"Comet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... death the dust has been allowed to gather over his matchless books. Between the two extremes lies the truth; and the true Byron is just now being discovered. Byron in literature will not die. He is the brightest comet that has darted into our ken since Shakespeare's time; and as comets have no orbit, but are vagrants of the heavens, so was he. Tragedy was in his train, and his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... which she ran her red machine had many an unexpected turning,—now it led her into peculiar danger; now into contact with strange travelers; and again into experiences by fire and water. But, best of all, "The Comet" never ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... going, and it gets too little rest, and that keeps my soul in a flutter too. It must be getting to mass and getting to confession, and saying aves and doing penance, it is such a busy little soul of mine; but we are not all alike, and madame's body goes in a more stately way. I am like a comet, she is like the sun steady, steady, round and round, with plenty of sleep and the comfortable darkness. Sometimes madame goes hard; so does the sun in summer-shines, shines, shines like a furnace. Madame's body ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet—erratic, inapprehensible, untraceable. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... unstable sol-type star in Cygnus collapsed abruptly and a number of otherwise promising planets became unfit for human exploitation. In Andromeda, a super-nova flared. The light of its explosion would not reach Kandar for very many thousands of years. The largest comet in the galaxy reached perihelion, and practically outshone the sun it circled. Nobody saw it, because nobody lived there. On a dreary, red-sky planet in Mousset, a thing squirmed heavily out of a stagnant sea and blinked ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the result of too much "easy-goingness," not of too much strain. As for Meredith, his wit was the wit of an abounding imagination. Lady Butcher gives some delightful examples of it. He could not see a baby in long robes without a witty image leaping into his mind. He said he adored babies "in the comet stage." ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... flame, So oft directed to destroy, Led thee to circle with thy name, The smile of Love, and Hope, and Joy! Those fires, that lend the dangerous blaze The devious comet trails afar, Might form the pure benignant rays That gild the morning's gentle star— Sure, where the Hero's ashes rest, The nations late emerg'd from night Still base—with love's unwearied care That spot in lavish flowers is dress'd, And fancy's dear inventive rite Still ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... a night journey by rail is a difficult matter; you go like an arrow whistling through a cloud; it is traveling in the abstract. You cross provinces, kingdoms even, unawares. From time to time during the night, I saw through the window the comet, rushing down upon the earth, with lowered head and hair streaming far behind; suddenly glares of gaslight dazzled my eyes, sanded with the goldust of sleep; or the pale bluish radiance of the moon gave an air of fairy-land to scenes doubtless poor enough by day. Conscientiously, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... flashes; no smoke nor yet any sound, and a bustle and stir among the little figures. So much for the hill. Immediately over the rear truck of the train a huge white ball of smoke sprang into being and tore out into a cone like a comet. Then came, the explosions of the near guns and the nearer shell. The iron sides of the truck tanged with a patter of bullets. There was a crash from the front of the train and half a dozen sharp reports. The Boers had opened fire on us ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... of celestial bodies—the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars—our satellite enjoys one special claim on our attention. The moon is our nearest permanent neighbour. It is just possible that a comet may occasionally approach the earth more closely than the moon but with this exception the other celestial bodies are all many hundreds or thousands, or even many millions, of times further ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... be compared to a comet,—a body with a bright head and a nebulous tail. Like all radicals and reformers they had a fringe of unbalanced and crotchety folk. It must be said, too, that absorption in a topic remote from the concerns of one's daily ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... party which chooses as its name the "Independence Party." Vitalized by the infusion in its body of the energetic and patriotic young men of the country, the new party sprang into the lists, as it were, full grown. Its period of adolescence has been as rapid as the transit of a comet. Yesterday it had not existed, even in the minds of dreamers; to-day, in the convention of one of the great political organizations an attempt was made to throttle the voice of the majority. The voice of a single ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... produced from Comet, July 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... my revenge. I'm goin' to take ten cases of giant powder and blow the mill of Honorable John Lawson Davis, Member of Congress, Champion Double-Jointed, Ground-and-Lofty, Collar-and-Elbow, Skin and Liar, so high in the air that folks'll think there's a new comet, ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... earth cast by the sun. But he was as one born out of due time. We are all familiar with the use made by students of unfulfilled prophecy of every extraordinary occurrence in nature, such as the sudden appearance of a comet, an earthquake, an eclipse, etc. We know how mysteriously they interpret those simple passages in the Bible about the sun being darkened and the moon being turned into blood. If they were not wilfully blind, such facts as are established by the following quotations would open their eyes to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... almost awful joy at beholding a mortal goddess! The house was crowded with hundreds more than it could hold, with thousands of admiring spectators who went away without a sight. This extraordinary phenomenon of tragic excellence! this star of Melpomene! this comet of the stage! this sun of the firmament of the Muses! this moon of blank verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned dagger! this empress of pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakespeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Juno commanding ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... design you planned here, I discoursed on, as my theme, The swift flight, the stare undazzled Of a pride-plumed eagle bold, Which with back-averted talons, Scorning the tame fields of air, Seeks the sphere of fire, and passes Through its flame a flash of feathers, Or a comet's hair untangled. I extolled its soaring flight, Saying, "Thou at last art master Of thy house, thou'rt king of birds, It is right thou should'st surpass them." He who needed nothing more Than to touch upon the matter Of high royalty, with a bearing As became ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... have even come to think, that such a visitant of our skies may exercise a beneficial influence. We at least recollect when old gentlemen, after dinner, brightened up at the mention of 'claret 1811,' merrily attributing the extraordinary merits of the liquor to the comet of that year. But comets, in the cool eye of modern science, are not without their terrors. Crossing as they often do the paths of the planets in their progress to and from their perihelia, it cannot but be that they should now and then come in contact ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... instance, that the moon was an ancient comet, which, whilst travelling along its elongated orbit round the sun, passed near to the earth, and was retained in her circle of attraction. The drawing-room astronomers pretended to explain thus the burnt aspect of the moon, a misfortune ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... declared solemnly, "a comet, Lauchlan, so far as Ah can mak' oot frae the book, is jist naething more nor less than an indestructible, incomprehensible combustion o' ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... two weeks passed. Then, one day, a comet of amazing brilliancy shot suddenly into our social orbit, and things happened. That this interesting stellar phenomenon was a Russian grand duke, a nephew of the Czar, but added to the ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... be pure spirit; she regarded matter with antipathy as something foul, to be held at arms' length lest it should stain and corrupt the soul; the most she would willingly admit was that mind and matter might travel side by side, like a doubleheaded comet, on parallel lines that never met, with a preestablished harmony that existed only in ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... beautiful humming-birds in Bolivia. Among them is the sappho comet, or bar-tailed humming-bird. In winter it descends into the lowlands of Peru, among the abodes of men, visiting their gardens and orchards with perfect fearlessness. The larger part of the plumage is of a light green, the lower portion of the back a deep ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... dexterity and quiet, displaying at the same time a small white hand, on the back of which was marked a comet and three daggers. As he had the discretion not to open his mouth, and performed all his duties with skill, his intrusion in a few minutes was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the grave of Hortense, with the carved likeness of the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness reigns around the spot, but above it, in the air, hovers the imperial eagle. The imperial mantle, studded with its golden bees, undulates behind him, like the train of a comet; the dark-red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the golden cross, hangs around his neck, and in his beak he bears a full-blooming branch ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... OFFICIAL. She comet by next drain. Das telegram say: 'Halt einen Herren mit schwarzem Buben and schwarzem Gepack'. 'Rest gentleman mit ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... darkness. In the midst of the general auroral glow and the specially vivid flashes made by the frightened fish darting ahead and to right and left of the canoe, our attention was suddenly fixed by a long, steady, comet-like blaze that seemed to be made by some frightful monster that was pursuing us. But when the portentous object reached the canoe, it proved to be only our little ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... gained the heights. "Then," said I, "why did not they stay there?" "Oh, then reappeared 'la petite trahison,'" and so they go on, and well do they deserve, and heartily do I wish, to have their pride and impudence lowered. But when I see what war is, when I see the devastation this comet bears in its sweeping tail, its dreadful impartiality involving alike the innocent and the guilty, I should be very sorry if it depended on me to pronounce sentence, or cry "havoc and let ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... before. Its name had come to have the purity of an abstract idea. In great sleepy continents, in land-locked harvest towns, in the little islands of the sea, for four days men watched that name as they might stand out at night to watch a comet, or ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own horizon—from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question "Why?" "Wherefore?" which had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... come, after a while, and take my breakfast. There is no accounting for your master's movements. I would as soon engage to keep up with a comet. There, let go my dress; I am going into the study for a while." She went slowly down the steps and, locking the door of the study to prevent intrusion, looked around the room. There was an air of confusion, as though books and chairs had been hastily moved ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... like the one here described, made with his own hands, a farmer boy not many years ago discovered a comet which had escaped the watchful ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... with the approaching Jubilee rejoicings a spirit in some sense martial filled the air, and Grimbal with his yeomanry was destined to play a part. A transient comet-blaze of militarism often sparkles over fighting nations at any season of universal joy, and that more especially if the keystone of the land's constitution be a crown. This fire found material inflammable enough in the hearts of many Devonshire men, and before its warm impulse John ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a comet which had recently become visible through their telescopes, and found from its position that it was undoubtedly Halley's comet, for which our astronomers were so eagerly watching. I wondered whether any of them had been fortunate enough to discover it early in ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... fire within its bosom, instead of being put out, burned fiercer than ever, and quickly began to consume the dead carcase. Thus it fell out of the sky, all a-flame, and (it being nightfall before it reached the earth) was mistaken for a shooting star or a comet. But at early sunrise, some cottager's were going to their day's labour, and saw, to their astonishment, that several acres of ground were strewn with black ashes. In the middle of a field there was a heap of whitened bones, a great deal higher than a haystack. Nothing ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the other symptoms, and was requested to repeat his visit the next day. Napoleon was now within a month of his death, and although he occasionally spoke with the eloquence and vehemence he had so often exhibited, his mind was evidently giving way. The reported appearance of a comet was taken as a token of his death. He was excited, and exclaimed with emotion, "A comet! that was the precursor ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... steps of the store with Cleve, Lola of the Golden Cloud, blazing like a comet in her red-and-black came face to face with her purposely. What was in Lola's head none would ever know, but she wanted to ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... a river, Leaped into the light of morning, O'er the precipice plunging downward Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet. And the Spirit, stooping earthward, With his finger on the meadow Traced a winding pathway for it, Saying to it, "Run in ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... merry insect the grasshopper; shivering under the influence of the Jupiter Pluvius of England, the watery St. Swithin; peering at that scarce personage the sun, when he happens to make his appearance, as intently as astronomers look after a comet, or the common people stare at a balloon; exclaiming against the cold weather, just as we used to exclaim against the warm. 'What a change from last year!' is the first sentence you hear, go where you may. Everybody remarks ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... hurry in the world, but write I will. Besides, I must wish you joy: you are warriors; nay, conquerors[1]; two things quite novel in this war, for hitherto it has been armies without fighting, and deaths without killing. We talk of this battle as of a comet; "Have you heard of the battle?" it is so strange a thing, that numbers imagine you may go and see it at Charing Cross. Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don't quite like it; they are afraid it should ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... succeeded, for his license had been taken away by the new movement. The bailiff, a wolfish-looking creature, who was always to be had for drink, also sat there trailing his vast loose moustache over a table. When Grandmoulin entered, a little crowd, like the tail of a comet, followed him into the room. As he passed through he said no word, but drew his cloak about him and moved forward sphinx-like to the bar of the court, where he sat down and commenced to ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... Pascent. Then in the eventime, the moon gan to shine, well nigh all as bright as the sunlight. Then they saw afar a marvellous star; it was broad, it was large, it was immense! From it came gleams terribly shining, the star is named in Latin, comet. Came from the star a gleam most fierce; at this gleam's end was a dragon fair, from this dragon's mouth came gleams enow! But twain there were mickle, unlike to the others; the one drew toward France, the other toward Ireland. The gleam that toward France ...
— Brut • Layamon
... natural Death, thou art joint-twin To sweetest Slumber! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, Whilst ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... what mischief he may brew With such a telescope brand-new At the four-hundredth power? He may bring some new comet down So near that it'll singe the town And do the Burgess-Corps crisp-brown Ere they can storm ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... habits of wandering precluded the possibility of his making a permanent impression. By the time people had fully awakened to the significance of his presence among them he was gone. So there grew up a legend concerning him, but no true biography. He was like a comet, very shaggy and very brilliant, but he stayed so brief a time in a place that it was impossible for one man to give either the days or the thought to the reproduction of his more serious and considered words. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... tribes of the beasts; and that since it had not availed the dreams must come from Gaznak, the greatest magician among the spaces of the stars. And he read to the people out of the Book of Magicians, which tells the comings of the comet and foretells his coming again. And he told them how Gaznak rides upon the comet, and how he visits Earth once in every two hundred and thirty years, and makes for himself a vast, invincible fortress and sends out dreams to feed on the minds of men, and may never ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... What was it the old preacher said—that 'touch of God' business? 'Touch—'" he laughed, "not touch, but blow, I say—a blow that ground me into star-dust and flung me into space, my heart a burning comet and my soul the tail of it, dissolving before my very eyes. What then can I, a lion, dying, care for the doe that crosses my path? The beautiful doe, beautiful even as you are. Do you ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... startled the intellectual world of the time and Montcalm set out to read them, omitting the articles which had no interest for him or which he could not understand. C is a copious letter in an encyclopaedia, and Montcalm found excellent the articles on Christianity, College, Comedy, Comet, Commerce, Council, and so on. Wolfe—soon to be his opponent—had the same taste for letters. The two men, unlike in body, for Wolfe was tall and Montcalm the opposite, were alike in spirit, painstaking students as well ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... as partially to disarm his reply of its sting. "In this instance, sir, our armies are rather gaining on the comet." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the man of science supports us. The astronomer has no hesitation in saying that the comet, which has sailed away through space, exists, and will return. The geologist describes for us the world as it was in past ages, when no eye ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... Heavens," still dependent solely upon the unaided eye as a collector of starlight, Tycho made those invaluable observations that enabled Kepler to deduce the true laws of planetary motion. But after all these centuries the sidereal world embraced no objects, barring an occasional comet or temporary star, that lay beyond the vision of the earliest astronomers. The conceptions of the stellar universe, except those that ignored the solid ground of observation, were limited by the small aperture of ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... for nature gave Unerring portents of worse ills to come. The angry gods filled earth and air and sea With frequent prodigies; in darkest nights Strange constellations sparkled through the gloom: The pole was all afire, and torches flew Across the depths of heaven; with horrid hair A blazing comet stretched from east to west And threatened change to kingdoms. From the blue Pale lightning flashed, and in the murky air The fire took divers shapes; a lance afar Would seem to quiver or a misty torch; A noiseless thunderbolt from cloudless sky Rushed down, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Fire-ball through the midnight air; Dart from the North on pale electric streams, 130 Fringing Night's sable robe with transient beams. —OR rein the Planets in their swift careers, Gilding with borrow'd light their twinkling spheres; Alarm with comet-blaze the sapphire plain, The wan stars glimmering through its silver train; 135 Gem the bright Zodiac, stud the glowing pole, Or give the Sun's phlogistic orb ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... have been described in all her purple Spots. The Fever might have marched before her, Pain might have stood at her right Hand, Phrenzy on her Left, and Death in her Rear. She might have been introduced as gliding down from the Tail of a Comet, or darted upon the Earth in a Flash of Lightning: She might have tainted the Atmosphere with her Breath; the very glaring of her Eyes might have scattered Infection. But I believe every Reader will think, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... in it": either a mitten for him, or a disappointment for her, or wedding-cake for all—generally and preferably, of course, the wedding-cake;—and belonging to such friendship as lawfully as a tail belongs to a comet, was a great, wide-spreading area of gossip. It was only in the case of Phebe Lane that this universal and common-sense rule had its one particular and unreasonable exception; and it was acting upon a ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... seated, Isabella's escort halted at the lower end, and she herself advanced alone in all her inconceivable beauty, producing an effect like that of a brilliant meteor shooting through the sky on a calm clear night, or of a sunbeam darting at the first dawn of day through a mountain gorge. A comet she seemed, portending a fiery doom to the hearts of many in that presence hall. Full of meekness and courtesy, she advanced to the foot of the throne, knelt before the queen, and said to her in English, "May it please your Majesty to extend your royal hands ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Science, is in the middle of it, and makes the scene still more noticeable to us. See, as the finish of the ceremonies, she has mounted a high swift horse, sword girt to her side,—a great rider always, this young Queen;—and gallops, Hungary following like a comet-tail, to the Konigsberg [KING'S-HILL so called; no great things of a Hill, O reader; made by barrow, you can see], to the top of the Konigsberg; there draws sword; and cuts, grandly flourishing, to the Four Quarters of the Heavens: 'Let any mortal, from whatever ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... personality. Poor fellow, though I pitied him, I did admire his spunk in holding back. It seems that as an editor he took to telling falsehoods on his own account so often that the Syndicate is packing him off as Special Correspondent to a tailless comet. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... the note which he knew contained Grell's advertisement. Although outwardly he was the least emotional of men, he always worked at high tension in the investigation of a case. No astronomer could discover a new comet, no scientist a new element with greater delight than that which animated the square-faced detective while he was ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... to a vassal who would fain hold land without owning a lord, and who goeth against the fealty and homage due from him and his predecessors?" The answer was, that the lord ought in that case to take back the fief as his own property. "As my name is Louis," said the king, "the Comet of La Marche doth claim to hold land in such wise, land which hath been a fief of France since the days of the valiant King Clovis, who won all Aquitaine from King Alaric, a pagan without faith or creed, and all the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... by observation, 20 deg. 59" north. A comet has been seen for the last ten or twelve nights, in the south-west, about equal to a star of the second magnitude, with a tail of about 8 ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... scattered to the never ceasing winds that swept the great crysolite city towers in ever increasing fury. That had been the last wish of each as he had passed away, dying from sheer old age. True they had fought on as long as they could to save their kind from utter extinction but the comet that had trailed its poisoning wake across space to leave behind it, upon Earth, a noxious, lethal gas vapor, had done ...
— The Ultimate Experiment • Thornton DeKy
... poet, historian, novelist, or what not? The Beacon says that "Jones's work is one of the first order." The Lamp declares that "Jones's tragedy surpasses every work since the days of Him of Avon." The Comet asserts that "J's 'Life of Goody Twoshoes' is a [Greek text omitted], a noble and enduring monument to the fame of that admirable Englishwoman," and so forth. But then Jones knows that he has lent the critic of the Beacon five pounds; that ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... slaves. "What good would a proclamation from me do, especially as we are now situated?" asked Mr. Lincoln by way of reply. "I do not want to issue a document that the whole world would see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... once these starres are come so nigh As to seem one, the Comet must appear In biggest show, because more loose they lie Somewhat spread out, but as they draw more near The compasse of his head away must wear, Till he be brought to his least magnitude; And then they passing crosse, he doth ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... will-of-the-wisp has undoubtedly been seen, as well as in a wet field in the central part of the parish; but it is a disappointing phenomenon—nothing but a misty, pale bluish light, rather like the reality of a comet's tail, and if "he" was by "Friar's Lantern led," "he" must ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... sound in the ears of orthodox Mahomedans, who reckon both Christ and Mahomed as prophets, his sect is now estimated to number at least 10,000, including many educated Mahomedans. Whatever its fate—a mere comet or a new planet in the Indian sky—it indicates the religious stirring of educated India in another province, and the prominence of Christ's personality therein. Mirz[a] Ghol[a]m Ahmad himself recommends ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... Thou art not made o' laughter Nor love's smile Can thy vision beguile: Like a black-fiery comet Suddenly, sinisterly, thou comest; Making thy fateful journey, Littering the floor of destiny With wreckages of life, Of love, of heart— Of all visitors thou art the surest; Halting nowhere long, endlessly passest, Dragging behind thee thy train of fire That burneth all, heedless of curse ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... sea and sky. If only fields—the humble man of heart Will revel in the grass beneath his foot, And from the lea lift his glad eye to heaven, God's palette, where his careless painter-hand Sweeps comet-clouds that net the gazing soul; Streaks endless stairs, and blots half-sculptured blocks; Curves filmy pallors; heaps huge mountain-crags; Nor touches where it leaves not beauty's mark. To them the sun and air are feast enough, As through field-paths ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... celebrated star, first seen by Tycho Brahe in the constellation Cassiopeia, never changed its position, or presented the slightest perceptible parallax. It could not therefore have been a meteor, nor a planet regularly revolving round the sun, nor a comet blazing with fiery nebulous light, nor a satellite of one of the planets, but a fixed star, far beyond our solar system. Such a phenomenon created an immense sensation, and has never since been satisfactorily explained by philosophers. In the infancy of astronomical science it was regarded ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... like these were not for human utterance now, and we sat together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the coming of the fiery comet that they know is destined ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... terrified by the appearance of a comet in December, 1680. At Michaelmas, 1811, an exceedingly brilliant comet appeared, supposed to have been the same which was seen at the birth of Jesus Christ. Donati's comet was first observed June 2, 1858, but was most brilliant in September ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... globetrotter; vagrant, hobo [U.S.], night walker, sleep walker; noctambulist, runabout, straphanger, swagman, swagsman [obs3][Aust.]; trecker[obs3], trekker, zingano[obs3], zingaro[obs3]. runner, courier; Mercury, Iris, Ariel[obs3], comet. pedestrian, walker, foot passenger; cyclist; wheelman. rider, horseman, equestrian, cavalier, jockey, roughrider, trainer, breaker. driver, coachman, whip, Jehu, charioteer, postilion, postboy[obs3], carter, wagoner, drayman[obs3]; cabman, cabdriver; voiturier[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... been able to form a style so peculiarly his own. It is not probable that De Beriot at this time knew much about Paganini; certainly he had never heard him. Paganini was at first looked on as a mere comet of extraordinary brilliancy, without much soundness or true genius, and many who afterward became his most ardent admirers began with sneering at his pretensions. De Beriot was in later years undoubtedly powerfully influenced by Paganini, but at the time of which we speak the young violinist ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... clear a light. But a few evenings later, when the sky was covered with soft clouds, there was an alarm and the guns mounted on the palace roofs began again bombarding the heavens. This time the darkness was shot by comet-like flashes of light, and the exploding shells gave a strange pyrotechnic aspect to the battle in the air. Again the enemy fled across the Adriatic without having done any special damage. Only a few old houses in the poorer quarter near the arsenal ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... a silent invisible God working his own will in it all? Was there a driver to that chariot whose multitudinous horses seemed tearing away from the pole in all directions? and was he indeed, although invisible and inaudible, guiding that chariot, sure as the flight of a comet, straight to its goal? Or was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels went grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, matter into man, and man into nothingness? Was there—could there be a living heart to the universe that did positively hear him—poor, misplaced, dishonest, ignorant ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... whatsoeuer some doe or maie imagine to the contrarie, specially some Astrologers knowing of the Eclipse of the Sunne which wee saw the same yeere before in our voyage thytherward, which vnto them appeared very terrible. And also of a Comet which beganne to appeare but a few daies before the beginning of the said sicknesse. But to exclude them from being the speciall an accident, there are farther reasons then I thinke fit at this ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot
... Comet Margaux,' said Dr. Forbery, topping anything Rockney might have had to say, and anything would have served. The latter clasped the decanter, poured ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as a comet, with a very long tail. The superstitious thought my appearance to be significant of some coming misfortune. Some draughtsmen took my figure, as far as they could descry it, so that when I landed I found paintings of myself, and engravings taken ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... fire, for just then a bird skimmed down from on high into the gloom beneath the trees, and they had a glimpse of the lovely creature, with its long, loose, yellowish plumage streaming out behind as if it were a sort of bird-comet dwelling amongst the trees. Then it was gone, and the young man consoled himself with the thought that had he fired the chances were great against his hitting, and it would have been like a crime to let the bird go off wounded and mutilated ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... would enter that carriage to-night, but the man who had to clean it. For, although we were shooting along at a terrible rate, the train would not stop to set us down, but would cast us loose a mile from our station; and some minutes after it had shot by like an infernal comet of darkness, our carriage would trot gently up to the platform, as if it had come from London all on its own hook—and thought nothing ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... blacks, when they saw the balloon over their heads, like a huge comet with a train of dazzling light, were seized with a terror that may be readily imagined. Upon hearing their cries, the prisoner raised his head. His eyes gleamed with sudden hope, and, without too thoroughly comprehending what was taking place, he stretched ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... opposite that of the sun. It is so faint that it can be seen only by a practised eye under the most favorable conditions. But it is always there. The latest suggestion is that it is a tail of the earth, of the same kind as the tail of a comet! ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So up to the house-top ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... except upon paper, and yet it finds with them what is present in the world of reality. For example, what resemblance is there between the letters A and B, the signs : and , , and -, and the fact that has to be ascertained? Yet the comet, foretold centuries before, advances from a remote corner of the heavens and the expected planet eclipses the disk at the proper time. Trusting to the infallibility of his calculation, the discoverer Columbus ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... rock seems to bear witness. The theory, briefly stated, is as follows: A great many ages ago, when this globe of ours was still in the period of cataclysms, rolling through space around the sun, it came in contact with a portion of the end of the tail of some enormous comet, sweeping through the universe on its erratic course. This great boulder is a sample of the component parts of that fiery tail, which smote the exposed face of the earth so terribly with the drift deposit ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... it was not, as Messier had supposed, a circular nebula. Herschel regarded it as the richest mass of stars in the firmament, but with a small telescope it appears merely as a filmy speck that has sometimes been mistaken for a comet. In 1860 a new star, between the sixth and seventh magnitude in brilliance, suddenly appeared directly in or upon the cluster, and the feeble radiance of the latter was almost extinguished by the superior light of the stranger. The latter disappeared in less than a month, and has not ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... flying in all directions, and snow-dust boiling up in a great geyser column. A snow-slide had swept down and struck a granite cliff. As I stood there, another slide started on the heights above timber, and with a far-off roar swept down in awful magnificence, with a comet-like tail of snow-dust. Just at timber-line it struck a ledge and glanced to one side, and at the same time shot up into the air so high that for an instant I saw the treetops beneath it. But it came back to earth with awful force, and I felt the ground tremble as it crushed ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... a pillar of dust which was approaching the house with reasonable rapidity. Presently the road changed from a trough of dust into a ribbon of greensward. The cloud dissipated itself, streaming away like the tail of a comet, and a ponderous and much begilt coach, drawn by six horses, their manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and outriders in gorgeous livery at the heads of each pair, rolled, or rather bumped into sight. With a seasick motion it undulated over the green acclivities ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... that the smith, blinded and suffocated by the smoke, his hair blazing like the tail of a comet, his hands bleeding, and his clothes torn, rolled upon the ground, roaring with pain, a stream of water, issuing from the engine, and directed by Toussaint Gilles, inundated him from head to foot, time enough to save a part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of the papers there were interviews with the new comet; in others were articles by her. These entertained her at first, because she had never seen the interviewers or the articles. She had not thought many of the thoughts attached to her name. The press agent of the Hyperfilm Company had written everything. He ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... moments when the pale and modest star, kindled by God in simple hearts, which men call conscience, illumines our path with truer light than the flaming comet of genius ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... is no calculation that an engineer can make as to the behavior of a girder under a strain, or an astronomer as to the recurrence of a comet, more certain than the calculation that under such circumstances we shall be dismembered unnecessarily in all directions by surgeons who believe the operations to be necessary solely because they want to perform them. The process metaphorically called bleeding the rich man is performed ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... miles, but there is a good road from the railroad station and the 'Comet' can take us across in no time. You see, there is a little village in the valley at the foot of our mountain, and in summer a 'bus runs twice a day with passengers and the mail, so the road must be fairly good. Papa says lots of ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... associate them with household work, nursing, and the general drudgery of existence. One never dreams of their having a life of their own. They have no accomplishments, nor any of the feminine charms. Women to whom an offer of marriage would seem as terrifying as a comet, they belong to the neutrals of the human hive, and are, practically speaking, only a little higher than the paid domestic. Indeed, perhaps their one distinction is that ...
— Different Girls • Various
... however, we think Mr. Lewes expected what was impossible. Charlotte Bronte could not harmonize with Jane Austen. The luminous and familiar star which comes forth into the quiet evening sky when the sun sets amid the amber light of an autumn evening, and the comet which started into sight, unheralded and unnamed, and flamed across the midnight sky, have no affinity, except in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... you justly proud of yourself, and to make me justly proud of you. This means that you must be a good speaker there; I use the word MUST, because I know you may if you will. The vulgar, who are always mistaken, look upon a speaker and a comet with the same astonishment and admiration, taking them both for preternatural phenomena. This error discourages many young men from attempting that character; and good speakers are willing to have their talent ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... can get power by building up his machine. And then some fellow in overalls who has some kind of a God-given quality that has never been explained yet so that we can understand, smashes into sight like a comet. It may be his way of talking to men, it may be his personality—it is more likely a divine spark in him that neither he himself nor other men understand. But every now and again some humble chap like that has changed the history of the world, and I reckon it's pretty ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... slippery paths and to the utmost verge of possibility, they can dash them down the precipice the instant they reach the promised Pisgah. They think it nothing to hang up a beacon to guide or warn, if they do not at the same time frighten the community like a comet. They do not mind making their principles odious, provided they can make themselves notorious. To win over the public opinion by fair means is to them an insipid, common-place mode of popularity: they would either force it by harsh methods, or seduce it by intoxicating potions. Egotism, petulance, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... before him,—their flavor discussed, their treatment descanted upon, their virtues extolled; from humble port to imperial tokay, he was thoroughly conversant with all, and not a vintage escaped as to when the sun had suffered eclipse, or when a comet had wagged his ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... way with you scientists. You'll pursue the tail of a comet—or a germ—till you're black in the face, but when something really important to the human race comes under your nose you can't ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... blue skies over England there rushed the bright stranger—a meteor, a comet, a fiery star! "such as no man before ever saw;" it appeared on the 8th, before the kalends of May; seven nights did it shine [235], and the faces of sleepless men were pale under ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the Fulton steamboat once; well, it was the first of the kind they ever seed, and proper scared they were to see a vessel, without sails or oars, goin' right straight ahead, nine knots an hour, in the very wind's eye, and a great streak of smoke arter her as long as the tail of a comet. I believe they thought it was Old Nick alive, a-treatin' himself to a swim. You could see the niggers a-clippin' it away from the shore, for dear life, and the soldiers a-movin' about as if they thought that we were ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... little girl this minute, and not be scared to either, Shelby. My dad used to say something about 'man being his own star,' I don't recollect it all, but I know it meant he could be one of the first magnet if he'd a mind to. I set out to be a comet, I reckon, all hot air tail, and there isn't much of ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Liberty shall soon, indignant, raise Red on the hills his beacon's comet blaze; Bid from on high his lonely cannon sound, And on ten thousand hearths his shout rebound; His larum-bell from village-tower to tower Swing on the astounded ear its ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... musingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped, once by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having to pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look through a telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... I, "I am married, and have been for upwards of twenty years, and I think I ought to know somethin' about it; and how can it be called a state of perfect rest, when some days I have to pass through as many changes as a comet, and each change a tegus one. I have to wabble round and be a little of everything, ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... 11. 1077.] [Sidenote: Matth. Paris. An earthquake, a long frost, a comet.] On the 27. daie of March was a generall earthquake in England, and in the winter following a frost that continued from the first of Nouember vntill the middle of Aprill. A blasing starre appeered on palme sundaie, beeing the sixteenth daie of Aprill, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... sudden and abnormal appearance of boot-blacks. One had set up an ornate stand on the rue de Rivoli. He was an American, Tom Wilkins, and the first ever known to practise his profession in the South Seas. He had come like a non-periodic comet, and suddenly flashed his brass-tagged platform and arm-chair upon the gaping natives. Most of them being barefooted, one would have thought his customers not many; but the novelty of a white man doing anything for them was irresistible to all who had shoes. He did not lower himself ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... "new'' star, discovered in the nebula by C. E. A. Hartwig in 1885, and subsequently spectroscopically examined by many observers; R Andromedae, a regularly variable star; and the Andromedids, a meteoric swarm, associated with Biela's comet, and having their radiant in this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sum up the characters of our visitors in epigrams than in long essays, as Mr. Ticknor has here done. This first star, who in comparison with many of Mr. Ticknor's later acquaintances was one of very modest magnitude, made his unexpected, comet-like appearance in Boston on his way to New York to marry an American woman. It is easy to believe what Mr. Ticknor says in his long account of him, that "while he flatters by his civility those who are little accustomed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... we have thought these revolutions likely to come, and the comet of Jerome Lalande has sent many persons to ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... described as princes of something or other. To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine claim to intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations. Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be the husband of a comet is not an easy thing. This husband had, however, an original idea, that of creating a State within a State, of possessing a merit of his own, a merit of the second order, it is true; but he did, in fact, in this ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... by almost continual rains, and flooding the country to a considerable extent. One was supposed to be the consequence of long-continued drought and excessive heat; one was traced to the influence of an eclipse of the sun; another, to a comet; and a fourth, to a most unusually stormy winter. The reader will have the kindness to remember that we are here expressing the opinions of the writers of the day, and by no means, our ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... elastic fluid, imponderable, and in fact exempt from almost all the conditions to which matter, as we know it, is subject, except that POSSIBLY it offers resistance to bodies moving in it. [Footnote: Encke's comet shows signs of retardation, as if moving in a resisting medium; but it is possible that that resistance may not arise from the ether, but from the nebulous envelope of the sun.] This fluid must pervade the whole universe, since ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... and six feet of mahogany kept them separated more effectually than miles of country. They smiled and nodded, however, and Dacre raised his glass of wine, and the two pledged each other's health in some old comet claret of 1912. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... to their ken like a comet. They'll see me with never a stain; But will they reform me?—far from it. We pay for our pleasure with pain; But the dog will return to his vomit, the ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... his eyes. At first he thought that it was a comet moving across the sky and reflected in the water; but, on glancing above, he saw his mistake. It looked, at first, like a great ball of fire rolling along the bottom of the lake with a stream of ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... in paradyse and now in purgatorye As man dispayred in a double were Born vp wit[h] hope, and the[n]e anon daunger Me drawet[h] aback, and sait[h] it shal not be For where as I of myne aduersite Am bolde somwhyle mercy to requyre Thenne comet[h] dispair & gynnet[h] me to lere A newe lesson to hope ful the contrary They be so diuerse they wil do me varye And thus I stand dismayed in a traunce For whan that hope were likly me tauaunce For drede I tremble & dar one word not speke ...
— The Temple of Glass • John Lydgate |
