"Meteoric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the legerdemain of death; no longer a humble steady star but a meteor; bumping as yet darkly against the planets; and then this monumental folly which had returned him to the old orbit but still in meteoric form, without peace or means of livelihood! An ass, indeed, if ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... particular ship had known many vicissitudes. Under the guidance of a musically inclined Ship's Steward, it had faced audiences across impromptu footlights as "The Pale Pink Pierrots," and, as such, had achieved a meteoric distinction. But unhappily the Ship's Steward was partial to oysters, and bought a barrelful at an auction sale ashore. On the face of things, it appeared a bargain; but the Ship's Steward neglected to inquire too closely into the antecedents of its contents, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... qualities which, though they are 'the fruit of the Spirit,' are yet not produced in us without our own co- operation. We have to forge and sharpen these weapons, though the fire in which they are forged is from above, and the metal of which they are made is given from heaven, like meteoric iron. These are 'kindness, long-suffering, love unfeigned.' We have to dismiss from our minds the ordinary characteristics of warfare in thinking of that which Christians are to wage. Like the old Knights Templars, we must carry a sword which has a cross for its hilt, and must ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... waited to receive the opening kick, while his comrades thundered toward him to form a flying screen of interference. But the twisting ball bounded from his too eager arms, and another Yale back fell on it in time to save it from the clutches of a meteoric Princeton end. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... ground above. The wind felt black, the sky was black, and the lamps were blowing about as if they wanted to escape for the darkness was after them. It was the Sunday following the induction of Fergus, and this was the meteoric condition through which Donal and Gibbie passed on their way to the North church, to hear him preach in the pulpit ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... forwarded it to him on the 18th of the same month." Among the particulars thus communicated, was the local superstition, that on the anniversary of the night when Bruce landed at Turnberry from Arran, the same meteoric gleam which had attended his voyage reappeared, unfailingly, in the same quarter of the heavens. With this circumstance Scott was much struck. "Your information," he writes on the 22d November, "was particularly interesting and acceptable, especially that which {p.006} ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... suffer for them. But the time had come when this parochialism of labour in Ireland was to end. To the enthusiasm and impetuous force of James Larkin and the fine brain of James Connolly Irish labour owes most for its awakening. The rise of Larkin was almost meteoric. He was one day organising the workers of Cork into a Transport Workers Union; almost the next he was marshalling a strike in Dublin, which made him an international democratic figure of extraordinary power. He was a man of amazing personality, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... angle of each reporter: and whenever any attempt was made to focus his hard sharp personality some guardian divinity seemed to throw a veil of mystery over him. His detractors, however, were the first to own that there was "something about him"; it was felt that he had passed beyond the meteoric stage, and the business world was unanimous in recognizing that he had "come to stay." A dawning sense of his stability was even beginning to make itself felt in Fifth Avenue. It was said that he had bought a house in Seventy-second Street, then that he meant ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... supporting its ceiling are spears. It is roofed with shields, and the ornaments on its benches are coats of mail. The Valkyrs are Odin's battle maids, choosers of heroes for his banquet rooms. With helmets on their heads, in bloody harness, mounted on shadowy steeds, surrounded by meteoric lightnings, and wielding flaming swords, they hover over the conflict and point the way to Valhalla to the warriors who fall. The valiant souls thus received to Odin's presence are called Einheriar, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... word—had made but a meteoric appearance in her future sister-in-law's cottage—a hasty greeting, a brief peck on Ilona's two cheeks, and one on Aladar's bristly face, then the inevitable homily; and as soon as Ilona paused in the latter, in order to draw breath, Elsa gave ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... is—' says old Glegg, shakin' his grizzly head; 'she's shore the most meteoric married lady of which hist'ry says a word. My girl Abby's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... situation. Only stout lashings prevented these men from being swept from the deck, while those upon the roof below were constantly compelled to cling to rails and stanchions to save themselves from being carried away by each new burst of meteoric fury. Upon the prow of the Vanator was painted the device of Gathol, but no pennants were displayed in the upper works since the storm had carried away several in rapid succession, just as it seemed to the watching men that it must carry away the ship itself. ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him up; and the first thing he did was to go and dedicate his armour and an offering of silver at the temple of Diana at Ephesus. This temple had grown up round a black stone image, very ugly, but which was said to have fallen from the sky, and was perhaps a meteoric stone. A white marble quarry near the city had furnished the materials for a temple so grand and beautiful that it was esteemed one of the seven wonders of ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... implements which are alluded to in the above mentioned articles also in Science, [Footnote: Science, vol. 3, 1884, pp. 308-310] as found in a North Carolina mound, and which analysis shows were not meteoric, furnish conclusive evidence that the tumulus was built after the Europeans had reached America; and as it is shown in the same article that the Cherokees must have occupied the region from the time of its discovery up to its settlement by the whites it is more than probable they were ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... be exotic, meteoric, dazzling. Home missions present as little attraction as bonnets that do not come from Paris. The little opportunities for doing good that spring up about their feet are neglected. I know so many of those gifted, enthusiastic transcendental natures, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... silence, they compressed into a few days more real companionship than is ordinarily enjoyed in months. Oftener and oftener, as time went on, Crane found the vision of his dream home floating in his mind as he steered the Skylark in her meteoric flight or as he strapped himself into his narrow bed. Now, however, the central figure of the vision, instead of being an indistinct blur, was clear and sharply defined. And for her part, more and more was Margaret drawn to the quiet and unassuming, but utterly dependable and steadfast young inventor, ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... succession of events of which the outer planets were formed last, a theory which had difficulties of its own. Professor George Darwin had recently shown, from an investigation of the mechanical conditions of a swarm of meteorites, that on certain assumptions a meteoric swarm might behave as a coarse gas, and in this way bring back the fluid pressure exercised by one part of the system on the other, which was required by Laplace's theory. One chief assumption consisted in supposing that such inelastic bodies ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... lies a belt of very small planets, of which the 1st was discovered on the first day of the present century, and the 124th this year, and the number of known satellites has increased from 10 to 17. Add to this the meteoric groups, and their suspected connexion with certain comets, and the perplexing questions suggested by the Solar Corona and the Zodiacal light, and it will be seen that our knowledge is in a transitional state; that with so many problems unsolved, any apparent contradiction to ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... two children. At the time of the birth of Louis Napoleon he was at Bayonne, arranging with the Spanish princes for the transfer of the crown of Spain to Joseph Bonaparte. Josephine was at Bordeaux. From this interview he passed, in his meteoric flight, to the Congress of Kings at Erfurt, but a few miles from the battle-field of Jena. It was here that the celebrated historian Mueller met the Emperor and gave the following testimony as to the impression which his presence ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... opinions, with the oldest, blindest, and most inveterate of human superstitions. If extravagant, yet to the multitude it did not seem extravagant. So natural a craze, therefore, however baseless, would never have carried Lord Monboddo's name into that meteoric notoriety and atmosphere of astonishment which soon invested it in England. And, in that case, my childhood would have escaped the deadliest blight of mortification and despondency that could have been incident to a most morbid temperament concurring with a situation of visionary (yes! ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Pope Alexander is yet to be written. No attempt has been made to exhaust it here. Yet of necessity he bulks large in these pages; for the history of his dazzling, meteoric son is so closely interwoven with his own that it is impossible to present the one without dealing at ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the same ethereal medium I have spoken of before, and which is only denser in proportion to its solar vicinity? The lenticular-shaped phenomenon, also called the zodiacal light, was a matter worthy of attention. This radiance, so apparent in the tropics, and which cannot be mistaken for any meteoric lustre, extends from the horizon obliquely upward, and follows generally the direction of the sun's equator. It appeared to me evidently in the nature of a rare atmosphere extending from the sun outward, beyond the orbit of Venus at least, and I believed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... her cause would triumph. "We do not care for your disbelief," cried one, "for in this very hall your predecessors denied the circulation of the blood!" - "Yes," cried another, "and they denied the falling of meteoric stones!" while a third exclaimed "Grande est veritas et praevalebit!" Some degree of order being at last restored, the question whether the report should be received and published was decided in the negative. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... meteoric prosperity came to a sudden halt, for there was war on the high seas as well. The whole mercantile marine was refitted and turned out to win what it might in other channels. Privateering was held ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... meteoric phenomenon that has occurred in Canada since the country became inhabited by civilized man, was first seen in October, 1785, and again in July, 1814. At noonday a pitchy darkness, of a dismal and sinister character, completely obscured the light of the sun, continuing for about ten minutes at ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the smaller rivers in the plateau region flow in very deep but very narrow canons. The rocks being harder and more homogeneous, the weathering has been slight. The meteoric forces have not taken a hand in the game. Thus the Parunuweap Canon is only twenty to thirty feet wide, but from six hundred to fifteen hundred ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... (if we are to believe the Chippeway legends, on the shores of Lake Superior) found fragments of the pure copper of that region, beat them into shape, and the art of metallurgy was begun; iron was first worked in the same way by shaping meteoric iron into spear-heads. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... in the thought—it filled the eyes with misty tears, it tore the heart with tumultuous heavings; frailer than the "snow fall in the river," were we each and all—but we strove to give life and individuality to the meteoric course of our several existences, and to feel that no moment escaped us unenjoyed. Thus tottering on the dizzy brink, we were happy. Yes! as we sat beneath the toppling ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Steadily forging ahead to the beat of her paddles or the thrash of her screw, the steamer even of that day was far more dependable than the sailing vessel. The Lightning clipper might run a hundred miles farther in twenty-four hours than ever a steamer had done, but she could not maintain this meteoric burst of speed. Upon the heaving surface of the Western Ocean there was enacted over again the fable of ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... am in the Ozarks and old Mother Earth is passing through the belt of meteoric dust, that great mysterious sea in the universe through which we pass every year about the ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... The sky seemed brass, the atmosphere a blast from Tophet; and the sun, still standing at some distance above the horizon, glared mercilessly down over the panting parched: earth, as if a recent and unusually copious shower of "meteoric cosmical matter" had fallen into the solar furnace, and prompted it by increased incandescence to hotly deny the truth of Helmholtz's assertion: "The inexorable laws of mechanics show that the store of heat in the sun must be finally exhausted." Certainly to those who ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... it is from one to five years old Quietly putting himself on common ground with his reader Simplicity Slovenly literature, unrebuked and uncorrected Suggestion rather than by commandment Unenlightened popular preference for a book Waste precious time in chasing meteoric appearances ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... glare, It will come! With Destruction in the air. It will come! With a meteoric glare, With Destruction in the air, With the vengeance of Despair, It ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... Sydenham the other day? Some dozen of men crushed up among the splinters of the scaffolding in an instant, nobody knew why. All the engineers declare the scaffolding to have been erected on the best principles,—that the fall of it is as much a mystery as if it had fallen from heaven, and were all meteoric stones. The jury go to Sydenham and look at the heap of shattered bolts and girders, and come back as wise as they went. Accidental death! Yes, verily; the lives of all those dozen of men had been hanging for months at the mercy of a flaw in an ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... which have had similar meteoric rises in value. The first edition of Walton and Cotton's 'Compleat Angler' was published in 1653 at one and sixpence. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the average price for a fine copy seems to ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... greeting followed Jimsy's meteoric flight down the hillside. Everybody seemed to know and like him, and Jimsy, as ever, was noisily responsive. Yes, he was more a part of this village of Lindon than the first citizen himself standing aloof upon ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear the rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the fields, and in an instant you see him quietly perched upon some low tree or ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... had been meteoric. She literally had leaped from the chorus into the role of principal comedienne—one of those pranks of fortune that cannot be explained or denied. She was one of the "Jack-in-the-Box" girls in a big New York production. On the opening night, when the lid of her box flew open ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... work is more rhetorical than poetical, we may still gladly acknowledge the swinging rhythm, the martial dash and vigor of his best verse. Also, remembering the Revolution, we may understand the dazzling impression which he made upon the poets of his day. When the news came from Greece that his meteoric career was ended, the young Tennyson wept passionately and went out to carve on a stone, "Byron is dead," as if poetry had perished with him. Even the coldly critical Matthew Arnold was ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Tennyson spent the quiet years of meditation and study before he achieved his full renown. This was no such sensational event as Byron's meteoric appearance in 1812; but one year, 1850, is a clear landmark in his career. This was the date of the publication of In Memoriam and of his appointment, on the death of Wordsworth, to the office of Poet Laureate. This year saw the end of his struggle with ill-fortune and the end ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... that these most remarkable cosmic phenomena can be explained in either of two ways: they may have resulted from an explosive or volcanic discharge from the surface of the earth, or from the oblique impact of a meteoric stream moving at a very high velocity. It seems unlikely that sufficient energy to bring about the observed changes could have been developed by a volcanic disturbance of the ordinary type; but if radioactive ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... affinities; SECOND, of another impulse connected with the vital forces, tending, in the course of generations, to modify organic structures in accordance with external circumstances, as food, the nature of the habitat, and the meteoric agencies, these being the 'adaptations' of the natural theologian." The author apparently believes that organisation progresses by sudden leaps, but that the effects produced by the conditions of life are gradual. He argues with much force on general ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... tore at her and whipped her face; the car rocked and reeled as in some mad frenzy. There was not much traffic, but such as there was it cleared away from before her as if by magic, as, seeking shelter from the wild meteoric thing running amuck, the few vehicles, motor or horse, that she encountered hugged; the edge of the road, and the wind whisked to her ears fragments of shouts and execrations. Again and again she looked ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... thieves, or else resigned in disgust. Worse still, because this taint was at the very source, the royal government in France was already beset with that entanglement of weakness and corruption which lasted throughout the whole century between the decline of Louis XIV and the meteoric ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... that the whole rush was a passing property in the air, which may have left something to eat behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... aux proprietes physiques, ou bien la vie est l'ensemble des fonctions qui resistent a la mort." (Life is the sum of the vital properties that withstand the physical properties, or, life is the sum of the functions that withstand death.) Bichat is another pathetic figure in medical history. His meteoric career ended in his thirty-first year: he died a victim of a post-mortem wound infection. At his death, Corvisart wrote Napoleon: "Bichat has just died at the age of thirty. That battlefield on which he fell is one which demands courage and claims many victims. He ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... year did he return to civilization, don a stiff collar, and recognize an institution. During his meteoric career at the University he had been made a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity, in recognition of his varied accomplishments. Not only could he sing and dance and tell a tale with the best, but he was also a mimic and a ventriloquist, gifts which had ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... elapsed since the battle of Diamond Hill. The progress of the Transvaal campaign was not very apparent, but it was real. Botha had been driven back along the Delagoa Bay railway, and neither the outbreaks in the Western Transvaal nor the meteoric incursion of De Wet had availed him. Nothing that had occurred elsewhere weakened the western advance to an extent that gave him an opportunity of effectively withstanding it. Buller was approaching, and Lord Roberts was no longer dependent upon one line of communication. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... satirical drama; a Lear of domestic or ordinary life;—a local eddy of passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day goings on of wind and weather; a Lear, therefore, without its soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunderclaps, its meteoric splendors,—without the contagion and the fearful sympathies of nature, the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements, dancing in and out, now breaking through, and scattering,—now hand in hand with,—the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... that fashionable neighbourhood called "the Heights." Ogilvy, who was some ten years older than I, and who belonged to one of our old families, had embarked on a career then becoming common, but which at first was regarded as somewhat meteoric: gradually abandoning the practice of law, and perceiving the possibilities of the city of his birth, he had "gambled" in real estate and other enterprises, such as our local water company, until he had quadrupled his inheritance. He had built a mansion on Grant Avenue, the wide thoroughfare ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS to her somewhat insecure pinnacle of devotion; by the alchemy of a machine centuries have been shortened to days and nights in the meteoric career of Miss PICKFORD. Yet merit has joined fortune in high cabal. Handicapped by a somewhat uneuphonious patronymic, MARY PICKFORD has established her rule without recourse to any of the disputable methods adopted by her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... fourth crusade (1204), when for sixty years a Latin empire was established on the Bosphorus, never again recovered as a Christian state the position in the Balkan peninsula which it had so long enjoyed. Bulgaria, too, after the meteoric glory of its second empire under the Asen dynasty (1186-1258), quite went to pieces, the eastern and northern parts falling under Tartar, the southern under Greek influence, while the western districts fell to Serbia. In the north, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl's daughter, the richest heiress in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance. And just when his meteoric career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... important in developing the theme of romantic love with real fineness of feeling and thus helping to prepare the way for Shakspere in a very important particular. In marked contrast to these men is Thomas Kyd, who about the year 1590 attained a meteoric reputation with crude 'tragedies of blood,' specialized descendants of Senecan tragedy, one of which may have been the early play on Hamlet which Shakspere used as the groundwork ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of the first star. It was seen early in the morning rushing over Winchester; leaving a gentle frou-frou behind it. Trelawny, of the Wells' Observatory, the greatest authority on Meteoric Crinolines, watched it anxiously. Winymann, the publisher, who sprang to fame by the publication of The War of the Worlds, saw it from his office window, and at once telegraphed to me: "Materials for ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... a lot about you in the papers," said the judge, and the Pope waved wearily to a pile of dailies. There were columns about him in those papers—about his meteoric rise: how he started a poor boy in the mountains, studied by candle-light, taught school in the hills: how a vision of their future came to him even that early and how he clung to that vision all his life, turning, twisting for option money ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... to address the woman who had now come back and was holding up the trailing breadths of the electric-blue gauze. "Isn't it lovely?" She gave herself time to adore the drapery, with its changes of meteoric lucence, before she rose and took it. She went with it to the background in the library, where, against the glass door of the cases, she involved herself in it and stood shimmering. A thrill pierced to Verrian's heart; she was indeed wraithlike, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sorting their goods without checks. Porters were shouldering immense loads, four or five heavy trunks at once, corded together, and stalking off Atlantean. Hatboxes, bandboxes, and valises burst like a meteoric shower out of a crater. "A moi, a moi!" was the cry, from old men, young women, soldiers, shopkeepers, and pretres, scuffling and shoving together. Careless at once of grammar and of grace, I pulled and shouted ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric stone falling in an obscure portion of Georgia near Clayton Court-house, which is a hoax, and has been so pronounced ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... where officials came and went with meteoric suddenness owing to the reshuffling of the governmental pack of human cards, friendships were as sudden as they were transient. Jack Darling having arrived at Muktiarbad while Mrs. Fox was at a hill station, their acquaintance was only ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... (sacred fire) and Wakn-wohlpa (sacred gift.) Meteors are messengers from the Land of Spirits, warning of impending danger. It is a curious fact that the "sacred stone" of the Mohammedans, in the Kaaba at Mecca, is a meteoric stone, and obtains its sacred character from the fact that it fell from heaven. 31 Kah-n-te-dahn—The little, mysterious dweller in the woods. This spirit lives in the forest in hollow trees. Mrs. Eastman's Dacotah, Pre. Rem. xxxi. "The Dakota god of the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... occupied a dozen centuries. Its beginnings were unimpressively local. At the height of its wealth, power and cultural influence it bestrode the Eurasian-African triangle. Its decline and disappearance were no less spectacular than its meteoric rise ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... Feldspar Group which is called Anorthite has been shown by Rammelsberg to occur in a meteoric stone, and his analysis proves it to be almost identical in its chemical proportions to the same mineral in the lavas of modern volcanoes. So also Bronzite (Enstatite) and Olivine have been met with in ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... unruly; headstrong, ungovernable, unappeasable, immitigable, unmitigable[obs3]; uncontrollable, incontrollable[obs3]; insuppressible, irrepressible; orgastic, orgasmatic, orgasmic. spasmodic, convulsive, explosive; detonating &c. v.; volcanic, meteoric; stormy &c. (wind) 349. Adv. violently &c. adj.; amain[obs3]; by storm, by force, by main force; with might and main; tooth and nail, vi et armis[Lat], at the point of the sword, at the point of the bayonet; at one fell swoop; with a high hand, through thick and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... through the MS. I found that he had cut out the war, in so far as his military experiences were concerned. In khaki he showed himself to be as English and John Bull as you please; and how the deuce his meteoric promotion occurred and what various splendid services compelled the exhibition on his breast of a rainbow row of ribbons, are matters known only to the War Office, Andrew Lackaday and his Maker. Well—that is ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the unknown, "the astronomers Louville and Halley took for lunar phenomena phenomena purely terrestrial, such as meteoric or other bodies which are generated in our own atmosphere. That was the scientific aspect of these facts, and I ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... as if to compensate for the loss of the moonlight, the heavens were illuminated by a superb shower of falling stars, far exceeding, both in number and in brilliancy, the phenomena which are commonly distinguished as the August and November meteors; in fact, Gallia was passing through that meteoric ring which is known to lie exterior to the earth's orbit, but almost concentric with it. The rocky coast, its metallic surface reflecting the glow of the dazzling luminaries, appeared literally stippled with light, whilst the sea, as though spattered with burning hailstones, shone ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... later, following the meteoric appearance of a young speculator in Duluth, and after Chicago had seen the tentative opening of a grain and commission company labeled Frank A. Cowperwood & Co., which ostensibly dealt in the great wheat crops of the West, a ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... natures and distributions of these harmonize with the hypothesis of an exploded planet, and I think with no other hypothesis. The theory of volcanic origin, joined with the remark that the Sun emits jets which might propel them with adequate velocities, seems quite untenable. Such meteoric bodies as have descended to us, forbid absolutely the supposition of solar origin. Nor can they rationally be ascribed to planetary volcanoes. Even were their mineral characters appropriate, which many of them are not (for volcanoes ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Palace of the Tuileries was ever thronged with a crowd, eager to catch a glimpse of the preserver of France. All the public bodies waited upon him with congratulations. Bells rung, cannon thundered, bonfires and illuminations blazed, rockets and fire-works, in meteoric splendor filled the air, bands of music poured forth their exuberant strains, and united Paris, thronging the garden of the Tuileries and flooding back into the Elysian Fields, rent the heavens with deafening shouts of exultation. As Napoleon stood at the window of his ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... children, the philosophers have been doing quite splendid work lately, in their own way especially, the transformation of force into light is a great piece of systematized discovery and this notion about the sun being supplied with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks very likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gunlock,—flint and steel,—on a large scale but the order and majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters care little about ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... word has power to startle, as if the crime were a new thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As a meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of the universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends on us, when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from some lost star, some wandering ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... far as I could determine. As for Duncan Baldwin, I found that he had become acquainted with Reginald Blake in college, that he came of no particular family and seemed to have no great means, although he was very popular in the best circles. In fact he had had, thanks to his friend, a rather meteoric rise in society, though it was reported that he was somewhat involved in debt ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Wigfall's exertion, and erratic conduct at the time, and his meritorious career during the existence of the Confederacy, prompt me to give a short sketch of this meteoric character. He was born in Edgefield County along in the first quarter of the century of good old South Carolina stock, and educated in the common schools and in South Carolina College. His large means, inherited from a long line of wealthy ancestors, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... centre. When he saw the Chinese forces scattered like chaff by the battalions of those despised islanders he was not slow to grasp the explanation. Kang Yuwei, a Canton man, also grasped it, and urged on the Emperor the necessity for reform with such vigour as to prompt him to issue a meteoric shower of reformatory edicts, filling one party with hope ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... marine organisms; while intermingled with these are found various volcanic products which have been either carried through the air or floated on the surface, and a small but perfectly recognisable quantity of meteoric matter. Ice-borne rocks are also found abundantly scattered over the ocean bottom within a definite distance of the arctic and antarctic circles, clearly marking out the limit of floating ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... orbit bands or patches of this material existed, and the earth in passing through such hands drew down upon itself the flying fragments of such matter as it continues to do to the present day. What are meteoric displays but the residue of the primordial showers by which the world ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... street, emptily echoing to my footsteps—no soul awake and audible but me. Then my halt at the placard. And amidst that sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, a little askew and crumpled, but quite distinct beneath that cool meteoric glare, preposterous and appalling, the ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... chivalrous bravery of the Emden's Captain, which has been many times in evidence throughout her meteoric career, was again shown. If the French boats were coming out, every moment was of priceless value to him. Nevertheless, utterly disregarding this, he stopped, lowered boats, and picked up the survivors from the Mosquet before steaming on ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... call "the inferior aristocracy"—with an inflection of voice caught no doubt from the great families themselves. Yet their father had been an Earl, the second of his name, and was himself the son of a meteoric personage of mid-Victorian days—parliamentary lawyer, peer, and Governor of an Indian Presidency, who had earned his final step in the peerage by the skilful management of a little war, and had then incontinently died, leaving his family his reputation, which was considerable, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... matter is to be found in volcanic dust which, as in the case of Krakatoa, may remain for years in the atmosphere, but which must ultimately fall upon the surface of the earth and ocean. This can be traced in all the deep-sea oozes. Finally there is meteoric dust, which is continually falling to the surface of the earth, but in such minute quantities and in such a finely-divided state that it can be detected only in the oozes of the deepest oceans, where both inorganic and ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... be removed from her. Thence the Wasp went to Madeira and was later reported as spoken near the Cape Verde Islands, but after that she vanished from blue water, erased by some tragic fate whose mystery was never solved. To the port of missing ships she carried brave Blakely and his men after a meteoric career which had swept her ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... During one viceroyalty of happy memory half a dozen clever and amusing men and women came together in Simla—it was a mere fortuitous occurrence, aided by a joyous ruler who hated being bored as none before or ever since have hated it—and the place has lived socially upon the reputation of that meteoric term ever since. Whereas the domestic virtues are no more deeply rooted anywhere than under the deodars; nor could any one, I hasten to add, chronicle the fact with more profound satisfaction than myself. A dinner-party, however, is not a favourable setting for the domestic virtues; it does ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... may be seen at the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. In Anderson township, Ohio, native gold has been found for the first time. Several small ornaments of copper have been found covered with thin sheets of gold. Earrings also, made of meteoric iron, have been found, and a serpent cut out of mica. Some terra-cotta figures also, which give us an idea of the way the hair was dressed in the days of the Mound-builders. I cannot here name all the implements and ornaments that have been discovered. Though most of them are ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... not to reject what they assert, merely because it does not correspond with our own ideas on the subject. The most remarkable instance of unbelief was relative to the aerolites or meteoric stones formed during a thunder-storm in the air, and falling to the earth. Of course you have ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... was there; also Mr. Satterthwaite, who sat next to Winthrop and addressed several confidential and very unimportant remarks to him, and seemed to look upon his brother as a sort of meteoric phenomenon. President Darcy, of Mr. Herder's College, was the only other guest. Elizabeth sat next to Winthrop, but after the first formal greeting vouchsafed not a single look his way; she was in a dignified mood for all the company generally, and Rose's were the only ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... he was at once equitable and generous—that his heart was ever open to charity—that his life has probably been shortened by his scrupulous regard for justice. His career was one splendid refutation of the popular fallacy, that genius has of necessity vices—that its light must be meteoric—and its courses wayward and uncontrolled. He has left mankind two great lessons,—we scarcely know which is the most valuable. He has taught us how much delight one human being can confer upon the world; he has taught us also that the imagination ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... with the ball between them. But when, met by Craven and Johnnie Big Duncan, they passed across to Dan, Hughie again checked so fiercely that Johnnie Big Duncan secured the ball, passed back to the master, who with another meteoric flash along the edge of the field broke through the Front's defense, and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the extreme, he used it with the most flagrant dishonesty as a bait first to Sparta, then to the Athenian oligarchs, and finally to the democracy. Superficial and opportunist to the last, he owed the successes of his meteoric career purely to personal magnetism and an almost ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the purpose of the present work. It proposes to lay down in a series of apposite chapters the story of the past century, beginning, in fact, rather more than a century ago with the meteoric career of Napoleon and seeking to show to what it led, and what effects it had upon the political evolution of mankind. The French Revolution stood midway between two spheres of history, the sphere ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... with him. Which wish of his is the gist of my epistle. Can he bring him? He wants to know before he broaches the proposition. I'm to be skinned alive if Jack ever learns that such a plea was made, so I beg you whatever other rash acts you see fit to commit during your meteoric flight across my plane of existence, don't ever give me away. Firstly, because if I ever get a chance to do so, I'm positive that I should want to cling to you as the mistletoe does to the oak, and could not bear to be given away; and secondly, ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... swept away by its pitiless rage. Robespierre, scheming and ambitious, came there, listened, said little, appropriated for his own ends, and bided his time. Mme. Roland had small taste for the light play of intellect and wit that has no outcome beyond the meteoric display of the moment, and she was impatient with the talk in which an evening was often passed among these men without any definite results. As she measured their strength, she became more outspoken. She communicated to them a spark of her own energy. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... published his memoir on 'Organic Motion,' and applied the mechanical theory of heat in the most fearless and precise manner to vital processes. He also embraced the other natural agents in his chain of conservation. In 1853 Mr. Waterston proposed, independently, the meteoric theory of the sun's heat, and in 1854 Professor William Thomson applied his admirable mathematical powers to the development of the theory; but six years previously the subject had been handled in a masterly manner by Mayer, and all that I have said about it has been derived from him. When we consider ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... still kept the old black stone in my pocket, and frequently told the story of the dramatic way in which I had become possessed of it. I also kept my resolution of showing it to Professor Shroeder, who was much interested both by the anecdote and the specimen. He pronounced it to be a piece of meteoric stone, and drew my attention to the fact that its resemblance to an ear was not accidental, but that it was most carefully worked into that shape. A dozen little anatomical points showed that the worker had been as accurate as he was skilful. "I should not wonder," said the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... what are called "mares' tails,"—small cloud-forms here and there against a heavy background, that look like the stroke of a brush, or the streaming tail of a charger. Sometimes a few under-clouds will be combed and groomed by the winds or other meteoric agencies at work, as if for a race. I have seen coming storms develop well-defined vertebrae,—a long backbone of cloud, with the articulations and processes clearly marked. Any of these forms, changing, growing, denote ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... meteoric females, all were supplied with the requisite material for declamatory speeches to be hurled at the Emperor in the hope of being reaped to the glory of God and the British ministry. The story of the attempted ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... lord and leading lady, the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of quill that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles, saucepans and fragments of bonnets as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls to peck at. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that in the minds of the two lords, the early public house at the corner has superseded the sun. They always ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... grant that," the prince cried; "but you are a sensible, clever woman, and you know my heart is easily excited. It is only the meteoric light of the ignis fatuus, soon extinguished. Let it dance and flicker, but remember that the only warmth which cheers and brightens my heart is your love and friendship. You are my first and only love, and you will be my last—that ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... my poor uncle almost squarely on the top of the head! So frightful was the impact that not only the man's neck was broken, but the rope too; and the body of the deceased, forced against the earth, was crushed to pulp beneath the awful front of that meteoric sheep! The concussion stopped all the clocks between Lone Hand and Dutch Dan's, and Professor Davidson, a distinguished authority in matters seismic, who happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained that the vibrations were ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... results. Subsequently Weiss, of Vienna, identified the meteor shower of April 20th (Lyrids) with comet 1861. Finally, that indefatigable worker on meteors, A. S. Herschel, added to the number, and in 1878 gave a list of seventy-six coincidences between cometary and meteoric orbits. ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... rooms at the Charlevoix are full of expensive junk; I'll sell it, and that will help. As soon as we're decently settled I'll look for a salaried job. Then watch my smoke. To quote from the press of a few months hence: 'The meteoric rise of Robert Wharton has startled the financial world, surpassing as it does the sensational success of his father. Young Mr. Wharton was seen yesterday at his Wall Street office and took time from his many duties ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... that son require but few words of illustration. Hardly a chapter of European history or romance is more familiar to the world than the one which records the meteoric course of Charles the Bold. The propriety of his title was never doubtful. No prince was ever bolder, but it is certain that no quality could be less desirable, at that particular moment in the history of his house. It was not the quality to confirm ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a bolide—a slow-moving, large meteoric object—had been observed by radar to be descending to earth. It had been tracked throughout its descent. It had landed in Boulder Lake. Air photos taken since its landing showed that an enormous disturbance ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... connection we allude particularly to minor planets, to telescopic comets, and to meteoric streams, which severally form a very numerous group of bodies of which the known members are accumulating to a great extent. As complications arise, some remedies must be applied to their solution, and one probable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... of our young men as could get ashore were present, made them very happy, and we had some very pleasant rides into the country. I had intended, if possible, visiting a huge mass, said to be so similar to the meteoric stones that have fallen in different parts of the world as to induce a belief that it is also one of them, although it weighs many tons, and I hoped to get a piece of it; but I find it is near Nazareth de Farinha, on the other side of the bay, and too far off for this present visit ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... country between a trained nurse and a doctor, while his creditors mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests explained to each other that they had dined with him only because they wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of his race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays. But he was prompt to perceive that the general dulness of the season afforded him an ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... hauled down, to give place to the tri-color of France; and now that second banner had disappeared. Though an American governor ruled the district, there prevailed among the populace a hope and belief, that, after a brief meteoric display, the red, white and blue, emblazoned with stars, would fade and vanish from its proud height over the old fort, new garrisoned by American soldiers. Spanish officers in disguise lingered in the haunts of their former dignity and sway. They stirred up secret dissension. They deemed ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... about seven o'clock, a wonderful appearance was witnessed in the sky. A succession of meteoric balls of fire flew through the air, apparently from west to east; attended by reports in rapid succession very much resembling those of heavy pieces of artillery and quite as loud. Some think this may be a providential mockery ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... their meteoric career demonstrated the value of good condition at the start. Although the Chicagoans experienced tough weather in Texas last spring they fared better than any of the other teams in their league, ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... war chief of the Shawnees, was born at the ancient town of Piqua on Mad River, not far from the present city of Springfield, in Clark County. His name means Shooting Star, and he was indeed the meteoric light of his people while he lived. He was of a high Indian, family of the Turtle Tribe, and his father had come with his clan to Ohio from their home in Florida, about the middle of the last century. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... upon it? and does not this complex of physical forces determine the precise spot where the stone shall fall? If, in its fall, it were to hit a bird or a mouse or a flower, that would be a matter of chance, so far as my will was concerned. Is not a meteoric stone falling out of space acted upon by similar forces, which determine where it shall strike the earth? In this case, we must substitute for the energy of my arm the cosmic energy that gives the primal impetus to all heavenly bodies. If the falling aerolite were to hit ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... constellation; and the Avenue des Champs Elysees, with its rows of lamps, and the throngs of carriages, each bearing now its lighted lantern, moving along that far-extending slope, looked like a new Milky Way, fenced with lustrous stars, and swarming with meteoric fire-flies. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... electricity; the new Indigo; the spontaneous inflammation of charcoal; the nitrous atmosphere of Tirhoot, one of the principal districts in India for the manufacture of salt-petre; Discovery of a mass of meteoric iron in Bohemia; the chemical composition of cheese; Berzelius on the power of metallic rods to decompose water after their connexion with the galvanic pile is broken; an alkaline principle in Box-wood; Professor Davy on a new method of detecting metallic poisons; Mr. Bennet's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... a band of Blackfeet, superior in numbers to the Crows, most unmercifully whipped them. On their return to their village one night in August, shortly after the fight, there was a grand display of meteoric showers, and although the Crow warriors were ready to face death in any form, the wonderful celestial display appalled them. They regarded it as the wrath of the Great Spirit showered visibly upon them. In their ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... brought my horse to a standstill, it rushed apparently towards us, and finally disappeared behind the clouds. It was some time before either horse or driver regained the nerve which had for a time forsaken them; and even then I was inclined to attribute this wonderful meteoric shower to a display of fireworks in a neighbouring village, so close to us had this last rocket-like shooting star appeared to be. A meteor which is sufficiently brilliant to frighten a horse and make him stop dead is of rare occurrence. I was thankful when I reached ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... apparently exerted a profound influence upon his contemporaries. 'Never within the memory of teacher or student,' wrote his college friend Aubert de Gaspe, 'had a voice so eloquent filled the halls of the seminary of Quebec.' In the Assembly his rise to prominence was meteoric; only three years after his entrance he was elected speaker on the resignation of the veteran {22} J. A. Panet, who had held the office at different times since 1792. Papineau retained the speakership, with but one brief ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... ship's course is, but they seem so far and alien from my wonted place that it is as if I had slid down a steepy slant from the home-planet to a group of asteroids nebulous somewhere in middle space, and were resting there, still vibrant from the rush of the meteoric fall. There were, of course, facts and incidents contrary to such a theory: a steamer starting from New York in the raw March morning, and lurching and twisting through two days of diagonal seas, with people aboard dining and undining, and talking and smoking and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... went on shore to make a general clearance in the Manilla markets. There was every prospect, when they left the ship, of the day continuing fine—a bright sun and a clear sky above, and a smooth sea below. Unfortunately for the success of the expedition, this happy meteoric combination did not continue. The heavens began to frown, and the sea—ever jealous of its sister's moods—put on a restless appearance. At sun-down the wind suddenly rose to half a gale, with a cross lumpy sea and drenching showers of rain. The accommodation ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... unconsciously, as a river might idle toward the sea. Patty! The light of this knowledge was blinding for a space. So Warrington came into his own romance. It was not the grand passion, which is always meteoric; it was rather like a new star, ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... composers, and found that the houses they erected were stable in the exact proportion that Bach was used in the foundations. If much Bach, then granted talent, the man reared a solid structure. If no Bach, then no matter how brilliant, how meteoric, how sensational the talents, smash came tumbling down the musical mansion, smash went the fellow's hastily erected palace. Whether it is Perosi—who swears by Bach and doesn't understand or study him—or Mascagni or Massenet, or any of the new school, the result is the same. Bach is the touchstone. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... could run no longer. But this rapid rush carried them out of immediate peril, and brought them into the flying throng pressing their way northward and westward. Wedged into the multitude they could only move on with it in the desperate struggle forward. But fire was falling about them like a meteoric shower. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... brilliant apparition of St. Amand appeared as something dreamed of, not seen. The star of Napoleon had risen above the horizon; the romance of his early career had commenced; and the campaign of Egypt had been the herald of those brilliant and meteoric successes which flashed forth from the gloom ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unaccountable upon any reasonable theory," said the doctor, "and I do not know what to believe, unless we are to conceive that the tooth and the ball were really meteoric stones that have assumed these remarkable shapes and been shot down upon the earth with such force as to penetrate Mr. Dingus' leg, and this is so very improbable that we can hardly accept it unless it ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the old "college chorus"—it had been a "chorus" almost from the foundation—into a glee club, and he had organized the first guitar and banjo club. The pleasant glow he left behind him still hung over the campus when Fred entered four years later. Charles's meteoric social career had dimmed the fact (save to a few sober professors) that he had got through by the skin of his teeth. Fred's plodding ways, relieved only by his prowess at football, had left a very different impression. Fred worked hard at his studies because he had to; and even with persistence ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... admiration and the wonder and the paragon and the criterion of his friend Billy Fairfax, who had trailed his meteoric course through college and who, when the Brian Boru went down, was accompanying him on his most recent adventure—a globe-trotting trip in the interests of a moving-picture company. Socially they made an excellent team. For Billy contributed ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... well, mighty well, sir, to swear by the honour of your ancestors; for very few of your modern stars have a ray of that same meteoric light to illumine their own ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... meteoric poet," and the same title seems very appropriate to Mr. Swinburne. Probably few readers had heard his name—I only knew it as that of the author of a strange mediaeval tale in prose—when he published "Atalanta in Calydon" in 1865. I ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... organism—one that has been, perhaps, dormant for centuries in the soil, or has evolved to its present form in the deep waters of the Elan watershed by a process whose nature we can only dimly guess at. Some have suggested a meteoric origin, and it is true that some meteoric stones fell over Wales recently. But that is far-fetched to my mind, for how could a white-hot stone harbour living matter? Whatever its origin, it is, I am sure, a harmless thing, and though strange, ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... together with Messrs. Albert Gallatin and Henry Clay, was directed to proceed to London, for the purpose of entering into negotiations for a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. Before leaving the continent, Mr. Adams visited Paris, where he witnessed the return of Napoleon from Elbe, and his meteoric career during the Hundred Days. Here he was joined in March, 1815, by his family, after a long and perilous ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Martin took up the strain warmly; "at the meteoric flight of the master-men. I once wrote a squib on them—the critics, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... life are of small extent, and fragmentary. It is to his formal publications and the common tradition of what he did, that we must turn for our biographical and historical estimate of the man. In this respect he is in analogy with Patrick Henry who appears only fitfully in history, but with meteoric brilliancy; or with Abraham Lincoln the narrative of whose life for the first forty-five years can be ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... assigned to the primitive period, are a certain number of engraved cylinders, some of which are very curious. [PLATE XIV., Fig. 1] It is clearly established that the cylinders in question, which are generally of serpentine, meteoric stone, jasper, chalcedony, or other similar substance, were the seals or signets of their possessors, who impressed them upon the moist clay which formed the ordinary material for writing. They are round, or nearly so, and measure from half an inch to three inches in length; ordinarily ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... don't need this assumption for anything. Well, it would come in handy to make some of these reports of freak phenomena, like mysterious appearances and disappearances, or flying-object sightings, or reported falls of non-meteoric matter, theoretically respectable. Reports like that usually ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... undoing of the work of what nitrifying bacteria may be present also, with great loss. The combined nitrogen of dead organisms, broken down to ammonia by putrefactive bacteria, the ammonia of urea and the results of the fixation of free nitrogen, together with traces of nitrogen salts due to meteoric activity, are thus seen to undergo various vicissitudes in the soil, rivers and surface of the globe generally. The ammonia may be oxidized to nitrites and nitrates, and then pass into the higher plants and be worked up into proteids, and so be handed on to animals, eventually to be broken down ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... popularly rumoured that he had fallen from his horse in a swoon caused by the apparition of Yoshitsune and Yukiiye on the Yamato plain and that of the Emperor Antoku at Inamura promontory. Just twenty years had elapsed since he raised the Minamoto standard in Sagami. His career was short but meteoric, and he ranks among the three greatest statesmen Japan has ever produced, his compeers being Hideyoshi ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... plodded wearily back to the pavilion, and mutely watched the cow-ponies rush and buck around the course. She beheld Valentino Cortes, a meteoric vision in white cotton trousers, girdled in crimson, flash by to victory amid the wild "Vivas!" of his compatriots. She saw the burros trot past in their little dog-trot of ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... great meteoric shower, in Nov. 1833. I was at Remley's tavern, 12 miles west of Lewisburg, Greenbrier Co., Virginia. A drove of 50 or 60 negroes stopped at the same place that night. They usually 'camp out,' but as it was excessively muddy, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... very striking proof of the origin of hot springs by the sinking of cold meteoric water into the earth, and by its contact with a volcanic focus, is afforded by the volcano of Jorullo. When, in September, 1759, Jorullo was suddenly elevated into a mountain eleven hundred and eighty-three feet above the surrounding plain, two ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... astronomer's fame has steadily increased. In 1868, in the great meteoric shower, she and her pupils recorded the paths of four thousand meteors, and gave valuable data of their height above the earth. In the summer of 1869 she joined the astronomers who went to Burlington, Iowa, to observe the total eclipse of the sun, Aug. 7. Her observations on the ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... with childlike wonder—as others had done—his meteoric progress in wealth and power. He was a man, disliked by some, feared by many, and obeyed by all; a land-owner; a cattle breeder; a grain dealer; a giant in body as well as will; and—the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... paid to the dust which is found on roofs and ledges at great heights. This meteoric dust, as it is called, consists of minute particles of iron, which are thought to fall from the highest part of the atmosphere, or possibly to be attracted to the earth from space. Lightning usually strikes the roof. The whole subject of lightning-conductors has been re-opened of late ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... quickness of respiration,—the beats of the pulse,—together with accurate notes of the duration of bodily exercise in the open air, the loss of weight of the whole body, the general feelings, and the circumstances, thermometric, barometric, and meteoric, under which the observations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Yet his enthusiasm kept him buoyant. In respect to his own work he was scrupulous; indeed, a stern critic. He abhorred claptrap and specious effects, and aimed at high standards of artistic expression. This gave him position among his brother architects, but was incompatible with meteoric progress. His design for the church at Benham represented much thought and hope, and he felt happy ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... average thickness. In the course of his report he stated: "Its specific gravity is 3.456 at 68 deg. Fahr., barom. 29.9. Its structure is imperfectly granular, but not crystallized, and there are small black specks of the size of a pin's head, and smaller, of malleable meteoric iron, which are readily removed from the crushed stone by the magnet. The color of the mass is ash gray. A portion of the surface is black and is scarified by fusion. Its hardness is not superior to that of olivine or massive chrysolite. Chemical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... London world was under peculiar conditions, which, while they would enhance the greatness of success, would be almost certainly fatal to anything short of the highest order of ability. The meteoric luster of Mali-bran's dazzling career was still fresh in the eyes of the public. The Italian stage was filled by Mme. Grisi, who, in personal beauty and voice, was held nearly matchless, and had an established hold on the public favor. Another great singer, Mme. Persiani, reigned through the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... wonderful occurred, which I had the satisfaction of seeing; and although forty-five years have elapsed, the terrifying scene is as firmly fixed in my memory as though it had happened but an hour ago. I refer to the meteoric shower of the 13th of November, 1833. My father had been from home, and on his return, about midnight, his attention was arrested by the frequent fall of meteors, or stars, to use the common phrase. The number rapidly increased; and the sight was so grand and beautiful that he ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... man or to cut his throat. As he did not attempt more than he could perform, his rapid success awakened aspirations for a possible future. He was odious to Venice, but a Venetian, who watched his meteoric course, wonders, in his secret diary, whether this unerring schemer was to be the appointed deliverer. He was a terror to Florence, yet the Florentine secretary, to whom he confided his thoughts in certain critical hours, wrote of him as men have written of Napoleon, and erected a monument to his ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the Materia Medica, the Museum of Natural History, and many other objects of interest. You must, however, take a peep at the Mineral Cabinet, or Geological Museum. It has been collected and arranged, with great industry and taste, by Professor Silliman. Look at this meteoric iron-stone. It fell a few years ago in Texas, and ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... some sister world in space, This is just the evidence which in recent years has been claimed as derived from a study of the surface of Mars. To that planet our hope of such evidence is restricted. Our survey in all other directions is barred by insurmountable difficulties. Unless some meteoric record reached our Earth, revelationary of intelligence on a perished world, our only hope of obtaining such evidence rests on the observation of Mars' surface features. To this subject we confine our attention ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... only make use of such metals as he found free in nature, that is, such as had not been attacked and corroded by the ubiquitous oxygen. These were primarily gold or copper, though possibly some original genius may have happened upon a bit of meteoric iron and pounded it out into a sword. But when man found that the red ocher he had hitherto used only as a cosmetic could be made to yield iron by melting it with charcoal he opened a new era in civilization, though doubtless the ocher artists of that day denounced ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... of the Challenger expedition announced that meteoric dust is found in the sea ooze, a result that follows as a matter of course from the discovery that this cosmic dust is falling all ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... contains a tiny bit of that ridiculous military decoration that Stutsman never allows far away from him. Find that decoration and you find Stutsman. In another one I have a chunk of Wilson's belt buckle, that college buckle, you know, that he's so proud of. Chambers has a ring made of a piece of meteoric iron and that's the bait for another machine. Have a tiny piece off Craven's spectacles in his machine. It was easy to get the stuff. The force field enables a man to reach out and take anything he wants to, from a massive machine to a microscopic bit of matter. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... says old Glegg, shakin' his grizzly head; 'she's shore the most meteoric married lady of which hist'ry says a word. My girl Abby's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... infusion of fresh blood to Odo were Alfieri's meteoric returns to Turin. Life moved languidly in the strait-laced city, even to a young gentleman a-tiptoe for adventure and framed to elicit it as the hazel-wand draws water. Not that vulgar distractions were lacking. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... bullying he underwent at the hands of leading ladies gave him an air of deference to everybody else which was sometimes painfully misunderstood. The stars, it must be said regretfully, in connection with so laudable an ambition, nearly always betrayed him, coming down with an unmistakably meteoric descent, stony-broke in the uttermost ends of the earth, with a strong inclination to bring the cause of that misfortune before the Consular Courts. They seldom succeeded in this design, since Llewellyn was usually ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... should consider certain simple yet noble generalizations of physics. We readily recognise the fact that when a hammer falls often on an anvil it heats itself and the metal on which it strikes. Those who have been able to observe the descent of meteoric stones from the heavens have remarked that when they came to the earth they were, on their surfaces at least, exceedingly hot. Any one may observe shining meteors now and then flashing in the sky. These are known ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... practise with Diana, drew the latter's attention. The paragraph recalled the fact that it was just a year since Miss Quentin had made her debut, and then went on to comment lightly upon the brief and meteoric character ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... bodies, comparatively small, but of various dimensions, is sweeping around the solar focus in an orbit, which periodically cuts the orbit of the earth, thus explaining the actual cause of shooting stars, aerolites, and meteoric showers." ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... men, darting a hard sharp glance around them while their tongues rattled merrily, were inviting country people to game with them on fair and open-handed terms; two masquerading figures on stilts, who had snatched lanterns from the crowd, were swaying the lights to and fro in meteoric fashion, as they strode hither and thither; a sage trader was doing a profitable business at a small covered stall, in hot berlingozzi, a favourite farinaceous delicacy; one man standing on a barrel, with his back firmly planted against ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... this report of the birth of a king. Having first consulted the priests and scribes respecting the birthplace of Christ, he procured a private interview with the Magians, for the purpose of ascertaining the time of the meteoric appearance; and, with all the policy of all experienced statesman, requested them to go and find out the extraordinary Child, then return to bring him word, that he might come and worship him. This was a contrivance, by which he expected to accomplish, with greater certainty, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... probably ground up into bits of dust before they reach the ground. Some of them, indeed, do strike the ground, and very large ones bury themselves deep in the earth. When we go to the Field Columbian Museum, in Chicago, we shall see these visitors from other worlds. They are called meteoric stones, or meteorites. When they are in the air we call ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... a power, and with but little perception of a power till there was a dim sense of want; want stimulating power, and power stimulating want; and both so based upon each other that no one can say which is the true foundation, but rather that they must be both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in mid air. They have seen very little ahead of a present power or need, and have been then most moral, when most inclined to pierce a little into futurity, but also when most obstinately declining to pierce too far, and busy mainly with the present. They have been so far ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena, that occurred with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, seen in the midnight ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
