"Firefly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the nation is then certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first, the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no more control it in its political career than the gleam of the firefly guides its oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are usually obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by which it is illumined, is to find a ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... other. "As usual you're right, Rankin," he said slowly. "The Lord knows Mollie gets restless enough at times. People were like ants in a hill where she was raised, and that life was a part of her." He took a last puff at the cigarette, and with a toss sent the smoking stump spinning like a firefly into the darkness. "And Flossie can't grow up wild—I know that. I'll talk your suggestion over with Mollie first, but I think I'd be safe in saying right ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Sparkling and darkling, dust of the milky way, Shifting and drifting, firefly legions at play; Fading and glowing, lights of a starry maze, Coming and going, drift of ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... that season the Firefly, and many misinterpreted her illy suppressed excitement and the scrutiny of those lambent eyes sending out their flame signals in search of answering lights. Even her secretary did not know that the dark shadows which ringed them were not due to the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... lose them hosses, Phil," continued old Matt, as he hobbled to a seat. "And if we can, them Injuns shan't hev 'em. I ain't a-goin' to hev old Firefly rid by them critters, and starved, and abused—I ain't a-goin' to do it! Them hosses must be got back. You're gittin' old enough to do sunthin' with Injuns now, Phil, and you must git ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... the dark wall of the east, and presently his eyes picked out a dot against its background, infinitesimal like the light of a firefly, but not to be ignored by ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... out of the carriage window all the journey to get my face cool before I arrived. Father met me at the station, and we spanked up together in the dog-cart. That was scrumptious. I do love rushing through the air behind a horse like Firefly, and father is such an old love, and always understands how you feel. He is very quiet and shy, and when anyone else is there he hardly speaks a word, but we chatter like anything when we are together. I have a kind of idea that he likes me best, though Spencer and Vere are the show ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was very much like in, for the same enemy, the darkness, was here also. The next moment, however, came a great gladness—a firefly, which had wandered in from the garden. She saw the tiny spark in the distance. With slow pulsing ebb and throb of light, it came pushing itself through the air, drawing nearer and nearer, with that motion which more resembles swimming than flying, and the light seemed the source ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... death. My heart sank lower and lower. I began to lose sight of the lean, long-coated figure, and at length could no more hear his swishing stride through the heather. But then I heard instead the slow-flapping wings of the raven; and, at intervals, now a firefly, now a gleaming butterfly rose into ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... called The Kelham Towers for their architect, are pointed by a long and pleasing slope of wings. Carl Gruppe's slender Fairy stands upon them, poised, as though just alighted. This finial figure has a pretty wistfulness that suggests the whimsical firefly fairies of Peter Pan more than the conventional gauzy creatures of ordinary fairy tale, and is more like a female counterpart of Shakespeare's "delicate Ariel" who sucks "where the bee sucks" than any other creature of fancy. The curving antennae increase this impression. ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... Mebbe that's a firefly ahead there. Mebbe they're all fireflies—that one, an' that one. Look at 'em! Believe me, they is a whole string ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... arc of dreadful lightnings held her with ghastly fascination. Suddenly all the guns ceased. Faintly in the distance she heard a tumult of human voices in the high notes of a savage cheer; the rattling din of rifles; the purring of automatics; and then, except for the firefly flashes of scattered shots around Engadir, silence and darkness. But she knew that chaos would soon be loosed again—chaos and murder, which were the product of her own chicanery. The Grays would find themselves in the trap ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... he trots about in a zigzag course, poking his tan muzzle into every clump of tall grass and giving tongue occasionally as he sniffs the cold trail. Presently a long, quavering cry comes from old Firefly; again and again Blucher opens more and more eagerly; another and another dog takes it up, and the trot quickens into a lope. The trail grows warmer as they follow the line of fence, and just as we settle ourselves in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... fear died and was buried the day you rode Alec's horse, Victor. A good canter on Firefly over the Blue Bonnet country will make you wonder that such a feeling ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... which the dignity of earth—of the fruitful life of seasons and of crops—produced in a solitary observer a quiet that was not untouched by awe. Where nature was suggestive of the long repose of ages, the brief passions of a single generation became as the flicker of a candle or the glow of a firefly in the night. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... than all the lamps," said Martin, and put it out. He sat on his bunk and the gleam of his cigarette came and went. It was like a big firefly in the half dark cabin. "To-morrow," he said to himself, with a tingle running through his blood, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... The firefly came in the twilight dim My red, red rose to woo— Till quenched was the flame of love in him And the light of his lantern too, As my rose wept with dewdrops three And hid in the leaves in ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... thorn The new-moon hangs a horn, Or, 'mid the sunset's islands, Guides a canoe, The brown owl in the silence Calls, and the dew Beads here its orbs of damp, Each one a firefly lamp. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... even—the blaze was so infernal. I didn't see a sail after the first three days, and those I saw took no notice of me. About the sixth night a ship went by scarcely half a mile away from me, with all its lights ablaze and its ports open, looking like a big firefly. There was music aboard. I stood up and shouted and screamed at it. The second day I broached one of the AEpyornis eggs, scraped the shell away at the end bit by bit, and tried it, and I was glad to find it was good enough to eat. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... that with three or four placed under an inverted wineglass one can see to read fine printed matter in the nighttime. It is the common people mostly who use these insects as evening ornaments on their persons, though sometimes the most refined ladies wear them. The firefly has a hook-like integument on its body by which it is easily fastened to the hair or dress without any harm to itself. It seems as though nature had anticipated this peculiar use of the "lightning-bug," ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... out the Phillipses, and having told Dawson, who was escorting Clara, that Hanmer was looking for him to make out the list of "the eleven," I was very sorry indeed when the sound of a gun announced that the Hon. H. Chouser's Firefly had won the cup, and that the other two yachts might be expected in the course of half-an-hour. Nobody waited for them, of course. The herring boats, after a considerable deal of what I concluded from the emphasis to be swearing in Welch, in which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... a means whereby he can make a heat without increasing the temperature, as nature does it in the glow worm, or in the firefly. A certain electric energy will produce both light and heat, but it is found that much more of this energy is used in the heat than ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... away o'er the Indigo fields, Soon pass'd the old maple, (what sugar it yields!) I travell'd along to the cabbage-palm quay, Turn'd short by the far-spreading tall tulip tree. Through forest and plain, and through dark dismal swamp, And lighted alone by the firefly's lamp, Which, fluttering around me, now here and now there, Rings of gold to my fancy seem'd form'd in the air, Till now at the brink of the lake I arrive, Reconnoitre the spot, and prepare for a dive, Then plunged in the water, and over I swam, Quickly climb'd the ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... the mocking bird, a songster gay, Would soothe their souls, with multifarious song, Singing his farewell-hymns to dying Day, As fade his smiles the darkening glades along; And when the frowns of night more thickly throng, The amorous firefly led them at that hour, O'er wooded hills, and marshes deep and long, To their sweet rest, which sank, with grateful power, Along their wearied nerves, in their ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... his chum, as the latter gave him this information. "The Firefly is tuned up for a hundred miles an hour! We'll be there in ten minutes! We must catch him red-handed, ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... her coming a long way off, her lantern bobbing along like a firefly, and walked faster. Impatience brought a cold sweat out upon his forehead and then he needs must call her name before she ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... 'Of course! when fellows live quietly and are careful of themselves. Ah! you may think you know a man for years, and you don't: you don't know more than an inch or two of him. Why, of course, Tom Redworth would be uxorious—the very man! And tell us what has become of the Firefly now? One never ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... morrow, when one of them, looking in the direction of the big gate, saw a light shining apparently on one of its posts. He called the attention of the rest to it. They wondered what it could mean. It could not be a firefly. It was not the light of a lantern in the hands of some one walking; the light was too steady. The Judge said to George: "My son, run down the lane, and see what that light means." George needed no urging, but ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... seemed to be jumping up and down; then it made long sweeps back and forth through the air. 7. "What can it be?" said one person. "How strange!" said another. "It can not be a comet; for comets have tails," said a third. "Perhaps it's a big firefly," said another. 8. At last some of the men determined to find out what this strange light was—whether it was a hobgoblin dancing in the air, or something dropped from the sky. So off they started ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... note, high, vibrating, and sweet, rent the silence, which immediately closed around it. I leaned out of the window, my heart beating as though it must burst. After a brief space the silence was cloven once more by that note, as the darkness is cloven by a falling star or a firefly rising slowly like a rocket. But this time it was plain that the voice did not come, as I had imagined, from the garden, but from the house itself, from some corner of this rambling ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... mean," reiterated Kennedy, indicating the light as it flashed now faintly, then disappeared, to reappear further along, like a gigantic firefly in the night. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... times she loved so dearly, of poetic wanderings with Shelley through woods and by the river, one of which she remembers long afterwards, when, making her note to the "Skylark," she recalls how she and Shelley, wandering through the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the firefly, heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems. Precious memories which helped her through many after years devoid of the sympathy she yearned for. At the Baths they had the pleasure of a visit from Medwin, who gave ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... surprise it yielded to his touch, and the door came open. And yet it was some seconds of tense listening before he let himself down to the ground again, and with his hand in the grass let out a tiny winking flashlight, no more than a firefly ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... gay as the firefly's light, Played round every subject, and shone as it played;— Whose wit, in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade;— Whose eloquence—brightening whatever it tried, Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave— Was as rapid, as deep, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... in Pleasant Valley, and the forest folk as well, was different from his neighbors. For instance, there was Jasper Jay. He was the noisiest chap for miles around. And there was Peter Mink. Without doubt he was the rudest and most rascally fellow in the whole district. Then there was Freddie Firefly, who was the brightest youngster on the farm—at least after dark, when his light ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... put up by Marjorie. The first thing visitors always said about it was that it made them feel comfortable and at home. They generally attributed the homelikeness to Lucille, who was dangerously near looking matronly, rather than to Marjorie, who would be more like a firefly than a matron even when she became ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... few minutes all the Fireflies flashed with anger and then the old Firefly said. "I think we can have revenge if all of you will do as I tell you, and if I am not much mistaken those Goblin fellows will remember us the next time they have a frolic, even if they do not ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... swiftness, looking as wild as the scenery through which their chargers bounded. The effect was rendered more imposing by the reflection of the moon-beams from their polished spears, and the pieces of silver which were affixed to their caps; while the luminous firefly appeared in the air like rising and falling particles ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... of an earth robbed of its winter clothing a cluster of moving figures stood out in faint relief, and presently a light flashed out like the infinitesimal blaze of a firefly in the night. It passed, and then it came again. Again it passed. And again it came. This time it lived and grew. A fire had lit, and the group of figures were crouching over it as though to protect it against the dark immensity of the world ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... later the signal came: a firefly's flash five times together and three times repeated ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... in his mind a picture that he could never forget. The face which had been so cruelly, so grotesquely revealed was that of Frenchy McAllister, and across his knees lay a heavy caliber Winchester. A curse escaped from the lips of the outlaw; the man on the stump spat at a firefly and smiled. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... out of the bayou past misty reed-girt islands into the indolent waters of the great lake, dragging after her the fleet of forty odd canoes. A cigar under the awning of the tiny poop suggested a great firefly in the blue shadows, where lounged zu Pfeiffer with his favourite brandy ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... found some half-dozen of the peculiarly brilliant Jamaican fireflies cruising about. The Guardsman refused at first to believe that any insect could produce so bright a light, and bemoaned the loss of his mental faculties, until I caught a firefly and showed him its two lamps gleaming like miniature ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's one of them looking for ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... am more interested in them than in anything else, not excepting the telephone—which makes Aladdin's lamp look like a firefly in the sunshine." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... want to lynch me," he said leisurely, "I'll be found at the Sailor's Rest for the next week. Then I'm going as skipper of The Firefly steamer, Port o' London, to Algiers. You can send the sheriff along whenever you choose. But I mean to have my picnic first, and to-morrow I'm going to Inspector Date with my yarn. Then I guess that almighty aristocrat wilt find himself ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... but they all heard the axes of Maroon wood-choppers; and when a sentinel declared, one night, that he had seen a negro go down the river in a canoe, with his pipe lighted, the whole force was called to arms—against a firefly. In fact, the insect race brought by far the most substantial dangers. The rebels eluded the military, but the chigres, locusts, scorpions, and bush-spiders were ever ready to come half-way to meet them; likewise serpents and alligators proffered them the freedom of the forests, ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... I am at heart; but somehow you girls have taken a notion I should do things and I can't bear to disappoint you. I must admit this is fascinating. I like it better even than golf, and will also give up my canter on Firefly this afternoon to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... try our luck at Firefly Lake," suggested Whopper. "That isn't as large as this lake, but it is certainly a nice sheet of water. And the hunting around there ought to be just as good ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... I should have a better chance of doing something if I were to obtain the command of the Firefly schooner; the lieutenant commanding her is about ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... villa, one among the many which deck the suburb of San Pietro d'Arena. It was the month of May—a month of May in that garden of the world—the blossoms of the fruit-trees were fading among thick, green foliage; the vines were shooting forth; the ground strewed with the fallen olive blooms; the firefly was in the myrtle hedge; heaven and earth wore a mantle of surpassing beauty. Torella welcomed me kindly, though seriously; and even his shade of displeasure soon wore away. Some resemblance to my father—some look and tone of youthful ingenuousness, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... lake. He had to make the most of his time, for it would take him so long to get back to Nassau street, you know. He had not paddled his scow more than half an hour over the dark but moon-streaked waters of the lake, when he met with the maiden who, all night long, by her firefly lamp, doth paddle her light canoe. This estimable female steered her bark alongside the scow, and to the startled Mr. P. she said: "Have you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... at his villa, meeting there Mr. and Mrs. Walpole, Frederick Tennyson, and young Norton (Mrs. Norton's son), who married the Capri girl. She was not present, I am sorry to say. We walked home to the song of nightingales by starlight and firefly-light. Florence looks to us more beautiful than ever after Rome. I love the very stones of it, to say nothing of the cypresses ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... black hulls cast A firefly radiance down the deep; The inlet gleams, the long clouds sweep, The sails flit ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... indeed throughout the rural portions of the country, there is a curious little insect called a cocuyo, answering in its general characteristics and nature to our firefly, though it is quadruple its size, and far the most brilliant insect of its kind known to naturalists. They float in phosphorescent clouds over the vegetation, emitting a lurid halo, like fairy torch-bearers to elfin ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... seen why they did not invite us," said one old Firefly. "They did not need us because ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... Hugh thoughtfully. "As a general thing that odd, moving light is seen in low, damp places. Often it is noticed in graveyards in the country, and is believed to be induced by a condition of the atmosphere, causing something like phosphorescence. You know what a firefly or lightning bug is like, don't you, Horatio? Yes, and a glow-worm also? Well, they say that there are black-looking pools of stagnant water lying around the old quarry; and yes, I think the lights seen might ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... Escape, and Dragon-all vessels with rising floors and round bilges, and the coefficient of performance was found to be 1430. The fourth set of experiments was made in 1834, upon the vessels Magnet, Dart, Eclipse, Flamer, Firefly, Ferret, and Monarch, when the coefficient of performance was found to be 1580. The fifth set of experiments was made upon the Red Rover, City of Canterbury, Herne, Queen, and Prince of Wales, and in the case of those vessels the coefficient rose to 2550. The velocity ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... pace, for it was growing late, and the shadows creeping from tree to tree. At length he saw a light in the distance. It was a very little light, not much larger than a star, and at first Ned thought it might be a giant firefly. However, he kept on and after a while it turned out to be a little candle in the window of a poor woodcutter's hut. Knocking on the door, it was presently opened by a strange looking man. He had long hairy ears like a donkey and was dressed in the skins ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... with some lover. A worthless jade, thus dismissed the yashiki, he will be too ashamed to make inquiry here; and his searches elsewhere are not likely to bear fruit.... How strange!" He brushed away a firefly which had flown into his face. With surprise those present watched the bug flitting here and there in the darkness of the corners and the open corridor. It was barely the middle of the third month (April), and no season for ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... ready to expire. With a sigh he laid down; but scarcely had he done so ere the wind began to rage furiously. The lamp, void of oil, was on the point of extinction, only a faint spark like that of a firefly remained. In that dim light a remarkable circumstance occurred. Astonished by the noise of the shutters, Nagendra looked towards the door near the bed. In that open doorway, shown by the dim light, a shadowy form appeared. The shape was that of a woman; but what he saw further made his ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... is of little economic importance to us at present but its peculiar habit of producing light makes it a very striking form and one which deserves study. The firefly is a beetle, and begins to make its appearance the latter part of June when the darkest nights may be one solid glow of fire. They live largely in damp places and bottoms at night are specked with their tiny flashes ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... matter of fact; but I have a small pension, and I earn a little by writing titbits of scientific gossip for 'The Firefly.' Herr von Eulenberg helps. He translates interesting paragraphs from the foreign technical papers, and I jot them down, and by that means I pick up sufficient to buy an extra hat or wrap, and go to a theater or a concert. But I have to be careful, as my employer is absent each summer ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... light which we produce by forcing oxygen through air tubes into a vat filled with the fat of a deep sea fish resembling your whale. You are aware, of course, that that is exactly how cold light is produced by the firefly, except for the fact that the firefly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... which is the glow-worm beside the path. You may get a very faint real illumination from him, lighting perhaps the space of your fingernail as he crawls along. He, too, merely serves to make the darkness visible. The firefly of the tropics is more spectacular. He blazes forth like a meteor, setting all the thicket aglow for a moment. The lights of our fireflies are more like a frosting of the darkness, as when the moon shines in winter and the light glints from ice crystals hung on the frozen grass. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... not get away at first, and back they trooped. A second trial was a failure. But at the third they were off in a line as straight as a chalk-mark. There were Essex and Firefly, Queen Bess and Mosquito, galloping away side by side, and Black Boy a neck ahead. Patsy knew the family reputation of his horse for endurance as well as fire, and began riding the race from the first. Black Boy ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar |
