti-slavery contest. The effective agent in this phenomenon was Angelina's serene, commanding eloquence, a wonderful gift, which enchained attention, disarmed prejudice, and carried her hearers ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... on evening cloud impress'd, Bent in vast curve, the watery meteor shines Delightfully, to th' levell'd sun opposed: Lovely refraction ! while the vivid brede In listed colours glows, th' unconscious swain, With vacant eye, gazes on the divine Phenomenon, gleaming o'er the illumined fields, Or runs to catch the treasures which ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Janet "He poisoned for money in cold blood—not exactly an artistic vice! Oh, he won't do!"—she laughed triumphantly—"if he did write charming things about the Renaissance! Besides, he illustrates my case; among us he was a phenomenon, like the elephant-headed man. Phenomena are for the scientists. You don't mean to tell me that any literature that pretends to call itself artistic has a right ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... afresh, with his own wonted perennial vigour, on paper at least, in company with the great sea-serpent, the big gooseberry, the shower of frogs, the two-headed calf, and all the other common objects of the country or the seaside in the silly season. No extraordinary natural phenomenon on earth was ever better vouched for—in the fashion rendered familiar to us by the Tichborne claimant—that is to say, no other could ever get a larger number of unprejudiced witnesses to swear positively and unreservedly in its favour. Unfortunately, however, swearing alone ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... bludgeon, a second body would arise from the body that is thus deprived of animation.[808] Once more, their doctrine of extinction of life (or Nirvana or Sattwasankshaya) is exposed to the objection that that extinction will become a recurring phenomenon like that of the seasons, or the year, or the yuga, or heat, or cold, or objects that are agreeable or disagreeable.[809] If for the purpose of avoiding these objections, the followers of this doctrine assert ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of Malmsey, and would drink currant-wine just as happily, if that accursed liquor were presented to them by the butler. Did you ever know a woman who could lay her fair hand upon her gentle heart and say on her conscience that she preferred dry sillery to sparkling champagne? Such a phenomenon does not exist. They are not made for eating and drinking; or, if they make a pretence to it, become downright odious. Nor can they, I am sure, witness the preparations of a really great repast without a certain jealousy. They grudge spending money (ask guards, coachmen, inn-waiters, ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and doing, April Fool Day. A singular phenomenon was to be seen in the vicinity of his place of business. Dobbs went home from his store, the last evening in March, and while taking his tea, remarked to his wife, that his colored porter had been blessed with an ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the hills I observed a large body of water, and was informed that this was an artificial reservoir which had been created by the damming of a large valley. The sky on this occasion was hidden by a mist, a very natural phenomenon in view of the fact that many thousands of square miles of the country, covered with snow on this part of Mars, was undergoing a ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... said, "you are an infant phenomenon. If I can pull the rest of this thing off to-night it will mean the $5,000 reward and fame galore for you and the paper. Now, I'm going to write a note to the managing editor, and you can take it around to him and tell him what you've done and what I am going ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... phenomenon of, Kadetamare, or Misonghi, village, . Kahirigi, boma of, Kaif-Halek or "How-do-ye-do," the letter carrier, Kalulu, the boy-slave, Kamolondo Lake, Kanengi River, Kaniyaga village Kanjee, Kanyamabengu River, Kanyenyi, Kayeh, a ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... generally, I find few things impossible in this world of mystery. To take an old metaphor, I would not be surprised to find a grain of wheat in all this bushel of chaff. Every genuine phenomenon in the world stands related to every other phenomenon, and I believe that the truth or falsity of the spiritualistic hypothesis can be determined in accordance with physical science. If I were young and strong like you I would devote ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... opposite side of the room, Eleanor Folsom, surrounded by her own group of questioners, was also having her hour of triumph, in the warmth of which a trace of bitterness that her first report of the phenomenon had been shrugged off by everyone—even, in a way, by ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... they escape from the exhaust of every running gas-engine. In the open air, where only a whiff or two would be inhale now and then, they are not dangerous. But in a closed room they may kill in an incredibly short time. In fact, the condition has given rise to an entirely new phenomenon which some one ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... Dictator,—what is there to prevent beings of another order from being as cheerful, as social, as good companions, as the very liveliest of God's creatures whom we have known in the flesh? Is it impossible for an archangel to smile? Is such a phenomenon as a laugh never heard except in our little sinful corner of the universe? Do you suppose, that when the disciples heard from the lips of their Master the play of words on the name of Peter, there was no smile of appreciation ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... see why that should bring the individual you mention to mind," she said. "If I remember correctly—and I was brought up on Dickens—she was a 'phenomenon,' not a prodigy. However, it makes no material difference what you and I call Mary Lathrop, the fact remains that she is an exceptionally well-behaved, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with a great cool stir of the air, the sense of an angel's having swooped down and caught me to his bosom. He held me only till the danger was over, and it all took place in a minute. With my manuscript back on my hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the reflexions I made on it are what I meant, at the beginning of this anecdote, by my change of heart. Mr. Pinhorn's note was not only a rebuke decidedly stern, but an invitation immediately to send him—it was ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... pictorial language even. An imitator of me, or rather pretender to be me, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely describe the dresses of the poissardes at Calais!—I could as soon resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute analysis, and get rid of the phenomenon by slurring in for it its impression. I am sure you must have observed this defect, or peculiarity, in my writings; else the delight would be incalculable in doing such a thing for Mathews, whom I greatly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the quarrel was as unreal as if, theorizing in primitive times about the raising of dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a 'brownie,' while another insisted on an 'elf' as the true cause of the phenomenon." [Footnote: 'Theorie und Praxis,' Zeitsch. des Oesterreichischen Ingenieur u. Architecten-Vereines, 1905, Nr. 4 u. 6. I find a still more radical pragmatism than Ostwald's in an address by Professor W. S. Franklin: "I think that the sickliest ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... "Some think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water." Says Pascal: "What a chimera is man! what a singular phenomenon! what a chaos! what a scene of contrariety! A judge of all things yet a feeble worm; the shrine of truth, yet a mass of doubt and uncertainty; at once the glory and the scorn of the universe. If he boasts, I lower him; if he lowers himself I raise him; either way I contradict him, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... mind is determined by certain general laws which govern the mind; is moulded, so to speak, in certain types pre-existing in our understanding, and which constitutes its original condition. Hence, say they, if the mind has no innate IDEAS, it has at least innate FORMS. Thus, for example, every phenomenon is of necessity conceived by us as happening in TIME and SPACE,—that compels us to infer a CAUSE of its occurrence; every thing which exists implies the ideas of SUBSTANCE, MODE, RELATION, NUMBER, &C.; in a word, we form no idea which is not related ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... that it was almost counted the duty of any patriotic Englishman to be proud of being a German. The genius of Carlyle, the culture preached by Matthew Arnold, would not, persuasive as they were, have alone produced this effect but for an external phenomenon of great force. Our internal policy was transformed by our foreign policy; and foreign policy was dominated by the more and more drastic steps which the Prussian, now clearly the prince of all the German ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... unchecked, and its products setting up strong chemical action. It was hard, in these instances, to believe that death had actually taken place, so attempts at resuscitation used to be resorted to. I was afterwards told by a medical man from Barberton that a similar phenomenon was noticed there in fever cases the temperature sometimes rising after ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... under the control of their employers and in the buildings where the machines were placed and the power provided. Such groups of laborers or "mill hands" were gradually collected where the new kind of manufacturing was going on. Thus factories, in the modern sense, came into existence—a new phenomenon in ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... character. Many ingenious hypotheses have been thrown out, which may perhaps be accepted as steps towards a true explanation; and while waiting the result of further inquiry, we shall endeavour to make our readers acquainted with the interesting phenomenon. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... expands about 50 per cent more than iron and in both brass and iron the expansion is nearly proportional to the increase in temperature. This phenomenon is utilized in expansion pyrometers by enclosing a brass rod in an iron pipe, one end of the rod being rigidly attached to a cap at the end of the pipe, while the other is connected by a multiplying gear to a pointer moving ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... believe Satan himself would give them comfort therein, for he knows what the end must be. Our glory has hitherto been not to be a separate body. "Hoc Ithacus velit."' And finally, within two years of his death, in his striking sermon on the ministerial office, 'In God's name stop!... Ye are a new phenomenon on the earth—a body of people who, being of no sect or party, are friends to all parties, and endeavour to forward all in heart-religion, in the knowledge and love of God and man. Ye yourselves were at first ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the matter for a while, and come back to it afresh. Sometimes, when you cannot at once recall a name, it does no good to keep doggedly hunting, while half an hour later you get it without the least trouble. The explanation of this curious phenomenon is found in interference and the dying out of interference. At your first attempt to recall the name, you simply got on the wrong track, and thus gave this wrong track the "recency" advantage over the right track; but this temporary advantage fades out rapidly with rest and leaves ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... are induced to save more, and make an addition to their capital, or at least to their purchases of labor. Wages will probably be temporarily higher in the employment in which prices have risen, and somewhat lower in other employments: in which case, while the first half of the phenomenon excites notice, the other is generally overlooked, or, if observed, is not ascribed to the cause which really produced it. Nor will the partial rise of wages last long: for, though the dealers in that one employment gain more, it ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... power of literature; the destruction of passion by the agency of knowledge and speech; literature as the road to understanding, to forgiveness, and to love; the redeeming power of language; literary intellect as the noblest phenomenon of all human intellect whatsoever; the writer as perfect man, as saint;—if one considered things so, would that be not ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... essentially devilish kind. On the general subject of "possession" see F. W. H. Myers's work on Human Personality and Survival after Death, Vol. I. (Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London.) Professor William James half humorously remarks: "The time-honored phenomenon of diabolical possession is on the point of being admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name of hysterodemonopathy by which to apperceive it." Varieties of ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... calling to her, "Why are you frozen there, why don't you move? You are free as the air of this great globe." Then she began to walk, but at once she saw the earth open and long tentacles, like arms, emerge to clutch her. She recoiled quickly and started in another direction but the same phenomenon occurred again. After that she determined to climb on to a great plain that she saw ahead. She thought she was safe when all at once she saw arising on every side the frightful tentacles which crept along her hiding-place, viscous and black, nearer, near ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... earthly attainment? The Review of Burns in an early number of the "Edinburgh Review," said to be from the pen of the late Lord Jeffrey, shows, as clearly as anything can, the utterly inconsistent and bewildered feeling with which the world must have regarded such a phenomenon. Alas! there was inconsistency and bewilderment enough in the phenomenon itself, but that only made confusion worse confounded; the confusion was already there, even in the mind of the more practical literary men, who ought, one would have thought, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... as the inexpressiveness of his voice and face and hands will have sharpened his scent for words and phrases that shall in themselves convey such meanings as he has to express. Whistler was that rare phenomenon, the good talker who could write as well as he talked. Read any page of The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and you will hear a voice in it, and see a face in it, and see gestures in it. And none of these is quite like any other ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... drovers received the compliments shouted at them by passing Imperialists one whit less admirable. The sight of the enemy's preserves excited a degree of interest which might be equalled—not surpassed—by the phenomenon (in pre-war days) of a procession of white elephants. And in the general chorus of favourable criticism—favourable because they were cheap, probably, if not exactly "gift" animals—nobody looked the cattle in the mouth. Very popular were these confiscations; and in view of so many augmentations ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... charge, he superintended the children's education, taught them foreign languages, and looked after the fortunes of M. and Mme. de Senonches with the most complete devotion. Noble Angouleme, administrative Angouleme, and bourgeois Angouleme alike had looked askance for a long while at this phenomenon of the perfect union of three persons; but finally the mysterious conjugal trinity appeared to them so rare and pleasing a spectacle, that if M. du Hautoy had shown any intention of marrying, he ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... are our concepts static, fixed, and discontinuous? What if the very concepts we employ in reasoning should exemplify the universal flow of life? Hegel finds that indeed to be the case. Concepts we daily use, such as quality and quantity, essence and phenomenon, appearance and reality, matter and force, cause and effect, are not fixed and isolated entities, but form a continuous system of interdependent elements. Stated dogmatically the meaning is this: As concavity and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... should be sought among the most primitive peoples, like the native Australians, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, the Botocudos of South America, and the Eskimos; and with these alone the author studies his subject. Their arts are regarded as a social phenomenon and a social function, and are classified as arts of rest and arts of motion. The arts of rest comprise decoration, first of the body by scarification, painting, tattooing, and dress; and then of implements—painting ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... remember he is not learning how to do endoscopy on the dog; but learning on the dog how safely to do bronchoscopy on a human being. The degree of resistance during introduction can be gauged and the color of the mucosa studied, while that interesting phenomenon, the dilatation and lengthening of the bronchi during inspiration and their contraction and shortening during expiration, is readily observed and always forms subject for thought in its possible connection with pathological conditions. Foreign body problems are now to be solved under these ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... morning by a remarkable instance of protective mimicry on the part of a grey squirrel, which assumes attitudes and adopts gestures which at a little distance render him almost indistinguishable from a small monkey. WHITE'S Selborne throws no light on this strange phenomenon, which I can only explain as a result on the animal world of the now fashionable Tarzan cult, which so happily reconciles the old hostility between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... manager of a theatrical company, and also the head of a most remarkable family indeed, each member of which was gifted with an extraordinary combination of talent and attractiveness, and most remarkable of all the family was the Infant Phenomenon. ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches, was the peaks of the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated with snow-banners. Many of the starry snow-flowers, out of which these banners are ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... things would come some day. He sighed inwardly and wondered, not for the first time, where the link could possibly lie between the matter-of-fact mother and the strange child of fancy. There was nothing to do but attribute the phenomenon to Mister, the whimsical knight of the open road. The boarder asked what he should bring Kern from the party: he feared they wouldn't have writing-desks, it not being at all a literary set. The girl thought a rapturous moment and then asked could she ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... bank. By twos and threes, the main body of the waterfowl gradually followed the advanced guard. Swimming nearer and nearer to the dog, the wary ducks suddenly came to a halt, and, poised on the water, viewed from a safe distance the phenomenon on the land. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... scientific spirit, I suppose. And he is new, and awfully interesting—even if he is only a station-agent." Wherefrom it will be perceived that her thoughts had veered from the cactus owl, to another perplexing local phenomenon. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he said. "But still a remarkable phenomenon took place in me when I left San Remo, a sort of mysterious intuition which prompted me first to try and jump out of the train—and the Masher prevented me—and next to rush to the window, let down the glass and follow the porter of the Ambassadeurs-Palace, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... demonstrated that these little bodies, like all larger animals and plants, come into existence only by ordinary methods of reproduction, and not by any spontaneous generation, as had been earlier claimed. It was Pasteur who first proved that such a common phenomenon as. the souring of milk was produced by microscopic organisms growing in the milk. It was Pasteur who first succeeded in demonstrating that certain species of microscopic organisms are the cause of certain diseases, and in suggesting successful methods of avoiding them. All these discoveries ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... of the human eye before him. In his confident attempt to explain to Carmen the process of cognition he had been completely baffled. Certainly, light coming from an object enters the eye and casts a picture upon the retina. He had often seen the photographic camera exhibit the same phenomenon. The law of the impenetrability of matter had to be set aside, of course—or else light must be pure vibration, without a material vibrating concomitant. Then, too, it was plain that the light in some ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... produced on April 24, 1837, and received with great applause, was played on sixty successive nights, but not to very crowded audiences. The press scarcely noticed the new actress. The critic of the Journal des Debats, however, while rashly affirming that Rachel was not a phenomenon and would never be extolled as a wonder, carefully noted certain of the merits and characteristics of her performance. "She was an unskilled child, but she possessed heart, soul, intellect. There was something ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... last century Humphry Davy observed that, on placing a very fine wire gauze over a flame, the latter was cooled to such a point that it could not traverse the meshes. This phenomenon, which he attributed to the conductivity and radiating power of the metal, he soon utilized in the construction ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... be supposed that this striking phenomenon, thus adroitly used, produced a strong impression on the Indians, and greatly increased their belief in the sacred character ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... The evolution of the European Union (EU) from a regional economic agreement among six neighboring states in 1951 to today's supranational organization of 25 countries across the European continent stands as an unprecedented phenomenon in the annals of history. Dynastic unions for territorial consolidation were long the norm in Europe. On a few occasions even country-level unions were arranged - the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... occasioned by some cutaneous disease. We saw a man and boy at Hepaee, and a child at Annamooka, perfectly white. Such have been found amongst all black nations; but I apprehend that their colour is rather a disease, than a natural phenomenon. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... delicate saffron. All along the eastern horizon extended a black-blue cloud-curtain of about twenty degrees in height, across which played the zigzag gold of the lightning. Overhead hung the gigantic ring of a complete rainbow (a rare phenomenon), looking like the iridescent rim of some vast sun that had shot from its orbit and was rapidly nearing our earth. In the north the while slept the sweet blue sky in peace. What a phantasmagoria of splendor, "the magic-lantern ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Virginians were treated to another new phenomenon—an open and free press. From 1732 when William Parks set up the Virginia Gazette until 1766 there had been only one paper in the colony. Besides the paper relied heavily upon the government, both royal and assembly, for printing contracts, ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... towns,) there appeared to be a greater abundance of aged people wearing small-clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and proclaiming a reward for the most venerable. I tried to account for this phenomenon by several theories: as, for example, that our new towns are unwholesome for age and kill it off unseasonably; or that our old men have a subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own accord rather ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wife's advancement in the world. He had often groaned over these in midnight conversations with Rebecca, although as a bachelor they had never given him any disquiet. He himself was struck with this phenomenon. "Hang it," he would say (or perhaps use a still stronger expression out of his simple vocabulary), "before I was married I didn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as Moses would wait or ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the river is here so crowded with masses and walls of rock, that there is only room at intervals for an isolated farm or hut. Suddenly the tops of masts appear between the high rocks, a phenomenon which is soon explained; a large gap in one of the rocky walls forms ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... accustomed to Right Hon. Gentleman's little trick, of which he is sole repository. But new Members tremble, and grow pale, as, when denouncing any person or practice, Right Hon. Gentleman mysteriously raises his hair till it stands on end. Once this phenomenon came about when he denounced certain weighing-machines, which, he said, had recently been put up at London railway stations. Tops of this machine, he said, were supported by two columns, one supposed to be ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... I could have kissed them! But I did what they appreciated more than that! I had good hot mulled wine ready for them, and sent them to bed on it! Some days afterwards, in another gale, between two snow-showers, I saw that rare electric phenomenon called St. Elmo's fire—jets of electric fire appearing at the points of all the ship's masts and yards. A spontaneous, unexpected, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... deportment, seizing an ancient woman by the throat, and hauling her into a dwelling-house, would have been under any circumstances, sufficient temptation to all true English stragglers so blest as to witness it, to force a way into that dwelling-house and see the matter out. But when the phenomenon was enhanced by the notoriety and mystery by this time associated all over the town with the Bank robbery, it would have lured the stragglers in, with an irresistible attraction, though the roof had been expected ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... impetuously, and turning to the company. "You are lively, imaginative, witty, charming, talented, but not substantial or persevering. Inconstancy is mingled in your blood, marrow, and very essence. Constancy is the phenomenon. The great mass of the common people have no religion but their priests, no law but their superiors, no morals but their interests. And how shall we expect a people to suddenly become wise and self-governing who ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... from the Bookseller, who will lose his printing. The hope I have however is sure: if life is lent me, I shall be done with the business; I will write this "History of Sansculottism," the notablest phenomenon I meet with since the time of the Crusades or earlier; after which my part is played. As for the future, I heed it little when so busy; but it often seems to me as if one thing were becoming indisputable: ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... lover of mankind the history of the Russo-Jewish renaissance is an encouraging and inspiring phenomenon. Seldom has a people made such rapid strides forward as the Russian Jews. From the melancholy regularity that marked their existence a little more than two generations ago, from the darkness of the Middle Ages in which they were steeped until the time of Alexander II, they ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Galabin, Packard, Thiernesse, Maxson, de Belamizaran, Dibot, and Chabert are among others recording the phenomenon of coexisting extrauterine and intrauterine pregnancy. Argles mentions ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... The darkness hung there like a curtain, just inside the outer walls of the building. Already a crowd had gathered to observe this new and strange phenomenon of the now celebrated Atlas Building. It was a curious and a facetious crowd, but not awestricken, as it had been at the first manifestations of this ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... Primal One. To you, too, your God speaks in the surging seas, the waving corn, the pure light of day; you, too, regard music which enchants your heart, and love which draws man to man, as his gifts; and we go only a step further, giving a special name to each phenomenon of nature, and each lofty emotion of the soul in which we recognize the direct influence of the Most High; calling the sea Poseidon, the corn-field Demeter, the charm of music Apollo, and the rapture of love Eros. When you see us offering sacrifice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the study of good Greek sculpture, or inclined by temperament to admire the earlier products of Italian painting, are apt to pursue the former path exclusively. They demand serenity and simplicity. Perturbation and violence they denounce as blemishes. It does not occur to them that, though the phenomenon is certainly rare, it does occasionally happen that a man arises whose art is for him the language of his soul, and who lives in sympathetic relation to the sternest interests of his age. If such an artist be born when ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... heated in a forge fire, in contact with carbon, becomes fusible. Boussingault has shown that this is due to the formation of a silicide of platinum by means of the reduction of the silica of the carbon by the metal. MM. P. Schuetzenberger and A. Colson have produced the same phenomenon by heating to white heat a slip of platinum in the center of a thick layer of lampblack ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... change to have some one to talk to; some one to sympathize with I neither wanted nor expected; I certainly did not find such a one in my new acquaintance. For the first two or three days I simply regarded him with the sort of wondering curiosity with which we examine a new natural phenomenon of any sort. His perfect self-possession and coolness, the nil-admirari and nil-agitari atmosphere which surrounded him, excited my admiration at first, till I discovered that it arose, not from the composure of a mind too deep-rooted to be swayed by external circumstances, but rather from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... friar preparing a criminal for death, gives Claudio a consolation which does not contain a word of Christian doctrine, not a syllable of sacrificial salvation and sacramental forgiveness, we are entitled to infer from such a singular negative phenomenon, if not that Shakspere rejected the Christian theory of things, at least that it formed no part of his habitual thinking. It was the special business of the Duke, playing in such a character, to speak to Claudio of sin and ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... armed, even to Mr. Parker. The scientist had recovered from his first fright, when he spied the Indians coming over the snow, as he was "observing" some natural phenomenon. Tom, even in his excitement, noticed that the professor was curiously examining his gun, evidently more with a view to seeing how it was made, and on which principle it was operated, rather than to ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... but one subject of study; the forms and metamorphoses of mind: all other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study." And, in truth, if he was occupied with the aspects of nature to such an excellent literary result, still, it was with nature only as a phenomenon of the moral order. His interest, after all, is, consistently, that of the moralist (in no narrow sense) who deals, from predilection, with the sort of literary work which stirs men—stirs their intellect—through feeling; and with that literature, especially, as looked at through the ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... and fro. Gilbert was reminded of the ghostly tales of the will-o'-the-wisp, and the banshee, and other terrifying creatures, which, village gossip said, inhabited the Drowned Lands. But he had a more practical explanation of the strange phenomenon. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... significance. In the first place, while it maintained the belief in degeneration, endorsed by Hebrew mythology, it definitely abandoned the Greek theory of cycles. The history of the earth was recognised as a unique phenomenon in time; it would never occur again or anything resembling it. More important than all is the fact that Christian theology constructed a synthesis which for the first time attempted to give a definite meaning to the whole course of human events, a synthesis which represents the past as leading up ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... long as to leave a tolerably large wick, blow it out; a dense smoke, which is composed of hydrogen and carbon, will immediately rise. Then, if another candle, or lighted taper, be applied to the utmost verge of this smoke, a very strange phenomenon will take place. The flame of the lighted candle will be conveyed to that just blown out, as if it were borne on a cloud, or, rather, it will seem like a mimic flash of lightning proceeding at ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... The colonial architecture of modern times presents a peculiar phenomenon. The colonizing nation, carrying into its new habitat the tastes and practices of a long-established civilization, modifies these only with the utmost reluctance, under the absolute compulsion of new conditions. When the new home is virgin soil, destitute of cultivation, government, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... all uncomprehending and indifferent. He was too old even to betray any interest in the phenomenon of ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... year 1780, on the 14th day of October, and again in July, 1814, a most remarkable phenomenon occurred, the like of which was never before witnessed in the country. "At noonday a pitchy darkness completely obscured the light of the sun, continuing for about ten minutes at a time, and being frequently repeated during the afternoon. In the interval between each mysterious eclipse, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Lepidoptera—moths and butterflies—like Papilio Machaon and P. Podalirius, swarm through France, reach up to the British Channel, and have not crossed it; with the exception of one colony of Machaon in the Cambridgeshire fens. I could talk long about a similar phenomenon in the case of our migratory and singing birds: how many exquisite species—notably those two glorious songsters, the Orphean Warbler and Hippolais, which delight our ears everywhere on the other side of the Channel—follow our nightingales, blackcaps, and warblers northward ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... a most astonishing natural phenomenon: that such a river as the Thames, receiving constantly all the filth of a vast metropolis, containing more than two millions of inhabitants, buries it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... almost as still as it would have done had she seen two of the saints in the great picture in the convent chapel turn their painted heads and shake them at each other. But as in this latter case she would (for very solemnity's sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon, so she put away all knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her own. "You'll be very far away," ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... step nearer the door and looked blankly, half wonderingly, across at the window, as if he expected to see some phenomenon. "Oh! That!" he exclaimed, carelessly. "Sure! We have them all ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the brief hour's exercise on the Sunday morning! The muffled roar of the great city was hushed, and the silence served to emphasise every visual phenomenon. Even the air of that city courtyard, hemmed in by lofty walls, seemed a breath of Paradise. I threw back my shoulders, expanding the chest through mouth and nostrils, and lifted my face to the sky. A pale gleam of sunshine pierced through the canopy of ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... more puzzled when he reported the strange fact to Uncle Remus, for the old negro took the information as a matter of course. With him the phenomenon was almost as old as his experience. The only explanation that he could give of it was that the fish—or some kinds of fish, and he didn't know rightly what kind it was—had a habit of falling from the bottom of the falls to the top. The most that he knew was ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... and the darkness concealed the sly glance which Sarah cast from her great dark eyes on the unsuspecting youth at her side. The conversation was next changed to Mr. Parris, his quarrel with his flock, and the strange phenomenon developing ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... of its channel, and would continue capable of carrying large steamers until late in August. Since that time it has rarely been out of its banks, and navigation of its waters has entirely ceased. The same phenomenon is observable in relation to many of our lakes. Hundreds of the smaller ones have entirely dried up, and most of the larger ones have become reduced in depth several feet. The rainfall has not been lessened, but, if anything, has increased. My explanation of ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the afternoon, John Mangles descried an enormous column of smoke about three miles off, gradually overspreading the whole horizon. What could be the cause of this phenomenon? Paganel was inclined to think it was some description of meteor, and his lively imagination was already in search of an explanation, when Ayrton cut short all his conjectures summarily, by announcing that the cloud of dust was caused by a drove of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... and twisted knots of reasoning which a fine artistic sense would have omitted, were all as Jewish as the Talmud. There was also a Jewish quality in his natural description, in the way he invented diverse phrases to express different aspects of the same phenomenon, a thing for which the Jews were famous; and in the way in which he peopled what he described with animal life of all kinds, another remarkable habit of the Jewish poets. Moreover, his pleasure in intense colour, in splashes and blots of scarlet and crimson and deep blue and glowing ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... French Revolution in the name of rational logic could not comprehend them, since this form of logic did not dictate them. As the actors of these events themselves understood them but ill, we shall not be far from the truth in saying that our Revolution was a phenomenon equally misunderstood by those who caused it and by those who have described it. At no period of history did men so little grasp the present, so greatly ignore the past, and ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... phenomenon well known to drinkers of absinthe, he regulated and governed his intoxication, and it gave him the dream that ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... too much, even from a man whose wits were astray. I began to lose patience, and was preparing to rid myself somewhat roughly of the madman's grasp, when a new phenomenon occurred. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... arranged parallel, in a hazy stream which flows rapidly past toward the rear of the train. Whereas if the eye is kept constantly moving from object to object scarcely a suggestion of this blurred appearance can be detected. The phenomenon is striking, since, if the eye moves in the same direction as the train, it is certain that the images on the retina succeed one another even more rapidly than when the eye is at rest. A supposition which occurs to one at once as a possible explanation is that perchance during ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... cyclones (hurricanes) may form south of Mexico and strike Central America and Mexico from June to October (most common in August and September); southern shipping lanes subject to icebergs from Antarctica; occasional El Nino phenomenon occurs off the coast of Peru, when the trade winds slacken and the warm Equatorial Countercurrent moves south, killing the plankton that is the primary food source for anchovies; consequently, the anchovies move ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... be agreed upon at the present time. In some cases—as in the realm of international relations—only the future can decide whether he was a prophet or a chauvinist; in all cases, opinions have differed widely, for Roosevelt could scarcely explore a river, describe a natural phenomenon or urge a political innovation without thereby arousing a controversy in which his friends and his opponents would participate with equal intensity. His identification of himself with his purposes was as complete as that of Andrew Jackson; opposition to his proposals was reckoned as ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... thus advanced them materially in their onward progress toward the higher condition of the Village Indians. Numerous tribes were thus raised out of savagery into barbarism by appropriating the arts of life of tribes above them. This process has been a constant phenomenon in the history of the human race. It is well illustrated in America, where the Red Race, one in origin and possessed of homogeneous institutions, were in three different ethnical conditions ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... with regard to the young man by one and all, even though, in reality, events had justified it only up to a certain point. No matter, people believed in him! Nothing seemed difficult to him. They expected from him what they were entitled to expect at most from some phenomenon of penetration and intuition, of experience and skill. That day of the sixth of June was made to sprawl over all the papers. On the sixth of June, Isidore Beautrelet would take the fast train to Dieppe: and Lupin would be arrested on the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... events," said Duplessis, "M. de Mauleon appears to be a philosopher of rare stamp. A Parisian who has known riches and is contented to be poor is a phenomenon ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... leaders, is not so much a programme of ideas as a demand for domination. In the rank and file it is largely a phenomenon of hysteria. I do not know whether my readers have ever participated in an agreeable game known as odd man out. Each player tosses a penny, and whoever disagrees with the rest, showing a head to their tails or vice versa, captures the pool. Such is in all essential particulars ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... is noted for its clean, velvety aspect; and that an animal should be able to pass unsoiled through earth of all textures is a really remarkable phenomenon. It is partly to be explained by the character of the hair, and partly by that of the skin. The hair of the mole is peculiar on account of its want of "set." The tops of the hairs do not point in any particular direction, but may be pressed equally forward or backward or to either side. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Pennsylvania and Virginia, or along the sounds of the Carolinas, hours before their existence is known in the states further east; and the same wind, which is a tempest at Hatteras, becomes softened to a breeze, near the Penobscot. There is, however, little mystery in this apparent phenomenon. The vacuum which has been created in the air, and which is the origin of all winds, must be filled first from the nearest stores of the atmosphere; and as each region contributes to produce the equilibrium, it must, in return, receive other supplies from those which lie ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... competitive point in the State, doing visible and irreparable injury to thousands of shippers, and infringing upon the rights of millions, should long be borne by a free and enlightened people, is a strange phenomenon of democratic endurance. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... he had during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo a resplendent light appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was in Italy or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to which I have referred, which is especially observed in the morning, but also at other times, and even by moonlight. Though a constant one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like Cellini's, it would be basis ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... improbable? The absent and distant are always regarded with wonder and incredulity; while familiar facts, in themselves far more wonderful, neither excite curiosity nor challenge credulity. Who now regards the startling phenomenon of the electric wire otherwise than as a simple truth easily comprehended? And yet there was a time—ah! there was a time—when to have proclaimed this truth would have rendered you or me ridiculous. There was a time, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... straggled downwards, proceeded in solemn sweep across the valley, and lighted the depths of the gorge beyond with a radiance of misty silver. The music of jackdaws welcomed this first indication of improved weather; then Phoebe's sharp eyes beheld a phenomenon afar off through the momentary cessation of the rain. Three parts of a mile away, on a distant hillside, like the successive discharges of a dozen fowling-pieces, little blotches of smoke or mist suddenly appeared. Rapidly ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a woman there is always a certain element of childishness, which has a reflex, if but temporary action upon her whole nature. The phenomenon is due partly to the fact that she is under the dominant influence of a wholly natural instinct, partly to the fact that the object of her love is of stronger make than herself, mentally, spiritually, and physically. This sense of dependence ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of the thousand-dollar bills that the honest cabby was holding up. What a phenomenon in the way of a hackman! And yet the New York night-hawks are no fools and thousand-dollar bills are easy to trace. Indiman gave the man fifty dollars as a reward of virtue and he was more than satisfied. But something still ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of my repeated tours through the Hartz," Mr. Jordan says, "I ascended the Brocken twelve different times, but I had the good fortune only twice (both times about Whitsuntide), to see that atmospheric phenomenon called the Spectre of the Brocken, which appears to me worthy of particular attention, as it must, no doubt, be observed on other high mountains, which have a situation favourable for producing it. The first time ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... a mighty laugh in the Den as the joke passed round, and the phenomenon of the "green new kid" blushing scarlet all over attracted general curiosity, and stopped the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... regime the first Mexican newspaper was published. During the war between England and Spain the Viceroy Figueroa, Marquis of Gracia Real, was almost captured by the British, who gave chase to the ship in which he came from Spain. Further events were the singular phenomenon of the forming of the volcano of Jorullo in Michoacan in 1759, the celebration of peace between England and Spain in 1763, the suppression of the Jesuits and their expulsion from the country in 1767, under the Marquis de Croix; the continued ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many "souls", on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-as-such within the sphere of morals—regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of "life" ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... long years ago, when I reached the Pole; and the writing on that page was quite different from the neat look of the rest, proving immoderate excitement, wildest haste; and he heads it 'Cinq Heures,'—I suppose in the evening, for he does not say: and he writes: 'Monstrous event! phenomenon without likeness! the witnesses of which must for ever live immortalised in the annals of the universe, an event which will make even Mama, Henri and Juliette admit that I was justified in undertaking this most eventful voyage. Talking with ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Dante ten silent centuries found a voice." To state what history now regards as fact, it must be said that while Dante by his giant personality and sublime poetic genius could alone ennoble any epoch he was not "a solitary phenomenon of his time but a worthy culmination of the literary movement which, beginning shortly before 1200, produced down to 1300 such a mass of undying literature" that subsequent generations have found in it their model ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... and another; all noisy, and eager to investigate the novel phenomenon newly discovered by the sand-pit in ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... having brought a camera and flashlight apparatus. The Slipper-tons had prepared me for poltergeists, and I was, at that moment, distinctly annoyed at being confronted with what I presumed to be an entirely different class of phenomenon. Indeed, I was so annoyed that I was half inclined to blow out the candle and go to sleep. I wish, now, ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... confine his genius to the extension and improvement of the mathematical theory of the tide. He considered the phenomenon from an entirely new point of view, and it was he who first treated of the stability of the ocean. He has established its equilibrium, but upon the express condition (which, however, has been amply proved ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... The phenomenon was brief. It lasted little more than a hundred years, but it transformed Europe and launched the Middle Ages. When it had passed, Normandy stood confirmed for centuries (and is still confirmed) in a character of its own. No longer ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc |
