"Thundercloud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will soon know the best or worst; for, far away to the west, dark, portentous as a thundercloud—spread out like the wings of mighty armies—moving like a Fate over the bright sky, comes on the vast array of ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... dear, indirectly. That was on Saturday afternoon. Next morning we breakfasted under a thundercloud with Egerton grinning inside his skin, and looking like 'Won't you catch it, that's all!' at me out of the corner of his eye. That was bad enough, without one's married sister up from the country taking one aside to say that she wasn't ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... tall tough thundercloud bends across the sky I watch for the first flash, and listen for the first roar, and in my heart stillness seems impossible and at ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... younger than I had thought—had a dark, laughing face, gay and defiant as a Neapolitan street boy. It might be evil, it might be good. The girl, who could be no more than twenty, was sullen in her beauty as a thundercloud. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Shad Wells, in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe in the portico, and looking like a thundercloud. In response to Peter's query, he moved his right shoulder half an inch in the direction of the door, and then spat in the geranium bed. So Peter knocked at the door, softly at first, then loudly, when Beth emerged, her sleeves rolled to her ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... consisting chiefly of trap-rock, seemed to be the water-worn debris of the Liverpool range. The cattle and horses being at rest, we were occupied this day in making various observations with our instruments, trying the rate of the chronometer, etc. A thundercloud and a little rain afforded some relief from the excessive heat of the atmosphere. The night was very calm; but the mosquitoes ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... a heavy bank of thundercloud had been observed rapidly gathering on the southern horizon, and the runaways had scarcely plunged a mile into the forest before the heavens were obscured, and it at once became so pitch-dark that it was utterly impossible for them ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the eyes of the Hindus; but evidently the Takur was well aware that, under certain circumstances, there may be exceptions to every Brahmanical rule. He had another aside with the chief Brahman, who followed us, darker than a thundercloud; the consultation did not last long, and after it was over Gulab-Sing declared to us that none of us was allowed to touch the fakirs, but that he personally had obtained this permission, and so was going to show ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... in talk. The slightest order was received with a black look, and grudgingly and carelessly obeyed. Even the honest hands must have caught the infection, for there was not one man aboard to mend another. Mutiny, it was plain, hung over us like a thundercloud. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over the table like a thundercloud, regarded Archie with more than his customary hostility. Life was no pleasant thing for the proprietor of the Cosmopolis just now. Once a man starts building hotels, the thing becomes like dram-drinking. Any hitch, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the matter of protection from lightning we must bear in mind that trees, buildings, masts and other elevated points exert no attractive power on the thundercloud except in connection with the great plane where they are situated. The primary cause of the discharge is not in the metals of the building, the exact point or line in which the insulation by the air breaks down being determined by a variety ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... at all," the Squire broke in. "You have had a tremendous load on your mind, and now it is lifted off; the thundercloud has burst, and though damage has been done, one is thankful that it is no worse. Now I can talk to you of a matter that has been on my mind for the last three weeks. What steps do you think that I ought to take to find ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... one step forward, and paused looking at the shore. The blackness of the island blotted out the stars with its vague mass like a low thundercloud brooding over the waters and ready to burst into flame ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the heads of the little party like a thundercloud; and now it had cleared, and all ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... to bear the elemental commission of Nature, as the military warrant of Congress, swarthy Paul darted hither and thither; hovering like a thundercloud off the crowded harbors; then, beaten off by an adverse wind, discharging his lightnings on uncompanioned vessels, whose solitude made them a more conspicuous and easier mark, like lonely trees on the heath. Yet all this while ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Dave at his side, toward the garden on open ground below the trees, where the bean vines were already turning yellow for lack of water. He chuckled as he went, for the disappearance of Charlie Menocal's patronizing air and the sudden thundercloud hanging on his visage attested that the ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... bit by bit. And day by day Colonel Clark looked graver. The messengers he had sent to Vincennes came not back, and the coureurs and traders from time to time brought rumors of a British force gathering like a thundercloud in the northeast. Monsieur Vigo himself, who had gone to Vincennes on his own business, did not return. As for the inhabitants, some of them who had once bowed to us with a smile now ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Doctor's hardest voice. Richling looked up at him as a child looks at a thundercloud. The Doctor pointed to ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and more intense glowed in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Paris early enough to allow me to rest and have supper. I had sent on my baggage by express, and had nothing to worry about Starting at seven, I should arrive next morning at Brussels. I can sleep famously in the cars, and I apprehended no difficulty. Fred, looking as black as a thundercloud, took me to the station, and was preposterous enough to ask me if I was not sorry I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Darrin by this queer turn of affairs, that he forgot the matter that had taken him from his room. On his way back he met Midshipman Page. On the latter's face was a look as black as a thundercloud. ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... no cross he saw Looming from out the dreadful night: Yet all his soul was filled with awe, A thundercloud with ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... talking, as I have said, we noticed a dark line, like a low cloud or fog-bank, on the seaward horizon. The day was a fine one, though cloudy, and a gentle breeze was blowing; but the sea was not rougher, or the breaker on the reef higher, than usual. At first we thought that this looked like a thundercloud, and as we had had a good deal of broken weather of late, accompanied by occasional peals of thunder, we supposed that a storm must be approaching. Gradually, however, this line seemed to draw nearer without spreading up over the sky, as would certainly have been ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... guilt that kept from bursting 20 Th' imprison'd secret struggling in the face: E'en as the sudden breeze upstarting onwards Hurries the thundercloud, that pois'd awhile Hung in mid air, red with its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... beginning to threaten and rumble on the horizon, like a rising thundercloud, it was the more needful, in Peter's time, that Christians parted by seas, by race, language, and customs, should draw together. And for us, fidelity to our testimony and loyalty to our Master, to say nothing of common sense and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Remate de Males, however, he narrated events more fully, giving complete details of Schwandorf's activities, Francisco's offense, and the final attack by the crew. While he talked the coronel's frown deepened. Also, Jose gradually assumed the expression of a thundercloud. And when the tale was done the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... raining all day; and ere sundown a clearing had come from the Alps, followed by fresh threatenings of thunderstorms. The air was very liquid. There was a tract of yellow sunset sky to westward, a faint new moon half swathed in mist above, and over all the north a huge towered thundercloud kept flashing distant lightnings. The pallid primrose of the West, forced down and reflected back from that vast bank of tempest, gave unearthly beauty to the hues of church and palace—tender half-tones ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... men. Stop these fountains, and the streams of evil would shrink to very small trickles. These twin vices attract the lightning of God's wrath, which 'cometh' on their perpetrators, not only in some final future judgment, but here and now. If we were not blind, we should see that thundercloud steadily drawing nearer, and ready to launch its terrors on impure and greedy men. They have set it in motion, and they are right in the path of the avalanche ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it was full of distrust. At this stage in the proceeding, something like a connected and intelligible conversation commenced between the chief who spoke English, and who was known in most of the north- western garrisons of the Americans by the name of Thundercloud, or Cloud, by way of abbreviation, on account of his sinister looks, though the man actually sustained a tolerably fair reputation for one of those who, having been wronged, was so certain to be calumniated. No man was ever yet injured, that he ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... ordinary manner as he touched Wingate on the shoulder. "Dredlinton is here, rather drunk and very quarrelsome. I heard him telling some one about having found you dining alone with his wife to-night. Phipps was listening. Look at him, as black as a thundercloud! Keep your head ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and beheld Ragnar's forces all unconscious of their danger, not having heard the approach in their own hasty preparations for departure. Another moment of dread suspense, like that with which the gazer watches the dark thundercloud before the lightning's flash. A moment of dread silence—during which some orders, given loudly below, ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... quite early, I was dusting the library, when John come in with his black face like a thundercloud. ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... the left and strike along the grassy bridge five hundred yards beyond us. If he turned to the right across the upper edge of the meadows, we could whistle for our sheep. Even if he kept straight ahead, possibly they might scent him. The Mongol's face was like a thundercloud. I believe he would have strangled that grasscutter could he have had him in his hands. But the Fates were kind, and the man with his donkeys kept to the left across the uplands. Even then my Mongol would not hurry. His motto was "Slowly, slowly," ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... time Ned's face was a thundercloud in which lightning was clearly imminent, but Mr. Carrington now recovered his wonted tact as suddenly as ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... same place in the latter species of affection that Dubois did in the former. The Duc was just coming out of the Abbe's closet as I entered the anteroom. He paused to speak to me, while Dubois, who had followed the Duc out, stopped for one moment, and surveyed me with a look like a thundercloud. I did not appear to notice ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one must think of the burly, resolute, humourous, and withal tender-hearted man, and of the work he accomplished. He it was, the Franklin's kite, led by the highest hand, that went up into the papal thundercloud hanging black over Europe; and the angry fire that broke upon it burned it not, and in roars of boltless thunder the apparition collapsed, and the sun of truth broke through the inky fragments on the nations once again. He it was who, when ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... had been so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom. The stern and sullen mood, from which had dropped but one fierce flash of anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark rack of thundercloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke, had he but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the colloquy went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further attempt to change his purpose. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... valleys on the shortest notice, had no terror for him; he had sat on horseback under an oilskin slicker through the worst of them; but to-night! Even as he watched, the distant glare of lightning threw the heaving proportions of the thundercloud ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... long, hot days of the armistice, a kind of dull quiet had appeared to brood over the city and its forts and over the camps and entrenchments of the besiegers. It had been something like a thundercloud, which was all the while growing blacker and hanging lower, and before the end of the first day of renewed hostilities the anxious watchers in the city houses could hear something which sounded like distant thunder. It was the occasional roar of a gun from one or another of the batteries on either ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... whatsoever aspects man's sin may have been an interruption and a contradiction of the divine purpose, out of the evil has come a good; that the more obdurate and universal the rebellion, the more has it evoked a deeper and more wondrous tenderness. The blacker the thundercloud, the brighter glows the rainbow that is flung across it. So these two front each other, the one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... night for the man with the latch-key, but he listened in vain. He was only partly reassured, for he feared that matters were not going on well at St. Sylvester's. Indeed, he knew they were not, for Bertie had strolled into his room one day with a face like a thundercloud. The young fellow was out of temper, and perhaps a little off his guard in consequence. When Gordon amused himself by baiting him, Lisle was forced to keep silence; but in this case it was possible, if not quite prudent, to allow himself the relief ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... some faint resemblance to a thundercloud as he approached the porch; but the greetings he got from Madeline's party, especially from Helen and Dorothy, chased away the blackness from his face and ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... had manifestly been somewhat ruffled by the necessity of repeating the soap and water process. He frowned like a thundercloud. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... thought the enemy were likely to gather. This day we looked to the side facing the Tidewater, a difficult job, for it was eaten into by the upper glens of many rivers. The weather grew hot and oppressive, and over the lowlands of Virginia there brooded a sullen thundercloud. It oppressed my spirits, and I found myself less able to keep up with Shalah. The constant sight of the lowlands filled me with anxiety for what might be happening in those sullen blue flats. Gone was the glad forgetfulness of yesterday. The Promised Land might smile as it ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of the early experiments with frictional electricity was Benjamin Franklin's great discovery of the identity of lightning and the electric spark. One day in June, 1792, he went to the common at Philadelphia and flew a kite beneath a thundercloud, taking care to insulate his body from the cord. After a shower had wetted the string and made it a conductor, he was able to draw sparks from it with a key and to charge a Leyden jar. The man who had "robbed Jupiter of his thunderbolts" ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... declared they were cheats, every one of them. She was busy sweeping when Daniel knocked. She came to the door in a dreadful hurry, hoping it might be an old widower in the neighborhood that she was trying to catch. When she saw how much she was mistaken she looked as black as a thundercloud. ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... fellers with the guns, if they have quit," commented Vittum. "They might as well try to lick the lightning in a thundercloud." ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... it is hard for thee, I know: but then, life is not easy for any one. That is why I used to envy the flies; here, I thought, is something that finds life good; but once, in the night, I heard a fly grieving in the claws of a spider,—no, I thought, a thundercloud hangs over them also. What is to be done, Fedya? but ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... face. Jesus Christ puts out His hand, and lays it upon the bier, not to communicate anything, but simply to arrest its progress. Is it not a parable of His work in the world? His great work is to stop the triumphant march of Death—that grim power which broods like a thundercloud over humanity, and sucks up all brightness into its ghastly folds, and silences all song. He comes and says 'Stop'; and it stands fixed upon the spot. He arrests the march of Death. Not indeed that He touches the mere physical ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... our Lord's own great words, which perhaps are an allusion to these: 'He that believeth not is condemned already'; but it also suggests the universality of that condemnation. Our Psalmist says that only through trusting Him can a man be taken and lifted away, as it were, from the descent of the thundercloud, and its bolt that lies above his head. 'They that trust Him are not condemned,' every one else is; not 'shall be,' but is, to-day, here and now. If there is a man or woman in my audience now who is not exercising trust in God through Jesus Christ, on that man or woman, young ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... talking to a gentleman. It was true; and plainly to be seen that the gentleman was Pierre de Folligny. Philidor watched them uncertainly. A joke passed, they both laughed and the Frenchman indicated his quivering machine hard by. Then it was that Philidor went forth across the square, his brow a thundercloud. The girl cast a glance over her shoulder in his direction and then followed the Frenchman to his machine. Philidor's long stride made the distance quickly, and before the pair were seated, he ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... but then he was afraid of a scandal. And so with all the gods—not one was bold enough to decide on such a terrible question as the beauty of three rival goddesses who were ready to tear out each other's eyes. For Juno was looking like a thundercloud, and Minerva like lightning, and Venus like a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... competence? And what a lot stood before the Son himself, if he were caught in flight, or if, what was nowise improbable, his delivery back was required and obtained? Sure enough, there had risen on the otherwise serene heaven of the Schiller Family a threatening thundercloud; which, any day, might discharge itself, bringing destruction ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... at Richard. She had mentioned Storri in a mood of mischief, as one spurs a gamesome horse to stir its mettle. Richard's brow was a thundercloud. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... anxiety or apprehension which comes over him from time to time. You remember our old friend Squire B., whose companion was killed by lightning when he was standing close to him. You know the look he had whenever anything like a thundercloud came up in the sky. Well, I should say there was a look like that came over this Maurice Kirkwood's face every now and then. I noticed that he looked round once or twice as if to see whether some object or other was in sight. There was a little ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the rainswept, steaming quays to Notre Dame on the island yonder. Overhead rolled and crackled the artillery of an April thunderstorm, and Mr. Caryll, looking out upon Paris in her shroud of rain, under her pall of thundercloud, felt himself at harmony with Nature. Over his heart, too, the gloom of storm was lowering, just as in his heart it was still little more than ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the daily hunt, the red hunter comes upon a scene that is strikingly beautiful or sublime—a black thundercloud with the rainbow's glowing arch above the mountain; a white waterfall in the heart of a green gorge; a vast prairie tinged with the blood-red of sunset—he pauses for an instant in the attitude of worship. He sees no need for setting ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... him wrapped in the black thundercloud or girded with the robe of the lightnings: You will find him the God who splits the earth in twain with the earthquake's riving blow, loosens the bands of the sea, sends tidal waves in surges of destruction, pours out the lava streams from the volcano's cone, as kings pour ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... while they are spitting in His face and stabbing at His heart, He takes them up in His arms and kisses their infuriated brow and cheek, saying, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." The other kind of sermon I never want to preach is the one that represents God as all fire and torture and thundercloud, and with red-hot pitch-fork tossing the human race into paroxysms of infinite agony. The sermon that I am now preaching believes in a God of loving, kindly warning, the God of spring and winter, the God ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage |
