Aurora Borealis Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Aurora Borealis. Here they are! All 70 of them:

I look like the freaking Aurora Borealis..
Jandy Nelson (I'll Give You the Sun)
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
Jack London
The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgement.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
When the human voice is reduced to being no longer a song, a word, or a cry, but the articulation of the unnamable itself, it is natural that there should be no other sound than the grinding of ice in the polar regions, the light, intermittent crackling of silk in the highest zones of the atmosphere, at the moment when the aurora borealis unfurls its strange, cold spangles. Majesty does not tolerate other eyes than these hard crystals
Michel Leiris (Brisées)
This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds. One wants to suffer in front of the stove and another believes that he will get well near the window. It always seems to me that I will be better off there where I am not, and this question of moving about is one that I discuss endlessly with my soul "Tell me, my soul, my poor chilled soul, what would you think about going to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and you'll be able to soak up the sun like a lizard there. That city is on the shore; they say that it is built all out of marble, and that the people there have such a hatred of the vegetable, that they tear down all the trees. There's a country after your own heart -- a landscape made out of light and mineral, and liquid to reflect them!" My soul does not reply. "Because you love rest so much, combined with the spectacle of movement, do you want to come and live in Holland, that beatifying land? Perhaps you will be entertained in that country whose image you have so often admired in museums. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts and ships anchored at the foot of houses?" My soul remains mute. "Does Batavia please you more, perhaps? There we would find, after all, the European spirit married to tropical beauty." Not a word. -- Is my soul dead? Have you then reached such a degree of torpor that you are only happy with your illness? If that's the case, let us flee toward lands that are the analogies of Death. -- I've got it, poor soul! We'll pack our bags for Torneo. Let's go even further, to the far end of the Baltic. Even further from life if that is possible: let's go live at the pole. There the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and augments monotony, that half of nothingness. There we could take long baths in the shadows, while, to entertain us, the aurora borealis send us from time to time its pink sheaf of sparkling light, like the reflection of fireworks in Hell!" Finally, my soul explodes, and wisely she shrieks at me: "It doesn't matter where! It doesn't matter where! As long as it's out of this world!
Charles Baudelaire (Paris Spleen)
The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.
Philip Pullman (The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, #2))
In the halls of heaven it was now dark enough for the Aurora Borealis sisters to begin their lively dance of the veils. With an enchanting play of colors they flitted light and quick about the great stage of the heavens, in fluttering golden dresses, their tumbling pearl necklaces scattering here and there in their wild caperings.
Sjón (The Blue Fox: A Novel)
For no real reason other than because of how striking he looks. He is just so . . . Scandinavian, maybe. Viking-like. Norse. Like his ancestors frolicked below the aurora borealis on their way to funding Ikea.
Ali Hazelwood (Stuck with You (The STEMinist Novellas, #2))
People usually associate the colour pink with weakness and naiveté; but I associate this colour with the most beautiful parts of the day— dawn and dusk! And in my searching through mystical writings, I have found that pink is actually related to the utmost levels of the Tree of Life. I've also seen it in pictures of the sky surrounding the most magnificent Aurora Borealis! So pink is strong and wonderful.
C. JoyBell C.
The energy they give off is effervescent, a swirling, intoxicating aurora borealis of grating, glorious entitlement.
Lisa Jewell (None of This Is True)
The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted aurora near the poles of both Saturn and Jupiter. And on Earth, the aurora borealis and australis (the northern and southern lights) serve as intermittent reminders of how nice it is to have a protective atmosphere.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Series))
Over and over again I sail towards joy, which is never in the room with me, but always near me, across the way, like those rooms full of gayety one sees from the street, or the gayety in the street one sees from a window. Will I ever reach joy? It hides behind the turning merry-go-round of the traveling circus. As soon as I approach it, it is no longer joy. Joy is a foam, an illumination. I am poorer and hungrier for the want of it. When I am in the dance, joy is outside in the elusive garden. When I am in the garden, I hear it exploding from the house. When I am traveling, joy settles like an aurora borealis over the land I leave. When I stand on the shore I see it bloom on the flag of a departing ship. What joy? Have I not possessed it? I want the joy of simple colours, street organs, ribbons, flags, not a joy that takes my breath away and throws me into space alone where no one else can breathe with me, not the joy that comes from a lonely drunkenness. There are so many joys, but I have only known the ones that come like a miracle, touching everything with light.
Anaïs Nin (Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1939-1947))
We were miles away from our real lives.
Maggie Stiefvater (Forever (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #3))
Outside, though perhaps morning, it is still night, but a night of a thousand thrusting colors laid over the shaking stars. The shattering ice still sounds like a drumbeat.
Dan Simmons (The Terror)
She lifted her head in surprise, following his line of sight above the tree line. Beyond the distant peaks, a green and blue symphony of lights had begun. It rippled and shimmered like sunshine on water, leaving Rich blinking back tears. He'd read something about this but had never seen it before. “It's the aurora borealis,” Lou said quietly. “Northern lights.
Danika Stone (Edge of Wild)
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery.
Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
The dark sky. A hundred million stars. More stars than I’ve ever seen before. My eyes let me see farther, but they don’t show me the one thing I want to see. I would trade all the stars in the universe if I could just have him back again. Wind whistles through the trees nearby. Birdsong weaves in and out of the sound. The hybrids emerge from the communication building, heads tilted to the sky. And then we see the end. Godspeed’s engine was nuclear; who knows what fueled the biological weapons. But they explode together. In space, they don’t make the familiar mushroom cloud. They don’t make the boom! of an exploding bomb. There is, against the dark sky, a brief flash of light. It is filled with colors, like a nebula or the aurora borealis, bursting like a popped bubble. Nothing else—no sound of an explosion, no tremors in the earth, no smell of smoke. Not here, on the surface of the planet. Nothing else to signify Elder’s death. Just light. And then it’s gone. And then he’s gone.
Beth Revis (Shades of Earth (Across the Universe, #3))
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence.
Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
But I guess that’s why true love is so alluring in the first place. It’s hard to find and hold on to, like all beautiful things. Like gold, saffron, or an aurora borealis.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves)
As I watched that single thread of lightning billow through the water above me like the aurora borealis, I imagined the heavy cord of time stretching away from me in the water like the hard, thick rope on a great ship.
Laura Whitcomb (Under the Light (Light, #2))
An aurora borealis rises over festive orchards; the branches of the trees immediately begin to bud, to blossom, to bend under the weight of their fruit. The child runs through the wild grass, heading for the Wall. It collapses like a big cardboard box, broadening the horizon and exorcising the fields, which extend over the plains as far as the eye can see...Run...And the child runs, laughing all the while, his arms spread out like a bird's wings.
Yasmina Khadra
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
Jack London (The Call of the Wild / White Fang)
People like to catch lights and put them inside their jars, so they can say they're lightkeepers. They like to capture bolts of lightning, the aurora borealis, flames and rainbows. If you are any of these, your friends and family and random passersby are going to want to control you in one way or the other. Don't be captured. Don't be put into their jars.
C. JoyBell C.
Downtown is before them, as high and bright as the aurora borealis rising from the black water of the Bering Sea.
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
When my eyes are closed, the seen (the aurora borealis of my inner eye lids) and the imagined (say, an image of Anna Karenina) are never more than a volitional flick away from each other. Reading is like this closed-eye world-and reading takes place behind lids of a sort. An open book acts as a blind-its boards and pages shut out the world's clamorous stimuli and encourage the imagination.
Peter Mendelsund (What We See When We Read)
Amundsen slept with his window wide open at night even in the winter, claiming to his mother that he loved fresh air, but really “it was a part of my hardening process.” He organized small expeditions for himself and a few friends, such as overnight treks on skis under a star-studded sky, enlivened by the otherworldly swirling of the aurora borealis, into the winter wilds to improve his toughness.
Stephen R. Bown (The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen (A Merloyd Lawrence Book))
For us to witness aurora borealis at all, and to see certain colors, depends on where we are in the world. The timing has to be right. There are so many variables at play. So many environmental factors that need to align.” A weak smile crosses her face. “Just like fate.
Lauren Kung Jessen (Red String Theory)
The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, onto the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgement. —THE AMERICAN JOE MILLER’S JEST BOOK
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, onto the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgement. – The American Joe Miller’s Jest Book
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, onto the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgement. —THE AMERICAN JOE MILLER’S JEST BOOK S
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
If Charley hadn’t shaken and bounced and said “Ftt,” I might have forgotten that every night he gets two dog biscuits and a walk to clear his head. I put on clean clothes and went out with him into the star-raddled night. And the Aurora Borealis was out. I’ve seen it only a few times in my life. It hung and moved with majesty in folds like an infinite traveler upstage in an infinite theater. In colors of rose and lavender and purple it moved and pulsed against the night, and the frost-sharpened stars shone through it. What a thing to see at a time when I needed it so badly!
John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
Love is infinite; an aurora and you have been given the brush by the Artist who created the palette.
Reena Doss
In the Awakenings movie I found it very interesting that the most profound awakenings in the catatonic patients occurred in 1969, the year that the Aurora Borealis was seen from N.Y. to Louisiana. It seems the patients were getting environmental radiation stimulation in addition to their L-Dopa drug that year. L-Dopa plus radiation therapy may eventually be proven to be a very potent brain stimulant.
Steven Magee
Lapland casts a powerful spell: there's something lonely and intangible here that makes it magical. The midnight sun, the Sámi peoples, the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) and roaming reindeer are all components of this – as is Santa Claus himself, who ‘officially’ resides here – along with the awesome latitudes: at Nuorgam, the northernmost point, you have passed Iceland and nearly all of Canada and Alaska.
Lonely Planet Finland
Affordable transportation does more than reunite people. It also allows them to sample the phantasmagoria of Planet Earth. This is the pastime that we exalt as “travel” when we do it and revile as “tourism” when someone else does it, but it surely has to count as one of the things that make life worth living. To see the Grand Canyon, New York, the Aurora Borealis, Jerusalem—these are not just sensuous pleasures but experiences that widen the scope of our consciousness, allowing us to take in the vastness of space, time, nature, and human initiative. Though we bristle at the motor coaches and tour guides, the selfie-shooting throngs in their tacky shorts, we must concede that life is better when people can expand their awareness of our planet and species rather than being imprisoned within walking distance of their place of birth. With
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
Romantic love is a beautiful thing under the right circumstances. But those circumstances are so specific and rare, aren’t they? It’s rare that you love the person who loves you, that you love only the person who loves only you. Otherwise, somebody’s heartbroken. But I guess that’s why true love is so alluring in the first place. It’s hard to find and hold on to, like all beautiful things. Like gold, saffron, or an aurora borealis.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves)
Romantic love is a beautiful thing under the right circumstances. But those circumstances are so specific and rare, aren’t they? It’s rare that you love the person who loves you, that you love only the person who loves only you. Otherwise, some-body’s heartbroken. But I guess that’s why true love is so alluring in the first place. It’s hard to find and hold on to, like all beautiful things. Like gold, saffron, or an aurora borealis.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves)
The charged particles energize molecules of gas in our upper atmosphere, called the ionosphere. This causes them to glow. That glow is called the aurora. If it appears over the north pole, it’s called the aurora borealis; over the south pole it is called the aurora australis. Most of the time it glows white or green. However, if the solar storm is fairly energetic, more and different gases are energized and we can see reds and purples in spectacular auroral displays.
Carolyn Collins Petersen (Astronomy 101: From the Sun and Moon to Wormholes and Warp Drive, Key Theories, Discoveries, and Facts about the Universe (Adams 101 Series))
Over and over again I sail towards joy, which is never in the room with me, but always near me, across the way, like those rooms full of gayety one sees from the street, or the gayety in the street one sees from a window. Will I ever reach joy? It hides behind the turning merry-go-round of the traveling circus. As soon as I approach it, it is no longer joy. Joy is a foam, an illumination. I am poorer and hungrier for the want of it. When I am in the dance, joy is outside in the elusive garden. When I am in the garden, I hear it exploding from the house. When I am traveling, joy settles like an aurora borealis over the land I leave. When I stand on the shore I see it bloom on the flag of a departing ship. What joy? Have I not possessed it? I want the joy of simple colors, street organs, ribbons, flags, not a joy that takes my breath away and throws me into space alone where no one else can breathe with me, not the joy that comes from a lonely drunkenness. There are so many joys, but I have only known the ones that come like a miracle, touching everything with light.
Anaïs Nin
If my eyes were able to range afar over this great sea, it was because a peculiar light brought to view every detail of it. It was not the light of the sun, with his dazzling shafts of brightness and the splendor of his rays; nor was it the pale and uncertain shimmer of the moonbeams, the dim reflection of a nobler body of light. No; the illuminating power of this light, its trembling diffusiveness, its bright, clear whiteness, and its low temperature, showed that it must be of electric origin. It was like an aurora borealis, a continuous cosmical phenomenon, filling a cavern of sufficient extent to contain an ocean.
Jules Verne (Journey to the Center of the Earth)
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself — one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.
Jack London (Jack London: The Complete Novels (The Greatest Writers of All Time Book 3))
Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed. This one would prefer to suffer in front of the stove, and that one believes he would get well if he were placed by the window. It seems to me that I should always be happier elsewhere than where I happen to be, and this question of moving is one that I am continually talking over with my soul. "Tell me, my soul, poor chilled soul, what do you say to living in Lisbon? It must be very warm there, and you would bask merrily, like a lizard. It is by the sea; they say that it is built of marble, and that the people have such a horror of vegetation that they uproot all the trees. There is a landscape that would suit you -- made out of light and minerals, with water to reflect them." My soul does not answer. "Since you love tranquillity, and the sight of moving things, will you come and live in Holland, that heavenly land? Perhaps you could be happy in that country, for you have often admired pictures of Dutch life. What do you say to Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and ships anchored at the doors of houses?" My soul remains silent. Perhaps Batavia seems more attractive to you? There we would find the intellect of Europe married to the beauty of the tropics. Not a word. Can my soul be dead? "Have you sunk into so deep a stupor that only your own torment gives you pleasure? If that be so, let us flee to those lands constituted in the likeness of Death. I know just the place for us, poor soul! We will leave for Torneo. Or let us go even farther, to the last limits of the Baltic; and if possible, still farther from life. Let us go to the Pole. There the sun obliquely grazes the earth, and the slow alternations of light and obscurity make variety impossible, and increase that monotony which is almost death. There we shall be able to take baths of darkness, and for our diversion, from time to time the Aurora Borealis shall scatter its rosy sheaves before us, like reflections of the fireworks of Hell!" At last my soul bursts into speech, and wisely cries to me: "Anywhere, anywhere, as long as it be out of this world!
Charles Baudelaire
I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilárd proposes to submit to you,” Einstein wrote. “The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilárd is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy.”34 Roosevelt never read the letter. It was found in his office after he died on April 12 and was passed on to Harry Truman, who in turn gave it to his designated secretary of state, James Byrnes. The result was a meeting between Szilárd and Byrnes in South Carolina, but Byrnes was neither moved nor impressed. The atom bomb was dropped, with little high-level debate, on August 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima. Einstein was at the cottage he rented that summer on Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, taking an afternoon nap. Helen Dukas informed him when he came down for tea. “Oh, my God,” is all he said.35 Three days later, the bomb was used again, this time on Nagasaki. The following day, officials in Washington released a long history, compiled by Princeton physics professor Henry DeWolf Smyth, of the secret endeavor to build the weapon. The Smyth report, much to Einstein’s lasting discomfort, assigned great historic weight for the launch of the project to the 1939 letter he had written to Roosevelt. Between the influence imputed to that letter and the underlying relationship between energy and mass that he had formulated forty years earlier, Einstein became associated in the popular imagination with the making of the atom bomb, even though his involvement was marginal. Time put him on its cover, with a portrait showing a mushroom cloud erupting behind him with E=mc2 emblazoned on it. In a story that was overseen by an editor named Whittaker Chambers, the magazine noted with its typical prose flair from the period: Through the incomparable blast and flame that will follow, there will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis… Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb. But Einstein was the father of the bomb in two important ways: 1) it was his initiative which started U.S. bomb research; 2) it was his equation (E = mc2) which made the atomic bomb theoretically possible.36 It was a perception that plagued him. When Newsweek did a cover on him, with the headline “The Man Who Started It All,” Einstein offered a memorable lament. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he said, “I never would have lifted a finger.”37 Of course, neither he nor Szilárd nor any of their friends involved with the bomb-building effort, many of them refugees from Hitler’s horrors, could know that the brilliant scientists they had left behind in Berlin, such as Heisenberg, would fail to unlock the secrets. “Perhaps I can be forgiven,” Einstein said a few months before his death in a conversation with Linus Pauling, “because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb and become the master race.”38
Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
If one could nominate an absolutely tragic day in human history, it would be the occasion that is now commemorated by the vapid and annoying holiday known as “Hannukah.” For once, instead of Christianity plagiarizing from Judaism, the Jews borrow shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of a celebration that coincides with “Christmas,” which is itself a quasi-Christian annexation, complete with burning logs and holly and mistletoe, of a pagan Northland solstice originally illuminated by the Aurora Borealis. Here is the terminus to which banal “multiculturalism” has brought us. But it was nothing remotely multicultural that induced Judah Maccabeus to reconsecrate the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC, and to establish the date which the soft celebrants of Hannukah now so emptily commemorate. The Maccabees, who founded the Hasmonean dynasty, were forcibly restoring Mosaic fundamentalism against the many Jews of Palestine and elsewhere who had become attracted by Hellenism. These true early multiculturalists had become bored by “the law,” offended by circumcision, interested by Greek literature, drawn by the physical and intellectual exercises of the gymnasium, and rather adept at philosophy. They could feel the pull exerted by Athens, even if only by way of Rome and by the memory of Alexander’s time, and were impatient with the stark fear and superstition mandated by the Pentateuch. They obviously seemed too cosmopolitan to the votaries of the old Temple—and it must have been easy to accuse them of “dual loyalty” when they agreed to have a temple of Zeus on the site where smoky and bloody altars used to propitiate the unsmiling deity of yore. At any rate, when the father of Judah Maccabeus saw a Jew about to make a Hellenic offering on the old altar, he lost no time in murdering him. Over the next few years of the Maccabean “revolt,” many more assimilated Jews were slain, or forcibly circumcised, or both, and the women who had flirted with the new Hellenic dispensation suffered even worse. Since the Romans eventually preferred the violent and dogmatic Maccabees to the less militarized and fanatical Jews who had shone in their togas in the Mediterranean light, the scene was set for the uneasy collusion between the old-garb ultra-Orthodox Sanhedrin and the imperial governorate. This lugubrious relationship was eventually to lead to Christianity (yet another Jewish heresy) and thus ineluctably to the birth of Islam. We could have been spared the whole thing.
Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
The masses of dense foliage all round became prison walls, impassable circular green ice-walls, surging towards her; just before they closed in, I caught the terrified glint of her eyes. On a winter day she was in the studio, posing for him in the nude, her arms raised in a graceful position. To hold it for any length of time must have been a strain, I wondered how she managed to keep so still; until I saw the cords attached to her wrists and ankles. Instead of the darkness, she faced a stupendous sky-conflagration, an incredible glacial dream-scene. Cold coruscations of rainbow fire pulsed overhead, shot through by shafts of pure incandescence thrown out by mountains of solid ice towering all round. Closer, the trees round the house, sheathed in ice, dripped and sparkled with weird prismatic jewels, reflecting the vivid changing cascades above. Instead of the familiar night sky, the aurora borealis formed a blazing, vibrating roof of intense cold and colour, beneath which the earth was trapped with all its inhabitants, walled in by those impassable glittering ice-cliffs. The world had become an arctic prison from which no escape was possible, all its creatures trapped as securely as were the trees, already lifeless inside their deadly resplendent armour. Frozen by the deathly cold emanating from the ice, dazzled by the blaze of crystalline ice-light, she felt herself becoming part of the polar vision, her structure becoming one with the structure of ice and snow. As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of her world. Fear was the climate she lived in; if she had ever known kindness it would have been different. The trees seemed to obstruct her with deliberate malice. All her life she had thought of herself as a foredoomed victim, and now the forest had become the malign force that would destroy her. In desperation she tried to run, but a hidden root tripped her, she almost fell. Branches caught in her hair, tugged her back, lashed out viciously when they were disentangled. The silver hairs torn from her head glittered among black needles; they were the clues her pursuers would follow, leading them to their victim. She escaped from the forest at length only to see the fjord waiting for her. An evil effluence rose from the water, something primitive, savage, demanding victims, hungry for a human victim. It had been night overhead all along, but below it was still daylight. There were no clouds. I saw islands scattered over the sea, a normal aerial view. Then something extraordinary, out of this world: a wall of rainbow ice jutting up from the sea, cutting right across, pushing a ridge of water ahead of it as it moved, as if the flat pale surface of sea was a carpet being rolled up. It was a sinister, fascinating sight, which did not seem intended for human eyes. I stared down at it, seeing other things at the same time. The ice world spreading over our world. Mountainous walls of ice surrounding the girl. Her moonwhite skin, her hair sparkling with diamond prisms under the moon. The moon’s dead eye watching the death of our world.
Anna Kavan (Ice)
Wild excitements, misery, riches, debauchery, broken hearts, scurvy, frostbite, suicide, the midnight sun, the Arctic night, the Aurora Borealis, the land of gold and paradoxes--that was Dawson in '98,' he wrote breathlessly.
Lael Morgan (Good Time Girls: Of the Alaska/Yukon Gold Rush)
Okavango Delta in Botswana to shots of the aurora borealis in Lapland. There were photographs taken as she’d hiked the Inca Trail, others from the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, still more among the ruins of Timbuktu. Twelve years ago, she’d learned to scuba dive and had spent ten days documenting marine life in Raja Ampat; four years ago, she’d hiked to the famous Paro Taktsang, or Tiger’s Nest,
Nicholas Sparks (The Wish)
Now separated from the other courts, I could see definite Winter Court trademarks: Any skin outside the natural spectrum was tinged blue, purple, white--- an aurora borealis of fae. Metallic glints appeared here and there, reminding me of Heather. Antlers like mine poked out of one or two foreheads. Bright eyes came in every color, some of which I couldn't describe.
Sabrina Blackburry (Dirty Lying Faeries (The Enchanted Fates, #1))
Trina is different. I don’t consider myself subordinate to her, and I don’t consider her my friend. But we interact civilly enough, I suppose, at meals and on deck. I notice myself not wanting her to learn any private things about me, because what if then she was able to look inside me and find those parts of me, like Linta observing ahsoken. What if she can find thoughts and feelings? And then I start thinking about my own Grace. A Grace isn’t always what you think it is, even your own. My mother told me my Grace was hiding, because she wanted me to live. But my Grace is other things too. I’m not sure what yet. But I’m using it more when I’m alone, to turn into whatever I want to try the feeling of. Water. The aurora borealis. A part of the ship. Sometimes when I’m in the rigging, I give myself gigantic wings that lie flat against my back, ready to unfurl, and I don’t really care if anyone sees me. Maybe that’s why some of the sailors don’t seem to know what to say to me. Whatever. I like it. It makes me feel like I’m figuring something out. If people can see me, then it makes me feel like I’m saying something. Like something about myself.
Kristin Cashore (Seasparrow (Graceling Realm, #5))
the clench of her body around me when she comes, sets me off so hard my body jerks rough and rapid until I’m coming, jetting into her body. And for the first time, it’s so intense it’s the same as my synesthesia, colors overtaking my mind, red wrapping around green, pink fusing with yellow, purple interspersing with blue. Vibrant hues coalescing into an aurora borealis that takes my breath, revealing to me the color of love.
Kennedy Ryan (Down to My Soul (Soul, #2))
That’s for the aurora borealis.” Always number one on our bucket list.
Emma Grey (The Last Love Note)
FALL I've never liked orange not even a hint of yellow though that doesn't mean I'm derange, you know. but it's still a riddle as to why, you can make me see it like it's aurora borealis in the sky.
Kynna Claire
Ahead of them, over the mountains to the north, the pale arcs and loops of the Northern Lights began to glow and tremble. Lyra saw through half-closed eyes, and felt a sleepy thrill of perfect happiness, to be speeding north under the Aurora.
Philip Pullman (Northern Lights)
Sea-foam tumbles onto the shore, claiming me gently in the way I've always craved. The ocean gathers me, carrying me over the surface like Cleopatra--- and I, every ounce as lovely as her and Aphrodite combined. Bit by bit the water swallows me, gently nipping at my skin until I dissolve into an aquatic spirit. Only then do I understand the language of angelfish and squid, and I move just as languidly. The sirens gape at me with their jewel-bright eyes and try to steal me as their own. But before I can be taken by those curious witches, I rise to the surface again. Everything glimmers here. I embrace the dusk with a hopeful smile. The sky blends into a watercolor of pastels and ambrosial stars. It's an aurora borealis of magenta and lavender, tempting me into the forest and away from the safety of the shore. Something's in the wind. I can feel it--- like the twinkling stars will finally lead me to the love I desire. I want it more than anything. The thought of it turns me feral, like a vampiress thirsty for a drop of blood. I dart through the forest, trailing a path of golden light. Past the evergreens and pines, underneath the moon, I become wild and free. Sweet summer fruit grows from trees, ripe and sparkling. With every cautious step I take, the flowers blossom. But they don't just grow. They glow. Ultraviolet irises, sugar-dusted peonies, and iridescent rosebuds unravel beneath my feet. Foxgloves bloom like trumpets, playing a regal procession beside twinkling bluebells. As I journey deeper into the forest, fireflies circle me, illuminating my path. And then I see him. I blink. He's awfully familiar, but I can't place my finger on who he is. He's beautiful. A boy with white-blond hair and viridescent eyes. Where have I seen him before? "Hello, Lila," he says. I stumble back. "How do you know my name?" He's peculiar. So unbelievably enchanting. I'm enthralled by the sound of his voice alone. "Don't be scared. You're safe here. I wanted to bring you somewhere special. Somewhere where you can make the forest beautiful with your dance." My dance. Of course, my dance. Witchlight flickers in his eyes. This world is meant for me. A gift wrapped up in velvet petals and sweet perfumes.
Kiana Krystle (Dance of the Starlit Sea)
The only light came from the windows of those houses she passed that had open curtains, revealing little tableaux of family life: the young couple prostrate on a sofa in front of the television, their small child playing on the floor; the solitary old lady reading the paper; the table set for tea, while an unwatched television cast an aurora borealis of moving shadows in the corner.
Jojo Moyes (Sheltering Rain)
was almost to the train station when I noticed a series of bright lights moving fast in the sky overhead. I stopped, trying to figure out what it was. It wasn't a plane or a flare or any kind of reflection. More like a blur of shooting stars. Except that shooting stars were usually higher in the sky, I thought. This thing was heading downward and breaking apart as it traveled, almost like fireworks, but dispersing in a more random way. It looked a little bit like photos I’ve seen of an aurora borealis, but I was sure if something like that was going to happen I’d have heard about it.
Karen McQuestion (Edgewood (Edgewood #1))
loud chanting and hooting is heard at the opera (along with the visual spectacle of audience attire such as jeans, message T-shirts, and sweats worn at such a formal art presentation); the exquisite and complex language of English is peppered with the word “like” every third or fourth word; the repetitive use of the adjective “cool” as a positive evaluation of everything remotely good reflects a paucity of vocabulary; and if the taste of strawberry ice cream is “awesome,” then what word is left to describe the aurora borealis? In
Alexandra York (LYING AS A WAY OF LIFE: Corruption and Collectivism Come of Age in America)
Who else could make the colors of the aurora borealis rise off my skin where he strokes my forearm? Or send needles of ice tinkling blue through my brain when he looks in my eyes?
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
Scientists can explain the aurora borealis if they wish, but they cannot take away its impact on an individual’s consciousness. What we know and what we feel do not always coincide.
Mary J. MacLeod (Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle (The Country Nurse #1))
For people steeped in biblical wonders and supernatural lore, alterations in the night sky, including the aurora borealis in northern latitudes, carried even greater portent.
A. Roger Ekirch (At Day's Close: A History of Nighttime)
It's just past eleven o'clock at night, so finally fully dark out, which means it's the perfect time to see the light installations in St. Andrew Square. As they cross the tram tracks and enter the square, Susan gasps, "Will you look at that?" The entire square is softly aglow from hundreds of spherical bulbs planted on stiff stems, like luminescent poppy seed heads. They cover every last inch of grass in the square, and the lights slowly change from white to blue, to green, and back to white, the change staggered by section, so the square seems alive with rippling bands of light, like a tiny aurora borealis come down to earth.
Brianne Moore (All Stirred Up)
Almost everything about Barrow's missions had been wrong - the orders, the ships, the supplies, the funding and the methods. Perhaps no man in the history of exploration has expended so much money and so many lives in pursuit of so desperately pointless a dream. But what a reign it had been! .... Never again, either, would such a disparate and entertaining band of explorers stalk the world. ...Maybe Barrow had produced no great benefits for mankind - unless one counts such benefits as Lyon's ear-numbing conclusion that the aurora borealis made no noise. Maybe too, his judgements might have been more accurate - although, to give him his due, it is hard to be accurate about the unknown. But he had filled so many gaps on the globe, had instigated so many dramatic events, and had stretched the known world to limits that would not be surpassed for half a century. Was that so bad?... Ultimately, for all his failures, Barrow had done something very important: he had set a benchmark for exploration.
Fergus Fleming (Barrow's Boys: The Original Extreme Adventurers: A Stirring Story of Daring Fortitude and Outright Lunacy)
She was the aurora borealis lighting up the darkest nights with her beauty.
Alyssa Karr (For When You Feel Like Giving Up)
In October of 1774 he sneaked away from Paulerspury with one of his old friends to hear John Wesley preach. Willy had heard about John Wesley as long as he could remember but wasn’t sure just what it was that made everyone talk about Wesley. As far as Willy knew he was just a preacher. Locals told stories about Wesley’s previous visits. Back in 1769 when Wesley spoke in Northampton, there was an aurora borealis the likes of which none could recall. The sky fired streaks of orange and white and scarlet. Many a sinner came forward that night, they said. A year later Wesley came back to preach from the Book of Job: ‘Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee!’ “Wesley
Sam Wellman (William Carey)
The aurora borealis is proof that other worlds exist. It’s the bleeding over of these other worlds.
Sarah Noffke (Ren: The Monster's Death (Ren #5))
Late August, a clear night becoming cold. There was no aurora borealis, just the dense sparks of the stars blown from their own ancient fire.
Peter Heller (The River)
I have seen the Aurora Borealis twice in my life–once in Anchorage, Alaska while we were walking home from the bar our band was playing at; and the other time in Salmon Arm, BC (Notch Hill area), coming home from a gig we played in Armstrong–gigantic curtains of green and pink waved across the sky; it is a mighty sight to see. High-pitched ethereal tones shook me down to the soles of my feet. The experience filled me with longing and a desire to know about more universal things. It reminded me that the Source loves to dance, too.
Lyn E. Ayre (Fragments of a Shattered Soul Made Whole: a memoir)
The Finns also have a rather lovely word for the aurora borealis: revontulet, which translates as ‘foxfire’. The origins are supposedly in a Finnish fable, in which an Arctic fox, running through snow, sprayed up crystals with his tail, causing sparks to fly off into the night sky.
Lucy Jones (Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain)
And I left the seashell roar and the aurora borealis of the city’s heart farther and farther behind me.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Mother Night)
Auroras are so dim they cannot be seen during the daytime.
Steven Magee