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Pyramid   /pˈɪrəmɪd/   Listen
Pyramid

noun
1.
A polyhedron having a polygonal base and triangular sides with a common vertex.
2.
(stock market) a series of transactions in which the speculator increases his holdings by using the rising market value of those holdings as margin for further purchases.
3.
A massive monument with a square base and four triangular sides; begun by Cheops around 2700 BC as royal tombs in ancient Egypt.  Synonyms: Great Pyramid, Pyramids of Egypt.



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"Pyramid" Quotes from Famous Books



... morning. Mountains ahead standing out against the clear sky with delicate clouds of white mist hanging along their sides or veiling the tops. One just at the bend is very, very fine. It reminds me of an Egyptian pyramid. Job is not feeling well this morning and it bothers me. I asked him if it were too many rapids. He smiled and said, 'I don't know,' but as if he thought that might be ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... prospect might help to form pleasing and useful associations. I therefore ascended gradually to the very summit of the hill adjoining the mansion where my visit had just been made. Here was placed an elevated sea-mark: it was in the form of a triangular pyramid, and built of stone. I sat down on the ground near it, and looked at the surrounding prospect, which was distinguished for beauty and magnificence. It was a lofty station, which commanded a complete circle of interesting objects to engage the spectator's attention. Southward the view was ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... very beautiful order. 'At the end of the folios (which were finely bound and gilt) were great jars of china, placed one above the other, in a very noble piece of architecture. The quartos were separated from the octavos by a pile of smaller vessels, which rose in a delightful pyramid. The octavos were bounded by tea dishes of all shapes, colours and sizes. . . . That part of the library designed for the reception of plays and pamphlets was inclosed in a kind of square, consisting of one of the prettiest ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... the traveller, had also caught up Miss Digges's information; and, breaking off abruptly an account of the Great Pyramid, which had been naturally introduced by the mention of the Thebais, and echoing the fair alarmist's words, "hope they won't fight," he rushed upon the parade, and bustled along as hard as his sturdy supporters could carry him. If the gravity of the traveller, and the delicacy ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... shows that it had reached that height in 1257. The major part is due to the Spalatine Tvrdoj, who signed a contract in 1416 to construct it, and probably took it up to the third story. The upper part is much later, and the octagonal pyramid was not completed till ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... and Princess also visited the Royal chambers in the great Pyramid. A delightful drive to Cairo followed, and the party soon found themselves comfortably installed in the Esbekiah Palace. On the following day a visit was paid to the great Mosque where lie the revered bones ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... bound and gilt) were great Jars of China, placed one above another in a very noble piece of Architecture. The Quartos were separated from the Octavos by a Pile of smaller Vessels, which rose in a delightful Pyramid. The Octavos were bounded by Tea Dishes of all Shapes, Colours, and Sizes, which were so disposed on a wooden Frame that they looked like one continued Pillar indented with the finest Strokes of Sculpture, and stained with the greatest ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... were striving towards in the sixteenth century A.D., various Oriental nations had attained at least five or six thousand years earlier. In Egypt at the time of the pyramid-builders, and in Babylonia at the same epoch, the people had developed systems of writing that enabled them not merely to present a limited range of ideas pictorially, but to express in full elaboration and with finer shades of meaning all ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... we would fain see extended to the Scottish people, we recognise two great elements, and but two only,—the natural, or that of the parent; and the political, or that of the ratepayer. These form the two opposite sides of the pyramid; and, though diverse in their nature, let the reader mark how nicely for all practical purposes they converge into the point, householder. The householders of Scotland include all the ratepayers of Scotland. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... and Mr. Foscolo, etc., want me to undertake what you call a 'great work'? an Epic Poem, I suppose or some such pyramid. I'll try no such thing; I hate tasks. And then 'seven or eight years'! God send us all well this day three months, let alone years. If one's years can't be better employed than in sweating poesy, a man had better be a ditcher. And works, too!—is Childe Harold ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... by the Earl of Burlington. He helped to lay out Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, with a fresh and surprising view at every turn; the wandering visitor was introduced, among other delights, to the Hermitage, the Temple of Venus, the Egyptian pyramid, St. Augustine's cave (artfully constructed of roots and moss), the Saxon Temple, the Temple of Bacchus, and Dido's cave. The craze for romantic gardening, with its illusions of distance, and its ruins and groves, persisted throughout ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... and patronising indeed. Gruff and Tackleton was also there, doing the agreeable, with the evident sensation of being as perfectly at home, and as unquestionably in his own element, as a fresh young salmon on the top of the Great Pyramid. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... a Poet whose untimely tomb 50 No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:— A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked 55 With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:— Gentle, and brave, and generous,—no lorn bard Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... built by three kings of the Fourth Dynisty, Cheops (Chufu), Chephren (Chafre), and Mycerinus (Menkere) They are gigantic sepulchral monuments in which the mummies of the kings who built them were deposited. The pyramid of Cheops (Fig. 1, at the right), the largest of all, was originally 481 feet 4 inches in height, and was thus doubtless the loftiest structure ever reared in pre- Christian times. The side of the square ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... mountain hamlet of central Sweden stands a great pyramid of iron cast from ore dug from the neighboring mountains. It is set up on a base of granite also quarried from those mountains, and bears upon it two names, Nils Ericsson and John Ericsson. The monument marks the place where these two men were born. The life of the former was passed ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... try what she called "the pyramid act" again, and as the Wizard was now convinced they could not reach the magic tools in that manner ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... a pyramid of elephants with a glittering gentleman in a turban and top boots on the summit would have made her forget this new and charming plan. But that astonishing spectacle and the prospect of a cage of Bengal tigers with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... should be continued along with other studies for years; and may throughout be advantageously accompanied by those concrete applications of its principles which serve as its preliminary. After the cube, the octahedron, and the various forms of pyramid and prism have been mastered, may come the more complex regular bodies—the dodecahedron and icosahedron—to construct which out of single pieces of cardboard, requires considerable ingenuity. From these, the transition may naturally be made ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... thousands of the industrious laborers of China spent their lives upon this stupendous work history does not tell. It stands as a striking monument of the magnificent conceptions of Hoangti, and of the patient industry of his subjects, beside which the building of the great pyramid of Egypt sinks into insignificance. Yet, as history has abundantly proved, it was a waste of labor so far as answering its purpose was concerned. In the hands of a strong emperor like Hoangti it might well defy the Tartar foe. In the hands of many of his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... reaches a considerable altitude, sometimes one-fourth or one-third the height of the Fall itself. This is known as the Cone. The French people call it more poetically Le Pain de Sucre, or sugar-loaf. On a bright day in January, when the white light of the sun plays caressingly on this pyramid of crystal, illuminating its veins of emerald and sending a refracted ray into its circular air-holes, the prismatic effect is enchanting. Thousands of persons visit Montmorenci every winter for no other object than ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... unfortunate Rulers of the Element in that quarter been able to perceive it at all! Well; since they haven't, one thing at least is clear, that our attempt is finished, and that from this hour we will devoutly give it up. That of shifting the now existing pyramid from Naseby village and rebuilding it on Broadmoor seems to me entirely inadmissible;—and in fact unless you yourself should resolve, which I don't counsel, on marking, by way of foot-note, on the now existing pyramid, accurately how many yards ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... was a string running across the room, and on it there were rags hanging. There was a bedstead against the wall on each side, right and left, covered with knitted quilts. On the one on the left was a pyramid of four print-covered pillows, each smaller than the one beneath. On the other there was only one very small pillow. The opposite corner was screened off by a curtain or a sheet hung on a string. Behind this curtain could be seen a bed made up ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... of art in his work. Browning had published only "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Strafford." Shelley and Keats were dead, their mortal remains reposing in the beautiful English cemetery in Rome, under the shadow of the tall cypresses, by the colossal pyramid of Caius Cestus. Byron and Scott and Coleridge had also died. There were Landor and Southey, Rogers and Campbell; but with Miss Barrett there came upon the scene a new minstrelsy that compelled its own recognition. Some of her shorter poems had caught the popular ear; notably, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... the mayors, there arose a thunder of applause and acclamations. Suddenly the decorations of the theater faded from sight, and the Place Bonaparte (the former Place Belcour) appeared, as it had been restored by order of the First Consul. In the midst rose a pyramid, surmounted by the statue of the First Consul, who was represented as resting upon a lion. Trophies of arms and bas-reliefs represented on one side, the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Guard, Thus to part is doubly hard; Did you silence Prussian guns, March beneath Italian suns, Enter Moscow and Madrid, Fight beside the Pyramid, And survive grim Russia's snow,— Thus to ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... restless murmurs of the ocean. Anchor yourself here for a while, reader, with me. It being the evening of the national anniversary, a few patriotic individuals are extremely busy in piling up a huge pyramid of dried pine branches, barrels covered with tar, and kegs of spirits, to a height of some fifteen or twenty feet—perhaps higher. A bonfire is premeditated. You shall see anon, how the flames will rise. The preparations are completed; the fire is applied. Hear how ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... my weary eyes lifted themselves to look dully round, there, like a white cloud of hope, came life pressing gloriously towards me—a pyramid of snowy canvas, dazzling in the sunshine, the upper courses of a very ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... any other ancient author; and even as late as 1491, the year before Columbus discovered America, Joan di Cuba, in his "Ortus Sanitatis," makes no mention of it. It has never been found in any ancient tumulus, sarcophagus, or pyramid; nor has it ever been represented in any ancient painting, sculpture, or work of art, except in America. But in that country, according to Garcilaso de la Vega, one of the ancient Peruvian historians, the palace gardens of the Incas, in Peru, were ornamented with maize, in gold ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... View of the Giant Pyramid of the Sun. Teotihuacan. Plateau region, Mexico. Prae-Mexican ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... to April, 1837, I had many conversations with Lord Glenelg, Sir George Grey, and Sir James Stephen (Under Secretaries), on the Government of Canada, shewing them that the foundation of our Government was too narrow, like an inverted pyramid, conferring the appointments to all offices, civil, military, judicial, to one party—excluding all others, however respectable and competent, as if they were enemies, and even aliens. I mentioned that not one member of the Reform party, (which had commanded for years ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... hair!" Why, the extremest style of to-day will not equal the top-knots which our great-grandmothers wore, put up with high combs that we would have thought would have made our great-grandfathers die with laughter. The hair was lifted into a pyramid a foot high. On the top of that tower lay a white rose. Shoes of bespangled white kid, and heels two or three inches high. Grandfather went out to meet her on the floor with a coat of sky-blue silk and vest of white ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... the buffeting of making a living in New York, had fallen in dust about him. He was utterly in the void. "How silly," he thought; "this is the world as it has appeared to the majority of men, this is just the lower half of the pyramid." ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... in the more limited ranges referred to, no fact is more familiar than that there is a simultaneous impulse acting on many individual minds at once, so that genius comes in clusters, and shines rarely as a single star. You may trace a common motive and force in the pyramid-builders of the earliest recorded antiquity, in the evolution of Greek architecture, and in the sudden springing up of those wondrous cathedrals of the twelfth and following centuries, growing out of the soil with stem and bud and blossom, like flowers of stone whose seeds might well have been ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... considering (as she in fact did consider) that her son was either the base or the apex of the splendid pyramid of the Festival lay in ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... satisfied the witticisms began to fly. Morten's present was a great wedding-cake. It was a real work of art; he had made it in the form of a pyramid. On the summit stood a youthful couple, made of sugar, who held one another embraced, while behind them was a highly glazed representation of the rising sun. Up the steps of the pyramid various other figures were scrambling to the top, holding their arms outstretched toward ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... LEGUMES Composition and nutritive value Legumes as a substitute for animal food Legumin, or vegetable casein Chinese cheese Legumes the "pulse" of Scripture Diet of the pyramid builders Digestibility of legumes A fourteenth century recipe The green legumes Suggestions for cooking Slow cooking preferable Soaking the dry seeds Effects of hard water upon the legumes Temperature of water for cooking Amount of water required Addition of salt ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... me like this country; its east winds might affect a pyramid! Draw your mantle round you, child, and go in; the air has suddenly ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... development to full and abiding maturity of the higher and more refined muscularity, just as conversely the awkwardness and clumsiness of adolescence mark a temporary loss of balance in the opposite direction. If this general conception be correct, then nature does not finish the basis of her pyramid in the way Ross, Mercier, and others have assumed, but lays a part of the foundation and, after carrying it to an apex, normally goes back and adds to the foundation to carry up the apex still higher and, if prevented from so doing, expends her ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... another, but the fourth cannot be resolved into them nor they into it. So much for their passage into one another: I must now speak of their construction. From the triangle of which the hypotenuse is twice the lesser side the three first regular solids are formed—first, the equilateral pyramid or tetrahedron; secondly, the octahedron; thirdly, the icosahedron; and from the isosceles triangle is formed the cube. And there is a fifth figure (which is made out of twelve pentagons), the dodecahedron—this God used as a model for the twelvefold division ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... caught by the feet and wings and frozen to the wet ground. A drove of a thousand hogs, which were being driven to St. Louis, rushed together for warmth, and became piled in a great heap. Those inside smothered and those outside froze, and the ghastly pyramid remained there on the prairie for weeks: the drovers barely escaped with their lives. Men killed their horses, disemboweled them, and crept into the cavity of their bodies to escape the murderous wind. [Footnote: Although the old settlers of Sangamon ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... judge or jury; And with his sharp and quivering spear, He pierced the rat right through the ear. The rat fell backward in the clover, Kicked up his legs, and all was over. The mice, with loud and joyful tones, Now gathered all the bad rats' bones, And with them built a pyramid, Down which their little children slid. And after that eventful day The mice in peace and joy could play, For now no wicked rats could steal Their cakes and jam and pies and meal, Nor catch them by their little tails, And drown ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck

... military tactics was very reassuring. There was a high hill of basalt, something resembling a pyramid, within a quarter of a mile of us; I accordingly ordered some of my men every day to ascend this look-out station, and I resolved to burn the high grass at once, so as to destroy all cover for the concealment ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... the slim, long hull of the ship moved ahead slowly under lower topsails. The loose upper canvas blew out in the breeze with soft round contours, resembling small white clouds snared in the maze of ropes. Then the sheets were hauled home, the yards hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her low broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... pamphlet; to it we may add that several Oratorios and Symphonic works were performed under my direction, such as Marx' "Moses," Rubinstein's "Paradise Lost," Schumann's "Paradise and the Peri" and his concluding scenes in "Faust," etc.; as for Symphonies, the Great Pyramid—Beethoven's "Ninth" (for Goethe's Jubilee in '49), nearly all Berlioz's Symphonies and Overtures, besides other Symphonies and Overtures by Schumann, Raff, Hiller, Bronsart, Joachim, Bulow, etc., most of which were at that time scarcely ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with the basal edges of its six sides bevelled so as to join an inverted pyramid, of three rhombs. These rhombs have certain angles, and the three which form the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the comb, enter into the composition of the bases of three adjoining cells on the opposite side. In the series between the extreme perfection ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... produced at similar levels. They are smaller on the tops of mountains than in the neighbouring plains. If the temperature or the wind alter, the figures of the hailstones become immediately changed. Hailstones of the form of a six-sided pyramid have been known to change, on the wind changing to the north-east, to convex lenses, so transparent and nicely formed, that they magnified objects without distorting them. Some hailstones are globular, others elongated, and ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... produces the same effect on him as the sight of a rod would, is waiting us in her icy little drawing-room. Four square armchairs, hidden beneath yellow covers, stand vacant behind four little mats. A clock in the shape of a pyramid, surmounted on a sphere, ticks ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... exclaim; "crushed to death beneath the weight of a pyramid of blessings that lies like lead upon my chest and reaches to the ceiling. Kind words—fond care, and sweet attentions—they bow me down to the earth! I am stifling beneath the burden of their silent reproaches. Two and two are four; and four and four is ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... the break of the poop, a sweep of deck that careened till the lee rail dipped, and green seas lolloped aboard and swirled, foam-flecked, aft. He saw the long jib-boom, now stabbing the leaden sky, now plunging into the depths. He saw the pyramid of bellying canvas on the foremast, the great foresail, the topsails, and the bare ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... its own misery, and so to fancy it had received from above what it had itself generated of its own poverty from below. To the mind's eye of Malcolm, the little hump on the sand was heaved to the stars, higher than ever Roman tomb or Egyptian pyramid, in silent appeal to the sweet heavens, a dumb prayer for pity, a visible groan for the resurrection of the body. For a few minutes he sat as still ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... the nave means the omission of the transepts. The west front consists of two vast but imperfect towers; one of which (the south) is immensely buttressed, so that its outline slopes forward like that of a pyramid. This is the taller of the two. If they had spires these towers would be prodigious; as it is, given the rest of the church, they are wanting in elevation. There are five deeply recessed portals, all in a row, each surmounted with a gable, the gable over the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... are, all organisms find in surrounding Nature the ample complement of themselves. Man, too, finds in his Environment provision for all capacities, scope for the exercise of every faculty, room for the indulgence of each appetite, a just supply for every want. So the spiritual man at the apex of the pyramid of life finds in the vaster range of his Environment a provision, as much higher, it is true, as he is higher, but as delicately adjusted to his varying needs. And all this is supplied to him just as the lower organisms ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... since first holding multiparty elections in 1991, but deficiencies remain. International observers judged elections to be largely free and fair since the restoration of political stability following the collapse of pyramid schemes in 1997. In the 2005 general elections, the Democratic Party and its allies won a decisive victory on pledges of reducing crime and corruption, promoting economic growth, and decreasing the size of government. ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... his figure the roundness of a ball. His face, reddened by skiedam and the frost, was glowing like crimson, while the broad beaver hat that overshadowed it, and the feathers with which the beaver was edged, were incrusted with the snow that was rapidly forming a pyramid on its crown, imparting to his whole aspect a drollery at which I could have laughed heartily, had not his well-known acuteness and ferocity awed me into a becoming gravity of demeanor; and delivering my dispatch with a tolerably good grace, I reined back my horse to await any reply he ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... then, the man refused to bet with your money; so then Mademoiselle Klosking said she would; and she played—oh, how she did play! She doubled, and doubled, and doubled, hundreds upon hundreds. She made a mountain of gold and a pyramid of bank-notes; and she never stopped till ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... a good man who has loved his garden; and to the long Latin praises of his virtues and eminence I add, as I pass beneath it on Sundays, a heartiest Amen. Who would not join in the praises of a man to whom you owe your lilacs, and your Spanish chestnuts, and your tulip trees, and your pyramid oaks? "He was a good man, for he loved his garden"—that is the epitaph I would have put on his monument, because it gives one a far clearer sense of his goodness and explains it better than any amount of sonorous Latinities. How could he be anything but good since he ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... songs. Robeckal, the "descendant of the old Moorish kings," would swallow swords, eat glass, shave kegs with his teeth; and Fanfaro would perform on the trapeze, give his magic acts, and daze the public with his extraordinary productions. A pyramid, formed of all the members of the troupe, at the top of which Caillette shone with a rose in her hand, stood at the bottom of the bills in red colors, and was gazed upon by the peasants in open-mouthed wonder. The hammering which went on ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... clergyman resident in Cairo, with whom, among other persons, Miss Dawkins had become acquainted. Upon this gentleman or upon his wife Miss Dawkins called a few days after the journey to the Pyramid, and finding him in his study, thus performed her ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope

... put it out?" I cried, excitedly, as the boughs of the huge green pyramid began to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... a low and regular wall of cloud-bank whose coping bears here and there bulges of white, cottony cloud. Then a regular pyramid, at this season white as snow, shows its gnomon-like point, impaling the cumuli. Hour by hour the outlines grow clearer, till at last the terminal cone looks somewhat like a thimble upon a pillow—the cumbre, or lofty foundation of pumice-plains. But the aspect everywhere varies according as you ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... tear ourselves away from this fascinating spectacle to draw nearer to the Great Pyramid, which stood beside us, its outline sharply traced in the clear atmosphere. We walked round and round it, thinking of the strange men whose ambition to secure immortality for themselves had expressed itself in this giant creation. The enormous blocks of granite brought from one knows ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... in the path facing him, with his hands in his pockets and his dark face in the shadow. A glance told Field, what he knew already, that there was only one way to go back. His face was white, but there was no more tremor in his voice than if he had leaned against a pyramid instead of a hundred feet of thin air, when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... boom upon some duty; and having finished it, turned around and lay on the boom for a long time, admiring the beauty of the sight below me. Being so far out from the deck I could look at the ship 5 as at a separate vessel; and there rose up from the water, supported only by the small black hull, a pyramid of canvas spreading far out beyond the hull and towering up almost, as it seemed in the indistinct night, into the clouds. The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade wind was 10 gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark-blue sky was studded with the tropical ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... The envious who but breathe in other's pain— Behold the host! delighting to deprave, Who track the steps of Glory to the grave, Watch every fault that daring Genius owes Half to the ardour which its birth bestows, Distort the truth, accumulate the lie, And pile the Pyramid of Calumny! These are his portion—but if joined to these Gaunt Poverty should league with deep Disease, 80 If the high Spirit must forget to soar, And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,[101] To soothe Indignity—and face to face Meet sordid Rage, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... tongues of flame, which, soon meeting and expanding into one, quickly enveloped the whole hill in one broad, unbroken robe of sheeted fire, encompassed and mounted the veteran pine, and around its colossal trunk formed a huge, whirling pyramid of mingling smoke and flame that rose to the mid-heavens, shedding, in place of the darkened sun, a lurid glare over the forest, and sending forth the stormy roar of a belching volcano. The next moment ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... the second place the group may assume the form of a pyramid. In this case the subordinates stand over against the superior not in an equalized mass but in very nicely graded strata of power. These strata grow constantly smaller in extent but greater in significance. They lead up from the inferior mass to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as Rainbarrow for many miles round. Some made themselves busy with matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. Others, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... serried ranks, there in isolated grandeur, some just beyond the dividing canyons, others fifty, sixty, a hundred miles away, cyclopean, majestic, infinite. Far to the north, Long's Peak lifts his seamed and hoary pyramid, almost as high as the crest on which we are standing; in the west rise that famous triad of peaks, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, their fanelike towers, sketched against the sky, disputing the palm with old Gray himself; while a hundred miles to the south Pike's Peak ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... garden the genius of noise was equally triumphant. An ingenious device, contrived and executed by a most kind and ingenious friend, for the purpose of sheltering the pyramid of geraniums in front of my greenhouse,—consisting of a wooden roof, drawn by pullies up and down a high, strong post, something like the mast of a ship,* had given way; and another most kind friend ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford

... in a not ignoble funeral pile, we hurried to the boats. We had been taught by a former catastrophe not to delay too long. As we pulled away, the flames, climbing up the masts and spars; to which the canvas still hung, formed a magnificent pyramid of fire, which grew and grew in height till it seemed to reach the very skies. It was a fine spectacle, but a finer was to come. She was still burning when we got back to our ship, and the boats were hoisted in. I watched the conflagration from the deck. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... sketchy way, the series of pictures which made up the year of his wanderings. He had travelled from New York to London, he had whizzed through Paris and dipped into Baden, he had been seasick on a Mediterranean which wasn't blue, he had barked his shins on a pyramid, he had been swindled out of a ridiculously large sum of money by a little scientist in green spectacles who was out on a mummy digging expedition, and he had gone into the interior after big game. He had managed to take in a Derby and to pick a winner, he had made Monte Carlo recognise ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. Now, if you have watched the progress of a particular shrub, you will see that it is no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but out of its apex there rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance than an orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its repressed energy to these upright parts. In a short time these become a small ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau

... [3203]Rama in Palestina, Colalto in Italy, the top of Magetus, or Acrocorinthus, that old decayed castle in Corinth, from which Peloponessus, Greece, the Ionian and Aegean seas were semel et simul at one view to be taken. In Egypt the square top of the great pyramid, three hundred yards in height, and so the Sultan's palace in Grand Cairo, the country being plain, hath a marvellous fair prospect as well over Nilus, as that great city, five Italian miles long, and two broad, by ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... at the foot of the walls and the white snow on the sky-line the little city, dazzling against the bluish background of the nearest mountain ranges, presented to the rays of the setting sun a pyramid of red-roofed houses, whose facades were also white, but so different one from another that they seemed to be of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... his accident. The other nodded sympathetically. "You were lucky to have Miss Yardely with you. I had a narrow shave myself this morning. Just as I was starting from my last camp, a tree that two minutes before looked as stable as a pyramid, collapsed. It caught me on the shoulder and knocked me flying. Lucky thing I fell clear; but it gave me a nasty jar, and my left arm is a little out of action, with the soreness. I oughtn't to have taken the trail this morning, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... subject naturally, but he knew well enough that the Experiment would be useless if he laid interfering hands on its inner processes. That would be like trimming a whitethorn tree in a formal garden, to make it resemble a pyramid. He was not making a thorn pyramid in an Italian garden; he wanted an oak, to grow by the common road of all men's life. And oaks must grow ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... presence something is wanting to the completeness of her elder sisters. The great Campanile at Florence, though it be inlaid with glowing marbles, and fair sculptures, and perfect in its beauty, wants the gilded, skyward-pointing pinnacle of its topmost pyramid; and so it stands incomplete. And thus faith and love need for their crowning and completion the topmost grace that looks up to the sky, and is sure of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... preparation for a desperate resistance. But the "Scourge of God" resolved that no man should boast of the honor of having either captured or slain him, and he caused to be raised in the centre of his encampment a huge pyramid of the wooden saddles of his cavalry; round it he heaped the spoils and the wealth that he had won; on it he stationed his wives who had accompanied him in the campaign; and on the summit Attila placed himself, ready to perish in the flames and balk the victorious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... Gradually the few stragglers loitering about the station wandered away; the engineer stepped upon the locomotive; a piercing whistle broke suddenly on the silence settling down over the whilom busy precincts, and as the rhythmic measure of the engine bell rang farewell chimes, a pyramid of sparks leaped high, and the mighty mechanism fled down the track, hunting its own echoes. The man in charge of the express office came out, looked up and down the street; yawned, lighted his pipe, and after locking the office, wended ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... A hollow crystal pyramid he takes, In firmamental waters dipp'd above, Of this a broad extinguisher he makes, And hoods the flames that to ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... dear,' said Flora, with great enjoyment, 'is then perished the column is crumbled and the pyramid is standing upside down upon its what's-his-name call it not giddiness call it not weakness call it not folly I must now retire into privacy and look upon the ashes of departed joys no more but taking a further liberty of paying for the pastry which has formed the humble pretext of our interview ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... prisoner, for a man armed with a copper spear slept across the doorway of my little room. Before I lay down I looked through the wooden bars which served as a protection to the window place, and saw that the house stood upon the border of a large open space, in the midst of which a great pyramid towered a hundred feet or more into the air. On the top of this pyramid was a building of stone that I took to be a temple, and rightly, in front of which a fire burned. Marvelling what the purpose of this great work might be, and in honour of what faith it was erected, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... Infancy to Age Each Brow be smooth and bright, As Lake in evening light. To-day be Joy! and Sorrow Devoid of Blame (The widow'd Dame) Shall welcome be to-morrow. Thou, too, dull Night! may'st come unchid: This wall of Flame the Dark hath hid With turrets each a Pyramid;— For the Tears that we shed, are Gladness, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... have dwelt long in Meroe, Strangers," answered the woman suspiciously, "or you would know that the old King dwells with Osiris beneath yonder pyramid, where the general of the Pharaoh of Egypt, he who rules here now, buried him after the great battle. Oh! it is a strange story, and I do not know the rights of it who sell my stuff and take little heed ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing the tricycle, even when ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton

... them are higher than others: one, two, four stories in height. They are each in form like a pyramid without its apex. Each upper story is smaller than that below it, the roofs of the lower ones serving as terraces for those above. They are of a whitish yellow, the colour of the clay out of which they are built. They are without windows, but doors lead into each story from the outside; ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... when Africa is cut from east to west by a railway line, some adventurous soul will scale the height of one of many mountains, one that seems no different from the rest and yet is held in awe by the phantom-haunted denizens of the gloomy forest, and there he will find a pyramid of wooden cases surrounded by bleached and scattered ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... were a golden pyramid with a base as big as the whole earth and an apex touching the heavens, it would not supply us with sufficient ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... A pyramid composed of large blocks of white stone, and similar in form to the ancient monuments of Egypt, rises from a platform of solid black granite, which has been completely isolated from the surrounding surface by a deep dry moat, whose precipitous ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... 3; articles by—Solon's words of wisdom to Croesus, 3; Babylon and its capture by Cyrus, 9; the pyramid of Cheops, 18; the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... with her the romps and pranks of the street Arabs. A clever picture of this class is the big boy using a smaller one as a wheelbarrow, the small boy's arms supporting the machine, and his legs furnishing the handles. Of kindred nature is a sort of double pick-a-back, or pyramid, in which three ragged urchins are enjoying themselves hugely in the attempt to carry out so remarkable a feat. In the line of gymnastics, also, is the really admirable painting exhibited at the New Gallery in 1890, which portrays three delicious youngsters turning ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... Maryon Rooke might be here by now," remarked Nan, selecting a scone from the golden-brown pyramid on the plate and carefully avoiding Penelope's eyes. "He said he might look in ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... Senwesert I., with him in a co-regency which lasted ten years. From Sec.8 we gather that the attempted assassination took place just before the dual rule; while the Instruction was evidently penned shortly before the writer's death. The 'house' referred to is presumably his pyramid-tomb, called Ke'-nofer-amenemhe'et. Amenemhe'et is exalted and good. The site of this ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn

... that I then determined, if ever I got the chance, to go and see with my own eyes so great a marvel. Imagine a spike of igneous rock (the whole island is volcanic), shooting straight up out of the sea to the height of 6,870 feet, not broad-based like a pyramid, nor round-topped like a sugar-loaf, but needle-shaped, pointed like the spire of a church. If only my Hull skipper were as good a draughtsman as he seemed to be a seaman, we should now be on our way to one of the wonders of the world. Most people ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... Christian life is the only life that will ever be completed. Apart from Christ the life of man is a broken pillar, the race of men an unfinished pyramid. One by one in sight of Eternity all human Ideals fall short, one by one before the open grave all human hopes dissolve. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... the ancient Buddhists, cut from the Himalayan rock; and returning from the Far East, I stopped at Ismailia, and so to Cairo, and saw where Memphis was, and stood one bright midnight before that great pyramid of Shafra, and that dumb Sphynx, and, seated at the well of one of the rock-tombs, looked till tears of pity streamed down my cheeks: for great is the earth, and her Ages, but man 'passeth away.' These tombs have pillars extremely ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... later, and Miss Loring still sat by the closed window, her eyes upon the gleaming river and sombre woods beyond, yet seeing them not. The tall mountain of vapor, which had arisen like a pyramid of white marble, no longer retained its clear, bold outline, but, yielding to aerial currents, had been rent from base to crown, and now its scattered fragments lay in wild confusion along the whole sweep of the western horizon. ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... wont to dwell on the fact that these victories of what they so oddly called peace were usually purchased at a cost in human life and suffering quite as great as—yes, often greater than—those of so-called war. We have all read of Tamerlane's pyramid at Damascus made of seventy thousand skulls of his victims. It may be said that if the victims of the various inventions connected with the introduction of steam had consented to contribute their skulls to a monument in honor ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... in all cases he acquired priestly functions after election, even when he did not possess them before, is indicated by the fact that at the ceremony of his induction into office he ascended to the summit of the pyramid sacred to the war-god Huitzilopochtli, where he was anointed by the high-priest with a black ointment, and sprinkled with sanctified water; having thus become consecrated he took a censer of live coals and a bag of copal, and as his first official ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... conflagration, Although the smoke mount up exactly round, Yet by the suns irradiation Made thin and subtil no where else its found By sight, save in the dim and duskish bound Of the projected Pyramid opake, Opake with darknesse, smoke and mists unsound. Yet gilded like a foggie cloud doth make Reflection of fair light that doth our ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More



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