"Lodestone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make a jack dat am sho' good, git snakeroot and sassafras and a li'l lodestone and brimstone and asafoetida and resin and bluestone and gum arabic and a pod or two red pepper. Put dis in de red flannel bag, at midnight on de dark of de moon, and it ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... into which great rivers from the north discharged their turgid waters. Along these bays and rivers were scattered the inhabitants, numbering less than one hundred thousand, of whom a considerable portion had come from the States. There, as always on the frontier, land had been a lodestone attracting both the speculator and the homeseeker. In the parishes of West Feliciana and Baton Rouge, in the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi, and in the settlements around Mobile Bay, American settlers predominated, submitting with ill grace to the exactions of Spanish officials who ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... remember it," I added, "our original ideas of magnetism were that it simply attracted. We knew the lodestone drew the steel, but only on better acquaintance did we learn of its ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... breaths of cool wind, Maskull felt the stirrings of passion in his heart. In spite of his bodily fatigue, he wished to test his strength against something. This craving he identified with the crags of the Marest. They seemed to have the same magical attraction for his will as the lodestone for iron. He kept biting his nails, as he turned his eyes in that direction—wondering if it would not be possible to conquer the heights that evening. But when he glanced back again at Poolingdred, he remembered Joiwind and Panawe, and grew more tranquil. He decided ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the attributes of the unmanifest.[719] As a vast tree is ensconced within a small unblown Aswattha flower and becomes observable only when it comes out, even so birth takes place from what is unmanifest. A piece of iron, which is inanimate, runs towards a piece of loadstone. Similarly, inclinations and propensities due to natural instincts, and all else, run towards the Soul in a new life.[720] Indeed, even as those propensities and possessions born of Ignorance and Delusion, and inanimate in respect of their nature, are united with Soul when reborn, after ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and listened, and her eyes fixed themselves longingly upon the portfolio lying at the door. Why were not her eyes endowed with the power of a loadstone? Why were they not able to attract ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... you, fair virgin, here are two little boxes of white ivory, of the same size and weight; and see, within each of them is suspended a little magnet, both cut from the one loadstone, and round in a circle are all the letters of the alphabet. Now, let each of you take a little box, carry it delicately, and by its help you can converse with each other though you were a hundred miles apart. This sympathy between ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... me, I strongly suspect a young fellow called Swingler, an ironmonger's son, of giving me a twist too much, on more than one occasion. He was introduced, that is, proposed as a member of our club, by Sir Robert Ratsbane, whose grandfather was a druggist, and seconded by Lord Loadstone, the celebrated lady-killer, as a regular pigeon, who dropped, by the death of old 'burn the wind,' into half a million at least. The fellow did appear to be a very capital speculation, but the whole thing, however, was a trick, as I strongly ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... substantive in itself, the other as it is a part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation of a more general form. Therefore we see the iron in particular sympathy moving to the loadstone; but yet, if it exceed a certain quantity, it forsakes the affection to the loadstone, and, like a good patriot, moves to the earth. This double nature of good is MUCH MORE (hear)—much more ENGRAVEN on MAN, if he deGENERATE ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the point at which we wish to apply the lever and to lift into prominence the moral character-building aim as the central one in education. This aim should be like a loadstone, attracting and subordinating all other purposes to itself. It should dominate in the choice, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... things in order — We left Edinburgh ten days ago; and the further North we proceed, we find Mrs Tabitha the less manageable; so that her inclinations are not of the nature of the loadstone; they point not towards the pole. What made her leave Edinburgh with reluctance at last, if we may believe her own assertions, was a dispute which she left unfinished with Mr Moffat, touching the eternity of hell torments. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... replied he. In the mean time Sir Charles and the parson were ready to burst with containing their laughter, to see how he managed my lady to bring her to; for his assertion of having married Betty Larkey, who was a country-woman of my lady's, and formerly known to her, was a loadstone which presently drew my lady's hand to her purse; then turning to Sir Charles, she asked him if he had any small money about him? I have none, replied Sir Charles, pretty bluntly, being scarce able ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... a loadstone, which lifts filings of iron by its magnetic force, capable of doing the same by the force of gravity, its density would have to be increased more than a thousand million times. All forces differ in like degree. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Back to that Fount of Beauty but through pain. Long, long he toiled, comparing first the curves Traced by the cannon-ball as it soared and fell With that great curving road across the sky Traced by the sailing moon. Was earth a loadstone Holding them to their paths by that dark force Whose mystery men have cloaked beneath a name? Yet, when he came to test and prove, he found That all the great deflections of the moon, Her shining cadences from the path direct, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... Pearl islands, in the bay of Panama. The sand of the beach of those islands is iron, and is as easily attracted by the loadstone as steel filings.] ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... Stay with me; it keeps them away." She never put such thoughts into words. With an Acadian girl such a thing was impossible But girls do not need words. She drew as potently, and to all appearances as impassively, as a loadstone. All others than Bonaventure she repelled. If now and then she toyed with a heart, it was but to see her image in it once or twice and toss it aside. All got one treatment in the main. Any one of them might gallop by her father's veranda ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... indeed the beginning of things. Fortune was there for any man. The town became a loadstone for the restless population ever crowding out upon the uttermost frontier. The men from the farther East dropped their waistcoats and their narrow hats at Ellisville. All the world went under wide felt and bore a jingling spur. Every man was armed. The pitch ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... in the first there is a general account of magnetism and the properties of the loadstone, closing with a discussion "of the inquiry whence the magnet receives the natural virtue which it has." Peter attributed this virtue to a sympathy with the heavens, proposing to prove his point by the construction of a "terrella," a uniform ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... name. After a sensational trial, they sentenced him to thirty odd years' imprisonment; he is now languishing in the fortress of Porto Longone on Elba. Whoever has looked into this Spanish citadel will not envy him. Of the lovely little bay, of the loadstone mountain, of the romantic pathway to the hermitage of Monserrato or the glittering beach at Rio—of all the charms of Porto Longone he knows nothing, despite a ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... choicest place of earth filled him with wonder. There was a tree such as he had never seen before; its branches were alike, but it bore flowers and fruit of a thousand kinds. Near it a reservoir had been fashioned of four sorts of stone—touchstone, pure stone, marble, and loadstone. In and out of it flowed water like attar. The prince felt sure this must be the place of the Simurgh; he dismounted, turned his horse loose to graze, ate some of the food Jamila had given him, drank of the stream ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... 'By a diamagnetic,' says Faraday, 'I mean a body through which lines of magnetic force are passing, and which does not by their action assume the usual magnetic state of iron or loadstone.' Faraday subsequently used this term in a different sense from that here given, as ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... the loadstone, a specimen of which I have with me; you can examine it when you visit this country. The next rock crystal, of which I have two specimens.[7] The fourth is alum, of which I procured a small quantity, as I did not visit the cave where it is to be obtained. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... last as thin as the edge of a penknife; and this marble was a millstone which crushed his life, a slab of porphyry upon which the colours of his days were ground and mixed, a tinder-box which set fire to the brimstone match of his soul, a loadstone which attracted him, and lastly, a rolling-stone ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... winds come sometimes from the north, and cold winds from the south; the day we shall understand that diminutions of temperature are proportionate to oceanic depths; the day we realize that the globe is a vast loadstone polarized in immensity, with two axes—an axis of rotation and an axis of effluvium—intersecting each other at the centre of the earth, and that the magnetic poles turn round the geographical poles; when those who risk life will choose to risk it scientifically; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... continual thought: business, friends, and wife being all alike forgotten, or only remembered with a painful effort, like that of one struggling with a posset. It was most notable in the matter of his wife. Since I had known Durrisdeer, she had been the burthen of his thought and the loadstone of his eyes; and now she was quite cast out. I have seen him come to the door of a room, look round, and pass my lady over as though she were a dog before the fire. It would be Alexander he was seeking, and my lady knew it well. I have heard ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hard metal in armour, while Theophrastus applies it to the hardest crystal. By an etymological confusion with the Lat. adamare, to have an attraction for, it also came to be associated with the loadstone; but since the term was displaced by "diamond'' it has had only a figurative ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the gold acted upon him like the loadstone upon the needle. He began counting over the pieces; his fingers literally stuck to them. One by one they disappeared from my sight, and when all were gone, he held out his hand and begged for one guinea more. I put the pen into his hand, and the paper before him; ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... loadstone, denotes you will make favorable opportunities for your own advancement in a material way. For a young woman to think a loadstone is attracting her, is an omen of happy changes ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... to determine whether the marvel before our eyes really was at the magnetic pole of the southern regions. All I can say is, that its needle staggered about, helpless and useless. And in fact the exact location of the Antarctic Sphinx mattered little in respect of the constitution of that artificial loadstone, and the manner in which the clouds and metallic lode supplied ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... "Karendelees,"—i.e., "miserable beggars." Each of the three had lost an eye in the course of his misfortunes. The story (of the Third Kalender) begins with the wreck of the prince's vessel on the mountain of loadstone and the feat of the prince, who shoots the brazen horseman on top of the mountain and so breaks the charm. But there is a long chain of wonders and of troubles, of evil ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... hauled up safely and satisfactorily to all parties, at one exhibition. Hoping that you will be able to fix up a lot of magnets that will attract all New York, and volunteering to sit on any part of the loadstone, I am, as ever, your little but sympathizing friend, GEN. TOM ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Thales might be the first who attempted to give reasons for what was believed. His reasons were, nevertheless, sufficiently crude and puerile; and having declared it the property of the soul to move itself, and other things, he was forced to give a soul to the loadstone, because ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of such strange effects; for example, the sight of a ram quiets an enraged elephant; a viper lies stock-still, if touched with a beechen leaf; a wild bull grows tame, if bound with the twigs of a fig-tree; and amber draws all light things to it, except basil and such as are dipped in oil; and a loadstone will not draw a piece of iron that is rubbed with onion. Now all these, as to matter of fact, are very evident; but it is hard, if not altogether impossible, to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... themselves with high opinion of their own importance and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life."—"Some turn the wheel of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they did yesterday they can do again to-day. Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Prince Albert. He was sent to the House of Correction for a few months, in the hope of curing him of his "Palace- breaking mania"; but immediately on his liberation, he was found prowling about the Palace, drawing nearer and nearer, as though it had been built of loadstone. But finally he was induced to go to Australia, where, it is said, he grew up to be a well-to-do colonist. Perhaps he met the house- painter Oxford there, and they used to talk over their exploits and explorations together, after the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... we have from the observation of our learned friend Mr. Graves, in an AEgyptian idol cut out of Loadstone and found among the Mummies; which still retains its attraction, though probably taken out of the mine about ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... Silvanus P. Thompson, F.R.S., has kindly supplied me with the following interesting note on the terrella (or terella): The name given by Dr. William Gilbert, author of the famous treatise, "De Magnete" (Lond. 1600), to a spherical loadstone, on account of its acting as a model, magnetically, of the earth; compass-needles pointing to its poles, as mariners' compasses do to the poles of the earth. The term was adopted by other writers who ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at, that such things should be. Instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife's knitting needle. But in either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate reaches ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in this strait when the loadstone drew out the bolts in his ship, though he does not give the latitude and longitude of the place in the story of his adventure," suggested Louis. In the evening the passengers looked at the lights, and retired ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... read.[299] All kinds of metals abounded, and especially gold.[300] The woods were of immense extent. The people traded with Greenland, importing thence pitch(?), brimstone, and furs. They sowed grain and made "beer." They made small boats, but were ignorant of the loadstone and the compass. For this reason, they held the newcomers in high estimation.[301] The name ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the loadstone of thy love, Let all our hearts agree; And ever towards each other move, And ever ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... surprising power of drawing to itself all pieces of iron that are not too large, nor placed at too great a distance. But what is equally extraordinary is, that iron itself, after having been rubbed upon the loadstone, acquires the same virtue as the stone itself, of attracting other iron. For this purpose they take small bars of iron, and rub them carefully upon the loadstone, and when they have acquired this very extraordinary power, they call them ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... market. Indian Conservatism. Sardines. Account-keeping. The great Barranca. Tropical fruits. Prickly pears. Their use. The "Water-Throat." Silver-works. Volcano of Jorullo. Cascade of Regla. "Eyes of Water." Fires. The Hill of Knives. Obsidian implements. Obsidian mines. The Stone-age. The loadstone-mountain of Mexico. Unequal Civilization of the Aztecs. Silver and commerce of Mexico. Effect of Protection-duties. Silver ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... of his fame, his pulpit in Toulouse was deserted, whilst the white trains of France were bringing tens of thousands of professional men, barristers, statesmen, officers, professors, to a wretched village church only a few miles away. What was the loadstone? A poor country parish priest, informed, illiterate, uncouth,—but a saint. And I know nothing more beautiful or touching in all human history than the spectacle of the great and inspired Dominican, coming to that village chapel, and kneeling ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... lover did not venture beyond compliments and modest protestations of devotion. But as time went on, he advanced to kisses and caresses, and once he made Virginia take a little jewel into her mouth. This was a white loadstone, blessed by Arrigone, and intended to operate like a love-charm. The girl, in fact, began to feel the influence of her seducer. In the final confession which she made, she relates how she fought against temptation. 'Some diabolical force compelled me to go ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... I know it. You were here, I came because there is a loadstone within you, that is my heart's sole attraction, and I must follow my heart. I came because I wanted to see your beautiful eyes again, to be intoxicated by your sweet voice, because to live away from you is impossible for me; because your presence is as necessary to ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... variety of pursuits which occupied his attention, was the examination of the properties of the loadstone. In 1607, he commenced his experiments; but, with the exception of a method of arming loadstones, which, according to the report of Sir Kenelm Digby, enabled them to carry twice as much weight as before, he does not seem to have made any additions to our ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... you on to victory. Indeed, I know it. I have seen him. He has the line—the fortunate line on the forehead. He is the loadstone in the breast of your cause; the magnet who can draw good fortune to it. If fate be against you, he will force fate to change her mind. If fate weave you a common thread, he will change it into purple. Victory, which she gives to others ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... afraid or ashamed to confess that I have loved Dexie Sherwood for years—loved her madly, blindly, though she has given me nothing but hard words and scornful looks through it all. Months of travel have failed to make me forget her. She has been like a loadstone drawing me back to her, when in my pride I would have rejoiced to feel myself free. I would have plucked her out of my heart if I could, but my love seems a part of my life, and I cannot kill it while I live myself. I believe you are a noble, generous ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the loadstone, I suppose. Do you believe that a lifeless stone can preserve you from the dangers which occasionally ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the reflection of the adamant, cast a strong light into every part. The place is stored with great variety of sextants, quadrants, telescopes, astrolabes, and other astronomical instruments. But the greatest curiosity, upon which the fate of the island depends, is a loadstone of a prodigious size, in shape resembling a weaver's shuttle. It is in length six yards, and in the thickest part at least three yards over. This magnet is sustained by a very strong axle of adamant passing through its middle, upon which it ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... armory said to be the finest in the world; the palace, ditto (which people who are addicted to upholstering may go and see, if they don't mind breaking the tenth commandment); the museum of natural history, where is the largest loadstone in active operation between this and Medina; and the Academia, nearly complete the list. Everybody should devote a morning to the last-named, were it only for the sake of the Murillos. The famous picture of 'St. Isabel giving alms to the sick' has been arrested at Madrid on ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... derived from shaving the head, cutting the hair, and bathing the feet in warm water. If the inflammation has arisen from particles of iron or steel falling into the eyes, the offending matter is best extracted by the application of the loadstone. If eyes are blood-shotten, the necessary rules are, an exclusion from light, cold fomentations, and abstinence from animal food and stimulating liquors. For a bruise in the eye, occasioned by any accident, the best remedy is a rotten apple, and some conserve of roses. Fold them ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... stones and gems are commonly of a rude description; but occasionally they exhibit a good deal of delicacy, and sometimes even of grace. They are cut upon serpentine, jasper, chalcedony, cornelian, agate, sienite, quartz, loadstone, amazon-stone, and lapis-lazuli. The usual form of the stone is cylindrical; the sides, however, being either slightly convex or slightly concave, most frequently the latter. [PLATE LXXIX., Fig. 3.] The cylinder is always perforated ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... been recently recommended, in solution, as the best preservative of picture-frames from the defilement of flies. Bacon gravely tells of a man who lived for several days on the smell of onions and garlic alone; and there was an old belief that the garlic could extract all the power from a loadstone. ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... added, 'we always had about us a multitude of experts and copyists, with binders, and correctors, and illuminators, and all who were in any way qualified for the service of books.' He ends his chapter on book-collecting with a reference to an eastern tale, comparing himself to the mountain of loadstone that attracted the ships of knowledge by a secret force, while the books in their cargoes, like the iron bars in the story, were streaming towards the magnetic cliff 'in ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... possible. He knows absolutely nothing about country life, and it may be dull for him, but he seems desirous of coming, and so I want you to help me to make it cheerful for him. To be candid, sis, I think the chance to see you, whom he has heard me say so much about, is the real loadstone. I enclose a bit of paper, and I want you to use it all in ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... presentiment of the identity of electric and magnetic attraction has been verified in our own times. "When electrum (amber)," says Pliny, in the spirit of the Ionic natural philosophy of Thales,* is 'animated' by friction and heat, it will attract bark and dry leaves precisely as the loadstone ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... indeed on that barrel. Beside my ring, there were five other valuable diamonds, my chronometer, which with its regular beat and stem-winding arrangement was a great curiosity. Then the heap of money was a loadstone for all their hungry eyes. The captain was making out an inventory and statement, while I stood white with rage to see the half-breeds, blacks, browns and yellows, handle my property so freely. I was especially in a rage with the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... near the solemn river, stealing away by night, as all things steal away, by night and by day, so quietly yielding to the attraction of the loadstone rock of Eternity; and the nearer they drew to the chamber where Eugene lay, the more they feared that they might find his wanderings done. At last they saw its dim light shining out, and it gave them hope: ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... no personal cause of dislike. We never had many words together," said the landlord. "But he's a man that you want to get as far away from as possible. There are men, you know, who kind of draw you towards them, as if they were made of loadstone; and others that seem to push you off. Captain Allen is one ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... tell thee, Berthold, what men's hopes are like: A silly child that, quivering with joy, Would cast its little mimic fishing-line Baited with loadstone for a bowl of toys ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... as true as the Pole Star, and she was as false as a magnetic needle in a cargo of loadstone. Dave was as steady and solid as she was fickle and fly-away, and in some way Dave, who never doubted anybody, doubted her. It was the jealousy of his love, perhaps, and maybe it was the message ticked off from her soul to his; but at any rate Dave was worried ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... throw off the mark at once, and leave her no longer in suspence.—Behold then in me, said he, the person I have mentioned: nor think me vain in ascribing those merits to myself which I would wish to be the loadstone of your affection.—My honour, I believe, you will not call in question:—my humour you have never found capricious, or difficult to please; and as for my love, you cannot but allow the conquering that aversion, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... by a fair wind, cut the sea with the swiftness of a bird; but on a sudden it deviated from its course, no longer obeyed the helm, and sped fast towards a black promontory which stretched into the sea. This was a mountain of loadstone, and, its attractive power increasing as the distance diminished, the vessel at last flew with the swiftness of an arrow towards it, and was dashed to pieces on its rocky base. Ogier alone saved himself, and reached the shore on a ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... miracle unveiling before us. We came to know that we had found the greatest power on earth. For it defies all the laws known to men. It makes the needle move and turn on the compass which we stole from the Home of the Scholars; but we had been taught, when still a child, that the loadstone points to the north and [-that-] this is a law which nothing can change; yet our new power defies all laws. We found that it causes lightning, and never have men known what causes lightning. In thunderstorms, we raised a tall rod of iron by the side of our hole, ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... the needle, "cease to blunder: Stupid alike your hints and wonder. This is a loadstone, and its virtue— Though insufficient to convert you— Makes me a magnet; and afar True am I to my polar star. The pilot leaves the doubtful skies, And trusts to me with watchful eyes; By me the distant world is known, And both the Indies made our own. I am the friend and guide of sailors, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Occasion, I prest in among the rest; and after a good deal of Struggling and Difficulty, reach'd into the Ring and Centre of that mix'd Multitude. But how did I blush? with what Confusion did I appear? when I found one of my own Countrymen, a drunken Granadier, the attractive Loadstone of all that high and low Mob, and the Butt of all their Merriment? It will be easily imagin'd to be a Thing not a little surprizing to one of our Country, to find that a drunken Man should be such a wonderful Sight; However, the witty Sarcasms that were then by ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... The helpless iron and the terrible loadstone! The passive seed! The dissolving cloud and the ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... maintained by a multitude of tradesmen, so many excellent channels made by art and opportune havens, to which they build their cities; all which we have in like measure, or at least may have. But their chiefest loadstone which draws all manner of commerce and merchandise, which maintains their present estate, is not fertility of soil, but industry that enricheth them, the gold mines of Peru, or Nova Hispania may not compare with them. They have neither gold nor silver of their own, wine nor oil, or scarce ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... shall come to a mountain of black stone, highs the Magnet Mountain;[FN257] for thither the currents carry us willy-nilly. As soon as we are under its lea, the ship's sides will open and every nail in plank will fly out and cleave fast to the mountain; for that Almighty Allah hath gifted the loadstone with a mysterious virtue and a love for iron, by reason whereof all which is iron travelleth towards it; and on this mountain is much iron, how much none knoweth save the Most High, from the many vessels ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... pursuing foreign discoveries by Land or Sea. Their notion of the Figure of the Earth was not just, for most of them thought that it was a flat extensive plain. Their Knowlege of Astronomy was very much confined; and their Ignorance of the Properties of the Loadstone would prevent their undertaking any Voyage of Consequence. Supposing the Country which Madog discovered was not America, yet to say the Story is a late Invention, and forged after the discovery of that Continent by Columbus, with a View to set up a prior Claim to it, is plainly ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... they make so small a resistance to a lateral pressure. Such events, as bear little analogy to the common course of nature, are also readily confessed to be known only by experience; nor does any man imagine that the explosion of gunpowder, or the attraction of a loadstone, could ever be discovered by arguments a priori. In like manner, when an effect is supposed to depend upon an intricate machinery or secret structure of parts, we make no difficulty in attributing all our knowledge of it to experience. Who will assert that he can give the ultimate reason, why ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... knowledge—had, by throwing cold water on it, extinguished the last funeral pyre of the ultimate Phoenix, and laughed to scorn the gigantic, gold-grubbing pismires of Pliny; the Roc, the Valley of Diamonds, the mountain island of Loadstone, the potentiality of the Talisman, the miraculous virtues of certain drugs, and countless other fables, were accepted and believed by all the nations of the West. One of those drugs, seldom brought to Europe on account ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... text. They are inhabited by the aginnatai. Mercator interprets those islands as Celebes, Gilolo, and Amboina. Ptolemy also mentions the island agajou daimonoc (Borneo), five baroussai (Mindanao, Leite, Sebu, etc.), three sabade'ibai (the Java group—iabadiou) and ten masniolai where a large loadstone was found. Colin surmises that these ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... with a miserable grim satisfaction that he was at last over and above it all. She had told him to conquer his boyish love for her and, as her will had always been law to him, he had made it, at last, a law in this. The touch of the loadstone that never in his life had failed, had failed now, and now, for once in his life, desire ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... not acquaint you with it; peradventure it relates to a horse or an ass, or peradventure it relates to a mule or a macho; it does not relate to yourself, therefore I advise you not to inquire about it—Dosta. . . ." He carried a loadstone in his bosom and swallowed some of the dust of it, and it served both for passport and for prayers. When he had to leave Borrow he sold him a savage and vicious she ass, recommending her for the same reason as he bought her, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... to flesh and blood, Than a dull prospect of a distant good. 'Twas well alluded by a son of mine (I hope to quote him is not to purloin), Two magnets, heaven and earth, allure to bliss; The larger loadstone that, the nearer this: The weak attraction of the greater fails; 370 We nod a while, but neighbourhood prevails: But when the greater proves the nearer too, I wonder more your converts come so slow. Methinks in those who ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... denotes you will make favorable opportunities for your own advancement in a material way. For a young woman to think a loadstone is attracting her, is an omen of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... with cider which Hopeful Prime, the servant, a woman of forty in spectacles, and who took part in the conversation, brought from the cellar; and finally on a family portrait that hung above the fireplace. A portrait was always a loadstone ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... flourished; and the mountain north of the Main which was all one emerald. "I think," he said, "that, though no man has ever had the fruition of these marvels, they are likely to be more true than false. I hold that God has kept this land of America to the last to be the loadstone of adventurers, and that there are greater wonders to be seen than any that man has imagined. The pity is that I have spent my best years scratching like a hen at its doorstep instead of entering. I have a notion some day to travel straight west to the sunset. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... have no wrong from me. Here is an order, well warranted, to clear the Lodge at Woodstock, and abandon it to thy master's keeping, or those whom he shall appoint. He will have his uncle and pretty cousin with him, doubtless. Fare thee well—think on what I told thee. They say beauty is a loadstone to yonder long lad thou dost wot of; but I reckon he has other stars at present to direct his course than bright eyes and fair hair. Be it as it may, thou knowst my purpose—peer out, peer out; keep a constant and careful look-out on every ragged ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... single subject of grammar, a topic rendered only more tenebrific by the labours of his successors, and which seems still to possess an attraction for authors in proportion as they can make nothing of it. A singular loadstone for theologians, also, is the Beast in the Apocalypse, whereof, in the course of my studies, I have noted two hundred and three several interpretations, each lethiferal to all the rest. Non nostrum est tantas componere lites, yet I have myself ventured upon ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... kind; but this is because it was executed by Lord Berners, long after our present period. Also, being of that date, it represents the latest French form of the story, which was a very popular one, and incorporated very large borrowings from other sources (the loadstone rock, the punishment of Cain, and so forth) which are foreign to the subject and substance of the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... there is a mind like a loadstone, which, plunged amidst steel and brass filings, gathers up the steel and repels the brass. But it is generally just the opposite. If you attempt to plunge through a hedge of burs to get one blackberry, you ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... images and vases of gold and silver were carefully melted, and those of a less valuable metal were contemptuously broken, and cast into the streets, Theophilus labored to expose the frauds and vices of the ministers of the idols; their dexterity in the management of the loadstone; their secret methods of introducing a human actor into a hollow statue; [4711] and their scandalous abuse of the confidence of devout husbands and unsuspecting females. [48] Charges like these may seem to deserve some degree of credit, as ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... a negative condition beneath the natural, by the laying on of hands a person in a good, healthy condition is capable of communicating to the necessity of the weak. For the negative condition of the patient will as naturally draw from the strong, as the loadstone draws from the magnet, until both become equally charged. And as fevers are a positive condition of the system "beyond the natural," the normal condition of the healer will, by the laying on of the hands, absorb these positive atoms, until the fever of the patient becomes reduced ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... registered at the Brown Palace Hotel. On the morning of the 11th he came down to breakfast to find the streets white and the air thick with snow. A wild northwester was blowing down from the mountains, one of those beautiful storms that wrap Denver in dry, furry snow, and make the city a loadstone to thousands of men in the mountains and on the plains. The brakemen out on their box-cars, the miners up in their diggings, the lonely homesteaders in the sand hills of Yucca and Kit Carson Counties, begin to think of Denver, muffled in snow, full of ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... met him on his appearance with every show of honor and respect. Edgar seemed pleased by his reception, entered the castle, but was not long there before he asked to see its lady, saying merrily that she had been the loadstone that had drawn him thither, and that he was eager ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... woman most?—Thus spake the iron to the loadstone: "I hate thee most, because thou attractest, but art too ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "As the loadstone to his star, as the compass to the pole, as the river to the sea, so come I, fair tyrant of my heart. For thy sake, I even salute these thy satellites, O moon of my vision! who ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... haste, and they took counsel. "Lord," said the nobles unto Matholwch, "there is no other counsel than to retreat over the Linon (a river which is in Ireland), and to keep the river between thee and him, and to break down the bridge that is across the river, for there is a loadstone at the bottom of the river that neither ship nor vessel can pass over." So they retreated across the river, and ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... thirty carats have been dug up. At Mompava there are said to be very rich copper mines; but from want of population, a vigorous government, and scientific mineralogists, little is to be hoped from them at the present day. At Pulo Bongorong, near Borneo Proper, there is plenty of loadstone found. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... sin to the diamond which was thought by its presence to prevent the loadstone from attracting iron. A soul attached to venial sin is retarded in its progress in the path of justice, but when the hindrance is removed God dilates the heart and makes it to run in the way of ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... period of sixty or seventy years magnetism was almost wholly confined to Germany. Men of sense and learning devoted their attention to the properties of the loadstone; and one Father Hell, a Jesuit, and professor of astronomy at the University of Vienna, rendered himself famous by his magnetic cures. About the year 1771 or 1772 he invented steel-plates of a peculiar form, which he applied to the naked body as a cure ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... competence, and likely if anything to be biassed the other way) pretty certainly not Welsh in origin, and there is no reason to think that it originally had anything to do with Arthur. Even after it obeyed the strange "suck" of legends towards this centre whirlpool, or Loadstone Rock, of romance, it yielded nothing intimately connected with the Arthurian Legend itself at first, and such connection as succeeded seems pretty certainly[31] to be that of which Percevale is the hero, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... And lest a monarch should think he can reach further with his sceptre, the Roman eagle upon such a balance spread her wings from the ocean to Euphrates. Receive the sovereign power; you have received it, hold it fast, embrace it forever in your shining arms. The virtue of the loadstone is not impaired or limited, but receives strength and nourishment, by being bound in iron. And so giving your lordships much joy, I take my leave ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... what had not befallen him, according to his son? He had been stuck on to a rock of loadstone; he had been bitten by mosquitos as big as jackdaws—at least as jack-snipes; he had sat down to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, and it whisked him over on his face, and turned out to he a rattle-snake—at least, a boa- constrictor! Nay, Henry discoursed on the ponies he had himself tamed, the ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a reaction, very easy to be understood, it was now D'Harmental who was calm, and Roquefinette who was excited. Every instant he menaced D'Harmental with his long sword, but the frail rapier followed it as iron follows the loadstone, twisting and spinning round it like a viper. At the end of about five minutes the chevalier had not made a single lunge, but he had parried all those of his adversary. At last, on a more rapid thrust than the others, he came too late ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... utmost extent, and where again it forces its way out from the fulness with which it has taken possession of the mind of the student. The imagination gives out what it has first absorbed by congeniality of temperament, what it has attracted and moulded into itself by elective affinity, as the loadstone draws and impregnates iron. A little originality is more esteemed and sought for than the greatest acquired talent, because it throws a new light upon things, and is peculiar to the individual. The other is common; and may be had for ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... from the finding of the loadstone, or natural magnet. This is a stone which has the power of attracting iron. A steel needle rubbed on it becomes magnetized, as we say, and, when suspended by the center and allowed to move freely, always swings around until it points north and south. Hung on a pivot ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... like Mahomet, &c.] It is reported of Mahomet the great impostor, that having built a mosque, the roof whereof was of loadstone, and ordering his corpse, when he was dead, to be put into an iron coffin, and brought into that place, the loadstone soon attracted it near the top, where it still hangs in the air. No less fabulous is what the legend says of Ignatius Loyola, that his zeal and devotion transported ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... (Arabian Nights' Entertainments). He was wrecked on the loadstone mountain, which drew all the nails and iron bolts from his ship; but he overthrew the bronze statue on the mountain-top, which was the cause of the mischief. Agib visited the ten young men, each of whom ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... invaded the nurse's own private work-basket, lured by disappointing lumps of wax and fragments of rhubarb-root; but we did not find it. We believe in its existence none the less. Real as the coronation-stone of the Scottish kings now in Westminster Abbey, as the Caaba at Mecca, as the loadstone mountain against which dear old Sinbad was wrecked, as the meteor which fell into the State of Connecticut and the volcanic island which rose out of the Straits of Messina, as the rock of Plymouth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for them that night. They lit their pipes, put a specimen of the coal on the table, and made it a kind of loadstone of thought and conversation. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... skim with quicker impetus the smoking ice, let it touch that beetling edge, and, leaping from the tangent, let it dart through the air, let it strike the eddying waters, be sucked hurriedly down that hoarse black throat, wind among the roots of the everlasting hills, and split upon the loadstone of the centre. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sides: the evening was too far advanced to permit any farther observations to be made. [Note: The island of Cannay, one of the Hebrides, affects the needle in a nearly similar manner. A rock in it is named The Loadstone Rock.] Observed the variation of the needle by azimuth, to be 6. ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... Spain! a seaman's hand confers These glorious gifts, for a new world is hers. But where is he, that light whose radiance glows, The loadstone of succeeding mariners? Behold him crushed beneath o'ermastering woes— Hopeless, heart-broken, chained, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and beings no less extravagant and chimerical. Many Aristotelians have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their substantial forms. I shall only instance Albertus Magnus, who, in his dissertation upon the loadstone, observing that fire will destroy its magnetic virtues, tells us that he took particular notice of one as it lay glowing amidst a heap of burning coals, and that he perceived a certain blue vapour to arise from it, which he believed might ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... the present race of philosophers, having been long exercised upon electricity, has been lately transferred to magnetism; the qualities of the loadstone have been investigated, if not with much advantage, yet with great applause; and as the highest praise of art is to imitate nature, I hope no man will think the makers of artificial magnets celebrated or reverenced above ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... a chair, and supported her head with his hand. It was then that I distinctly recognised one of the asserted phenomena of mesmerism. The head of Mademoiselle M—— followed every where, with unerring certainty, the hand of her mesmeriser, and seemed irresistibly attracted to it as iron to the loadstone. At length Mr K—— succeeded in thoroughly awaking his patient, who, on being interrogated respecting her past sensations, said that she retained a recollection of her state of semi-consciousness, during which she much desired to have been able to sleep ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... of books exhaust his boundless energy and ingenuity, for in the five years preceding his death (1783-1788), he produced his "Natural History of Minerals" in five volumes, the last of which was mainly occupied with electricity, magnetism, and the loadstone. It is true that the researches of modern chemists have wrought havoc with Buffon's work in this field; but this was his misfortune rather than his fault, and leaves untouched the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... not mine. I did it, but it was not mine. I was forced at times to wander round, and round, and round that spot. If you had chained me up when the fit was on me, I should have broken away, and gone there. As truly as the loadstone draws iron towards it, so he, lying at the bottom of his grave, could draw me near him when he would. Was that fancy? Did I like to go there, or did I strive and wrestle with ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... resemblances between Dante and the founder of German mysticism. Not only in similes and illustrations, such as the tailor and his cloth, the needle and the loadstone, the flow of water to the sea, the gravitation of weights to the centre; or in such phrases as Eckhart's "nature possesses nothing swifter than the heaven," or his use of edilkeit "nobility," in reference to freewill, la ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... of their compasses varied so much, and moved so irregularly, that they were often compelled to quicken them with a touch of the loadstone. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... from that period we have deviated from our course for twenty-one days, and we have no wind to carry us back from the fate which awaits us after this day. To-morrow we shall arrive at a mountain of black stone, called loadstone: the current is now bearing us violently toward it, and the ships will fall in pieces, and every nail in them will fly to the mountain, and adhere to it; for God hath given to the loadstone a secret property by virtue of which everything of iron is attracted toward it. On that ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown |
