"Zero" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prairie—the work's more severe. There the little man spends a good deal of his time hauling home stove-wood or building-logs for new stables or barns. He has often to drive several leagues with the thermometer well below zero before he can find a bluff with large enough trees. In the Pacific Slope forests, where it's warmer, work goes on much as usual. The bush rancher spends his days chopping big trees in the rain and his nights making odd things—furniture, ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... even in the Equatorial regions are severe, the temperatures at times descending to as low as 80 degrees below zero. However, our springs, summers, and autumns are mild and nearly twice as long as your seasons, for the Martian year is 687 days long. We grow and mature many crops of necessary cereals, fruits and vegetables during the spring and summer months, so that want is never ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... we had forgotten that the mercury outside was nearly down to zero, and had not noticed the cold; but Pat's words quickened our sensitiveness, so we hastened shivering to bed, and the house ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... form military history. A military situation is made up of many factors, and before a ship can be called obsolete, useless to the great general result, it must be determined that she can contribute no more than zero to either side of the equation—or of the inequality. From the time she left the hands of the designers, a unit of maximum value, throughout the period of her gradual declension, many years will elapse during which a ship once first-rate will be an object of consideration ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... people from Canada to San Antonio, Texas; from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, in every month of the year, in the lakes of Norway, Sweden and Denmark as well as in the North Sea, in all kinds of weather—once in the Red River at Grand Forks, N. Dakota, in a snow storm in zero weather, and I have never yet heard of one person having taken cold from being baptized, but on the other hand, MANY HAVE ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... 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
... indicator oscillate rapidly on the dial, and finally subside uncertainly at zero, he thanked heaven that they had indulged in no psychic ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... October—and in the dreamy days of summer, Fairchild had believed that October would see him rich. But now the hills were brown with the killing touch of frost; the white of the snowy range was creeping farther and farther over the mountains; the air was crisp with the hint of zero soon to come; the summer was dead, and Fairchild's hopes lay inert beside it. He was only working now because he had determined to work. He was only laboring because a great, strong, big-shouldered man had come from Cornwall to help him and was willing to fight it out to the end. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... be very cold when I get up, which will be almost immediately—very cold indeed. It was zero yesterday; it may be below the line to-day, twenty or thirty below the line—even more. A little slam, perhaps, in spades. There are icicles hanging from the window-frame; and it is a curious thing, when one comes to think of it, what a lot of things ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... self-determining power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, condition. Organization may reduce the power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Education is only second to nature. Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, but "Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the prayer of Agur, and with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to eat, but in reality they always find enough to keep them in health and spirits, and are as fat as butter balls. In the mid-winter, in the far north, when the thermometer showed thirty degrees below zero, and the chill blizzard was blowing on the plains, I have seen this brave little bird gleefully chasing his fellows, and pouring out, as he flew, his sweet voluble song with as much spirit as ever Skylark has in ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... companion, Astrup, he ascended to the summit of the great ice cap which covers the interior of Greenland, 5000 to 8000 feet in elevation, and pushed northward for 500 miles over a region where the foot of man had never trod before, in temperatures ranging from 10 deg. to 50 deg. below zero, to Independence Bay, which he discovered and named, July 4, 1892. Imagine his surprise on descending from the tableland to enter a little valley radiant with gorgeous flowers and alive with murmuring bees, where musk ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... mind has then been built up through hundreds of thousands of years by gradual accretions and laborious accumulations. Man started at a cultural zero and had to find out everything for himself; or rather a very small number of peculiarly restless and adventurous spirits did the work. The great mass of humanity has never had anything to do with the increase of intelligence except to act as its medium of transfusion ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... his equipment should be as comfortable and complete as though he were going to be a foreman. She knew very well that Jack Frost has no compunctions about sending the thermometer away down thirty or forty degrees below zero in those far-away forest depths; and whatever other hardships Frank might be called upon to endure, it was very well settled in her mind that he should not suffer for lack of warm clothing. Accordingly, the knitting-needles and sewing-needles had been plied industriously from the ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... rest of the house is down almost to zero. Luckily it is not a cold winter, but it is very damp, as it rains continually. I have an armchair there, a footstool, and use the kitchen table as a desk; and even then, to keep fairly warm, I almost sit on top of ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... and Resistance on Electric Oscillations.—If an oscillation circuit in which high frequency currents surge has a large resistance, it will so oppose the flow of the currents that they will be damped out and reach zero gradually, as shown at A in Fig. 33. But if the resistance of the circuit is small, and in wireless circuits it is usually so small as to be negligible, the currents will oscillate, until their energy is damped out by radiation and other losses, as ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... every fact about our condition that the most nervous of men could wish to know. One of them shows the pressure of air in the main compartment of the boat, another registers vacuum, and when both are at zero, Mr. Lake knows that the pressure of the air is normal, the same as it is on the surface, and he tries to maintain it in this condition. There are also a cyclometer, not unlike those used on bicycles, to show how far the boat travels on the wheels; a depth gauge, which keeps ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... learned the art of war, the reader has learned the art of writing. Formerly all that was expected of a romance was that it should be interesting. As to style, no one cared for that, not even the author; as to ideas—zero; as to local color—non est. By degrees the reader has demanded style, interest, pathos, and complete information; he insists on the five literary senses—Invention, Style, Thought, Learning, and Feeling. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... silently to the console. Johnny sat raptly. A slow smile of satisfaction began to spread over his face. His gaze flicked to dials and gauges; he nodded very slightly, and brought both hands down like an organist playing a mighty chord. He watched the gauges. The needles were still, lying on their zero pins, and where lights should have flickered and flashed there was nothing. Paresi glanced at Anderson and met a worried look. Hoskins had his head cocked to one side, listening, puzzled. Ives rose from the couch and came forward to ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... Hood this morning; a rose-colored mass of snow, bearing S. 85 deg. W. by compass. The sky is clear, and the air cold; the thermometer 2.5 deg. below zero, the trees and bushes glittering white, and the rapid stream filled ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... the bank with chattering teeth and an icy armor. My pocket thermometer showed two degrees above zero. Another storm was bearing down upon me from the range, and the sun was sinking. But the worst of it all was that there were several miles of rough and strange country between me and Grand Lake that would have to be made in the dark. I did not care to take any ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... was quiet, and only the dog's heavy breathing, the snap of the fire, or the crack of a timber in the deadly frost broke the silence. Inside it was warm and bright and homelike; outside it was twenty degrees below zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was congealed, and only the white stars, low, twinkling, and quizzical, lived—a life of sharp corrosion, not ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... what we have to do with a stream of water in a turbine is to reduce its velocity relatively to the earth, quite a different thing to its velocity in relation to the turbine; for while the one may be zero, the other may be anything we please. ABCD in Fig. 1 represents a parallelogram of velocities, wherein AC gives the direction of a jet of water starting at A, and arriving at C at the end of one second or any other division of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... and speculation he had decided that the Caves must be situated in the Inferno Range, a place so particularly vicious that no man, so far as was known, had ever explored it. During the day the heat would boil eggs, and at night the sub-zero cold cracked great scales off the granite boulders. And here, too, lay the Trap-Door City ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... about it was merely that there had not been enough of them to yield a proportion of good ones. Nick had felt in fine the benefit of living in an age and in a society where number and pressure have, for the individual figure, especially when it's a zero, compensations ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... remaining clear were hardening. The mercury in the tube sank by possibly a degree every two nights, at last touching zero; and it correspondingly failed to arise by as much at noon. The days were cruelly short. Darkness lasted until eight in the morning; it dropped down again at five. The frost crept deeper into ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... charged by thirty turns of the machine, and discharged through the galvanometer, a thick wet string, about ten inches long, being included in the circuit. The needle was immediately deflected five divisions and a half, on the one side of the zero, and in vibrating passed as nearly as possible through five divisions and a half on ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... blizzard roaring down off the plateau Christmas morning; a white death that thundered and howled outside the caves at a temperature of more than eighty degrees below zero. But inside the caves it was warm by the fires and under the little brown trees were toys that had been patiently whittled from wood or sewn from scraps of cloth and animal skins while the children slept. They were crude and humble toys but the pale, thin faces of the children ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... cardinal must have seen his mistake, you understand; for he canceled the zero, and has added a one before the five. But, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nation, he did nothing of what his position involved. On the contrary, he plundered the whole nation for his own individual advantage. In the patriarchal relation that hypocritically concealed the slavery of the worker, the latter must have remained an intellectual zero, totally ignorant of his own interest, a mere private individual. Only when estranged from his employer, when convinced that the sole bond between employer and employe is the bond of pecuniary profit, when the sentimental ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Ned fell to zero, and found himself in the street, with an indistinct impression of having heard the dishevelled clerk chuckling vociferously as he passed ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... our return from Kitty Hawk we began a series of experiments to accurately determine the amount and direction of the pressure produced on curved surfaces when acted upon by winds at the various angles from zero to 90 degrees. These experiments are not yet concluded, but in general they support Lilienthal in the claim that the curves give pressures more favourable in amount and direction than planes; but we find marked differences ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... mad, is in the care of a wife whom he lately married, and who does not care for him, and he will die before his marble palace is finished. There are no prettinesses, flowers, &c., about these fine houses, perhaps accounted for by the forty or fifty degrees below zero which they sometimes enjoy at Chicago. After six miles driving we got to the Piggery, &c., and the least said about that the better; it is certainly wonderful, but disgusting—the most interesting parts were the enormous yards containing cattle, all arranged comfortably, with hay and water, &c., ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's ear, without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness had dismissed them, counting her almost as zero. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... was extry wrong soon's I struck the settin' room. Emeline was there, and Bennie D., and I give you my word, I felt like turnin' up my coat collar, 'twas so frosty. 'Twas hotter'n a steamer's stoke-hole outside, but that room was forty below zero. ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... space, thousands of degrees below freezing point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur: the incipient intimations ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the sword back—at least he said so. He was always a trifler with women, though; and it was so delicious to have this tearful widow remove her veil and explain—for gadzooks! had she not several times allowed the mercury to drop to zero for his benefit? ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... determine directly the circumstances of its production. Indeed, as this brilliant phenomenon occurred in the midst of the very clouds which I was traversing, it was easy for me to ascertain that these clouds were not formed of frozen particles. The thermometer marked 2 deg. above zero. The hygrometer marked a maximum of humidity experienced, namely, seventy-seven at three thousand seven hundred and seventy feet, and the balloon was then at four thousand six hundred feet, where the humidity was only seventy-three. It is therefore certain that this ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... the universe. Time approaches zero. The crew of a spaceship travelling from Earth to Alpha Centauri at a speed close to that of light would hardly notice the passage of ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... worked their way into the stricken territory. While a blizzard raged in Ohio from Cleveland to Cincinnati, with the temperature down to twenty-eight degrees above zero, the railroads—which means all the railroads in every section, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, and their allied lines—threw into the battle thousands upon thousands of men, trainload after trainload of machinery, ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... hear the "Conquering 'Ero" a-crashing on Godfrey's band, And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there, with the race in hand— In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape, As I felt the tack of her spinnaker c-rack! as I heard the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... agent which exerts a more constant or more powerful influence upon health and life, than the atmosphere. The climate in these latitudes is exceedingly variable, ranging all the way from 110 deg. Fahr. in summer to 40 deg. below zero in the winter season. The body of every individual should be so protected from cold, that it can maintain a mean ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... put this extract into the hands of an American, his admiration of Washington would immediately fall down below zero, and in all probability he would say, as they do of poor Captain Lawrence—"Why, sir, Washington was a great man, but great men have their failings. I guess he wrote ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... pecularities were unexplainable, and be hoped that the observations would be studied by his hearers, and some explanation found in regard to the thermometric observations of the expedition. He remarked that the mean temperature for the year of the hourly observations was 5 degrees below zero, which justified him in saying his station was the coldest point of earth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... prove to be) after a kind of knowledge perhaps not properly attainable. Hereafter, in every age, some will be found to start afresh quixotically, through what wastes of words! in search of that true Substance, the One, the Absolute, which to the majority of acute people is after all but zero, and a mere algebraic symbol for nothingness. In themselves, by the way, such search may bring out fine intellectual qualities; and thus, in turn, be of service to those who can profit by the spectacle of an enthusiasm not meant for them; ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... around the ship, so as to rise a couple of feet above our bulwarks, five feet above our deck. They are very often ten and twelve feet high, and threaten to overwhelm us. Add to this, darkness, snow, cold, and the absolute destitution of surrounding shores." The temperature fell below zero and the ships seemed destined to winter in Wellington Channel, but fortunately a strong northwest gale, in conjunction with heavy tides, disintegrated the main pack and set ships, ice and all, southward into Barrow Strait. Here they fell under the action ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... very charming, but which would soon become misery and torture if he did not make haste to abandon it for labor. In this original idleness, the product of Prometheus being nothing, his well-being is the same as that of the brute, and may be represented by zero. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... mark is eight. Four is considered as the average, and a student not receiving this average in all the studies of a term is not allowed to remain as a member of college. At Yale the marks range from zero to four. Two is the average, and a student not receiving this is obliged to leave college, not to return until he can pass an examination in all the branches which ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... o'clock he came to me, ghastly haggard and thin, and again asked me to leave his house, but I refused this zero-hour request. He shrugged and went back to his study. I watched him for a while and saw that he was studying that queer little book which so deeply affected him, and I again heard him utter those despairing words: ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... futile altogether; and amounts now, in the human memory; to flat zero,—unless the following infinitesimally small fraction be ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... act of creation God limits His own infinity, no matter to how infinitesimal an extent. On the alternative supposition we have ultimately to think of God and man either as All plus something or All plus zero—which is absurd. Mr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting that in creating the world God distinguishes Himself from the world, as a poet is distinct from his poem—a truth which he has condensed into an aphorism, {28} "All creation is separation"; but on the part of the Deity ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... is used in this study is an empirical one. As has already been explained (p. 8), every word contained in the frequency tables possesses a value of at least 0.1 per cent, and other words have a zero value. With the aid of our method the difficulty of classifying the reactions quoted above is obviated, as it is necessary only to refer to the table to find their proper values: the value of the reaction ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... already remarked, that the degree of fertility, both of first crosses and of hybrids, graduates from zero to perfect fertility. It is surprising in how many curious ways this gradation can be shown to exist; but only the barest outline of the facts can here be given. When pollen from a plant of one family ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... in 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, either in temporary ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... a fortnight. The snow was very deep, and the dogs found great difficulty in dragging their heavy burdens through the snow. But the record was good. A distance of eight hundred and fifty-seven miles was accomplished in sixty-eight days, with the thermometer at fifty degrees below zero. The hardships endured are very briefly recorded: "Provisions becoming scarce; dogs without food, except a little burnt leather; night miserably cold; tea froze in the tin pots before we could ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... for all countries to adopt a "zero tolerance" policy for terrorist activity within their borders. In the new global environment it is also important for states to understand how terrorists and their supporters may use legitimate means of communication, commerce, ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States
... that; reduces one's courage to zero," the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my thoughts. "Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle, the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... following Sunday saw him back again, and the first day of vacation was not hailed with greater delight by the boys than by their old friend Peter. The nearest railway station was eleven miles distant, but rain or shine, blood-heat or zero, Peter always hitched up his own team and set out hours too early to meet the train. On arriving at the station, he would tie up his horses and sit smoking his black stone pipe for a long time. The distant whistle of the incoming ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the open palm with the thumb extended, just as our 0 (zero) is thought to represent a ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... Captain Philander Kent Knowles. He was lost in the wreck of the steamer "Monarch of the Sea," off Hatteras. The steamer caught fire in the middle of the night, a howling gale blowing and the thermometer a few degrees above zero. The passengers and crew took to the boats and were saved. My father stuck by his ship and went down with her, as did also her first mate, another Cape-Codder. I was a baby at the time, and was at Bayport with my mother, Emily Knowles, formerly Emily Cahoon, Captain ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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
... place against each name (as far as he knew) the annual income of the different appointments held by that person. In the mean time, I performed the same operation on his list, against some names of which I was obliged to place a ZERO. The result of the comparison was an average of nearly 1200L. per annum for the six French SAVANS whom I had named. Of the average amount of the sums received by the English, I only remember that it was very much ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... battle. Let him settle it with himself, that until he does this, he is doing nothing; that without the attention of his scholars, he is no more a teacher, than is the chair he occupies. If he is not plus, he is zero, if not actually minus. With this truth fully realized, he will come before his class resolved to have a hearing; and this very resolution, written as it will be all over him, will have its effect upon his scholars. Children ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... 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 ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... who would take service to Karague, we filled up our complement with men at exorbitant wages to carry our things on to Usui. At this place, to our intense joy, three of Sheikh Said's boys came to us with a letter from Rigby; but, on opening it, our spirits at once fell far below zero, for it only informed us that he had sent us all kinds of nice things, and letters from home, which were packed up in boxes, and despatched from the coast ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Board of Green Cloth there is forgetfulness of Armageddon save when the cry of "Zero" recalls to the convalescent British warrior the fateful hour for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... 'S' stand for '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 ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... December, which at the time I thought were the extreme of winter weather, were as nothing to the polar blasts that poured down upon us in January and February. I had no thermometer. But judging by subsequent observations I am sure that the temperature reached twenty degrees below zero. I took no baths in the brook now but contented myself with a hurried splash from a pan. At night I covered myself with all the blankets that I could support. I protected my face with a woolen cap, which was drawn over the ears as well. Zoe, though sleeping near the immense ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... A 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, ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... both, who fled before them like deer among the passes of the hills, and, like deer at bay, often fought like demons to the death; with border watchings, and protection and care and vigilance of the Indians; with hurried marches at sunrise, the thermometer at fifty degrees below zero often in winter, and open camps beneath the stars, and no camp at all, as often as not, winter and summer; with rough barrack fun and parade and drill and guard of prisoners; and with chances now and then to pay homage to a woman's face, the Mounted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... how incredibly long winter seems in climates where for weeks together the thermometer stands at zero? There is something hopeless in such cold. You think of summer as of a thing read about somewhere in a book, but which has no actual existence. Winter seems the ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... there came a frost, and on the morning of November 5 my thermometer showed 22 degrees below zero. Riding through the foot hills and pine woods we suddenly emerged on the high banks of the Saskatchewan, and in the mid distance of a deep valley was the Mountain House. There was great excitement at my arrival. My journey from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... except what the water man brings every day. This little house has eighteen rooms around a court. It means four separate roofs and going outdoors to get from one to another. When the mercury is at twenty below zero it would mean that just the same. All the ground floors have stone floors. We did not see all the rooms; there are paper windows in some and glass windows in some. In summer they put on a temporary roof of mats over the court. It is higher than ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... passed that was like an age. The prognosis became known and was not reassuring. This was one of the toxic space viruses, dormant at absolute zero, but active under shipboard conditions. A species, in fact, of the dread, oxygen-eating dryorus, which multiplies with explosive rapidity, and kills upon penetration of ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... you first, Darrin," announced the captain. "Go like a streak, if you can. If you fall down it counts zero. Start when I say ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... that in the ancient nebula that was the matrix of our solar system similar, or rather dissimilar, particles in all but the subtle essence we call life, might have become entangled and, resisting every cataclysm as they had resisted the absolute zero of outer space, found in these caverned spaces their proper environment to develop into the race of the Silent Ones and—only ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... to the squadron would have been fittingly celebrated but for the fact that five o'clock the following morning had been designated as "zero hour" for the greatest drive ever undertaken by Americans on foreign soil. He had arrived just in time to hurl himself into the feverish preparations for the support which all air units must give the massed ground forces that would hurl themselves upon ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... at our New England farm—with the younger part of the family—in my annual "retreat." Last year at this time I was here, with the thermometer a dozen degrees below zero; now it is milder, but cold, bleak, snowy. Yesterday we were fishing for pickerel through the ice at Hayes's Pond—in a wilderness where fox abound—and where bear and deer make rare appearances—all within a few miles of Lenox and Stockbridge. The farmer's family is at one end of the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... silver dimes," as the "Clarion" put it. He was followed by Eddie Perkins, proprietor of a dubious resort on Mail Street. By this time coat-room franchises had suffered a severe depreciation. They dropped almost to zero when the newspaper, having clinched the lesson home with its "Photo-graft Gallery of Leading Dime-Hunters," exhorted its readers: "If you think you need your change as much as these men do, watch for the coupon in to-morrow's 'Clarion,' and Stick it ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but water them and keep them from draughts. There are usually so many windows in a German sitting-room that those near the plants need never be opened in winter; and even when the temperature sinks several degrees below zero outside, the air of the flat is kept artificially warm, so warm that English folk gasp and flag in it. At the first sign of winter the outside windows, removed for the summer, are brought back again. Our windows ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... impersonal pantheism of India, and the theurgies of Egypt, and produced strange hybrids of the human mind. The one point of agreement between them is that they conceive the Supreme God as impersonal and entirely inactive, "a deified Zero," and endeavor by a system of emanation to trace the descent of this baffling principle into man and the universe. Philo was as unfortunate in his philosophical as in his religious following, who both ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... obvious to hint at a lower expression, yet in a picture, that for respects of drawing and colouring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible within these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures should be as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or perhaps Zero! By neither the one passion nor the other has Raphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not self-conscious of his art, in which neither ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... was repeated on the return of the commissioner by observing again at the St. Francis bridge before mentioned on the night of the 10th of December, with the thermometer ranging during these observations from 11 to 15 deg. below zero of Fahrenheit's scale, there being then near 4 feet of snow upon the ground. The commissioner then proceeded by the Grand portage road, and the road which pursues the margin of Temiscouata Lake and the valleys of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere—that awful absolute zero which men had measured by anticipation, but never yet experienced—by a simple system of producing within the air-tight suits a temperature sufficiently elevated to counteract the effects of the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... The snow completely disappeared within a day or two; and even while it lasted the song sparrows, fox sparrows, and linnets could be heard singing with all cheerfulness. On the coldest day, when the mercury settled to within twelve degrees of zero, I observed that the song sparrows, as they fed in the road, had a trick of crouching till their feathers all but touched the ground, so protecting their legs against the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... form of the Earth had been neglected. I must point out the extraordinary merit of the officers who effected this operation. Transits were observed and chronometers were interchanged when the temperature was lower than 19 deg. below zero: and when the native assistants, though paid highly, deserted on account of the severity of the weather, the British officers still continued the observations upon whose delicacy ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... cent. per cent., and more. Then it descends to eighty, sixty, fifty, forty, twenty, ten, eight, five, four, and three per cent. In Holland, it has even been as low as two per cent. Hence it is concluded, that "in proportion as society comes to perfection, it will descend to zero by the time civilization is complete. In other words, that which characterizes social perfection is the gratuitousness of credit. When, therefore, we shall have abolished interest, we shall have reached the last step of progress." This is mere sophistry, and as such false arguing may contribute ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... Governor-Designate and his 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
... but Waitstill was always as busy in the barn as in her own proper domain. Her heart yearned for all the dumb creatures about the place, intervening between them and her father's scanty care; and when the thermometer descended far below zero she would be found stuffing hay into the holes and cracks of the barn and hen-house, giving the horse and cow fresh beddings of straw and a mouthful of extra food between the slender meals provided by ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ends well! Am I or am I not the 'smart guy?' I pulled a thousand dollars out of roulette last night at poor old Jimmie Follette's. Had only seventy-five to start with. The wheel gave me all the rest. I backed zero and she kept repeating. Raised my stakes whenever I won. See here, I've got the spoils on me—all but the hundred I had to shed—and twenty-five for the ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... you," said Edmund in a whisper. "It can't be down to absolute zero on account of the dense atmosphere. You'll get used to it in a few ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... time Godfrey found that they were none too many, for at Turukhansk the thermometer in winter sometimes sinks to 60 degrees below zero. For a time, however, he found no occasion to use the capote, the fur shirt trousers and boots being amply sufficient, while the fur cap with the hanging tails kept his neck and ears perfectly warm. Already the ice was thick on the still reach of the river beside which the huts stood, ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... 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 ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... your right by contract, insist upon a supply of fresh air for your workroom with the same emphasis you use in demanding sufficient heat in zero weather. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... to organize his nigger minstrel troupe, and when the doors of the Royal Terror Theatre opened at 7.30 on August 6, the temperature outside them was -40 deg., while inside it was well below zero. Under these conditions it is small wonder that the audience was glad when the curtain ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... turn round and see the filthy Esquimaux and Indians, and know that you've got to live for another year with them, sit in their dirty tepees, eat their raw frozen meat, with an occasional glut of pemmican, and the thermometer 70 degrees below zero, you get a lump ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I had one general next to me at table, the famous General Changarnier, who my other neighbor said had one foot in the grave and the other dans le plat. He was so old and thin and bony that if his uniform had not kept him up he would have crumbled together before my eyes, and have become a zero instead of a hero. However, he kept together while dinner lasted, for which I was thankful, and I returned him safely to posterity and to ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... our stunt was eleven P.M. Eleven o'clock was "zero." The system on the Western Front, and, in fact, all fronts, is to indicate the time fixed for any event as zero. Anything before or after is spoken of ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... if the index of sense is at zero, Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean; Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero Are much the same thing ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are the very model of discretion. I have put your reticence to a pretty severe test this morning, and you have stood it very well. But I can see that you are bristling with questions like a porcupine with quills. Zero hour has arrived. You may ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... lake and out-cap me at making Latin verses. However, I consoled myself by saying, "As I grow older all this superiority will cease." But when he returned, after his first cruise, glittering in his graceful uniform, my hopes and my ambition sank below zero. He was already a man, and an officer—I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Celsius, and the Reaumur. As shown in Fig. 11, in the Fahrenheit scale, the space between the two fixed points is divided into 180 parts; the boiling point is marked 212, and the freezing point is marked 32, and zero is a temperature which, at the time this thermometer was invented, was incorrectly imagined to be the lowest temperature attainable. In the centigrade and the Reaumur scales, the distance between the two fixed points is divided into 100 and 80 parts, respectively. ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... junk on you—I had a lot of stuff in my kit, but I flashed it all with the Standish, except what I brought in here for us three. Whether you think so or not, we're in a real jam—our chance of getting away is mightly close to zero. Now that I've gone this far, I might as well tell you that I don't believe these birds are pirates at all, in the ordinary sense of the word. And it may be possible that they're after me, but I don't think ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... in an Iowa village on a bitter cold evening. The rear of the hall was up on posts. When introduced there was only one inch between my shoe soles and zero, while a cold wind from a broken window struck the back of my head. It occurred to me that if I would play Bernhardt I might save a ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... his visits either periodical, or only as frequent as the exigencies of the public service might require.' With much shrewdness he pointed out that the actual presence of a minister hi a place so uncongenial, especially during the winter months, when the thermometer falls to 40 deg. below zero, might possibly be to the Mandarin mind less awe-inspiring than the knowledge of the fact that he had the power to take up his abode there whenever the conduct of the Chinese Government gave occasion; and that thus the policy which he recommended would 'leave in the hands of Her Majesty's ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... thousand, to see it. 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 |
