"Volcano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scottish moorlands is often set fire to, that the sheep may have the advantage of the young herbage produced, in room of the tough old heather plants. This custom (execrated by sportsmen) produces occasionally the most beautiful nocturnal appearances, similar almost to the discharge of a volcano. This simile is not new to poetry. The charge of a warrior, in the fine ballad of Hardyknute, is said to be 'like ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... when the soft ground beneath him gave way suddenly and he catapulted below into the darkness. Through the Stygian gloom he fell in what seemed to be an endless drop. He finally crashed upon something hard. The thin crust of the volcano's mouth had broken through, precipitating him into the ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... Oolooz army, dead or alive, couldn't have made a noise like that. It might have been a volcano breaking through the rocks." ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... deserted huts, and a small plantain walk, but little taken care of; from which we could only collect three small bunches of plantains. After passing this place, we came to a deep gully that led towards a mountain, near a volcano; and, as I conceived that in the rainy season very great torrents of water must pass through it, we hoped to find sufficient for our use remaining in some holes of the rocks; but, after all our search, the whole ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... shone like the brightest burnished copper, and flashed like prismatic lightning, with every impulse of the wind. The diversity of colours indeed with which the Chinese have the secret of cloathing fire seems one of the chief merits of their pyrotechny. The whole concluded with a volcano, or general explosion and discharge of suns and stars, squibs, bouncers, crackers, rockets, and grenadoes, which involved the gardens for above an hour after in a cloud of intolerable smoke. Whilst these entertainments were going forward ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... left few imitators and (it may easily be conceived) no successful imitators. The suggestion of him lingers on in the exquisite Elizabethan perversity of Coventry Patmore; and has later flamed out from the shy volcano of Francis Thompson. Otherwise (as we shall see in the parallel case of Ruskin's Socialism) he has no followers in his own age: ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... he gave it to be understood that it consumed superior talents, so as to lend a grace to his exhaustion. In his native town he thought proper to exaggerate his affected contempt of life and his spurious misanthropy. Still, his eyes could flash with fire like a volcano supposed to be extinct, and he endeavored, by dressing fashionably, to make up for the lack of youth that might strike a ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... her large eyes blazed and glowed like a volcano; her lofty brow seemed in all respects designed to wear a crown. And, indeed, it was a ducal coronet that sparkled on her black hair, which in long ringlets curled down to her full, voluptuous shoulders. ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... of miles away north. It's somewhere in the heart of Unaga. Some place explorers never hit. It's the great Spire of Unaga. The unquenchable Fires of Unaga. It's a living volcano that sets all other volcanoes looking like two cents. I've seen it twice—in the far-off distance. You've seen it once. The boys have seen it, too. It looked like a pillar propping up the roof of the heavens. A pillar of fire. It set me nigh crazy with wonder. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... become a volcano? Certainly no hunting or exploring party could make a smoke like that. But a word from the leader of the party of horsemen explained ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... not very large, perhaps the flat space at the bottom may have covered something over an acre, but all round this oval ran tiers of seats cut in the lava of the crater. For without doubt this was the crater of an extinct volcano. ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... character for those fused substances called, in general, Lavas, and having the most visible marks for that which had been actually a volcano, naturalists, in examining different countries, have discovered the most undoubted proofs of many ancient volcanos, which had not been before suspected. Thus, volcanos will appear to be not a matter of accident, or as only happening in a particular ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... terrible, too; and then when you think that we really are, as that dragoman said just now, on the very end of civilisation, and with nothing but savagery and bloodshed down there where the Southern Cross is twinkling so prettily, why, it's like standing on the beautiful edge of a live volcano." ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... he supposed had been rendered. He endeavored by supplication to appease some being who, for some reason, had, as he believed become enraged. The lightning and thunder terrified him. In the presence of the volcano he sank upon his knees. The great forests filled with wild and ferocious beasts, the monstrous serpents crawling in mysterious depths, the boundless sea, the flaming comets, the sinister eclipses, the awful calmness of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... your breakfast. As if there were any real difference between you and the Conservatives. All the upper classes have the same interests to protect, and the same principles. [Calmly.] Oh! you're sitting upon a volcano, John. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I had some most interesting work in examining the marks left by EXTINCT glaciers. I assure you, an extinct volcano could hardly leave more evident traces of its activity and vast powers. I found one with the lateral moraine quite perfect, which Dr. Buckland did not see. Pray if you have any communication with Dr. Buckland ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Lord Byron was like a volcano, full of fire and wrath, sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful.... As a companion," he adds, "no one could be more amusing than Lord Byron; he had neither pedantry nor affectation about him, but was natural and playful ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the highest cloud-region, and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the human frame, and attempted ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... mountain, now watching the stars, now contemplating the arid, desolate sides of Vesuvius. He tells how, in recalling those days—the only peaceful ones of his life—he used to think, as he looked up at the infinite expanse of heaven and the confines of the horizon, with the towering volcano, that this must be the ultimate end of the earth, and it appeared as if neither tree nor grass refreshed the dreary space which stretched out to the foot of the bare smoky mountain. When, grown older, he came nearer to it, and saw the mountain so different ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... fast. It seemed to the waiting veterans of Thomas that it had burst forth suddenly like a volcano. They saw the vast clouds of smoke gather again off there where their comrades stood, and, knowing the immense weight about to be hurled upon them, they feared for those men who had fought so often by ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... conqueror treading the peoples in His fury and pouring their life-blood on the earth, the song of the delivered. Up through the troubled air, heavy with thunder-clouds, soars their praise, as a lark might rise and pour its strains above a volcano in eruption—'I will mention the loving kindness of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us and the great goodness toward the house of Israel which He hath bestowed on them, according to His mercies, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Congress act? The Congress will come here emerging from the innermost of the popular volcano; but the Congress will be manacled by formulas; it will move not in the spirit of the Constitution, but in the dry constitutionalism, and the Congress will move with difficulty. Still I have faith, although ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... deep fire that burned in Philip's eyes, and she realized that Lawrence was unaware of how his provocative, half-humorous ironies were stirring the volcano within the man who ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... circular in shape, and slightly covered with timber. In the top of this island is a depression, or crater—the Witches' Caldron—100 feet deep, and 475 feet in diameter, which was evidently the last smoking chimney of a once mighty volcano, and which is now covered within, as without, with volcanic rocks. North of this island, and on the west side of the lake, is Llao Rock, reaching to a height of 2,000 feet above the water, and so perpendicular that a stone may be dropped from its summit to the waters at ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... Betts, who had also escaped with only a few minor injuries, because he was as quick as a cat, and must have fallen on a soft piece of ground besides; "tell you what, I thought that old hill had turned into a volcano, and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... upon the heat in the air being mentioned to Dr. Heberden, he had answered that he supposed it proceeded from the last eruption in the volcano in the moon: "Ay," cried Colonel Manners, "I suppose he knows as much of the matter as the rest of them: if you put a candle at the end of a telescope, and let him look at it, he'll say, what an eruption there is in the moon! I mean if Dr, Herschel would do it to him; ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 80 His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes 85 On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves, Rugged and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... learns to his cost that the life-spark of a fabled race glows in the black heart of a dead, Western volcano.] ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... spring, summer, and autumn reign perpetually in a sort of triumvirate; the same field, nay, in some cases, the same tree, presenting, at one and the same time, blossoms, green fruit, and ripe fruit: infancy, maturity, and decay. She saw, too, in the night the volcano on the Island of Bourbon, afterwards False Cape and Table Mountain, but not the Flying Dutchman, the weather being unfortunately too fine to induce him to put to sea. Next came St. Helena, since ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... puzzle together in that instant. David Cable's face was the one he had seen; not James Bansemer's. The maid set up a hysterical shrieking when he bluntly told her of the mishap to her mistress, but he did not wait to answer questions. He was off to find James Bansemer. The volcano he had been watching so long was about to burst, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... languid pulse, covered copious elements of vital passion. The slow wheel could not resist the long attrition of controversy; and when it once blazed, the flame was all the fiercer for its unseen nursing. 'You mistake Condorcet,' said D'Alembert, 'he is a volcano covered with snow.'" ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... and if he is not, I will save him or perish too," was Arthur's heroic reply, as he sprang up the long winding stairs, near which the flames were roaring like some long pent up volcano. ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... erosion results from crop cultivation on slopes without proper terracing; deforestation natural hazards: cyclones and tsunamis possible during rainy season (December to April); Mount Kartala on Grand Comore is an active volcano international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection; signed, but ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... you can look westwards to Mweru, a still active volcano little known and rarely visited, and from Mweru a chain of heights runs west once more till they end abruptly almost in a precipice that descends to the plain. At its foot rises a small river, bubbling up from half a dozen ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable
... terrible, but terrible like the hurricane, which sweeps away the pestilence; terrible like the earthquake, on whose night of terror God builds a thousand years of blooming plenty; terrible like the volcano, whose ashes are clothed by the purple vintages and yellow harvests of a hundred generations. The strong powers of nature are as beneficent as strong. The destroying powers are also creating powers. Life sits upon the sepulchre, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... profound, most agitating, most intense cannot speak; words are too little for the greatness of feeling. So Job sat himself upon the ground seven days and seven nights, speechless. Not in this case, as is said of Schiller's Robbers, did the pent volcano find vent in power-words; not in strong and terrible accents was uttered the hoarded wrath of long centuries of misrule and oppression. The volcano, raging, aching, threw itself in silence into the arms of one who could soothe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... armour for AEneas. Opposite to this was seen the palace of Vulcan, which presented a deep and brilliant perspective. The labours of the Cyclops produced numberless very happy combinations of artificial fires. The public with pleasing astonishment beheld the effects of the volcano, so admirably adapted to the nature of these fires. At another entertainment he gratified the public with a representation of Orpheus and Eurydice in hell; many striking circumstances occasioned a marvellous illusion. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... natural curiosity of the vicinity, certainly. The following interesting description of this rock is by Prof. Chandler: "The spring rises in a little mound of stone, three or four feet high, which appears like a miniature volcano, except that sparkling water instead of melted lava flows from its little crater. When Sir William Johnson visited the spring, and in fact until quite recently, the water did not overflow the mound, but came to within a few inches of the summit; some other hidden outlet permitting ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... car, and not very novel foibles of Cy Bogart. Their problems were exactly what they had been two years ago, what they had been twenty years ago, and what they would be for twenty years to come. With the world a possible volcano, the husbandmen were plowing at the base of the mountain. A volcano does occasionally drop a river of lava on even the best of agriculturists, to their astonishment and considerable injury, but their cousins inherit the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... that friend has said all his say. What a contrast the fiery fervour and unwearying pertinacity of Abraham's prayers make to the stiff formalism of the intercessions one is familiar with! The former are like the successive pulses of a volcano driving a hot lava stream before it; the latter, like the slow flow of a glacier, cold and sluggish. Is any part of our public or private worship more hopelessly formal than our prayers for others? This picture from the old world may well shame ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... appearance might be due to the clearing off of the clouds above a heated region of the globe beneath, rendering the latter visible through the opening; others that it was perhaps a mass of smoke and vapor ejected from a gigantic volcano, or from the vents covering a broad area of volcanic action; others that it might be a vast incandescent slag floating upon the molten globe of the planet and visible through, or above, the enveloping clouds; and others have thought that ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... came, and the whaleboat carried him on board. The after-part of the ship was full of Haoles {6} who had been to visit the volcano, as their custom is; and the midst was crowded with Kanakas, and the forepart with wild bulls from Hilo and horses from Kau; but Keawe sat apart from all in his sorrow, and watched for the house of Kiano. There it sat, low upon the shore in the black ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the platform wall, realizing that in diverse ways my guru was trying to convey to me the devastating news. Seething with rebellion, my soul was like a volcano. By the time I reached the Puri hermitage I was nearing collapse. The inner voice was tenderly repeating: "Collect yourself. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the sea. We pondered this very much; and we put to ourselves the question, "What raised the island to its present height above the sea?" But to this we could by no means give to ourselves a satisfactory reply. Jack thought it might have been blown up by a volcano; and Peterkin said he thought it must have jumped up of its own accord! We also noticed, what had escaped us before, that the solid rocks of which the island was formed were quite different from the live coral rocks on the shore, where the wonderful ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... English soil. I would meet him even if he were a chevaux de frise. Little it mattered to me. He might swing the ten arms of an Indian god; he might yell like a gale at sea; he might be more terrible in appearance than a volcano in its passions; still I would ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... watch came up on deck, and the hunters, the latter wiping their mouths, fresh from their interrupted breakfast, all crowding forward to get a glimpse of the land. Rainey kept on the course, heading for the far-off volcano. Minutes passed before Carlsen came on deck. He had not ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... electric fan. You have seen a housewife sweating over her oven to get it hot enough to bake a batch of biscuits. Her face gets pink and a drop of sweat dampens her curls. Quite a horrid job she finds it. But I had iron biscuits to bake; my forge fire must be hot as a volcano. There were five bakings every day and this meant the shoveling in of nearly two tons of coal. In summer I was stripped to the waist and panting while the sweat poured down across my heaving muscles. My palms and fingers, scorched by the heat, became ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... earthquake, was felt on shore. They said it was the most severe one sustained for many years. No damage was done that I could learn, and they do not appear to dread them much, having an outlet for these sulphureous quakers in an extensive volcano. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... Milan, the devout Dolores Gonzaga, with her large, calm, enthusiastic eyes, and again and again, crowding all the others into the background, the timid Johanna van der Gheynst, who under her delicate frame concealed a volcano of ardent passion. She had given him a daughter whose head was now adorned by a crown. In spite of the brief duration of their love bond, she had been clearer to him than all the rest—clearer even than the woman to whom the sacrament of marriage afterward ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... question. But I would like to say a few words about the alleged stupidity of the people of London in making no preparations for a disaster regarding which they had continual and ever-recurring warning. They have been compared with the inhabitants of Pompeii making merry at the foot of a volcano. In the first place, fogs were so common in London, especially in winter, that no particular attention was paid to them. They were merely looked upon as inconvenient annoyances, interrupting traffic and prejudicial to health, but I doubt if anyone thought it possible for a fog ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... any other influence in the nineteenth century, and who is trying to eke out at last a spoonful of atonement for it all—all this vast baptism of the business world in despair and force and cursing and pessimism, by perching up before it ——- University, like a dove cote on a volcano. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Franklin was in Paris, the embassador from America, in garb and demeanor as simple and frugal as the humblest citizen, and all Paris gazed upon him with wonder and admiration. A few bold spirits began to whisper, "Let us also have no king." The fires of a volcano were kindling under the whole structure of French society. It was time that the mighty fabric of corruption should be tumbled into the dust. The splendor and the extravagance of these royal festivities added but fuel to the flame. The people began to compute the expense of bonfires, palaces, equipages, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... volcano, Bonaparte would sooner or later be destroyed by it if he hastens not in due time to close the crater. Sitting upon the first step of the throne restored by his own hand, he would be the object of a monarch's gratitude; he would receive from France the highest regards, the ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... watching a beloved cataleptic: till she came alive, what was to be done but wait! God has had more waiting than any one else! Lufa was an iceberg that would not melt even in the warm southward sea, watched by a still volcano, whose fires were of no avail, for they could not reach her. Sparklingly pretty, not radiantly beautiful, she sat, glancing, coruscating, glittering, anything except glowing: glow she could not even put on! She did not know what it was. Now and then a soft sadness ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... observe, that all the rocks and shoals laid down on this coast do not exist at all; such as Volcano Island, the Byhors, Krenpel, the whole Slykenburgh, five Comadas, &c. Having beat up this coast twice, and carefully surveyed the whole, I can declare a finer and clearer coast does not anywhere exist. The old chart, published by A. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... vessel. The charts of the present day teem with examples of this sort and many islands and reefs are laid down which have not been seen since their first discovery, and which perhaps never existed at all, unless, like Sabrina Island, they were thrown up by a submarine volcano, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... to his brain, Colin, who was on the starboard side of the boat, threw his whole energy into the back stroke, and the boat spun round like a top into what seemed to be the seething center of a submarine volcano, for, with a roar that made the timbers of the boat vibrate, the gray whale spouted not six feet from where the boy was sitting. Dimly he saw the harpoon hurtle through the spray and the sharp crack of the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... untamed unridden young colt of an ass and rides through the city surrounded by the crowds under the very eyes of these leaders and their hireling legal minions. The tenseness of the whole scene, the power of restraint so put forth, the volcano smouldering underfoot waiting the slightest extra jar to loose out its explosion, all are revealed in the little sentence so pregnant in its concealed dynamic meaning, Jesus "hid Himself from, them." There's an exquisite blending of restraint over them and ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... the wailing of a baby volcano with a toothache. It began, and moved, and went through the series of changes that ended in a climbing, droning hum. Another. Another. The launching of pushpots for their morning flight was evidently getting ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... no the appreciation of what hame meant that our faithers had had. Not all of us, maybe, but too many. And a' the time, God help us, we were like those folk that dwell in their wee hooses on the slopes of Vesuvius—puir folk and wee hooses that may be swept awa' any day by an eruption of the volcano. ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... murmuring of the blue column as it came out of the cone, all this devastation had been caused in almost absolute silence. People could have watched and seen these deserted buildings slowly fuse together, run together as molten metal runs together, like the lava from a volcano of long ago under the ponderous moving to and fro of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... of decadence, profligacy, falsehood; and she cannot but see it. Tyrone's rebellion is the last drop which fills the cup. After fifty years of war, after a drain of money all but fabulous expended on keeping Ireland quiet, the volcano bursts forth again just as it seemed extinguished, more fiercely than ever, and the whole work has to be done over again, when there is neither time nor a man to do it. And ahead, what hope is there for England? Who will be her successor? She knows in ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... to this plan on account of solicitude for my safety, "because Mosilikatse was behind the Cashan mountains thirsting for the blood of the first white man who should fall into his hands. And no man would in his sober senses build his house on the crater of a volcano." Having removed to the Bakwains of Sechele, I spent some of the happiest years of my life in missionary labor, and was favored in witnessing a gratifying measure of success in the spread of the knowledge of the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... earth. He escaped out of hell's doors on a windy day, and all that we do is to puff out a bad light, and send him back. Look at this fellow in whom conscience is operating so that he appears like a corked volcano! You can see that he takes Austrian money; his skin has got to be the exact colour of Munz. He has the greenish-yellow eyes of those elective, thrice-abhorred vampyres who feed on patriot-blood. He is condemned without trial ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... let me repeat the story told by Weismann of the July revolution in Paris in 1830, when the French got rid of Charles the Tenth. Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called on him and found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great event?' said Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames. There can no longer be discussion with closed doors.' The Frenchman replied that no doubt it was a terrible business; but what could they expect with such a ministry and such a king? 'Stuff!' said Goethe: 'I ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... not mend it. We have been, and are, living on the edge of a volcano here, young gentlemen, and the slightest thing may cause an eruption. This act of yours, I greatly fear, will bring the flames ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... issue, we spoke of its late eruption. While reading the proof of that portion of our 'Gossip,' a friend handed us a letter lately received from an American missionary lady at the Sandwich Islands, from which we extract the subjoined vivid description of the great volcano at Hawaii: 'You know,' says the writer, 'something, I suppose, of the geological character of this island. It seems as though a vast crater had boiled over and poured its fiery liquid in every direction. This lava, having cooled and hardened, forms the basis of the island. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Cold water, always kept at a suitable temperature, had completely prevented the inflammation of the wounds. It even seemed to the reporter that this water, being slightly sulphurous,—which was explained by the neighbourhood of the volcano,— had a more direct action on the healing. The suppuration was much less abundant, and—thanks to the incessant care by which he was surrounded!—Herbert returned to life, and his fever abated. He was besides subjected ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... pleasant one, but it is only the surface. Do you think a woman could look as she does in some of her poses and not feel it? We have never seen her in a passion, but if she got into one, it would be terrible. When she flashes out sometimes it is like a tongue of flame from a slumbering volcano. You would feel that there might be an eruption that would sweep everything before it. As you know, I gave up painting her after the first two months, but I sketch her in every pose; not always her whole figure, but her face, and keep the sketches for use some ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... crust of the earth, like the giant Enceladus under Mt. Etna, and that there are times when they roar from the depths where they are in bondage, and call aloud for freedom; when they rise in their might, and manifest themselves in the earthquake and the volcano. It will be a more fearful and terrific struggle, when the powers of an apostate being are roused in eternity; when the then eternal sin and guilt has its hour of triumph, and the eternal reason and conscience have their hour of judgment and remorse; when the inner world of man's spirit, by this ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... inherited temperament, and miseducation, humanity was so cramped, distorted, envenomed, that the best of it was in the fiery sway of the more urgent passions, his inmost life being, as it must always be with poets, inwoven into his verse. From the expiring volcano in his bosom his genius, in this poem, casts upon the world a lurid flame, making life look pale or fever-flushed. With unslumbering vivacity, human nature is exhibited in that misleading light made by the bursting of half-truths that ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... may be an element of a glorious success. The volcano that pours its vengeance upon the fair plantation below, leaving wreck and ruin in its path, bestows a wealth of sulphur which plays an important part in the world of commerce. The same frost that kills the harvest of a season also destroys ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... inkstand was always in the state of lava congealed in the crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowadays become a Vesuvius? The pens, all twisted, served to clean the stems of our pipes; and, in opposition to all the laws of credit, paper was even scarcer ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... With the same insane pertinacity I continued to repeat "Now's your time, now's your time," and "billet, billet, billet," till at last I came up to the nearest battery, where I could look over the crest of the hill; and as if I had looked into the crater of a volcano, or down the fabled abyss into hell, the whole grand horror of a battle burst upon my sight. For a moment I could neither feel nor think. I scarcely beheld, or beholding did not understand or perceive. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... to the experiences of life under such a summons, for I had dreamed that I was on a visit to the Man in the Moon, and was enjoying a genuine surprise at finding him happy and well contented, seated in the centre of an extinct volcano, with all the riches of the great satellite gathered round him, hanging in tempting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... for him mildly, for he still had the uneasy feeling that he stood on the brink of a volcano; and, as a matter of fact, he tumbled into ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... o'clock when, the job lot of telegrams despatched, Fairfax led his volcano from the hotel and headed for the apartment house. He expected another balk at the entrance, for his round of gaiety had come now to seem to him eternal—he could hardly imagine a life in which he was not conducting a tipsy man through ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... less than 2.5 times the size of Washington, DC Land boundaries: none Coastline: 101.9 km Maritime claims: Exclusive fishing zone: 200 nm Territorial sea: 3 nm Disputes: none Climate: antarctic Terrain: Heard Island - bleak and mountainous, with an extinct volcano; McDonald Islands - small and rocky Land use: arable land 0%; permanent crops 0%; meadows and pastures 0%; forest and woodland 0%; other 100% Environment: primarily used as research stations Note: located 4,100 km southwest of Australia in the ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... struck him: there was a volcano amongst those mountains up which he was ascending; and it was the lava which had produced that desolation, and which, cold and hardened, formed the soil whereon he walked. It was now past midday; and he seated himself ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the budget itself, and like the budget again, as complicated as it looks simple; and I set it as a warning, a beacon, at the edge of this hole, this gulf, this volcano, called, in the language of the 'Constitutionel,' ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... 'reforming' the other half pretty steadily ever since the Creation, yet there appears to be a fairly appreciable amount of human nature left in it, notwithstanding. Suppressing sin is much the same sort of task that suppressing a volcano would be—plugging one vent merely opens another. Evil will last ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... in her—a flare of feminine ferocity. She felt hot to the touch, an active volcano ready for eruption. If only she could get a chance to strike back in a way that would hurt, to wound him as deeply as he ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... the hardy fir, which flourishes amongst the rocks. The ground for about two leagues was covered with lava, and great masses of black calcined rock, so that we seemed to be passing over the crater of a volcano. This part of the country is deservedly called the Mal Pais, and the occasional crosses with their faded garlands, that gleam in these bleak, volcanic regions, give token that it may have yet other titles to the name ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Above all this dreadful preparation the merry world goes on, singing and dancing, marrying and giving in marriage, as thoughtless of the impending catastrophe as were the people of Pompeii in those pleasant August days in 79, just before the city was buried in ashes;—and yet the terrible volcano had stood there, in the immediate presence of themselves and their ancestors, for generations, and more than once the rocking earth had given signal tokens ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... indeed it appears so bright that when the moon is new and the whole of this part of the disc is dark, Aristarchus can still be seen with a telescope, and this gave rise in the past to the idea that it was a volcano in actual eruption. The explanation is, however, more prosaic, because the mountain is really brought into view by earthshine on its bright covering. When the moon is new the earth is almost fully lighted on the side toward the moon, and ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... in costume the Court of Charles the First. They agreed this night to reappear in their splendid dresses; and the Duke, who was Villiers, supported his character, even to the gay shedding of a shower of diamonds. In his cap was observed an hereditary sapphire, which blazed like a volcano, and which was rumoured to be worth ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... "But we don't know, Fleming. For the last few years—ever since the trouble in the Balkans finally flamed up—Europe has been on the brink of a volcano. We don't know what the next day may bring forth. I've been afraid—" He stopped, suddenly, ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... not." "It doesn't matter to me, compared with what it matters to her." "Well, it matters to ME," Claud Dalzell announced, in a high tone, the crust of his fine manners giving to the pressure of the volcano within. "I can't stand the connection, if you can. Carey was bad enough, but he had some claim beside his coat to rank as a gentleman. This crawling ass, who would lick your boots for sixpence, to have him patting me on the back and calling ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... it, enduring terrible fatigue and periods of piercing cold. They got far above the timber line and approached the boundaries of eternal snow. It is characteristic of them, that on one point of their journey, they stopped and despatched a party under Ordaz to scale and explore the smoking volcano Popocatepetl, which with Ixtaccihuatl guarded the beautiful valley of Mexico. Ordaz and his twelve companions followed the guides as far as they would lead them and then they climbed far up the sides. They were unable to reach the top, but they accomplished a ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the most powerful of all the giants who conspired against Jupiter. He was struck with a thunder-bolt, and covered with the heap of earth now called Mount Etna. The smoke of the volcano is the breath of the buried giant; and when he shifts his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... passing through the midst of the conspirators, he proceeded past the doors of the offices occupied by the various crown officials. None spoke to the old man, he spoke to none, but his breast burned in agony, and a cloud was on his brow, like the smoke that wreathes around the crater of a volcano. His eyes seemed to shoot forth sparks, and his lips were muttering. Anger and sorrow were upon his face, but, turning a corner in the building, he was now hidden from the view of the multitude, and strode along the ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... placed in the center to form, as it were, the backbone of the pile; the smaller blocks of ore are arranged on the outside of these and in the interstices. The shape or form of the pile when completed is similar to a truncated cone, and when burning the kiln looks like a small volcano. When the kiln has been filled with ore, the whole is covered with ginesi with a view of preventing the escape of the fumes. The ore is then ignited by means of bundles of straw, impregnated or saturated with sulphur, being held above the thin portion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... Strange manifestations of nature were reported from the interior, where the ground was opened in many places like a ploughed field. Great rents in the earth were reported, and for many miles north from Los Angeles miniature geysers are said to have spouted volcano-like streams of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... peculiar interest. The following may serve as specimens:—"What is that which becomes pregnant without conceiving, fat without eating?" The answer seems to be "A cloud." "My coal-brazier clothes me with a divine garment, my rock is founded in the sea" (a volcano). "I dwell in a house of pitch and brick, but over me glide the boats" (a canal). "He that says, 'Oh, that I might exceedingly avenge myself!' draws from a waterless well, and rubs the skin without oiling it." "When sickness is incurable and hunger unappeasable, silver and gold cannot restore health ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to catch a sight of the breaking up of the jam, which, for magnitude, it is certain, has not occurred on this river for more than one hundred years. The whole river was like a boiling cauldron, with masses of ice upheaved as by a volcano. But soon the darkness shrouded the scene in part. The ear, however, could hear the roaring of the waters and the crash of buildings, bridges, and lumber, and the eye could trace the mammoth ice-jam of four miles long, which passed on majestically, but with lightning rapidity, bearing the contents ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people—many of them—bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... if with eye anointed, you could look On that benign and tranquil countenance, You might detect the lines which Passion leaves Long after its volcano is extinct And flowers conceal its lava. Percival Was older than his consort, twenty years; Yet were they fitly mated; though, with her, Time had dealt very gently, leaving face And rounded form still youthful, and unmarred By one uncomely outline; ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... the flame of a hate unspeakable burning in his heart, and demanding the lives—no less—of those that had destroyed him and his. Yet was he forced to sit a mendicant almost at that board whose head was his by every right; forced to sit and curb his mood, giving no outward sign of the volcano that boiled and raged within his soul as his eye fell upon the florid, smiling face and portly, well-fed frame of Gregory Ashburn. For the time was not yet. He must wait; wait until Joseph's return, so that he might spend his vengeance ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... spread to the wooden walls; and over the burning ruins the assailants rushed into the city. A high wind arose, and the whole city, whose buildings were constructed of wood only, soon blazed like a volcano. The wretched citizens had but to choose between the swords of the Russians and the fire. Many, in their despair, plunged their poignards into the bosoms of their wives and children, and then buried the dripping blade in their own ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... horses were converging by many paths and lanes towards the old shaft, and the shaft itself was apparently endued with the properties of a volcano, for out of its mouth issued a continuous shower of dust and stones, while many stalwart arms laid bare the mine beneath, and tossed up the precious "tubs" ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... ice-cap abuts against this extinct volcano at an elevation of about four hundred feet above sea-level; the summit of the mountain rises another eight hundred feet. On the north, the rock descends to the floe. Gaussberg is pyramidal in shape, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... this husband of hers, like an unquiet spirit, came to trouble her and remind her of a time she would willingly have forgotten. She looked calm and quiet enough sitting there with her placid face and smooth brow; but this woman was like a slumbering volcano, and her passions were all the more dangerous ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... we may go down or be laid up for a long while for repairs. These waters are fairly well charted, but there is still a great deal to be learned about them. From time to time they have had earthquakes down here, and volcano eruptions, and ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... geology. The little Mount Eeles cone surmounted, we looked far down into a vast crater of miles in circuit, whose sharp-ridged, angry, unsettled-looking sides could barely convince us that we looked upon an extinct volcano. Hardly did its aspect reach the solid quiet of the Vesuvian interior, as described by some scanty classic records, prior to the grand, sudden, entirely unexpected outburst of the Pompeiian eruption. Let the crowds ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... wonderful scene, an arboreal desert, dominated by its pure light green, yet lined by many merging colors. And it rose slowly to a low dim and dark-red zone of lava, spurred, peaked, domed by volcano cones, a wild and ragged region, illimitable ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... scrupulous care. He was fair, almost girlish, in appearance, and gentle in his speech. No one, merely observing the quiet, modest boy, going about his usual routine of duty, without noise or turbulence, would have dreamed of the sleeping volcano that lay beneath ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... you an hour ago smiling and happy. I find you white and worn. There are strange lights in your eyes like the slumbrous fire of a volcano; even your voice seems to have lost its tenderness. What is ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... Edith called, "I see Vesuvius!" and the wonderful volcano lay before them. Its smoke rose in a straight column and then broke, trailing off into the distance like the ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... houses built on little levels, artificially made on the declivities of the hills, have a very picturesque appearance. The scenery in the immediate background is gloomy; but, in the distance, the summit of the volcano Aconcagua, which is 23,000 feet above the level of the sea, and which, on fine evenings, is gilded by the rays of the setting sun, imparts a ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... day all the other inhabitants slept upon a volcano, and at quarter day sent in a unanimous notice of their intention ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure. Not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. Only from the summit of the mountain one little snowy wisp of cloud after another kept detaching itself, like smoke from a volcano, and blowing southward in some high stream of air: Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable task, making the weather, like a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'n' stark ravin' dumb to see where he would come out after that. I did n't say nothin' of what I felt to him or Mr. Shores, for the very good reason as I wanted to save all my feelin's for Mr. Kimball, but I tell you that a volcano gettin' itself made in the beginnin' is floatin' lily-pads beside the inside of me ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... huge weight of formidable verisimilitude which shall surround me on all sides and give firm ground for my feet to walk on. I love it when a novel is thick with the solid mass of earth-life, and when its passions spring up volcano-like from flaming pits and bleeding craters of torn and convulsed materials. I demand and must have in a book a four-square sense of life-illusion, a rich field for my imagination to wander in at large, a certain quantity of blank space, so to speak, filled with a huge ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... very gay look to the scene. Buckwheat flowers bloomed on their rosy stems, and tall corn-stalks rustled their leaves in the warm air that came from the ovens hidden in the hillsides; for bread needs a slow fire, and an obliging volcano did the ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... hurriedly about in our minds for something to say—it is called "making conversation." But Carpenter evidently did not know about this custom, and neither of us instructed him. Once or twice I stole a glance at Mary, marvelling at her. All her life she had been a conversational volcano, in a state of perpetual eruption; but now, apparently she passed judgment on her own remarks, and ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... as Mott believed, the victims of a stupid nightmare? Or could it be true that beneath all this peace boiled a volcano ready at any minute ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... or great black stone, preserved by the Mahometans in the Temple of Mecca, had probably a celestial origin. It is said to have been brought from heaven by the angel Gabriel. Some astronomers imagine that these stones have been thrown from a lunar volcano. There is nothing, perhaps, philosophically inconsistent in this theory, for volcanic appearances have been seen in the moon; and a force such as our volcanoes exert would be sufficient to project fragments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... and was now destined to be butchered for their amusement. Having prevailed upon about 70 of his comrades, he burst out of the school with them, succeeded in obtaining arms, and took refuge in the crater of Vesuvius, at that time an extinct volcano (B.C. 73). Here he was soon joined by large numbers of slaves, who flocked to him from all quarters. He was soon at the head of a formidable army. The desolation of the Social and Civil Wars had depopulated Italy, while the employment of slave-labor furnished Spartacus with an endless supply of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... Jean Jacques sat reciting to himself a spectacular bit of logic from one of his idols, wedged between a piece of Aristotle quartz and Plato marble. The sound of it was good in his ears. He mouthed it as greedily and happily as though he was not sitting on the edge of a volcano instead of the moss- grown limestone on a hill above ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stolid and impassive that it is hard to arouse his wrath. He will bear insults without a murmur for a long time, but in the end he will be stung into madness and he will give force to all his pent up fires of hate that have slumbered like a volcano. He may wait long without having punished his oppressor, but he will bide his time. So it was with the Boxers in China whose story is so painfully fresh in the memories of the great legations of the ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... wall of rock that I have mentioned, which I suppose is composed of some very hard stone that remained when the softer rock in which it lay was disintegrated by millions of years of weather or washings by the water of the lake. Or perhaps its substance was thrown out of the bowels of the volcano when this was active. I am no geologist, and cannot say, especially as I lacked time to examine the place. At any rate there it was, and there in it appeared the mouth of a great cave that I presume was natural, having once formed a kind ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... but the fire of a volcano burned within, as she watched the letter blackening upon the coals; and when next her eyes met those of her grandmother there was in them a fierce, determined look which prompted that lady at once to change her tactics and try the power of persuasion rather than of force. Feigning a smile, she said: ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... with terror. If the Pilot had thought it advisable to escape, he might have walked over the prostrate bodies of his captors, not one of whom would have been bold enough to follow what appeared to be a human volcano, vomiting fire and smoke,—the fire of course ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... infamy, and, feeling called of God in his soul, went upon the platform. His first utterances brought down the hisses of the mob. He was not a man very easily subdued by any mob. They listened as he kindled and poured on that man Austin the fire and lava of a volcano, and he finally turned the course of the feeling of the meeting. Practically unknown when the sun went down one day, when it rose next morning all Boston was saying, "Who is this fellow? Who is this Phillips?" A question that has ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... during the "peaceful" years the blood of 3742 patriots has been shed. When the prisons of Austria are filled with patriots, is that peace? or is the discontent of all the nations peace? I do not believe that the Lord created the world for such a kind of peace as that,—to be a prison,—to be a volcano, boiling up and ready to break out. No: but with justice and liberty there will be contentment, and with contentment, peace—lasting peace, consistent peace: while from the tyrants of the world there is oppression, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... also an enormous hanging stone perched on the edge of a volcano's crater—the highest summit in the whole island. Although it was very far below us, we could see it quite plainly, and it looked wobbly enough to be pushed off its perch with the hand. There was ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... was given me by Professor Judd, and I found in it several ovoid particles of a much larger size, being 1/50 inch long, and 1/70 wide and deep. The dust from the same eruption, which fell on board the ship Arabella, 970 miles from the volcano, also contained solid particles 1/500 inch diameter. Mr. John Murray of the Challenger Expedition writes to me that he finds in the deep sea deposits 500 and even 700 miles west of the coast of Africa, rounded particles of quartz, having a diameter of 1/250 inch, and similar particles are ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace |
