"Sirius" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Paul Vence, "I shall not say like Renan, my beloved master: 'What does Sirius care?' because somebody would reply with reason 'What does little Earth care for big Sirius?' But I am always surprised when people who are adult, and even old, let themselves be deluded by the illusion of power, as if hunger, love, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Almighty that hung out moon and stars, the youth glanced around the darkening horizon and presently observed a tiny light far to the south. He stared at it quite surprised, and then he chanced to see a star just above it. It was the reflection of Sirius in Canis Major. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... so directly at variance with natural laws, that it loses in interest in a direct ratio with the violence it does to our feelings. Nor is the mode of conveyance imagined by Voltaire less incongruous than that of Swift. When Micromegas, ah inhabitant of Sirius, whose adventures were evidently suggested by those of Gulliver, accompanied by an inhabitant of Saturn, leaves the latter planet, they are, in the first place, made to leap upon the Ring of Saturn, which they find tolerably flat, "comme l'a fort bien devine un ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... his face up as far as he could in the huge fish-bowl helmet to stare at the sky. His eyes wandered from star cluster to star cluster, from glowing Regulus, to bright and powerful Sirius. He stifled a sigh. How much he had wanted to see more—and more—and more of the great wide, high, and deep! He remembered his early days as a youth on his first trip to Luna City; his first sensation at touching an alien world; his skipper, old, wise, and patient, who had given him his creed ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... and Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and astronomers ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... in finding out what Browning means, imagine to their great surprise that they find out that they care for poetry. What they really care for is their own cleverness in discovering riddles, and they are as far away from poetry as Sirius ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... spell shall blight our vines, Nor Sirius blaze above us, But you and I shall drink our wines And sing to ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... the skies. Sirius held the ascendant, and under his influence even the radiant band of the Celestials began to droop, while the great ball-room of Olympus grew gradually more and more deserted. For nearly a week had Orpheus, the leader of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the dancers', not a sound Disturbed the icy air; No watchman on his midnight round Or traveller was there; But over All-Saints', high and bright, Pulsed to the music Sirius white, The Wain by ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... mortals fled; they drooped and died. Fierce Sirius scorched the fields, and herbs and grain Were parched, and food the wasting crops denied. Once more Anchises bids us cross the main And seek Ortygia, and the god constrain By prayer to pardon and advise, what end Of evils to expect? what woes remain? What fate hereafter shall our steps attend? What ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... beam of beauty, which begun To warm us so when thou wert here, Now scorches like the raging sun, When Sirius does first appear. Oh, fix this flame! and let despair Redeem ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... with her father's once more, and said, on a sudden brightness: "Sirius, papa!" He repeated it in the profoundest manner: "Sirius! And is there," he asked, "a feminine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... England and America by steam, Dr. Lardner delivered a lecture before the Royal Society "proving" that steamers could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry coal enough to produce steam during the whole voyage. The passage of the steamship Sirius, which crossed in nineteen days, was fatal to Lardner's theory. When it was proposed to build a vessel of iron, many persons said: "Iron sinks—only wood can float:" but experiments proved that the miracle of the prophet in making iron "swim" could be repeated, and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... hum and preparation of awakening spring—very faint—whether in the earth or roots, or starting of insects, I know not—but it was audible, as I lean'd on a rail (I am down in my country quarters awhile,) and look'd long at the western horizon. Turning to the east, Sirius, as the shadows deepen'd, came forth in dazzling splendor. And great Orion; and a little to the north-east the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... gentlemen, although not one of the heavenly bodies, indeed altogether terrestrial, one feels, naturally, rounder in his orbit, and a little more likely to see stars, after such a dinner as this, than before. Do I not, indeed, see around me now, all the stars of the intellectual firmament? Are not SIRIUS and ARCTURUS here, in their glory, as well as ORION and the rest? As my old friend CRISPIN would say, their name is legion! I would blaze, gentlemen, too, if possible, in honor of the occasion; but, as I can't Comet, meteors fall in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... ships lost station, and the formation was very irregular. At four in the afternoon the wind changed again to the north-west, but it was very light and the fleet moved slowly. To the westward all day the "Euryalus" and "Sirius" frigates were seen watching Villeneuve's progress, and just as darkness was closing in one of the French frigates signalled that there were twenty sail coming in from ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... detected in an adversary the absurd realization contained in this and the following passages of the abstract notion, sin, from the sinner: as if sin were any thing but a man sinning, or a man who has sinned! As well might a sin committed in Sirius or the planet Saturn justify the infliction of conflagration on the earth and hell-fire on all its rational inhabitants. Sin! the word sin! for abstracted from the sinner it is no more: and if not abstracted from him, it remains separate from ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... Lance kept his head tilted backward. Alpha Centauri, the most popular target, was not visible at this latitude; and Barnard's star, besides being far too faint, lay on the other side of the sun. But there shone Sirius, just as bright as it had glittered for the Greeks, and frosty Procyon, a little to the north. Both orbs twinkled and beckoned, evoking strange ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... 2. Sirius. This comparison, among many others, shows how constantly the poet's attention was directed to the phenomena ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... prevailed that the stars were ghosts of the mighty dead—of giants, kings, or princes, or princesses, or of pious people whom the gods loved, or of animals which were worshipped. A few instances may be selected at random. When the Teutonic gods slew the giant Thjasse, he appeared in the heavens as Sirius. In India the ghosts of the "seven Rishis", who were semi-divine Patriarchs, formed the constellation of the Great Bear, which in Vedic times was called the "seven bears". The wives of the seven Rishis were the stars of the Pleiades. In Greece ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... said Jeffers lightly. "It's about a young spaceman named Mike, who said: 'I can do as I like!' And to prove his bright quip, he took a round trip, clear to Sirius B on a bike. Or, the tale of the pirate, Black Bart, whose head was as hard as his heart. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "[Greek: os gar ameinon]." That is like Homer. The stars continue their signals. Vintage time is when Orion and Sirius are come to mid-heaven, and rosy-fingered ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... her entire stay there, he had lived that life of ecstasy which suspends material perceptions and precipitates the whole soul on a single point. He contemplated, not that girl, but that light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet bonnet. The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he would not have been any ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of this religion is difficult to discern clearly: but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications of natural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all the ancient nations of Western Asia—the stars, Sirius, the moon, the sun, water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cow and the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficent or malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, and reduced ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... doings of mortals. [18] Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 647. [19] Op. cit. p. 115. Much of the uncertainty as to date is doubtless due to the reflective influence of other forms of the cult; the Tammuz celebrations were held from June 20th, to July 20th, when the Dog-star Sirius was in the ascendant, and vegetation failed beneath the heat of the summer sun. In other, and more temperate, climates the date would fall later. Where, however, the cult was an off-shoot of a Tammuz original (as might be the case through emigration) the tendency would ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... globes the size of the moon to make one globe the size of the sun! Yet, notwithstanding this immense size, our sun is quite a small body as compared with some of the fixed stars, which, as perhaps you may know, are really suns at an inconceivable distance from us. The bright star Sirius, which is visible during our winter time, is not only very much brighter in reality than our sun, but must be many times larger; and there are others known to be very much larger than Sirius. It has ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,—ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,—looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery fusion, the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he watched the Six Flying Stars speed across the night sky—six glowing stars that moved in a direction opposite to the march of the other stars. Bright as Sirius seen from Earth, strung out one behind the other like jewels on a velvet string, they ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... We moved out beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and then we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey, the Lud. We tried Terrestrial know-how, we tried Production Miracles, we tried patriotism, we tried damning the torpedoes and full speed ahead ... and we were smashed ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... sent up with balloons and to the radio and other investigators who have been uncovering secrets of upper-air electricity. But the interior of the earth is still one of the great mysteries. It is a paradox of astronomy that much more is known about the center of the sun or a star like Sirius than about the center ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Star Sirius and the Pole Star dwell afar Beyond the drawings each of other's strength: One blazes through the brief bright summer's length Lavishing life-heat from a flaming car; While one unchangeable upon a throne Broods o'er the frozen heart of earth alone, Content to reign the bright particular star ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... of the most gifted of mortals from that spot looked out upon the heavens, and in thought went forth on voyages of discovery into the distant regions of the universe! At the calm, still hour of midnight, Sirius watching over the city of sleepers, Jupiter carrying his brilliant lamp along his ancient pathway, every one of the luminaries in the place appointed by Him who calleth them all by their names—there stood the thoughtful man, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... weather was such that they could not have been cleared two days before the time that they were. We were now looking eagerly for the arrival of the Gorgon, which ship, the governor informed me by letter, was to take the Sirius's crew and marines off this spot, which has cost ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... to the Sirius caught near fifty large fish, which were called light-horsemen from a bone that grew out of the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Give laws, and dwellings I divide by lot; When rising vapors choke the wholesome air, And blasts of noisome winds corrupt the year; The trees devouring caterpillars burn; Parch'd was the grass, and blighted was the corn: Nor 'scape the beasts; for Sirius, from on high, With pestilential heat infects the sky: My men- some fall, the rest in fevers fry. Again my father bids me seek the shore Of sacred Delos, and the god implore, To learn what end of woes we might expect, And to what clime ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... victim, no man's jest." Bid him go home and nurse himself, while you Act as his counsel and his agent too; Hold on unflinching, never bate a jot, Be it for wet or dry, for cold or hot, Though "Sirius split dumb statues up," or though Fat Furius "spatter the bleak Alps with snow." "What steady nerve!" some bystander will cry, Nudging a friend; "what zeal! what energy! What rare devotion!" ay, the game goes well; In flow the tunnies, and your fish-ponds ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... later, for its proper eastward motion had carried it some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius and the pointers of the Bear. It was very white and beautiful. In many parts of the world that night a pallid halo encircled it about. It was perceptibly larger; in the clear refractive sky of the tropics it ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... exhaled. 2. Conclusions are drawn. 3. Industry will enrich. 4. Stars have disappeared. 5. Twilight is falling. 6. Leaves are turning. 7. Sirius has appeared. 8. Constantinople had been captured. 9. Electricity has been harnessed. 10. Tempests have been raging. 11. Nuisances should be abated. 12. Jerusalem was destroyed. 13. Light can be reflected. 14. Rain must have ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... our cosmical island belongs, forms a lens-shaped, flattened stratum, detached on every side, whose major axis is estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor one at a hundred and fifty times the distance of Sirius. It would appear, on the supposition that the parallax of Sirius is not greater than that accurately determined for the brightest star in the Centaur (0".9128), that light traverses one distance of Sirius in three years, while it also ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... reason to believe that the great star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... eyes to the patch of sky where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph ... And higher ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... pass to Canis Major (map No. 2). There is no hope of our being able to see the companion of alpha (Sirius), at present (1901), even with our five-inch. Discovered by Alvan Clark with an eighteen-inch telescope in 1862, when its distance was 10" from the center of Sirius, this ninth-magnitude star has since been swallowed up in the blaze of its great primary. At first, ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... telescopes," says Humboldt, "the contemplation of these nebulous masses leads us into regions from whence a ray of light, according to an assumption not wholly improbable, requires millions of years to reach our earth—to distances for whose measurement the dimensions (the distance of Sirius, or the calculated distances of the binary stars in Cygnus and the Centaur) of our nearest stratum of fixed ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... this star spend close upon a century in travelling hither. Dr Chase's measures with the Yale heliometer indicated for it, in 1894, a parallax of about 0'' .035;8 and it must, accordingly, be of nearly four times the total brightness of Sirius, while its aerial lustre exceeds seventy- fold that of the solar photosphere. Variables of the Algol class are rendered difficult to discover by the incidental character of their fluctuations. At the end of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fall, Sir, out of heaven! Now, would you credit it, that as I fell I saw that Sirius wears a nightcap? True! (Confidentially): The other Bear is still too small to bite. (Laughing): I went through the Lyre, but I snapped a cord; (Grandiloquent): I mean to write the whole thing in a book; The small gold stars, that, wrapped up in my cloak, I carried safe away ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... the winding bed of the river, lying piled like a gray eider-down coverlet; folding itself over the forest trees; floating up to the Mountain House, and hanging about the rocks. But overhead the sky looked bright, and Sirius waved his torch which the vapour had filled with coloured lights. As yet ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... well beyond the glare of cities, which is often strong enough to conceal all but the brighter objects, you will find the task a difficult one. Ranging through the six magnitudes of the Greek astronomers, from the brilliant Sirius to the faintest perceptible points of light, the stars are scattered in great profusion over the celestial vault. Their number seems limitless, yet actual count will show that the eye has been deceived. In a survey ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... VICTORY, and across her bows, fired single guns at her, to ascertain whether she was yet within their range. As soon as Nelson perceived that their shot passed over him, he desired Blackwood and Captain Prowse, of the SIRIUS, to repair to their respective frigates; and, on their way, to tell all the captains of the line-of-battle ships that he depended on their exertions; and that if, by the prescribed mode of attack, they found it impracticable to get into ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... which grows steeper at every pace, and which leads to that valley, filled with grey shadow, out of which none return. To them I hold out a hand of greeting in the spirit. Perhaps, when the Great Cycle has been traversed, we may meet again. Perhaps in another Argo we may voyage from Sirius to Mazaroth, through seas of golden ether adventurers from world to world instead of from ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... This varies within wide limits. The faintest star which can give an impression on the photographic plates of the greatest instrument of the Mount Wilson observatory (100 inch reflector) is nearly 100 million times fainter than Sirius, a star which is itself more than 10000 million times fainter than ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... Milky Way. Through his perma-glas canopy, he could see it trailing across the black velvet of space like a white bridal veil. Below his SC9B scout-ship stretched the red dust deserts of Sirius Three illuminated by the thin light of two ice moons. He ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... any that poets have ever sung, or playwrights fabled. Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos'd obscure. For it isn't only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark, or almost dark, unnotic'd orbs and suns, (like the dusky companions of Sirius, seven times as large as our own sun,) rolling through space, real and potent as any—perhaps the most real and potent. Yet none recks of them. In the bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens, they have not even names. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to Ronny and grinned at him. He motioned to the report again. "What a name for a planet. Republic. Bunch of screw-balls, again. Out in the vicinity of Sirius. Based their system on Plato's Republic. Have to go the whole way. Don't even speak Basic. Certainly not. They speak Ancient Greek. That's going to be a neat trick, finding interpreters. How'd you ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Hercules is the dragging him up to the light; and in some sort he represents the voracity or devouring of Hades itself; and the mediaeval representation of the mouth of hell perpetuates the same thought. Then, also, the power of evil passion is partly associated with the red and scorching light of Sirius, as opposed to the pure light of the sun: he is the dog-star of ruin; and hence the continual Homeric dwelling upon him, and comparison of the flame of anger to his swarthy light; only, in his scorching, it is thirst, not hunger, over which he rules physically; so that ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... in a mountain of very red marble, having on the left a marble wall forming a parapet about five feet high. At intervals solid pedestals rise from this wall, bearing every token of having served to support colossal statues of Sirius, the barking Anubis, or the Dog star. One hundred and thirty-three of these pedestals with the marks just mentioned are still in their places, but only two figures of the dog were recognizable when I was there; these, however, though much mutilated, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... been going on in the case of other nebulae. The history of the sun is but a type of the history of stars in general. And when we consider that all other visible stars and nebulae are cooling and contracting bodies, like our sun, to what other conclusion could we very well come? When we look at Sirius, for instance, we do not see him surrounded by planets, for at such a distance no planet could be visible, even Sirius himself, though fourteen times larger than our sun, appearing only as a "twinkling little star." But a comparative survey of the heavens ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Lucifer ortu. Tu frondifluae frigore brumae Stringis lucem breuiore mora: 15 Tu, cum feruida uenerit aestas, Agiles nocti diuidis horas. Tua uis uarium temperat annum Vt quas Boreae spiritus aufert Reuehat mites Zephyrus frondes 20 Quaeque Arcturus semina uidit Sirius altas urat segetes. Nihil antiqua lege solutum Linquit propriae stationis opus. Omnia certo fine gubernans 25 Hominum solos respuis actus Merito rector cohibere modo. Nam cur tantas lubrica uersat Fortuna uices? Premit insontes Debita sceleri noxia poena, 30 At peruersi ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work! You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread, Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius'? what Capella's? What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what boundless aggregate of all? What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in you? what fluid, vast identity, Holding ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... far faint ray from Sirius rising, When through space first was hurled The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising, This atom, called ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... until the 6th of June, 1789, that Phillip resumed his labours in the field of exploration. The Sirius had then returned from the Cape of Good Hope, and he could reckon on the assistance of his friend, Captain Hunter, to re-investigate Broken Bay with the vessel's boats. Accordingly, two boats were sent on to Broken Bay with provisions, where they were joined by the Governor and his party, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... than the fainter ones, it by no means follows that a very bright star, even of the first magnitude, is among the nearer to our system. Two stars are worthy of especial mention in this connection, Canopus and Rigel. The first is, with the single exception of Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens. The other is a star of the first magnitude in the southwest corner of Orion. The most long-continued and complete measures of parallax yet made are those carried on by Gill, at the Cape of Good Hope, on these two and some other bright stars. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Poet Moreau, in the cemetery Montparnasse; bust of Taglioni, in the foyer of the Grand Opera House, Paris; bust of the astronomer Leverrier, at the Institute, Paris; a statue, "The Spring," Museum of Bourges; "Sirius," in the Palais of the Governor of Algiers. Also busts of Prince Napoleon, General Boulanger, the Countess de Choiseul, the Countess de Vogue, and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... being considerably improved. Among other burners designed about 1900 may be mentioned the Ackermann, the head of which consisted of a series of tubes from each of which a jet of flame was produced, the Fouche, the Weber, and the Trendel. Subsequently a tubular-headed burner known as the Sirius has been produced for the consumption of acetylene at high pressure (20 inches ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... Voltairean view of war may be of interest at this time. Some one has called attention to the illuminating discourse between Micromegas, gigantic dweller on one of the planets revolving about Sirius, and a company of our philosophers, as reported in the seventh chapter of the amusing fantasy bearing the name of the above-mentioned Sirian visitor. A free translation of a part of this conversation is here offered. After congratulating his terrestrial hearers on being so small and adding that, ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... gives 2 1/2 times as much light is of the fifth magnitude, and successive multiplications or divisions by 2 1/2 define the lower or higher magnitudes. Negative magnitudes have clearly to be contemplated; thus Sirius is of magnitude minus 1.4, and the sun is of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... too, O Nymphs, and your unenvious aid The rural powers confess, and still prepare For you their choicest treasures. Pan commands, Oft as the Delian king [P] with Sirius holds 70 The central heavens, the father of the grove Commands his Dryads over your abodes To spread their deepest umbrage. Well the god Remembereth how indulgent ye supplied Your genial dews to nurse them ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... effect of the night landscape should be rendered by careful exclusion of tints from the word-palette. The art of the etcher is more needed than that of the painter.) Heaven overhead is set with stars, shooting intensely, smouldering with dull red in Aldeboran, sparkling diamond-like in Sirius, changing from orange to crimson and green in the swart fire of yonder double star. On the snow this moonlight falls tenderly, not in hard white light and strong black shadow, but in tones of cream ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... blossom and flourish after an extraordinary manner is by the poets expressed by the word [Greek omitted]. In this sense, Antimachus calls the city of Cadmeans flourishing with fruit; and Aratus, speaking of the dog-star Sirius, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... honourable felicity Of comradeship I can be chivalrous, And through love's transmutations fierily Constant as the gemmed paladin Sirius To that fair pact. We go, gay challengers, Beneath dark rampires of forbidden thought, Thread life's dim gardens masked like revellers Where dreams of roses red are dearly bought. We shall ride haughtily as bright Crusaders, As hooded palmers ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... finished: this in subsequent years was greatly improved. I applied to the Royal Society for the loan of Huyghens's object-glass, but they declined to lend it. About this time I find observations of the spectrum of Sirius. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... of spectral lines towards the red end of the spectrum was definitely established by Adams in 1924, by observations on the dense companion of Sirius, for which the effect is about thirty times greater than for the Sun. R.W.L. ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... etincelle, Orion resplendit; L'essaim prodigieux des Pleiades grandit; Sirius ouvre son cratere; Arcturus, oiseau d'or, scintille dans son nid; Le Scorpion hideux fait cabrer au zenith Le poitrail bleu ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... great Napoleon, when the French state had lost those divisions of caste and prejudice, of landed aristocracy and moneyed interest, institutions in which the vulgar see only barriers to Liberty but which are indeed the only possible defences against the coming of that periodic Sirius ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... far away the brilliant Sirius—the Dog Star, Cygnet, Centauri, the Great Bear, and a ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... sultry Sunday, when no cooling breeze Was borne on zephyr's wing, to fan the trees; One sultry Sunday, when the torrid ray O'er nature beam'd intolerable day; When raging Sirius warn'd us not to roam, And Galen's sons prescrib'd cool draughts at home; One sultry Sunday, near those fields of fame Where weavers dwell, and Spital is their name, A sober wight, of reputation high For tints that emulate the Tyrian ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... rushed, his ear Drawn by the immortal horses of his sire. As from the ocean-verge upsprings the sun In glory, flashing fire far over earth— Fire, when beside his radiant chariot-team Races the red star Sirius, scatterer Of woefullest diseases over men; So flashed upon the eyes of Ilium's host That battle-eager hero, Achilles' son. Onward they whirled him, those immortal steeds, The which, when now he longed to chase the foe Back from the ships, Automedon, who wont To rein them for his father, brought ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... realizing the weird fancy of the Arabian poet, who calls her a "giant stiffening into granite, but struggling madly against his doom," might shriek, in a spasm of agony, loudly enough to be heard in Sirius. But our travellers could not hear it. Their ears no sound could now reach. They could no more detect the rending of a continent than the falling of a feather. Air, the propagator and transmitter of sound, was absent from her surface. Her cries, her struggles, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... /imp./ 1. Commonly found at the end of software release announcements and {README file}s, this phrase indicates allegiance to the hacker ethic of free information sharing (see {hacker ethic}, sense 1). 2. The motto of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent {suit}s) in Douglas Adams's "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". The irony of using this as a cultural recognition signal appeals ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... which convey the same meaning over very wide tracts of country. Here when Venus comes out in the evenings, she is called Ntanda, the eldest or first-born, and Manjika, the first-born of morning, at other times: she has so much radiance when shining alone, that she casts a shadow. Sirius is named Kuewa usiko, "drawer of night," because supposed to draw the whole night after it. The moon has no evil influence in this country, so far as we know. We have lain and looked up at her, till sweet sleep closed our eyes, unharmed. Four or five of our men were affected ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... devoted to the double, triple, and quadruple stars, those which, though single to the naked eye, when viewed by the help of the glass showed that they were two, three, or four, perfectly separate. Then the various colours were studied, and diamond-like Sirius was viewed, as well as his ruby, topaz, sapphire, and emerald companions in the great sphere. The moon was journeyed over at every opportunity, with her silvery, pumice-like craters, and greyish-bottomed ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... is a loving heart that feels a necessity of spending itself on others. He likes to make his emotions spectacular, and as his impressions are events for him, he would like to display them, even to the inhabitants of Sirius. His soul is like a lake swept by a gale of wind that would drive a man-of-war at the rate of twenty-five knots an hour; and on this lake Stephane sails his squadrons of nutshells, and he sees them come, go, tack, run around, and capsize. He keeps his log- book very ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Liverpool, said that on the first voyage of the Sirius steamship to America, only five letters were received at the post-office to go by her, while at least 10,000 were sent in a bag from the consignee ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the fragments of Osiris; and the role played by Anubis, and his Greek avatar Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... inviolable seal as those of the Medes and Persians, and from their unchangeableness must have floated down the stream of Aryan migration, from some infallible fountain in Bactria. I should not be much more astonished to hear that Cynosure had grown giddy, had swung down and waltzed in the arms of Sirius." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... thought," continued the dreamy archdeacon, "that it would be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But 'tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the simultaneous presence of other stars whose rays mingle with it. Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire. Flamel! there's predestination in the name! Flamma! ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... charts you use and you at sea, the charts of the heavens, where what stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog star, and Saturn, and the star you steer your ship by, the polar star.... And all the constellations, the Milky Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the Great Bear and the great glory you see when you pass the line, the Southern Cross ... and the little stars you ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... are situated. In one square are forty obelisks of one piece of granite. A road is cut in the mountain of red marble, having on the left a parapet wall about five feet in height. At equal distances there are solid pedestals, upon the tops of which stood originally colossal statues of Sirius, Litrator Anubis, or Dog Star. There are 133 of these pedestals, but only two much mutilated figures of the Dog remain. There are also pedestals for figures of the Sphinx. Two magnificent flights of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... tangible universe, in the desires and cravings of this same human heart; this little human heart beating blindly beneath a waistcoat or a blouse. Its owner is little bigger than a beetle or an ant, and the habitat of that owner is a speck in space; a pygmy in comparison with Sirius or Arcturus, and invisible from ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... fruitful Venus' star contains the seeds Of all things. Ruler of the boundless deep The god (11) Cyllenian: whene'er he holds That part of heaven where the Lion dwells With neighbouring Cancer joined, and Sirius star Flames in its fury; where the circular path (Which marks the changes of the varying year) Gives to hot Cancer and to Capricorn Their several stations, under which doth lie The fount of Nile, he, master of the waves, Strikes with his beam the waters. Forth the stream Brims ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... captain he formerly served with, but was rebuffed. He realises that the present First Sea Lord, the title of the Admiral in command of the whole navy, is someone he used to serve with in former days, so they go to see this eminent officer. The outcome is that Syd's father is appointed to command the Sirius, and is invited to take Syd ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... not weary you," he said. "It is a beautiful night. You will not catch cold if you are well wrapped up, and, no matter what you may think of the real Cross when you see it, you will never have a better chance of star-gazing. Look at Sirius up there, brighter than the moon; and Orion, too, incomparably grander than any star in southern latitudes. Our dear old Bear of the north ranks far beyond the Southern Cross in magnificence; but mist and smoke and dust contrive to rob our home ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... baleful star of Sirius, When the postmen slowlier jog, And the ox becomes delirious, And ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... "The bright star Sirius, itself a vast flaming sun, has a companion which is also a sun,—nearly seven times as large as our own,—but which is dark, and gives no light at all. This dark sun was seen through a very powerful telescope in 1862, and it is thought that there are a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... of complexion in themselves. Sirius, as before stated, was once a ruddy, or rather a fiery-faced orb, but has now forgotten to blush, and looks down upon us with a pure, brilliant smile, in which there is no trace either of anger or of shame. On the countenances of others, ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... in 1572, what appeared to be a new star in the constellation, Cassiopeia. It was a star of the first magnitude when first perceived, and daily it increased in brilliancy, till it out-shone Sirius, equaled Venus in lustre, and could be perceived, even by the naked eye, at noonday. For nearly a month the star shone; at first it had a white light, then a yellow, and finally it was a bright red. Then it slowly faded, and in about ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... south the River (Eridanus) makes now its best show. Its leading brilliant, Achernar, is, however, never seen in the United States. In the southeast the Great Dog, with the splendid Sirius ("which brightliest shines when laved of ocean's wave"), shows resplendently. Above is Orion now standing upright, treading on the Hare (Lepus) and facing the Bull (Taurus), now at its highest. ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor
... a million times bigger than the earth; Sirius is twelve times the size of the sun; comets measure thirty-four millions ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... "That means we're within two light years of Sirius, since we were headed in that direction. Let's turn the ship so we can take a look at it with ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... for them," said Morey. "We can—and we can move faster than your ship, if not faster than they. The people of the dead star have moved to a very live star—Sirius, the brightest in our heavens. And they are as much alive now as their new sun. They can move faster than light, also. We had a little misunderstanding a while back, when their star passed close to ours. They ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... THE SUN.—A photometric experiment of Huygens, resumed by Wollaston, a short time before his death, teaches us that 20,000 stars the same size as Sirius, the most brilliant in the firmament, would need to be agglomerated to shed upon our globe a light equal to ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Sirius, far in the deeps of space, beyond the flight of a cannon-ball flying for a billion years, beyond the range of unaided vision, blazes the star that is our Utopia's sun. To those who know where to look, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... soon their pleasure pass'd: at noon of day The sun with sultry beams began to play: Not Sirius shoots a fiercer flame from high, When with his poisonous breath he blasts the sky: Then droop'd the fading flowers (their beauty fled) And closed their sickly eyes, and hung the head; And rivell'd up with heat, lay dying in their ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... mentioned, the season of the inundations began and coincided with the actual time of inundation. The more precise fixing of new year's day was accomplished through observation of the time of the so-called heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the Egyptian name Sothis. It chances that, as viewed from about the region of Heliopolis, the sun at the time of the summer solstice occupies an apparent position in the heavens close to the dog-star. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams |
