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Atom   /ˈætəm/   Listen
Atom

noun
1.
(physics and chemistry) the smallest component of an element having the chemical properties of the element.
2.
(nontechnical usage) a tiny piece of anything.  Synonyms: corpuscle, molecule, mote, particle, speck.



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"Atom" Quotes from Famous Books



... than my body—my spirit is unscathed. It is the ancient consolation, coming down through poetry and history even to me. The Government—the Nation—can destroy my life, separate me from my people, throw mud on my name; but they cannot take away one atom of my consciousness of the truth. And it is better to have that consciousness than to retain all the rest without it. Blessed ethical truisms, which come to our succor when ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... he helped her disentangle the aromatic string from her falling braids,—for I kept apart,—he breathed the penetrating incense of each separate amulet, and I saw that from that hour, when every atom of his sensation was tense and vibrating, she would be associated with the loathed amber in his undefined consciousness, would be surrounded with an atmosphere of its perfume, that Lu was truly sealed from him in it, sealed into herself. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... into the arm-chair and exhaled a long breath. "Martin is a great creature," he said. "He is far, far better than a play. There is none like him, none—nor will be when our summers have deceased. Straight, too: not an atom of harm in dear old Martin. Do you know, Murch, you are wrong in suspecting ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... shall hereafter: But now to wash Christ's feet were dangerous honour For weakling grace; would you be humble, daughter, You must look up, not down, and see yourself A paltry atom, sap-transmitting vein Of Christ's vast vine; the pettiest joint and member Of His great body; own no strength, no will, Save that which from the ruling head's command Through me, as nerve, derives; let thyself die— And dying, rise ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... intense dreariness of snow. The solemn loneliness of it—the dark, silently flowing river, the dun sky, the wide, white expanse of plain, the mad violence of the storm beating against him—brought to him a feeling of helplessness. He was a mere atom, struggling alone against Nature's wild mood. Then the feeling clutched him that he was not alone; that from somewhere amid those barren wastes hostile eyes watched, skulking murderers sought his life. Yet there was no sign of any presence. He could not stand there and die, nor permit Carroll to ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... weight to trifling occurrences. And still it is those that appear most insignificant which we ought to fear most, because they alone determine our fate, precisely as an atom of sand dismembers the most ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... they were not discussing the importance of men, but their relative inequalities. Nobody was denying the equal importance of everybody. But there was a virtue of this man and a virtue of that. Nobody could dispute the equal importance of every wheel in a machine, of every atom in the universe. Prothero and Carnac were angry because they thought the denial of absolute equality was a denial of equal importance. That was not so. Every man mattered in his place. But politically, or economically, or intellectually that might ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... is unavoidable, and am prepared for it. I had been at a good deal of pains to form a just, impartial estimate of my intellectual powers before I came here; I have not added, since I came to Edinburgh, anything to the account; and I trust I shall take every atom of it back to my shades, the coverts ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... physical universe in such a way that all changes in the outer world can be understood as the movements of its parts in accordance with such necessary physical axioms. If we knew all the atoms of the present status of the universe, and we knew every present movement of every atom, we should be able to foresee the position of every atom in the next moment and in the following moment and in all following moments, and all that by the necessary continuation of the substance and its energies. That alone is the background ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... Neal, "I'm forever oblaged to you, but I don't want it. I've had 'The Afflicted Man's Companion' too long, and divil an atom of consolation I can get out of it. I have one o' them I tell you; but, be me sowl, I'll not undhertake a pair o' them. The very name's enough for me." ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... you'll take them, too. I can never be happy without them. You can never understand. You are a man, and so strong." He drew her to him again, and she nestled close in his arms. "You don't know what it is to hear a child's voice, and know that it is part of you, your life, one little tiny atom beginning all over again. No, no—I ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... unspeakably petty alike, must come again to thee, and all in the same series and succession; this spider, too, and this moonlight betwixt the trees and this moment likewise and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of time is always turned again, and thou with it, thou atom of dust'? Wouldst thou not cast thyself down and with gnashing of teeth curse the demon who thus spoke? Or, hast thou ever experienced the tremendous moment in which thou wouldst answer him: 'Thou art a god and never heard ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... arrival, and while, hoping to rescue Ellice, I was in pursuit of the precious pair, my wife relapsed and died—the victim of excitement brought on by her child's disgrace. I came back here to a desolate, silent house;—bereft of wife and daughter; and in the grave of her mother, I buried every atom of love and tenderness I ever entertained for Ellice. When the sun is suddenly blotted out at noon, and the world turns black—black, we grope to and fro aimlessly; but after awhile, we accommodate ourselves to the darkness;—and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... ever rest, nor ever lie, Till, beyond thinking, out of view, One mote of all the dust that's I Shall meet one atom ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... to suffer and die, but I do want to know things." She was an intense atom, and from the first thought ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... such occurrences as chemical combination, or changes in volume and density, the scientist has employed as a unit the least particle, physically indivisible and qualitatively homogeneous. Look for the atom in the body of science, and you will find it in physical laws governing expansion and contraction, and in chemical formulas. There the real responsibility of science ends. But whether through the need of popular exposition, or the undisciplined imagination of the investigator himself, atoms ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... account for your own simple sympathies between impulse and act, do you believe that there exists a man upon earth who can read all the riddles in the heart and brain of another? Is it not true that not one drop of water, one atom of matter, ever really touches another? Between each and each there is always a space, however infinitesimally small. How, then, could the world go on, if every man asked another to make his whole history and being as lucid as daylight before he would buy ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... n. A hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are designed and built with the individual specification and placement of each separate atom. The first unequivocal nanofabrication experiments are taking place now (1990), for example with the deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel substrate to spell the logo of a certain very large computer company. ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... day Germany thrilled with the news that Professor Schleschinger had destroyed himself. For suicide, however, some of the papers substituted murder, though of neither was there an atom of actual proof. On the day following, three persons died by their own hands in Berlin, of whom two were young members of the medical profession; on the day following that, the number rose to nineteen, Hamburg, Dresden, and Aachen joining in the frenzied death-dance; within ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... know. Hebe is very handy, and she always was. But she never put herself before Anne, and so we got in the way of me being the one to do most for mums. I told you at the beginning—didn't I?—that some people might think me rather a girl-y boy, but I don't mind one scrap of an atom if they do. I have my own ideas. I know the splendidest cricketer and footballer you ever saw is a fellow whose sister's a cripple, and she can't bear any one to lift her but him, because he's so gentle. And I've seen a young doctor in our village doing up a ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... insight into the universal." The romanticists, he thinks, cultivate not the awe we find in the great writers, but mere wonder. He takes Poe as a typical romanticist. "It is not easy to discover in either the personality or writings of Poe an atom of awe or reverence. On the other hand, he both experiences wonder and seeks in his art to be a ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... transmigration to places of pain or pleasure, its resurrection, the final judgment, the good and bad angels, the revolt of the evil Genius, and all the poetical belief of a world to come. And this highly-favored people, whose perfection consists in a slight mutilation of their persons,—this atom of a people, which forms but a small wave in the ocean of mankind, and which insists that God has made nothing but for them, will by its schism reduce to one-half, its present trifling weight in the scale of ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... this conclusion was a wise one the reader must judge. Egotism is a natural trait of mankind. If it is exhibited in a moderate degree we pardon it with a smile; if it is excessive we condemn it as a weakness. The life of one man is but an atom, but if it is connected with great events it shares in their dignity and importance. Influenced by this reasoning I concluded to postpone the publication of my speeches except so far as they are quoted or described in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... pathetically besought him, as a good father, not to forsake him entirely.[124] But in vain; his father-in-law deserted him at his sorest hour of need. To make peace was out of the question. England's honour had suffered a stain that must at all costs be removed. No king with an atom of spirit would let the dawn of his reign be clouded by such an admission of failure. Wolsey was there to stiffen his temper in case of need; with him it was almost a matter of life and death to ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... the note. It was easy enough to evade any close questions on her part; she thought it was "a good deal more suitable for Bel not to stay at Mrs. Pimminy's alone, and she wasn't an atom surprised to know she had concluded so;" besides, Miss Smalley was very much preoccupied ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and deed is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence,' La Ilah illa Allah,' is summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force, or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to whom alone it ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... of our solar system and whose rate of motion is comparable only to that of Light. This is not theory, it is fact clearly demonstrated to us by the study of Radio-activity. Curiously enough, we know more about these bodies than we do of the atom itself; we actually know their size and weight and the speed with which they move. We do not yet know what is at the centre of this system, but we do know that each of these bodies is as far away from the centre as ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... your thoughts are; but nothing is more true, and I swear to you, that having the happiness of possessing you, there remains nothing for me to desire. I esteem my kingdom, great as it is, less than an atom, when I have the pleasure of beholding you, and of telling you a thousand times that I adore you. I desire not that my words alone should oblige you to believe me. Surely you can no longer doubt of my devotion to you after the sacrifice which I have made to your beauty of so many women, whom I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... him, and we should be left eight miles from the nearest shelter to find our way to it, with a deep creek to cross. F—— was fifty yards off, with his back to me, searching for some indispensable buckle; so there was no help to be got from him at the moment. I exerted every atom of my remaining strength to slip the bridle over my left arm, which I pressed against my waist; then I sat down as quietly as I could, not to alarm the horse, bent forward so as to keep my left arm under me lest the bridle should ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... point, so plainly eager was she to be well and strong. And always, from morning until night, and again from night until morning, the pivot of her existence, around which swung all thoughts, words, actions, and plans, was the sturdy little plump-cheeked, firm-fleshed atom of humanity known as Bertram, Jr. Even Aunt Hannah remonstrated ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... were so exactly like himself, that in a moment all these intervening years seemed crushed into an atom of time. Hilary felt certain, morally and absolutely certain, that, in spite of all outward change, he was the same Robert Lyon who had bade them all good-by that Sunday night in the parlor at Stowbury. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... the world lost in a moment its joyousness, the sunshine its warmth. The greenness and beauty round me, which an instant before had filled me with pleasure, seemed on a sudden no more than a grim and cruel jest at my expense, and I an atom perishing unmarked and unnoticed. Yes, an atom, a mote; the bitterness of that feeling I well remember. Then, in no long time—being a soldier—I recovered my coolness, and, retaining the power to think, decided what it behoved me ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... slip and fasten eagerly on the good. Would you prefer a taste fixed by someone who tells the browser what he ought to like? Then that is not the reader's own taste at all, but that of his informant. We have too much of this sort of thing—too many readers without an atom of taste of their own who will say, for instance, that they adore George Meredith, because some one has told them that all intellectual persons do so. The man who frankly loves George Ade and can yet see nothing in Shakespeare may one day discover Shakespeare. The man who reads Shakespeare merely ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... pushes up in the moist earth like a spear thrust through a shield; the eggs of the starling are laid in the knot-hole of the pollard elm—common eggs, but within each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond of two hundred carats—the dot of protoplasm, the atom of life. There was one row of pollards where they always began laying first. With a big stick in his beak the rook is blown aside like a loose feather in the wind; he knows his building-time from the fathers of his house—hereditary knowledge handed down in settled course: but the stray ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... and scores of people from the village, now, arriving every moment, and Mrs. Kinzer had all she could do to keep them from "rescuing" every atom of her furniture from the house and piling it up in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... that step or gesture of mine would attract its attention for at the sight I had become petrified, like Lot's wife! In that atom of time, which seemed to me a century, I could not even think, but across the deadened faculty of my mind flashed a warning I had recently received from the Sakais: never make a movement in the presence of a tiger, and never look ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... thundered, in vain from the ship sounded the long and lordly tumult, responded to by immense acclamations from the shore; in vain did the noise deafen the ear of the father, the smoke obscured the cherished object of his aspirations. Raoul appeared to him to the last moment; and the imperceptible atom, passing from black to pale, from pale to white, from white to nothing, disappeared for Athos—disappeared very long after, to all the eyes of the spectators, had disappeared both gallant ships and swelling sails. Towards midday, when the sun devoured ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Atom though the hummer was, hardly more than a pinch of feathers, she was a decided character, with notions and ways of her own. One of her fancies was to open the honey-pots for herself. When she found a bud beginning to unclose, a lobe or two unfolded, she at once took it ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... call up into life My sire and uncle—I consent. Men may, Even aged men, be, or appear to be, Sires of a hundred sons, but cannot kindle An atom of their ancestors from earth. The victims are not equal; he has seen His sons expire by natural deaths, and I My sires by violent and mysterious maladies. 280 I used no poison, bribed no subtle master Of the destructive art of healing, to Shorten the path to the eternal cure. His sons—and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... to remorseless fire! Watch till the last faint spark expire; Then strew its ashes on the wind, Nor leave one atom ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... arrived, I kissed her when I left, each day was the same. She would put her arms round my neck and look long and deeply into my eyes, then she would gently kiss my lips. Not an atom of emotion! not a spark from the fires which I feel must be raging beneath that diabolically [1] extraordinary [1] ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... the Arabian Mutakallimun, we have seen (p. xxii), laid great stress on the theory of atom and accident as opposed to the concepts of matter and form by which Aristotle was led to believe in the eternity of the world. Accordingly every Mutakallim laid down his physical theory and based on it his proof of creation. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... everything else in the world, were by no means happy moments; well did I know it, for they were the only moments in my life on which I concentrated a scrupulous, undistracted attention, and yet I could not discover in them one atom of pleasure. All the time that I was away from Gilberte, I wanted to see her, because, having incessantly sought to form a mental picture of her, I was unable, in the end, to do so, and did not know exactly to what my ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... a return to it, but the great fatigue to his sister of the mule ride up the mountain, by a path which made walking, wherever possible, the easier course. They did walk down it in the early October of 1885, and completed the hard seven hours' trudge to San Martino d'Aosta, without an atom of refreshment or a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... they were certainly not reasonable. Was it reasonable to destroy almost all their tremendous civilization in atomic warfare over causes our historians can no longer accurately determine?" The Industrialist brooded over it. "From the dropping of the first atom bomb over those islands—I forget the ancient name—there was only one end in sight, and in plain sight. Yet events were allowed to ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov

... brought to a focus, and where they will find fit expression. In nature we see no waste of energy, nothing left to chance. Since the shuttle of creation shot for the first time through chaos, design has marked the course of every golden thread. Every leaf, every flower, every crystal, every atom even, has a purpose stamped upon it which unmistakably points to the crowning ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... where thou oughtest to seek, and art sure to find, consolation, as I can assure you with a single word, that were Rome and all her priesthood once more in the plenitude of their power, they could not, for largesse or penance, afford to thy misery an atom of aid or comfort—Elspat MacTavish, I grieve to tell ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... right to do and perform that which injures none. The limits within which each may move without injuring others are fixed by the law, as the boundary between two fields is fixed by the fence. The freedom in question is the freedom of the individual as an isolated atom thrown back upon itself. Why, according to Bauer, is the Jew incapable of receiving the rights of man? "So long as he is a Jew, the limiting quality which makes him a Jew must triumph over the human quality which binds him as a man to other ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... Mr. Prejudice was placed by Diabolus, his master, as keeper of the ward at the post of Ear-gate, and for that fatal service he had sixty completely deaf men put under him as his company. Men eminently advantageous for that fatal service. Eminently advantageous,—inasmuch as it mattered not one atom to them what was spoken in their ear either ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... the same hypothesis, takes place by substitution; the atoms are supposed to be set free and to exchange places, forming a new compound different from the original only in this: that each new particle contains an atom of each of the two different substances, while each original particle consists of two identical atoms. The product is, therefore, assumed to be, and can, under the circumstances, be no other than particles of the composition CN and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... there is good evidence that pure water can effect little or nothing in wearing away rock. At last the base of the cliff is undermined, huge fragments fall down, and these remaining fixed, have to be worn away, atom by atom, until reduced in size they can be rolled about by the waves, and then are more quickly ground into pebbles, sand, or mud. But how often do we see along the bases of retreating cliffs rounded boulders, all thickly clothed ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... that sphere the universe is born, is evolved, and dies; it lives, it moves, it has its being in Him; its matter is His emanation; its forces and energies are currents of His life; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, all-evolving; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, its centre and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and everything in Him. Thus have the Sages of the Ancient ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... write feverishly. A half-hour later he read what he had written and tore it up. Another half-hour and he repeated the performance. Three times he wrote the tale and destroyed it, then paused, realizing blankly that as a newspaper story it was impossible. Every atom of interest surrounding the suicide of the girl grew out of his own efforts to solve the mystery. Nothing had happened, no new clues had been uncovered, no one had been implicated in the girl's death, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... not yet rolled away, and the Duchess of Savoy had already lost every atom of illusion. Since the 13th of August, Cardinal Mazarin had been officially negotiating with Don Louis de Haro, representing Philip IV. The ministers had held a meeting in the middle of the Bidassoa, on the Island of Pheasants, where a pavilion had been erected ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... known Me, Lord of sage and singer, Ancient of days; of all the Three Worlds Stay, Boundless,—but unto every atom Bringer Of that which quickens it: whoso, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold

... few ounces of the ley in an open shallow vessel so long, that the alkali lost the whole of its causticity, and seemed entirely restored to the state of an ordinary fixed alkali; but it did not however deposite a single atom of lime. And to assure myself that my caustic ley was not of a singular kind, I repeated the same experiments with an ordinary soap-ley, and with one made by mixing one part of a pure fixed alkaline salt with three parts of common ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black

... story of a Turkish chiaus who swindled some London merchants of a large sum in 1609, the year before Jonson used the word in the Alchemist. "Corroborative detail" again. The story may be true, but there is not an atom of evidence for it, and Skinner, who suggests the correct derivation in his Etymologicon (1671), does not mention it. Until contemporary evidence is adduced, the story must be regarded as one of those ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... little shiver. It was as if with the waning of the glory something had passed from her spirit, leaving her strangely cold and small—an atom in ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... his "girl" thus: "Me and the master rode out to the trenches last night. We was attacked by a strong German patrol. I nips off me horse, pulls out my rifle and shoots two of them, and the rest bolted." Not a single atom of truth in the story, except that he was nestling in a warm stable at an advanced village, whilst his master was shivering in the mud of the trenches ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen

... but an indifferent mass, a passing accident, the corruption of a few epidermic particles? And if this be life, what is that humanity which is so small a fragment of it?—Such is Man in nature, an atom, and an ephemeral particle; let this not be lost sight of in our theories concerning his origin, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... will continue to spend a greater portion of its national production than any other people in the free world. For 15 years no other free nation has demanded so much of itself. Through hot wars and cold, through recession and prosperity, through the ages of the atom and outer space, the American people have never faltered and their faith has never flagged. If at times our actions seem to make life difficult for others, it is only because history has made life difficult ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy

... man tells the same story with its different texture, with its own tongue. One plan is written in every atom, woven in and through and around us in a veritable robe of glory.... The farther a man goes in vision, the more he sees that the plan is for joy; that the plan is one; that separateness and self-sense is illusion and pain; that one story is written in every stone and leaf and star and heart—the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... not up to his work? The St. Ambrose stroke is glorious. Tom had an atom of go still left in the very back of his head, and at this moment he heard Drysdale's view holloa above all the din; it seemed to give him a lift, and other men besides in the boat, for in another six strokes the gap is lessened ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... make gems and perfumes, drugs and foods, to suit his tastes, instead of depending upon the chance bounty of nature. He is beginning consciously to adapt means to ends and to plan for the future even in the field of politics. He has opened up the atom and finds in it a microcosm more complex than the solar system. He beholds the elements melting with fervent heat and he turns their rays to the healing of his sores. He drives the lightning through the air and ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... back among her cushions, a shadow, that had not been there before, crept slowly across the shoulder of her muslin dress. The oncoming darkness mattered nothing to her now; and she herself, a mere atom of life, blown out like a candle, mattered less than nothing to the desert ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... somewhat native humour with which he 'chaffs' the boys and 'prentices, or cunningly gammons the gen'lm'n into the gift of a glass of gin, of which we verily believe he swallows in one day as much as any six ordinary men, without ever being one atom ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... sign was the whole creed of the cattle trade. Without a fence, without an atom of actual control, the cattle man held his property absolutely. It mingled with the property of others, but it was never confused therewith. It wandered a hundred miles from him, and he knew not where ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... those who would be lost in the dust of futility. Whatever she was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world's breeding. Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the girl, her nearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... convictions, of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all gone—like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... equipment was the power to convince them without effort of my superior usefulness; there was no time to lose. I am nothing but a genius, encased in such human form as would best serve its purpose; an atom of the vast creative Being beyond the Universe, loaned for an infinitesimal part of time to the excrescence calling itself The United States of North America, on the dot called Earth. Now the part is played, and I am to be withdrawn. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... climb the rock, picking a spot where limpets are not, and sit in that glorious sunlight, each atom of which seems to melt into the blood. Clasping our hands about our knees, we can watch the glory of the sun climbing higher and higher above the ocean, and, if we choose, fancy ourselves big grapes ripening on ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... Catholicity, so that the less it believes, and the more it protests, the more consistently Protestant it will be. Since, then, its name becomes continually truer, it must subsist until it perishes, just as an ulcer disappears with the last atom of the flesh which ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... independent and proud, without any of the sly humilities of Balzac's country folk, too artless to be purse-proud. One pride alone she had—that of showing her son with what scrupulous care she had discharged her duties as guardian. Not an atom of dust, not a trace of damp on the walls. All the splendid ground-floor, the reception-rooms with their hangings of iridescent silk new out of the dust sheets, the long summer galleries cool and sonorous, paved with mosaics and furnished ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... I., 1885, page 483; also "Insectivorous Plants," Edition II., page 22.) The movement in this case does not depend on the chemical nature of substance. Latterly I have tried experiments on single glands, and a microscopical atom of raw meat causes such rapid movement that I could see it move like hand of clock. In this case it is the nature of the object. It is wonderful the rapidity of the absorption: in ten seconds weak solution of carbonate of ammonia ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... The king rode on horseback, and for a few minutes accompanied the carriage of the queen and Madame. The weather had cleared up a little, but a kind of veil of dust, like a thick gauze, was still spread over the surface of the heavens, and the sun made every atom glisten within the circuit of its rays. The heat was stifling; but, as the king did not seem to pay any attention to the appearance of the heavens, no one made himself uneasy about it, and the promenade, in obedience to the orders given by the queen, took its course in the direction ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... apply this in support of my surmise respecting the enormous electric power of each particle or atom of matter. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... Vicomte de Bragelonne's account, and this Bragelonne... oh! Saint-Aignan, she still loves him. I vow to you, Saint-Aignan, that if, in three days from now, there were to remain but an atom of affection for her in my heart, I should die from very shame." And the king resumed his way to his ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... process, in a great majority, if not in all cases, which have been noticed among inorganic substances, is a deoxidizing one, so far as the more refrangible rays are concerned. It is obviously so in the cases of gold and silver. In the case of the bichromate of potash it is most probable that an atom of oxygen is parted with, and so of many others. A beautiful example of such deoxidizing action on a non-argentine compound has lately occurred to me in the examination of that interesting salt, the ferrosesquicyanuret of potassium described by Mr. Smee ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... itself absolutely untouched, I suppose because it was too tough for them. I never saw a neater job. Moreover, these industrious little creatures had devoured the beast itself. Nothing remained of it except the clean, white bones lying in the exact position in which we had left the carcase. Atom by atom that marching myriad army had eaten all and departed on its way into the depths of the forest, leaving this ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... I know that Father says that Mother is always trying to make me a "Marie," and nothing else; and that Mother says she knows Father'll never be happy until he's made me into a stupid little "Mary," with never an atom of life of my own. And, do you know? it does seem sometimes, as if Mary and Marie were fighting inside of me, and I wonder which is going to ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... "Not an atom to him; but it will subject me to a pinch for stale news. There, give me my patient's picture, and let ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... of an old monk, and she always came attired in great splendour like a lady. The two lovers had no other license than to see each other, and to speak to each other, without being able to snatch the smallest atom of pleasure, and always grew ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine, Stoic, Ulyssean atom; Suddenly hasty, reckless, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence

... acts upon one surface of the selenium and the current enters at the opposite surface. When the two influences, the light and the current, act through the gold, in conjunction, their forces are united; and, as every atom of the selenium is affected by the light, owing to the extreme thinness of the plate, we have the full effect ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... M'Bongwele's palace. The village appeared at first sight to be deserted, for not a soul was to be seen in any direction; but the low wail of an infant, suddenly breaking in upon the silence, and issuing from one of the huts, betrayed the fact that at least one small atom of humanity still lingered about the place; and where so small a baby was, the mother would probably ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... his brother on this occasion, sat on a bench against the wall, contemplating with wonder the energy of these overworked women. Beside him sat the husband of one of them, a tall, gaunt ranchman, with his legs crossed, poising upon a bony knee an atom of humanity in a short plaided ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... an atom of good, for all that," he volunteered doubtfully. "It's a thousand chances to one, with this breeze, that we shall drop on our side of the fence, and those blessed guns of theirs have got us set. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... yellow road that climbed and dipped and climbed and dipped again over foot-hills and sprawling space till it was lost in a world without end, Mary Carmichael, standing in the doorway, watched an atom, so small that it might have been a leaf blowing along in the wind, turn ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... it didn't for a moment occur to us to do so-and-so when the time for doing it came. It amazes me now to think how little either of us troubled about the established rights or wrongs of the situation. We hadn't an atom of respect for them, innate or acquired. The guardians of public morals will say we were very bad people; I submit in defence that they are very bad guardians—provocative guardians.... And when at last there came a claim against ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... of the edict, which, however, was simply caused by the universal complaining, and the tardy discovery of the fault committed in passing it. The little confidence in Law remaining was now radically extinguished; not an atom of it could ever be set afloat again. Seditious writings and analytical and reasonable pamphlets rained on all sides, and the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... and the kind reception I have received there. Paris is too large; little people like myself feel their smallness more here than elsewhere; it does not require an excess of pride for one to dislike being reduced to the state of an atom. Residing in Vienna suits me better; I breathe freer there; it is a city better adapted to my size and taste. Birds do ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... and did exactly what was expected from them. Curiosity was excited only when Serina, the daughter of Acasto, in love with Chamont, made her appearance. Lavinia's winsome face, her eyes half tender, half alluring, her pretty mouth with not an atom of ill nature in its curves, her sympathetic voice, at once attracted the audience. It was a pity, everyone felt, she had so little to say and do. Her few lines expressed but one sentiment—her love ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... not often you get a letter from an Irish "Paddy," but here's one now. Here in Cork we don't get magazines like Astounding Stories regularly, but I got the May issue to-day and could not stop until I had devoured it from cover to cover. "The Atom Smasher" is a story which I have been hunting for for years. When I had finished it, I had to sit back and leave out all the breath which I was holding in in a prolonged "whew!" If ever I get the luck to find another Astounding Stories I'll burn up the pages looking for the name Victor ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... not seem | | so in this particular story. | | | | We know so little about | | intra-atomic forces, that this | | story, improbable as it will appear | | in spots, will read commonplace | | years hence, when we have atomic | | engines, and when we have solved the | | riddle of the atom. | | | | You will follow the hair-raising | | explorations and strange ventures | | into far-away worlds with bated | | breath, and you will be fascinated, | | as we were, with the strangeness of | | it all. | | ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... Were my life's warmth and sunshine, outspread arms My gilded deep horizons. I rejoiced In yielding to all amorous influence And multiple impulsion of the flesh, To feel within my being surge and sway The force that all the stars acknowledge too. Amid the nebulous humanity Where I an atom crawled and cleaved and sundered, I saw a million motions, but one law; And from the city's splendor to my eyes The vapors passed and there was nought but Love, A ferment turbulent, intensely fair, Where Beauty beckoned ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... the grand plan of the Universe of which this earth is an atom. That plan is ruled by a Divine ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... symbolical figures and images, eight, ten and twelve feet high, of elephants lions, tigers, oxen, rams, swans and eagles, larger than life. Corner niches and recesses have been enriched with the most intricate ornamentation, and in them, still of the same rock, without the introduction of an atom of outside material, the sculptors chiseled the figures of forty or more of the principal Hindu deities. And on each of the four sides is a massive altar carved out of the side of the cliff with the most ornate and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... this changing I, This ever altering thing which yet persists, Keeping the features it is reckoned by, While each component atom breaks or twists; If, wandering past strange groups of shifting forms, Cells at their hidden marvels hard at work, Pale from much toil, or red from sudden storms, I might attain to where the Rulers lurk; If, pressing ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... and then dry them in a cloth, pressing out every atom of moisture as far as possible; then mix with the cress hard-boiled eggs chopped fine, and seasoned with salt and pepper. Have a stale loaf and some fresh butter, and with a sharp knife cut as many ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... their bodies, these souls remain in their Kama Rupic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the Kamaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... that's Bobby Bennett who works in the Meat Market," replied the atom of a man who had accosted us at Aldgate. "He was a friend of Lanky's, and a bad 'un. I've 'eard say that 'e 'ad a ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... of one year brought him a companion in bondage, a long-haired, gray- eyed little atom, as self-contained as himself, who moved about the house silently and for the first few weeks spoke only to the goat that was her chiefest friend on earth and lived in the back-garden. Mrs. Jennett objected ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... Nature thought for such as we, What place her human atom fills, The weed-drift of her careless sea, The mist on her unheeding hills? What reeks she ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... briefest and her tiny heels the highest and most slender. The incredible foot and ankle wore a flesh silk stocking so fine that it looked as though they were bare—which was the achievement most to be aspired to. Every atom of her was lovely and her small deep-curved mouth and pure large eyes were ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... had corner-seats, things much coveted by French travellers. On Mr. Stubbs's right sat an immense Englishman, enveloped in a dark blue camlet cloak, fastened with bronze lionhead clasps, a red neckcloth, and a shabby, napless, broad-brimmed, brown hat. His face was large, round, and red, without an atom of expression, and his little pig eyes twinkled over a sort of a mark that denoted where his nose should have been; in short, his head was more like a barber's wig block than anything else, and his outline would have formed a model of the dome of St. Paul's. On the Yorkshireman's ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... upright in a wooden cot. A fat-faced atom of brown humanity, bald-headed and big-eyed, he sucked his thumb and stared at the visitor, and from the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... absence, might have been apparent. Take a broker on Wall Street, for instance, or a lawyer who had threaded his painful way to the dim light of understanding through the intricate mazes of the law all day, as his train neared his loved village. From an atom that went to make up the motive power of a great metropolis, he himself became an entirety. He was It with a capital letter. No wonder that under the circumstances Fairbridge had charms that allured, that people chose it for suburban residences, that the small, ornate, new houses with their ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... young friend, the doctor saw him stop when at the side of the motionless boat. His profile showed first on one side and then, on the other, while he listened for the slightest sound that could give an atom of knowledge. Apparently the effort was useless, for the next moment he placed his left hand on the gunwale and vaulted lightly upon deck. He stood a few moments as if transfixed, then turning abruptly about leaped to ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... wonderful sight. Every available atom of space (as I gradually raised the glass from the floor to the ceiling of the building) appeared to be occupied. Looking upward and upward, my range of view gradually reached the gallery. Even at that distance, the excellent glass which had been put into my hands brought ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... clotted head of the little girl, for the British Museum; the total upshot would attract much less public notice than the invention of a new "part" for a motor car; and the august structure of science, like a coral tree, would increase by another atom. In the meantime, we lay anchored, avoiding ironclads ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... was transfigured suddenly. An instant since he had been a stoop-shouldered, short-sighted, insignificant person, more gentle mannered than a child, but in a flash he became a palpitating fury: an evil atom surcharged with such terrific venom that his antagonist drew back involuntarily. "Don't you make no threat'nin' moves in my direction, or you'll go East in an ice-bath!" He was panting as if the effort to hold himself in leash ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... found itself afloat on the great Laurentian sea the first act of that first atom led to the second act of that first atom, and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life, until, if the steps could be traced, it would be shown that the first act of that first atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing here in my dressing-gown at this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... spiritual good, the nearer we are to that kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost which we seek. Get out of the narrow individualism or atomism—for let us never forget that individual and atom are the same word—which threatens to dwarf and pulverize us, which keeps within our view only the narrow range of our own interests and defeats their true pursuit by the very intensity of attention it concentrates ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... thinks that for five years I was the only man who had an atom of powder 'a la marechale.' Why, Monsieur le Baron, a man was guillotined for owning a ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... ambitions of life become as naught: for neither love, hatred, revenge, honour, money, jewels, or social success will bring a cup of water, a handful of corn or a coal of fire. Under this torture Nature once more becomes king and man again an atom; his judgment clarified, his heart stripped naked, his soul turned inside out. The untamed, mighty, irresistible primitive is now to be reckoned with, and a lie ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... hearts that did conceive that damned lie, to part true love for ever; may they sicken and wither on earth joyless, loveless, hopeless; and wither to dust before their time; and burn in eternal fire," He cursed the meat at their mouths and every atom of their bodies, from their hair to the soles of their feet. Then turning from the cowering, shuddering pair, who had almost hid themselves beneath the table, he tore a letter out of his bosom, and flung it down before ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Atom" :   physics, grain, flyspeck, chemical element, element, free radical, chemical science, nucleus, radical, natural philosophy, speck, monad, grinding, elementary particle, substance, fundamental particle, carbon atom, chylomicron, identification particle, material, chemistry, isotope, stuff



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