"Aurora borealis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the invitation, tossed it, together with a note from Dick, across to Barney without comment, the color of his entire world changed for that favorite son of Broadway. The surly gloom of the end of a profitless enterprise became magically an aurora borealis of superior hopes:—no, something infinitely more substantial than any heaven-painting flare of ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the Esquimaux were determined to have the last word, and went on firing after the cannon had ceased to roar. It was a calm night without moon, but the brilliant display of numberless stars, and a glorious Aurora Borealis, increased the enjoyment. The brethren, Stock and Haller, coming on board, we could not quit the deck till midnight; sleep was not thought of. Captain Martin also displayed a number of blue lights, to the great astonishment and gratification of the Esquimaux." The Captain ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... with which we stood to the southward; having frequent showers of sleet and snow. But, in the night, we had fair weather, and a clear serene sky; and, between midnight and three o'clock in the morning, lights were seen in the heavens, similar to those in the northern hemisphere, known by the name of Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights; but I never heard of the Aurora Australia been seen before. The officer of the watch observed that it sometimes broke out in spiral rays, and in a circular form; then its light was very strong, and its appearance beautiful. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... flood A beautiful Ice Palace stood, A dome of frost-work, on the plan Of that once built by Empress Anne,[1] Which shone by moonlight—as the tale is— Like an Aurora Borealis. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... (if the term may be used) to certain midnight apparitions. The Aurora Borealis is always a pleasant companion; a meteor seems to come like a messenger from departed spirits; and the blossoming of trees in the moonlight becomes a sight looked ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... interfere with their travelling. The long nights of the Polar regions are not like those of more Southern latitudes. They are sometimes so clear, that one may read the smallest print. What with the coruscations of the aurora borealis, and the cheerful gleaming of the Northern constellations, one may travel without difficulty throughout the livelong night. I am sure, my young friend, you have made good use of your globes, and need not be told that the length of both nights and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... The Aurora Borealis, or northern lights,[162] appear with great brilliancy in the clear Canadian sky, especially during the winter nights. Starting from behind the distant horizon, they race up through the vault of heaven, spreading over all space ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... his flow of colloquial eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of that conciser quality, wit. Of satiric wit he possessed a very peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr. Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason, glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed difficult to define its nature; ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... rocks, when they crystallized, emitted light, even enough to raise a crop by. And he says "vegetation might have depended on the glare of volcanoes in the moon." What do you think would be the fate of agriculture depending on the "glare of volcanoes in the moon?" Then he says "the aurora borealis." Why, you couldn't raise cucumbers by the aurora borealis. And he says "liquid rivers of molten granite." I would like to have a farm on that stream. He guesses everything of the kind except lightning-bugs and foxfire. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... have explained—to his own satisfaction, at least—the many freak phenomena: a solitary light spirally ascending upward until lost in the clouds; sprays of fire and spark-showers illumining the sky; rainbow arcs of angry red that flickered, as an aurora borealis, from ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... was too young to shed much light. But just after Jean and Jake sleepily laid aside their pipes and closed their eyes, the aurora borealis flamed out icily in a clear sky, bringing more than all the light Bill needed. In that frozen stillness Bill's brain was like the interior of a lighted factory with all its machinery in full swing. Fed by hate and slowly accumulated ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... had placed round the hut to catch foxes, which I assure you were considered quite a dainty by us poor wretches, greedy as we were after fresh meat. On the 4th of November, the sun was no longer visible, and a long and dreary night set in. All the light we had came from the moon, aurora borealis, and the lamps which we hung around our hut, and fed with bear's fat. The only consolation left us was that with the sun the bears had left us, and we could now leave the hut without danger of being devoured. The cold still continued to ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... most dangerous components of the sea is the snowstorm. The snowstorm is above all things magnetic. The pole produces it as it produces the aurora borealis. It is in the fog of the one as in the light of the other; and in the flake of snow as in the streak ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... book is admirably composed, if we can bring ourselves to admit that the genre is ever admirable. The writer's vocabulary has become opulent, his phrases flash and detonate, each page is full of unconnected sparks and electrical discharges. A sort of aurora borealis of wit streams and rustles across the dusky surface, amusing to the reader, but discontinuous, and insufficient to illuminate the matter in hand. It is extraordinary that a man can make so many picturesque, striking, and apparently apposite remarks, and yet ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... teaches—nor finally, (with yet more recent dreamers) of chemical compositions by elective affinity, or of an electric light at once the immediate object and the ultimate organ of inward vision, which rises to the brain like an Aurora Borealis, and there, disporting in various shapes,—as the balance of plus and minus, or negative and positive, is destroyed or re-established,— images out both past and present. Aristotle delivers a just theory without pretending to an hypothesis; or in other ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sledges. In the months of December and January it is true that the daylight in Arctic Canada (north of Lake Athapaska) became so short that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three hours a short distance above the horizon. But there were compensations. The brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, even without the assistance of the moon and the stars, made some amends for that deficiency, for it was frequently so light all night that travellers could see to read a very small print (Samuel Hearne). The importance ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... disappearing again, and these would be our clouds. From them he would see rain, hail and snow falling to the earth, and from time to time bright flashes would shoot across the air- ocean, which would be our lightning. Nay even the brilliant rainbow, the northern aurora borealis, and the falling stars, which seem to us so high up in space, would be seen by him near to our earth, and all ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... are the result. Humboldt mentions in his "Cosmos" that, during an eruption of Kotlugja, one of the southern Icelandic volcanoes, the lightning from the cloud of volcanic vapor killed eleven horses and two men (Cosmos i. 223). Great displays of the aurora borealis usually accompany the volcanic eruptions of this island—doubtless resulting from the quantity of electricity imparted to the higher atmosphere by the condensation of the ascending vapors. On the 18th of August, 1783, while the great eruption of Skaptar ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various |
