"Zenith" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new face to affairs, while it secured the ascendancy of the Catholic party in the kingdom. Disastrous eclipse had come over the house of Montmorency and Coligny, while the star of Guise, brilliant with the conquest of Calais, now culminated to the zenith. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gray house eaves the mist wavers. Day troubles it. A pink light rises to the zenith, and the mist shifts and slips away in layers, pink and gold and white. Now far beyond the grayness, to the west, the cone of Fuji flashes into splendor. It, too, is pink. Its shape is of a lotos bud, and the long fissures that plough a mountain ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... yellow. Beneath the red curtain, close to the horizon, was a small semicircle of bright greenish yellow, just as if the sun were about to rise; and bright gleams of light shot up from it far into the sky, making the rose-coloured clouds glow again. The brilliancy extended upwards almost to the zenith, the stars glimmering through the darker or less bright part of the sky. Though I have mentioned "clouds," there was not a cloud to be seen; the clouds I name were really masses of brilliant light, obscuring the deep blue beyond. I feel ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... next floor had been divided into a succession of private rooms, comfortably furnished, where, screened behind thick curtains, dined somewhat "irregular" patrons: lovers who were in either the dawn, the zenith, or the decline of their often ephemeral fancies. On the top floor, spacious salons, richly decorated, were used for large and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... crucible, of which the earth under our feet seems always the very bottom of the bowl, many ingredients, and distils from them this pure gold. Soon after he passes the meridian you may see it sprinkled lavishly from zenith to horizon, and as the day wanes it gilds all sordid things with the glow of romance. By it we get the clearer vision and have thoughts of the unseen things which are eternal. The trouble with sordid souls, if such there be, is that they have never seen enough ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... we meet 'Twixt Westminster and Aldgate-street! Rascals—the mushrooms of a day, Who sprung and shared the South Sea prey, Nor in their zenith condescend To own or know ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... than what time Latona's twins Cover'd of Libra and the fleecy star, Together both, girding the' horizon hang, In even balance from the zenith pois'd, Till from that verge, each, changing hemisphere, Part the nice level; e'en so brief a space Did Beatrice's silence hold. A smile Bat painted on her cheek; and her fix'd gaze Bent on the point, at which my vision ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... horror came over Schwartz, he knew not why; but the thirst for gold prevailed over his fear, and he rushed on. And the bank of black cloud rose to the zenith, and out of it came bursts of spiry lightning, and waves of darkness seemed to heave and float between their flashes, over the whole heavens. And the sky where the sun was setting was all level, ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... greatness of a College on the boards of which are such names as Berkeley, Swift, Grattan, Flood, and Burke, but it will be admitted by all that as far as the fame of her alumni is concerned—and there is no other test for a collegiate foundation—Trinity reached the zenith of her greatness during the years in which a free Parliament served to break down the barriers of religion in the island. With the passing of that phase of political history she relapsed into her place as the "silent sister" in the country, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... It spread over the whole extent of the sky in the form of an irregular arch, and was intensely brilliant. But the brilliancy varied, as the green ethereal fire waved mysteriously to and fro, or shot up long streamers toward the zenith. These streamers, or "merry dancers," as they are sometimes termed, were at times peculiarly bright. Their colour was most frequently yellowish white, sometimes greenish, and once or twice of a lilac tinge. The strength of the light was something greater than ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... correctly." Booth nodded his head. By this time the grayness of dawn was approaching; moving figures inquisitively coming near were to be seen distinctly, and the cocks began to crow gutturally, though the barn was a hulk of blaze and ashes, sending toward the zenith a spiral line of dense smoke. The women became importunate that the troops might be ordered to extinguish the fire, which was spreading toward their precious corn-cribs. Not even death could banish the call of interest. ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... new star rising from the territorial seas, We have seen it mount the zenith where the old flag split the breeze; And we boasted of our glories in rejoicings grand and great As we thought we raced for honors in the new-created state! Vanished now the dreams of sal'ry and the offices to fill, For the women all are knocking ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... stage in the evolution of Israel is recorded in the opening chapters of I Samuel and is best studied in detail in connection with the history of the nation at its zenith. We have studied the forces which made the nation. A brief summary will indicate the transition to the next period, that of the kingdom. The victory over the Canaanites gave the Hebrews possession of the land and left them free ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... Then two. The stars winked out, and the dawn whitened. The air became warmer. The whole east, clean of clouds, flamed opalescent from horizon to zenith, crimson at the base, where the earth blackened against it; at the top fading from pink to pale yellow, to green, to light blue, to the turquoise iridescence of the desert sky. The long, thin shadows of the early hours drew backward like receding serpents, then suddenly the sun looked over the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... frame Of Nature, the great mother. Ev'n in life, While still, pent-up in flesh, and skin, and bones, My thoughts and feelings like electric flame Shot through the solid mass, toward the source, And blended with the general elements, When thy young star o'er life's horizon hung Far from it's zenith yet low lagging clouds (Vapors of earth) obscured its heaven-born rays— Dull joys of prejudice and superstition And vulgar decencies begirt thee round; And thou didst wear awhile th' unholy bonds Of "holy matrimony!" and didst vail Awhile thy lofty spirit to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... down behind a fleecy cloud-mountain and kindled a volcano, from whose silver-rimmed crater fiery rays of scarlet shot up, almost to the clear blue zenith; while here and there, through clefts and vapory gorges, the lurid lava light ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... day of the year; the last moon of the year, almost at her zenith. Of all the Christmas guests Lance alone remained; and Thea had promised him before leaving, a moonlight vision of Amber, the Sleeping Beauty of Rajasthan. The event had been delayed till now, partly because they waited on the moon; partly because they did not want it ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like rocks along a shore. Up over them rushed light, crimson surf, foaming, tossing. Beyond, a rosy sea. In it, little golden boats floated. The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... under our feet; the volcano blazed; the wind burst forth in irresistible blasts, and swept the living and the dead in whirlwinds far off into the desert. Thunder pealed from every quarter of the heavens. Lightning, in immense sheets, withering eye and soul, burned from the zenith to the ground, and marked its track by forests on flame, and the shattered summits ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the night, I pondered the startling events of the past few hours. Above me the stars and planets gleamed in the deep purple of an almost cloudless sky. Venus had long since dropped below the horizon. But Mars was up there—approaching the zenith. I wondered what the Martian helio might be saying. I could have asked Greys back at the office. But Greys, I knew, would be too busy to ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... go as suddenly as though she had struck him. The cold white light of the tropical dawn had crept past the zenith now and the expanse of the shallow waters looked cold, too, without stir or ripple within the enormous rim of the horizon where, to the west, a ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... where you are," cried Sandford; "you are arrived at the zenith of perfection in a woman, and to add one qualification ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... stood upon the verge of the grave. But as the sun of his existence was gently and calmly sinking beneath the horizon, lo! its beams were reflected in their pristine brightness by another orb, born from its bosom, which was steadily ascending to the zenith of earthly fame! ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... be grand to-night," whispered a thin man, who looked like a tailor, seated on the other side of Leonard. Time flies,—an hour. Look again at the Dutch clock. John Burley is grand, he is in his zenith, at his culminating point. What magnificent drollery! what luxuriant humour! How the Rabelais shakes in his easy-chair! Under the rush and the roar of this fun (what word else shall describe it?) the man's intellect is as clear as gold sand under a river. Such wit and such ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of this tropical night. My memories took wing toward France, in the wake of those zodiacal stars due to twinkle over it in a few hours. The moon shone in the midst of the constellations at their zenith. I then remembered that this loyal, good-natured satellite would return to this same place the day after tomorrow, to raise the tide and tear the Nautilus from its coral bed. Near midnight, seeing that all was quiet over the darkened waves as well as under the waterside trees, I repaired to my ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... breakfasted in the stately seclusion of his rooms, and as he came gravely sauntering into the Club ordinary, was at once beset by a friendly chorus, as he carelessly glanced over the morning letters which attested his progress toward the social zenith. He, however, gazed impatiently at the club-house door, where a neat pair of ponies awaited him, with servants deftly purveyed by the subtle Ram Lal. His two body servants were also afrites of the same sly Aladdin. His swelling port duly impressed ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... last fond glance will show him o'er his head The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread In lambent glory, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... palates were jaded before they knew the taste of food. He found much to console him in literature, not only in the literature of the past but in the literature of his day, but here again he was beset with misgivings and haunted by forebodings. He felt that the State had reached its zenith both in material prosperity and intellectual achievement, and that all the future held in reserve was decline and decay. This thought was ever present with him; in the vast extension of empire he foresaw the inevitable disintegration, and he wondered in a melancholy ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... that's my quality. I've done errands and odd jobs for him all my life. Most people who meet him do; though it might be hard to say why. I haven't hitched my wagon to a star; nobody'll get to do that, because this star isn't going to take anything to the zenith ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... and mirroring in their depths the hardly distinguishable outline of the Southern Cross. The salt smell of the sea was tinged with the spice-laden air of the near coast. Drowsiness came over me. I picked up a musket and paced around the little plateau. The moon had but just reached its zenith, making all objects easily discernible. The smooth storm-swept space before me reflected back its rays like a well-scrubbed quarter-deck; below were the dark outlines of my sleeping mates. I could hear the light wind rustling through the branches ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... cloud, which straightway became gilt and silver-edged in a marvellous and splendid degree. The cloud of thought was thicker than that, if not quite so brilliant; and it was not until low growls of thunder began to salute his ear, that he looked up and found the silver edge fast mounting to the zenith and the curtain drawing its folds all around over the clear blue sky. His next look was earthward, for a shelter; for at the rate that chariot of the storm was travelling he knew he had not many minutes to seek one before the storm would be upon him. Happily a blacksmith's ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... circle is one whose plane is perpendicular to the horizon, hence all such circles must pass through the normal and have the zenith and nadir points for their poles. The altitude of a celestial object is its distance above the horizon measured on the arc of a vertical circle. As the distance from the horizon to the zenith is 90, the difference, or complement ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... was hot, and the June sun almost at its zenith. The gale that had rocked the tall trees in fury but a few days before was almost forgotten in the windless weather that had succeeded it. Master Morgan had sauntered along one of the broad woodland paths, and was now lying on his back in a sweet-smelling bed of bracken, gazing up through ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... thought when from quite up in the zenith down into the depths of the sea the arch of heaven seemed to open out in a sharp jagged line of vivid blue light, shutting again instantaneously, and the boy knelt gazing before him in wonder, for there, about ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... evidently expected. The struggle was protracted for three months; and it signalized Mr. Wilson's first serious conflict with the Senate—that same Senate which was destined to play such a vexatious and destructive role in his career. At this time, however, Mr. Wilson had reached the zenith of his control over the law-making bodies. It was early in his Presidential term, and in these early days Senators are likely to be careful about quarrelling with the White House—especially the Senators who are members of the President's political party. In this struggle, moreover, Mr. Wilson ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... made his way across the foot of the lawn to the road where the machine was waiting for them. As they climbed into it, the glow to the south had turned a lurid red, staining the dusky sky to the zenith. Brierly drove and for precaution's sake Peter sat in the tonneau with Shad. But the lumberman, if he had ever been considered formidable even in his own estimation, showed no evidence of any self-confidence. Peter had given him signs of mettle which were not to be denied and like all bullies ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... moon to stand still is no exception. There was no standing still of the sun and moon in that case. What is meant by the expressions in Joshua 10 is that the Israelites conquered the enemy in the short time that the sun occupied the zenith, while its motion was not noticeable for about an hour, as is usually the case about noon. In the case of Isaiah moving the sun ten degrees back for Hezekiah (Isai. 38, 8), there was likewise no change in the motion of the sun, but only in that of ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... diminished at the times of the southing and northing of the moon, and that in a greater degree when this coincides with the southing and northing of the sun, and this in a still greater degree about the times of the equinoxes. This decrease of the gravity of all bodies during the time the moon passes our zenith or nadir might possibly be shewn by the slower vibrations of a pendulum, compared with a spring clock, or with astronomical observation. Since a pendulum of a certain length moves slower at the line than near the poles, because the gravity ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... rapidly of data which he had derived from his metric photograph, from plumb line, level, compass, and tape, astronomical triangle, vertices, zenith, pole and sun, declination, azimuth, solar time, parallactic angles, refraction, and a dozen ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... obscuration, like a total one of the sun, could last but a few seconds, for the Polynesia and the other ship were moving in opposite directions, while the moon itself was creeping upward toward the zenith. Slowly the black ship glided toward its destination—hull, masts and rigging gradually mingled with the gloom beyond, until the moon, as if shaking off the eclipse, mounted upward with its face unmarred, excepting ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... sixteen.[3] This institution became very influential among the Negroes of Canada. Travelers mentioned the Institute in accounting for the prosperity and good morals of the refugees.[4] Unfortunately, however, after the year 1855 when the school reached its zenith, it began to decline on account of bad feeling probably resulting from a ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... we realize what is for our good. Knowledge, development, culture, may reach their zenith and pass beyond. We may become debauched with the surfeit of these things. The end and aim of life ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... passed three hours; the night had long set in, with a clear sky, 13 deg. below zero, and a sharp wind blowing. All at once an exclamation from Braisted aroused me. I opened my eyes, as I lay in his lap, looked upward, and saw a narrow belt or scarf of silver fire stretching directly across the zenith, with its loose, frayed ends slowly swaying to and fro down the slopes of the sky. Presently it began to waver, bending back and forth, sometimes slowly, sometimes with a quick, springing motion, as if testing its elasticity. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... splashed my fingers and scorched them, but I scarcely noticed. My sense of high-gear adventure had reached its zenith now. There was something thrilling, something stimulating in this stealthy night entrance into a deserted castle. It was an experience, at all events; there was no concierge to stump before one through dim passages and up winding staircases; no flood of dates and names and anecdotes ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... majority of her father's guests—a man not made but still early in the making, the glamour of promise rather than the stark light of finality upon him. This affected her; for at eighteen, a career, be it never so distinguished, which has reached its zenith, in other words reached the end of its tether, must needs have a touch of melancholy about it. With the heat of going on in your own veins, the sight of one who has no further go strikes chill to the heart. And so, while uncertain whether ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... tablet was for many years in dispute, Voltaire, Renan, and others of lesser fame regarding it as a pious Jesuit fraud; but all doubts on the subject have now been dispelled by the exhaustive monograph of Pere Havret, S.J., entitled La Stele de Si-ngan. The date of the tablet seems to mark the zenith of Nestorian Christianity in China; after this date it began to decay. Marco Polo refers to it as existing in the 13th century; but then it fades out of sight, leaving scant traces in Chinese literature of ever ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... they strolled out to see the sun set from Lady Judith's grounds. The wind had dropped. The clouds had rolled from the zenith, and ranged in amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over sea and land: Titanic crimson head and chest rising from the wave faced Hyperion falling. There hung Briareus with deep-indented trunk and ravined brows, stretching all his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... late breakfast, a la mode du pays, sauntered off to parts unknown to the others. The day was one of remarkable beauty. No dim foggy city sun cast a sullen glance at the landscape. The sun stood in the zenith of a sky of the deepest azure, like a flaming, sparkling, dazzling meteor. Still ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... appointed time the terrified savages saw a disc of blackness gradually pass over the face of the sun; the birds became agitated and flew to cover; the skulking dogs drew near their masters; almost absolute darkness fell on all about; the stars of heaven appeared in the zenith, and in the midst of it all, the Prophet exclaimed: "Did I not testify truly? Behold! Darkness has shrouded the sun!" The account of that day, faithfully set forth by J. Fennimore Cooper, then a youth, is filled with strange relations of the unnatural ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the ashes were live embers which quickly ignited the wood he threw on. A few stars were peeping out in the misty zenith. He looked up at them, deliberated, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... writing Church music, in which stringed instruments were heard; in the seventeenth, lived Stradella, Lotti, Bononcini, Lully, and Corelli. In the eighteenth century, the period when the art of Violin-making was at its zenith, the list is indeed a glorious one. At this point is the constellation of Veracini, Geminiani, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Boccherini, Tartini, Viotti, Nardini, among the Italians; while in France it is the epoch of Leclair and Gavinies, composers of Violin music of the highest excellence. Surrounded ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... too ready with complaint In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank sky, we might grow faint To muse upon eternity's constraint Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope Must widen early, is it well to droop, For a few days consumed in ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... tropics, into which the year is divided—the wet and the dry. Though the heat is greatest in the former, it is called winter, as the sun then passes twice over the zenith; while during the dry season, which is called summer, the sun is in the southern hemisphere. During the whole year the north-east trade-wind blows across the country, but modified in direction and force by ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... time, dissolved. The body rests, but the unfettered mind enters upon a "will-less state of pure seeing," where dreams no longer remain the meaningless fantasies of blind sleep, but become luminous with idea and sequence. With the body thus left behind, the intellect rises to the zenith of perception, where the blue veil of earthly knowledge is pierced ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... its zenith and sank slowly. It grew cooler in the forest through which he lurched, but he was hardly aware of it. Claire, too, was rapidly losing control over herself. She had ceased to talk, save to utter dull, monosyllabic commands to him. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... powerlessness of that other great mystery of creatural life which we call Space, Height or depth, it matters not. That diffusive love diffuses itself equally in all directions. Up or down, it is all the same. The distance from the centre is the same to Zenith or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... they were unable to watch the sky, since only a strip of the zenith was visible. The flat ledge about the watch-tower was the only level spot large enough for single-stick exercise, and they were still practicing there when, at about four o'clock, a tremendous roll of thunder ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... for it, she knew too well the strength and weakness of life to have pride; her former plain dealing had not stiffened into self-sufficiency. Such as one had known her when beginning business, such one found her in the zenith of her fortune. Instead of a woollen gown she wore a silk one, but the color was still black; her language had not become refined; she retained the same blunt familiar accent, and at the end of five minutes' conversation with any one of ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the play opens when Pillage is at the zenith of his power; a stage direction orders that "The Levee enters, and range themselves to a ridiculous tune"; a partition of places ensues under the allegory of the business arrangements of a theatrical manager; and the author ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... more than all this which should induce us to follow the promptings of nature; this is the fact that Australia will only reach the zenith of her possibilities when her people conform to her climatic requirements. For what would the latter mean? Market gardens innumerable, and a healthy and lucrative life for all concerned; the development of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... apostle of terrorism, and recently officially reported to have been killed by Carranza's troops, was a former plantation stirrup-boy, who, at the zenith of his rebel power, gained temporary control of Mexico City. Twice since 1910, when he began his revolt in Morelos, he and his Indian followers took brief possession of the capital. For nine years he ravaged southern Mexico, co-operating for a time in 1914 with Villa. He was the most implacable ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... convent in Buenos Ayres, on this occasion was the instrument used by their enemies. For a short time everyone believed him, and excitement was intense; but, most unluckily, Buenaventura happened at the zenith of his notoriety to run away with a married woman, and, being pursued, was brought to Buenos Ayres, and then in public incontinently whipped. In any other country Buenaventura after his public whipping would have been discredited, but a letter arrived from the Bishop of Paraguay, telling ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... in the course of modern civilization as compared with the later stages of the Graeco-Roman or classic civilization is to be found in the relations of wealth and politics. In classic times, as the civilization advanced toward its zenith, politics became a recognized means of accumulating great wealth. Caesar was again and again on the verge of bankruptcy; he spent an enormous fortune; and he recouped himself by the money which he made out of his political-military career. Augustus established Imperial Rome on firm foundations ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... more especially silk weaving, that was established in any district was introduced by foreigners, and very often on a capitalist basis. "A new phase in the development of the Venetian silk industry began with the arrival of traders and silk-workers from Lucca, whereby the industry reached its zenith. The commercial element came more and more to the fore; the merchants became the organizers of production, providing the master craftsman with raw materials which he worked up." So we read in Broglio d'Ajano. We are told ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of Jainism finds its best expression in architecture. This reached its zenith both in style and quantity during the eleventh and twelfth centuries which accords with what we know of the growth of the sect. After this period the Mohammedan invasions were unfavourable to all forms of Hindu architecture. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... appreciation of the beautiful actively brought into play, as they landed safely on the sward at the end of the bridge. "See the dusky shadows creeping over the Highlands, yonder, and their still duskier shadows in the still water. See the orange and pink of the sunset sky, reaching half way to the zenith, and that quarter moon dividing the sunset colors from the dark blue beyond, like a sentinel. Then see that steamboat creeping close in under the shadow of the land, as if she was trying to steal by unobserved. And then yonder, that smelting furnace perched ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... transparent blue, which I have witnessed in no other country than America, so pure, so cloudless, so immeasurably distant as it seems from the beholder's eye! There was not a speck of cloud from east to west, from zenith to horizon; not a fleece of vapor on the mountain sides; not a breath of air to ruffle the calm ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... romance." No other name struck such fear into Spanish hearts, or so raised in English ones the spirit of adventure and of contempt for the queen's enemies. He is known in Spanish annals as "the Dragon," and before he died the maritime power of Spain had passed its zenith. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... a quarter of a century ago—Wagga-Wagga. This was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in unappeasable curiosity—curiosity as to which of the two long-missing persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir Roger Tichborne, the lost ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the right, coming out on a narrow point. Without mishap we reached the foot of the steep hill. At the bottom the wind was almost wholly shut off, so that sounds were easier to distinguish. The moon had passed its zenith long since, and half of the flat lay in dense shadow. Beyond the shadow a pall of smoke lay over everything, a shifting haze that made objects near at hand indefinite of outline, impossible to classify at a glance. A horse or a tree ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... creek and swung up off the beach to breathe the sweating ponies in the deep shade of a mango tree that spread high above the surrounding brush. Dismounting, they stood as in a huge green bowl: its bottom the smooth waters of the gulf, iridescent under a zenith sun and framed as far as the eye could reach with a slant of parched beach; the sides of the vast concavity were formed by the verdant mat of jungled slopes that rose with ever increasing abruptness ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... dead world was shrouded in gloom. But right across the southern horizon was one long vivid scarlet streak, waxing and waning in vivid pulses of life, leaping suddenly to a crimson zenith and then dying down to ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... When Mr Balfour replied to the allegations that the Roman Empire sank under the weight of its military obligations, he said that this was 'wholly unhistorical.' He might well have added that the Roman power was at its zenith when every citizen acknowledged his liability to fight for the State, but that it began to decline as soon as this obligation was no longer recognized."—Pall Mall Gazette, ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... adopted apparently from the Crusaders, but still preserved in Armenia. Leon, the great-great-grandson of Rupen, was consecrated King under the supremacy of the Pope and the Western Empire in 1198. The kingdom was at its zenith under Hetum or Hayton I., husband of Leon's daughter Isabel (1224-1269); he was, however, prudent enough to make an early submission to the Mongols, and remained ever staunch to them, which brought his ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Spain by the arms of his own grandfather. She now perceived that the exorbitant power of the house of Austria would be as dangerous to the liberty of Europe as ever that of the family of Bourbon had been, in the zenith of its glory. She might have remembered the excessive power, the insolence, the ambition of Charles V. and Philip II. who had enslaved so many countries, and embroiled all Europe. She was sincerely desirous of peace, from motives of humanity and compassion to her subjects and fellow-creatures; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... there could be no gainsaying the message glowing from that cunning brush work. There were two goddesses, one in marble and one palpitating with life. The likeness, too, was undeniable. If one was a replica of Greek art at its zenith, the other was unmistakably ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... was too great not to be soon overcast. The unbounded influence of the De Polignacs was now at its zenith. It could not fail of being attacked. Every engine of malice, envy, and detraction was let loose; and, in the vilest calumnies against the character of the Duchess, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... shut it, she stopped short, for she saw a strange sight. One side of the heavens was still thick with the yellow haze, but toward the sea a bank of black clouds was whirling rapidly up from the horizon. It had nearly reached the zenith, and had already hidden the sun and turned the afternoon into temporary twilight. The sea was glassy smooth near the shore—as smooth as oil; but farther out, the waves had begun to toss and tumble, and the moaning sound was become a deep hollow ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... in the zenith that the shade from the edge of the forest did not project halfway across the open space to which we have alluded. It was in this partial gloom that the young man took his station, placing himself as far back as he could without ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... was opened up to me by this voyage. It quite changed my intellectual outlook. Spencer and Darwin were then high in the zenith, and I had become deeply interested in their work. I began to view the various phases of human life from the standpoint of the evolutionist. In China I read Confucius; in India, Buddha and the sacred books of the Hindoos; among the Parsees, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... the Roman power should endure. The twelve vultures denoted twelve centuries. This interpretation of the vision of the birds of destiny was current among learned Romans, even when there were yet many of the twelve centuries to run, and while the imperial city was at the zenith of its power. But as the allotted time drew nearer and nearer to its conclusion, and as Rome grew weaker and weaker beneath the blows of barbaric invaders, the terrible omen was more and more talked and thought of; and in Attila's time, men watched for the momentary extinction of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... goose-egg shell, Which in two equal portions shall divide The distance from the centre to the side. Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin;— Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin Suspend the ready napkin; or like me, Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee; Just in the zenith your wise head project, Your full spoon rising in a line direct, Bold as a bucket, heed no drops that fall. The wide-mouthed bowl will surely ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of our story Akbar was at the zenith of his glory. He had moved his court from Agra, the capital of his predecessors on the throne of the Moguls, after having raised for himself, on the spot where the birth of a son had been promised him by a hermit ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... vie! as James Mesurier said, and, that being so, no wonder life is a sad business. Better perhaps be childless and retain one's own personal hopes and fears for life, than be so relegated to history in the very zenith of one's days. If only this younger generation at the door were always, as it assumes, stronger and better than its elder! but, though the careless assumption that it is so is somewhat general, history alone shows how false and impudent the assumption often is. Too often genius itself ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... great comet to the zenith, his path a blazing trail, Cowperwood did for the hour illuminate the terrors and wonders of individuality. But for him also the eternal equation—the pathos of the discovery that even giants are but pygmies, and that an ultimate balance must be struck. Of the strange, tortured, terrified reflection ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... foot that pressed it. Nay, in some places, where the shade was thickest, and where a current of air flowed up through the long vistas of trees, might still be seen, although the sun was in the zenith, tiny drops of the morning dew, spangling the grass-blades. Into those innermost recesses of the greenwood, however, the esquilador had not thought it necessary to penetrate: habituated to the African temperature of Southern Spain, he was satisfied with the moderate degree of shelter obtained ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... all resting on the faith and security of Jay Cooke. Once, not unlike the Chicago fire map, Cowperwood had seen a grand prospectus and map of the location of the Northern Pacific land-grant which Cooke had controlled, showing a vast stretch or belt of territory extending from Duluth—"The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas," as Proctor Knott, speaking in the House of Representatives, had sarcastically called it—through the Rockies and the headwaters of the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. He had seen ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... seen the day of barge and raft reach its zenith, had heard the first steam packet's shrieking whistle which sounded the death-knell of the ancient order, though the shifting of the trade was a slow matter and the glory of the old did not pass over to the new at once, but lingered still in mighty fleets of rafts and keel-boats and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... night and the aurora. Wavering fingers of light steal up from the northern horizon. Higher and higher they climb until they have reached and crossed the zenith. From the north they spread to the east and to the west until the whole sky is aflame with shimmering fire of marvellous changing colours varying from ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... dark. From the horizon to the zenith, light vapory clouds hurried through the upper air, driven by a refreshing northwesterly breeze. The day had been lovely; the night promised to ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... when at the zenith of his fame, was the Marquis de Puysegur. Returning from serving at the siege of Gibraltar, this young officer found mesmerism the mode at Paris, and appears to have become, for no other reason, one of the initiated. At the end of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... in by an immense spectrum thrown upon the eastern sky. A broad bar of red and orange lies along the low horizon, surmounted by an expanse of color in which green struggles with yellow and blue with green half the way to the zenith. By and by the red and orange spread upward and grow dim, the spectrum fades, and the sky becomes suffused with yellow white light, and in a moment the fiery scintillations of the sun begin to break across the Maryland hills. Then before long ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the sixth hour: both because digestion is seemingly finished (the natural heat being withdrawn inwardly at night-time on account of the surrounding cold of the night), and the humor spread about through the limbs (to which result the heat of the day conduces until the sun has reached its zenith), and again because it is then chiefly that the nature of the human body needs assistance against the external heat that is in the air, lest the humors be parched within. Hence, in order that those who fast may feel some pain in satisfaction for their sins, the ninth hour ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the report of the gun. Then we all drew a long breath. When they threw shells at us their method was to elevate the muzzle of the gun, and discharge the missile in such a manner that it would describe what I suppose would be called the parabola of a curve. As it would be nearing the zenith of its flight we could follow it distinctly with the naked eye. It looked like a big, black bug. You may rest assured that we watched the downward course of this messenger of mischief with the keenest ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... her, above the meadow, he went through his flying repertory. He cut clashing diagonals through the air; he rose and fell in undulations like music; he shot about, gleaming white against the blue sky; and finally he came down to her from the very zenith of the dome in a sizzing straight line which opened, almost at her feet, in a white explosion of suddenly ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... is not flattery to call your betters. When "The Paetolian" has paid you for a copy of verses,—(I can furnish you a list of alliterative signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe Zenith,)—when "The Ragbag" has stolen your piece, after carefully scratching your name out,—when "The Nut-cracker" has thought you worth shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem,—then, and not till then, you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Antarctic circles, as they would be always below the horizon. From the equator they would be continually seen edgewise, and so would appear merely as line of light stretching right across the heaven and passing through the zenith. But the dwellers in the remaining regions would find them very objectionable, for they would cut off the light of the sun during lengthy ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... of the month, he said, he had been studying the heavens every morning before daybreak, when the constellation of Perseus was at the zenith; Agalah was scarcely visible; Algol was even less bright; Mira-Cetus had disappeared entirely; from all of which he augured the death of some man of great importance, to occur ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... benefactor with so much spontaneous tenderness of feeling that George, as if in sympathy, warmed into the same theme. "I can well conceive," said he, "your affection for Mr. Darrell. I remember, when I was a boy, how powerfully he impressed me, though I saw but little of him. He was then in the zenith of his career, and had but few moments to give to a boy like me; but the ring of his voice and the flash of his eye sent me back to school, dreaming of fame and intent on prizes. I spent part of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in American waters, killing several persons, and had seized and carried off four American citizens, produced the excitement he was anxious to create against England, preparatory to the war on which he was then determined—in the zenith of Napoleon's success and power, and in the extremity of England's struggle for her own existence and the liberties of mankind. The statement of the American President as to the affair of the ships Leopard and Chesapeake has been repeated to this ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson |
