Literary notes about Collision (AI summary)
The word "collision" in literature spans a remarkable range of meanings, from the literal impacts of ships and bodies to metaphorical clashes of ideas and wills. In adventure narratives like those in Jules Verne’s works ([1], [2], [3]), collision vividly captures the sudden, physical impacts that propel a story into drama, such as when vessels strike obstacles or even each other ([4], [5]). Conversely, writers like G. K. Chesterton ([6], [7]) and Henry Sidgwick ([8]) employ collision to symbolize the collision of ideologies, prejudices, or creeds—implying a deeper friction within human thought and society. This dual use extends to descriptions of historical and political upheavals ([9], [10]) and even cosmic events ([11], [12]), illustrating how the concept of collision effectively embodies both tangible encounters and the abstract intermingling of contrasting forces.
- At three o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by a violent collision.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne - A hideous collision occurred, and thrown over the rail with no time to catch hold of it, I was hurled into the sea.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne - I was navigating two meters beneath the surface of the water when the collision occurred.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne - The collision of the frigate with the cetacean had occurred about eleven o'clock in the evening before.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne - The skiff couldn't avoid the collision.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne - If ever we were in collision with our real brothers and rivals we should leave all this fancy out of account.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton - The essential of the difference is this: that prejudices are divergent, whereas creeds are always in collision.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton - Here, again, it is obvious that any collision between two intuitions is a proof that there is error in one or the other, or in both.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick - Protesting against arbitrary government, they came into collision with the warrior rulers, so as to be exposed to imprisonment and the sword.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis - There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless, grinding collision of the New with the Old."
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - "That is when astronomers think the collision took place which produced this new star.
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery - Does it indicate asteroid, or comet, or a new-forming sun, or a nebula resulting from some cosmic collision or disintegration?
— from How We Think by John Dewey
