"Ignite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the black market operators, but there was nothing else to do if one wanted certain pieces of equipment. During the "Tense War" of the late Sixties, the Federal and State governments had gone into a state of near-panic. The war that had begun in the Near East had flashed northwards to ignite the eternal Powder Keg of Europe. But there were no alliances, no general war; there were only periodic armed outbreaks, each one in turn threatening to turn into World War III. Each country found itself agreeing to an ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... station on one of the transcontinental lines winding among the mountains far above the level of the sea, the burning rays of the noonday sun fell so fiercely that the few buildings seemed ready to ignite from the intense heat. A season of unusual drought had added to the natural desolation of the scene. Mountains and foot-hills were blackened by smouldering fires among the timber, while a dense pall of smoke entirely hid the distant ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... except during an engagement, cooking was done right in the front trenches. The method is to use a brazier made from an old iron bucket, punched full of holes, in which charcoal or coke is burned. As we seldom had charcoal, it was necessary to start the fire before daylight, using wood to ignite the coke which made no smoke but, with careful nursing, could be made to burn all day. The presence of smoke always drew the fire of rifle grenades, trench-mortar shells and even artillery. It was one ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... that the people are away or not at home; "Allopar" is cold, and "allopar pechuk" is hot. Persons fond of tracing resemblances may find in "Ignik" (fire) a similarity to the Latin ignis or the English "ignite," and from "Un-gi doo-ruk" (big, huge) the transition down to "hunky-dory" is easy. Those who see a sort of complemental relation to each other of linguistic affinity and the conformity in physical ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... musket was fired with a match, which the soldier lit from a cumbrous pocket fire-carrier. The harquabuse was a lighter gun, which was fired without a rest, either by a wheel-lock (in which a cog-wheel, running on pyrites, caused sparks to ignite the powder), or by the match and touch-hole. Hand firearms were then common enough, and came to us from Italy, shortly after 1540. They were called Daggs. They were wheel-locks, wild in firing, short, heavy, and beautifully wrought. Sometimes ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the water-proof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... pressure be set up inside of the cartridge case. For instance, if a primer of a certain size should be found to operate perfectly well, giving prompt ignition in the cartridge case of a rifle of small caliber, it would be found that the same primer would not ignite a charge of the same powder if loaded into a gun of one inch caliber. In the latter case a few grains only lying near the primer would be ignited, and these would soon become extinguished by sudden release of pressure ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... allowed every twenty-four hours to get the seven fires up after cleaning. Here is another method for consuming the smoke, but is a very wasteful one; four or five shovelfuls of small smoky coals are thrown on or near the dead-plate, where they remain until they become sufficiently heated to ignite, and are then pushed on to the bars by the rake, and a similar quantity again thrown on the dead-plate, and when ignited pushed on to the bars as before, and so it is continued. It is expected that the smoke while passing over the bright fire towards ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... what; and, with a heart palpitating with the apprehension that his proffered service might be rejected (poor deluded mortal!), he begged he might assist her. With a glance that he thought sufficient to ignite the insensible carbon, she accepted his offer. Happy Matthew!—he grasped the handles her warm red-hands had touched!—Cold-blooded, unimaginative beings may deride his enthusiasm; but after all, the sentiment ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... like all her country-women, was ardent in her affections. The few days that she was on board the schooner with her father, during the time that the Enterprise convoyed the Spanish vessel into port, were quite sufficient to ignite two such inflammable beings as Clara d'Alfarez and Edward Templemore. The monk had been left on board of the leaky vessel; there was no accommodation in the schooner for him or the duenna, and Don Felix de Maxos de Cobas ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... branches of trees so that he could make a trap in which he eventually caught a bear and killed it. He then cut up the bear and used the skin for blankets and the flesh for food. He also cut sticks and made a little instrument by which he was able to ignite bits of wood and so start his fire. He also searched out various roots and berries and leaves, which he was able to cook and make into good food, and he even went so far as to make charcoal and to cut slips of bark from the trees and draw pictures of the scenery and animals around him. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Only a few days ago several native huts had been burnt; such an accident might endanger our station, therefore I should construct an earthen roof over a building of strong palisades. I explained that should the whole of the ammunition explode, it might ignite and destroy Masindi. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... of rubbing two pieces of dry wood together, producing fire by friction. This could be accomplished by persistent friction of two ordinary pieces of dry wood, or by drilling a hole in a dry piece of wood with a pointed stick until heat was developed and a spark produced to ignite pieces of dry bark or grass. Another way was to make a groove in a block of wood and run the end of a stick rapidly back and forth through the groove. An invention called the fire-drill was simply a method of twirling rapidly in the hand a wooden drill which was in contact with dry wood, or by ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... have even built locomotives, and yet, if he is not a good "shovel-man," if he does not know how to manage his fire, he will never rise to distinction in his profession. The great secret is to build the fire so that the whole mass of fuel will ignite and burn freely without the use of the blower, and so bring the engine to the train with a fire that will last. When we see an engine blowing off steam furiously at the beginning of the trip, we must not be surprised if the train reaches the first station behind time, since it indicates a fierce, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... tested the probability of the achievement of Archimedes in setting fire to the ships of Marcellus with mirrors and the sun's rays. He constructed a composite mirror of a hundred and twenty- eight plane mirrors, and with it he was able to ignite wood at two hundred and ten feet. However, I shrewdly suspect that, even if this story is true, they are using hydrogen or acetylene flares over there. But none of these things would be feasible in your ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... its original wrapper, shall be fired, each with 1 pound of clay tamping, at a gallery temperature of 77 F., into a mixture of gas and air containing 8 per cent. of methane and ethane. An explosive will pass this test if all ten shots fail to ignite the mixture. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... the fatal garment from the hands of his bride and calls upon the sun-god to ignite the altars. The pyre flames, the heat warms the clinging tunic, which wraps Hercules in its folds of torture. Writhing in agony, he flings himself upon the burning pyramid, followed by Dejanira, who, in despair, sees too late that she has been ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... substances require only a small amount of heat before they will burn, while others require much heat. Different materials, then, require different degrees of heat to burn. The phosphorus and other substances on the tip of a match ignite readily. The heat that is developed by rubbing the tip over some surface is sufficient to make the phosphorus burn. The burning phosphorus and other substances heat the match stick to the temperature at which it begins to burn; the burning match stick applied ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... enough to plane over our lines little damage is done; the tank can be repaired and the machine made serviceable again. But for the time being he is out of the fight. Sometimes the escaping petrol may ignite and the pilot and observer perish in the flames—the most terrible ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... an entire boxful of them, and yet will fail in lighting a fire in the open air, on a windy day. The convenience of lucifers in obtaining a light is very great, but they have two disadvantages: they require that the air should be perfectly still, while the burning sulphur is struggling to ignite the stick; and, again, when the match is thrust among the wood, the sticks upon which is has to act, have not been previously warmed and consequently, though one or two of them may become lighted, the further progress of the fire is liable to cease. On the other ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... To ignite your apparel from a lamp, you will sustain humiliation from sources from which you expected encouragement and sympathy, and your business will not ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... tell them how to discharge themselves most deeply and worthily upon life. "Well!" cry they, "what shall we do?" "Ignoramus, ignorabimus!" says agnosticism. "React upon atoms and their concussions!" says materialism. What a collapse! The mental train misses fire, the middle fails to ignite the end, the cycle breaks down half-way to its conclusion; and the active {127} powers left alone, with no proper object on which to vent their energy, must either atrophy, sicken, and die, or else by their pent-up convulsions and excitement ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... which they tightly rammed down stiff clay, with which they filled each gun to its very muzzle. Then, when each piece had been similarly treated, the whole were very carefully primed, after which a length of quick match, long enough to allow of the safe retreat of the man who should ignite it, was securely inserted among the priming; the two insensible sentinels, bound hand and foot, and effectually gagged, were lowered to the ground, and the entire party retreated as they had come, with the exception of one man who volunteered to remain ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the clouds by rods erected on elevated buildings. As this was not sufficiently demonstrative he succeeded at length in drawing the lightning from the clouds by means of a kite and silken string, so as to ignite spirits and other combustible substances by an electric spark similar to those from a Leyden jar. To utilize his discovery of the identity of lightning with electricity he erected lightning-rods to protect buildings, that is, to convey the lightning ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... of the Lias; for when the shales are deeply impregnated with bitumen and pyrites, they undergo a slow combustion when heaped up with faggots and set on fire; and in the cliffs of the Yorkshire coast, after rainy weather, they sometimes spontaneously ignite, and continue to burn for several months. 10. As we passed through the works, on our way to the clay, we observed a sort of reservoir, into which the clay, after being freed from its impurities, had been run in a liquid ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... sticking out from her nose, on the end of which was one hundred pounds of powder in a copper cylinder provided with four extremely sensitive tubes of lead containing a highly explosive mixture, which would ignite upon contact with a ship's side or bottom and explode ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... broke his leg at football the other day, told a friend that it was a confounded fraction, but she hoped the bones would ignite in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... her mother was out and Betty and Tony had gone for a drive with Dr. Yearsley, Anna betook herself to the garden with some of her most loathed garments under her arm, and a box of matches in her pocket. A bonfire on a summer's day is easy to ignite, and there was just sufficient breeze to fan the flame to active life, so Anna was in the midst of her work of destruction almost before she realized it. But, while waiting for her mother to depart, Anna had ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... store of these in the box enfolded carefully in a bit of cloth and a strip of deerskin, and bestowed in a high niche of the cavern; but there was sometimes moisture in the night winds, and there could be no absolute assurance that the matches would ignite ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... during the day, especially in Yorkville, to which Acton was compelled to send a strong force. The mob also attempted to burn Harlem bridge, but the heavy rain of the night before had made it so wet that it would not ignite. Down town, likewise, mobs had assembled before the Western Hotel and other places, but were dispersed before they had inflicted any damage. Almost the last act in the evening was an attack on the house of Mr. Sinclair, one of ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... evidently contained some curious mechanism. It might be more curious than comfortable. Possibly some agreeable little device in clockwork. The tick, tick, tick suggested clockwork which had been planned to go a certain time, and then—then, for all I knew, ignite an explosive, and—blow up. It would be a charming solution to the puzzle if it were to explode while I stood there, in my nightshirt, looking on. It is true that the box weighed very little. Probably, as ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... if he had a friend—one he could trust—who would steal in there some night while the family were away, and scratch a match on the leg of his breeches, or on the breeches of any other gentleman who happened to be present, and hold it where it would ignite the alleged house, and then remain near there to see that the fire department did not meddle with it, he would confer a great favor on one who would cheerfully retaliate in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... that Adolay would return, and then sat down to make fire by the slow and laborious Eskimo process of rubbing two pieces of stick rapidly together until the friction should ignite them. He was still absorbed in the work when the Indian girl returned with a bundle of wood which she ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... silver match box from his pocket, and was on the point of handing it to her. Then he remembered the coronet engraved on it, and holding it against his side, managed to strike a light and ignite the spirit. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... say a special word to our religious leaders. You know, I'm proud of the fact that the United States has more house of worship per capita than any country in the world. These people, who lead our houses of worship, can ignite their congregations to carry their faith into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all of the people in distress, to those who have been savaged by the breakdown of all we hold dear, because so much of what must be done must come from the inside out. And our religious ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... two men hasten to the hut, and are heard striking a flint and steel. Returning with a lit lantern they ignite a blaze. The private of the Locals and his wife hastily retreat by the light of the flaming beacon, under which the purple rotundities of the heath show like bronze, and the pits like the eye-sockets of ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of men's lives," he said. Then he turned and faced her with a sudden gleam in his eye. "There is one thing yet unexplained—the burning of the Chateau de Vasselot. An empty house does not ignite ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... posted with their guns, hoping for a shot at wild pig or cheetah, or possibly a lion or leopard. Carew kept guard at the huts, with a few boys to beat off the flames that encroached to any danger points and watch for flying sparks that might ignite the thatch. It was a wonderful sight, and his eyes were full of appreciation as he watched it. The gathering darkness, the lurid flames lighting up with swift brightness the ancient ruins; the high Acropolis Hill on one side, the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... oft, full oft, they thee ignite, I oft a pastime prove for tongues with folly rife; By wasting of thyself thou yieldest others light, And I in self same way must use ...
— Grimmer and Kamper - The End of Sivard Snarenswayne and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... ignite a torch at the lantern and poke it into one pot after another. Flames began to burn, blue and green and yellow, and lurid smoke rolled to the deck-beams overhead. Amid this glare and reek of combustibles, Blackbeard waved ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... point the meeting could not be pronounced a success. Crowds were there, and the people were waiting to be caught on fire; but the right spark had not been struck. It only wanted a little to rouse the whole audience to white heat; the train was laid, the powder was set, but no one seemed able to ignite the match. People looked at one another doubtfully. The youths who had been expected to enlist remained cold and almost jeeringly critical. Then the Admiral called ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... organized matter is founded, is never permanent in any of its forms. Oxygen is the carrier which enables it to change its condition. For instance, let us suppose that we have a certain quantity of charcoal; this is nearly pure carbon. We ignite it, and it unites with the oxygen of the air, becomes carbonic acid, and floats away into the atmosphere. The wind carries it through a forest, and the leaves of the trees with their millions of mouths drink it in. By the assistance of light it is decomposed, ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... the languishing cooing of doves, the braying of donkeys, the chatter of irresponsible sparrows—these were in my mind's ear as I read. "Suffering Sappho!" I exclaimed to myself. "Is this the divine fire that is supposed to ignite genius and make ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... and a corps of friends equally well piped. If the seceders have no time to ignite the weed, we are quite ready, and a great deal more willing, considering the late frightful rise in Lynchburg, to do it for them. I can answer for burning one pound a day myself. What do you think of it? It isn't traitorous in me, is it, to thus ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a lamp in a district built up almost exclusively of wood, about nine o'clock in the evening of October 8, 1871, it continued through that night and the greater part of the next day. Finally, it was checked by the explosion of gunpowder, whereupon it exhausted itself by burning all there was to ignite within the confined space. Although 18,000 houses had been reduced to ashes, ten years thereafter all traces of the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... himself into the lower room to see if everything was in order: this room was full of barrels of powder, and a fuse ready prepared wanted but a spark to set the whole on fire. Bothwell withdrew, then, to the end of the garden with Balfour, David, Chambers, and three or four others, leaving one man to ignite the fuse. In a moment ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... enough to strike a second match and ignite the torch, which was fortunately within reach of his hand, and as his companions, roused from their sleep by his sharp cry of alarm, sprang excitedly to their feet, the flaming glare revealed to their astonished gaze a monstrous serpent coiled half ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... other. Bullets and shell fell like hail on the spot occupied by the Emperor. A shell struck the walls of a powder-magazine not far from him, and scattered the pieces around his head, but fortunately the powder did not ignite. A few moments after another shell fell between his Majesty and several Italians; they bent to avoid the explosion. The Emperor saw this movement, and laughingly said to them, "Ah, coglioni! non fa male." ["Ah, scamps! ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... took them from me and dropped them on the coals remaining from last night's fire—the last fire of the season. They did not ignite quickly, though they began to turn brown, and thin spirals of smoke arose from them. The Butterfly Man knelt, thrust a handful of lightwood splinters under the pile, and touched a match here and there. When the resinous wood flared up, the letters blazed with it. They blazed and then ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... glow of light held at arm's length by the recreant follower of Destiny illuminating a tableau which shall end the ignominious chronicle—a maid with unkissed, curling, contemptuous lips slowly lifting the lamp chimney and allowing the wick to ignite; then waving a scornful and abjuring hand toward the staircase—the unhappy Tansey, erstwhile champion in the prophetic lists of fortune, ingloriously ascending to his just and certain doom, while (let us imagine) half within the wings stands the imminent ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the very eye felt riveted in admiration, while the heart quailed with horror. Backwards and forwards gleamed the forms of men in the dusky glare; and oaths and cries, and the clang of swords, and the shrieks of women, terrified by the destruction they had not a little assisted to ignite—the sudden rush of horses bursting from their stables, and flying here and there, scared by the unusual sight and horrid sounds—the hissing streams of water which, thrown from huge buckets on the flames, seemed but to excite them to greater fury ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... you would be safer if you were a bird, John," asserted Mrs. Ross, with an uneasy smile. "Birds have no motors to fail them, no fire to ignite and burn them up, as our present airplanes. How many of your own unfortunate associates can lay their untimely deaths to either one of these causes! It was only the last time you were here that you were telling Paul and me about the terrible fall Howard Smith had because his motor stopped, and how ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... no doubt, on the beach," said he, "but they are of no use at all without a steel. However, we must try." So saying, he went to the beach, and soon returned with two flints. On one of these he placed the tinder, and endeavoured to ignite it; but it was with great difficulty that a very small spark was struck out of the flints, and the tinder, being a bad, hard piece, would not catch. He then tried the bit of hoop iron, which would not strike fire at all; and after that the back of the axe, with no better success. During all these ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... purpose. The process is this: Several fires, if possible originally lighted by some natural cause, such as lightning, are brought in vases. Over one of these fires is placed a flat perforated tray of metal on which small pieces of very dry sandal-wood are made to ignite by the mere action of the heat, but must not actually come in contact with the flame below. From this fire a third one is lighted in a similar manner, and nine times this operation is repeated, each successive fire ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... seen perfectly well the extreme unconvincingness of Mrs. Stapleton, and had been genuine enough in his little shrug of disapproval in answer to Maggie's, after lunch; yet that lady's remarks had been sufficient just to ignite the train of thought. This train had smoldered in the afternoon, had been fanned ever so slightly by two breezes—the sense of Maggie's superiority and the faint rebellious reaction which had come upon him with regard to his personal religion. Certainly he had had Mass ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... your fingers until they catch on fire. Just when the conflagration threatens to become general she stops using the polisher and proceeds to cool down the ruins by gently burnishing your nails against the soft, pink palm of her hand. You like this better than the other way. You could ignite yourself by friction almost any time, if you got hold of the right kind of a chamois skin rubber, but this is quite different and highly soothing. You are beginning to really enjoy the sensation when she roguishly pats the back ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... been changed the most. It is hard and rather difficult to ignite, but when once on fire it gives more heat and burns longer than other coals. This coal, known as anthracite, is not found extensively in the United States outside of Pennsylvania. Coal which is younger and ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... far errand: Grune is another: Rutowski's Saxon Camp (now become Cantonment) is a third. Three Currents instinct with fire and destruction, but as yet quite opaque; which have been launched,—whitherward thinks the reader? On Berlin itself, and the Mark of Brandenburg; there to collide, and ignite in a marvellous manner. There is their meeting-point: there shall they, on a sudden, smite one another into flame; and the destruction blaze, fiery enough, round Friedrich and his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... incredible manner he destroyed the whole Roman fleet by conflagration. By tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beams on it; and as the thickness and smoothness of the mirror cooeperated to ignite the air from these beams he kindled a great flame, all of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, and he consumed them all. Marcellus, therefore, despairing of capturing the city on account of the inventiveness of Archimedes thought ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... is essential that the bamboo selected be dry and well seasoned, for otherwise the dust produced by the rubbing will not ignite. There are a few varieties of wood that answer the same purpose, but I am unable to give the names though I ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... I knew that a barrel of powder, even when thrown into the midst of a red-hot fire, takes a considerable time to explode. An intense heat must be generated in the wood before the powder inside will ignite; and, for this reason, the barrel must be a good while exposed to the fire. Perhaps the flames had not yet reached it? Was this the reason why ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid |
