"Phenomenon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bulletin from the new observatory at Mount McKinley, which affirmed that during the preceding night a singular obscurity had been suspected in the northern sky, seeming to veil many stars below the twelfth magnitude. It was added that the phenomenon was unprecedented, but that the observation ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... with the greatest alacrity, and, running to a door in the wooden partition which cut off a corner of the room and thus furnished an apartment for the ancient phenomenon, he rapped vigorously, and called, in accents quite unlike ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... could resist his arms. But if he met with no regular force to oppose his progress, he had to contend against a still more implacable enemy in the heart of every Bavarian — religious fanaticism. Soldiers who did not believe in the Pope were, in this country, a new and unheard-of phenomenon; the blind zeal of the priests represented them to the peasantry as monsters, the children of hell, and their leader as Antichrist. No wonder, then, if they thought themselves released from all the ties of nature and humanity towards this brood of Satan, and justified ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... infant-phenomenon, double-beam lasting two minutes; supplementary allowance for angelic vision subsequent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... purity and melody. They sing in a minor key, but yet not mournfully. They row in the deep shadow of the shore, and at every stroke of the oars the water shines around the boat, and drops, as of fire, fall from the oars. The phenomenon is not uncommon on the Atlantic; and know you not, my Alette, what it is which shines and burns so in the sea? It is love! At certain moments, the consciousness of the sea-insects rises to a high pitch of vividness, and millions of existences invisible to ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... districts protected by municipal privileges, every form of corruption natural to a society where the State heard no appeals, and made no inquiry into the processes employed by those to whom it sold the taxes. What was possible in the way of extortion was best seen in the phenomenon of well-built villages being left tenantless, and the population of rich districts dying out in a time of peace, without pestilence, without insurrection, without any greater wrong on the part of the Sultan's government than that normal indifference which permitted the existence of a ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... about by a heavy bludgeon, a second body would arise from the body that is thus deprived of animation.[808] Once more, their doctrine of extinction of life (or Nirvana or Sattwasankshaya) is exposed to the objection that that extinction will become a recurring phenomenon like that of the seasons, or the year, or the yuga, or heat, or cold, or objects that are agreeable or disagreeable.[809] If for the purpose of avoiding these objections, the followers of this doctrine assert the existence of a Soul that is permanent and unto which each new ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... fortnight longer, during which the same phenomenon continued, each day the salt pans and coppers being further off from the beach. At last the men perceiving that the rocks did not rise higher from the water again became alarmed, and broke out into open mutiny. By this time I had cured a sufficiency ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... small and shaped like two cushions. She talked scandal, ate boiled beet-soup in the morning, and swore extremely; and amidst all these various occupations her countenance never for one instant changed its expression, which phenomenon, as a rule, women alone ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all this upon individuals is a very interesting phenomenon to watch. Every one of us has been touched by the pagan spirit which has invaded our times at so many different points of entrance. It has become an atmosphere which we have all breathed more or less. If some one were to say to any company of British ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... speak before they are born is a phenomenon of frequent occurrence in the lives of saints and the myths of savage peoples, especially when the child about to come into the world is an incarnation of some deity. Of Gluskap, the Micmac culture-hero, and Malumsis, the Wolf, his bad ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the more so because of the season. At any other season of the year he would readily have accounted for the phenomenon that now fell under his observation, on the hypothesis that the woman was somebody's sister or cousin or aunt. But at present that explanation was untenable; Maitland happened to know that not one of the other men was in New York, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... are not quite so narrow as that," he said; "but I willingly grant you that there are some articles of your faith in which we doctors don't believe. For example, we don't believe that a reasonable man is justified in attaching a supernatural interpretation to any phenomenon which comes within the range of his senses, until he has certainly ascertained that there is no such thing as a natural explanation of it to be found in the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... complaint of Sabbath-breaking. We read of fratricide, drunkenness, lying, unbelief, theft, idolatry, slave-dealing, and other crimes, but no hint as to sanctifying or desecrating the Sabbath. At length, a few days before the giving of the law, a natural phenomenon announced to the Jews the great change that was at hand—the manna fell in double quantity on Friday, and was not found on Saturday. So new was this that, contrary to the command, the people went out ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... shore Mark strained his eyes to make out the ship and its attendants; but all was dark, save the spangling of the stars, till they were about a hundred yards from the shore, when a beautiful phenomenon caught the lad's eye, for wherever the oars disturbed the water it seemed as if fiery snakes darted away in an undulating line which seemed to run through the transparent ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... excessively long legs. His dark eyes were soft when he was in a good temper, but fierce as a tiger's when roused to anger; and His Majesty's temper was—well, not precisely angelic. [Note 3.] It was like lightning, in being as sudden and fierce, but it did not resemble that natural phenomenon in disappearing as quickly as it had come. On the contrary, Edward never forgot and hardly forgave an injury. His abilities were beyond question, and, for his time, he was an unusually independent and original thinker. His moral character, ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... difficult case proposed by Dr. Barrow as repugnant to all the known theories 30 This case contradicts a received principle in catoptrics 31 It is shown to agree with the principles we have laid down 32 This phenomenon illustrated 33 It confirms the truth of the principle whereby it is explained 34 Vision when distinct, and when confused 35 The different effects of parallel diverging and converging rays 36 How converging ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... some foundation-dream, Has reared aloft his goodly scheme, And proved his predecessors fools, And bound all nature by his rules; So fares he, in that dreadful hour, When injured truth exerts her power, Some new phenomenon to raise; Which, bursting on his frighted gaze, From its proud summit to the ground, Proves the whole edifice unsound. "Children," thus spake a hare sedate, Who oft had known the extremes of Fate, "In slight events the attentive ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... proportions. The reals contained within them the rudiments of all developments of matter, knowledge, willing, feelings, etc. As combinations of reals changed incessantly and new phenomena of matter and mind were manifested, collocations did not bring about any new thing but brought about a phenomenon which was already there in its causes in another form. What we call knowledge or thought ordinarily, is with them merely a form of subtle illuminating matter stuff. Sa@mkhya holds however that there is a transcendent entity as pure consciousness and that by some kind of transcendent ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... view as it blended with the great white flakes of falling snow. Whether it covered a treacherous iceberg, or some other hidden obstacle against which our little sloop would dash and send us to a watery grave, or was merely the phenomenon of an Arctic fog, there was no ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... gas is not an uncommon phenomenon in volcanic districts," I continued, "as I take this to be; but it is odd what should have started it. It has sometimes been known to follow earthquake shocks, when there is a profound ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... his glass into his eye, and Mr. Seguin put down his roll to behold the phenomenon. Poor Debby! her first step had been ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... his head. "Do you realize that you two are a phenomenon? I should write you up for one of the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... stir of the air, the sense of an angel's having swooped down and caught me to his bosom. He held me only till the danger was over, and it all took place in a minute. With my manuscript back on my hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the reflexions I made on it are what I meant, at the beginning of this anecdote, by my change of heart. Mr. Pinhorn's note was not only a rebuke decidedly stern, but an invitation immediately ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... of brats climbed up to stare at them, and every one rushed out into the road to see the "black" whore young Boitelle had brought home with him. At a distance they noticed people scampering across the fields just as when the drum beats to draw public attention to some living phenomenon. Pere and Mere Boitelle, alarmed at this curiosity, which was exhibited everywhere through the country at their approach, quickened their pace, walking side by side, and leaving their son far behind. His dark companion asked what ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... — N. extrinsicality^, objectiveness, non ego; extraneousness &c 57; accident; appearance, phenomenon &c 448. Adj. derived from without; objective; extrinsic, extrinsical^; extraneous &c (foreign) 57; modal, adventitious; ascititious^, adscititious^; incidental, accidental, nonessential; contingent, fortuitous. implanted, ingrafted^; inculcated, infused. outward, apparent &c (external) 220. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... allusions were fresh and obvious, "Albion and Albanius" was detached from "King Arthur," which was not in such a state of forwardness. Great expense was bestowed in bringing forward this piece, and the scenery seems to have been unusually perfect; particularly, the representation of a celestial phenomenon, actually seen by Captain Gunman of the navy, whose evidence is quoted in the printed copies of the play.[1] The music of "Albion and Albanius" was arranged by Grabut, a Frenchman, whose name does not stand high as a composer. Yet Dryden pays him some compliments in the preface of the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... to the Hospice of St. Bernard, the dead, lifted too late from their shroud of snow, and borne thither to await the recognition of their friends, dry, and do not decay. In the "Catacombs" of the monastery of the Capuchins at Palermo, and in the "Bleikeller" at Bremen, the same phenomenon has appeared. Even Egypt is a confirmation of these statements, for it is probable that, had much less care been taken to preserve the dead, they would not there have yielded to decay as in other lands; and that moisture is so far absent from ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... heavenly bodies were only of the rudest description, and the available observations of earlier dates were extremely scanty. We can but look with astonishment on the genius of the man who, in spite of such difficulties, was able to detect such a phenomenon as the precession, and to exhibit its actual magnitude. I shall endeavour to explain the nature of this singular celestial movement, for it may be said to offer the first instance in the history of science in which we find that combination ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... of putting it; from another point of view Daniel may be regarded as almost the most remarkable literary phenomenon of his time; he is so exceedingly modern. He outran the taste of his own period by a hundred years, and without teacher or example displayed the excellences which came to be preferred to all others in the eighteenth century. "These poems of his," says his editor in ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... to whether the emotional life of woman matured anything that can be called a worship of man? The answer to this is a decided "no." At no time in the history of woman do we find even the smallest indication of a parallel phenomenon; the profound and tragic dualism of the Middle Ages—one result of which was the spiritual love of woman—passed her by without touching her. In the feminine soul conflict apparently results not in tragedy and productivity, but ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... an unusually amiable mood, I inquired the probable cause of this phenomenon. She would not go so far as to give any judicial opinion, but offered a ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one of the thousand-dollar bills that the honest cabby was holding up. What a phenomenon in the way of a hackman! And yet the New York night-hawks are no fools and thousand-dollar bills are easy to trace. Indiman gave the man fifty dollars as a reward of virtue and he was more than satisfied. But something still remained on his ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... to see what's inside of it? Look 'ere then. (She removes the cork, touches a spring, and a paper fan expands out of the neck of the bottle; CHOCOLATE is grimly pleased, and possibly impressed, by this phenomenon, which he repeats several times for his own satisfaction.) Ah, that fetches you, don't it, CHOC'LIT? (The Warrior nods, and says something unintelligible in his own tongue.) Why don't yer talk sense, 'stead ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... Manifold River. The cliff rises to an altitude of four or five hundred feet, terminating in a bold and lofty peak; and the cave is situated about half-way up the face of the precipice. The cave is arched at the entrance, a black yawning mouth in the white face of the limestone. It is a natural phenomenon, but appears to have been enlarged by cave-dwellers. It has been explored by a local antiquary, and has yielded evidence of having been ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... attention was drawn to a new phenomenon—the serpents of the outer air. These were long, thin, fantastic coils of vapour-like material, which turned and twisted with great speed, flying round and round at such a pace that the eyes could hardly ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... English novelist has indicated with genial emphasis, in one of his essays, how much more wonderful as a psychological phenomenon is the clairvoyance of imagination than that ascribed to mesmerism: since, by the former, writers of genius describe with verisimilitude, and sometimes with a moral accuracy such as we can scarcely believe ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the European Union (EU) from a regional economic agreement among six neighboring states in 1951 to today's supranational organization of 27 countries across the European continent stands as an unprecedented phenomenon in the annals of history. Dynastic unions for territorial consolidation were long the norm in Europe. On a few occasions even country-level unions were arranged - the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Austro-Hungarian ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... It was a phenomenon of this struggle,—which seems paradoxical,—that the partisans of tradition were the most liberal, and the partisans of Modernism the Ultramontanists. The lesser clergy and certain Cardinals felt vaguely liberal, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... we were at sea, I saw a group of savages lying round the binnacle, all intently occupied in observing the phenomenon of the magnetic attraction; they seemed at once to comprehend the purpose to which it was applied, and I listened with eager curiosity ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... four o'clock in the afternoon, at Messoudiah, or, "the Fortunate Spot." Here we witnessed a kind of phenomenon, which was not a little agreeable to us. Messoudiah is a place situated on the coast of the Mediterranean, surrounded with little dunes of very fine sand, which the copious rains of winter readily penetrate. The rain remains in the sand, so that on making with the fingers holes of four or ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... such cases were on record. There had been a great deal of discussion, of late, with reference to a fact long known to a few individuals, but only recently made a matter of careful scientific observation and brought to the notice of the public. This was the now well-known phenomenon of color-blindness. It did not seem very strange that if one person in every score or two could not tell red from green there might be other curious individual peculiarities relating to color. A case has already been referred to where the subject of observation fainted at the sight of any red ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thirty years from the date of our conversation I should be exposing myself to suspicions of the grossest superstition by questioning the sufficiency of Darwin; maintaining the reality of the Holy Ghost; declaring that the phenomenon of the Word becoming Flesh was occurring daily, he would have regarded me as the most extravagant madman our family had ever produced. Yet it was so. In 1906 I might have vituperated Jehovah more heartily than ever Shelley did without eliciting ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... the fine tinting so remarkable in the other American Maples. These facts have led me to conjecture that this superior tinting of the autumnal foliage may be peculiar to the eastern coasts both of the Old and the New Continent, in the northern hemisphere. May not this phenomenon bear some relation to the colder winters and the hotter summers of the eastern compared with the western coasts? I offer this suggestion as a query, not as a theory, and with the hope that it may induce travellers to make some particular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... scrambled on shore, and went in the direction of the tree. He found her climbing down one of the branches, towards the stem. But in the darkness of the wood, the prince continued in some bewilderment as to what the phenomenon could be; until, reaching the ground, and seeing him standing there, she caught hold ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... on the desert, where they bored for water and struck ready-made gas—the whole place now is lighted with it. If you like, I'll give you material for a first-rate article upon an uncommon phenomenon of Nature.' ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... had administered was that the body of the victim was turned black by it soon after death. This discoloration, in fact, began to appear in the face of the corpse of Britannicus before the time for the interment arrived; and Nero, in order to guard against the exposure which this phenomenon threatened, ordered the face to be painted of the natural color, by means of cosmetics, such as the ladies of the court were accustomed to use in those days. By doing this the countenance of the dead was restored to its proper color, and afterward underwent ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... is one which admits, perhaps more than any other, of identification with a meteorological phenomenon, and presents to us as well the phase of transition from ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... existence does not mean existence per se; and that a phenomenon does not mean a mere mode of mind. Objective existence is existence as an object, in perception, and therefore in relation; and a phenomenon may be material, as well as mental. The thing per se may be only the unknown cause of what we directly know; but what we directly know is something more than our own sensations. In other words, the phenomenal effect is material as ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... might readily plead guilty. Niebuhr further declares: "I confidently believe we are on the eve of a new era of Art in Germany, similar to the sudden bloom of our literature in the eighteenth century." He discerned in the movement an unaccustomed spiritual phenomenon—one of those manifestations of the national mind from time to time found in the history of humanity. He felt once more an outburst of the intellectual life of Germany, a rising again of the force of genius which had impelled Lessing, Kant, and Goethe, ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... day, each wished to be satisfied; a regular hunt was organized against this phenomenon; they set out, invaded his retreat, pursued him, surrounded him, at last seized him, and the brave sailors of Great Britain discovered with stupefaction, in this monopedous, acephalous man, in this satyr, this ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... do not mean that it was Kate Fox, who thus, in childish jest, first discovered that these mysterious sounds seemed instinct with intelligence. Mr. Mompesson, two hundred years ago, had already observed a similar phenomenon. Glanvil had verified it. So had Wesley, and his children. So we have seen, and others. But in all these cases the matter rested there and the observation was not prosecuted further. As, previous to the invention of the steam engine, sundry observers ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... Hamilton, a great phenomenon of meteorology has happened. We were all standing, you must know, at the open door, taking a squint at the weather, when our attention was attracted by a curious object that appeared in the sky, and seemed to be coming down at the rate of ten knots an hour, right end-on for the house. I had just ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... characterised as "an isolated phenomenon in Italian Art"—was ANTONIO ALLEGRI, commonly called CORREGGIO, from the place of his birth. In 1518 he settled at Parma, where he remained till 1530, so that he is usually catalogued as of the School of Parma, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... not that they are merged in the True. Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a mosquito, that they become again' (Ch. Up. VI, 9, 2; 3) For just as during the subsistence of the world the phenomenon of multifarious distinct existence, based on wrong knowledge, proceeds unimpeded like the vision of a dream, although there is only one highest Self devoid of all distinction; so, we conclude, there remains, even after ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... beyond the clearing of the wood-choppers, and be effectually turning the whole of the enemy's position. Once at the precipitous termination caused by the face of rock that had been thrown to the surface by some geological phenomenon, he could not miss his way, since these rugged marks must of themselves lead him directly to the station known to be occupied by the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... over the head of himself and his daughters by inducing people to pay him more for his services than they are worth. In the extreme instances of reaction against convention, female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage; and when Nature throws up that rare phenomenon, an unscrupulous libertine, his success among "well brought-up" girls is so easy, and the devotion he inspires so extravagant, that it is impossible not to see that the revolt against conventional respectability has transfigured a ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... the care of this phenomenon—for such he may be said to have been in Martin's eyes—Mr Bevan led the way into the room which had shed its cheerfulness upon the street, to whose occupants he introduced Mr Chuzzlewit as a gentleman ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... to note a curious phenomenon. There were actually tears in the girl's big grave eyes. Link wondered ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... isolated highlands are the stronghold of the brunette Alpine race.[62] Livi, in his treatise on military anthropometry, deduced a special action of mountains upon pigmentation on observing a prevailing increase of blondness in Italy above the four-hundred meter line, a phenomenon which came out as strongly in Basilicata and Calabria provinces of the south as in Piedmont and Lombardy in the north.[63] The dark Hamitic Berbers of northern Africa have developed an unmistakable blond variant in high valleys of the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the Batanga, commanded by my old friend Captain Murray, under whose care I had made my first voyage. On the 30th we sighted the Peak of Teneriffe early in the afternoon. It displayed itself, as usual, as an entirely celestial phenomenon. A great many people miss seeing it. Suffering under the delusion that El Pico is a terrestrial affair, they look in vain somewhere about the level of their own eyes, which are striving to penetrate the dense masses of mist that usually enshroud its slopes ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected on,—that, under all the changes of the domestic cabinet which are so apt to occur in American households, the same coffee, the same bread and biscuit, the same nicely prepared dishes and neatly laid table always gladdened their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... consistent with order and a priori reasons, but he denies its conformity with experience and a posteriori reasons. 'I surpass you', he said, 'in the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal mark of a good system.' But, in my opinion, it is not a very good explanation of a phenomenon to assign to it an ad hoc principle: to evil, a principium maleficum, to cold, a primum frigidum; there is nothing so easy and nothing so dull. It is well-nigh as if someone were to say that the [219] Peripatetics surpass the new mathematicians in the explanation ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... great extent otherwise. But from the bottom of the dykes to the edge of yonder sparkling water, there is a bare beach, full three miles in extent. What does this mean? What are these dykes for, if the enemy is so far off? The answer to this query discloses a remarkable phenomenon. The tide in this part of the world rises sixty or seventy feet every twelve hours. At present the beach is bare; the five rivers of the valley—the Gasperau, the Cornwallis, the Canard, the Habitant, the Perot—are empty. Betimes the tide will roll in in one broad unretreating ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... functions of any sort,—skating, conversing, hearing music, enjoying a landscape,—there is no consciousness of separation of the method of the person and of the subject matter. In whole-hearted play and work there is the same phenomenon. ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... omit to mention a very curious phenomenon of which I had often heard, but had never before beheld until this day. It is known among sailors as the phenomenon of "the ripples." I was on the forecastle superintending the bathing operations when it first made its appearance, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... perfectly terrific. It had a minutely large quality. Here and there, in a kind of sonal darkness, solid sincere unintelligible absurd wisps of profanity heavily flickered. Optically the phenomenon was equally remarkable: seated waggingly swaying corpselike figures, swaggering, pounding with their little spoons, roaring, hoarse, unkempt. Evidently Monsieur le Surveillant had been forgotten. All at once ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went farther away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. The Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of the nature of the world. The solar bark always kept close to that bank of the celestial river which was nearest to men; and when the river overflowed at the annual inundation, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... controlled a people whom he seemed to drive with reins so loose and careless, was a mystery to me. But that his influence and the prestige of his name penetrated to every nook of that vast yet undeveloped kingdom was the phenomenon which slowly but surely impressed me. I was but a passing traveller, surveying from a distance and at large that vast plain of humanity; but I could see that it was systematically tilled by ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... could no longer apply to the strange orb any accustomed thoughts. Its historical attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us with a hideous novelty of emotion. We saw it not as an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus upon our hearts and a shadow upon our brains. It had taken, with unconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the effectiveness of a remedy or the credibility of a statement, one of the most important weapons was analogy. Direct observation of a phenomenon was good. Next best was direct observation of some analogous phenomenon whereby one body acted upon another to alter its properties or induce significant changes. Boyle drew his analogies largely from chemistry, but he had no hesitation in ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... art any outstanding phenomenon like the interest in the radio that has swept the country this year, or any remarkable development in the science of photography like the invention a few years ago of the Lumiere plate. The day may come when our exhibitions will ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... foreign to his temperament. Neither the remarkable persistence of one's own characteristics, not infrequently matter of deep regret to their possessor, nor the charmingly unaccountable variability of the fairer sex, at times quite as annoying, is a phenomenon sufficient to stir his curiosity. Accepting, as he does, the existing state of things more as a material fact than as a phase in a gradual process of development, he regards humanity as but a small part of the great natural world, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... view of the artist'—Paul Filey had begun laying down some new law, but turning an abrupt corner, he followed the wandering attention of his audience—'from the point of view of the artist,' he repeated, 'it would be interesting to know what the phenomenon is, that Lady John took for a precipice and that Miss Levering ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest,—for that principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same environments, produce, some a white, others a yellow flower. The same phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the same leaves, and apparently constituted exactly alike,—one produces yellow silk, another white; and if we come to man himself, we find that children often resemble neither father nor mother. The logical deduction from this fact ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... deviation from the ordinary course of animal development. Both physically and mentally evolution seemed to take an enormous leap, instead of proceeding by its usual minute steps, and in the advent of man we have a phenomenon remarkable alike in the development of the body and ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... Janet "He poisoned for money in cold blood—not exactly an artistic vice! Oh, he won't do!"—she laughed triumphantly—"if he did write charming things about the Renaissance! Besides, he illustrates my case; among us he was a phenomenon, like the elephant-headed man. Phenomena are for the scientists. You don't mean to tell me that any literature that pretends to call itself artistic has a right to ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... absolutely nothing, either in the statements of ancient writers, or in the Assyrian inscriptions, so far as they have been deciphered, to confirm the supposition, it can hardly be accepted as the true explanation of the phenomenon. The doctrine of the Trinity, scarcely apprehended with any distinctness even by the ancient Jews, does not appear to have been one of those which primeval revelation made known throughout the heathen world. It is a fanciful mysticism which finds a Trinity in the Eicton, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... day the human torrent would require more kindliness, more equity, the logical division of wealth by just laws regulating universal labor. If it were true, too, that civilization was a check to excessive natality, this phenomenon itself might make one hope in final equilibrium in the far-off ages, when the earth should be entirely populated and wise enough to live in a sort of divine immobility. But all this was pure speculation beside the needs of the hour, the nations which must be ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... focus at precisely the same distance. The rays that pass near the outer edge of the lens have a shorter focus than that of the rays which pass near the center of the lens; this is called spherical aberration. A similar phenomenon occurs with a concave mirror whose surface is spherical. In that case, as we have seen, the difficulty is overcome by giving the mirror a parabolic instead of a spherical form. In an analogous way ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... A marvelous phenomenon indeed! Do you want a light or a fire? Nothing can be simpler; make a hole in the ground, the gas escapes, and you apply a match. That is a natural gasometer within the ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... return from the Lyapinsky house, I related my impressions to a friend. The friend, an inhabitant of the city, began to tell me, not without satisfaction, that this was the most natural phenomenon of town life possible, that I only saw something extraordinary in it because of my provincialism, that it had always been so, and always would be so, and that such must be and is the inevitable condition of civilization. In London it is even ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... literary aspect, "Synnoeve Solbakken" was strikingly novel. The author did not, as his predecessors had done, view the people from the exalted pedestal of superior culture; not as a subject for benevolent preaching and charitable condescension, but as a concrete phenomenon, whose raison d'etre was as absolute and indisputable as that of the bourgeoisie or the bureaucracy itself. He depicted their soul-struggles and the incidents of their daily life with a loving minuteness and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... by the assertion of Carlyle that "in Dante ten silent centuries found a voice." To state what history now regards as fact, it must be said that while Dante by his giant personality and sublime poetic genius could alone ennoble any epoch he was not "a solitary phenomenon of his time but a worthy culmination of the literary movement which, beginning shortly before 1200, produced down to 1300 such a mass of undying literature" that subsequent generations have found in it their model and inspiration and have never quite ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... because of words printed in "The New Age" and the "New Witness." That is less and less true of what I have called the official press. The phenomenon is worth analysing. Its intellectual interest alone will arrest the attention of any future historian. Here is a force numerically quite small, lacking the one great obvious power of our time (which is the power to bribe), rigidly boycotted—so much so that it ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... was one of those ether philosophers who bring in elastic fluid as an explanation by imposition of words, without deducing any one phenomenon from what we know of it. And yet he says that attraction has received no support from geometry; though geometry, applied to a particular law of attraction, had shown how to predict the motions of the bodies ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... approach her, neither did he make any other movement or gesture. Flora de Barral told me all this. She could see him through her tears, blurred to a mere shadow on the white road, and then again becoming more distinct, but always absolutely still and as if lost in thought before a strange phenomenon which demanded the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... being bound to individuality, necessitates that each of us can only be one, and yet each of us can know all. Hence arises the need for philosophy. The double knowledge which each of us possesses of his own body is the key to the nature of every phenomenon in the world. Nothing is either known to us or thinkable by us except will and idea. If we examine the reality of the body and its actions, we discover nothing beyond the fact that it is an idea, except the will. With this double discovery reality ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... trying actually to erect material walls between themselves and the rest of the world, their empire is a perfectly fair specimen of what the Yellow Race can do, if left entirely to itself, and quite as much of what it cannot do, and now they have for centuries presented that unique phenomenon—a great nation at ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... poetry, and what has been the extent of their literary influence? The dust of controversy has long since settled, and what has its subsidence made visible? My own belief is that the Rowley poems are interesting principally as literary curiosities—the work of an infant phenomenon—and that they have little importance in themselves, or as models and inspirations to later poets. I cannot help thinking that, upon this subject, many critics have lost their heads. Malone, e.g., pronounced Chatterton the greatest genius that England had produced ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... The phenomenon is thus explained by the Professor: "the parallel rays of the sun passing through the little bowl, are bent by the density of the water, into a cone or pyramid, whose vertex reaches a little beyond those hour circles, and there burns the hand ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... the Llano Estacado the surface exhibits a very singular phenomenon—a belt of sand-hills, nearly twenty miles in breadth and full fifty in length, stretching north and south upon the plain. These hills are of pure white sand, thrown up in ridges, and sometimes in cones, to the height of a hundred feet, and without tree, bush, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... grasp with interest, the less vigorous hands of the professor were fairly benumbed by such constant shaking, but his eyes sparkled with joy, though a tear was stealing down his cheek; but—and the phenomenon was certainly well worthy the attention of ophthalmologists—the tear was ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... the affairs of human life. Thus the hand has a thousand ways of becoming dry, moist, hot, cold, soft, rough, unctuous. The hand palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard and again is softened. In fine it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable so that one is tempted to call it the incarnation of thought. It causes the despair of the sculptor and the painter when they wish to express the changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch out your hand to a man is to save him, it serves as a ratification ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... elements which went to make up the family religion and that part of the state religion which was an enlargement and an imitation of the family religion. But even in the most primitive times a Roman's life was not bounded by his own hut and the phenomenon of death. There was work to be done in life, a living to be gained, and here, as everywhere, there were hosts of unseen powers who must be propitiated. His religion was not only coincident with every phase of private life, it was also closely related to the specific occupations and ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... considered as brethren, and as entitled to support from one another. If our streets and our roads are infested by miserable objects, imploring our pity, no Quaker will be found among them. A Quaker-beggar would be a phenomenon in the world. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... phenomenon," as it is called, is the effect of the electrical condition of the earth beneath. The chemical components of the sea form a sensitive magnetic body, which is subject to attraction and repulsion, and as the magnetic current extended for several thousands of miles, and was caused by a collision ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... some brashly, some embarrassedly, were substantiating the fact that he had, a month ago, described yesterday's event in detail. There was an interview with Leonard Fitch; the psychology professor was trying to explain the phenomenon of precognition in layman's terms, and making heavy going of it. And there was the mobbing of Whitburn in front of Administration Center. The college president was shouting denials of every question asked ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... of warriors arrived at the village, he found all of the people's minds still agitated with fear at the late phenomenon. Every one was talking of it with wonder and amazement, and the chief's opinion was demanded at once; they were expecting it, and wanted to know what the consequences were to be. Admonished by his recent defeat, Beckwourth now had no trouble in reading the stars. He told his warriors that they had ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... little upon the subject, seeing it is one which has been often forced upon my attention, and sometimes strangely enough; and yet I have never arrived at anything which at all appeared a satisfactory conclusion. It does appear that a mental phenomenon so extraordinary cannot be wholly without its use. We know, indeed, that in the olden times it has been made the organ of communication between the Deity and His creatures; and when, as I have seen, a dream produces upon a mind, to all appearance hopelessly reprobate and depraved, an effect ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... I do not doubt that your daughter will be perfectly restored. Only let me recommend care to avoid exposure to the open air during the close of the day. Let her avoid also the room in which she was first seized, for it is a strange phenomenon in nervous temperaments that a nervous attack may, without visible cause, be repeated in the same place where it was first experienced. You had better shut up the chamber for at least some weeks, burn fires in it, repaint and paper it, sprinkle chloroform. You are not, perhaps, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... founder of the Lingayats,[420] but also of Vallabhacarya and Caitanya. But in nearly all cases caste reasserts itself. The religious teachers of the sect receive extravagant respect and form a body apart. This phenomenon, which recurs in nearly all communities, shows how the Brahmans established their position. At the same time social distinctions make themselves felt among the laity, and those who claim to be of good position dissociate themselves ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... vessel there were two hundred English. The English fleet has literally swept the seas of all the ships of their enemies; and a French ship is so rare, as to be noted in a journal across the Atlantic, as a kind of phenomenon. A curious question here suggests itself—Will the English Government be so enabled to avail themselves of this maritime superiority, as to counterweigh against the continental predominance of the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... each of these men towards the other had been one of mutual contempt. The phenomenon has frequently been observed in like cases. Now, what appeared to be a common misfortune brought them into a sort of alliance. So, at least, it seemed to Leandre when he went in quest of Andre-Louis, who with apparent ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... distinguished), that exhibited the rarest union of female blandishment and masculine culture. "The wife for our house and honour," implies Demosthenes, "the Hetaera for our solace and delight." These extraordinary women, all foreigners, and mostly Ionian, made the main phenomenon of Athenian society. They were the only women with whom an enlightened Greek could converse as equal to himself in education. While the law denied them civil rights, usage lavished upon them at once admiration ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an arcane, living (or moving) FIRE, and the eternal witnesses to this unseen Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," this trinity including, and being the cause of every phenomenon in Nature.—("The Secret Doctrine.") ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Seneca respecting the woman who had caused him the bitterest anguish and humiliation of his life is, as we have remarked already, a strange and significant phenomenon. It is clearly not due to accident, for the vices which he is incessantly describing and denouncing would have found in this miserable woman their most flagrant illustration, nor could contemporary history have furnished a more apposite ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... during the "Mother Cross row," as it was long styled among the boys, that a remarkable phenomenon was witnessed at Roughborough. I mean that of the head boys under certain conditions doing errands for their juniors. The head boys had no bounds and could go to Mrs Cross's whenever they liked; they ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Indeed, the coincidence of the running of the bourne, a wet summer, a worse sowing-season, and a wet cold spring, may well inspire evil forebodings, and give a colourable pretext for such apprehensions as are often entertained on the occurrence of any unusual natural phenomenon. These intermittent rivulets have no affinity, as your correspondent E. G. R. supposes, to subterraneous rivers. The nearest approach to this kind of stream is to be found in the Mole, which sometimes sinks away, and leaves its channel dry between Dorking and Leatherhead, being ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... the dog of the Hare Indians, a very different breed, resembles the prairie wolf. Except in the matter of barking, there is no difference whatever between the black wolf-dog of the Indians of Florida and the wolves of the same country. The same phenomenon is seen in many kinds of European dogs. The Shepherd Dog of the plains of Hungary is white or reddish-brown, has a sharp nose, short erect ears, shaggy coat, and bushy tail, and so much resembles a wolf that Mr. Paget, who gives the description, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... with you this subject. We confidently submit the argument as one which is invulnerable in all its points. We ask you to review it carefully. Take in, if thought can comprehend it, the wonderful phenomenon of our own nation. Consider its location, the time of its rise, the manner of its rise, its character, Satan's masterpiece of lying wonders which he has here sprung upon the world, and the elements which are everywhere working to fulfill in just as ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... ennoble and purify the moral nature of man. But something like this transformation was seen when Octavian, the crafty and selfish intriguer, ripened into the wise and statesmanlike Augustus. Nor have our own days been quite ignorant of a similar phenomenon, when the stern soldier-politician of Germany, the man who once seemed to delight in war and whose favourite motto had till then been "blood and iron" having secured for his master the hegemony of Europe, strove (or seems to have striven), during ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... intensified interest, the coach resumed his work over Ashley. He waited for a recurrence of the phenomenon which Lyman had marked and he yielded again to the general excitement over the approaching contest. Absorbed in the two unrelated interests, he gradually came to connect them. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... against the armour," said one of these officers, "the fragments were visible as they flew about. We had a desire, in the midst of preoccupation with our work, to reach out and catch them. Singular mental phenomenon, wasn't it?" ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Trachonitis. Their appearance led the latter to question whether the latest eruptions of the Harrat Rjil, as it is called from an adjoining valley, may not have taken place within the historic period; and he referred to Psalm xviii. as seeming to note the occurrence, during David's reign, of such a phenomenon in or near Palestine. Humboldt deemed it probable that the Koranic legend (chap. iv.) of the Abyssinian host under Abraha destroyed by a shower of stones baked in hell-fire, referred, not to small-pox as is generally supposed, but to an ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... summoned him from the studio to see a peculiar phenomenon—Johnny Dromore, very well groomed, talking to Sylvia with unnatural suavity, and carefully masking the goggle in his eyes! Mrs. Lennan ride? Ah! Too busy, of course. Helped Mark with his—er—No! Really! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... first sight appeared to be a heavy fall of snow coming up with the wind from the south. Strange to relate, this phenomenon turned out to be millions of white butterflies of large size. Some of these, when measured, I found to be four and five inches across the wings. Darwin relates his having, in 1832, seen the same sight, when his men exclaimed that it was ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... dilapidated day-car as it drew up before the tiny, sanded station which marked the terminus of the railway. The man was tall, clean-shaven, quick of step and of glance. The woman was likewise tall, well-gloved, and, strange phenomenon at a country station, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... is a marvellous phenomenon: suffering from a disease which sometimes broke out with violence, and which he never ceased to feel for a single day of his life, he not merely withstood the extreme of peril at that moment so big with ruin, but also founded a system of resistance throughout the kingdom, in which his arms so worked ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Hicks, with pretended seriousness, "Coach, you just hand me the blue-prints and specifications of said Gargantuan Hercules, and I'll try to corrall just such a phenomenon as you desire. Never hesitate to consult me on such important matters, for I am ever-ready to cast aside my own multifarious duties, when my Alma Mater ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... Babington. So changed was their estate since the Reformation, that few high-born youths, except the weak or lame, took holy orders. Many clergymen worked during the week. One, says South, was a cobbler on weekdays, and preached on Sundays. Wilmot says: "We are struck by the phenomenon of a learned man sitting down to prove, with the help of logic, that a priest or a chaplain in a family is not a servant,"—Jeremy Collier: Essays on Pride and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... great white audiences. In each of these instances I believe the men were stirred by the same emotions which actuated "Shiny" on the day of his graduation; and, too, in each case where the efforts have reached any high standard of excellence they have been followed by the same phenomenon of enthusiasm. I think the explanation of the latter lies in what is a basic, though often dormant, principle of the Anglo-Saxon heart, love of fair play. "Shiny," it is true, was what is so common in his race, ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... his rebellious work, was the consoling dream of his future masterpiece, the one with which he would at last be fully satisfied, in painting which his hands would show all the energy and deftness of true creative skill. By some ever-recurring phenomenon, his longing to create outstripped the quickness of his fingers; he never worked at one picture without planning the one that was to follow. Then all that remained to him was an eager desire to rid himself of the work on which he was engaged, for it brought him torture; no doubt ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... brief hour's exercise on the Sunday morning! The muffled roar of the great city was hushed, and the silence served to emphasise every visual phenomenon. Even the air of that city courtyard, hemmed in by lofty walls, seemed a breath of Paradise. I threw back my shoulders, expanding the chest through mouth and nostrils, and lifted my face to the sky. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... boy," says a pale, nursing mamma, to a great, bristling, white-headed phenomenon, who is kicking very much ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and many pale faces would exchange glances and turn to the captain or to the prow of the vessel. But Captain von Kessel and his officers were absorbed in their meal and paid no attention to the phenomenon, which for moments at a time brought the Roland to a quivering standstill. They never looked up, but kept to their eating and talking, even when, as often happened, tremendous masses of water hurled themselves ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a law of feeling, but it happened at any rate. " He had come in a puzzled frame of mind, even an accusative frame of mind, and almost immediately he found himself suffer. ing like a culprit before his judge. It is a phenomenon of what we call guilt ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... not seen her for something running into weeks. The thought that he was to renew an acquaintance, which, though almost slight, still had extraordinary power to hold him, was a delightful one. Sometimes he had found himself wondering at the phenomenon of her attraction for him. But he was incapable of analyzing his feelings closely. His life had been spent on these fringes of civilization so long, and the generality of the women he had come into contact with had been so much a part of the life ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... are a relatively new phenomenon in the Islamic Republic and most conservatives still prefer to work through political pressure groups rather than parties; a loose pro-reform coalition called the 2nd Khordad front, which includes political parties as well as less formal ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... In Sweden a very curious phenomenon has been observed on certain flowers, by M. Haggern, lecturer in natural history. One evening he perceived a faint flash of light repeatedly dart from a marigold. Surprised at such an uncommon appearance, he resolved to examine it with attention; and, to be assured it was no ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for twelve nights, one's soul is cleansed of all sins. One should next proceed to the tirtha known as Gayatri celebrated over the three worlds. Staying there for three nights, one acquireth the merit of giving away a thousand kine. A strange phenomenon is seen to occur there in respect to Brahmanas, O Lord of men! If a Brahmana, whether born of a Brahmani or any other woman, reciteth the Gayatri there, the recitation becomes rhythmic and musical, while, O king, a person who is not a Brahmana cannot adequately hymn it at all. Proceeding next ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... truism to say that my intellect is wiser than my emotions. So, knowing the precise value and use of this erotic phenomenon, this sexual madness, this love, I, for one, elect to choose my mate with my intellect. Thus I choose Hester. And I do truly love her, but in the intellectual sense and not the sense you fanatically demand. I am not seized with a loutish vertigo when I look upon her and touch her hand. Nor do I ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... perhaps an inevitable consequence of Kalidasa's subject that his women appeal more strongly to a modern reader than his men. The man is the more variable phenomenon, and though manly virtues are the same in all countries and centuries, the emphasis has been variously laid. But the true woman seems timeless, universal. I know of no poet, unless it be Shakespeare, who ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... piled upon each other so that I could not well distinguish them. It was on a sunny afternoon that I stood on the banks of the Zuricher See (Lake Zurich) and, looking over its calm waters, I beheld in the distant southeast a strange phenomenon. There stood the high glittering banks of clouds, and over them I saw the black sides of a towering peak whose top was covered with ice and snow. I then visited the Rigi and looked at Alpine Switzerland from its giddy heights. This, since the railroad ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... a strange natural phenomenon that exists on an island not more than half a mile in length, which the party visited after leaving Lilama's island. Near the centre of this last-mentioned island, says Peters, is a volcanic mountain about four thousand feet in height, with an extinct crater reaching down through ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... war between England and Spain the Viceroy Figueroa, Marquis of Gracia Real, was almost captured by the British, who gave chase to the ship in which he came from Spain. Further events were the singular phenomenon of the forming of the volcano of Jorullo in Michoacan in 1759, the celebration of peace between England and Spain in 1763, the suppression of the Jesuits and their expulsion from the country in 1767, under the Marquis de Croix; the continued exactions of the Council ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... among you who hold a little more indulgent opinion with regard to religion, and deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of the mind, an insignificant rather than a dangerous phenomenon, cherish quite as unfavorable impressions of all social organization for its promotion. A slavish immolation of all that is free and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism and barren ceremonies—these, they imagine, are the inseparable consequences ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... hurt repeating. It is well that man shall have it; it may be that we shall both fail-there is no telling; but if we do the world can profit by our blunders and guide itself—perhaps to the mastery of the phenomenon that controls the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... rains are nearly due, and great masses of cloud begin to gather on the horizon, there is again and again a pageant of wonder and colouring to steep man's senses afresh at every renewal, as if it was the first time of beholding. Nothing banal, nothing mediocre in the actual phenomenon—just a riot of colouring, a riot of splendour, a riot of revelation. It is not a glory in the west spreading a little way overhead. It is an all around, north, south, east, and west, colouring beyond all telling—something aloof, overpowering, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... bloom in mental faculty in the case of Little Billee, in this we have an inquiry into a by no means unusual state of mind carried out with scientific exactness to an artistic end. Mr. Henry James would no doubt have preferred this phenomenon as the basis of a plot to the preposterous mesmerism which forms the plot of Trilby, he being one of the few who understand that a dramatic situation is a mental experience. In Peter Ibbetson the "dreaming truly"—the illusion that becomes as great as reality—is the phenomenon the author ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... a long time, his soul steeped in profound peace, waiting for the Great Spirit to speak to him through some phenomenon of nature. There was only one wish in his heart; that through him his people might become prosperous and great. At last he fell asleep and dreamed that the Great Spirit stood before him in the form of a white buffalo and ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... The surviving "Ugrian" inhabitants appear to have sunk into mere totemists and fetish worshippers, like the aboriginal races of India; while the Celtic tribes were at a loose and early stage of polytheism, with a Pantheon filled by every possible device, by the adoration of every kind of natural phenomenon, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds and clouds, the earth and sea, rivers, wells, sacred trees, by the creation of tribal divinities, gods and goddesses of war, commerce, healing, and all the congeries of mutually tolerant devotions ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... the ghostly tales of the will-o'-the-wisp, and the banshee, and other terrifying creatures, which, village gossip said, inhabited the Drowned Lands. But he had a more practical explanation of the strange phenomenon. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... of atoms of the elements as instances of identically similar things, but these are things not of experience but of theory, and there is not a phenomenon in chemistry that is not equally well explained on the supposition that it is merely the immense quantities of atoms necessarily taken in any experiment that mask by the operation of the law of averages the fact that each atom ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... that the birth of the Savior of mankind was heralded by the appearance of a remarkable star in the sky. Taking this assertion to be true, it might be a matter of some interest to consider what explanations have been made of this phenomenon. A large majority of religious teachers, we admit, even to the present day, have attempted no explanation whatever, but have settled the subject by calling the star a miraculous appearance, concerning whose ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... movement is a world-wide fact. An agitation which has gathered impetus and strength during more than forty years is a significant phenomenon in the realm of mind and of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... chant, except those of the inner circle. In dread sat the warriors of the terrible magic of their doctors which they had once doubted. But the minds of Bakahenzie, Yabolo, and the other two master craftsmen were stunned. The phenomenon of the glowing hand had they never seen before, but they recollected the stones of Mungongo. Even was Sakamata, sophisticated to the wonders of Eyes-in-the-hands, impressed and bewildered. Dormant awe for the Unmentionable One was awakened in every one of them. Zalu Zako felt ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... of years he had existed in the water had changed his skin to a thick hide covered with a heavy growth of hair. The phenomenon would doubtless be accepted by many as a convincing proof that the human being was really ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... noticed during the previous year, but now, after nine months of their life, with the wonderful insight which their needs had instilled into them, made them very observant of every phenomenon. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... to sight again in this truncated pyramid, beats it all hollow. By George, too, the bay yonder looks as blue as ever the AEgean Sea to Byron's eye, gazing from the Acropolis! But the painted foliage on these crags!-the Greeks must have dreamed of such a vegetable phenomenon in the midst of their grayish olive groves, or they never would have supplied the want of it in their landscape by embroidering their marble temples with gay colors. Did you see that ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... he would volunteer an imitation of somebody, generally of Incledon. His imitation was vocal; I made pretensions to the oratorical parts; and between us, we boasted, that we made up the entire phenomenon." LEIGH HUNT'S BYRON. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... Englishman or the American? It is not easy to say. Anyhow the duel shows how great was the excitement, not only in the new but also in the old world, with regard to an inexplicable phenomenon which for a month or more had driven ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... On the general subject of "possession" see F. W. H. Myers's work on Human Personality and Survival after Death, Vol. I. (Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London.) Professor William James half humorously remarks: "The time-honored phenomenon of diabolical possession is on the point of being admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name of hysterodemonopathy by which to apperceive it." Varieties of ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... surface of the glass having a vitreous electric atmosphere united, as it were, to its inequalities, becomes similar to resin; and will now attract resinous electric ether, like a stick of sealing wax, without combining with it. Whence this curious and otherwise unintelligible phenomenon, that smooth surfaced glass will give vitreous electric ether to an insulated conductor, and glass with a roughened surface will give resinous ether ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... reluctance, many of its members continuing to stare with intense absorption at the place where the puppy lay or the place where the policemen stood. An appreciable interval elapses before the "street accident" has entirely ceased to exist as a phenomenon. ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... furiously, for the ship was running into the gale, a phenomenon that we shall explain, as most of our readers may not comprehend it. All gates of wind commence to leeward; or, in other words, the wind is first felt at some particular point, and later, as we recede from that point, proceeding in the direction from which the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... how much significance should be attached to the fairly frequent phenomenon of dying people seeming in some rapt vision to see or feel as if meeting them the presence of loved ones gone before. Sometimes these phenomena are very striking. I once thought of asking a religious journal to open its columns to testimony from thoughtful, cool-headed clergy and ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's sword for doing what was then considered only his duty. But it must be remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet previous to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... much direct influence upon the desire to emigrate beyond spreading knowledge as to the real conditions of life in America, for which home life in Ireland is often ignorantly bartered.[5] We cannot isolate the phenomenon of emigration and find a cure for it apart from the rest of the Irish Question. We must recognise that emigration is but the chief symptom of a low national vitality, and that the first result of our efforts to stay the tide may increase the outflow. We cannot fit the people to stay without ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett |
