"Torrential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chilled by their own expansion. The consequence might be foreseen. The load of vapor is in great part precipitated, dense clouds are formed, their particles coalesce to rain-drops, which descend daily in gushes so profuse that the word "torrential" is used to express the copiousness of the rainfall. I could show you this chilling by expansion, and also ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... a good seaman, but old and wanting in nerve. Still, with the aid of some of the terrified crew, and amidst a torrential downpour of rain which almost immediately began to fall, he did what he could to save the ship. In half an hour the rain ceased, and then the wind came with hurricane force from the southward; the crew again bolted, and refused to come on deck, and the poor mate in trying to ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... with loose slabs of coral stone, pure white in colour and giving forth a clear, resonant sound to the slightest disturbing movement On our right hand was a scrub of puka trees, which afforded no shelter from the torrential rain; on our left the ocean, whose huge, leaping billows crashed and thundered upon the black, shelving reef, and sent swirling waves of whitened foam ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... absorbed in my dream under my own illimitable skies. But soon or late, when the moment comes, I wake, I rouse, I see my inviolate desolations invaded. Then I gather my strength, I drown you with my torrential rivers, I torture you with my burning sun, I obliterate you with my flying sand. So shall my cactus bloom once more, my jeweled lizards crawl unmolested and the cry of the coyote echo again through the vast, soundless spaces of my desolation. Then to my looms, to my looms and out of emptiness and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... gratified, Suma retired to the cavity in the cottonwood while the torrential rains fell with a monotonous roar, and the craneflies with their lacy, whirring wings formed a curtain in the entrance to lend sanctity to ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... Doctor Geddes sent us Schmetz, the gardener, a gnarled little man with a peppery temper, a torrential flow of Alsatian French, and a tireless energy. I don't know why nor how Schmetz had come to Hyndsville, except that somehow he had acquired a small farm near by and couldn't get away from it. He explained to us, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... man that offered! This was his chance, I told him; the one chance of his life; he was letting a piece of idiotic pride wreck the probable happiness of years. He agreed with me with moans and weeps. He had the candor of a child and the torrential sentiment of a German musician. Three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents stood between him and eternal bliss, and yet he waved my pocketbook from him! And all the while I saw myself ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... the marshes, which, it will be remembered, have been described as a pocket of clay, low-lying lands mainly reclaimed, but which become miry during heavy rains. It was General von Buelow's misfortune, that, on the very night that his flank was exposed, there should come a torrential downpour. These same marshes had figured more than once before in France's military history, and General Foch, as a master strategist, was determined that they should serve again. When the rain came, he thanked his lucky stars and acted on ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... same time one of those rain storms, regular cataracts in their fury, fell in a torrential shower just as the flames devouring the lower branches were threatening to seize upon the trees against which ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... hills. And the sand-bottoms were bare, save for spots of scrub, with here and there short tufts of dry and withered grass. Water there was none, nor sign of water, except for washed gullies that told of ancient and torrential rains. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... above sea-level. This region must be arid. Out of it must rise separated mountain masses to such heights that they shall be well watered. These most elevated regions alone having abundant rain and snowfall, torrential streams are generated and poured down upon the arid wastes, where they persistently scour their beds, ploughing deep channels below the level of their surroundings. The perpendicularity of the walls of these channels, or canyons as they are called, depends on the volume ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... drying 400 pairs of socks every 24 hours, while the R.A.M.C. provided hot baths in the factory by the pond. Unfortunately, most of the dugouts, after a short resistance, succumbed to the alternations of frost and torrential rain. Sometimes the roof and sides collapsed, as the Oxfords found to their cost when an iron girder killed four men. Sometimes the pressure of water merely caused leakage, but in either case the result was eventually the same. ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... crests of the bigger waves, spinning them out like silver manes of leaping horses. These flashed in the sunlight, till, over the central ridge of water, the air was full of a fine, misty spray that hung palpitating and luminous. Here was a torrential life—born of the endless and ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... our first harvesting heard none Like thunder of the song of heart: her face, The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun, And peal on peal across the hills held chase. She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire; Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire Full of the marrowy race. Her laughter, Gods! was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... circumstanced like the one we have described—embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all the ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary floods, just as ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... I write of, the climate of the Eastern Province was totally different from what it is today. From October to March thunderstorms, accompanied by torrential rain, were of frequent occurrence. Early in the afternoon clouds would appear over the mountains to the north-west; between three and four o'clock these clouds, now forming immense, towering masses of cumulus, would sweep down towards the sea, pouring ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... and clarity impossible in our Terra's dust-filled air. As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and steadily until midnight. Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as they had come into being, the torrential downpour would cease, and, through that huge world's wonderfully transparent, gaseous envelope, the full glory of the firmament would be revealed. Not the firmament as we know it—for that hot blue sun and Nevia, her one planet-child, were many light-years ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... sewers to deal with the maximum quantity of rain which may possibly fall either in the form of waterspouts or abnormally heavy torrential rains, and the amount of risk which it is desirable to run must be settled after consideration of the details of each particular case. The following table, based principally upon observations taken at the Birmingham Observatory, shows the approximate rainfall ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... host of satellites of various magnitudes, who did all in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad absurdum. Endowed for the most part with considerable facility of composition, the poetasters poured forth their feelings with torrential recklessness, demanding freedom for their inspiration, and cursing the age that fettered them with its prosaic cares, its cold reason, and its dry science. At the same time the dramatists and novelists created heroes of immaculate ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... rain rattled like kettledrums on that glass, and the centre of the courtyard was a pond in which a few hansoms were splashing about. Everything—the horses' coats, the cabmen's hats and capes, and the cabmen's red faces, shone and streamed in the torrential summer rain. It is said that geography makes history. In England, and especially in London, weather makes a good deal of history. Impossible to brave that rain, except under the severest pressure of necessity! They were in shelter, and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett |
