Thought is the lightning of the soul. [ Mme. de Bassanville ]

I have a dog of Blenheim birth.
With fine long ears and full of mirth;
And sometimes, running over the plain,
He tumbles on his nose:
But quickly jumping up again
Like lightning on he goes! [ Ruskin ]

Lightning and thunder (heaven's artillery)
As harbingers before th' Almighty fly:
Those but proclaim His style, and disappear;
The stiller sounds succeed, and God is there. [ John Dryden ]

How oft, when men are at the point of death.
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death. [ William Shakespeare ]

Long while I sought to what I might compare
Those powerful eyes, which light my dark spirit;
Yet found I nought on earth, to which I dare
Resemble the image of their goodly light.
Not to the sun, for they do shine by night;
Nor to the moon, for they are changed never;
Nor to the stars, for they have purer sight;
Nor to the fire, for they consume not ever;
Nor to the lightning, for they still persevere;
Nor to the diamond, for they are more tender;
Nor unto crystal, for nought may they sever;
Nor unto glass, such baseness might offend her;
Then to the Maker's self the likest be;
Whose light doth lighten all that here we see. [ Spenser ]

I escaped the thunder and fell into the lightning. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passes from life to his rest in the grave. [ Wm. Knox ]

Whenever he speaks, Heaven, how the listening throng
Dwell on the melting music of his tongue!
His arguments are emblems of his mien,
Mild but not faint, and forcing, though serene:
And when the power of eloquence he'd try,
Here lightning strikes you, there soft breezes sigh. [ Garth ]

Censure is like the lightning which strikes the highest mountains. [ Balthasar Gracian ]

Light, or, failing that, lightning--the world can take its choice. [ Carlyle ]

Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind. [ Alfred de Musset ]

He that has no fools, knaves, nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning. [ Proverb ]

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame. [ A. Smith ]

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament. [ Bovee ]

Gold loves to make its way through guards, and breaks through barriers of stone more easily than the lightning's bolt. [ Horace ]

The perception of the beautiful is gradual, and not a lightning revelation; it requires not only time, but some study. [ Ruffini ]

Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam or caloric or lightning. [ Chapin ]

Love breaks in with lightning flash: friendship comes like dawning moonlight. Love will obtain and possess; friendship makes sacrifices but asks nothing. [ Geibel ]

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. [ Mark Twain ]

There is something on earth greater than arbitrary power. The thunder, the lightning, and the earthquake are terrific, but the judgment of the people is more. [ Daniel Webster ]

The lofty pine is oftenest agitated by the winds - high towers rush to the earth with a heavier fall - and the lightning most frequently strikes the highest mountains. [ Horace ]

But the sublime, when it is introduced at a seasonable moment, has often carried all before it with the rapidity of lightning, and shown at a glance the mighty power of genius. [ Longinus ]

Wit, bright, rapid, and blasting as the lightning, flashes, strikes, and vanishes in an instant; humour, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its object in a genial and abiding light. [ Whipple ]

Many men want wealth, - not a competence alone, but a five-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath. [ Beecher ]

This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity. [ Goldsmith ]

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. [ Burritt ]

The productions of the press, fast as steam can make and carry them, go abroad through all the land, silent as snowflakes, but potent as thunder. It is an additional tongue of steam and lightning, by which a man speaks his first thought, his instant argument or grievance, to millions in a day. [ Chapin ]

The flitting sunbeam has been grasped and made to do man's bidding in place of the painter's pencil. And although Franklin tamed the lightning, yet not until yesterday has its instantaneous flash been made the vehicle of language: thus in the transmission of thought annihilating space and time. [ Professor Robinson ]

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. In springing a mine, that which has done the most extensive mischief makes the smallest report; and again, if we consider the effect of lightning, it is probable that he that is killed by it hears no noise; but the thunderclap which follows, and which I most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety. [ Colton ]

We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art: but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning. [ Montaigne ]