Quotes & Sayings About Ice Crystals

When water freezes it expands; in cells, ice crystals can tear the protoplasm apart. — Brian Capon

Of all the forms of water the tiny six-pointed crystals of ice called snow are incomparably the most beautiful and varied. — Wilson Bentley

Life has evolved to thrive in environments that are extreme only by our limited human standards: in the boiling battery acid of Yellowstone hot springs, in the cracks of permanent ice sheets, in the cooling waters of nuclear reactors, miles beneath the Earth's crust, in pure salt crystals, and inside the rocks of the dry valleys of Antarctica. — Jill Tarter

When she opened her eyes, she was in shadow - shadow, but dry and warm, thanks to the massive wing shielding her from the elements and the heat of Abraxos's breath filling the space like a little furnace. He was still snoozing - a deep, heavy sleep. She had to brush ice crystals off his outstretched wing before he came awake. — Sarah J. Maas

And give me some coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night."
Harga looked surprised. That wasn't like Vimes.
"How black's that, then?" he said.
"Oh, pretty damn black, I should think."
"Not necessarily."
"What?"
"You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night."
Vimes sighed.
"An overcast moonless night?" he said.
Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.
"Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?"
"I'm sorry? What did you say?"
"You get city lights reflected off cumulus, because it's low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in
"
"A moonless night," said Vimes, in a hollow voice, "that is as black as coffee. — Terry Pratchett

After the urine is collected over a couple of days, it's dumped into space, which is beautiful to watch because the urine freezes into a glitter of ice crystals shimmering in the sun. — Mike Mullane

Therefore Morgoth came, climbing slowly from his subterranean throne, and the rumour of his feet was like thunder underground. And he issued forth clad in black armour; and he stood before the King like a tower, iron-crowned, and his vast shield, sable unblazoned, cast a shadow over him like a stormcloud. But Fingolfin gleamed beneath it as a star; for his mail was overlaid with silver, and his blue shield was set with crystals; and he drew his sword Ringil, that glittered like ice. — J.R.R. Tolkien

electrical wires dragged down by the weight of the ice and flickering balefully, a row of sleet-covered planes stranded in an airport, a huge truck that's jackknifed and tipped over and is lying on its side with smoke coming out. An ambulance is on the scene, a fire truck, a huddle of raingear-clad operatives: someone's been injured, always a sight to make the heart beat faster. A policeman appears, crystals of ice whitening his moustache; he pleads sternly with people to stay inside. It's no joke, he tells the viewers. Don't think you can brave the elements! His frowning, frosted eyebrows are noble, like those on the wartime bond-drive posters from the 1940s. Constance remembers those, or believes she does. But she may just be remembering history books or museum displays or documentary films: so hard, sometimes, to tag those memories accurately. Finally, a minor touch of pathos: a stray dog is displayed, semi-frozen, wrapped in a child's pink nap blanket. A gelid baby — Margaret Atwood

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

Shivering, she would lie awake imagining her veins sluggish with frozen blood, ice crystals weaving a coral-like shining net around her heart. Her dreams were full of black seas and ice floes and frozen lakes ... — Cassandra Clare

In moments Akiva was up in the ether, scarcely feeling the sting of ice crystals in the thin air. He let his glamour fall away, and his wings were like sheets of fire sweeping the black of the heavens. He moved at speed, onward toward another human city to find another doorway bitter with the devil's magic, and after that another, until all bore the black handprint ... Once all the doors were marked, the end would begin. And it would begin with fire. — Laini Taylor

He turned his head, ice crystals caught in his hair. "Agnes. Don't pretend you disagree. This is all there is and you know it. Life, here, in our veins. There is the snow, and the sky, and the stars and the things they tell us, and that's all. Everyone else - they're blind. They don't know if they're living or dead. — Hannah Kent

The swirling lines of snow were composed of separate flakes, and each flake was a cluster of separate ice crystals--scientists had counted over a hundred of them in a single flake. Under the microscope each minuscule crystal, colorless and transparent, revealed a secret symmetry: six sides, the outward expression of an inward geometry of frozen molecules of water. But the real wonder was that no two crystals were precisely alike. In one of this father's camera magazines he had seen a stunning display of photomicrographs, and what was most amazing about the enlarged crystals was that each contained in its center a whole world of intricate six-sided designs, caused by microscopic air pockets. For no conceivable reason, Nature in a kind of exuberance created an inexhaustible outpouring of variations on a single form. A snowstorm was a fall of jewels, a delirium of hexagons--clearly the work of a master animator. — Steven Millhauser

Studying ice crystals as a graduate student, he eventually found the basic design (equilateral, equiangled hexagon) so icily repeated, so unerringly conforming, that he couldn't help but shudder: Beneath the splendor
the filigreed blossoms, the microscopic stars
was a ghastly inevitability; crystals could not escape their embedded blueprints any more than humans could. Everything hewed to a rigidity of pattern, the certainty of death. — Anthony Doerr

Lisette set out browned chicken, warm butternut squash salad, blue potatoes, and blackberry bread with a crust of sugar that looked like ice crystals. — Sarah Addison Allen

The sleds accelerated quickly as they glided effortlessly over the smooth ice. We had never before experienced such a quick, easy slide. usually we wished we could push ourselves to make our sleds go faster. But not this time. The crystals of ice started flying past at an incredible rate of speed. No longer aware of where my sister and her sled were, all I could see was raw ice whizzing by ten inches under my chin at a rate of speed I never imagined I would experience on a sled. I felt like I was flying! — Daniel Boerman

In the sunlight, snow melts, crystals evaporate into a steam, into nothing. In the firelight, vapors dance and vanish. In the core of a volcano, fragile things burst and disappear. The girl, in the gunfire, in the heat, in the concussion, folded like a soft scarf, melted like a crystal figurine. What was left of her, ice, snowflake, smoke, blew away in the wind. The tiller seat was empty. — Ray Bradbury

A terrible cold world of ice and death had replaced the living world we had always known. Outside there was only the deadly cold, the frozen vacuum of an ice age, life reduced to mineral crystals. [ ... ] I drove at great speed, as if escaping, pretending we could escape. Although I knew there was no escape from the ice, from the ever-diminishing remnant of time that encapsuled us. — Anna Kavan

Layer upon layer of soft-packed snowflakes settled in near silence, forming a quilt of feathery ice crystals. — Rebecca Nichols Alonzo

The snow here hadn't thawed. Its large, rough crystals were filled with the blue of the lake-water. But on the sunny side of the hill the snow was just beginning to melt. The ditch beside the path was full of gurgling water. The glitter of the snow, the water and the ice on the puddles was quite blinding. There was so much light, it was so intense, that they seemed almost to have to force their way through it. It disturbed them and got in their way; when they stepped on the thin film of ice over the puddles, it seemed to be light that was crunching under their feet, breaking up into thin, splinter-like rays. And it was light that was flowing down the ditch beside the path; where the path was blocked by stones, the light swelled up, foaming and gurgling. The spring sun seemed to be closer to the earth than ever. The air was cool and warm at the same time. — Vasily Grossman

Yes. When I want to fill my heart with His love, I open my eyes to the creations of His hand, especially the ones that seem outrageously and uselessly beautiful--sunsets, sunrises, ice crystals, patterns in drying mud, golden cottonwood leaves against red rock cliffs, the melancholy sound of the first cricket in August, moss-covered rocks in a mountain stream, the way a baby laughs before she can do useful things such as talking or walking. — Virginia H. Pearce

Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. — Paul Theroux

Daily I witness my spiritual betters in my own children. When the snows come, I see ice crystals falling, slick roads, and rising heat bills. They sit at the window in awe of God's creativity. When nighttime falls and the stars shine, I muse about burning balls of hydrogen. They join the dancing of the spheres in celebration of God who made them. When our family sits down to eat, I envision a cluttered kitchen and dishes needing to be washed. They see daily bread delivered by their faithful heavenly Father. — R.C. Sproul Jr.

There is a silence so great that I can hear the ice crystals cracking and falling from eyelashes of girls who will never blink again. — Lauren DeStefano

His mother the Ice Queen. The only thing he still had of hers was a book: Snow Crystals, by W. A. Bentley. Inside were thousands of carefully prepared micrographs of snowflakes, each image reproduced in a two-inch square, the crystals white against a field of black, arrayed in a grid, four-by-three, twelve per page. — Anthony Doerr

The biggest barrier to reanimating a flash-frozen body is preventing cell damage from ice crystals during the process. It's like what happens to frozen tofu: When you defrost it, it turns into a sponge. Oh, I guess most of you haven't head frozen tofu.' The expert, who was Chinese, smiled at the confused Western faces around him. — Liu Cixin

Nature forms patterns. Some are orderly in space but disorderly in time, others orderly in time but disorderly in space. Some patterns are fractal, exhibiting structures self-similar in scale. Others give rise to steady states or oscillating ones. Pattern formation has become a branch of physics and of materials science, allowing scientists to model the aggregation of particles into clusters, the fractured spread of electrical discharges, and the growth of crystals in ice and metal alloys. The dynamics seem so basic - shapes changing in space and time - yet only now are the tools available to understand them. — James Gleick

The field was covered with ice crystals sticking up like a garden of little diamonds. Sophia was beside her now, and the two animals walked slowly into the crystal blossoms. Flora was enchanted.

For a moment she forgot she was hungry, tired, and ill-equipped to make this journey. She forgot to worry about Oscar. She forgot to worry that there would never be a useful job for her. She kicked up her front hooves with each step and watched the ice crystals scatter in front of her. — Chris Kurtz