"Natural phenomenon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both of these may be said to owe their origin. The gods here do not preserve their proper places as in a polytheistic faith, but each one of them shrinks into insignificance or shines as supreme according as it is the object of adoration or not. The Vedic poets were the children of nature. Every natural phenomenon excited their wonder, admiration or veneration. The poet is struck with wonder that "the rough red cow gives soft white milk." The appearance or the setting of the sun sends a thrill into the minds of the Vedic sage and ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... conception of this natural phenomenon has followed not so much an inherent change of sentiment as the intimacy of wider knowledge and the death of superstitious influence. One is much struck by the importance ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the imagination can find a function for it in reason's ideal realm, every piece of knowledge remains useless, or even an obstacle in the way of our intended advance. This applies to individuals just as truly as it does to mankind. And since man's reason is a natural phenomenon and does apparently belong to the class of elemental forces, this warfare against the apparent fact, and the fortitude and hope which its whole-hearted prosecution begets, appear as a natural law to the intelligence and as a command ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... direction resulting from that life. Herein lies the danger in psychology, and in the statistics regarding the number of conversions during the period of adolescence. The danger lies in the tendency to make regeneration a natural phenomenon, an advanced step in the development of a human life, instead of regarding it as a crisis. Such a psychological view of regeneration denies man's sin, his need of Christ, the necessity of an atonement, and the regenerating work of ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... means a mysterious, ghostly power that soars above nature, but a force of nature like its other forces, as mysterious and as definite as they are, only that it dominates a specified group of beings, namely, living organisms. It may readily be compared with any other natural phenomenon. For instance, the phenomenon of crystallization has its well determined sphere of activity, viz., the mineral world. It employs definite mathematico-physical laws to obtain a specified result, and even acts differently in ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... and occasionally even a certified modern forgery. The foregoing remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, joined with what we have learned about shape-perception and empathy, will enable the Reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly owned up to. For a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess enough elements in common with a masterpiece, otherwise it could never suggest any connexion with it. Given a favourable emotional attitude and the absence of obvious extrinsic ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... the course of eternal law and calculable beforehand, as a threatening sign from Him; as though man's deserts had any connection with the courses of the sun and moon. The Bishop and all the priests of the province were to head the procession, and thus a simple natural phenomenon was forced in the minds of the people into a significance ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... getting to this 83 deg.!" Being anxious to make up, in some measure, for the drift which the present northerly wind was in all probability occasioning, we rose earlier than usual, and set off at half past four in the evening. At half past five P.M. we saw a very beautiful natural phenomenon. A broad white fog-bow first appeared opposite the sun, as was very commonly the case; presently it became strongly tinged with, the prismatic colours, and soon afterward no less than five other complete arches were formed ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... some "stop-watch critic" suggested, that the sun itself was not actually "lurid," on that celebrated occasion, and he accordingly changed the expression to "level," thus signifying a mere natural phenomenon; and, besides the sacrifice of a fine poetical expression, forgetting that the sun must have appeared actually "lurid" through the interposition of "the war-clouds, rolling dun." Nor is this the only instance ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... famous Wetherill brothers and trader at Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting the secret of the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... do not appear in the dark alone, or only in haunted houses, or at cross- roads, or in gloomy woods. They are everywhere: every man has his own ghost, every place has its peculiar haunting fiend, every natural phenomenon has its informing spirit; every quality, as hunger, greed, envy, malice, has an embodied visible shape prowling about seeking what it may devour. Where our science, for example, sees (or rather smells) sewer gas, the Japanese behold a slimy, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... experience that seldom happened to her. She was perfectly aware that her beauty was remarkable even in a city of beautiful women, and it was rarely that she permitted her knowledge of that fact to escape her. Her beauty, to her, was a natural phenomenon, impossible to overlook. The realization of it did not obtrude itself into her ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... because of t'other. Irene believed my poison turned her stone red, or she would never have refused to wear it a minute longer, from an unreasonable dislike of the Evil One, whose influence she discerned in this simple, natural phenomenon. I considered myself justified in boning the ring for my own use, so I had it enlarged to go on my finger, and there it is, on! I shall never see it again, unless Septimius Severus turns up trumps. What colour should ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... and similar thoughts, and of innumerable minor thoughts about himself, in the very centre of his mind and occupying nearly the whole of it, was the vast thought, the obsession, of his own potential power and its fulfilment. George's egotism was terrific, and as right as any other natural phenomenon. He had to get on. Much money was included in his scheme, but simply as a by-product. He had to be a great architect, and—equally important—he had to be publicly recognized as a great architect, and recognition ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... can't make 'em. Nobody can. If they could be made, some star somewhere would be turning them out, or some natural phenomenon would let them loose from time to time. If there were such things as deathrays, all living things would have died, or else would have adjusted to their weaker manifestations and developed immunity so they wouldn't be deathrays ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... as I was frequently told, that all I had seen, even to the "Prayer Eyes," would go for nothing on my return; for in England, America was supposed to be a vast tract of country containing one town—New York; and one astonishing natural phenomenon, called Niagara. "See New York, Quebec, and Niagara," was the direction I received when I started upon my travels. I never could make out how, but somehow or other, from my earliest infancy, I had been familiar with the name ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... This animal, this monster, this natural phenomenon that had puzzled the whole scientific world, that had muddled and misled the minds of seamen in both hemispheres, was, there could be no escaping it, an even more astonishing phenomenon— a phenomenon made by the hand ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... accounts of a deluge among different nations in almost every part of the world, we can easily perceive that they do not refer to one single historical event, but to a natural phenomenon repeated every year, namely, the deluge or flood of the rainy ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... this is scarcely to be commended. It is wiser, one fancies, to have the matter of the scene pretty fully roughed-out before details of furniture, properties, and position are arranged.[14] It may happen, indeed, that some natural phenomenon, some property or piece of furniture, is the very pivot of the scene; in which case it must, of course, be posited from the first. From the very moment of his conceiving the fourth act of Le Tartufe, Moliere must have had clearly in view the table under which Orgon hides; ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... convinced by several boys older than myself that (I even remember the date) on June 18th the earth was going to be destroyed. It had been proved, I was told, beyond the shadow of a doubt that on that particular date some natural phenomenon would take place which would inevitably entail the destruction of everything living on the earth. This forms an interesting parallel to the present case; for at the time I was only about eight years old, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... more remarkable and not less sublime than that noble cataract. He was therefore anxious to inspect them, and on the 20th of November, 1855, he reached Kalai, a place eight miles west of the Falls. On arriving at the latter, he found that this natural phenomenon was caused by the sudden contraction, or rather compression, of the river, here about 1000 yards broad, which urges its ponderous mass through a narrow rent in the basaltic rock of not more than twenty-five yards, and down a deep cleft, but a little wider, into ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... have created those immeasurable poems. In this universality there is something almost intoxicating in the thought of a popular poem: we feel, with artistic pleasure, the broad, overpowering liberation of a popular gift, and we delight in this natural phenomenon as we do in an uncontrollable cataract. But as soon as we examine this thought at close quarters, we involuntarily put a poetic mass of people in the place of the poetising soul of the people: a long row of popular poets in whom ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... understanding from Pearce that day would dawn in less than half-an-hour's time, I turned out and, slipping into my trousers and jacket, went up on deck. And very glad I was that I had done so, for I was thus enabled to observe a very curious natural phenomenon, which one might knock about in those seas for years without seeing, for the simple reason that the circumstances must be favourable or the phenomenon ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the standard of time the duration of another natural phenomenon, which appears to be always reproduced under identical conditions; the duration, for instance, of a given luminous vibration. But the experimental difficulties of evaluation with such a unit of the times which ordinarily have to be considered, would ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... from the burning sun, and the sweet-scented flowers of the magnolias, azaleas and wild grapes added fragrance and beauty to the scene. Flies, snakes and frogs were very numerous, but gave us little trouble, nevertheless, I was not sorry when at dawn on the third day after passing the strange natural phenomenon we saw across the level pasture-like plain, high up, spectral and half hidden in the grey haze, the gigantic walls and high embattlements of the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... planet; but a heavy rain of a salt taste, pouring down in the midst of roaring whirlwinds, puts an end to the raging of the elements, and several semi-circular rainbows, extended over the ocean like gay triumphal arches, announce the peaceful termination of the great natural phenomenon. As soon as the air and sea have recovered their equilibrium, the sky again shews its transparent azure.... As the sun gradually sinks in the clouded horizon, the sea and sky assume a new dress, which is beyond description sublime and magnificent. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... a glorious natural phenomenon, which so surprised me that I could not refrain from uttering a slight scream. It may have been about eleven o'clock, when suddenly the sky on my left was lighted up, as though every thing were in flames; a great fiery ball shot through the air with lightning speed, and disappeared on the horizon, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... every day after the sunset. There is, as it were, a tint of sadness spread over the whole of nature. One becomes accustomed to it, and yet while we know that the occultation of the Sun by the Moon is a natural phenomenon, we can not escape a certain sense of uneasiness. The approach of some ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... months, the neighborhood, having accepted Ashe and his morning exercises as a natural phenomenon, paid him no ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... venereal disease is diminished, and the procreation of healthy offspring favors conjugal happiness and constancy in sexual union. From the religious point of view, the freedom in sexual intercourse which prevails among country people before marriage is looked upon as immoral; but this is a natural phenomenon similar to the "marriage by trial" of certain savage races, or the "hand-fasting" of the Scotch people, of which we have spoken in Chapter VI. People who tolerate and defend prostitution should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and of the manner in ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... return from the Lyapinsky house, I related my impressions to a friend. The friend, an inhabitant of the city, began to tell me, not without satisfaction, that this was the most natural phenomenon of town life possible, that I only saw something extraordinary in it because of my provincialism, that it had always been so, and always would be so, and that such must be and is the inevitable condition of civilization. ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... times, there is no complaint of Sabbath-breaking. We read of fratricide, drunkenness, lying, unbelief, theft, idolatry, slave-dealing, and other crimes, but no hint as to sanctifying or desecrating the Sabbath. At length, a few days before the giving of the law, a natural phenomenon announced to the Jews the great change that was at hand—the manna fell in double quantity on Friday, and was not found on Saturday. So new was this that, contrary to the command, the people went out on the seventh day as on other days, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton |
