"Zero" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wildest idea, although she would be astounded to hear me say so." "Have you ever had flounders?" I asked. "Flounders!" My friend's pretty nose went up the eighth of an inch, and her confidence in my powers as counselor went down to zero. "Flounders! but they are a very common fish you know." "I know they are very delicious," I answered. "Order them, and trust me; but I must coax the autocrat of your kitchen to allow me to cook ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... length of the tube, and the height of the barometer is ascertained by taking the difference of the readings of the upper and lower limbs respectively. This instrument may also be read by bringing the zero-point of the graduated scale to the level of the surface of the lower limb by means of a screw, and reading off the height at once from the surface of the upper limb. This barometer requires no correction for errors of capillarity or capacity. Since, however, impurities ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the molecules of a substance were brought to a standstill, that substance would be at the absolute zero of temperature. There could be nothing colder. The temperature at which all molecular motions would cease is known: it is -273 deg. C. No body could possibly attain a lower temperature than this: a lower temperature ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... very severe here for nearly three weeks; the thermometer 30 degrees below zero, with quite a fall of snow on the ground. I have tried every means in my power to raise volunteers for three months' State service, but as yet have not succeeded, owing to the factional ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... his heart sank lower and lower. The old pre-war life claimed him mercilessly, and he was frozen with a dread which he had never felt on the fire-step in the cold dawn awaiting the lagging hour of zero. On the entrance to the Gare du Nord he went into the corridor and looked through the window. He saw Elodie afar off. Elodie, in a hat over her eyes, a fur round her neck, her skirt cut nearly up to her knees showing fat, white-stockinged calves. She had put on much flesh. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... which extremes meet, and the most common thing becomes a cosmic and mystical thing. I did not want so much to alter the place and use of things as to weight them with a new dimension; to deepen them by going down to the potential nothing; to lift them to infinity by measuring from zero. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... capital, his plant, his investments more or less totally, and the workingmen lost their means of livelihood and were thrown on what you well called the cold charity of the world—a charity usually well below zero; and this loss without any rebate or compensation whatever from the public at large on account of any general benefit that might be received from the invention. It was complete. Consequently, the most beneficent of inventions was cruel as death to those who had been dependent ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... were encountered during these winter months. First there was the unearthing of a conspiracy against Champlain. Those concerned in it were speedily punished, but the execution of the chief culprit gave to the new settlement a rather ominous beginning. Then came a season of zero weather, and the scurvy came with it. Champlain had heard of the remedy used by Cartier, but the tribes which had been at Stadacona in Cartier's time had now disappeared, and there was no one to point out the old-time remedy to the suffering ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... of us at first," returned Dan, "but when we found that the thermometer fell to somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees below zero; that walking in snow-shoes, trapping, hunting buffalo, and shooting, were not to be learned in a few days; and when we saw our women and children dependent sometimes on the charity of Indians, and reduced almost to starvation, we changed our minds as to the ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... it for the Arctic explorers to explain. They're used to being in below-zero temperature," George said with a troubled laugh. "I'm sure I can't waste any time thinking about a woman who could stand out against you, Marna, the way you are this day, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... heart; I do not see how it should concern me. If I am to pay the money, it matters very little to me whether he invests it in a Greek husband or the Double Zero—speculations, I take it, pretty much alike. Have you sent ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... a representation reaches the zero point of consciousness, or as soon as a new representation (sensation) comes in, the others begin at once to rise or sink. The Mechanics seeks to investigate the laws of these movements of representations; but we may the more ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... on these plains sometimes went so low as 20 deg. below zero, with wind blowing. There was no natural shelter, literally nothing as big as your hat in the pasture, and several men advised the building of sheds, wind-breaks, etc. But experience told me just the opposite. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... amounts to one-thirtieth; and hence, the difference between the quantities of heat received from the sun on a summer's day under these opposite conditions amounts to one-fifteenth. Estimating this, not with reference to the zero of our thermometers, but with reference to the temperature of the celestial spaces, Sir John Herschel calculates "23 deg. Fahrenheit, as the least variation of temperature under such circumstances which can reasonably be attributed to the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... a few steps beside Clay. The little puncher followed them dejectedly. His confidence had gone down to chill zero. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... first, Darrin," announced the captain. "Go like a streak, if you can. If you fall down it counts zero. Start when I say 'go.' Are ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... frequent—the reader's fainting spirits are repaired not by the excellence of the manuscript before him, but by its absolute literary nonentity, a kind of intellectual Absolute Zero. Lack of merit may be so complete, so grotesque, that the composition affords to the sophistic eye a high order of comedy. A lady submits a poem ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... said Radway, "it won't be so bad after all. A couple of days of zero weather, with all this water lying around, would fix things up in pretty good shape. If she only freezes tight, we'll have a good solid bottom to build on, and that'll be quite a good rig out there on ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... was to be, as I said, an evening-party; and to this Messieurs Tagrag and Tufthunt had invited many of the principal nobility that our metropolis had produced. When I mention, among the company to tea, her Grace the Duchess of Zero, her son the Marquis of Fitzurse, and the Ladies North Pole her daughters; when I say that there were yet OTHERS, whose names may be found in the Blue Book, but shan't, out of modesty, be mentioned here, I think I've said enough ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is against usage to use these whistles for anything but the command to go over the top at 'zero.' Necessity, however, Mademoiselle, knows ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... Therefore, between reality in a phenomenon and negation, there exists a continuous concatenation of many possible intermediate sensations, the difference of which from each other is always smaller than that between the given sensation and zero, or complete negation. That is to say, the real in a phenomenon has always a quantity, which however is not discoverable in apprehension, inasmuch as apprehension take place by means of mere sensation in one instant, and not by the successive synthesis of many sensations, and therefore ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... armed with a most reassuring pass, signed by the burgomaster himself, but when we arrived at the frontier and confidently handed it to the official there, he shook his head. "Impossible! Impossible!" he said. With a sudden rush our spirits sank to zero. This was the "most unkindest cut of all," but out of the darkness came light. We were at cross-purposes, and the man thought we wished to motor across the little bridge connecting Germany and Holland. We assured him we had no such desire, that I would ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... Mr. Lamont has recently given us a lively picture,* (* "Seasons with the Sea-Horses" 1861.) and huge whales fatten on myriads of pteropods in polar regions. It had been suggested that the bottom of the sea, at the era of extreme submergence in Scotland and Wales, was so deep as to reach the zero of animal life, which, in part of the Mediterranean (the Aegean, for example), the late Edward Forbes fixed, after a long series of dredgings, at 300 fathoms. But the shells of the glacial drift of Scotland and Wales, when they do occur, are not always those of ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... forest. But in December, with some exceptions, of course, birds must be sought after rather than waited for. The 15th, for example, was a most uncomfortable day,—so uncomfortable that I stayed indoors,—the mercury only two or three degrees above zero, and a strong wind blowing. Such weather would drive the birds under shelter. The next forenoon, therefore, I betook myself to a hill covered thickly with pines and cedars. Here I soon ran upon several robins, feeding upon the savin berries, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... habits, one of which was a regular attendance at church on Sundays; every one that could go went, even in the severest winter weather. Then, of all times, it was almost a necessity; with the thermometer at twenty below zero outside, it would have been beyond human endurance to sit in the unheated church had it not been packed to the doors ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... left it was dark almost all day. The thermometer could scarcely be read at noon, and the stars were visible during the day. From this time forward thick darkness set in, and the cold became intense. The thermometer fell below zero, and after that they never saw it above that point for months together—20 degrees, 30 degrees, and 40 degrees below were common temperatures. The ice around them was ten feet thick. On the 1st of December noon was so dark that they could not see fifty yards ahead, and on the 15th ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... perceived that he was making fun again; but he continued with an air of greater seriousness. "Don't you see what a very good thing that was to begin one's day with? Why, even in Santa Croce, with the thermometer ten degrees below zero in the shade of Alfieri's monument, I was no gayer than I should have been in a church at home. I suppose Mrs. Bowen would object to having that procession go by under one's window in a book; but I can't really see how it would hurt the reader, or damp his spirits permanently. A wholesome ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... out, by the chronometers—look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing, before? Stripped down to his shorts, and with the spin stopped for zero-G, he was bouncing back and forth from wall to wall inside his bubb! The sun makes it nice and warm in there. Think I might try it, myself, sometime. Shucks, I feel pretty good, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... gauge, as well as the pipette itself, are graduated into equal divisions. If need be, the graduating may be done by simply pasting on the glass strips of paper, upon which a graduated scale has been drawn. The zero of the pipette's graduation is exactly at the lower extremity, B. The graduation of the two gauge tubes extends in both directions from a zero situated near the center. The zeros of the two branches must correspond as exactly as possible, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... outside the rim of light made by his fire and listened to the moaning of the wind over the treetops. Beyond the circle of light the dry snow, which crunched like sand under his feet, was lost in ghostly gloom. It was forty degrees below zero. And he was glad, even with this sickness of despair in his heart, that she was not a fugitive ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... suppressed. Can the consciousness then continue to exist? On this last point it seems that doubt is not possible, and we must answer in the negative. A consciousness without an object, an empty consciousness, in consequence, cannot be conceived; it would be a zero—a pure nothingness; it could not manifest itself. We might admit, in strictness, that such a consciousness might exist virtually as a power which is not exercised, a reserve, a potentiality, or a possibility of being; but we cannot comprehend that this power can ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... are fish with red gills; Naught disturbs us, our blood is at zero: We are buoyant because of our bags, Being many, each fish is a hero. We care not what is it, this life That we follow, this phantom unknown: To swim, it's exceedingly pleasant,— So swim away, making a foam. This strange looking ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... us, of course, but we were used to that. We kept our eyes open and our mouths shut. That's our job, and we give value for money received. So we were alert and ready. But it wasn't the attack that nearly got us this time. It was the cold of the dead planet lost in absolute zero and absolute darkness. ...
— Dead World • Jack Douglas
... absolute zero (see "Zero, Absolute"). It is obtained by adding for the centigrade scale 273, and for the Fahrenheit scale 459, to the degree readings ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... because it was easier, all of the water pipes were placed on outside walls. This made no difference when the house was occupied only during the summer months but during the first winter we became experts in thawing pipes that "caught" whenever the temperature dropped to zero. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... breathed the horses again, but they were hot, the air was at zero or colder, the rays of the sun had begun to slant. I walked for a while alongside the team. They were drooping sadly. Then I got in again, driving them slowly till we came to the crossing of the ditch. I had no eye ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... ... house on a sunny hill ... Gone like a flickered page: Time soon now ... zero ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... heavy with dust and the acrid sheep smell. It was the liveliest possible spectacle of organized confusion, and the accompanying noise was calculated to split the ears of the groundlings. As the number unshorn of the installment of sheep in the pen dwindled toward zero, little groups of unoccupied shearers gathered round the posts near the low tables, lit fresh cigarettes, whipped out cards, and started a little game of monte for the checks they had in their pockets, continuing till the captain's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... before seen in his hands. 'If I only persevere in my system, the certainty that I must win is almost mathematical. I have staked and lost two hundred and thirty-three times. Allowing out of that one chance in every thirty-six, which is the average of zero being marked, and two hundred and four times for the backers of the other numbers, I have the mathematical expectation of six times at least, which would nearly recoup me. And shall I, then, sacrifice that vast foundation of waste chances that I have laid down, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... aid his escape, were roughly shattered at the sight of these buildings. He had reckoned on their resembling in some respect the prison in Glasgow, and at the sight of these formidable fortresses with their lofty walls and flanking towers, their moats and vigilant sentries, his hopes fell to zero. It would, he saw at once, be absolutely impossible to open communication with a prisoner of whose whereabouts he was wholly ignorant and of whose very existence he was doubtful. The narrow slits which lighted the cell in which he was confined might look into an inner court, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... closer now, and the sky was growing dark. Rick estimated that they had no more than ten minutes before the storm would hit. He had to look up at a sharp angle to see the storm front. Visibility was down to zero directly under it. Whitecaps and a roiling sea told him there was plenty of wind in the squall. He doubted that the houseboat could head into it successfully. The wind would catch the high cabin sides and force ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... has grown so grievously lax in so many of our English homes? In Carlyle's strong words, "Obedience is our universal duty and destiny, wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that 'would,' in this world of ours, is as mere zero to 'should,' and for most part as the smallest of fractions ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... The rink these zero days was a pretty sight. Miss Meredith, on her way out for a walk, used to love to stand for a few minutes and watch the charming scene. "What lovely things girls are," she would murmur to herself as they ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... roots of the trees, and the worms, insects, and smaller animals in the ground! It is a veritable fleece, beneath which the shivering earth ("the frozen hills ached with pain," says one of our young poets) is restored to warmth. When the temperature of the air is at zero, the thermometer, placed at the surface of the ground beneath a foot and a half of snow, would probably indicate but a few degrees below freezing; the snow is rendered such a perfect non-conductor of heat mainly by reason of the quantity of air that is caught and retained between the crystals. Then ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... men, and probably self-taught, contrived to draw wonderfully good music, and, in the intervals of dancing, played airs from the Straniera and Puritani. The taste for music is certainly universal, the facilities wonderful, the science nearly at zero. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... true enough. Since the desperation of the night her activities had dropped to zero, and there was no further rashness to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... proceeds so obtained were devoted, and he looked forward to the moment when he might avow what he had done, and justify it by doubling the capital withdrawn. But to his inconceivable horror, the bill of the Canal Company was rejected in the Lords; the shares bought at a premium went down to zero; and to add to his perplexity, the speculator abruptly disappeared from the town. In this crisis he was summoned to meet his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sprung to its feet and was closing up in support to the crucial assault. At the trenches of the defenders, batteries, with horses falling and being cut away in an instant, dashed to the line, unlimbered and poured in their scattering salutations of zero shrapnel to ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... good-night. There was no constraint on her part, and no familiarity. She talked fluently and naturally, just as one first-class lady traveller might do to a fellow-passenger. Yet, if not here in contact with the zero of peasant property, we are considering ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... (who knew all about the subject of the lecture) could stand; but Mr. Bulkin, referring her to his own Appendices, finished his address, and offered the Duchess half-a-crown as he led his troop to other victories. From this accident the Duchess never recovered. Her spirits, at no time high, sank to zero, and she soon passed peacefully away. She left a will in which her personal property (about 40,000 pounds a year) was bequeathed to Gwyneth, "as my beloved son, Percy, has enough for his needs," the revenues of the dukedom of Stalybridge being about 300,000 pounds per annum before the agricultural ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... air At the bleak end of night; he shivered there In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay, Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why, Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in Under the freedom of that morning sky!" And then he coughed ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... be fatal to American competition. But the mills of the Gods grind right along, regardless of individual opinions or precedents. Foreign tea plants have been so acclimatised in South Carolina that a plantation of tea has withstood a winter temperature of zero, the lowest recorded degree for 150 years; the secrets of curing the leaf have been disclosed and successfully practiced by Americans, and a cheap form of child labor for picking the tea leaves has resulted in commercial success ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... match for average woman, eighteen chances to eighteen, but zero always turns up in woman's favour. Man, being a philosopher and far less interested in woman (who is an incident) than woman is interested in him (who is her life), would cheerfully go on playing with the odds always slightly against him, if he had a clear idea ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... its red teeth through the slats and roared and laughed to the day which sparkled on the white world without. When he got out of bed a second time, he found the room so hot that he had to pull down his window-sash, and he dressed in a temperature of twenty degrees below zero without knowing that the dry air was more than fresh. Mrs. Durgin called to him through the open door of her parlor, as he entered the dining-room: "Cynthy will give you your breakfast, Mr. Westover. We're all done long ago, and I'm busy in here," and the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... imperfect reality—God as action. Soulless matter, which only exists as a logical abstraction, is arrived at by looking at things "in disconnexion, dull and spiritless." It is the sphere of the "merely many," and is zero, as "the One who is not" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... their prudent saving from the summer surplus to keep the winter storeroom well supplied like a squirrel's. Such thrift is the more necessary when a clamorous, hungry family of young jays must be reared while the thermometer is often as low as thirty degrees below zero at the end of March. How eggs are ever hatched at all in a temperature calculated to freeze any sitting bird stiff, is one of the mysteries of the woods. And yet four or five fluffy little jays, that look as if they were dressed in gray fur, emerge from the eggs before the spring sunshine has ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... equals that now in triumphant practice in the lists of literature. From Zoilus to the penny newspapers, never has there been criticism, penned or spoken, so bitterly pungent as some of the grave laudatory articles, by which authors are now quizzed down to zero in the popular reviews. Satan Montgomery is bantered with the name of Isaiah; Miss Landon by a comparison with La Rochefoucault; and Don Trueba, with Pigault le Brun. This is a refinement in cruelty. It is twining the rack with flowers; and hanging a man with a cord of gold. The sentence of the reviewer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... many of the events planned for the second inauguration to be abandoned. The thermometer did not rise much above zero all day, persuading many to avoid the ceremony on the East Portico of the Capitol. The oath of office was administered by Chief Justice Salmon Chase. A parade and a display of fireworks were featured later that day, as well as a ball in a ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the surrounding bush. It was not really cold for North Ontario, but the fur coat was hardly enough protection to make a bed in the open air comfortable. Foster had slept in the Athabasca forests when the thermometer marked forty degrees below zero, but he then wore different clothes and had been able to make a roaring fire and build a snow-bank between him and the wind. Moreover, he was still liable to be overtaken by ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... interminable forest of pines, the piercing cold lashing our faces like a whip, and the stars blazing in the great expanse of dull-polished steel above us with that hard diamond-like radiance they only assume when the thermometer is down below zero. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... of sense is at zero, Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean; Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero Are much the same ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ordinates were dangerous things to trifle with. All in vain. More theorems went on to my cuff than into my head. Never did chalk do so much work to so little purpose. And, therefore, it came that Furnace Second was reduced to zero in Professor Surd's estimation. He looked upon me with all the horror which an unalgebraic nature could inspire. I have seen the Professor walk around an entire square rather than meet the man who had no mathematics ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... For a year she had given the best of her body to nourish that little bewildered bit of veal—and now we were to eat what was left of her.... Also I passed through a certain railway yard of a big city last holidays. You recall the zero weather? Tier on tier of crated live chickens were piled there awaiting shipment—crushed into eight-inch crates, so that they could not lift their heads. Poe pictured an atrocious horror like that—a ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... a raucous buzz, and a squawk box said: "On my mark it will be Zero minus four minutes ... mark!" The voice of ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... robe, which he bought last week at the county seat, paying a half month's wages for it. He shields her from the least cold, when perhaps that very morning she has hung out a wash in her mother's yard with the temperature about zero. ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... word, hold! A commission! Is a true artist commissioned? He obeys his inspiration, he follows his ideal—A commission! a commission! Ugh!—On my word, you would break the wings of faith! Little one, have you any of that double zero Kummel left, that you had ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... with the reflection that with your enthusiastic temperament, artist eye, and love of nature, you never would survive even a glimpse of Switzerland; the land of William Tell would be the death of you. When you are about eighty years old, have cooled down about ten degrees below zero, have got a little dim about the eyes, and a little stiff about the knees, it may possibly be safe for you to come and break yourself in gradually. I have not forgotten how you felt and what you did at the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... party sallied, forth from the "line" and took formal possession of the territory in the name of the Government of Canada. There was no one stirring about the prairie on the night in question, for the glass shewed the thermometer to be 20 degrees below zero: so the gallant Governor was enabled to take ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... to 11 degrees, 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 6 degrees; and at Selborne to 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 10 degrees; and on the 31st January, just before sunrise, with rime on the trees and on the tube of the glass, the quicksilver sank exactly to zero, being 32 degrees below the freezing point; but by eleven in the morning, though in the shade, it sprang up to 16.5 degrees,—a most unusual degree of cold this for the south of England! During these four nights the cold was so ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... month or two later They made him dictator, In place of the elderly king: He was lauded by pulpit, and boomed by press, And no one had ever a chance to guess, Beholding this hero Who ruled like a Nero, His valor was zero, Or ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... fear each other. The nearest of all to me was a peasant with a swollen face and a red beard, in a tattered caftan, and patched overshoes on his bare feet. And the weather was eight degrees below zero. {24a} For the third or fourth time I encountered his eyes, and I felt so near to him that I was no longer ashamed to accost him, but ashamed not to say something to him. I inquired where he came ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... and villagers. Like the man-o-war's man of song they enjoyed steady occupations summer and winter, and spent much of their time in the open. The cold was never extreme, the thermometer very rarely dropping below zero Fahrenheit. The dust of summer was buried deep under the gleaming snow, and the air was crisp and exhilarating. Often the doctor was one of Mat's passengers. Often he would leave the stage where some trail wound down into a ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... and looked at his watch. 0310. Zero minus one fifty. He opened the steel locker and ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... know about bearing. Three years they have stood a temperature of twenty below zero, so that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... snapped. "I'll take her in my black wagon up to my place, put her in the tiled basement. I'll pump out all her blood and flush it down the commode. Then I'll feed in Formaldi-Forever Number Zero. Formaldi-Forever, for the Blush of Death. 'When you think of a Pretty Girl, think of Formaldi-Forever, the Way to Preserve that Beauty.' Then I'll take a needle and some silk thread and just a few stitches on the ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... was transferred to Lahore. From 1839 to 1880 it has been occupied alternately by the British and the Afghans. The climate is not exceptionally severe, although in winter the mercury drops to 25 degrees below zero at times. The population averages about ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... ship a wooden platter, that is to be scrubbed out every morning before breakfast, even if the thermometer be at zero, and every sailor goes barefooted through the flood with the chilblains? And all the while the ship carries a doctor, well aware of Boerhaave's great maxim "keep the feet dry." He has plenty of pills to give you when you are down with a fever, the consequence of these ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... without relaxation of duty. But he, as well as the turnkey, named Grant, seemed to take delight in tormenting the Americans. This man would often keep the prisoners out for many hours, in the severest weather, when the mercury was ten and fifteen degrees below zero, under a pretext that the prison had been washed, and was not sufficiently dry for their reception: when in fact every drop of water used was in a moment ice. People in the southern states, and the inhabitants of England and Ireland, can form no adequate idea of the frightful climate of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... was not unlike the "radio" broadcasts of the Twentieth Century. It went out at a frequency of about 1,000 kilocycles, had an amperage of approximately zero, but a voltage of two billion. Properly amplified by the use of inductostatic batteries (a development of the principle underlying the earth induction compass applied to the control of static) this current energized the "A" ionomagnetic coils on ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... itself, and cannot be known by those which precede or follow it, as is the case with letters. The common tendency is to make figures too large and coarse. Mind the ovals in figures and have them full and round. The chief excellence of the zero lies in its roundness; the 3, 5, 6 or 9, without care in making the ovals, may degenerate into a straight line, or simply a meaningless hook, which it would hardly be safe to use in expressing sums of money, ordering goods, or ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... our manufactures suspended, our public works retarded, our private enterprises of different kinds abandoned, and thousands of useful laborers thrown out of employment and reduced to want." Further than this, the financial credit of the Nation was at zero. It was financially bankrupt before the close of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... purchase it, refuse to do so, it is clear that, the poem being unexchangeable, its intrinsic value will not be diminished; but that its exchangeable value, or its productive utility, will be reduced to zero, will be nothing at all. Then we must seek the amount of wages to be paid between infinity on the one hand and nothing on the other, at an equal distance from each, since all rights and liberties are entitled to equal respect; in other words, it is not the intrinsic value, but the relative ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... in the swamp, a wretched, dispiriting, drizzling rain, falling from morn till night, bringing the temperature down to zero. They recommenced their journey at dark despite the weather; preferring to push ahead rather than seek shelter again, with their friends, and so delay their progress. Thus they tramped wearily along, until ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... 'do not Skip' rather than for 'Skip'? Ah, here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always; and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... that,' said I. 'Let me.' But she pushed me away. 'Mustn't waste time.' She gave her orders as business-like as an officer. 'Do your own saddle while I attend to this. Zero can run right away from anything they're riding—from anything at all. Can't you, Zero?' and she gave the horse a quick pat in between unbuckling. He was a powerful, rangy bay, and not winded by his run and his swim. 'He's my father's,' she went ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... consequently very thin, he drives it into him with the force of both arms, and then cuts away the remaining crust of ice to enable him to repeat the wounds and to get him out. A man will thus watch for hours together, with a temperature of 30 degrees below zero. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Shall the thing be abolished utterly,—as perhaps were proper, had not our Crown-Prince been there, with eyes very open to it, and yet with thoughts very shut;—or shall some flying trace of the big Zero be given? Riddling or screening certain cart-loads of heavy old German printed rubbish, [Chiefly the terrible compilation called Helden-Staats und Lebens-Geschichte des, &c. Friedrichs des Andern (History Heroical, Political and Biographical of Friedrich the Second), ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... setting off at full steam eastwards, she continued her way along the northern shore. A brisk breeze tended to increase the keenness of the temperature, the thermometer being, on an average, about two degrees below zero. Salt water freezes only at a lower temperature than fresh; the course of the Dobryna was therefore unimpeded by ice, but it could not be concealed that there was the greatest necessity to maintain the utmost ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Mac's hopes sank below zero. "Now we've done it," he said ruefully, looking down at the swirling torrent, "It's a case of 'wait-a-while' ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... except a detachment at New Market, and another small one at the signal-station on Three Top Mountain. The winter was a most severe one, snow falling frequently to the depth of several inches, and the mercury often sinking below zero. The rigor of the season was very much against the success of any mounted operations, but General Grant being very desirous to have the railroads broken up about Gordonsville and Charlottesville, on the 19th of December I started ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... other room has in it an open window. Even then the nursery windows should be opened wide from fifteen minutes to half an hour night and morning, while the child is in another room; and this even when the weather is at zero or below. It does not take long to warm up room that has been aired. Perhaps the best means of obtaining the ingress of fresh air without creating a draft upon the floor, where the baby spends so much of his time, is to raise the window six inches at the top or bottom and insert ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... respects the old days were perhaps ahead of these, Before we got to wanting wealth and costly luxuries; Perhaps the world was happier then, I'm not the one to say, But when it's zero weather I ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... such a good appetite; and it appeared that I was not very likely to stand well in her good opinion, for I also ate a great deal, and every extra mouthful I took I sank in her estimation, till I was nearly at the zero, where Timothy had long been for the same offence; but Mr Cophagus would not allow her to stint him, saying, "Little boys must eat—or ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... than the ropes in the ship. Not a razor, nor a brush, nor a drop of water, except the rain and the spray, had come near us all the time; for we were on an allowance of fresh water; and who would strip and wash himself in salt water on deck, in the snow and ice, with the thermometer at zero? ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... pleasure, but provided interest for young friends at home, to whom I may detail my winter journey on a sunny autumn afternoon at Hebron. A real midwinter Labrador sledge journey, with the thermometer far below zero of Fahrenheit and the wind blowing hard and cold, is not so pleasant, especially if the dogs be quite invisible because of the driving snow. Should the traveller then be pitched off the sledge, and the drivers not perceive his absence at once, they may lose one another for ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... than fifteen hundred people died in the north country. From the Barren Lands to the edge of the southern watershed the earth lay under from four to six feet of snow, and from the middle of December until late in January the temperature did not rise above forty degrees below zero, and remained for the most of the time between fifty and sixty. From all points in the wilderness reports of starvation and death came to the company's posts. Trap lines could not be followed because of the intense cold. Moose, caribou, and ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... thoroughly that my clothes actually burned me as I lay down. But they heated the blankets and that made my bed snug and soon I was in the land of dreams. During the night I awoke. The wind had lulled. The canopy above was clear, cold, starry, beautiful. When we rolled out the mercury showed ten above zero. Perhaps looking at the thermometer made us feel colder, but in any event we would have had to move about to keep warm. I built a fire and my hands were blocks of ice when I got ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and four-legged. She would have been rather startled at such an enunciation of her practice, but she was devoted to it as a practice: she would give her own chair to the cat and sit on the settle herself; get up at midnight, if a mew or a bark called her, though the thermometer was below zero; The tenderloin of her steak or the liver of her chicken was saved for a pining kitten or an ancient and toothless cat; and no disease or wound daunted her faithful nursing, or disgusted her devoted tenderness. It was rather hard on humanity, and rather reversive of Providence, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... his "Voyage Botanique A(C)n Norwege," says "that each species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has its own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the physiological functions of the plant are suspended, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... considering the lack of material—Rea laughed his short "Ho! Ho!" and stopped him with the word, "Wait." Every morning the green ice extended farther out into the lake; the sun paled dim and dimmer; the nights grew colder. On October 8th the thermometer registered several degrees below zero; it fell a little more next night and ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... no infidels, no religious scoffers, among those soldiers seriously awaiting the zero hour. In the rear areas and rest billets, the profane and irreligious word might often have been heard; but face to face with Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell, the skeptic was silenced. Boys who might have been hitherto negligent in approaching the Sacraments were now the first to call ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... God," it is a name of nothing at all. "By abstraction," he says, "we annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of consciousness. But what remains? Nothing." When we attempt to conceive it as a reality, we "hypostatise the zero."[AM] ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... the sun falling upon it during a day two weeks in length, is radiated away so rapidly that the surface of the lunar rocks never rises above the freezing temperature of water. On the night side, with no warm atmospheric blanket such as the earth enjoys, the temperature may fall far toward absolute zero, the most merciful figure that has been suggested for it being 200 deg. below the zero of our ordinary thermometers! But there is much uncertainty about the actual temperature on the moon, and different experiments, in the attempt to make a direct measurement of it, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... ever used high intensities on any large scale till now, nor can a mere bystander decide what range of temperature is now in common use. Loosely guessing that science controls habitually the whole range from absolute zero to 3000 degrees Centigrade, one might assume, for convenience, that the ten-year ratio for volume could be used temporarily for intensity; and still there remained a ratio to be guessed for other forces than ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Siberia is the prevalence of poorgas, or snow storms with wind. On the bleak tundras where there is no shelter, the poorgas sweep with pitiless severity. Some last but a few hours, with the thermometer ten or twenty degrees below zero. Sometimes the wind takes up whole masses of snow and forms drifts several feet deep in a few moments. Travelers, dogs, and sledges are frequently buried out of sight, and remain in the snow till the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Wage Slavery, the unpaid labor apparently falls to Zero. There is none. You voluntarily enter into a bargain, agreeing that your day's work is worth so much, and you receive the full price agreed upon. But again this is only a false appearance. As we saw by our analysis, a ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... the hooded carriage-entrance of the hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old women sitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... only 10 degrees above zero on Sunday morning (October 4th), but there was not a cloud in the sky, and we should have enjoyed the crisp, clear air had it not been for the ever-present spectre of starvation. All the food we had besides the pea ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... bacon. Bacon frizzling, fat rashers of real homefed on the fire-none of your foreign-suggested a genial refreshment and resistance to antagonistic elements. Nor was it, granting health, granting a sharp night—the temperature at least fifteen below zero—an excessive boast for a man to say he could go on eating for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sunlight, a hoax to put Farmington on the map, and real honest-to- goodness flying saucers. One explanation was never publicized, however, and if there is an explanation, it is the best. Under certain conditions of extreme cold, probably 50 to 60 degrees below zero, the plastic bag of a skyhook balloon will get very brittle, and will take on the characteristics of a huge light bulb. If a sudden gust of wind or some other disturbance hits the balloon, it will shatter into ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... alone, than you can say, I will shut myself up from other influences proper to my time and nation. You cannot go back to the old naked barbarism, and you cannot reduce the influence of Christianity, even considered merely as one of the characteristics of the times, to zero. You may fancy you are letting it alone, but it does not let you alone; it is here, and you cannot shut ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... not have long for it, a speaker in the wall requests everyone to lie down as acceleration is about to begin. I strap down on the couch which fills half the compartment, countdown begins and at zero the floor is suddenly ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... the week hope was dropping to zero again with Lauriston. No letters had arrived—either from John Purdie or the editor. On the Sunday morning he was again face to face with the last half-crown. He laid out his money very cautiously that day, but when he had paid for a frugal dinner at a cheap coffee-shop, ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... FROM.—The question that now arises is what line one may use from which to calculate degrees, or at what point in the circle zero is placed. Degrees may be calculated either from the horizontal or from the vertical line. Examine Fig. 53. The working margin indicated by the cross mark is your base line, and in specifying an angle you calculate it from the work edge. Thus, ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... night how desperate his need had been. He lay in his berth on board a train for the city—while back at his "open-camp" a wild blizzard was raging, and the thermometer stood at forty degrees below zero. But Thyrsis was warm and comfortable; and also he was brown and rugged, once more full of health and eagerness for life. All night he listened to the pounding of the flying train; and fast as the music of it went, it was not fast enough for his imagination. It seemed as if the rails were speaking—saying ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... he has sat at the training-table, his invariable good-humor, his Cheshire cat grin, and his sunny ways have kept the fellows in fine mental trim so they haven't worried over the game. But now, just as soon as he left Camp Bannister, the barometer of their spirits went down to zero and every meal at training-table is a funeral. Coach Corridan can't inject any pep into the scrimmages, and he says if Hicks doesn't return soon, Bannister's chances of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... waiting figure tried to bar the path of the spy, only to be promptly bowled over. Desperation nerved the arm that struck that blow. The German knew that his chances were almost at the zero mark, and for the time being he was like a wolf at bay, ready to snap right and left and do what damage he could before yielding himself ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... erected there, and then a thick bank of snow was heaped up round it. After this was accomplished, all the boats were hauled up beside the tent, and covered with snow, except the two quarter-boats, which were left hanging at the davits all winter. When the thermometer fell below zero, it was found that the vapours below, and the breath of the men, condensed on the beams of the lower deck and in the cabin near the hatchway. It was therefore resolved to convert some sheet-iron, which they fortunately ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne |
