Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Comet   Listen
noun
Comet  n.  (Astron.) A member of the solar system which usually moves in an elongated orbit, approaching very near to the sun in its perihelion, and receding to a very great distance from it at its aphelion. A comet commonly consists of three parts: the nucleus, the envelope, or coma, and the tail; but one or more of these parts is frequently wanting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Comet" Quotes from Famous Books



... who, by the aid of the heliometer or a double-refracting prism,* determines the diameter of planetary bodies; who measures patiently year after year, the meridian altitude and the relative distances of stars, or who seeks a telescopic comet in a group of nebulae, does not feel his imagination more excited — and this is the very guarantee of the precision of his labors — than the botanist who counts the divisions of the calyx, or the number of stamens in a flower, or examines ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... soar to their ken like a comet. They'll see me with never a stain; But will they reform me?—far from it. We pay for our pleasure with pain; But the dog will return to his vomit, the hog to his ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... Russia fairly crawl. Instead of coal they use wood in their engines, which sends back thousands of sparks like the tail of a comet. It grew dark about two o'clock in the afternoon, and we found ourselves promenading through the bleakest of winter landscapes. Tiny cottages, emitting a bright red glow from infinitesimal windows, crouched in the snow, and silent fir-trees silhouetted themselves against the moonlit sky. It only ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... but it has been an astonishment to us, as our war-comet was to the astronomers. The comet, as some of them say, brushed us with its tail as it passed; yet nobody finds us the worse for it. So, too, we have been brushed lightly by mishap, as we ought to have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... thee that thou mayest crush the land of the East, and invade those who dwell in the provinces of Tonutir,—I grant that they may see Thy Majesty as the comet which rains down the heat of its ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... voices, and read one never quite expressed fact in endless picture-language? Yet, whether it be that these things will not be intellectually learned, or, that many centuries must elaborate and compose so rare and opulent a soul,—there is no comet, rock-stratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, spider, or fungus, that, for itself, does not interest more scholars and classifiers than the meaning and upshot of ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... been sent to examine the auriferous lodes of our Acadian neighbors. If gold does not really exist there, and in very remunerative quantities, it will be hard for us henceforth to believe in the calculations of even a spring-tide, a comet, or an eclipse. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... in the original is dhumaketu. Elsewhere I have rendered it comet. It would seem, however, that is wrong. In such passages the word is used in its literal sense, viz., "(an article) having smoke for its ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... listened to. Each knot of speakers was becoming louder in debate, and Dr. Boltby's voice was hardly heard when he announced that a rain of blood had fallen on the Macgillicuddy mountains in Ireland, testified to by numerous respectable Protestant witnesses, and attributable, either to the late comet, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... especially on our homeward journeys at sunset that I was always over-powered by unique impressions. During the first part of our stay in the September of that year we saw on one of these occasions the marvellous apparition of the great comet, which at that time was at its highest brilliancy, and was generally said to portend an ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... the quarry Stood erect, and called the nations, Called the tribes of men together. From his footprints flowed a river, Leaped into the light of morning, O'er the precipice plunging downward Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet. And the Spirit, stooping earthward, With his finger on the meadow Traced a winding pathway for it, Saying to it, "Run in this way!" From the red stone of the quarry With his hand he broke a fragment, Molded it into a pipe-head, Shaped and fashioned it with figures; From ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... thrill of starting, when we seemed to be tearing like a tailless comet through a very small portion of space not designed to hold comets, I grew happy, though far from tranquil. I can't imagine people ever feeling really tranquil in an automobile, and I don't believe they do, though they may pretend. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... thought the occasion not the right one. It was useless to issue a proclamation that might be as inoperative as the Pope's bull against the comet. My duty, it has seemed to me, has been to be loyal to a principle, and not to betray it by expressing it in action at the wrong time. That is what I conceive statesmanship to be. For long now I have had two fixed resolves. To preserve the Union, and to abolish slavery. How to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater

... to feel what they cannot feel, but whose heart and brain find the light that they need in the unchanging feelings of all. The truest man will never be he who desires to be other than man. How many there are that thus waste their lives, scouring the heavens for sight of the comet that never will come; but disdaining to look at the stars, because these can be seen by all, and, moreover, are countless in number! This craving for the extraordinary is often the special weakness ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... mother, do but come and look!" she cried, with the air of coaxing assurance which bespoke a favoured child. "Such a strange star in the sky! Men in the streets are all looking and pointing; and some say that it is no star, but a comet, and that it predicts some dreadful thing which is coming upon this land. Do come and look at it! There is a clear sky tonight, and one can see it well. And I heard that it has been seen by some before this, when at night the rain clouds have been swept away by the wind. Do come to ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... can never altogether repress though by wise guidance we may render it an aid not only to personal development and well-being but to the moral betterment of the world. The attraction of sex, according to a superstition which reaches far back into antiquity, is a baleful comet pointing to destruction, rather than a mighty star to which we may harness our chariot. It may certainly be either, and which it is likely to become depends largely on our knowledge and our ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... that at all the street corners there they are selling a little pamphlet for a sou entitled "Le seul moyen de ne pas mourir le 13 Juin a 1'apparition de la Comete." ["The only means how not to die on the 13th of June at the appearance of the comet."] The only means is to drown oneself on the 12th of June. Much of the good advice which is given to me by the critics is very like this seul moyen. Yet we will not drown ourselves—not even in the lukewarm waters of criticism—and will also for the future ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... of Christianity was no argument against the truth of them. That there were many things in nature whose certainty he by no means doubted, and yet was totally ignorant of the methods whereby many of them operated, and even of the use of some of them. Could he say what purpose the fiery comet answers? How is its motion produced, so regular in its period, so unequal in its motion, and so eccentric in its course? Of many other things man is in reality as ignorant, only being able to form a system which seems to suit in some particulars, he imagines he has discovered ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... another two weeks passed. Then, one day, a comet of amazing brilliancy shot suddenly into our social orbit, and things happened. That this interesting stellar phenomenon was a Russian grand duke, a nephew of the Czar, but added to the piquancy ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field

... virility) asked in his exquisite plaintive way: "Why do our lady novelists make the men bully the women?" It is, I think, unquestionably true that the Brontes treated the male as an almost anarchic thing coming in from outside nature; much as people on this planet regard a comet. Even the really delicate and sustained comedy of Paul Emanuel is not quite free from this air of studying something alien. The reply may be made that the women in men's novels are equally fallacious. The ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... was clear; and, as night came on, the travellers saw a prodigious comet blazing above this scene of desolation. On that night, it was chilling, with a superstitious awe, the hamlets of New England and the gilded chambers of Versailles; but it is characteristic of La Salle, that, beset as he was with perils, and surrounded ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... was necessarily short, as there were appointments to be kept by the Bishop in New Zealand in November, and all that could be aimed at was the touching at the more familiar islands for fresh instalments of scholars. The grand comet of 1858 was one feature of this expedition—which resulted in bringing home forty-seven Melanesians, so that with the crew, there were sixty-three souls on board during the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... doors away, was a thorn in his side. Three nights in the week a brazen comet struck into a set of lancers, drowning the metallic thud of the piano and compelling his ear to follow the latest popular air ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... planets. The orbit of a planet is the distance the stick goes round in going round. Astronomy is intensely interesting; it should be done at night, in a high tower in Spitzbergen. This is to avoid the astronomy being interrupted. A really good astronomer can tell when a comet is coming too near him by the warning buzz ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... his holy building to further what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000—for then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... earth enuy the ayre, Which from her lyps exhald refined sweet, A world to see, yet how he ioyd to heare The dainty grasse make musicke with her feete. But my most meruaile was when from the skyes, So Comet-like, each starre aduanc'd her lyght, As though the heauen had now awak'd her eyes, And summond Angels to this blessed sight. No clowde was seene, but christalline the ayre, Laughing for ioy upon ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... in the person who undertook the highest and most sacred duties of the Temple. Consequent on the election of a comparatively unknown girl, inquiries were numerous, asking who she was and whence she came, springing like a comet out of the gray depths of the sky; and when reply was made that she had been a slave to the wife of Lucius, many marvelled, and said it was the hand of the goddess who raised one of low degree to sit upon the golden throne; whilst among the noble families of Rome great curiosity ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... the distant firmament. We have admired it. It is so far off. What can there be to make us shudder in a fixed star? Well, one day—one night, rather—it moves. We perceive a trembling gleam around it. The star which we imagined to be immovable is in motion. It is no longer a star, but a comet—the incendiary giant of the skies. The luminary moves on, grows bigger, shakes off a shower of sparks and fire, and becomes enormous. It advances towards us. Oh, horror, it is coming our way! The comet recognizes us, marks us for its own, and will not be turned aside. Irresistible ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... of the Ring machine had been observed at several different points, beginning at Cape Race, where at about four A.M. the wireless operator reported what he supposed to be a large comet discharging earthward a diagonal shaft of orange-yellow light and moving at incredible velocity in a southeasterly direction. During the following day the lookout on the Vira, a fishguard and scout cruiser of the North Atlantic Patrol, saw a black speck soaring among the clouds which he took ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... was indeed on the 13th of March 1781, while engaged in observing the constellation of the Twins, that the justly famous Sir William Herschel caught sight of an object which he did not recognise as having met with before. He at first took it for a comet, but observations of its movements during a few days showed it to be a planet. This body, which the power of the telescope alone had thus shown to belong to the solar family, has since become known to science under the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... you, Joe," said Willy Cameron. "You look strange to me. Ah, now I have it. You look like a comet without a tail. Where's ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Brother Regimental, "it is quite a different thing. But do not send young Samuel to the dragon—the dragon might devour him. For the last five years Samuel is not in a state to show his innocence to monsters. In the year of the comet, the Devil in order to seduce him, put in his path a milkmaid, who was lifting up her petticoat to cross a ford. Samuel was tempted, but he overcame the temptation. The Devil, who never tires, sent him the image of that young girl in a dream. The shade ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... be found in the various Browning hand-books, in Mr. Nettleship's and other dissertations, and, particularly, in Mrs. Ball's most circumspect and able historical essay. It is sufficient here to say that while the Sordello and Palma of the poet are traceable in the Cunizza and the strange comet-like Sordello of the Italian and Provencal Chronicles (who has his secure immortality, by Dante set forth in leonine guise—a guisa di leon quando si posa—in the "Purgatorio"), both these are the most shadowy of prototypes. The Sordello of Browning is a typical ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... neck-straining, swift, Wing touching wing while no wings shift, Seen by none, but when stars appear A reaper wandering home may hear A sigh aloft where the stars are dim, Then a great rush going over him: This was his; it had linked him close To the force by which the comet goes, With the rein none sees, with the lash none feels, But with fire-mane tossing ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... thing Jack wondered was whether the passing of the Monarch would not be taken by people on the earth for the flight of some giant comet, as it sailed aloft, all lighted up. But he was too tired ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood

... Pete, with a merry laugh. "Poor old soul, though, she knows no better. Good-bye, sir. I shall see you again. I read your name in the paper the other day about finding a comet, and it made me laugh to think of the old days. Good-day, sir. I'm going to see Mr Maxted. I find he has been very good to the poor old granny since ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... accompanied the growing intelligence of every people, in regard to the economy of nature in their own times. In an early state of advancement, when a greater number of natural appearances are unintelligible, an eclipse, an earthquake, a flood, or the approach of a comet, with many other occurrences afterwards found to belong to the regular course of events, are regarded as prodigies. The same delusion prevails as to moral phenomena, and many of these are ascribed to the intervention of demons, ghosts, witches, and other immaterial ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... beauty, which in any case has its own unseen spectrum. A new being, fated, perhaps, to bestow genius, perhaps beauty around it, kisses the earth; the unseen becomes flesh and blood. No human being is a repetition of another, nor is any ever reproduced; each new being is like a comet which only once in all eternity touches the path of the earth, and for a brief time takes its luminous way over it—a phosphorescent body between two eternities of darkness. No doubt there is joy amongst human ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... he evinced an early taste. When a very little boy, I began to teach him the names and positions of the principal constellations, the revolutions of the earth on its axis, and the fixity of the polar star. I believe we were the first to notice a comet in 1845, which was only a short time visible here, having a south declination, and which we afterwards knew to have been a fine object in ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... window, rain tossed by the wind; without noticing, I saw it, and my brain swung with the rain until it heaved in circles, and then a feeling of faintness awakened me to myself. I did not allow my mind to think, but now and again a word swooped from immense distances through my brain, swinging like a comet across a sky and jarring terribly when it struck: 'Sacked' was one word, 'Old' was ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... existence that his eye cannot reach them. And when they do condescend to pay us a visit, they traverse so wide a circuit that the curve they describe is too slight to furnish a basis for reliable mathematical calculations. Hence the orbit of a comet is a mystery, and the return not unfrequently a surprise. If this be true of what seem to be the unfinished or exploded worlds, that swing like airy nothings in the heavens and fringe the imperial realm of physical being, then what may not ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... chambermaids were able to drive in that article of commerce when the Prince made the tour of the world in the long ago—hair which probably did not always come from his brush, since enough of it was marketed to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts for the fact that the rope which lynches a negro in the presence of ten thousand Christian spectators is salable five minutes later at two dollars and inch; it accounts for the mournful fact ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... announced the knight-errant of never-ending space, a wicked comet. To Arizona gave he playthings many: the rattlesnake, hairy tarantelas and stinging scorpions, horned toads and centipedes, a scented hydrophobia-cat, the Gila monster, a Mexican and the Apache; ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet—erratic, inapprehensible, untraceable. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... he was to his people as to himself. Long years before his birth, upon the appearance of the comet of 1577, Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, who was deep in the occultism of his day, had predicted that a prince would appear in Finland who would do great things in Germany and deliver the Protestant peoples from the oppression of the popes, and the ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... 1839: "I loved the countess deeply and purely when I was kindled by her flame. But she took such a strange position toward me that I never could have a pure, genuine, enduring joy in this love. There were delights, but no quiet gladness. I always felt as if a splendid comet had appeared on the horizon, but never as if the dear ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... night walker, sleep walker; noctambulist, runabout, straphanger, swagman, swagsman [obs3][Aust.]; trecker[obs3], trekker, zingano[obs3], zingaro[obs3]. runner, courier; Mercury, Iris, Ariel[obs3], comet. pedestrian, walker, foot passenger; cyclist; wheelman. rider,horseman, equestrian, cavalier, jockey, roughrider, trainer, breaker. driver, coachman, whip, Jehu, charioteer, postilion, postboy[obs3], carter, wagoner, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... mid career; Glorious th' assembled fires appear; Glorious the comet's train; Glorious the trumpet and alarm; Glorious th' Almighty's stretched-out arm; ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... a kind of astronomical parody on the planet. Comets look some like planets, but they are thinner and do not hurt so hard when they hit anybody as a planet does. The comet was so called because it had hair on it, I believe, but late years the bald-headed comet is giving just ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... "a comet, Lauchlan, so far as Ah can mak' oot frae the book, is jist naething more nor less than an indestructible, incomprehensible combustion o' ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... mark of joy. Only Atahuallpa looked on sadly, seeing the chances of regaining his freedom, or maintaining it if he did regain it, lessened by the increased number of his enemies, and to add to his dejection a comet just then made its appearance in the heavens. As one had been seen shortly before the death of the Inca's father, Huayna Capac, he looked upon it as a warning of evil to come, and a dread of the future ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... which seems growing, as is testified by the "Angel World"—that there is a great gulf between the powers it indicates, and the task of leading the age—and that, on the whole, it is rather a prodigious comet in the poetical heavens, than either a still, calm luminary, or even the curdling of a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... gallop to run him down. In a photograph I hope to send you (perhaps with this) you will see Simi standing in the verandah in profile. As a steward, one of his chief points is to break crystal; he is great on fracture—what do I say?—explosion! He cleans a glass, and the shards scatter like a comet's bowels. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 'A comet—that's all, Master Swithin,' repeated Hannah, in a lower voice, fearing she had done harm in ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it's become extinct, been frozen; cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again 'the water above the firmament,' then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth—and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... writing (learnedly about a comet, 7th January 1680-81) Tom comes and tells me the blazing star is in the yard, and calls me to see it. It was but dim, and the sky not clear.... I am very sensible of ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... a comet, with a very long tail. The superstitious thought my appearance to be significant of some coming misfortune. Some draughtsmen took my figure, as far as they could descry it, so that when I landed I found paintings of myself, and engravings taken ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... moon, a great silver dome, was uplifting itself from a bluish-gray level, which she knew was the distant plain of wheat. Somewhere in its midst appeared a dull star, at times brightening as if blown upon or drawn upwards in a comet-like trail. By some odd instinct she felt that it was the solitary forge of the young inventor, and pictured him standing before it with his abstracted hazel eyes and a face more begrimed in the moonlight than ever. When DID he wash himself? ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... Charlotte Bronte could not harmonize with Jane Austen. The luminous and familiar star which comes forth into the quiet evening sky when the sun sets amid the amber light of an autumn evening, and the comet which started into sight, unheralded and unnamed, and flamed across the midnight sky, have no affinity, except in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... naturally glad of an opportunity to invite the attention of the public. In a word, no sooner was my poor father's back turned than the "Literary Times" was dropped incontinently, and Mr. Peck and Mr. Tibbets began to concentrate their luminous notions into that brilliant and comet-like apparition which ultimately blazed forth under ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... troubled night, A warning comet trails her hideous hair, And underneath, the wroth sea-waves ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... this huge rock seems to bear witness. The theory, briefly stated, is as follows: A great many ages ago, when this globe of ours was still in the period of cataclysms, rolling through space around the sun, it came in contact with a portion of the end of the tail of some enormous comet, sweeping through the universe on its erratic course. This great boulder is a sample of the component parts of that fiery tail, which smote the exposed face of the earth so terribly with the drift deposit at that time of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... wildly, and my star took lustre from it; and the star of Shagpat trembled like a ring on a tightened rope, and waved and flickered, and seemed to come forward and to retire; and 'twas presently as a comet in the sky, bright,—a tadpole, with large head and lengthy tail, in the assembly of the planets. This I saw: and that the stranger star was stationed by my star, shielding it, and that it drew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... him every day, And so takes refuge in the loving eyes Which are their heaven, the dwelling-place of light), Must straightway lift his eyes unto the heavens, Like God's great palette, where His artist hand Never can strike the brush, but beauty wakes; Vast sweepy comet-curves, that net the soul In pleasure; endless sky-stairs; patient clouds, White till they blush at the sun's goodnight kiss; And filmy pallours, and great mountain crags. But beyond all, absorbing all the rest, Lies the great heaven, the expression of deep space, Foreshortened to a vaulted dome ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... fire, for just then a bird skimmed down from on high into the gloom beneath the trees, and they had a glimpse of the lovely creature, with its long, loose, yellowish plumage streaming out behind as if it were a sort of bird-comet dwelling amongst the trees. Then it was gone, and the young man consoled himself with the thought that had he fired the chances were great against his hitting, and it would have been like a crime to let the bird go off wounded and mutilated to a ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... them that the Prophet had stationed a "lamp" in the sky, to watch them for him—and sure enough, a comet flamed in the horizon. To a Creek ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... itself. "This time in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. See! I am on board, and I am driving her at one hundred and ten miles." And he followed with his pointer the swift course of the vessel, as it shot down the screen like a great comet, leaving a long tail of smoke behind it. To the overwrought nerves of the audience, the buzz and splutter of the moving-picture machine seemed to increase in volume, and thus lend a semblance of reality to the monster as it ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... breed of cattle, as there is no animal which attains sooner to maturity, and none that supplies meat of a superior quality. The value of some of the improved breeds is something enormous. At the sale of Mr. Charles Colling, a breeder in Yorkshire, in 1810, his bull "Comet" sold for 1,000 guineas. At the sale of Earl Spencer's herd in 1846, 104 cows, heifers, and calves, with nineteen bulls, fetched L8,468. 5s.; being an average of L68. 17s. apiece. The value of such animals is scarcely to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... volume when he reached firm earth and ran swiftly towards the end of the curve, from which, down a long declivity, the engineer could see his lantern. Panting, he held the light aloft as a great fan-shaped blaze of radiance came flaming like a comet down the track. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... Crevecoeur, "are altogether like the comet, gloomy, wild, and terrible in themselves, yet to be accounted the forerunners of still greater and more dreadful evils which ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Here, with her fixed Comet-blazing eyes, The damned Augurs of vntimely death, Shee ends her tale, whilst from her harts caue flyes A storme of winds, no gentle sighing breath, All which, like euill spirits in disguise, Enter Iberias eares, and to her sayth, That all the substance ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... discoursed on, as my theme, The swift flight, the stare undazzled Of a pride-plumed eagle bold, Which with back-averted talons, Scorning the tame fields of air, Seeks the sphere of fire, and passes Through its flame a flash of feathers, Or a comet's hair untangled. I extolled its soaring flight, Saying, "Thou at last art master Of thy house, thou'rt king of birds, It is right thou should'st surpass them." He who needed nothing more Than to touch ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... "Honion," partly because his head, being perfectly bald, resembled that vegetable, and partly because he enjoyed the prefix "The Hon." before his name. Yes, I am speaking of the Hon. F. Lancaster, who appeared for a few moments like a new comet in the cricket heavens, just as the thundercloud of war blotted everything out. When the cloud should roll away, that new comet would be ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... there is of this Comet that is seen a'nights; and the King and Queene did sit up last night to see it, and did, it seems. And to-night I thought to have done so too; but it is cloudy, and so no stars appear. But I will endeavour ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... man. To exert our faculties in devising ingenious modes of satisfying ourselves about the magnitude and distance of the sun; to extend our acquaintance with the system, to which that luminary is the common centre, by tracing the revolutions of a new planet, or the appearance of a new comet; to carry our bold researches through all the immensity of space, where world beyond world rises to the view of the astonished observer; these are employments which none but those incapable of pursuing them can depreciate, and which every one capable of pursuing them must ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... Ega, Senor Macedo, was also an Indian, and a very sensible fellow. He sometimes filled minor offices in the government of the place. He used to come very frequently to my house to chat, and was always striving to acquire solid information about things. When Donati's comet appeared, he took a great interest in it. We saw it at its best from the 3rd to the 10th of October (1858), between which dates it was visible near the western horizon just after sunset, the tail extending in a broad curve towards the north, and forming a sublime object. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... be useful to refer to an estimate by Newton, based upon doubtful data, but repeated by various astronomers of eminence since his time. The comet of 1680, when nearest to the sun, was only a sixth of the sun's diameter from his surface. Newton estimated its temperature, in this position, to be more than two thousand times that of molted iron. Now it is clear from the foregoing experiments that the temperature ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... strange ingredients into a possible Elixir of Life, ran far afield in search for the Philosopher's Stone, gathered herbs for the confection of simples during auspicious phases of the moon, and beheld in comet and meteor awful forewarnings of public calamity or of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... Of a certain Comet that appeared in Germany, and how Dr. Faustus was desired by certain Friends of his to know the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... a diagram showing the relative positions and movements of the earth, sun and moon. What governs the tide? What causes an eclipse? What is a comet, a ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... perish, he will return to it in visible form, thence to withdraw the good, transplanting them, it may be, into the sun, and to punish here the wicked with the demons that have allured them; then the globe of the earth will begin to burn and will be perhaps a comet. This fire will last for aeons upon aeons. The tail of the comet is intended by the smoke which will rise incessantly, according to the Apocalypse, and this fire will be hell, or the second[134] death whereof Holy Scripture speaks. But at last hell will render ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... anything at all tangible, steadfast, or obligatory. In infallibility there are no degrees. The power of the High and Holy One is one and the same, whether the sphere which it fills be larger or smaller;—the area traversed by a comet, or the oracle of the house, the holy place beneath the wings of the cherubim;—the Pentateuch of the Legislator, who drew near to the thick darkness where God was, and who spake in the cloud whence the thunderings and lightnings ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... nor did I ever again meet Mr. Owen or any of his people. I believe, however, that they reached Durban safely and sailed away in a ship called the Comet. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... water-spout, Covered with ether,—accident of travel! My eyes still full of star-dust, and my spurs Encumbered by the planets' filaments! (Picking something off his sleeve): Ha! on my doublet?—ah, a comet's hair!. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... time I seemed to feel the vast immensity of the blackness before me. I think perhaps it may have been that path of light stretching out into the distance. As I looked it seemed like the reversed tail of a comet, or the dim glow of the Milky Way, and penetrating to ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... guard—could divert Turgot from the prime scientific duty of confronting a theory with facts. Buffon was for explaining the formation of the earth and the other planets, and their lateral movement, by the hypothesis that a comet had fallen obliquely on to the sun, driven off certain portions of its constituent matter in a state of fusion, and that these masses, made spherical by the mutual attraction of their parts, were carried to different distances in proportion ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... come, after a while, and take my breakfast. There is no accounting for your master's movements. I would as soon engage to keep up with a comet. There, let go my dress; I am going into the study for a while." She went slowly down the steps and, locking the door of the study to prevent intrusion, looked around the room. There was an air of confusion, as though books and chairs had been hastily moved about. On the floor lay ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... public that in connection with Mr. Barnum I have leased the comet for a term, of years; and I desire also to solicit the public patronage in favor of a beneficial enterprise which we ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... lights in it. After you see them, the glint of the fireflies flitting hither and thither, starring the meadows as thickly as distant suns star the sky, making a milky way of the brookside and flashing comet-like along the dry upland, is singularly vivid. They sparkle, these northern fireflies of ours, with a dainty glint that merely emphasizes the darkness. Now and then you may see the larva of one of these, which is the glow-worm beside the path. You may get a very faint real illumination from ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... milkman. It was a splendid and frantic story, a sort of astronomical farce. It was all about a man who was rushing up to the Royal Society with the only possible way of avoiding an earth-destroying comet; and it showed how, even on this huge errand, the man was tripped up at every other minute by his own weakness and vanities; how he lost a train by trifling or was put in gaol for brawling. That is only one of them; there were ten or twenty more. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... among fools I might a-been sittin' beside my little girl this minute, and not be scared to either, Shelby. My dad used to say something about 'man being his own star,' I don't recollect it all, but I know it meant he could be one of the first magnet if he'd a mind to. I set out to be a comet, I reckon, all hot air tail, and there isn't much of ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... them shinin' towers wus shadowy mountain ranges of softest color, that melted up into the tender blue of the April sky. And right in the east a full moon wuz sailin', lookin' down tenderly on Josiah and me and the babe—and Jonesville and the world. And the comet sot there up in the sky like ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... sent his cigarette flying through the night like a comet scattering sparks, and brought his hand down with ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... waved a signal to them, they replied with a straggling fire of musketry to what they considered a treacherous move on the part of plundering Musurungus. At sunset a lump of scirrhus before the sun was so dense that its dark shadow formed a brush like the trabes of a comet. This soon melted away, and a beautifully diaphanous night tempted us to move towards the dreary funnel of darkness which opened ahead. The clouds began to pour; again the stream became rough, and the swift ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... vast height downward; while the fire within its bosom, instead of being put out, burned fiercer than ever, and quickly began to consume the dead carcase. Thus it fell out of the sky, all a-flame, and (it being nightfall before it reached the earth) was mistaken for a shooting star or a comet. But at early sunrise, some cottager's were going to their day's labour, and saw, to their astonishment, that several acres of ground were strewn with black ashes. In the middle of a field there was a heap of whitened bones, a great ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... There was only a black void dividing some clusters of brilliant but remote and diminished lights. There were odd stars which detached themselves from the fixed clusters, and moved in the void, sounding the profundity of the chasm beneath them with lines of trembling fire. Such a wandering comet drifted near where I stood on the verge of nothing, and then it was plain that its trail of quivering light did not sound, but floated and undulated on a travelling road—that chasm before me was black because it was filled with fluid night. Night, I discovered suddenly, was in irresistible ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... his eyes. At first he thought that it was a comet moving across the sky and reflected in the water; but, on glancing above, he saw his mistake. It looked, at first, like a great ball of fire rolling along the bottom of the lake with a stream of ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... so," said the old man, sombrely, "but the graybacks should not have forgotten already the lesson we taught them at the Golden Cove the year of the red comet. But, Constans, lad, we should be on our way if we would not have the pretty Alexa furrowing her forehead over our empty seats at her birthday board. Hola! Willem; ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... of view by those who contend for such a limit seemed to me, although no positive refutation of their creed, still a point worthy very serious investigation. On comparing the intervals between the successive arrivals of Encke's comet at its perihelion, after giving credit, in the most exact manner, for all the disturbances due to the attractions of the planets, it appears that the periods are gradually diminishing; that is to say, the major axis of the comet's ellipse is growing shorter, in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... back of Nellie, a graceful, fleet young mare which Col. Selby had generously set aside for his use. Maids, matrons, and small boys stood in gaping amaze, stool in one hand and milk pail in the other, watching half-fearfully, half-admiringly, the fearless young equestrian, who shot by like a comet, his long, black ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... age came on, he grew blind, deaf and dumb, Tho' his sport, 'twere hard to keep from it, Quite tired of life, bid adieu to his wife, And blazed like the tail of a comet, brave boys. ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... might have been described in all her purple Spots. The Fever might have marched before her, Pain might have stood at her right Hand, Phrenzy on her Left, and Death in her Rear. She might have been introduced as gliding down from the Tail of a Comet, or darted upon the Earth in a Flash of Lightning: She might have tainted the Atmosphere with her Breath; the very glaring of her Eyes might have scattered Infection. But I believe every Reader will think, that in such sublime Writings the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... round in the circle of commonplace, and then to pop out of it like a tailed comet! Such is the history of many a man's life. I have a near friend who went away from town one fall, happy and contented with his lot. And what do you suppose he found when he returned home? He had been nominated for alderman. It is too early to predict ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... from Flammarion this morning," he said. "But all about Halley's comet, of course. What ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... the whole scene, far exceeding anything of the sort I had ever before witnessed. We were nearly across the river, when a sleigh more handsomely equipped than any we had yet seen, dashed down the bank, and came whirling past us like a comet. It was full of ladies, with the exception of one gentleman, who stood erect in front, driving. I recognised Bulstrode, in furs like all of us, capped and tailed, if not plumed, while among the half-dozen pairs of brilliant ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... appear, And trumpets raising Mars himself to war. Now AEtna's flames with an usual roar Vomit huge bolts of thunder in the air, Amidst the tombs and bones without their urns, Portending spirits send up dismal groans: A comet's seen with stars unknown before, And Jove descending in a bloody show'r: The god these wonders did in short unfold, Caesar their ills no longer shou'd with-hold. Impatient of revenge, quit Gallick jars, And ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... over Jerusalem blazed a great comet, in appearance like a sword of fire. It was true that they had seen it before at Tyre, but never before had it shown so bright. Moreover, there it had not the appearance of a sword. This they thought to be an ill omen, all of them except ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... little will would reign without mercy, if it reigned at all; and ever present with her was the uneasy sense that it was her duty to bring this erratic little comet within the laws of a well-ordered solar system,—a task to which she felt about as competent as to make a new ring for Saturn. Then, too, there was a secret feeling, if the truth must be told, of what Mrs. Kittridge would think about it; for duty is never more formidable ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... that it was not, as Messier had supposed, a circular nebula. Herschel regarded it as the richest mass of stars in the firmament, but with a small telescope it appears merely as a filmy speck that has sometimes been mistaken for a comet. In 1860 a new star, between the sixth and seventh magnitude in brilliance, suddenly appeared directly in or upon the cluster, and the feeble radiance of the latter was almost extinguished by the superior light of the stranger. The latter disappeared in less than a month, and has not been ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, dash away! dash away! dash away, all!" As dry leaves, that before the wild hurricane fly When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... hidden there somewhere. The food of the migrant birds that are coming from over sea was there dormant under the snow. Many nations have a tradition of a former world destroyed by a deluge of water, from the East to the West, from Greece to Mexico, where the tail of a comet was said to have caused the flood; but in the strange characters of the Zend is the legend of an ark (as it were) prepared against the snow. It may be that it is the dim memory of a glacial epoch. In this deep coombe, amid the dark oaks and snow, was the fable of Zoroaster. For the coming of Ormuzd, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... Although it was a warm day, she hung a cloak over her shoulders. But her arms peeped out of the loose sleeves, and at least a foot of skirt was visible. As she walked along the corridor and down the stairs, she seemed to smudge the place with colour, and, directly she entered the dining-hall, comet-like she drew all eyes upon her. Astonished titterings followed in her wake; even the teachers goggled her, afterwards to put their heads together. In the reception-room Marina remarked at once: "Hullo!—is THIS the new dress your mother wrote ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... is to open a new career, and to appear suddenly in the world of science with a book of discoveries in one's hand like an unexpected comet sparkling in space! Here is the book, gentleman. I have undertaken and carried out a journey of forty-two days in my room. The interesting observations I have made, and the continual pleasure I have felt during this long expedition, excited in me the wish to publish it; the certitude ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... "No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corpse might seem a constellation. O, had he died of old, how great a strife Had been who from his death should draw their life! Who should, by one rich draught, become whate'er Seneca, Cato, Numa, Caesar, were, Learned, virtuous, pious, great, and ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... admit Munster, gintlemen—glorious Kerry!—yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it. I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system: like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude" (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—"from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person. Gintlemen, I have the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... be compared to a comet,—a body with a bright head and a nebulous tail. Like all radicals and reformers they had a fringe of unbalanced and crotchety folk. It must be said, too, that absorption in a topic remote from the concerns of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... the morning, we have the comet streaming through the sky, and dragging its interminable tail among the stars. It keeps brightening from night to night, and I should think must blaze fiercely enough to cast a shadow by and by. I know not whether it be in the vicinity of Galileo's ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... about the house. No one could see the time of day by the clocks, and white paper looked like black velvet. Many people were terrified and wondered what was coming. Some expected a great tornado; others said a comet was due and feared it portended some great calamity, perhaps a disaster to the armies in the field who were fighting England in the war of the Revolution. Still others, more ignorant and superstitious, were ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... unexpected visitors. There is only one great comet that we know has been seen more than once, and expect with reasonable certainty to see again. This is Halley's comet, which has been returning to a near approach to the sun at somewhat irregular intervals of seventy-five to seventy-eight years ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... his history by Frank Bracebridge. He was an old bachelor, of a small independent income, which by careful management was sufficient for all his wants. He revolved through the family system like a vagrant comet in its orbit, sometimes visiting one branch, and sometimes another quite remote, as is often the case with gentlemen of extensive connections and small fortunes in England. He had a chirping, buoyant ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... Caesar's gilded chair nor his crown set with precious stones, though it was permitted by decree. [-7-] When, however, a certain star through all those days appeared in the north toward evening, some called it a comet, and said that it indicated the usual occurrences; but the majority, instead of believing this, ascribed it to Caesar, interpreting it to mean that he had become a god and had been included in the number of the stars. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... slipped, and fell to the earth with a crash. Then straight did rise on his wondering eyes the constellations fair, Arcturus and the Pleiades, the Greater and Lesser Bear, The swirling rain of a comet's train he saw, as he swiftly fell— And Jill came tumbling after him with a loud triumphant yell: "You have won, you have won, the race is done! And as for the wager laid— You have fallen down with a broken crown—the half-crown ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... examined his pulse and the other symptoms, and was requested to repeat his visit the next day. Napoleon was now within a month of his death, and although he occasionally spoke with the eloquence and vehemence he had so often exhibited, his mind was evidently giving way. The reported appearance of a comet was taken as a token of his death. He was excited, and exclaimed with emotion, "A comet! that was the precursor of the death ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... ye cannot break,—the force that clips And grasps your circles to the central light; Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse, Self-exiled to the farthest verge of night; Yet strives with you no less that inward might No sin hath e'er imbruted; The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes; The Law brooks not to have its solitudes By bigot feet polluted; Yet they ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and half-way across the room—a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs. Sheridan shrieked ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... quite late on the evening of his second day's journey that the Major, occupying the box-seat of the "Exterminator," dashed with comet-like speed through so much of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world as showed itself in Piccadilly at half-past seven on ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... us, there was a very terrible Comet seen in the Air, that it appeared for 180 Days before the Flood continually; and that as it approach'd nearer and nearer every Day all the while, so that at last it burst and fell down in a continual Spout or Stream of Water, being of a watry ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... coxcomical writer has represented it, "the vibration of a pendulum," but a conduct, wise, manly, judicious, and heroic. Who does not know, that the twinkling stars are of a more excellent nature, than those which shine upon us with unremitted lustre? Who does not know that the comet, which appears for a short time, and vanishes again for revolving years, is more gazed upon than either? But I am afraid the comet is too sublime an idea for your lordship's comprehension. I would therefore recommend to you, to make the cracker the model of your ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did, the year after, another a little before the fire. The old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac[45] part of the other sex (whom I could almost call old women too), remarked, especially afterward, though not till both those ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... He grows tidier, and he gathers up a mass of heterogeneous information, and in the strangest possible fashion as the years go on, boards have to be put into the dining-room table, and the shoe bill becomes something terrible, and during some of his peregrinations he feels rather like a comet with a tail. The dentist's bills and where to go for the summer and do-you-think-the-nurse-is-as-careful-as-she-should-be-with-baby's-bottles make him put on a sort of surface maturity. But it never fools his womankind. Deep down he still believes in ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... needs. Her own story was, that she kept moving, so that folks couldn't see how ugly she was. And, in fact, her existence was manifest through her long train of good deeds,—just as the presence of a comet is shown by its tail. It was doubtless on the above principle that her visage was agitated by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... said because she knew that none of the stars had given a true reason for twinkling so gayly that night. The truth was, they were filled with envy, and were trying to be as brilliant as possible, to compete with a flaming Comet which had just appeared in ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May

... see what good old Brownie's put by for us," said Norah, disappearing towards the house like a small comet. ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... comet appeared in the heavens, Sky O'Dawn gave the Emperor the astrologer's wand. The Emperor pointed it at the comet and the ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... passing comet in its flight, By that great force of two mad hearts aflame, A soul incarnate, back to earth you came, To glow like star-dust for a little night. Deep shadows hide you wholly from our sight; The centuries leave nothing but your name, Tinged with the ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... by way of conjecture, "I expect this is the reason why the Leaplowers dock themselves. They find it more convenient to give up the management of their affairs to some one of these God-likes, and fall into his wake like the tail of a comet, which makes it quite unnecessary to have ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal—and these, not alone In the main current of the general life, But small experiences of every day, Concerns of the particular hearth and home: To learn not only by a comet's rush But a rose's birth—not by the grandeur, God, But the comfort, Christ. All this how far away Mere delectation, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... "my trouble is in my foot and not in my head. On the second night out from Dekker's star, I lost my footing on the stairs from the dining hall and plunged like a comet to the bottom. I would probably have been killed but for the person of a stout steward who, at that moment, started to ascend the stairs. He took the full impact of my descent on his chest and saved my life, I'm ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon

... comet bristling, Rose the young man's hair, And, poor soul! he fell a-whistling Out of sheer despair. Down the gloomy street in silence, Savage-calm he goes; But he did no deed of vi'lence— Only ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... to clean it. For, although we were shooting along at a terrible rate, the train would not stop to set us down, but would cast us loose a mile from our station; and some minutes after it had shot by like an infernal comet of darkness, our carriage would trot gently up to the platform, as if it had come from London all on its own hook—and thought ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... ten cases of giant powder and blow the mill of Honorable John Lawson Davis, Member of Congress, Champion Double-Jointed, Ground-and-Lofty, Collar-and-Elbow, Skin and Liar, so high in the air that folks'll think there's a new comet, predictin' ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips

... guess'd, Tho' we all took it for a jest; Partridge is dead, nay more, he dy'd E're he could prove the good 'Squire ly'd. Strange, an Astrologer shou'd die, Without one Wonder in the Sky! Not one of all his Crony Stars To pay their Duty at his Herse? No Meteor, no Eclipse appear'd? No Comet with a flaming Beard? The Sun has rose, and gone to Bed, Just as if partridge were not dead: Nor hid himself behind the Moon, To make a dreadful Night at Noon. He at fit Periods walks through Aries, Howe'er our earthly Motion varies; ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift

... starlight, Tycho made those invaluable observations that enabled Kepler to deduce the true laws of planetary motion. But after all these centuries the sidereal world embraced no objects, barring an occasional comet or temporary star, that lay beyond the vision of the earliest astronomers. The conceptions of the stellar universe, except those that ignored the solid ground of observation, were limited by the small aperture of the ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... has enlarged the telescopic vision of the astronomer until worlds hidden in the distant heavens have trooped forth and have joined the choir praising the Lord. Planet weighed against planet and wildest comet ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... thereafter a party of tourists, gathered at the margin of Mirror Lake, were astounded at the unwonted phenomenon of a whisky flask descending upon them like a comet out of a clear sky; and all the way back to the hotel they marveled greatly at the wonders of ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... for the appearance of a comet by stating that the sun often snaps at one of the stars, his children, and does not get a good hold of it, he only tears a piece out; and the star, getting wild with pain, goes flying across the sky with a ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... the ethereal regions might not be more void of monsters than the ocean is of whales and other great thieving fish!" A very literal interpretation of this "hairy star" has been here embroidered, carefully fitted out with cog-wheels and all the paraphernalia of a conventional mediaeval comet. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... clutch at the garments in the closet. For her robes radiated dull light, like a coal seen behind ashes. It was as though she were about to burst into flame. On her head gleamed a dull star; from it, the radiance of her robe fell away toward her feet in lesser light, like the tail-streamer of a comet. All emotion of despair, disillusion, rage, were expressed for a moment within him by an emotion of supernatural awe which sent the tremors running from his face to his spine, and his spine to his feet. She stood a perfect phantom of the night, like Annette ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... transparent substance, hard as the hardest rock and as transparent as air in the light of my electric lamps. My shell rested securely upon this substance. I walked upon it. It seemed as if I could see miles below me. In my opinion, Margaret, that substance was once the head of a comet." ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... between nature and important human events. The dying hours of Cromwell and Napoleon were marked by violent storms. Omens in earth and sky were the precursors of the death of Julius Caesar and King Duncan. A great comet heralded the opening of the war, and Palm Sunday—the day which commemorates the victorious entry of Christ into Jerusalem, ushered in the welcome reign of peace. The time was auspicious; the elements were rocked to sleep in a kind of Sunday repose. The two armies, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens



Words linked to "Comet" :   nucleus, cometary, astronomy, comet-like, extraterrestrial object, estraterrestrial body, cometic, coma



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com