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Atom   Listen
noun
Atom  n.  
1.
(Physics)
(a)
An ultimate indivisible particle of matter.
(b)
An ultimate particle of matter not necessarily indivisible; a molecule.
(c)
A constituent particle of matter, or a molecule supposed to be made up of subordinate particles. Note: These three definitions correspond to different views of the nature of the ultimate particles of matter. In the case of the last two, the particles are more correctly called molecules.
2.
(Chem.) The smallest particle of matter that can enter into combination; one of the elementary constituents of a molecule.
3.
Anything extremely small; a particle; a whit. "There was not an atom of water."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Atom" Quotes from Famous Books



... must surely think, with strange paradoxical feelings, of one's own utter insignificance in creation, mingled with the delightful consciousness of our individual importance in the eyes of the Maker and Father of all. An atom among worlds, as one feels, sitting there at such an hour and in such a spot, still we remember with love and pride, that not a hair of our head falls to the ground unnoticed by an Infinite Love and an Eternal Providence. The soul tries to fly into the boundless ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... ocular evidence. For while Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that "stood fast" of the earth—the belief in "substance," in "matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... with merriment at the success of his mischief-making. The very sight of Thor's disgusted looks, and of his great hands clenched with rage under the delicate veil, nearly killed him with laughter; and when all was ready he declared himself unable to lose an atom of the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... 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 thin slices as will be required for two dozen sandwiches; then cut the cress ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... in and says he has been to see Commander Bizmuth Aquinox. "He will give just enough of the atom pile for seventy million miles," he says. "And only enough superhydrogenerated radium to push us twenty million miles, Sep. I think we should write to Number One. I explained to the space brass that we have got to come ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... it and stopped shooting long enough to pick it up. With the bullets of her people buzzing around his ears he carried the brown atom down the mountain-side and took her home on his saddle ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... experiments go, absolutely devoid of that fundamental chemical property, the power to combine with other elements. All of them are believed to be monatomic—that is to say, each of their molecules is composed of a single atom. This, however, is not an absolutely novel feature as compared with other terrestrial elements, for the same thing is true, for example, of such a familiar substance as mercury. But the incapacity to enter into chemical combinations seems very paradoxical; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... think about,— Is all man's sum of faculty effects When exercised on earth's least atom, Son! What was, what is, what may such atom be? ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... morning the storm had quite abated, but the sea was such as can be seen only in mid-ocean. Our little ship (she was only 700 tons) appeared such an atom in comparison with the enormous mountains of water. At one moment we would be perched on the summit of a wave, seemingly hundreds of feet high, and immediately below a terrible abyss into which we were on the point of sinking; the ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... if the blundering fools had only exercised an atom of sense," Mrs. Spencer retorted. "Mrs. Clephane couldn't deceive a normal two-year-old child; she is as ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... "I am an atom of Nature;" said Wauna, gravely. "If you want me to answer your superstitious notions of religion, I will, in one sentence, explain, that the only religious idea in Mizora is: Nature is God, and God is Nature. She is the Great Mother ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... indivisible atom. It is as incomprehensible as the mysteries of creation, or the duration ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... this goodly frame, this World, Of Heaven and Earth consisting, and compute Their magnitudes—this Earth, a spot, a grain, An atom, with the Firmament compared And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll Spaces incomprehensible (for such Their distance argues, and their swift return Diurnal) merely to officiate light Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot, One ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... Alvarez County yesterday. Visitors on the early morning tour through Alvarez Caverns, came upon an astonishing spectacle. Two men and a young girl of indescribable strangeness of manner and dress were seated on the floor of Atom Cave. All were in the last stages of exhaustion and exposure, and even the little light from the electric hand lamps seemed to blind them. Fortunately, in the tour was Dr. and Mrs. Ferguson of New Washington, ...
— Out of the Earth • George Edrich

... understand how the grass grows beneath our feet. We cannot understand how the egg becomes a bird. We cannot understand how the butterfly is the very same creature which last autumn was a crawling caterpillar. We cannot understand how an atom of our food is changed within our bodies into a drop of living blood. We cannot understand how this mortal life of ours depends on that same blood. We do not know even what life is. We do not know what our own souls are. We do not know what our own bodies ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... Yesterday I know the Duke dined with Peel, who I have no doubt persuaded him to send this excuse. The Government are in exceeding delight at the Duke's conduct ever since he has been in opposition, which certainly has been very noble, straightforward, gentlemanlike, and without an atom of faction or mischief about it. He has done himself great honour; he threw over Aberdeen completely on that business about foreign policy which he introduced soon after the meeting of Parliament, and now he is assisting the Government in their Lieutenancy Bill, and is in constant communication ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... 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

... am at a loss to see that one atom of progress is made in this discussion by the further discovery that, (in a work written ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... solve the mystery of human destiny at the gate of the Adams' home the day after the funeral. Amos had his foot on the hub of the Doctor's buggy and was saying: "But Doctor, can't you see that it isn't all material? Suppose that every atom of the universe does affect every other atom, and that the accumulated effect of past action holds the stars in their courses, and that if we knew what all the past was we should be able to foretell the future, because it would be mathematically calculable—what of it? That ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... spreading outwards in a rough equivalent of his shape. A spurt of steam leaped upwards savagely, and the smoke seemed darker. It began to drift on the air, touched a building, and left a spot of smudginess, before it drifted on, getting thinner with each gust of wind. It was as if every atom of his body had suddenly disassociated itself from every ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey

... had been born on their wedding day, just a fortnight ago! She was pale and wan, but so ecstatically proud and happy looking; and Tristram at once said, they—he and Zara—must be the god-parents of her boy; and Zara held the crimson, crumpled atom for a moment, and then looked up and met her husband's eyes, and saw that they had filled with tears. And she returned the creature to its mother—but she could not speak, for ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... the imagination. Consider the example of the atomic theory. In order to describe 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, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... they more brittle than China, and drop'd to pieces with a Touch, every Atom of her I have ventur'd at, if she is but Mistress of thy Wit, ballances Ten times the Sum—Prithee let ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... men's minds with general ideas of a character most foreign to their daily experience, and has, more than any other, rendered it impossible for them to accept the beliefs of their fathers. Astronomy,—which tells them that this so vast and seemingly solid earth is but an atom among atoms, whirling, no man knows whither, through illimitable space; which demonstrates that what we call the peaceful heaven above us, is but that space, filled by an infinitely subtle matter whose particles are seething and surging, like the waves of an angry sea; which ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley

... Mollie was the most sublimely thoughtless of the lot. Mrs. Phil had never been guilty of a discreet act in her life. Phil himself regarded consequences less than he regarded anything else, and Aimee's childish staidness and forethought had certainly not an atom of worldliness in it. Accordingly, Dolly was left to battle with society, and now and then, it must be admitted, the result of her brisk affrays did her ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... care not, for I deem no shame To hold men, flowers, and trees and stars the same, Myself, as these, one atom in ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... 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 fables ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... making every cheek glow with a crimson fire and kindling a light in every eye. It seemed to set every golden atom dancing, it was felt through every breath drawn by two ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the latter, we feel an almost irresistible inclination to class it with spirit, or with nihility. The only consideration which restrains us is our conception of its atomic constitution; and here, even, we have to seek aid from our notion of an atom, as something possessing in infinite minuteness, solidity, palpability, weight. Destroy the idea of the atomic constitution and we should no longer be able to regard the ether as an entity, or at least as matter. For want of a better word we might term it spirit. Take, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... man," said the major carelessly. "Voice orotund, magnetic. Easy manners. Good figure;" and he walked up and down complacently, slapping his own shrunk shank. There had been a well-shaped leg inside of the ragged linen trousers once, and the conscious merit which infused every atom of his lean little body still culminated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... atom, we find, lasts some seventeen hundred years, or a trifle longer. What becomes of it when it is destroyed? We can only say that it disappears from ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... its powerful dialectic criticism is generally directed against it. S'a@nkara himself had begun it by showing contradictions and inconsistencies in many of the Nyaya conceptions, such as the theory of causation, conception of the atom, the relation of samavaya, the conception of jati, etc [Footnote ref 2]. His followers carried it to still greater lengths as is fully demonstrated by the labours of S'rihar@sa, Citsukha, Madhusudana, etc. It was opposed to Mima@msa so far as this admitted the Nyaya-Vais'e@sika ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... his wooden nest or house after this, and presently sat down to eat one of his so-called meals. I couldn't see an atom of dung on the table however, and though there were some fairly edible flowers he never once sucked them. He had only an immense brown root called a potato, and a 'chop' of some cow. Seizing a prong in his claws, the old Fabre quickly harpooned this 'chop' and proceeded ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... 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 with the ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... flowers without let, An atom at random in space; My soul dwells in regions ethereal, And ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng

... to state that lead is certainly employed for this purpose. The effect is very rapid; and there appears to be no other method known, of rapidly recovering ropy wines. Wine merchants persuade themselves that the minute quantity of lead employed for that purpose is perfectly harmless, and that no atom of lead remains in the wine. Chemical analysis proves the contrary; and the practice of clarifying spoiled white wines by means of lead, must be ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... chlorine, bromine, iodine, and fluorine. These elements combine directly with metals, forming as many series of salts (chlorides, bromides, iodides, and fluorides), corresponding to the respective oxides, but differing in their formul by having two atoms of the halogen in the place of one atom of oxygen. For example, ferrous oxide is FeO and ferrous chloride is FeCl{2}, and, again, ferric oxide is Fe{2}O{3}, whilst ferric chloride is Fe{2}Cl{6}. These salts differ from the carbonates, nitrates, &c., in containing no oxygen. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... and pernicious, and the prejudices which we now smile at as obsolete are truths of nature's own imparting, only wanting the agency of comprehensive intelligence to make them valuable, by adapting them to the present state of society. For, as one atom of falsehood in first principles nullifies a whole theory, so one principle, fundamentally true, suffices to obviate many minor errors. This fundamentally true principle, I am prepared to show, exists in the established opinions ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... were strong enough by simply biding their time and availing themselves of popular divisions to crush one opponent after another. And yet the struggle against them was one of life and death for the city. No atom of the new civilization, the new spirit of freedom or humanity, seems to have penetrated among them. Behind the gloomy walls of their city fortresses they remained the mere murderous tyrants of a brutal feudalism. "I counsel, lords, that we free ourselves from this ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... French, indeed, laugh at them and consider them as mere divertissements of Bonaparte's, and feeble attempts to excite a spirit of defence amongst the people—a spirit which, fortunately for Europe, was never excited. The lads of Paris had determined to take their chance and not to do one atom more than they were called upon or compelled to do. These wooden barriers are made of le bois de tremble (aspen), and the pun was that the fortifications "tremblaient partout." You will like to hear something of Edgeworth's friend, St. Jean d'Angely;[46] he came up to the barrier ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... anything was the matter with his wife it was my fault, as I must have brought the contagion or neglected to take the usual antiseptic precautions. I told him that he should not make such statements without an atom of proof, but, interrupting me, he declared that, fever or no fever, he would attend upon Lady Colford, as he could not afford to throw away the best chance he had ever had. I said, 'My dear fellow, don't be mad. Why, if anything ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... the affair with an interest which even to me seemed queer. It was not detached, but it was semi-detached, and, of course, on the side for which I seem, in this history, to be perpetually apologizing. With certain limitations it didn't matter an atom whom Cecily married. So that he was sound and decent, with reasonable prospects, her simple requirements and ours for her would be quite met. There was the ghost of a consolation in that; one needn't ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... white or colored, is transmitted through ether in waves of measurable length: each atom of the medium, when disturbed, moves around its place of rest in an orbit of variable dimension and eccentricity. On the character of the orbit depends the character of the light; and on the velocity of orbit motion, its intensity. Like the gentle pulsations which circle ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and explain it. I am but a poor creature, a beggar, an atom in the scale of humanity. Who has the least respect for Lebedeff? He is a target for all the world, the butt of any fool who chooses to kick him. But in interpreting revelation I am the equal of anyone, great as he may be! Such is the power of the mind and the spirit. I have made a lordly personage ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... universe in which Man lived was predominantly dexter—arbitrarily so designated—it was not completely so. It had a "sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandth of one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in the universe was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course; antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it was distributed throughout interstellar space in the form ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett

... on his foe to die. But this bold lord with manly strength endued, She with one finger and a thumb subdued: Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew, A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw; The gnomes direct, to every atom just, The pungent grains of titillating dust. Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows, And the high dome re-echoes to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... 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 summit of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... troops, and throwing shells into the woods ahead of the attacking column. Had any Confederates prepared to resist the march, they must have been driven out of the forest before the Federals came within musket-range. Not an atom of resistance was made. The plans of the invaders seemed irresistible. About half-past four in the afternoon, a puff of smoke rose from the river-bank far ahead of the leading vessel, and in a few seconds a heavy shell plunged into the water ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... were crumbled to the finest dust, and scattered through the universe, there would not be an atom of the dust for ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mercy on the seducer—"a vicious youth, without one accomplishment to endear vice." For vice, Lord Bendham thought (with certain philosophers), might be most exquisitely pleasing, in a pleasing garb. "But this youth sinned without elegance, without one particle of wit, or an atom of good breeding." ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... warmly, "we expect that if Scranton has any show in the games that are to be played in the Three-town League this season, most of the credit will lie at the door of Mr. Leonard. He seems to be a wonder at getting a boy to bring out every atom of energy and vim that lies in him. Only Nick Lang acts surly under him. That's the big fellow who made that three-bagger a while ago. He's ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... young men in that audience were left without an atom of heart, how many would have given their two ears to be in ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... "Not an atom," Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge declared. "I have just committed myself to the biggest financial transaction of my life and it ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... contrary," remarked Reginald, "it would be strange if they were still to know us. In fact, it would be unnatural. The skies above us and the earth underfoot are in perpetual motion. Each atom of our physical nature is vibrating with unimaginable rapidity. Change ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... imagined such a thing as white blood, either, but it all checks up. Someway, somehow, every particle—probably every atom—of free or combined iron in this whole volume of space ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... for works of art; he looked even upon the Venus of Milo with coldness. "It seemed," wrote he, speaking of the weather one morning, "as if a cold, bitter, sullen agony were interposed between each separate atom of our bodies. In all my experience of bad atmospheres, methinks I never knew anything so atrocious as this. England has nothing to compare with it." The "grip" was a disease unnamed at that epoch, but I should suppose that it was very vividly described ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... I rallied every atom of self-control I possessed. "There is nothing to worry about, mother," I said carelessly. "Dicky has often spoken recently about this offer to go to San Francisco. It was always tentative before, but ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... day to day. The air is full of rumours. One can see them grow along the street. One traces them down. Perhaps one finds an atom of truth somewhere at the root of them. One puts that atom into a telegram. The military censor cuts it out with unfailing politeness, and a good day's work is done. Heat, dust, and a weekly deluge with stupendous ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... for now"—Then he was working hard! and doing his own studies and correcting her French exercises, and giving her lessons all the while, as well as to other people; and bringing her gifts with the fruit of his work! And not an atom of it all could Faith touch to change. She pondered it, and she knew it. She doubted whether she could with any good effect venture so much as a remonstrance; and the more Faith thought, the more this doubt resolved itself into certainty. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... almost as fine a fellow as Timothy Told-you-so, and if Timothy would but stoop to have more of Newton's spirit, he might in time come to possess an atom or ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... at length summoned our last atom of strength to launch her, she immediately filled with water and went to the bottom like a piece of lead. That was the end of the canoe. We had not the strength to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... looked downwards, fist with the one eye, and then with the other. On glancing downwards I observed that Peterkin's mouth was wide open, and that this remarkable bird was looking into it. Peterkin used to say that I had not an atom of fun in my composition, and that I never could understand a joke. In regard to the latter, perhaps he was right; yet I think that, when they were explained to me, I understood jokes as well as most people: but in regard to the former he must certainly have been wrong, for ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... look at man and ask the question: What is there about him which would need an independent act of creation any more than about the "mountain of granite or the atom of sand"? The answer comes back: Besides life, man has many mental attributes. Let us direct our attention at first to the grand phenomena of life, and then to ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... tendency, every redeeming trait is cunningly caricatured, and so cleverly ridiculed that is impossible to respect them afterwards. It is hard to tell what another era may bring forth of good, but it is certain that ours has killed, to the very possibility of a future regeneration, every germ and atom of solid morality, that sustained it. Perhaps that is what was wanted, the end may be achieved now. It has been clearly and undeniably proved to the world, that there is no longer any God, there is no eternity, no atonement, no recompense. We are left to wonder whose business it was to call ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... them are members, nor Christians; nor have they an atom of interest in any such matters. They are going for pure fun, and ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... been swept clean. There have been the Romans and the Visigoths and the Moors and the French—armed men jingling over mountain roads. Conquest has warped and sterilised our Iberian mind without changing an atom of it. An example: we missed the Revolution and suffered from Napoleon. We virtually had no Reformation, yet the Inquisition was stronger with ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... coldly and with studied deliberation, "you have been a life-long friend of mine, and, until to-night, I have looked upon you almost as a brother; but, to-night, by your own confession and by your acts which have followed upon that confession, you have destroyed every atom of the friendship I have felt for you. You have made me wish that I had never known you. You have outraged every sense of propriety, and every feeling of manhood that I thought you possessed. Fortunately for us all, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman

... Thee is lost:— What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee? And what am I then? Heaven's unnumber'd host, Though multiplied by myriads, and array'd in all the glory of sublimest thought; Is but an atom in the balance weighed Against Thy greatness; is a cypher brought Against infinity! What am ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... late Lord Shelburne came to Ballymoat, a wild uncultivated region without industry or civility, and the people all Roman Catholics, without an atom of a manufacture, not even spinning. In order to change this state of things, his lordship contracted with people in the north to bring Protestant weavers and establish a manufactory, as the only means of making the change he wished. This was done, but falling into the ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... it is the fashion to hold in derision and mockery the idea that nobility, poetry, or eloquence exist in the wild Indian. I know that with that low brutality which has ever made the Anglo-Saxon race deny its enemy the possession of one atom of generous sensibility, that dull enmity which prompted us to paint the Maid of Orleans a harlot, and to call Napoleon the Corsican robber—I know that that same instinct glories in degrading the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... 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 ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... on the 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

... streams Still flowing, still were lost in those of love: So love grew mightier from the fear, and Nature, 40 Fleeing from Pain, sheltered herself in Joy. The stars above our heads were dim and steady, Like eyes suffused with rapture. Life was in us: We were all life, each atom of our frames A living soul—I vowed to die for her: 45 With the faint voice of one who, having spoken, Relapses into blessedness, I vowed it: That solemn vow, a whisper scarcely heard, A murmur breathed against a lady's ear. Oh! there is joy above the name of pleasure. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... big as your thumb, and ordinary mortals are content to call him the winter wren. He is a saucy little atom of a bird, with his tail pointing rakishly toward his head. I regret exceedingly to add that he is but a winter resident with us, and we rarely hear his song. Mr. Burroughs says that he is a 'marvellous songster,' his notes having a 'sweet ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... in action. An atom is dissected, a belly rumbles in hunger, a star blooms into brief nova; a bird wheels in futile escape, an ice-flow impacts, an equation is expressed in awesome mushrooming shape. These are multitudinous, apocalyptic. They ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... objections lie against the doctrine of the world having originated from atoms. For on that doctrine one atom when combining with another must, as it is not made up of parts, enter into the combination with its whole extent, and as thus no increase of bulk takes place we do not get beyond the first atom.[308] If, on the other hand, you maintain that the atom ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... from which they all proceed. Though we may not know what THAT is—the fact that It must exist—that It IS, is a sufficient guarantee that the LAW is in constant operation on all planes, from the lowest to the highest, and that THE COSMOS IS GOVERNED BY LAW! And this being so, not even an atom may be destroyed, nor misplaced, nor suffer Injustice; and all will attain the End rightly, and know the "Sat-chit-ananda" of the Hindus—the Being-Wisdom-Bliss Absolute that all philosophies and religions agree upon is the Final State of the Blessed. And to the occultist All are Blessed, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... cannot come into direct contact with an atom of alcohol, without the function of the former being spoiled, and not only is it spoiled, but the effete matter which it has within its capsule cannot be exchanged for the necessary oxygen. The breath of the drunken man does not give out the quantity ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't eaten it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... atom. Weary of life in mean and paltry times, Of smoking pipes and dreaming of ideals. Who am I? How do I know? That's my trouble. Am I at all?—It's very hard to "be." I study Victor Hugo; spout his odes— I tell you this, because this sort of thing Is all contemporary ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... returned from the court. Octave has been acquitted. Ludovic had behaved wonderfully. He explained the reason of the misadventure in a way that was really surprising in an uneducated man, and there was not an atom of suspicion among judge, jury, or spectators. I have changed my mind; I would not have a fellow like Ludovic in my service; he is much too sharp. When I had been duly sworn, I gave my evidence. Though I was much agitated, I went through it all right; but when I got home I felt very ill, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... atom 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... my foes to submission and can even reduce the size of a mountain to an atom, if I will it. But, O Vahnni, as I do not accept the libation of Soma if offered by a foe, and as I do not strike the weak with my thunderbolt, Vritra seemed to triumph over me for a time. But who among mortals can live in peace by creating feud with me. I have banished the Kalakeyas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... If the vulgar fractions followed, Big fleas have little fleas! It flashed upon me there,— Like the snakes of Pharaoh which the snakes of Moses swallowed All the world was playing at the tortoise and the hare: Half the smallest atom is—my soul was getting tipsy— Heaven is one big circle and the centre's everywhere, Yus, and that old woman was an angel and a gipsy, Yus, and Bill, the chicken-thief, the corn-flower millionaire, Shamming not to care, What was he? A seraph ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... cabalist. [Footnote: Adventures of a Guinea.] A third is so fortunate as to obtain from a woman who lets lodgings, the curious contents of an antique bureau, the property of a deceased lodger. [Footnote: Adventures of an Atom.] All these are certainly possible occurrences; but, I know not how, they seldom occur to any Editors save those of your country. At least I can answer for myself, that in my solitary walks by the sea, I never saw it cast ashore any thing but dulse and tangle, and now and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... me: I'm a beast, I know. 270 But see, now—why, I see as certainly As that the morning-star's about to shine, What will hap some day. We've a youngster here Comes to our convent, studies what I do, Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop: His name is Guidi—he'll not mind the monks— They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk— He picks my practice up—he'll paint apace, I hope so—though I never live so long, I know what's sure to follow. You be ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... but infinities on every side, which enclose me like an atom, and like a shadow which endures but for an instant, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... science. "If there is still a feeling of hostility between them," he said, "it is no longer the fault of religion. There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is so no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea,—that idea which the ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... laid bare before him. This spectacle is constantly changing, constantly renewed, at times deeply moving. No face can be, or is, indifferent, in these days and one no longer feels himself a detached individual observer; one becomes an atom of the crowd, sharing the anxiety of certain women that one knows are on their way to a hospital and who half mad with impatience are clutching the fatal telegram in one hand, while with the fingers of the other they thrum on one cheek or nervously catch at a button ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... There can be no force without motion. Force is forever active, and there is, and there can be no cessation. If therefore, matter and force have existed from eternity, so has motion. In the whole universe there is not even one atom in a state ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... a self-unconscious man naturally, and he hardly realized yet how widely his name had gone as the possessor of millions. He supposed himself an unnoticed atom as he stood at the spring on the second night of his stay in the village. Of a certainty many did not know him, but they saw him, for he was a striking figure—a handsome figure—though that had never concerned him. He was, in ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland

... consists of minute particles, and these we call plastidules, that plastidules are composed of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and are endued with a special soul, which soul is the product of some of the forces which the chemical atom possesses, he affirms that this is one of those positions which is still unapproachable, adding, "I feel like a sailor who puts forth into an abyss, the extent of which he cannot see;" and, again, "I must enter my decided protest ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... Atom by atom, link by link, has the reasoning chain been forged. Some links, too quickly and too slightly made, have given way, and been replaced by better work; but now the great phenomena are known—the outline is correctly and firmly drawn—cunning ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... What did she care about anything in the world but that she should have back again what she had valued so little as to lose it from her mind altogether? All of her own energy was strained in the bitterness of keeping her soul alive till Neale should come. She had not the smallest atom of strength to care about ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... the dauntless Bobby had accepted the humble role of stage hand rather than have no part in the play, and she trundled scenery with right good will and acted as Miss Anderson's right hand in a mood of unfailing good humor. There was not an atom of envy in Bobby's character, and she thought Betty the most wonderful actress she ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... one ever sees you, atom! You are hidden too securely. I have sought for hours to find you. It is but to tease us, surely, That you sing in pine-tops spicy: "I see, I ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... diversities of opinion, they have at last arrived at these conclusions, and sent them to us. Shall any Senator stand upon the little consideration, "this changes my resolution," and shall he compare that little atom of his production with the great end and object proposed to be attained for a whole nation? No, sir; not a moment. I believe our best hope of preservation is in adopting the resolutions proposed by this Convention, and I adhere ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... exquisite luxury of forgetting herself, of losing herself so utterly that no other thing at the moment appears to her worth living for. She has heard the voice of the charmer exhorting her to abandon pride, ambition, her own personality, to become, in short, no more than an atom of happiness under a dark and splendid sky which each moment of felicity seems to adorn with ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... the unconscious genius which now demands brief reference to its perfections. Though a brilliant example of the employment of unattractive deceptive features, it has no individual comeliness—not an atom of grace, no style of its own. Every feature, attitude and movement is subordinate to the part it plays. Death being the penalty, it may not blunder. Behold, among acres of similar growth, a trivial collection of rough, short weeds of the sea—grey, green and mud-coloured. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It never does, you know. Where ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... forth in one inspired moment—the master-moment of a lifetime; they possess the sublime certainty of love, loyalty, devotion; if they err through a heroic folly and draw upon themselves ruin in things temporal, may there not be some atom of divine wisdom at the heart of the folly, which is itself indestructible, and which ensures for them a welfare out of time and space? Prophet and casuist—Browning is both; and to each he will endeavour to ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... least red grain of flesh Within my body, cry out to the dreaming soul That slowly labours in a vast travail, To halt the heart, divert the streaming flow That carries moons along, and spare the stress That crushes me to an unseen atom of fire? ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence

... buffeted against me the more I felt the crushing sense of almost cosmic forces. Everybody was so plainly an atom in a public company, a drop of water in a tyrannous stream of human energy—companies that cared nothing for their individual atoms, streams that cared nothing for their component drops; such atoms and drops, for the most part, to be had ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... "it would simplify matters. What I have done is this: I have bought the man, Soames—up to a point. But so deadly is his fear of the mysterious Mr. King that although he has agreed to assist me in my plans, he will not consent to divulge an atom of information until the raid is ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... them. And it invented the word because it revealed the thing on which it rests. 'Brotherhood' is the sequel of 'Fatherhood,' and the conception of mankind, beneath all diversities of race and culture and the like, as being an organic whole, knit together by a thousand mystical bands, and each atom of which has connection with, and obligations to, every other—that is a product of Christianity, however it may have been in subsequent ages divorced from a recognition of its source. So, then, the gospel rises above all the narrow distinctions which call themselves patriotism and are parochial, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... not use that word of the gait of a woman like my friend's grandmother. 'Stately stept she butt the hoose' to Betty. She felt strangely soft at the heart, Robert not being yet proved a reprobate; but she was not therefore prepared to drop one atom of the dignity of her ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... cried hoarsely. "You must not, you shall not do this unspeakable thing! For God's sake, girl, if you have an atom of self- ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... 5 per cent. of impurities. This cellulose is a chemical compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and, according to the relative proportions of these constituents, it has had the chemical formula C{6}H{10}O{5} assigned to it. Each letter stands for an atom of each constituent named, and the numerals tell us the number of the constituent atoms in the whole compound atom of cellulose. This cellulose is closely allied in composition to starch, dextrin, and a form of sugar called glucose. It is possible to convert cotton rags ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... overwhelming effect. If the telescope had shewn us wonderful things, there was another instrument, he said, which had been given to us {20} about the same time. If by the telescope we had been led to see "a system in every star," it was no less true that the microscope had disclosed "a world in every atom," thus proving to us that "no minuteness, however shrunk from the notice of the human eye, is beneath the ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... had a large balance on the 21st of February, but he had as large a one before; he sold on this day, but he had sold a much before. He made only L.1,300 on that day; he had made much more on other days; there is not an atom of evidence connecting him with Mr. De Berenger; but the taking of the office applies to him as well as to Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, and also the circumstance of some notes being traced into his ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... wealth had its martyrs. One of these multi-millionaires, the famous Samuel Box, preferred to die rather than surrender the smallest atom of his property. One of his workmen, the victim of an accident while at work, being refused any indemnity by his employer, obtained a verdict in the courts, but repelled by innumerable obstacles of procedure, he fell ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... Von Kettler, without abating an atom of his nonchalance, "there, my dear Superintendent, you hit the nail on the head. Only, instead of thousands, you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... there is good evidence that pure water effects 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 after being reduced in size they can be rolled about by the waves, and then they 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 ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... civil institutions are attended by faiths, doctrines of philosophy (myths, folklore), and by precepts of right conduct and duty (taboos). The making of folkways is not trivial, although the acts are minute. Every act of each man fixes an atom in a structure, both fulfilling a duty derived from what preceded and conditioning what is to come afterwards by the authority of traditional custom. The structure thus built up is not physical, but societal and institutional, that ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... inaugurate, initiate, institute, originate, start, found. Belief, faith, persuasion, conviction, tenet, creed. Belittle, decry, depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, sophomoric, turgid, tumid, grandiose, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... meaning, other than practical, there is for us none. Ostwald in a published lecture gives this example of what he means. Chemists have long wrangled over the inner constitution of certain bodies called 'tautomerous.' Their properties seemed equally consistent with the notion that an instable hydrogen atom oscillates inside of them, or that they are instable mixtures of two bodies. Controversy raged; but never was decided. "It would never have begun," says Ostwald, "if the combatants had asked themselves what particular experimental ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... almost felt as if the godlike being she had so humbly adored from afar had turned upon her with the demand for human sacrifice. Those devouring kisses sent unimagined apprehensions through her heart. They seemed to satisfy him so little while they sapped from her every atom of vitality, leaving her helpless as an infant, her body drawn to his as a needle to the magnet, not of her own volition, but simply by his strength. And ever the fire of his passion grew hotter till she felt as one bound ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... published two volumes of Travels—full of querulous and captious remarks—for which Sterne satirised him, under the name of Smelfungus. The same year he again visited Scotland. In 1767 he published his "Adventures of an Atom,"—a political romance, displaying, under Japanese names, the different parties of Great Britain. A recurrence of ill health drove him back to Italy in 1770. At Monte Nuovo, near Leghorn, he wrote his delightful "Humphrey Clinker." This was his ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... course, you're at a crossroads. You could jump in either direction, blowing yourself up or taking the big step into space. I think you'll turn out okay, but not everybody agrees—and the Federation can't take even small chances. So you can't be allowed to set off your atom bombs, or worse, where they might get through to another planet. We can't actually interfere with you, so we've closed ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw

... caused in the logic of a thought by the mere position of a word as despicable as the word even. A mote, that is itself invisible, shall darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye—the heavens shall be hidden by a wretched atom that dares not show itself—and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judgment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling to the right-hand word, or the left-hand word, shall confound a system.] But we all know, each knows by his own ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... level, but the level where nothing was sure again, the level that made cancer a thing of epidemic proportions, replacing statistically all of the insane multitude of things that man could do to kill himself. Even the good things that the atom had brought were destroyed in the panic that ensued. No matter that you quit. You are still one of the guilty. You have seen it hidden in her eyes and you have seen it in the milky eyes of ...
— Now We Are Three • Joe L. Hensley

... smiling a little. "Now, if it seems probable that there is no limit to the immensity of space, why should we make its smallness finite? How can you say that the atom cannot be divided? As a matter of fact, it already has been. The most powerful microscope will show you realms of smallness to which you can penetrate no other way. Multiply that power a thousand times, or ten thousand times, and who shall say ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... while Jane may be high-handed, she has certain rigid ideas when it comes to Society and who shall enter its gates. So far she's made no concessions. She and a few others still keep a tight rein. Their daughters though! And granddaughters! Jane's girls are replicas of herself with every atom of her personality left out—but Jim's daughter, Janet, is her grandmother over again plus modern bad manners, bad habits, and a defiance of every known convention. Wretched little flapper. Gad! What ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... slow Mark how the hours go. Every stone is mouldering slow. And the least winds that blow Some minutest atom shake, Some fretting ruin make In roof and walls. How black it is ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare



Words linked to "Atom" :   chemical science, nucleus, grinding, fundamental particle, physics, atomic, corpuscle, molecule, material, stuff, atom bomb, isotope, particle, flyspeck, natural philosophy, atomise, Rutherford atom, free radical, chemical element, monad, radical, carbon atom, gram atom



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