"Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sprang up as suddenly as the sun had fallen. Her silver radiance flooded the firmament. Light, heavenly light once more! He was alone. The voice was still; the shadow left him. Far away from him the white line of the water was breaking on the silver sand. His own cry came back to him and frightened him in the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Lord in the manger of the ass: I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan; I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene; I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Caridwen; I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin. I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn, For a day and a year in stocks and ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... blame for all that is wrong in the world? I didn't invent Sin and Hate and Slaughter. Who made it my duty anyhow to administer the Universe, and keep the planets to their Copernican courses? My shoulders are bent beneath the weight of the firmament; I grow weary of propping up, like Atlas, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... same object through the medium of reflection;—for, as with the bounties of the Creator, so with the wonders of His creation—man is too prone to undervalue them in proportion to the frequency with which they are spread before him; and thus the deep azure vault, so often seen in the firmament above, is less likely to attract his attention and engage his meditations, than when the same glorious scene lies mirrored ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Cope, on their return, stooped to put his latch-key to use, Lemoyne impulsively threw an arm across his shoulder. "Everything is all right, now," he said, in a tone of high gratification; and Urania, through the whole width of her starry firmament, looked down kindly upon ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year; when dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament—when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton songsters make the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious little bob-lincon revels among the clover blossoms of the meadows—all which happy coincidences persuaded the old dames of New Amsterdam, who were skilled ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... the ground and spring, disordered, into a firmament which satanizes. The clouds swell into breasts, divide into buttocks, bulge as if with fecundity, scattering a train of spawn through space. They accord with the sombre bulging of the foliage, in which now there are only images of giant or dwarf hips, feminine triangles, great V's, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the inconceivable had happened, and she recognised that there was present an excess of beauty and an excess of being. For indeed the room was too like a lighthouse in the way that all who sat within were forced to look out on the windy firmament and see the earth spread far below as the pavement of the clouds on which their shadows trod like gliding feet. The walls it turned to the south and west were almost entirely composed of windows of extravagant dimensions, beginning below the cornice and stopping ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... now fill the trumpet of fame will fall silent. Pages that now are read as if they were leaves of the 'Book of Life' will be obliterated and unknown, and when all the flashing cressets in Vanity Fair have smoked and stunk themselves out, 'They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.' The great things are the Christian things, and there was no greater deed done that day, on this round earth, than when that Jewish wayfarer, travel-stained and insignificant, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... himself standing on the sidewalk in front of the Bayou State Security with the block of bank-notes under his arm. Once more he was on fair fighting terms with the world, and the star of hope, which had gone out like a candle in a gust of wind at the discovery of his loss, swung high in the firmament, shining all the more brightly for ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... because we have maintained them.... If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our paths. Washington is in the upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle round their center, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... for a few moments, the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry; the tramp of heavy-aimed foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, being distinctly heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. After a short, fierce engagement, the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but rallied again, after a breathing-time, formed again into solid column, and again advanced. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all He worked so fast To finish air, and wave, and shore, Knew that this work of His would last For ever and for evermore. On Saturday night He was content, He knew that Monday would not bring Need for another firmament, ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... seruice, and a braine of inuention for the good of the common-wealth; his place is powerful, while his seruice is faithfull, and his honour due in the desert of his employment. In summe, he is as a fixed planet mong the starres of the firmament, which through the clouds in the ayre, shewes the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... entered that of Paris, where he completed the course in 1881, and immediately afterward started on a series of concert tours. Ysaye's eminence as a violinist has been gained by hard work. He did not burst meteor-like upon the world, but he earned his position in the violin firmament by ten years of concert touring, during which time he passed successively through the stages of extreme sentimentality until he reached ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... the mold of which was broken immediately. Pauline Garcia, in company with De Beriot, gave a series of concerts through Belgium and Germany, and it soon became evident that a new star of the first magnitude was rising in the musical firmament. In Germany many splendid gifts were showered on her. The Queen of Prussia sent her a superb suite of emeralds, and Mme. Sontag, with whom she sang at Frankfort, gave the young cantatrice a valuable testimonial, which was alike an expression of her admiration of Pauline Garcia ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... power I neither deny nor am careful to distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same Divine point, and have reference to heavenly hopes; delights they are in seeing the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly compared with the bright firmament, reachings forward unto the things that are before, and joyfulness in the apparent though unreachable nearness and promise of them. But there are other modes in which infinity may be represented, which are confused by no associations of ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... light glimmered in my brain. I must have got into the subterranean firmament. This conclusion decided the opinion of those, who insist that the earth is hollow, and that within its shell there is another, lesser world, with corresponding suns, planets, stars, &c., to be well-grounded. The result proved that I ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... the Holy Roman Empire, the lily to the Most Christian King, and the stars to the firmament, there remained for the Pope himself—an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... 30th, more memorable than the disgraced Sunday, December 3rd, the SUN was on its way towards the west: in vain some scattered clouds would hamper its splendour—the god in the firmament generously ornamented them with golden fringes, and thus patches of blue sky far off were allowed to the sight, through the gilded openings among ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... we worship the heaven-realm's Warder, The Maker's might and his mind's thought, The glory-father's work as he every wonder, Lord everlasting, of old established. He first fashioned the firmament for mortals, Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator. Then the midearth mankind's Warder, Lord everlasting, afterwards wrought, For men a ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... firmament, is not so gret a lord, ne so myghty, ne so riche, as the gret Chane: nought Prestre Johan, that is Emperour of the highe Ynde, ne the Sowdan of Babylone, ne the Emperour of Persye. Alle theise ne ben not ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... him) Mr. Meredith connects man with the Universal, and teaches him to arrive at it and recognise it by strongly reminding him that he is a child of Earth. 'You are amenable,' he says in effect, 'to a law which all the firmament obeys. But in all that firmament you are tied to one planet, which we call Earth. If therefore you would apprehend the law, study your mother, Earth, which also obeys it. Search out her operations; honour your mother as legitimate children, and ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the brink of the abyss, and started back affrighted; for no woman can gaze, unflinchingly, into the depths of man's heart; precipices always have frightened you—dear angel, as if you had not wings! If you had paused an instant longer, you would have seen far, far in the gloom in a firmament of ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... concomitant horrors—wetness, mildew, agues, rheumatics, and such like; then there were the English rains, a miserable drizzle causing the blue devils; then the rainy season of Abyssinia with the flood-gates of the firmament opened, and an universal down-pour of rain, enough to submerge half a continent in a few hours; lastly, there was the pelting monsoon of India, a steady shut-in-house kind of rain. To which of these rains should ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... storm passed, and the sun came out again in the firmament of their souls. But looked he down on no tempest-marks? Had not the ruthless tread of passion marred the earth's fair surface? Were no goodly trees uptorn, or clinging vines wrenched from their support? Alas! was ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... and peak over peak, the finest mountains of the world are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash, or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and reverence; the mind ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... but we must wait till another time for all that. The fact is that Mr. Estes, the gentleman who is going to be so very kind as to put all these stories into a book for me, (for neither my dog nor I could possibly do that for ourselves, and I don't know of any book-binding star in the whole firmament,) says he really cannot undertake to print any more of my nonsense at present, as he has many grave and learned books to publish. It is my private opinion that there is often as much moonshine in grave and learned books as there is in ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... voice of armies rose With rallying shout through the starred firmament, And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul There grew dilated strength, and it was filled With his omnipotence; his whole of might Broke from him, and the godhead rushed abroad. The vaulted ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... weakness, have felt their hearts grow tender despite themselves and have done unwittingly deeds that have met them in the path, deeds that shine as brightly to our mental eyes as do the seen and unseen stars that strew the firmament of heaven. ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... a thin roaring sound, high aloft. Cochrane jerked his head back. The stars filled all the firmament, but he knew what to look ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... again through the telescope and gazed on the countless hosts of heaven's millions of suns there came into my mind and I repeated aloud that noble passage in the Bible, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." I remarked to the Chief Engineer as we went down to the station, that a great many people visited the observatory, for I had looked in the visitors' book, where every person was required to sign his name. He replied, "Yes, if a private company owned it, ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... solar system has been verified, for we find that the globe of which it was once a part revolved around an immense sun which had a retinue of twenty- seven planets of various sizes. Whether this great sun is one of the stars of our firmament we can only conjecture; perhaps in some future state of existence ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... termed a tragic sort of decoration. Moreau is a painter who could have illustrated Marlowe's fatuous line, "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia," and superbly; or, "See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament." He is an exotic blossom on the stem of French art. He saw ivory, apes, and peacocks, purple, gold, and the heavens aflame with a mystic message. He never translated that message, for his was an art of silence; but the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the brightness round about and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber; the rush and whirl of life that followed, wheels and wings and rings full of eyes; and over this the likeness of a firmament of the colour of the terrible ice and the sound of wings like the noise of many waters, as the Voice of the Almighty and above the firmament a Throne and on the Throne the Appearance of a Man, the Appearance of the likeness ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of our court (Buckingham), by whose motion all the other spheres must move, or else stand still: the bright sun of our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our marygolds of the court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great as he, but none so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are far from court. Now to hear certainties. It is told me that ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue, ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... and Lady Laura had insisted upon giving Clarissa introductions to some of her dearest friends among the old French nobility—people who had known Lord Calderwood in their days of exile—and more than one dearest friend among the newer lights of the Napoleonic firmament. Then there were a Russian princess and a Polish countess or so, whom Lady Laura had brought to Mrs. Granger's receptions in Clarges-street: so that Clarissa and her husband found themselves at once in the centre of a circle, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... at a time. In those fuddled incompetent days before the Great War the crisis was a little-known phenomenon. Here and there in the drab routine of peaceful corpulent years there flashed in the prosperous firmament the baleful light of a great anxiety. Agadir was one; CARSON and his gun-runners was another. But they were few; they came like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... smoke of a furious bombardment. It seemed to me, too, that the guns on the other fronts had come nearer. Deve Boyun was hidden by a spur of hill, but up in the north, white clouds, like the streamers of evening, were hanging over the Euphrates glen. The whole firmament hummed and twanged like a taut string that ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Carley to the platform of her car, which was the last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate, feeling the wind whip her hair and the iron-tracked ground speed from under her, spellbound and stricken at the sheer wonder and glory of the firmament, and the mountain range that it canopied ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... from the camp they found the whole firmament illuminated. The flames whirled up in long light spires, and the air was filled with sparks and cinders. A bright glare was thrown upon the city, revealing every battlement and tower. Turbaned heads ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... fancied himself in a hothouse roofed with black glass, for there were flagstones under foot, and no sky could be seen, no breeze could stir overhead. The few stars whose glimmer twinkled from afar belonged to our firmament; they quivered almost on the ground, and were, in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... noon Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune, The stars and the moon Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls: Under whose sapphirine walls, June, hesperian June, Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star, The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are, Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.— Is it the melody mute ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... in a death-struggle. It must either become one vast slaveocracy of petty tyrants, or wholly the land of the free. The traitors boast that they have swept from the national firmament one-third of its stars, but they have only darkened them with clouds, which the sun of liberty will scatter, revealing behind them the eternal pillars of Justice, emblazoned with liberty, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. But when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his firmament let shine. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... service of his mistress, and his dexterity, experience, and merit therein challenged a room in the Queen's favour which eclipsed the other's over-seeming greatness, and made it appear that there were others steered and stood at the helm besides himself, and more stars in the firmament of grace ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... preaching? Be it so then. I feel, and deeply too, that your immortal minds, those gems which were created to sparkle and shine in the firmament of heaven, are in danger of having their lustre for ever tarnished, and their brightness everlastingly hid beneath a thicker darkness than that which once covered ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the weary months of toil, difficulty and danger as Angria's prisoner, were past; and it was with whole-hearted joyousness he realized that he was now on his way to Bombay, where Clive was—Clive, the hero who was as a fixed star in his mental firmament. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the coat-of-arms of a State, painted on glass. I could not see that the impartial sunbeams, tempered by this skylight, had burned away the insignia of the malecontent States. Nor had any rampant Secessionist thought to punch any of the seven lost Pleiads out from that firmament with a long pole. Crimson and gold are the prevailing hues of the decorations. There is no unity and breadth of coloring. The desks of the members radiate in double files from a white marble tribune at the centre ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... hung in a pale-green sky, looking down on a dozen roads each crawling like a black snake with the close press of retreating troops. As I was making my way back to Gradisca the whole firmament leaped into sudden brilliance and every feature in every face among the throngs around me on the road stood out for several seconds under a ghastly light. Then followed from behind Monte Michele, a deep, rolling roar. It was the ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... tornado reached to where we stood, and threw me off my legs to the entrance of the cabin; and with the wind came down a torrent of rain, which drenched us, and the clouds covered the whole of the firmament, which became dark; the lightning darted in every direction, with peals of thunder which were deafening. I crawled into the cabin, into which the rain beat in great fury and flowed out again in ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... she said. She sought in vain for more words; he also, throwing back his head, appeared to search the firmament for phrases without result. Silence seemed enforced between them, and walked with them, on into the murky landscape, over the fallen leaves. Passing a streetlamp, they quickened their steps, looking furtively at the light, which seemed leagued ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... hatchway, clinging to the main fife-rail, I presently became dimly aware of my more immediate surroundings. As it chanced, it was about the time of full moon, and although the planet herself was completely hidden by the dense masses of cloud that drove wildly athwart the firmament, her light filtered through. Presently I was able to see as far as the outer edge of the reef, where the surf, brilliantly phosphorescent, plunged madly down upon it and burst into leaping fountains of spray that came driving over the wreck like heavy rain, though ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... heart, her skirts sweeping the dew from the leaning flowers. Her lips moved often, but only the confused, vehement "Oh, oh!" came from them, until at last she paused in the middle of the garden, away from the trees, where all was open to the sparkling firmament, and extended her arms over ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... dreams. Something seemed to happen in the very heavens above; the moon reached down from the sky, swiftly and tenderly, and was so dazzling that the shepherd boy had to turn his face away. He knew that in the blue spaces of the firmament overhead the moon was embracing the Seven Sisters. Then he ran, ran like the wind, for already the water was shrieking down the streets of the town. As he went he could see lights begin to jump in dark windows and sleepy people in their night attire coming to peer out ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... glimpse of a small cave, called the Smoke House, because it is hung with rocks perfectly in the shape of hams. The River Hall descends like the slope of a mountain. The ceiling stretches away—away—before you, vast and grand as the firmament at midnight. No one, who has never seen this cave, can imagine the excitement, and awe, with which the traveller keeps his eye fixed on the rocky ceiling, which, gradually revealed in the passing light, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... look far and near, Changes in every scene appear; The blossom fades, the day is gone, And night succeeds the morning sun. The clear blue firmament is seen. But gath'ring clouds soon intervene; The sun, resplendent, hastes away, To give to other lands the day. The vig'rous youth to manhood grown, Becomes a hoary sire anon; The blooming maid becomes a bride, A loving consort by her side, The zenith ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... this firmament of friends was Mrs. Slater. She had made a heavy loss that she could ill afford and she accepted it without a shadow of reproach to me. Of course she expected and hoped that at some time I would be able to repay her, but this thought did not ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... unflinching advocate of the oppressed, regardless of the sacrifices which he was obliged to make on their behalf, we are disposed to view him as one of that noble band whose lives have been consecrated to deeds of charity and benevolence, and whose names will illumine the moral firmament, so long as virtue and truth shall command ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... a star going down into another firmament of as deep and dark a blue as that above; and as Saxe watched he saw it reflected from the dark walls. Then lower, lower, and down and down, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... existence of a universe Maker, call Him by what name you will. So far the ground is very firm beneath us, without either inspiration, teaching, or any aid whatever. Since, then, there must be a world Maker, let us judge of His nature by His work. We cannot observe the glories of the firmament, its infinite extent, its beauty, and the Divine skill wherewith every plant and animal hath its wants cared for, without seeing that He is full of wisdom, intelligence, and power. We are still, you will perceive, upon solid ground, without having to call ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world,—above all, who has found out, by living into the pith and core of life, that all of the Deity which can be folded up between the sheets of any human book is to the Deity of the firmament, of the strata, of the hot aortic flood of throbbing human life, of this infinite, instantaneous consciousness in which the soul's being consists,—an incandescent point in the filament connecting the negative pole of a past eternity with the positive pole of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... soft and mystic radiance of the moon. An owl hooted, and the rustling of brushwood told me of the near proximity of some fur-coated burrower in the ground. High above this animal life, remoter even than the tops of my beloved trees or the mountain-ranges, etched on the dark firmament, shone multitudinous stars, even the rings round Saturn being plainly discernible. From the Milky Way my eyes at length wandered to the pines, and a puff of air laden with the odour of their resin and decaying brushwood decided me. I took a few preliminary sips of whisky, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... upon the deep, and on the firmament, the orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the night. Methought that all I looked on said ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... unobserved by this vast herd of elephants as they drifted on and away, following a leader as does a herd of sheep. They browsed from growing herbage which they encountered as they traveled, and now and again shook the firmament with their deep bellowing.(20) ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... for the statement—for the truth of which, however, it does not vouch—"that on the first occasion when Dean Close found himself beneath the roof, then glowing in all the brilliancy of modern painting and gilding, in semblance of 'the spangled firmament on high,' he solemnly ejaculated, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... water cast into the ocean Is this whole firmament compared to thee. But what is the universe which I behold, And who am I, in thy presence? Were I to add to the millions of worlds Existing in the ocean of air, A hundred fold as many other worlds—and then Dare to compare them to thee, They would scarcely appear ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... the most mortal maid of warmest flesh and blood become an abstraction to her lover—sometimes shrink to the significance of one more flower, and sometimes expand to the significance of a microcosm, a firmament in mystical miniature. ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... American journalistic firmament in Berlin is Karl Heinrich von Wiegand, the special representative of the New York World. The New York World is not pro-German, but von Wiegand is of direct and noble German origin. Apart from his admitted ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Goethe, and Schiller—those were the great names that were soon to shine like stars in the literary firmament. But the lesser men who broke the ground and opened paths for their brilliant followers are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... all the clouds of superstition, and demonstrate at once that there has been no sun in the firmament during the whole of a cloudy day! Soar like the strong pinioned eagle, make your tour beyond the mists of error and bring us the joyless tidings that there is no clear sky in the heavens. Can you imagine any thing to be more pleasing than the coming of one that brought good tidings? ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... a beautiful calm night, and a half moon hung silver in the sky. The stars, far brighter than they ever appear in England, twinkled in the blue firmament, behind the mighty peak of Etna. It was not really dark, and it was quite possible to see the main outlines of most of the features of the landscape. Everard walked along cheerily. So far he had met with no hindrance. The people at the fair had indeed looked at him with ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... slam against it our doors and, until lately, our windows. Naturally it takes to ghoulishness. It was in the South where the roofs are flat and men sleep as friends with the night that it was written, "The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handiwork." ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... awning to one side. Then he peered skyward, into the noonday zenith; into an ocean of blue, immeasurable. There was no end to this azure liquid. Gazing thus, his intelligence became aware of the fact that there are skies of different kinds. This one was not quite like his native firmament. Here was no suggestion of a level space overhead, remote, but still conceivable—a space whereon some god might have sat enthroned, note-book in hand, jotting down men's virtues, and vices, and what not. A ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... one of the great Anglo-Indian journals. They were alike anonymous, but it was quite evident that they came from the same hand. A few months later they were known to be the work of Rudyard Kipling; and when I returned to London the new writer was at the zenith of the literary firmament and was shining there like a comet. For the first few years of his career he looked inexhaustible, and whilst he was still at his most dazzling best, he produced a litde masterpiece of roaring ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... all his force, and gathers all his waves; Nature lies mantled in a watry robe, And shoreless ocean roils around the globe; O'er highest hills, the higher surges rise, Mix with the clouds, and leave the vaulted skies. But when in thunder, the rebuke was giv'n, That shook th' eternal firmament of heav'n, The dread rebuke, the frighted waves obey, They fled, confus'd, along th' appointed way, Impetuous rushing to the place decreed, Climb the steep hill, and sweep the humble mead: And now reluctant in their bounds subside; Th' eternal bounds restrain the raging ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... which had remained closed in prayerful meditation during his rapid descent, he found himself in a vast vault, bespangled overhead with luminous points like the starred firmament. It was also lighted by a yellow glow that seemed to proceed from a mighty sea or lake that occupied the centre of the chamber. Around this subterranean sea dusky figures flitted, bearing ladles filled with the yellow fluid, which they had replenished from its depths. From this lake ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... in the German musical firmament, was born, Sept. 1, 1854, at Siegburg on the Rhine, and received his earliest musical training at the Cologne Conservatory. He made such rapid progress in his studies, showing special proficiency in composition, that he carried off in succession ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... preserved, kept, and entertained, so well, that not he and his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that of Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set up the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and have been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared to provoke, incense, or endamage the one for fear of the other. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the young man's brow, and as he drew his robe across his breast with a shiver, he thought of the sisters, who, before long, would have to go out in the fresh morning air. Once more he raised his eyes from the earth to the firmament over his head, and it seemed to him that he saw before his very eyes the proud form of Klea, enveloped in a mantle sown over with stars. His heart throbbed high, and he felt as if the breeze that his heaving breast inhaled in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unwholesome sweetmeat. Long candles of blue and gold and bouquets of dusty artificial flowers flanked it. Behind it, in a round niche, stood a painted figure of Christ holding a book. The two adjacent side chapels had domed roofs representing the firmament. Beneath the pulpit stood a small harmonium. At the opposite end of the church was a high gallery holding more chairs. The mean, featureless windows were filled with glass half white, half staring ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... "Maskilim" shall shine As the brightness of the firmament ... Many shall run to and fro, And knowledge shall ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... it not reasonable to believe that that role was to be that of the Messiah come to sit on the throne of His father David, and destined to bring Israel from her now obscure position to once more shine as a bright star in the firmament of nations? Why was it not reasonable that He was to lead the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... sun set in its usual course there was no darkness; and on the morrow the sun rose on a land already illumined; a day and a night and another day had been as one day; and this was but one of the signs. A new star appeared in the firmament of the west, even as was seen by the magi in the east; and there were many other marvelous manifestations as the prophets had predicted. All these things occurred on what is now known as the American continent, six hundred years after Lehi and his little ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... where we now are placed. Paul hastened after her, and seated himself by her side. It was one of those delicious nights which are so common between the tropics, and the beauty of which no pencil can trace. The moon appeared in the midst of the firmament, curtained in clouds which her beams gradually dispelled. Her light insensibly spread itself over the mountains of the island, and their peaks glistened with a silvered green. The winds were perfectly still. We heard along the woods, at the bottom ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... golden eye had closed, his ruddy light Expiring on the bosom of the night; And solitary twilight's deepening shade In dusky robe the firmament array'd. The moon, resplendent, fill'd her glittering throne, And tipp'd with yellow gems all ether shone. The breeze was silent on the glassy deep, And half the world was sinking into sleep: Save where the shepherd led his fleecy train To crop the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... asserted. Gregory, in writing to William the Conqueror, had used the figures of the sun and moon to illustrate the relations of Church and State. Innocent draws out the analogy in much detail: "As God, the builder of the universe, has set up two lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, so for the firmament of the universal Church, which is called by the name of heaven, He has set up two great dignities, the greater to rule souls, as it ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... the day and blew the firmament, Phebus of gold his stremes doun hath sent To gladen every flour with his warmnesse; He was that time in Geminis, I gesse, But litel ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... tabernacle, that it might be an object of respect. Taken singly, according to some, the curtains denoted the starry heaven, which is adorned with various stars; the curtain (of goats' skin) signified the waters which are above the firmament; the skins dyed red denoted the empyrean heaven, where the angels are; the violet skins, the heaven ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... command! How light he had made of the riot! Ranulph's strength and courage she accepted as a matter of course, and was glad that he was brave, generous, and good; but the glamour of distance and mystery were around d'Avranche. Remembrance, like a comet, went circling through the firmament of eleven years, from the Vier Marchi to the Place ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... waves rolling up as if they meant to eat me, and all the rest of the night as black as pitch. The air was simply yelling. The clouds seemed down on your head almost, and the rain fell as if heaven was sinking and they were baling out the waters above the firmament. One great roller came writhing at me, like a fiery serpent, and I bolted. Then I thought of the canoe, and ran down to it as the water went hissing back again; but the thing had gone. I wondered about the egg ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... woman, house and trade. In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make whether Orion is up there in heaven or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?" On the other hand our evidence of the existence of God and of our own souls, and our knowledge of right and wrong, are immediate, and are independent of the senses. {446} We are in direct communication with the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... found in the air of our region that is not usually seen amongst other nations lying beyond the seas. Wherefore we must needs confess that the situation of our island (for benefit of the heavens) is nothing inferior to that of any country of the main, wheresoever it lie under the open firmament. And this Plutarch knew full well, who affirmeth a part of the Elysian Fields to be found in Britain, and the isles that are situated about it in ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... received; while that poor bird— O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me Been faithless, hear him;—though a lowly creature, One of God's simple children that yet know not The Universal Parent, how he sings! As if he wished the firmament of heaven Should listen, and give back to him the voice Of his triumphant constancy and love; The proclamation that he makes, how far His darkness doth transcend our ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... how the firmament Within an azure fold The flock of stars hath pent, That we might them behold, Yet from their beams proceedeth not this light, Nor can their crystals such reflection give. What then doth make the element so bright? The heavens are come down upon earth to live But ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... him any one else's mountain boots that could compare with his own. "They don't know," he was accustomed to add, "and they have never learned it in all their life, how such a shoe is to be made so that the firmament of the nails shall fit well on the soles and contain the proper amount of iron, so as to render the shoe hard on the outside, so that no flint, however sharp, can be felt through, and so that it on its inside fits the foot as snug and soft ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... cette mer, las de chercher sa route, Du firmament splendide il explore la vote, Des astres inconnus s'y lvent ses yeux; Et, moins triste, aux parfums qui soufflent des rivages, Au jour tide et dor qui glisse des cordages, Il sent qu'il a chang ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the day of the show, was one of those days that nature often bestows on Brownsville: not the fleck of a floating cloud in the firmament above. Even the winds slept that they might not ruffle the tranquility of the scene ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... also cut in two by the firmament, lying between our atmosphere and that "New Heaven and New Earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness"; and the floor of this upper world is covered by the "waters that be above the firmament"; above this is Paradise, and below the firmament live the angels, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... feelings to obscure his judgment. He knew that Gordon was a difficult, let it be granted an impossible, colleague; that he would do things in his own way in defiance of diplomatic timidity and official rigidity; and that, instead of there being in the Egyptian firmament the one planet Baring, there would be only the single sun of Gordon. All these considerations were human, but they none the less show that he allowed his private feelings, his resentment at Gordon's treatment of him in 1878, to bias his judgment in a matter of public moment. It was his opposition ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... miss, you ask would be enough for me? I cannot sum the total number; nay, that were too tough for me. The sands that o'er Cyrene's shore lie sweetly odoriferous, The stars that sprent the firmament when overly stelliferous— Come, Lezzy, please add all of these, until the whole amount of 'em Will sorely vex the rubbernecks attempting to keep ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... and is taking place in the world—or rather in us and enacted by us, I seem to myself not to be expressing any private imagination or supposition which may or may not be so, but a certainty that it must be so. Either it is so or 'the pillared firmament is rottenness and earth's base built on stubble'. And this means that everywhere and always, but most specially and centrally and potently in man's spirit, there is Progress, in spite of checks and hindrances which come from within it, a ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Blanc, already seen from the north, seemed to lift its snowy drapery higher into the blue sky, and stood out more majestic in its crystallized peaks when seen from the bridges of the Rhone. Another firmament was seen through the clear azure water of the beautiful lake; and although the air was cold and fresh in the icy chill of the mountains, and nature stripped of her green, yet our young heroines were charmed with their first view ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... blows from his cheek A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, Clear'd of the rack, that hung on it before, Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil'd, The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove With clear reply the shadows back, and truth Was manifested, as a star in heaven. And when the words were ended, not unlike To iron in the furnace, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... claims not the honor of entire originality. The principles here advanced have been advocated, believed, and successfully practised. William S. Cardell, Esq., a bright star in the firmament of American literature, reduced these principles to a system, which was taught with triumphant success by Daniel H. Barnes, formerly of the New-York High School, one of the most distinguished teachers who ever officiated in that high and responsible capacity in our country. ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... by no means, not for my wretched Life! What, kill a King!—forbid it, Heaven: Angels stand like his Guards about his Person. The King! Not so many Worlds as there be Stars Twinkling upon the embroider'd Firmament! The King! He loves my Wife Florella, shou'd he die— I know none ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... I ever found. The firmament is, I believe, always the great indifferent and neglected god, the Nyan Kupon of the Tschwi, and the Anzambe, Nzam, etc., of the Bantu races. The African thinks this god has great power if he would only exert it, and when things go very badly with him, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... despite her twenty-one years, and supremely happy. Her aunt, one of those ladies whose very smile is in itself an act of condescension, was treating her with unusual graciousness that night, and there was not a star awry in Chris's firmament. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... lunar radiance Inundates and illuminates the scene; The waxing moon, in her meridian full, Her beam vicarious disseminates, And shining, hides with her superior light, The twinkling beauty of the firmament! ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... subdue his passions, by which means he is united to virtue, and by his regularity of life, demonstrates what he proposes. This is figured to him by the steps that he takes in approaching the altar; the symbolic meaning of which is the separation of the firmament from the earth and water on the second day of creation. (The charge proceeds by giving a figurative interpretation of the ceremonies, etc., of the first and second part of the third degree, which I pass over ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... she done when the root of a forget-me-not caught the drop of water by her hair and sucked her in, that she might become a floweret, and twinkle brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth. ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... all glorious in new-born liberty, fresh and unsullied, like Venus out of the ocean,—that newly discovered star, in the firmament banner of this Republic. Sister Arkansas, with her bowie- knife graceful at her side, like the huntress Diana with her silver bow, —oh it would be refreshing and recruiting to an exhausted patriot to go and replenish his soul at her fountains. The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... outlined against the azure sky. For this is again clear, the clouds and threatening storm having drifted off without bursting. And now, while with woe in his look he watches the swooping bird, well knowing the sinister significance of its flight, he sees another, and another, and yet another, till the firmament ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... it had led to a more friendly intercourse. Mary sent him away, very happy with some books for them, some new Spanish reading for himself, an astronomical book, and her little celestial globe—for the whole firmament of stars had been by no means lost on him. That interview was her Christmas treat. Well for her that she did not hear Robson say, 'That young man knows how to come over the ladies. I shall keep a sharper look-out after him. I know no harm of him, but if there's one man I trust less ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men whose minds are the storehouses of knowledge, and whose utterances by word and pen have moved the quickest and most forceful lives in the world. It would be easy to call the long roll of these names shining like stars and constellations in the firmament of thought—princes and kings of intellect who acknowledge that Jesus Christ is not only superior to them morally and ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... instrument to the one used by Waldmeer, and through it spoke:—"Venus, one of the great stars, has been shaken from the firmament. It fell in the suburbs of Telmantio, and many lives ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... your med'cine, and your chrysosperm, Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury, Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia, Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther; Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials, Of piss and egg-shells, women's terms, man's blood, Hair o' the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay, Powder of bones, scalings ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson |
