"Pyrotechnical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rapidly. I must admit the phenomenon was singularly beautiful. The telescopic effect of a snowstorm with the sun as a background I had never before seen. It reminded me of the golden rain which is sometimes seen falling from a flight of sky-rockets during pyrotechnic displays; I would gladly have dispensed with the spectacle, for it necessarily followed that the sun and Venus again disappeared from view. The clouds gathered, the snowstorm descended as heavily as ever, and we hardly dared to hope ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... bit deeply into the stubborn rod of energy. Brighter, thicker, and longer grew the discharges as the gnawing plane drew more and more power; but in direct ratio to that power the rod grew larger, denser, and ever harder to cut. More and more vivid became the pyrotechnic display of electric brilliance, until suddenly the entire tractor rod disappeared. At the same instant a blast of intolerable flame erupted from the Boise's flank and the whole enormous fabric of her shook and quivered under the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... Words from a person who has never read The Act he claims him urgent to repeal. Such quips and qizzings [as he reckons them] He implicates as gathered from long hoards Stored up with cruel care, to be discharged With sudden blaze of pyrotechnic art On the devoted, gentle, shrinking head O' the right incomparable gentleman! [Laughter.] But were my humble, solemn, sad oration [Laughter.] Indeed such rattle as he rated it, Is it not strange, and passing precedent, That the illustrious chief of Government ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... are not exactly new inventions. About the time of artillery's beginning, the military fireworker came into the business of providing pyrotechnic engines of war; later, his job included the spectacular fireworks that were set off in celebration of victory ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... will, inspired him with an idea. He set out on foot to Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followed the side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed with lights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of a pyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then he observed that blinds and curtains were being drawn in the noble mansion, shutting out from its superb nobility the miserable, crude, poverty-stricken world. With the exception of the glow in the fan light over the majestic portals, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... As he spoke, a pyrotechnic display enveloped the entire ship as a radiation from the foreign vessel struck the other neutralizing screen and dissipated its force harmlessly in the ether. Instantly Seaton threw on the full power of his refrigerating system and shot in ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... among the offices of stock-brokers as the news flew on the ticker. Members of firms who were not on the floor gathered about the tickers in excited groups and watched the pyrotechnic fluctuations of Sugar to the exclusion of all other stocks. The quotations came out at two and three points apart. One minute the stock was away up, and the next it seemed to fall hopelessly. Then it would as suddenly soar upward again. It ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... a new world for me out of primeval chaos, and for aeons of centuries I dizzied myself gazing upon the pyrotechnic marvel. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of his purpose to apply his understanding of chemical principles and his own experience to the solution of pyrotechnic problems, for he continues: ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... their blue tank if we did not see them suffering with surfeit, and hanging in motionless misery amid the clear water under a cloud of bread crumbs. We are such devotees of the special attractions offered from time to time that we do not miss a single balloon ascension or pyrotechnic display. In fact, it happened to me one summer that I studied so earnestly and so closely the countenance of the lady who went up (in trunk-hose), in order to make out just what were the emotions of a lady who ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... great orgy of light. The eggs are luminous; the grubs likewise. The full-grown females are magnificent light-houses, the adult males retain the glimmer which the grubs already possessed. We can understand the object of the feminine beacon; but of what use is all the rest of the pyrotechnic display? To my great regret, I cannot tell. It is and will be, for many a day to come, perhaps for all time, the secret of animal physics, which is deeper than the physics ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... capital illustration—that of the clown and his two pieces of fireworks. No matter in what pantomime the scene occurs, as it may do for any. The clown approaches the door of a dealer in fireworks, finds no one on duty in the shop, enters, and comes out laden with pyrotechnic spoils. He takes a small rocket, fires it, and is knocked down, frightened and stunned by the unexpectedly-heavy explosion. But he recovers directly, and determines to try the experiment over again. There is one immense rocket ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... When the two forts were captured, they disappeared in a great blaze. Then the ship, the symbol of the city of Paris, appeared and took its station between two columns of light. The decoration changed, and first the Temple of Peace was seen, then that of Hymen—a real pyrotechnic masterpiece. After the fireworks the Emperor and Empress went first into the record room, then into the concert hall, where was sung a cantata, with words by Arnault and music by Mhul, which began with this apostrophe ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Hopalong's nose, and missing. But he made contact with his own face, which stopped a short-arm blow from the owner of the aforesaid nose, a jolt full of enthusiasm and purpose. Beautiful and dazzling flashes of fire filled the air and just then something landed behind his ear and prolonged the pyrotechnic display. When the skyrockets went up he lost interest in the proceedings and dropped to the floor like a ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... paid but moderate attention to shots. They were usually merely pyrotechnic, and indicated rejoicing rather than death. But here and there she heard a window raised, and then lowered again. The hill had gone back to bed. Anna went into her room and dressed. For the first time it had occurred to her that she might be held ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... its being a calm evening—with the prospect of a pyrotechnic display later—permitted us to remain on the Fair Grounds longer than we usually did; hence we determined to ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... time has come to formulate, authoritatively, the precise scope of intellect which such distinctions suggest and to define the shorthand of conversation which their use has made practicable. The rapid spread of the theory, traveling from Sulphite to Sulphite, like the spark of a pyrotechnic set-piece, till the thinking world has been over-violently illuminated, has obscured its genesis and diverted attention from the simplicity and force of its fundamental principles.[1] In this, its progress has been like that of slang, which, ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... incandescent, furiously pyrotechnic, raveningly expanding atomic fireball that in seconds seemed to fill ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... among the knowing ones, and he is shrewd enough to prefer the prestige of concealment to the tickling of his vanity by publicity. The most noticeable feature in his work is its quiet, effective style of composition, which is utterly free from the pyrotechnic arts ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... time they had come to an end of all the deep reflections, all the moralizings, small and great, all the bad puns made on a subject already exhausted by Rabelais three hundred and fifty years ago. It was not a little to their credit that the pyrotechnic display was cut short with a final ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac |
