"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in an amiable person, who is fairer than the children of men, who is all love, and hath no spot in him. Is it not a sweet word, a Redeemer to captives, a Saviour to sinners? And will not the soul rise up, and go forth out of itself? And will it not choose to flit(480) unto him who is the desire of all nations? Will it not go unto him for food and clothing? Love then is the soul's journey and motion towards Jesus, whom faith hath brought in such ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... appearance and manifested a feeling of nostalgia. Mother Carey's chickens, little birds resembling swallows, began to flit around us, skimming closely along the waves. There is a fiction among the sailors that nobody ever saw one of these birds alight or found its nest. Whoever harms one is certain to bring misfortune upon himself and possibly his companions. A prudent traveler would be careful not to offend ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... we are going to start directly," cried Lady Louisa, who was a fluttering creature of three-and-thirty, always eager to flit from one scene to another. "If we don't, I really think we shall be late—and there is some dreadful law, isn't there, to prevent people being ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... in my pocket I remember thinking, "Some poor devil made miserable!" for there had been hint in it of the husband. But I had no thought—I swear it before God—of who that husband was till I beheld her flit back through the open doorway, with terror in her mien and searching eyes fixed on the floor. Then hell opened before me, and I saw my happiness go down into gulfs I had never ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... not that there is much to see in it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole; which you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue. Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in the house of the Lord.' He knew what he was saying when he preferred his humble office to all honours among the godless. He was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the Temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. No doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. No doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have heard and understood the great charter of spiritual worship ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the black hulls cast A firefly radiance down the deep; The inlet gleams, the long clouds sweep, The sails flit up, the ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... The waste cotton-shrub, long useless, disobedient, as the thistle by the wayside,—have ye not conquered it; made it into beautiful bandana webs; white woven shirts for men; bright-tinted air-garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty: the Forest-giants, Marsh-joetuns bear sheaves of golden-grain; AEgir the Sea-demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... more after that, and Hester was content till a new worry came to trouble her. On her way to her room late one night, she saw a tall shadow flit down one of the side corridors that branched from the main one. For a moment she was startled, but, being a woman of courage, she followed noiselessly, till the shadow seemed to vanish in the gloom of the ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe,—from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge, and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... They flit about, the yellow birds, And rest upon the jujube trees [1]. Who followed duke Mu in the grave? Dze-kue Yen-hsi. And this Yen-hsi Was a man above a hundred. When ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... and we have done. If any faint remembrance, as of a dream, flit in some puzzled moment across your brain, and you shall feel that the potion which is to be given you shall not have done its work, and the memory of this existence which you are leaving endeavours vainly to return; we say in such a moment, when you clutch at the dream but it eludes your ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... to flit up the terraces before him, her voice rippling with amusement dropping down on him through the dusk. "Well, you'll have to come nearer than that, if you ever want to make a go of it!" she called over her shoulder. Upon which note this very modern ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... rocks, wrapped in velvet moss. Trees holding up screens of green lace between your eyes and the blue water of the loch. Pebbles white and round as pearls, or silver coins dropped by fairies in a big "flit." That's one of your similes! Grass running down to the edge of the water, and full of bluebells. Water the colour of drowned wallflowers. I don't believe your Highland lochs can be prettier or more idyllic, though this ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of the steamer is the great event of the day; and on Sunday, after morning service, the butterflies of fashion flit to the pier to see the landing of passengers. It is rather embarrassing for weary travelers to be obliged to "run the gauntlet" as they pass through the gay throng, for every one stares with all his might. This does not seem to be ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... the way the blood dribbled from the corpse in a slow, incessant, sanguine exudation. The old negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars. The dead man untied and cast upon the vessel's dock, steam gotten up in a little while, and the broad Potomac shores saw this skeleton ship flit by, as the bloody sun threw gashes and blots of unhealthy light ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... season, and go by; And Cronos pass'd, and Uranus, and then Shall Zeus and all his children utterly Pass, and new Gods be born, and reign, and die,— But thee shall lovers worship evermore What Gods soe'er usurp the changeful sky, Or flit to ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... constantly thought to ride through the air on broomsticks or other equally convenient vehicles; and if they do so, how can you get at them so effectually as by hurling lighted missiles, whether discs, torches, or besoms, after them as they flit past overhead in the gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes that witches ride in the dark hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring down the hags, while he curses them, saying, "Curse, curse Herodias, thy mother is a heathen, damned of God and fettered through the Redeemer's blood." ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... flit to and fro From mast to mast; 10 They feel the distant tempest That nears them fast: Great rocks are straight ahead, Great shoals not past; They shout to one ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... thrown into prison for her deed of madness and now the executioner's axe awaits her. She sits on the damp straw, rocking a bundle, which she takes for her baby, and across her poor wrecked brain there flit once more pictures of all the scenes of her short-lived happiness. Then Faust enters with Mephisto, and tries to persuade her to escape with them. But she instinctively shrinks from her lover, loudly imploring God's and the Saint's ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Dust devils rise up from the plains and veil the crags. In the winter there are snows. In the summer great clouds gather over Shiwina and grow dark with rain. White corn tassels are waving, blue butterfly maidens flit among the blossoming beans. ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... lean sides and their festoons of brown, dusty cobwebs; dull, comfortable creatures they appear to imaginative eyes, waiting hungrily for their yearly meal. The eave-swallows are teasing their sleepy shapes, like the birds which flit about great beasts; gay, movable, irreverent, almost derisive, those barn swallows fly to and fro ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... wrote the story of his broken life in the song of "the bird with the broken pinion, that never flew as high again." Sooner or later each life passes under bondage. For all strength will vanish as the morning dew our joys take wings and flit away; the eye dim, the ear dull, the thought decay, our dearest die. Oft life's waves and billows chill us to the very marrow, while we gasp and shiver midst the surging tide. Then it is a blessed thing to look out through blinding tears upon a friendly face, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... weary horses had slowed down to a walk, the heavy sand retarding progress. It was a gloomy, depressing scene in the spectral gray light, a wide circle of intense loneliness, unbroken by either dwarfed shrub or bunch of grass, a barren expanse stretching to the sky. Vague cloud shadows seemed to flit across the level surface, assuming fantastic shapes, but all of the same dull coloring, imperfect and unfinished. Nothing seemed tangible or real, but rather some grotesque picture of delirium, ever merging into another yet more hideous. The very silence of those surrounding ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... whenever the weather is anything like favourable, presents an animated scene. Eight-oars pass along, the measured pull of the oars in the rowlocks marking the time in musical cadence with their plashing dip in the water; perilous skiffs flit like fire-flies over the glassy surface of the river; men lounge about in the house-boats and barges, or gather together at King's, or Hall's, and industriously promulgate small talk and tobacco-smoke. All is gay and bustling. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... became a bay of the great Lake itself. Every moment of this portion of the ride is a delight. The senses are kept keenly alert, for not only have we the Lake, the bay and the mountains, but part of the way we have flowers and shrubs by the thousands, bees and butterflies flit to and fro, and singing streams come foaming white from the snowbanks above, eager to reach the Lake. As our car-wheels dash across these streamlets they splash up the water on each side into sparkling diamonds and on every hand come ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... My sword! Do you see how it flashes? Soon will it redden in their tepid blood!— What change is this in me? My brow burns hot; A multitude of visions flit before me.— Vengeance it is,—triumph for all those dreams Of greatness, regal power, and lasting fame. My watch-word shall be: livid flames and death! The capitol! Now ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... night, when he lay sleepless, sick for his mother's presence, her voice, her kisses, her soothing touch, the boy would rise to sit at the window—there to watch shadowy figures flit through the street-lamp's circle of light. Once he fancied that his mother came thus out of the night, that for a moment she paused with upturned glance, then disappeared in woe and haste: returning, halted again; but ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... drive back the same day. One's circle had its limitations and degrees of intimacy. Now it is possible motor fifty miles to lunch and home to dine with guests from the remotest corners of the earth. Oceans are crossed in six days, and the eager flit from continent to continent. Engagements can be made by cable and the truly enterprising can accept an invitation to dine in America on a fortnight's notice. Telephones communicate in a few seconds and no one is secure from social intercourse for fifteen minutes. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... remember how keen and sweet the air was, with the scent of the wild thyme? and how the sand-martins circled round us?) As we passed through the long, bare, imposing rooms, something like a shadow of you seemed to flit before us. Or if I glanced out of one of the tall windows, it seemed as if you had just passed under them, along the Riva or across the Piazza. As for Isola Nobile, if I regret that it is n't mine, that is chiefly because I should be glad to ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... house-dog is barking, The night-owl is hooting, The glow-worm is sparkling, The meteor is shooting; And forms, which lie So stiff and still, In their shrouds so chill, Through the live-long day, Now burst their clay, And flit through the sky, On their dusky pinions: Hell's dominions Keep holiday. Sisters, sisters, wherever your watches Are kept, fleet hither to me, Fleet hither, fleet hither, and leave earth's ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... hears an indelicate word or expression, which allows of no possible harmless interpretation. Then not the shadow of a smile should flit across the lips. Either complete silence should be preserved in return, or the words, "I do not understand you," be spoken. A lady will always fail to hear that which she should not hear, or, having unmistakably heard, she ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... common voice could make itself heard produced nevertheless an effect of magical stillness, silence, and solitude. We were alone in it, save that now and then in the far-distant spaces a figure might flit and disappear between the huge glinting columns of metal. It was a hall enchanted and inexplicable. I understood nothing of it. But I understood that half the electricity of New York was being generated by its engines of a hundred and fifty thousand horse-power, and that if the spell ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... shall be glad to help the cause, even so little as that," she answered. Pepperell thanked her for her words, and ignored the look of disappointment that he had seen flit across ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... scar-ridden eunuch!" Pilate shouted as he entered the place. "Wrap thy broad back in this wolf hide and take thou a helmet and spear—so! Now, musicians, pipe thee a tune that will be wild like the wrath of the gods. No music now to make a butterfly flit, but thunder for the beast that maketh the earth tremble. ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... Tybalt, awake me not yet, Around my soft pillow while softer dreams flit, For what are the joys that in waking we prove, Compared with these visions, O, Tybalt, my love? Let the birds to the rise of the mist carol shrill, Let the hunter blow out his loud horn on the hill, Softer sounds, softer pleasures, in slumber I prove,— But think not I dreamt ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... predicament: I knew that within myself was a Golconda of memories of other lives, yet I was unable to do more than flit like a madman through those memories. I had my Golconda but ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... swoln with blooms Like chrysalids impatient for the air, The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run Along the furrows, ants make their ado; Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain—and God renews His ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... of her kiss. How had he kept himself from catching her to his heart in that moment, and holding her there while he drank his fill of the cup she had so shyly proffered? How had he ever suffered her to flit from him down the rough kopje and turn at the bottom with the old intangible shield uplifted ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... regularity; and at the same time greater brilliancy is exhibited. The fantastic headdresses of the women nod and vibrate like waving plants of Indian corn; the lustrous hair and the gaudy costumes glisten and sparkle in the sunlight, fox pelts wag back and forth, plumes and feathers flit and dance, the monotonous chanting, the dull thumping and drumming rise into the deep blue sky, re-echoing from the towering cliffs, whose pinnacles look down upon the weird scene from heights far above the uppermost ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... and we struggled. That struggle brought down the clock with a shattering crash. Robert Turold and I were locked in one another's arms, wrestling desperately for the revolver, when I saw the great moon face of the clock flit past my vision like the face of a man taking a header off a pier. The crash startled Robert Turold. His hand loosened, and I got the revolver from him. As I tore it from his fingers it went off, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... others are the anagrammatic answer to Pilate's question, "Quid est veritas''—namely, "Est vir qui adest''; and the transposition of "Horatio Nelson'' into "Honor est a Nilo''; and of "Florence Nightingale'' into "Flit on, cheering angel.'' James I.'s courtiers discovered in "James Stuart'' "A just master,'' and converted "Charles James Stuart'' into "Claimes Arthur's seat.'' "Eleanor Audeley,'' wife of Sir John Davies, is said to have been brought before the High ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... out to the end of the Fifth Act. I cannot, unfortunately, boast of being merely a spectator, seated in the royal box, applauding now and again. There is a wrench at my heart, a pang in every nerve. When I have put out the light and am in my bed, little touches, little glances, little words flit about and fill the darkness. When I get up in the morning, I thrill with lively anticipations, my blood seems to course through me to the strains ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... the lily blooms," he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, "to the cliffs round which the eagles flit,—what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On one side are the sylvan valleys, the thick grown ravines, the meandering ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... of birds, the gulls and rooks and little brown wavering things which flit out and along the edge of the chalk-pits, is once more refreshment to me, utterly untempered. A merle is singing in a bramble thicket; the dew has not yet dried off the bramble leaves. A feather of a moon floats across the sky; the distance ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... comment or change of expression, but a tear seemed to flit and zigzag its way down the dried courses of her thousand wrinkles. She stood in the doorway, facing the moon as it rose above the roof of the granary. If she was a little translucent for so solid-shaped an old presence, Old Dalton did not notice ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... much for the present time, and assure posterity that there never was such a lamb as Catherine II., and that, so far from assassinating her own husband and Czar Ivan,[2] she wept over every chicken that she had for dinner. How crimes, like fashions, flit from clime to clime! Murder reigns under the Pole, while you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised to hear that there ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... was cast,—the authority of Beau Lovelace was nearly supreme in fashionable and artistic circles, and from the moment he was seen devoting his attention to the "new beauty," excited whispers began to flit from mouth to mouth,—"She will be the rage this season!"—"We must ask her to come to us!"—"Do ask Lady Winsleigh to introduce us!"—"She must come to our house!" and so on. And Lady Winsleigh was ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... remarked the Bishop, gravely, "life is but a mirror which reflects themselves. Other forms and faces may flit by, in the background; dimly seen, scarcely noticed. There is but one face and form occupying the entire foreground. Life is, to such, the mirror which ministers to vanity. Should a husband appear in the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... heart for a single day in ordinary circumstances. The lights and shadows that flit ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... flashing waves, he heard their ceaseless roar; Or carolled in his light canoe content, As, bound from creek to creek, it grazed the shore; Gods of the storm the dreary space might sweep, And shapes of death, and gliding spectres gaunt, Might flit, he thought, o'er the remoter deep; And whilst strange voices cried, Avaunt, avaunt! Uncertain lights, seen through the midnight gloom, Might lure him sadly on ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... too—It was curious about those dreams. She would now have found it an intolerable bore to sit with hands idle in her lap and eyes upon vacancy, watching the dim, luminous shadows flit aimlessly by. Yet that was the way she used to pass hours—entire days. She used to fight off sleep at night the longer to enjoy her one source of pure happiness. There was no doubt about it, the fire of romance was burning low, and she was becoming commonplace, practical, resigned. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... her have her own way. So she goes from t'one to t'other, till at last she says, 'There's poor Tommy Johnson, as used to live in the stone row; he's flitted with his wench Betty, and nobody knows where they've gone.' 'That's strange,' says I, 'what made 'em flit that fashion?' 'Oh,' she says, 'they'd a deal of trouble. Thomas wasn't right in his head arter his lad Sammul went off, so he took up with them Brierleys, and turned teetotaller; and then his missus,'—but I canna tell ye what she said about ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Derek watched her flit down the aisle, saw her jump up the little ladder onto the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance. He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The thing seemed ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... feast in the merry noontide, and glad is the April green That a Volsung looks on the sunlight and the night and the darkness have been. Earls think of marvellous stories, and along the golden strings Flit words of banded brethren and names of war-fain Kings: All the days of the deeds of Sigmund who was born so long ago; All deeds of the glorious Signy, and her tarrying-tide of woe; Men tell of the years of Volsung, and how long agone ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... Bay when he returned above decks to lean on the rail, watching the shores flit by, marking with a little wonder the rapid change in temperature, the growing mildness in the air as the steamer drew farther away from the gorge-like head of Toba with its aerial ice fields and snowy slopes. Twenty miles ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... existence then too fanciful For our life's common light, who are so dull? Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire Warms feet and hands—nor does to more aspire; By whose compact utilitarian heap The present may sit down and go to sleep, Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, And ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... charming, if English. Thoughts of Cosette, which used to flit through his brain with a surprising effect that can only be likened to an effect of flamingoes sweeping across an English meadow, had now almost entirely ceased to disturb him. He had but to imagine what Geraldine's attitude towards Cosette would ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... an older friend; The humbler prose has fallen to thy share: Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, What spoken in thy presence must offend— That, set aside some few caprices wild, Those humorous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, In all my threadings of this worldly maze, (And I have watched thee almost from a child), Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, I have not found ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... before they push a way through the tunnel," said Jack. "We've certainly got a couple of hours before they find where we came out. Then, very likely, they'll start a fresh search for us among the ruined houses. That would give us a bit more pull in making a flit ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... stones that held the houses of the dead. They are tapu; about them flit the veinahae, the matiahae, and the etuahae, dread vampires and ghosts that have charge of the corpse and wait to seize the living. Well have these ghoulish phantoms feasted; whole islands are theirs, and soon they will sit upon the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... jackets on their respective beds reading or talking, would listen for her departure. There was always a moment when they knew that the excitement was over and the landing stricken into certainty. Then Mademoiselle would flit to the top of the stairs and demand, leaning over the balustrade, "Eh bien! Eh bien!" ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... who is matchless among you for wit; A Leyden jar always full charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit. His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric; In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... ultimate notice from London to Mrs Machin, and it was on blue paper. It stated, baldly, that as Mrs Machin had failed to comply with all the previous notices, had, indeed, ignored them, she and her goods would now be ejected into the street, according to the law. It gave her twenty-four hours to flit. Never had a respectable dame been so insulted as Mrs Machin was insulted by that notice. The prospect of camping out in Brougham Street confronted her. When Denry reached home that evening, Mrs Machin, as the phrase is, ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... alternative struck a sudden terror into her; for the abbot abruptly records in his book that 'here her spirit seemed to flit out of her, and she began to tremble very much, and in vain to contend with tears. I had her all dissolved at my feet within a few moments. She was ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the flag! Up, up, betimes, and proudly speak of it; A lordly thing to see on tower and crag, O'er which,—as eagles flit, With eyes a-fire, and wings of phantasy,— Our memories hang superb! The foes we frown upon shall feel the curb Of our full sway; and they shall shamed be Who wrong, with sword or pen, The Code that keeps us ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... moon-irradiated plain of Umbria. Over all rise shadowy Apennines, with dim suggestions of Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Montefalco, and Spoleto on their basements. Little thin whiffs of breezes, very slight and searching, flit across, and shiver as they pass from Apennine to plain. The slowly moving population—women in veils, men winter-mantled—pass to and fro between the buildings and the grey immensity of sky. Bells ring. The bugles of the soldiers blow retreat in convents turned to barracks. Young men ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... flown? Am I once more sunk to a level with my former self? Once I thought that religion was a substance with me,—not a shadow, to flit, to mock, and to vanish when its succour was most needed; yet now does my ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was a goodly heap for to behold, And spake the praises of the workman's wit, But full great pity, that so fair a mould Did on so weak foundation ever sit; For on a sandy hill, that still did flit, And fall away, it mounted was full high, And every breath of heaven shaked it; And all the hinder parts, that few could spy, Were ruinous ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the heathen barbarian. The terror inspired in the rude English mind by the mark and the woodland, the home of wild beasts and of hostile ghosts, of deadly spirits and of fierce enemies, gleams luridly through every line. The fen and the forest are dim and dark; will-o'-the-wisps flit above them, and gloom closes them in; wolves and wild boars lurk there, the quagmire opens its jaws and swallows the horse and his rider; the foeman comes through it to bring fire and slaughter to the clan-village at the dead of night. To these real ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... flit round the young ferash? Does the grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... quaint and amusing! Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day, And took with her your trifle of money; Bless your heart, they don't mind - they're exceedingly kind - They don't blame you - as long as you're funny! It's a comfort to feel If your partner should flit, Though YOU suffer a deal, THEY don't mind it a bit - They don't blame you - so ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... of the Renaissance, traveling was at that time very disagreeable; everywhere in Europe it was as difficult then as it is now in the Orient. Great lords and ladies, who to-day flit across the country in comfortable railway carriages, traveled in the sixteenth century, even in the most civilized states of Europe, mounted on horses or mules, or slowly in sedan-chairs, exposed to ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... "We must flit, and again seek some other home. Though he should keep our secret,—and I believe he will if he be asked,—it will be known that there is a secret, and a secret of such a nature that its circumstances have driven ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... least funny, that it was absolutely flat; but it had quite the opposite effect upon the Honourable Arthur. He had no command over himself or his horses for some minutes; and at intervals during the afternoon the full felicity of the idea would steal upon him, and the smile of reminiscence would flit across his ruddy face. ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... feeding, have made it all too tempting a mark for the rifles of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if sufficient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck, ker-r-ruck, very like a tree-toad's call, and flit about among the trees with the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invitations for a shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in districts where nuts abound, being "more common than the robin" about Washington, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... water flows it forms a little oasis upon the barren slope. Along the course of the streams are little patches of green grass, flowers, and bushes. Birds flit about, and there are tracks of small animals in the mud. Evidently the water is as great an attraction to them as it is to us. If a well were dug in the plateau above, we can understand now how ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... branches like incandescent globes of colored glass. But it is usually impossible for one on the ground to see the finest blooms, which turn their faces to the sunlight above the canopy of green. Gray apes chatter in the tree-tops; strange tropic birds of gorgeous plumage flit from bough to bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the undergrowth; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid swamps; occasionally the jungle crashes beneath the tread of some heavy animal—a rhinoceros, perhaps, or a wild ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... fills those woods with the very breath of melancholy, no birds will sing in the multitudinous cloisters except the birds of the night whose melody is one doleful and mocking note. The bracken burns and withers, lush grass rots and whitens above the fir-roots, the birds flit from shade to shade with no carolling. And over all will stand the trees sleeping with ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Hare, who had been so absorbed as to forget himself, suddenly felt a cold tightening of the skin of his face, and a hard swell of his breast. The dance of Snap's eyes, the downward flit of his hand seemed instantaneous with a red flash and loud report. Instinctively Hare dodged, but the light impact of something like a puff of air gave place to a tearing hot agony. Then he slipped down, back to the stone, with a ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... self-controlled, seemed to show a person of equable temperament, without any strong emotions. In her light cheerfulness, her perpetual interest in the things about her, she might have reminded a spectator of some of the smaller sea-birds that flit endlessly from wave to wave, for whom the business of life appears to be summed up in ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... red sulky faces were hidden in the dark, watching candle after candle sputter, brighten, and twinkle, till the trembling shadows began to flit away like ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... sailors aboard he learned that he was not the only member of the crew who had been shanghaied. Aside from a half-dozen reckless men from the criminal classes who had signed voluntarily, either because they could not get a berth upon a decent ship, or desired to flit as quietly from the law zone of the United States as possible, not a man was there who had been ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the giant-mother, 'which thou beholdest to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep on, equally unknown and dim, is ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... best appear to you! how severe its voice! how forbidding its aspect! With what animation, on the contrary, do you enter into the mere pursuits of time and the world! What bright anticipations of joy and happiness flit before your eyes! How you are struck and dazzled at the view of the prizes of this life, as they are called! How you admire the elegancies of art, the brilliance of wealth, or the force of intellect! ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... the deep woods of Mexico, Where screams the "painted paraquet," And mocking-birds flit to and fro, With borrowed notes they half forget; Where brilliant flowers and poisonous vines Are mingled in a firm embrace, And the same gaudy plant entwines Some reptile of a poisonous race; Where spreads the Itos' ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... names menacingly from the saddle, once, twice. The drowsy answers—grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, or deprecating—came out into the silent darkness in which the horseman sat still, and presently a dark figure would flit out coughing in the still air. Sometimes a low-toned woman cried through the window-hole softly, "He's coming directly, senor," and the horseman waited silent on a motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... and pleasant; flowers spring up, great trees cast a friendly shade, streams murmur cheerfully over their pebbly beds, jewelled fruits are to be had for the trouble of gathering them; invisible hands set out well-covered dinner-tables, brilliant and graceful forms flit in and out across our path, and we all at once find ourselves in the midst of a company of dear old friends whom we have known and loved ever since we knew anything. There is Fortunatus with his magic purse, and the ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... to complete annihilation, is yet identical with that of "an hidden untimely birth." Translated into the language of philosophy this somewhat vague notion might be expressed as follows: All things, past, present and to come, which flit as unreal shadows on the wall of time and space, are manifestations of the one sole force which is everlasting and omnipresent. They are not parts of a whole which is one and divisible: all that we see and know of them in life is nothing; and ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Monsieur le Duc. One would as soon think of taking the adoration of a butterfly seriously. One is a flower, butterflies come round, and when they find no honey, flit away elsewhere. You amuse yourself, so do I. Talk about hearts, I do not believe in ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... No record of thee Shall there ever be, Since thou dost not share Roses in Pieria grown. In the deathful cave, With the feeble troop Of the folk that droop, Lurk and flit and crave, Woman severed ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... narrow straight pathway doth wind. The sighing winds whisper of sacrifice, toil, And foot-prints where pilgrims have trod Are crimson and tear-washed, where fissures are rent Wierd spirits of pain flit abroad. ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton
... It takes an astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... quitting Jerome's arm. She did so with a gentle murmur of explanation, for she could do nothing abruptly, then went on before him swiftly. Her white shawl hung from her head to her waist in sharp slants. She moved through the dusk with the evanescent flit of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... eyes, in which tears were shining, she said: "Forgive me, Mr. Carrollton. I sent Gritty home on purpose to see if you would be annoyed, for I felt vexed because you would not humor my whim and meet me at the bridge. I am sorry I caused you any uneasiness," she continued, as she saw a shadow flit over his face. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... peered at him through my binocular, while he returned the compliment by peering at me, and then warily ventured to rehearse his little tune. The least movement on my part would startle him, cause him to flit to another perch and crane out his neck to glare at me questioningly with wild, dilated eyes, uncertain whether I was to be trusted or not. Both of us presently grew tired of our strained position, and so I walked off and he flew away. No doubt there was mutual ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Sikes, which often flit about, but must not be trusted. Mr. Patch could not have given a better proof that his rejection ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... understood the reticent tones of the man behind, and how admirably the loosely painted convention of landscape background is made to carry on the purely artificial arrangement of light and shade. In the Reynolds the shadowed figure on the left, and the shadows that flit across the skirts of the other two figures, and the fine relief of the dark trees, give a wonderful richness of design to a picture that is not in other respects ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... disk my course I trace, There restlessly forever flit; Small is the circuit I embrace, Two hands suffice to cover it. Yet ere that field I traverse, I Full many a thousand mile must go, E'en though with tempest-speed I fly, Swifter than arrow from ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... upon the shore, Young looked back at the hut. It was dark. He saw three boats flit silently by him toward the city, as if phantoms guided them. They crossed the moonbeams, and Young lost them in the dark ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White |
