"Explosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watchin' us, smilin' cynical, until we're almost through the door; and then—well, it's a sigh that comes out explosive. She starts as if she meant to dash after us, and then stops ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the story of how she had written the verses in the infirmary. On her witty tongue the stubby pencil, the dull knife, and the teasing midget of an impudent freshman made a delightfully humorous tale. Even the explosive "Lila!" and its accompanying side glance of terrified joy in the daring developed into a picture that sent the seniors into tempests of laughter. Somehow she did not care to mention the letter which Ellen had dropped ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... debating. When he spoke he was even more explosive than before. "Not a cent! Not a red! Give that whelp money to run his crazy paper on? Not your father, while he keeps ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... substance or fluid with which he, as a vial, is filled to the brim. And in many cases apparently the insulation of the tabooed person is recommended as a precaution not merely for his own sake but for the sake of others; for since the virtue of holiness or taboo is, so to say, a powerful explosive which the smallest touch may detonate, it is necessary in the interest of the general safety to keep it within narrow bounds, lest breaking out it should blast, blight, and destroy whatever it comes into ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... But I don't see why you should be afraid of it in any case. To judge by the size of it, I shouldn't say it could be a very dangerous explosive." ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... rage over wicked, wasteful man. Their novels are bursted notebooks—sometimes neat and orderly notebooks, like Mr. Galsworthy's or our own Ernest Poole's, sometimes haphazard ones, like those of Mr. Wells, but always explosive with reform. These gentlemen know very well what they are about, especially Mr. Wells, the lesser artist, perhaps, as compared with Galsworthy, but the shrewder and possibly the greater man. The very sentimentalists, who go to novels to exercise the idealism which they cannot use in ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... and prosperous Springfield looked to me when I arrived there on an early spring day! How clean, orderly, leisurely, and respectable after the untidiness and explosive anarchy of New York! I made for the river, as I always do wherever a river is, and watched it flowing down in the silver-gray light and catching bits of the rain-washed blue sky. The trees had lost the brittleness and sharpness of winter's drawing and their outlines ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... his amazement. The curious-looking creature over there on the knoll was defying him, was challenging him. At this time of year his blood was hot and quick for any challenge. He gave vent to a short, harsh, explosive cry, more like a grumbling bleat than a bellow, and as unlike the buffalo's challenge as could well be imagined. Then he fell to thrashing the nearest bushes violently with his antlers. This, for some reason unknown to the mere human chronicler, seemed ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... see very clearly those of others. The mistakes they make in their own families open their eyes to those of others, and then they are often very impatient. I know one gentleman who has excellent knowledge of the proper training of the young, but as a parent he is a total failure. He is so explosive and lacking in patience and firmness, perhaps also in love, that his knowledge has not helped him. It is not what we know, but what we apply, that makes ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... natural and proper enough that the masses of explosive ammunition stored up in detective stories and the replete and solid sweet-stuff shops which are called sentimental novelettes should be popular with the ordinary customer. It is not difficult to realize that all of us, ignorant or cultivated, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... but in such matters most men never learn wisdom from experience. A man of John Niel's age might have guessed that it is dangerous work playing with explosives, and that the quietest, most harmless-looking substances are sometimes the most explosive. He might have known that to set to work to cultivate the society of a woman with such tell-tale eyes as Jess's was to run the risk of catching the fire from them himself, to say nothing of setting her ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... many foolish legends, but none more foolish than the legend of the typical Frenchman, conceived as a short, rotund, explosive person, with a square, brown beard of curly baby-hair and a shiny silk hat with a flat brim. There have been too many young athletes of clean build on view whose nationality, language and the uniforms of powder-blue ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... dam, more solidly coherent than granite itself, slowly, grandiose even in its ruin, passed out and down in a hundred foot crevasse where the spill gates were widened by the high explosive. A vast land slip, jarred from the cut-face mountain side above, thundered down and aided in the crumbling of the dam. A disintegrated mass of powdered concrete fell out, was blown apart. The face of the dam on that part slowly settled down ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... the sight and exquisite taste of the Doctor's sugar, and the wonder with which they must have regarded the strange ammunition of the Wasungu. It is to be sincerely hoped that they did not hurt themselves with the explosive bullets and rim cartridges through any ignorance of the nature of the deadly contents; in which ease the box and its contents would prove a very ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... explosive grunt, the stranger's knees and chin came together like the sudden closing of ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... see, without being awakened, the angry lightning rend the midnight clouds, and hear the explosive thunder hurl its fury at us; but can we explain it any more than our scientist can explain the natural forces of thought, of love and hate, or the subtle ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... spoiling for a fight, Went off in high explosive fashion; They lashed themselves to left and right Into a pre-historic passion; The Mammals, on the other hand, Ate all their eggs up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... morning Constantinopolitans lounging on the sea-wall were surprised by explosive sounds from down the Marmora. Afterwhile they located them, so to speak, on a galley off St. Stephano. At stated intervals, pale blue smoke would burst from the vessel, followed by a hurry-skurry of gulls in the vicinity, and then the roar, muffled by distance. The age of artillery had not ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... separate sound correctly, but connect the consonants, especially the explosive sounds, with the succeeding vowels badly, with effort as if an obstacle were to be overcome. The paths i and l are affected, and hence M is not properly excited. S, too, comes under consideration in the case of stuttering, so far ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... are mistaken,' said the girl arching her brows. 'But for destitution, it need not exist. But I wish I could think of the right explosive materials to put in Prim's trunk! She wants waking up, Olaf,and you have just stroked ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... My explosive mud ball!" assented Cleo. "But this is different. Ugh! I shall never, never brag of clean hands again after this. There, my fish is tied on the sinker; now what ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... incessant hospital rounds Mr Crewdson found an Australian whose leg had been shattered by an explosive bullet and who told him this strange tale. When thus wounded he fell between two rocks and found himself unable to move, but while lying there a young well-dressed Boer discovered him, and with a perfect ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... whom even the stupid guards could see was too weak to work in the loom-room; I, who had been given the day off to recuperate—from too terrible punishment—I was named as the one who had helped hide the non-existent thirty-five pounds of high explosive! ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... in the armament of warships and coast defences. The rifled cannon was still in the experimental stage, but explosive shells, which in Nelson's days were only fired from mortars at very short range, had now been adapted to guns mounted on the broadside and the coast battery. Solid shot were still largely used, but the coming of the shell meant that there would be ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... August of the previous year I had such a broad view that if a shell were to explode anywhere along the front of five miles it would have been visible to me, and I saw not a single burst of smoke from high explosive or shrapnel. Apparently the Germans never expected to undertake any offensive here. All their energy was devoted to defensive preparations, without even an occasional attack over a few hundred yards to keep in their ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... kind of explosive shell, which was fixed to the object meant to be destroyed. Note once more Hamlet's ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... emotion, desire, all the elements of mind. We cannot see this mind, but we can see its products. To deny the subconscious is to deny the artist while looking at his picture, to disbelieve in the poet while reading his poem, and to doubt the existence of the explosive while listening to the report. The subconscious is an artist, a poet, and an explosive by turns. If we deny its existence, a good portion of man's doings are unintelligible. If we admit it, many of his actions and ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... gun-room adjoining. What arrested Colwyn's attention in the latter room was the display of guns on the walls. There were many varieties of them: rifled harquebuses, obsolete carbines, flint-lock muskets, and modern rifles; in fact, the whole evolution of explosive weapons, from the first rude beginnings down to the breech-loader ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Bertram had, in direct breach of the law, warehoused a large quantity of gunpowder; but scientific witnesses who were subsequently examined showed that it was possible that certain chemicals stored in the warehouse, when suddenly combined, as by the falling of the floors, would be quite as explosive as gunpowder itself. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... re-started it and thus demonstrated that the 'automatic action' was not due to any internal vital force. He pointed out that the external stimulus—instead of causing, as was customary to suppose, an explosive chemical change and an inevitable run-down of energy—brings about an accumulation of energy by the plant. And with the accumulation of absorbed energy, a point is reached when there is an overflow—the excess of ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... indignation against Mr. Wilson's conduct of international affairs. But international affairs were also a dangerous source of conflict. It was necessary to find an opening subject which would not only ignore 1912 but would avoid also the explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfully selected the spoils system in diplomatic appointments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discrediting phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The record being indefensible, there ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... his room a glass tube, in the centre of which he had placed a ball of gun-cotton, which, as you all know, is ordinary cotton-wool, which, from having been steeped in strong acid, is converted into a substance of great explosive power. It is also soluble in alcohol and ether. One end of the glass tube was, of course, open to the external air; and at the other end of it he placed an aspirator, a contrivance for causing a current of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... still more heartily. "Explosive bullets! —Good Lord, it was all we could do to get percussion caps. Do you know how we got percussion caps, seh? Three of our officers—dare-devils, seh —floated down the Mississippi on logs. One fellow made his way back with two hundred thousand. He's the pride ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their own country and of Europe to their personal plans have resigned, and others have taken their places of whom we need not fear this. I believe, therefore that I may state that our outlook toward France is more peaceful and less explosive today than it was a year ago and I am glad to do this, because I wish to quiet, not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... O'Neil reappeared. He came plunging out of the brush, drenched, muddy, stained by contact with the thickets; but his former mood had disappeared and in its place was a harsh, explosive energy. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... Lusitania would remain above water long enough, even after the torpedoing, to permit passengers to enter the ship's boats. Circumstances of a very peculiar kind, especially the presence on board of large quantities of highly explosive materials, defeated this expectation. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... most in the world—the things that owe to it their lasting worth and their very existence. A little of this precious commodity, more or less, is what often makes the difference between the ordinary and the supreme achievement. It is the liquid explosive that shatters the final, and most stubborn, barrier between man and the Infinite. It is what Walt Whitman called "that last spark, that sharp flash of power, that something or other more which gives life ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... with age and moss-covered, holding in check its tiny lake, was now nothing but ruins. The shots had been placed in the lower point, which was fifty feet down and conical as it struck and rested on the mother rock. Whoever had placed the charges knew well the explosive directions of his powder, and his ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... turned out to cut him up, delighted at the idea of fresh meat. There was about an acre of high and dry ground that bordered the marsh in one spot; to this the carcase of the hippopotamus was towed. I was anxious to observe the effects of the explosive shell, as it was an invention of my own that had been manufactured by Mr. Reilly, [*] the gunmaker, of London. This shell was composed of iron, covered with lead. The interior was a cast-iron bottle (similar in shape ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... beast lashed out again, spread on the air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The man's body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... her seat by Hiel in front, and the sleigh drove round for old Mrs. Jones. The Doctor insisted on giving up his place to her and tucking her warmly under the buffalo robe, while he took the middle seat and acted as moderator between the boys, who were in a wild state of hilarity. Spring, with explosive barks, raced first on this and then on that side of the sleigh as it flew swiftly ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... It was nothing but high explosives, high explosive shrapnel, ordinary shrapnel, trench bombs, and bullets from German machine-guns. One incessant hail of metal. Who on earth could live in it? What worried me most was that there was not sufficient light to film the scene; but, thank Heaven, it ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... or goblins? Well, let's strike a match and light up: then perhaps we may. That's one good thing about these hollows,—there is no explosive gas, like there is in a coal mine. There, take this and hold it out before you," he continued, as he closed and passed the lanthorn. "Lift it up! Now ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... mind to conceive what the extent of the heat may be. All he knows is that it is probably far greater than suffices to resolve water into its gaseous elements—oxygen and hydrogen—and that even before this point is reached, superheated steam becomes a terrifically formidable explosive agent. Look at what it did at Ban-dai-san in Japan last year. It actually split a mountain three miles in circumference in twain, and blew one half of it right away into a valley as if it had been the mere outside wall of a house. And such was the force ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Service Reform Association. George William Curtis was presiding, and Roosevelt's old friend, George Haven Putnam, who tells the story, was also present. Roosevelt began by hurling a solemn but hearty imprecation at the head of the Postmaster General. He went on to explain that his explosive wrath was due to the fact that that particular gentleman was the most pernicious of all the enemies of the merit system. It was one of the functions of the Civil Service Commission, as Roosevelt saw it, to put a stop ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... proletariat to sleep. He will none of "reforms," since reforms are but so many compromises with the possessing classes. He wants the revolution, a "full, complete, immediate, and immediately economic" revolution. To attain this end he arms himself with a saucepan full of explosive materials, and throws it amongst the public in a theatre or a cafe. He declares this is the "revolution." For our own part it seems to us nothing ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... letter from M. Lobry de Bruyn appears in the number of the Chemiker Zeitung for October 31, warning those who may attempt to prepare free hydroxylamine by the above method that it is a dangerously explosive substance when warmed to a temperature of 80 deg.-100 deg.. Upon warming a flask containing the free solid base upon a water bath a most violent explosion occurs. A spontaneous decomposition appears to set in about 80 deg., and even in open vessels the explosion is very violent. Care must also ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... was no progress in the art of tunneling. On the contrary there was a decline from the earlier construction until late in the 17th century when gunpowder came into use as an explosive in blasting rock. The first application of gunpowder was probably at Malpas, France, 1679-1681, in the construction of the tunnel on the line of the Languedoc Canal 510 feet long, 22 feet wide and ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... thought Grandcourt, as he too checked his horse. He was not a wordy thinker, and this explosive phrase stood for mixed impressions which eloquent interpreters might have expanded into some sentences full of an irritated sense that he was being mystified, and a determination that this girl should not make a fool of him. Did she want him to throw himself ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... time. First-rate importance on the whole cannot be claimed for the Nebiim, but occasionally there arose amongst them a man in whom the spirit which was cultivated within their circles may be said to have risen to the explosive pitch. Historical influence was exercised at no time save by these individuals, who rose above their order and even placed themselves in opposition to it, but always at the same time had their base of operations within it. The prototype of this class of exceptional prophets, whom we ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... amount of power can be concentrated in the machine, but at present we can do little more than float with the wind. It is probable that an engine sufficiently strong, built of the best steel, and propelled by the explosive power of gun cotton, or some similar explosive, would overcome the difficulty. If I were to construct such an engine I would substitute for the lifting power of a balloon that of a sail ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... that were advanced from the camp to cover the retreat, but as this does not appear in the reports, perhaps it is not true. Our loss was about 200 killed and wounded, including Sir George Colley, Drs. Landon and Cornish, and Commander Romilly, who was shot with an explosive bullet, and died after some days' suffering. When the wounded Commander was being carried to a more sheltered spot, it was with great difficulty that the Boers were prevented from massacring him as he lay, they being under the impression ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... grandson, the lady was Mrs. Kukor's daughter, for "Mama!" cried the young mother; and as they met just in front of Johnnie there was an explosive outburst of talk in a strange tongue, and much of what Johnnie afterwards described to Cis as "double kissin'," that is, a kissing on both cheeks, the baby coming in for his share and weeping over ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... to his senses, crying out: "It is treachery! It is Chamber No. 6 blowing up!" As a matter of fact, that was where the cartridges were. It was said that at Meudon traces had been found of the same explosive as had been used in bombs against the Emperor during the first days of May (a plot that had probably been hatched by the police). The perpetrator, however,—doubtless for good ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... mother's, and clasped him in hands that were strong like vices. He felt her whole body shaken by the throes of distress, and had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose from before him the curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked back over the interview; he saw not where he had offended. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the gas beneath the gauze is unable to arrive at the point of ignition. In the safety-lamp the little oil-lamp is placed in a circular funnel of fine gauze, which prevents the flame from passing through it to any explosive gas that may be floating about outside, but at the same time allows the rays of light to pass through readily. Sir Humphrey Davy, in introducing his lamp, cautioned the miners against exposing it to a rapid current of air, which would operate in such a ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... more strange that while, in my experience, Italian Spirits neither understand nor speak Italian, and French Spirits can neither comprehend nor talk French, and German Spirits remain invincibly dumb in German, it is reserved to Indian 'braves' to be glibly and fluently voluble in the explosive gutturals ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... apply these conclusions to the theory of the ignition of an explosive gas-mixture, and in particular to the combustion of "knallgas" (a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen) to water-vapour. At ordinary temperatures knallgas undergoes practically no change, and it might be supposed that the two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, have no affinity for each other. This conclusion, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... ordered General Lozier. The plane wavered in signal to the others and swung sharply to the left. Each man knew the flaming death that was theirs if the fire of their exhaust touched that explosive mixture of hydrogen and air. The great bubble turned with them ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... in order to keep him quiet, to keep up a barrage. Our ammunition had run down to a point where we had only fourteen shells left, and we received orders to hold two high explosive shells, one for the muzzle and another for the breech of the gun, to put it out of business ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... Hyson and Hyson Jr., in Oolong and Bohea, in Souchong and Gunpowder, in Black and Green; and if there were Scarlet or Yellow or Blue Teas, Col. PUNCHINELLO would equally admire, steep, sweeten and sip them. Nor is Dr. PUNCHINELLO less an admirer of the explosive fire-cracker, sent to us by JOHN, to assist us in the preservation of our liberties. The Hon. Mr. PUNCHINELLO declines dogs (in pies,) and opium (in pipes,) nor can he say whether he approves of bird's nests (in porridge,) as he has never eaten any, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... moment a steady pursuit of one idea characterized Ringfield's actions. Already charged to explosive point by pressure of emotions both worthy and the reverse, he immediately entered into correspondence with several charitable institutions with regard to Angeel, and he also wrote to Mr. Enderby and Mr. Abercorn. It was now the ninth of the month and the snow still held. Sobriety ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... noticed it about the same time. I yanked out my automatic (I had a clip of Boland explosive bullets in it) and Tweel, quick as a sleight-of-hand trick, snapped a queer little glass revolver out of his bag. It was much like our weapons, except that the grip was larger to accommodate his four-taloned hand. And we held our ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... perplexed eyes. The persistence of their regard even after Bobby's entrance suggested to him that the evidence remained secreted, that the officers, under the circumstances, were scarcely interested in his return. He was swept himself into an explosive amazement: ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... upon; most of it much too hot or too cold: a couple of narrow habitable belts about it, which, to wandering spirits, must look like the places where it has got damp, and green-moldy, with accompanying small activities of animal life in the midst of the lichen. Explosive gases, seemingly, inside it, and possibilities ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the president, "though it would, of course, suit for that. Nihil humunum alienum, eh?" and he broke into a loud, explosive laugh, while his spectacles irradiated that peculiar form of glee derived from a Latin quotation by those able to enjoy it. Dr. Boyster, walking on the other side of Mr. Tomlinson, joined in the laugh in a ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... you had better read it." It was held out unfalteringly, while Mrs. Benson dived for, opened, wiped, tested, and fixed her spectacles. These operations concluded, it was received as might have been a dangerous explosive. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... brooks no delay. It is impatient of conventionalisms and shams. It breaks through the established order of things in matters both social and religious. It is dynamic, vivid, revolutionary. It goes to the root of things, with a startling directness, a kind of explosive force. It disturbs and shatters the customary placidities of men's lives. It forces them to face spiritual realities, to look the truth in ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... find my doubts confirmed. A short time after this I made a more unexpected and astonishing discovery. I found that this complex and hitherto misunderstood gas could, under the influence of certain high-frequency electrical discharges, be made to combine with explosive violence with the nitrogen of the atmosphere, leaving only a harmless residue. We wired the surrounding region for the electrical discharge and, with a vast explosion of weird purple flame, cleared the whole ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... paper bag than when she dined with greater observance of the convenances. She was an unattached journalist of thirty-four, large, showy, fair as butter, pink as a dog-rose, reminding one of a florist's picked specimen bloom, and given to sudden and ample movements and moist and explosive utterances. She "pulled a better living out of the pool" (as she expressed it) than Oleron did; and by cunningly disguised puffs of drapers and haberdashers she "pulled" also the greater part of her very varied wardrobe. She left ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... Pennsylvania oil fields. * * * Then there was a pause in the work, for the experts decided that the new oil which spouted forth in such vast quantities was too heavy and malodorous to serve as an illuminant. Presently, however, it was discovered that this defect was a virtue, for here was a non-explosive petroleum that could be utilized in great quantities as a fuel, and work was hastened with renewed vigor, for now California possessed the monopoly of the one great need, not only of herself, but of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... awestruck, fascinated at the astounding sight, he also saw what looked like a falling star shoot down from one of the Zeppelins, and again there fell on his ears that strange explosive thud. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... to clasp the frightened girl. Hilary seemed to uncoil. His fist shot straight up with all the power of his body behind it. It crashed into the jutting jaw of the Mercutian like a charge of high explosive dynol. For all his height and massive strength, the giant toppled over, thudding ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... most explosive and crusty person that ever happened in Glendale, and it takes all of Aunt Augusta's energy, common-sense and force of character to keep him and the two chips he carries on his shoulders, as a defiance to the world in general, from being in a constant state of combustion. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the usual manner, the Boche had left mines, timed to go off at any time up to twenty-eight days. One could never be sure that the ground underneath one's feet would not blow up at any moment. These mines were small boxes of high explosive, inside of which was a little metal tube with trigger and detonator attached. Inside the tube was a powerful acid, which, when it had eaten its way through, set free the trigger and exploded the charge. The ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... no time in digging more of these shallow pits, that reminded one rather gruesomely of graves, and had barely scraped them deep enough to roll into before a hail of small high-explosive shell fell all ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... but the best one lies in the use of bisulphide of carbon. This is very effective, but it has come into such common use that a word of caution should be given as to its handling. It is very volatile and, when near flame, powerfully explosive, and should be handled with great care. Pour it into the runways of the ants, and then throw over these a mat. The fumes will speedily kill all the ants. A better way, however, is to drive a stick ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... bargaining, makes increasingly for survival. Moreover, there grows very slowly an indefinable fabric of traditional home training in restraint that is very hard to separate in analysis from mental heredity. People who have dwelt for many generations in towns are not only more temperate and less explosive in the grosser indulgences, but more urbane altogether. The drunken people are also the "uncivil" peoples and the individualistic peoples. The great prevalence of drunkenness among the upper classes two centuries ago can hardly have been ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... gelatine," Jack declared. "One stick is enough to blow the Fortuna to pieces. Here are one, two, three, four, five, six—six sticks of high powered explosive lying right next to our engines. Where would the good ship have been if that stuff had let go? I tell you, ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... man, who has been strangely silent during the last stages of our discourse, shakes himself like a terrier which has achieved dry land again after a bath; and asks once more, with a certain explosive violence, his dear old question, "What is the use of ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... carefully bred I refrained from retaliation. I did not tell him that his legs were out of drawing and that he had a frightfully vicious nose. But before I had time to explain my business he had started on a series of explosive directions: "Eat proper food. Plenty of open air. Exercise morning, noon and night and in between. Use the Muldow system. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... severally (1) Caste, (2) Centralization, (3) The Explosive Forces by which the Revolution was superinduced. The Preface deals at some length with certain political questions of ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... deep converse as we came up, and it was only when we were close upon them that they became aware of our presence. For a few seconds they stared at us, apparently rooted to the spot, and as if they could not believe their good fortune. Then one broke into an explosive bellow of delight, while the other ran off squeaking with excitement to find other devils who should share the treasure-trove. But, unlike his infamous predecessor, he was not content with seven. When ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... It was, therefore, decided to "shoot it," that is, tin cylinders, containing in all about two hundred pounds of nitro-glycerine, were to be lowered into the hole, one on top of the other. Then a heavy cylindrical weight was to be dropped down on them. The concussion would set off the explosive. ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... alike had most of them cropped hair, and that curious kind of head which to an Englishman looks almost brutal, the kind that we call a bullet-head. Indeed, we are speaking very appropriately when we call it a bullet-head, for in intellectual history the heads of Frenchmen have been bullets—yes, and explosive bullets. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... operations are not related, and are, in fact, perfectly independent. Sometimes there has been a large discharge of lava, and little or no escape of steam; at other times there have been paroxysmal explosive eruptions with little discharge of lava. Even in the case of Vesuvius, which is close to the sea, there have been instances when the lava has welled out almost with the ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... ask him, one day, if he believed he could make gold. He looked at me with his frightful grin, and said, "Yes, and diamonds too, with time and money to help me." He not only believes in The Philosopher's Stone; he says he is on the trace of some explosive compound so terrifically destructive in its effect, that it will make war impossible. He declares that he will annihilate time and space by means of electricity; and that he will develop steam as a motive power, until travelers can rush over the ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... "Your pride is wounded, and you are still sore. Suspect me as you please,—make me out a new Pandarus, if you like—I shall not be offended. But you know—for I have often told you— that I never interfere in love matters. They are too explosive, too vitally dangerous; outsiders ought never to meddle with them. And I never do. Come back with me to Cairo. And when we are once more safely established on the solid and unromantic isles of Britain, you will forget all about the Princess Ziska; or if ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... that when Germany invaded France, the French had not a ton of their chief high explosive on hand. Some of its ingredients they had been getting from Germany! France lost her coal and iron mines and her largest factories the first weeks of the war and has not regained them. Yet early ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... sometimes reach for their high notes with their arms and legs, and if the high note comes out all right, we forget the effort in the thrill over the result, provided effort does not degenerate into contortion. Similarly in an unusually powerful, explosive fortissimo, a momentary use of pure abdominal breathing may be excusable. But these are exceptions that prove the rule, and very rare exceptions ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... startled by a fearful barrage at four o'clock when I got up, washed my clothes: was visited by the Y.M.C.A. Secretary: was shelled from five o'clock till ten o'clock. I went for chow and found shell ball gone through kitchen. High explosive, black smoke shells bursting intermittently, tiles fell into my dugout. I took pick shovel in with me; my kitten ran away but came back. A three-legged cat came to the ruined home where I am; its leg evidently had been ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... seat in the British Islands. Here is a people,—still youthful as we count age in our European world, for even the Celts had preceded them by nearly a thousand years,—which has successfully displayed its explosive or methodical force in the most diverse fields, military, religious, economic. From henceforth it is invited, by an allied army of terrified journalists, to expend these stupendous and irresistible energies ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... they were all three in that excruciating state of rawness of the nerves, in which a man has the sensation that his brain is a violent explosive which a single jarring sound or word must ignite and blow to atoms, like ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... burnt her fingers, and she swore weak explosive oaths, filthier than any I have heard from a bookmaker. She lisped, and there was a suggestion in her accent of East Prussia or Western Russia. Her face was permanently reddened by alcohol. The skin was coarse, almost scaly, and her whole person ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... rounds that were fired proved their destructive effect on the opposing trenches. The Turkish weapon was known as the "broomstick bomb" and was also propelled from a mortar. It consisted of a 4-inch cartridge case filled with a high explosive and also containing metal such as boiler punchings, nails, etc. (in one case gramophone needles were discovered), and provided with a percussion cap. It was fitted to a stick about two inches thick and five feet long. Its descent into our ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... chosen was simplicity itself—a hand-sized capsule of oxygen. But in a hydrogen/ammonia atmosphere, oxygen could be a deadly explosive. Massan carried several of these "bombs"; so did Odal. But the trick, Massan thought to himself, is to know how to throw them under these conditions; the proper range, the proper trajectory. Not an easy thing to learn, without years ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... Pigalle and the Avenue de Clichy on moonless nights. Poor devils of misery! They did but make war on the well-to-do, and with less deadly methods, as a rule, than those encouraged in greater wars when, for trade interests also, men kill each other with explosive bombs and wrap each other's bowels round their bayonets and blow up whole companies of men in trenches which have been sapped so skilfully that at the word "Fire!" no pair of arms or legs remains to a single body and God Himself would ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... of conquering, vagabond, adventurous aspirations. I forgot my age, my obligations, my duties, my vexations, and youth leaped within me as though life were beginning again. It was as though something explosive had caught fire, and one's soul were scattered to the four winds; in such a mood one would fain devour the whole world, experience everything, see everything. Faust's ambition enters into one, universal ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eyes from the sheet at each report, to see the puffs of smoke two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots over a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines. Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight. We have made a march of about 75 kilometers in four days, and are now on the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... blew up his first batch of gunpowder one might have supposed that men would have gone at once to the explosive engine. But they could see nothing of the sort. They were not yet beginning to think of seeing things; their metallurgy was all too poor to make such engines even had they thought of them. For a time ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... that she had the situation in her hands. That, of course, did not mean safety. She had it in her hands as one may hold some highly explosive and uncertain compound. D'Alcacer thought of her with profound sympathy and with a quite unselfish interest. Sometimes in a street we cross the path of personalities compelling sympathy and wonder but for all that we don't follow them home. D'Alcacer ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... one stirred Florence, who had been sitting quietly, according to request, and "resting", but not resting her curiosity. "Who's disappointed in love, papa?" she inquired with an explosive eagerness that slightly startled her preoccupied parents. "What is all this about Aunt Julia, and grandpa goin' to live alone, and people committing suicide and prohibition and everything? ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... moulding, in space, of this plastic intermediary projected beyond the limits of her bodily organism. Certain it is that such a projection does at times take place, and it seems rational to suppose that "raps" may be due to the explosive expulsion of this neural energy after it has reached a certain "tension." One quite striking incident which has been narrated to me by a physician of my acquaintance tends rather to confirm this view. It is that, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... Vesuvius, which rises a vast green cone from the midst of the plain, and emits from its summit a constant stream of smoke. In times of eruption this smoke becomes very dense and voluminous, and alternates from time to time with bursts of what seems to be flame, and with explosive ejections of red-hot stones or molten lava. Besides the cities and towns that are now to be seen along the shore at the foot of the slopes of the mountain, there are many others buried deep beneath the ground, having been overwhelmed by currents of lava from the volcano, or by showers ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... is it this time, Barry?" says I. "Have you doped out an explosive pretzel, or are you goin' to turn milliner and release ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... result of the combination. One of the essentials in explosives is some compound of oxygen (such as the manganese dioxid or potassium chlorate you used to make oxygen in Experiment 93) which will easily set its oxygen free. This oxygen combines very swiftly with something else in the explosive, releasing heat and forming a gas that takes much more room. In its effort to free itself, this expanding gas will blast rocks out of the way, shoot cannon balls, or ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... crude oil is placed in an iron retort connected with a coil of pipe in a vessel of cold water. Heat is then applied to the retort, when the process of distillation commences. The first product is a light-colored, volatile substance, sometimes called naphtha, that is very explosive. This substance is used in the place of spirits of turpentine in the preparation of paints and varnishes, and, after further treatment, in removing paints and grease from clothing. The next product from the retort is the refined fluid for illumination. This is of a yellow color, with a bluish ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... in any consecutive order, though he tried several methods of self-analysis, and repeated to himself that he had experienced a great happiness and was probably on the threshold of a great success. These two reflections did not help him much. The happiness had been of the explosive kind, and the success in the business matter was more than problematic, as well as certainly ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... is the cardinal fact on which ventilation practically turns. But what is the nature of it? There are three factors in the phenomenon. In the first place, the mechanical peculiarity of flame, or gas in the moment of combustion, as compared with a gas like air merely heated, is an almost explosive velocity of ascent. The physical peculiarity from which this results is the intensity of its heat—commonly stated at 2,000 degrees, as to our common illuminating gas—acting instantaneously throughout its mass, just as in gunpowder. The gas goes up the flue in its own flash, like the ignited ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... against such an attack we need guns that can shoot farther, straighter and more powerfully than any at present in use, and we've got to have the most powerful explosive. In other words, we've got to beat the biggest guns that are now in existence. And I'm ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... sorry to miss. She was driving a young horse that she'd only bought a week or two previously, warranted to be perfectly steady with motor traffic, bicycles, and other common objects of the roadside. The animal lived up to its reputation, and passed the most explosive of motor-bikes with an indifference that almost amounted to apathy. However, I suppose we all draw the line somewhere, and this particular cob drew it at travelling wild beast shows. Of course my sister didn't know ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... apparently harmless phrases to Uma, spoken with deep concentration, had possessed sufficient hidden force to explode like bombs and produce definite, though injurious, effects. I understood, later, that the explosive vibratory power in speech could be wisely directed to free one's life from difficulties, and thus operate without ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... readjusted her blonde hair before the little glass and did not reply. But it was evident that she was not very angry, for Mlle. Fouchette was explosive and went ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... prayers might be offered for the repose of his soul. The sounds occurred during full daylight, and in a clear open space between his bed and the ceiling. He did not know to what to compare them, but as he said they were explosive in sound, Lord Bute suggested that they might be compared to the sounds made by petards, which are commonly used in Italy for firing feux de joie. Father H—— answered, "Yes perhaps, if they were continuous enough." He said that ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... rifle we have never known an instance of a premature discharge of either of the chambers; though, from the repeated inquiries which have been made, it is obvious that such is the general apprehension. In reply to the common assertion, that much of the explosive force must be lost by escape of gas between the chamber and the barrel, we simply state the fact that we have repeatedly shot through nine inches of solid white cedar timber at forty yards. Finally, at two hundred yards, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... experiment has outrun our expectations. Atomic science is in the full tide of development; the unfolding of the innermost secrets of matter is uninterrupted and irresistible. Since Alamogordo we have developed atomic weapons with many times the explosive force of the early models, and we have produced them in substantial quantities. And recently, in the thermonuclear tests at Eniwetok, we have entered another stage in the world-shaking development of atomic energy. From now on, man moves into a new era of destructive power, capable of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... to the proper degree of tension; then the tone is started by allowing the 'breath-bands' to separate very slightly, so that a thin stream of air is forced through the opening between their margins. The tone is ushered in by a slight explosive sound, which is nothing but the well-known stroke of the glottis. So long as the expiratory pressure is steadily maintained, this tone may be held, and yet no strain is imposed on the vocal cords. Perfect control of the breath is thus attained. For a powerful ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... man's reactions; the necessity of operating in a completely closed system compatible with man's physiological requirements (oxygen and carbon dioxide content, food, barometric pressure, humidity and temperature control); explosive decompression; psychophysiological difficulties of spatial disorientation as a result of weightlessness; toxicology of metabolites and propellants; effects of cosmic, solar, and nuclear ionizing radiation and protective shielding and treatment; effects on man's circulatory system ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... point to point and at last, in the bottom of a deep-cleft canyon, he discovered the source of the sound. Huge dumps of white waste were spewed out along the hillside, there were houses, a big tent and criss-crossed trails; but the only sign of life was that chuh, chuh, of the engine and the explosive blap, blaps of an air compressor. It was Murray's camp, and the engine and the compressor ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... mane. His whole body became vibrant with the obvious desire to fight,—and no antagonist in sight. Uttering a tremendous grunt, he arched his back again, stamping with all four feet, somewhat like the capers of a Mexican "broncho" when preparing to buck"; then he snorted once more, with such explosive force as seemed to shake the tree beside which we were hidden, as he looked about for something ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... to the surprise of his physicians, did not die, but he hovered on the brink of it for many thin weeks and his son gave up his entire vacation to be with him. The letters he sent Honor were brief bulletins of his father's condition, explosive regrets at having to give up his summer with her, but Jimsy was not a letter writer. In order properly to fill up more than a page it was necessary for him to be able to say, "Had a bully practice to-day," or, "Saw old Duffy last night and he told ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... his line of fire, Wilson," the Major said; "he is explosive this morning, and has been giving it to us all round. However, nobody minds what the Doctor says; his bark is very bad, but he has no bite. Wait till you are down with the fever, and you will find him devote himself to you as if he ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... that on my return to Australia I would set myself the task of establishing an Australian arsenal and an explosive factory. ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon |
