Late some evening, early in May, when one by one the birds have withdrawn their voices from the vesper chorus, listen for the lingering "'tsee, 'tsee, 'tseet" (usually twelve times repeated in a minute), that the redstart sweetly but rather monotonously sings from the evergreens, where, as his tiny body burns in the twilight, Mrs. Wright likens him to a "wind-blown firebrand, half glowing, half charred."英文原著 · 《Bird Neighbors》
Methought I was a good deal sacrificed, and rather represented in the light of a firebrand of a fellow whom my cloud of lawyers had restrained with difficulty from extremes. But I let it pass, and made but the one suggestion, that I should be described as ready to deliver my own evidence and adduce that of others before any commission of inquiry - and the one demand, that I should be immediately furnished with a copy.英文原著 · 《Catriona》
"My dear, what a firebrand!" whispered Irais. I got up and went in. They were sitting on the sofa, Minora with clasped hands, gazing admiringly into Miss Jones's face, which wore a very different expression from the one of sour and unwilling propriety I have been used to seeing.英文原著 · 《Elizabeth and her German Garden》
For some weeks after this I saw little of the young firebrand, though from time to time he attended my receptions and invariably behaved to me with a modesty which proved that he placed some bounds to his presumption. I heard, moreover, that M. de Saintonge, in acknowledgment of the triumph over the St. Germains which he had afforded him, had taken him up; and that the connection between the families being publicly avowed, the two were much together.英文原著 · 《From the Memoirs of a Minister of France》
Smoky darkness, getting streaked with dangerous fire. "Tried?" said his Grace of Newcastle to the City Deputation: "Oh indeed he shall be tried immediately; he shall be hanged directly!"--assure yourselves of that. [Walpole, ii. 231: Details of the Siege, ib. 218-225; in Gentleman's Magazine, xxvi. 256, 312-313, 358; in Adelung, vii.; &c. &c.] And Byng's effigy was burnt all over England. And mobs attempt to burn his Seat and Park; and satires and caricatures and firebrands are coming out: and the poor Constitutional Country is bent on applying surgery, if it but know how.英文原著 · 《History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 17》