War and Peace vocabulary

"What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?" the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. "Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the Creator?" he said, looking inquiringly at Levin.

 Levin felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what was a direct answer to the question.

Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)

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God spent a day making a firmament, by which he "divided the waters from the waters." If it had then stated that he spent a day in making moonshine, or one day in making breath for Adam, it would have been as sensible; for the firmament is as truly a part of the earth (being eliminated from it) as our breath is a part of our bodies.

Kersey and Lydia Graves. The Bible of Bibles (1879)

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in the blackness of earthly darkness, the firmament of the unseen has blazed with stars of new and significant lustre.

Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

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it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

William Shakespeare. Hamlet (1600)

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 Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther;

 Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop,

 Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,

 And then your red man, and your white woman,

 With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials,