"Ball of fire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chance of getting well was to come here for change of air and scene—would I take her and her mother? Of course I would. They then told me that Dr. Smith had said his brother's case was perfectly hopeless. This upset me. My feet turned into ice and my head into a ball of fire. As soon as they left, I had the spare room arranged, and then went out and walked till dark to cool off my head, but to so little purpose that I had a bad night; the news about Prof. S. was so dreadful. Mr. Prentiss was appalled, too. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... round ball of fire in the west, would be out of sight in half an hour, and then the desolate darkness of the mountains would surround them. A wild turkey called to its mate in the distance, and small creatures of the air fluttered about, as if determined to know what human beings ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... already placed. He rang the bell, and walked to the window, to observe the appearance of the morning. A heavy snow had fallen during the night; and the sun, ascended to its meridian, shone through the thick atmosphere like a ball of fire. All seemed comfortless without; and turning back to the warm hearth, which was blazing at the other end of the room, he was reseating himself, when ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... floor. It was the work of an instant for my father to raise a window, wrap the lamp in the table-cloth, and throw both into the street. This left the room in darkness, and I don't think the cause of the accident occured to any of us, till there rushed from under the sofa a little ball of fire that flew round and round the room at a ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... minute of silence. "We can't," James said then. A grin began to spread over his face. "It might not be too bad an idea, at that, come to think of it. That ball of fire they picked out for you would be a blue-ribbon dish in anybody's cook-book. And Grand Lady Lemphi—" He kissed the tips of two fingers and waved them in the air. "Strictly Big League ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... all was that we shook hands most heartily with the captain next day; and that evening as the doctor, Jack Penny, Jimmy, Gyp, and I stood on the beach, we could see the schooner rounding a point of the great island, with the great red ball of fire—the sun—turning her sails into gold, till the darkness came down suddenly, as it does in these parts; and then, though there was the loud buzzing of hundreds of voices about the huts, we English folk seemed to feel that we were alone as it were, and cut off from all ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... wedding of the spring, the reminiscence in November of the nuptials of the May. Its own color, however, is not confined to gold. It may be of almost any hue and within the general limits of a circle of any form. Now it is a chariot wheel with petals for spokes; now a ball of fire with lambent tongues of flame; while another kind seems the button of some natural legion of honor, and still another a pin-wheel ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... could not wait for him. It serves him right.' She hoped he would now be caught red-handed. The sun had sunk low in the horizon by the time the dinghy reached the vessel, and nothing could be more beautiful than the slowly sailing ship moving across the great ball of fire. It looked like a fairy craft as ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... but the sun, although at its greatest altitude, glowed like a red ball of fire low down in the southern horizon, and a peculiar gloomy twilight hung over the white wintry landscape. I could not overcome the impression that the sun was just rising and that it would soon be broad day. A white ptarmigan ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... strength. But, on the second day, the heat grew appalling; not for the camels, for they love the broad glare of the sun, but for the Arabs, who, in spite of their hardihood, grew faint and weak as the sun, like a ball of fire, poured its scorching rays ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... caves—the few survivors come out, or dig their way out, to look upon a changed and blasted world. No cloud is in the sky, no rivers or lakes are on the earth; only the deep springs of the caverns are left; the sun, a ball of fire, glares in the bronze heavens. It is to this period that the Norse legend of Mimer's well, where Odin gave an eye for a ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... reaction that took place inside the sphere. Then Tom threw a switch, shooting a powerful bolt of current across the electrodes. The field strength of the electromagnets, controlled by rheostats, instantly shaped the charge into a glowing ball of fire! ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... cool, but the sweat stood in drops on Edward Conway's temple. He gulped, but swallowed only a dry lump, which immediately sprang back into his throat again and burned as a ball of fire. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... world of ours was made. He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, and that the Almighty thrust His finger into this bank of fog, and began slowly to move His finger around, increasing the speed until at last He whirled this bank of fog into a solid ball of fire. Then it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other banks of fog, and condensed the moisture without, until it fell in floods of rain upon its hot surface, and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal fires bursting outward through ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... requiring her bones, which were under a glass-case, to be "interred with every undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound ten, in another particular place."[12] Melmoth the Wanderer, when he becomes the wooer of Immalee, seems almost like a reincarnation of the Demon Lover. The wandering ball of fire that illuminates the dusky recesses of so many Gothic abbeys is but another manifestation of the Fate-Moon, which shines, foreboding death, after Thorgunna's funeral, in the Icelandic saga. The witchcraft and demonology that attracted Scott and "Monk" Lewis, may be traced ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... that the fishermen tell,— They say that a ball of fire fell Straight from the sky, with crash and roar, Lighting the bay from shore to shore; That the ship with a shudder and a groan, Sank through the waves to the caverns lone ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... to a bit of a brook. June scooped up the water in her hands, and Hungry lapped it with her pink tongue. But there was no dinner to be found, and no sign of Massa Linkum; the sun was like a great ball of fire above the tree-tops, and the child ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... simultaneous exclamation of all. A long chain of lightning and a heavy ball of fire seemed to shoot from the sky, lighting up the whole sea, revealing, and at the same time striking, in its descent, a full-rigged brig, which, like themselves, was scudding before the gale under bare poles, a few cables' length off their port beam. The next instant, a fearful explosion, heard loud ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... observed it to move, and sensibly to lower, as it carried down the descent of the bank to the shore. Here, in a very short time, its flame gradually expanded, and grew brighter, until it became of the size of a mans head, when it continued to shine a steady ball of fire. Such an object, lighted as it were by magic, under the brow of the mountain, and in that retired and unfrequented place, gave double interest to the beauty and singularity of its appearance. It did not at all resemble the large and unsteady ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the east. I was numbed and shivering with cold—but I was alive and safe. That square yard of good and solid wood was as much to me as if it had been a floating island. And as the light grew and grew, and the sun at last came up, a ball of fire out of the far horizon, I looked across the sea on all sides, hoping to catch sight of a sail, or of a wisp of smoke—of anything that would tell me of the near presence of human beings. And one fact I realized at once—I ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... same moment the light, that I had took to be Hatteras, rolled slowly, like a ball of fire, along the jib-top-sail stay to the top-mast head, and then I knew it was a St. Elmo's fire, a thing I'd heard of but ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... shady nooks by the stream; while on this particular occasion the very Sun seemed to have coaxed his setting beams into the production of most gorgeous colouring. Belts of golden cloud were streaking the western sky; such long trails of them, that it was impossible to say whether the great ball of fire, which gave them their glory, had actually gone down behind the horizon, or was just about to do so. At all events, it was unmistakably sundown: though the scene was far removed from northern latitudes, it might be designated by the familiar Scotch "gloamin'." The groves, and dells, ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... it's about time we started for home," said Harry, after a bit, as he noticed the sun, like a ball of fire, sinking to rest in the western sky. "I'll have to go after the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... above the lilac-tinted mountains, hung like a great suspended ball of fire. The cloudless sky glared like a furnace. Deep purple shadows crept into the canyons slashing the mountain range. The yellow dust-waves and the mirages disappeared with the going down of the sun. Still we were carried on and on. We would go down with the tide. Now ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... patriarch's fresh old heart. "My home be thine in Prague! Be thou my son, Who have no offspring save one simple girl. See, glorious youth, who dost renew the days Of David and of Samuel, early graced With God's anointing oil, how Israel Delights to honor who hath honored him." Then Raschi, though he felt a ball of fire Globe itself in his throat, maintained his calm, His cheek's opaque, swart pallor while he kissed Silent the Rabbi's withered hand, and bowed Divinely humble, his exalted head Craving the benison. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... seem to suspect that his indifference has any effect on me. I suppose he is unable to conceive my world or any world but his own. If he were at Blackdeep now and the sun were shining, would it be to him a glowing, blessed ball of fire? ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... center was a large diamond throne, and on this sat Maetta, clothed in a pure white gown, with a crown of diamonds on her brow and in her hand a golden scepter tipped with one enormous diamond that glowed like a ball of fire. Above the throne was a diamond-covered chandelier, with hundreds of electric lights, and these made the Grand Chamber of Diamonds glitter so brightly that Timtom was nearly blinded, and had to shade ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... down the rocky slope the setting sun gleamed straight in his eyes. It was poised like a ball of fire on the very edge of the mountains. Five minutes more and it would be gone. Fifteen minutes more and darkness would close in. Then the giant's eye must begin to glow, and to wink precisely once a minute all night long. If ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... Presently Montezuma himself came out, attended by his great lords, and in that ghastly light I saw that his lips worked and his hands writhed over each other. Nor was the miracle done with, for anon from the clear sky that hung over the city, descended a ball of fire, which seemed to rest upon the points of the lofty temple in the great square, lighting up the teocalli as with the glare of day. It vanished, but where it had been another light now burned, for the temple ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... not a breath of air stirring to cool the oppressive atmosphere. The earth and sky were suffused with a bright, red light, which gradually died away into a dim, purplish haze, through which the sun ascended like a ball of fire; while every blade and leaf hung motionless, as if awaiting breathlessly the coming of some ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... that her nose came into its minding to give us all their prowe and so to sinke us. But we, being resolute, so plyed them with our small shot that they could have no time to discharge their great ordnance; and when they began to approch we heeved into them a ball of fire, and by that meanes put them off; whereupon they once again fell asterne of us, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... sea which, towards the north, distinctly traced its boundary line upon the sky. At our feet lay fields of dazzling whiteness. Over our heads a pale azure, free from fog. To the north the disc of the sun seemed like a ball of fire, already horned by the cutting of the horizon. From the bosom of the water rose sheaves of liquid jets by hundreds. In the distance lay the Nautilus like a cetacean asleep on the water. Behind us, to the south and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... eyes scanned a vast sea, which scrawled its boundary line firmly against the background of the northern sky. At our feet: dazzling tracts of white. Over our heads: a pale azure, clear of mists. North of us: the sun's disk, like a ball of fire already cut into by the edge of the horizon. From the heart of the waters: jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent bouquets. Far off, like a sleeping cetacean: the Nautilus. Behind us to the south and east: an immense shore, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... fiction of resemblance, the proper relation between Creator and creature, between God and man, is unattainable.[121] If one exists, for whom the fiction or fancy has been converted into fact—for whom the Unknowable has proved itself to contain the Knowable: the ball of fire to hold within it an earthly substance unconsumed; he deserves credit for the magnitude, not scorn for the extravagance, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... hill, where they piled up an enormous heap of trunks and branches of trees, with the interstices filled with stubble, dried bark, and roots, and other such combustibles, and then setting the whole mass on fire, they rolled it down into the town—a vast ball of fire, roaring and crackling more and more, by the fanning of its flames in the wind, as it bounded along. The intelligent reader will, of course, pause and hesitate, in considering how far to credit such a story. It is obviously impossible that any ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hot and as if it were ready to burst through its channels. The sun seemed to follow him and blaze down upon him with the malicious persecution of a personal enemy. He shook his fist and swore at the ball of fire. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... finger into the bank of fog and began slowly describing a circle in its midst, increasing the speed gradually until the fog went whirling round his finger so rapidly that it was transformed into a glowing ball of fire. Then the Creative Spirit hurled the fiery ball from his hand, and it shot through the universe, burning its way through other banks of fog and condensing them into rain, which fell in great floods, cooling the surface of the immense ball. Flames ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... round-topped mountain and on the top of the mountain an enormous globe of cloud, full of lightning that flashed unceasingly, so that the cloud was at one instant like a ball of silver in the moonlight, and at the next like a ball of fire in darkness. Not a breath stirred the air, and the strange thunderstorm flashed out its life through the long hours, stationary and alone at its ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... risen—a great ball of fire changing all the blue of the sky to red and gold, and they watched as the gods had watched the flaming ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... Catalogues—many instances. One that stands out is—"bright ball of fire and light in a hurricane in England, Sept. 2, 1786." The remarkable datum here is that this phenomenon was visible forty minutes. That's about 800 times the duration that the orthodox ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... hours later he was dropped at a tank station, from which point he and the corporal struck straight into the barren desert. The glare of the afternoon sun was slanting down upon them when they started. Their shadows grew longer as they rode. The sun, a ball of fire, dropped below the distant horizon edge and left a sky of wonder to drive a painter ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... look around to see if I came back. Quickly I leaped to my former position. He confronted Wright. He was beyond the table where the gun lay. They were close together. My moment had come. The game was mine—and a ball of fire burst in my brain to race all ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... Night was something lightish, and one of the Sailors was got into the Skuttle (so I think they call it) at the Main-Top-Mast, looking out if he could see any Land; a certain Ball of Fire began to stand by him, which is the worst Sign in the World to Sailors, if it be single; but a very good one, if double. The Antients believed these ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... a match and lit a newspaper. In a moment a ball of fire was floating downward to him, and it was then that the smell of dust and kerosene entered his consciousness as pincers enter the flesh of men in torment. He stood up with hands upstretched to catch the fire—caught it—bore it ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines of the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... chillun," she said, "me and my sister one night was comin' from spring. Twas in de winter time and jus' as cold, twas dark and I had de light. Sister say: 'Babe, don't let dat light go out.' Jus' den I seed it—a horse's head all spread out in fore! A big ball of fire! I yelled: 'Oh, sister, look at de horse wid a head of fire!' She knock me out for dead! She grab dat light and run home and lef' me in de wood. When I come to I run to my mother crying and she say: 'Now Nancy, you know you kin see 'em ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... twilights are short here, and that, when the sun disappeared, color vanished from the sky. There was a wonderful light on all the inner bay, as we put off from shore. Ischia was one mass of violet color, As we got from under the island, there was the sun, a red ball of fire, just dipping into the sea. At once the whole horizon line of water became a bright crimson, which deepened as evening advanced, glowing with more intense fire, and holding a broad band of what seemed solid color for more than three quarters of an hour. The colors, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
