"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes must ever be open for beautiful little living things. Now a green and gold lizard flashes across a bit of grey rock, now a dragon-fly disports its sapphire wings amid the yellowing ferns or purple ling, butterflies, white, blue, and black and orange, flit hither and thither, whilst little beetles, blue as enamel ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... affirmed the other, heartily, as he eyed the boy; and perhaps a dim suspicion that he might find the fugitive valuable as a guide began to flit through ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... face to face with the mighty hosts of the vanished dead, all clothed in life, and girded round with a panoply of power, and light, and strength; with vivid memory of the secret wrongs deemed buried in their graves. Our cities are thronged with an unseen people who flit about us, their piercing eyes invisible to us, are scanning all our ways. The universe is teeming with them,—"THERE ARE NO DEAD,"—the air, the earth, and the sky above, are filled with a ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... flies, From flower to flower, and loads her labouring thighs 490 With treasured sweets, robbing those flowers, which, left, Find not themselves made poorer by the theft, Their scents as lively, and their looks as fair, As if the pillager had not been there. Ne'er doth she flit on Pleasure's silken wing; Ne'er doth she, loitering, let the bloom of Spring Unrifled pass, and on the downy breast Of some fair flower indulge untimely rest; Ne'er doth she, drinking deep of those rich dews Which chemist Night prepared, that ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... cocksparrow, and bee, There's a ring gaudy-green in the dell, Sing, sing, ye sweet cherubs, that flit in the tree; La! who can draw tears from a well-well-well, Who ever drew tears ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... defeat itself, and the bird flies and chirps in agony, when she might pass unnoticed by keeping still. The most marked exception which I have noticed is the Red Thrush, which, in this respect, as in others, has the most high-bred manners among all our birds: both male and female sometimes flit in perfect silence through the bushes, and show solicitude only in a sob which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the elated son of Vulcan, as he descended the companion ladder, "we're goin' to flit, lad. We're about to rise in the world, so get up your bellows. It's the last time we shall have to be bothered with them ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... ghosts that flit around, While spade and mattock death-fields glean, Open with words from the unseen The mysteries now ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... the business which had been so auspiciously commenced under his judicious arrangements. Such, indeed, was the then critical state of affairs at Naples, that it required both the ablest heads, and the best hearts, to seize the favourable moment, already beginning to flit away, for effectually restoring loyalty and order in that devoted country. During the absence of Lord Nelson and Captain Troubridge, from Sicily and Naples, Cardinal Ruffo, with his army of twenty thousand ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... vagar wander, roam, flit, drift, hover. vago, -a wandering, wavering, vague, indistinct, hazy. vagoroso, -a wandering, errant. vaguedad f. vagueness; con —— vaguely, uncertainly. valenta f. valor, courage. valer be worth, help, avail; ms vale it is better. valeroso, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... sake of the river, a rustic cot is taken for a few weeks by a party of boating-people. Then the quaint, old-fashioned gardens blossom with a sudden luxuriance of striped tents and flaming umbrellas, while bright women in many-hued boating-costumes flit among cabbages and onions like curious tropical birds and butterflies. As a rule, however, the Dean is abandoned to its usual rustic population and to artists, numbers of the latter remaining all winter in the haunts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... her MS., and paused to reread some passage just penned, which she had laboriously composed, and thought particularly good as an illustration of the idea she was striving to embody perspicuously, a smile would flit across her countenance while ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... his throat, pretended that he drank it. At the moment when he felt the moisture on his lips it seemed to him that his breast and stomach were aflame and that if he did not quench that flame he would drop dead. Before his eyes red spots began to flit, and in his jaws he felt a terrible pain, as if some one stuck a thousand pins in them. His hands shook so that he almost spilt these last drops. Nevertheless, he caught only two or three in his mouth with his tongue; the rest ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that she was fond of musing, of solitude; that in her fancies she believed in the reality of visions which might flit before her eyes as they flit before the eyes of all ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soldierly stuff; but he felt a distinct shiver flit along his back. His past life had not lacked thrilling adventures and strangely varied experiences with desperate men. Usually he met sudden emergencies rather calmly, sometimes with phlegmatic indifference. This passionate outburst on the priest's part, however, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... enough, about a mile down the mountain, a rider on a white horse was seen to flit rapidly across a heathy open and vanish among the trees on ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... towards which adventurous youth turned its steps when real life was to be begun. He dreaded and yet longed to be there, and his heart was in a turmoil of conflicting emotion as he watched the landscape flit by. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... where dwell the dead, And hear the roaring of the streams of Hell. And he will see the feeble, shadowy tribes, And Balder sitting crown'd, and Hela's throne. Then must he not regard the wailful ghosts Who all will flit, like eddying leaves, around; But he must straight accost their solemn queen, And pay her homage, and entreat with prayers, Telling her all that grief they have in Heaven For Balder, whom she holds by right below; If haply he may melt her heart with words, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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 ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... plainly visible as you look closer, are countless forms of brightness and of beauty. You will find them among the shining coals that glimmer in scarlet and gold before you when the embers lie clear and warm upon the hearth. You will behold them among the shadows that flit across the embers with delicate grace ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... breeches-pocket, to completely beating Bourbon's oppressive ideas out of Bourbon's head. A little fact, but how important, then and there! Under the Successor, all this may be different:—ghastly beings, Old Tutors, Favorites, Mother's-Favorites, flit, as yet invisible, on the new backstairs:—should Bute and Company get into the foreground, people will then know how ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in the sunbeam that pierces the yew; Its colours were crimson, black, orange and blue. It looked like a flag that the fairies might fly If leading an army from here to the sky. And out of the shadow it came from the lane To flit through the light into shadow again. O brother! dear brother! what could it have been? Such colours, such beauty, I seldom have seen. Look! there in the distance it flutters once more, Now right and now left by the summer-house door.' And like one bewitched he set off at a bound, Though ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... letters a-flicker from crimson to blue High overhead. All round him the mad world seethes. Hansoms, like cantering beetles, with diamond eyes Run through the moons of it; busses in yellow and red Hoot; and St. Paul's is a bubble afloat in the skies, Watching the pale moths flit and the dark ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... forms were flitting past. She seemed to recognize a few more of these. They floated through the Hall of Death towards the dark curtain, and there they vanished. Would her husband and her daughter thus flit past? No, their sighs and lamentations still sounded from above:—and she had been nearly forgetting them for the sake of ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... had set in. There was nothing to be seen of any bird although some do flit to and fro through the forest in winter-time and the children on their way to Millsdorf had even heard some twitter. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... other, while large flights of wild-duck rise splashing from the stream. Eagles soar aloft, or, with the vultures, alight upon a sand-bank to dispute the possession of some carcass with the jackals and the foxes. Water wag-tails flit along the shore, or in the most friendly manner board your steamer to feed on the crumbs from your tea-table, while large numbers of gay-plumaged king-fishers dart in and out from their nests tunnelled far into the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... Stability above? To match and mate Feeling with knowledge,—make as manifest Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest, Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink, A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread Whitening the wave,—to strike all this life dead, Run mercury into a mould like lead, And henceforth have the plain result to show— How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know— This were the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... the children all are lapped in sleep The pretty Nymphlets of the sea shall rise, And we shall know them as they flit and creep And peep and glance and murmur lullabies; While the pale moon comes up beyond the hill, And Proteus rests ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... they were winded by half the pack, while the other half were running the first fox up the fence. The crash and music of the hounds re-echoed from the trees and the enfolding hills above, the shrieking of the jays as they flit protesting from tree to tree, the hearty ring of the huntsman's voice cheering his hounds—surely all this should send each fox flying out over the fields beyond! But a fox has no nerves. He keeps his head with the coolness of a Red Indian, and a "slimness" ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... really, to discharge a duty in the face of his own scepticism that he had spoken thus, and he did not expect to see another shade of sadness flit across ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... vapours to the Baron's brain New stratagems the radiant Lock to gain. Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late, Fear the just Gods, and think of Scylla's fate! Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, She dearly pays for ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... of air from an open oven. The intense heat only serves to make the insects more active. The locusts shrill through the long sultry noon, the bees hum with greater industry among the flowers, multitudes of butterflies flit joyfully from place to place, and the turkey-vulture soars high above the forest, for the intense heat only serves to make his dinner more plentiful and for him more palatable. The small animals now seek the shade of the forest and the birds, with bills open and wings drooping, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... night, when his wheel pulled him, he rose and went out into the garden. The night was at odds with morning which was which. An occasional bat would flit like a doubtful shadow across his eyes, but a cool breath of air was roaming about as well, which was not of the night at all, but plainly belonged to the morning. He wandered to the bottom of the garden—to the clump of trees, lay down where Agnes had been lying the night before, and thought ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... cried Bob, who so far had only heard the occasional note of a bird which was invisible. Now he saw one or two flit across the sunny ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... arrear. He got the first brash at Whitsunday put ower wi' fair word and piping; but when Martinmas came, there was a summons from the grund-officer to come wi' the rent on a day preceese, or else Steenie behoved to flit. Sair wark he had to get the siller; but he was weel-freended, and at last he got the haill scraped thegether—a thousand merks—the maist of it was from a neighbour they caa'd Laurie Lapraik—a sly tod. Laurie had walth o' ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... presence—of the Irish members at Westminster destroys every hope that Ireland will be governed by her best citizens. The reasons why this is so are various; some of them may be shortly stated. The system, in the first place, of double representation, under which members of the Irish Parliament must flit to and fro between Ireland and England, and debate one day about Irish matters in Dublin, and the next about Imperial, or in truth British, matters in England, makes it impossible for quiet hard-working Irishmen, who carry ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... anguish and self-murd'ring thought, He was so wasted and forpined quite, That all his substance was consumed to nought, And nothing left but like an airy sprite; That on the rocks he fell so flit and light, That he thereby received no hurt at all; But chanced on a craggy cliff to light; Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl, That at the last he found a cave ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... humiliation, I could boom forth with a sound equal to that of dozens of singers, if I could only hit upon the formula. During morning and evening prayers, which were extremely lengthy and fatiguing, I fancied that one of my two selves could flit up, and sit clinging to the cornice, and look down on my other self and the rest of us, if I could only find the key. I laboured for hours in search of these formulas, thinking to compass my ends by means absolutely irrational. For example, I was convinced that if I could only count ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... strange nomenclature of the savages who take their cognomens from some characteristic of their nature, she was known as the Antelope, because she more resembled that graceful animal than any other of the young maidens in her tribe. She would flit from rock to rock, when out gathering berries, or float down the stream in her birch-bark canoe, catching fish for her aged father's meals. Crouching Panther had for a long time had his eyes riveted upon the Antelope, and would often lie for hours on some ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom. And flit from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reading lamps and disciplined shelves of brown bound books. Now and then a dignitary in gaiters would pass him, "Portly capon," or a drift of white-robed choir boys cross a distant arcade and vanish in a doorway, or the pink and cream of some girlish dress flit like a butterfly across the cool still spaces of the place. Particularly he responded to the ruined arches of the Benedictine's Infirmary and the view of Bell Harry tower from the school buildings. He was ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... it all before," Rat said, with a note of boredom in his reedy voice. "Why, with hyperspace drive you'd be able to flit all over the galaxy without suffering the time-lag you experience with regular drive. And then you'd accomplish your pet dream of going everywhere and seeing everything. Ah! Look at the eyes light up! Look at the radiant expression! You get ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... beggars all description; and yet, listen! I will paint it for you, if I can. It is a lovely spot. Tall mountains, crowned with verdure, rise in awful sublimity around; a river runs through, and bright flowers grow to the water's edge. But there a group of Indians gather. They flit to and fro, with something like sorrow upon their dark brows. In their midst lies a manly form, but his cheek, how deathly! His eyes are wild with the fitful fire of fever. One friend stands before him—nay, I should say, kneels; for see, he is pillowing that poor head ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the thorn-tree was silhouetted against the sky, for it stood on the edge of a slight descent. Every twig and leaf was distinctly visible, while the openings in the foliage were so numerous that not a wing could flit by without my seeing it. The nest itself was partially veiled by a bunch of leaves. What the view might be from the other side I did not investigate that morning; I preferred to leave the birds the slight screen afforded by the foliage, for since ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... ouk, as I gaed out To flit a tether'd ewe and lamb, I met, as skiffin' ower the green, A jolly, rantin' Highlandman. His shape was neat, wi' feature sweet, And ilka smile my favour wan; I ne'er had seen sae braw a lad As this young ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Nicolette Passing, lifted skirts and let— 'Neath the pretty ermine frock, 'Neath the snowy linen smock— Just a dainty ankle show. Lo, the sick was healed, and lo, Found him whole as ne'er before. From his bed he rose once more, And to his own land did flit, Safe ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... uttering a deep sigh, he fell back, and, stretching out his arms, expired. On the next the water had a more happy effect: the eye, which at first was glazed and fixed, slowly acquired a look of consciousness, the muscles of the face relaxed, and a smile, expressive of gratitude, seemed to flit across the countenance of the sufferer. The next, who was sitting by himself, almost naked, with his feet close to the sea, received the cup with a vacant stare, and dashed the precious liquid on the ground, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Gnats and moths flit in the soft sunlight and spiders run over tree trunks while their single shining lines of silk are stretched ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... them, to take place in the Pleasance, and resolved to add a third to the party, in hope that, either in coming or returning, he might find an opportunity of delivering the letter to Leicester; for strange stories began to flit among the domestics, which alarmed him for the lady's safety. Accident, however, detained Dickon a little behind the Earl, and as he reached the arcade he saw them engaged in combat; in consequence of which he hastened to alarm the guard, having little doubt that what bloodshed took ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning at such moments whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And when I said I was not a young girl myself he got all the madder. Well, I allowed him to think I was going to marry Dr. Denbigh (I wonder what the doctor would say), and as a consequence Harry will flit to-morrow, and he is with poor little Peggy out in the grape-arbor, and she is crying her eyes out. If he dares tell her what a fool he is I could kill him. I am horribly afraid that he will let it out, for I never saw such an alarmingly impetuous youth. Young Lochinvar out of the west ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... many other thoughts flit over one's mind in looking at any phase of work, or any piece of work. In the right choice of work lies the fullest use of one's capacities; in the right conditions of work lies the freest play of one's energies; in the right spirit of work lies the way of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... (meat) viando. Flesh karno. Flexibility fleksebleco. Flexible fleksebla. Flexion flekso. Flicker lumsxanceli. Flight forkuro. Flight (birds) flugado. Fling jxeti. Flint (mineral) siliko. Flippant babila. Flirt amindumeti, koketi. Flirt koketulino. Flirtation koketeco. Flit flirti. Float (intrans.) nagxi. Float (trans.) flosi. Flock (congregation) zorgitaro. Flock aro. Flog skurgxi. Flood superakvego. Floor planko. Floor (storey) etagxo. Florid rugxega. Florin floreno. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... pleasant all, and sunny, Bees are busy making honey, You can flit from bough to bough, You can sing and twitter now: Wait till winter comes, you rover, Then your frolic will be over. Cats are on the roof already: Birdie, ...
— The Nursery, July 1877, XXII. No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Growing Things! As through the gladden sight ye flow And flit and glow, Ye win me so In soul to go, I too am waves, I too am wings, And kindred motion ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the fire the lovers sit, On rosy wings the moments flit; One little word confirms their bliss, And seals it with a ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... burst forth from his eyes. "I am free!" he exclaimed, loudly and in a tone of exultation. "Yes, I am free! My life and the world belong to me again. All women are mine again, Cupid and all the gods of love will boldly flit toward me, for they need not conceal themselves any longer from the face of a husband strolling on forbidden grounds, nor from the spying eyes of a jealous wife. Life is mine again, and I will enjoy it; yes I enjoy it. I will enjoy it like fragrant wine pressed to our lips in a golden goblet, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... 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
... cotton; that, too, was difficult. 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-jotuns—bear sheaves of golden grain; AEgir—the Sea-Demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... used to flit through Green Valley streets like a chattering blue-jay. But now nobody saw her, only now and then at night, slinking along through the dark. And many a kindly heart ached for her, remembering how Fanny loved the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... her canny realization of the value of tantalism. She was not long left in ignorance of his record for flitting fancy and she felt that he would flit from her as soon as he conquered her. Her ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... its loop, put the point to his lips, and paused. He was standing with his back to the failing light, so I could not see the expression of his mobile face. When he paused, I knew that no ordinary doubt beset him. He stood thus for nearly a minute. While he waited, I watched a pair of swans flit ghost-like over the silken surface of the lake. Between us and a dark bank of wood the lights of the house flamed red. The melancholy even-song of a blackbird wailed out from a shrubbery beside us. Then Herbert Brande wrote in ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... of wedded life flew over Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot without a cloud, save a few dark but transitory ones which I saw now and then flit over the husband's countenance as the time when he should become a father drew near, and came to be more and more spoken of. 'I should not survive her,' said Mr Arbuthnot, one day in reply to a chance observation of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... joyous than the Parisians have been during the last two days of sunshine. The Jardins des Tuileries are crowded with well-dressed groups; the budding leaves have burst forth with that delicate green peculiar to early spring; and the chirping of innumerable birds, as they flit from tree to tree, announces the approach ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... in thy quiet:—a cessation—a coolness from business—an indolence almost cloistral—which is delightful! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spoke of the past:—the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their enshrining ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... those were such as had feelings and misfortunes like its own; among whom it was its hard fate frequently to suffer imposition, from assumed worth and fictitious distress. Beings of supposed benevolence, capable of perceiving, loving, and promoting merit and virtue, have now and then seemed to flit and glide before it. But the visions were deceitful. Ere they were distinctly seen, the phantoms vanished. Or, if such beings do exist, it has experienced the peculiar hardship of never having met with ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the direction in which the strangers had gone, thus covering the spare man to whom she was talking from their backward glances. Bates, who was looking up at her face with his heart-hunger in his eyes, saw a look of contempt for the passing remark flit across her face, and because of the fond craving of his own heart, his sympathy, strangely enough, went out to the young man who had spoken, rather than to her sentiment of contempt. The angel of human loves alone could tell why John Bates loved this girl after all that ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... had no argument ready, and etiquette was waived. "Time!" she repeated, and then the two battering-rams, revolving their fists country-fashion, engaged. Half-forgotten Homeric phrases began to flit from a faraway schoolroom back into the little teacher's mind and she began to be consoled for the absence of gloves—those tough old ancients had used gauges of iron and steel. The two boys were evenly matched. After a few thundering body blows they grew wary, and when the round closed their ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... the City of Marvel, but artists toiling at the work they loved. They took no pattern from the houses of men, but each man wrought what his inner eye had seen and carved in marble the visions of his dream. All over the roof of one of the palace chambers winged lions flit like bats, the size of every one is the size of the lions of God, and the wings are larger than any wing created; they are one above the other more than a man can number, they are all carven out of one block of marble, the chamber itself is hollowed from it, and it is ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... hour of dusk and mist and midges, Now the tired planes drone homeward through the haze, And distant wood-fires wink behind the ridges, And the first flare some timorous Hun betrays; Now no shell circulates, but all men brood Over their evening food; The bats flit warily and owl and rat With muffled cries their shadowy loves pursue, And pleasant, Corporal, it is to chat In this hushed moment with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... charitable institutions of New York, and, on learning that some of the members of the New York orchestra were in indigent circumstances, she generously made them a substantial gift. Her beneficent actions during her entire stay in America are too numerous to detail. Frequently would she flit away from her house quietly, as if about to pay a visit, and then she might be seen disappearing down back lanes or into the cottages of the poor. She was warned to avoid so much liberality, as many unworthy ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in all of the man's misdoings, he himself it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... time, current of time, tide of time, march of time, step of time, flight of time; duration &c 106. [Indefinite time] aorist^. V. elapse, lapse, flow, run, proceed, advance, pass; roll on, wear on, press on; flit, fly, slip, slide, glide; run its course. run out, expire; go by, pass by; be past &c 122. Adj. elapsing &c v.; aoristic^; progressive. Adv. in due time, in due season; in in due course, in due process, in the fullness of time; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is a long way to flit to; beyond London a good bit I reckon; and quite in foreign parts; but I've never had no opinion of England, ever since they could be such fools as to take up a quiet chap like thee, and clap thee in prison. Where you go, I'll go. Perhaps ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... threw their arms about each other, and were so full of their own feelings that they never saw Uncle Fact's tall shadow flit across them, as he stole away over the soft sand. Poor old gentleman! he was in a sad state of mind, and didn't know what to do; for in all his long life he had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... arrived, they found only the old charwoman in the house, and she left shortly after their arrival. Finding that something was needed, the nurse went out to purchase it. On her return she asked the mother were the children all right, as she had seen two ghostly forms flit past her on the door-step! The mother answered that she believed they were, but on going up to the nursery they found both the children with their throats cut. The murderer was never brought to justice, and no ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... the initiative to make his way down the long aisle and find a table for himself, he might have stood there indefinitely, but for the restless activity of Adams, the head steward. It was Adams' mission in life to flit to and fro, hauling would-be lunchers to their destinations, as a St. Bernard dog hauls travelers out of Alpine snowdrifts. He sighted Lord Emsworth and secured ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the stranger to the left who complied with his request, but for one instant both the clergyman and the old sexton caught sight of a face white as death, yet beautiful as an angel's, framed in a mass of dead-gold hair; but the flickering of the lamps caused strange shadows to flit over it. There was a moment of utter silence, broken only by the howling of the ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... been taught by their unfailing instinct that summer has departed, and winter is near. They no more warble their rich melodies, or flit in and out of the bowery recesses of the honeysuckles or peep with knowing look under the eaves, or into the arbour. Other purposes prompt to other acts, and they are taking their farewell of the pleasant summer haunts, where ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... the Brooklyn Bridge: The bees and fireflies flit and twinkle in their vast hives; curved clouds like the breath of gods hover between the towers and the moon. One hears the hiss of lightnings, the deep thunder of human things, and a fevered breathing as ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... admittedly the first of Woodbridge young ladies. To take her to a dance was to have the ultimate in good times, there was no need to worry about her getting "stuck," and in addition to the thrill of taking a popular girl one could enjoy all the advantages of a stag. One could flit from flower to flower until surfeited with beauty and then retire for a smoke or other innocent diversion without the haunting fear that possibly Dick or Bill was circling around and around in ever-deepening gloom with one's elected for the night. Nancy had permanently impressed herself ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... with wonder which savored of horror, but she heard the door close and saw Lily flit back across the yard with a feeling of immeasurable relief. Then she heard her aunt's voice at her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... not. I was thinking—well of other, things," and here he allowed the ghost of a smile to flit suggestively across his firm-set lips. "And Mr. Van Burnam seemed preoccupied also, for, as far as I know, he did not even look ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... and rare," (the queen rejoin'd,) Impending destinies in dreams to find; Immured within the silent bower of sleep, Two portals firm the various phantoms keep; Of ivory one; whence flit, to mock the brain, Of winged lies a light fantastic train; The gate opposed pellucid valves adorn, And columns fair incased with polish'd horn; Where images of truth for passage wait, With visions manifest of future fate. Not to this troop, I fear, that ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... enemy's big guns; sometimes diving to avoid a shell; sometimes staggering as though wounded, but always righting himself. There would be the Mad Major each day, over the rearguard troops, seeming to shelter them. He would harry the German line; he would drop a bomb, flit back, and with a brave "We've got them, boys," cheer the sinking spirits of ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... sad intonations Seemingly, as flit they past, Bring to memory hopes long shattered, Blissful ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... dark tricks, The Roman kentna hoo 'twas farin' Across the ferry rowed by Charon, An' readin' doonwards through the ages The tale's the same in a' their pages, Eternal grum'lin' at the load We hae to bear alang Life's road, Yet, when we're fairly at the bit, Awfu', maist awfu sweer to flit, Praisin' the name o' ony drug The doctor whispers in oor lug As guaranteed to cure the evil, To haud us here an' cheat the Deevil. For gangrels, croochin' in the strae, To leave this warld are oft as wae As the prood laird o' ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... bright-feathered bosom friends Flit around one and the same tree; One of them tastes the sweet berries, The other without ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... red, the reflection of the lighted windows, stretched over the dark sea. The captain of the ship was giving a ball. The gay music floated across to me in snatches at long intervals. I recall in particular the trill of a little flute in the midst of the deep blare of the trumpets; it seemed to flit, like a butterfly, about my boat. I bade the man row to the ship; twice he took me round it. ... I caught glimpses at the windows of women's figures, borne gaily round in the whirl-wind of the waltz.... I told the boatman to row away, far away, straight into the darkness.... I remember ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... accepted his plan by acclamation, and returned home to push with the utmost haste the preparations for their stupendous task. The idea of a migration en masse did not frighten them. They were nomads and the descendants of nomads, who for ages had been used to fold their tents and flit away. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the soul of Christina, a still breadth of light without shadow; there was a murmur of content in her voice when she spoke, and a ripple of content in her laugh when she laughed. But the light quivered on Dolly's lip, and gleamed and sparkled in her brown eyes, and light and shadow could flit over her face with quick change; they did ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... of something a thousand times rarer than hydrogen, by which, in accordance with the most ordinary natural laws, you would not only rise to the ceiling and float there in quasi-angelic posture, but perhaps, as one of your feminine adepts is said to have done, flit swifter than train or telegram to "still-vexed Bermoothes," and twit Ariel, if he happens to be there, for a sluggard? We have not the presumption to deny the possibility of anything you affirm; only, as our brethren are particular about evidence, do give us as much to go upon as may save us ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the earth that is scarcely seen Through the curtain of vapour that waves between, O'er city and hamlet, o'er hill and plain, O'er forest green, and o'er mountain hoar, They flit like shadows, and pass the shore, And wing their ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... ignorance. Up and down they wandered, and she gave him eyes, whether for Artemis, or Aphrodite, or Apollo, or still more for the significant and troubling art of the Renaissance, French and Italian. She would flit before him, perching here and there like a bird, and quivering through and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep; and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... contented population, happy in the enjoyment of comfort, beyond that of the labouring classes of most other countries. He visits her marts, her harbours, and her ports—men of all nations are met together there—fleets of rich argosies are ever arriving and departing—and myriads of steamers flit to and fro, happily now engaged in promoting the arts of peace, but ready at a moment's notice to become the defenders of his country's shores, and, as recent events have shown the world, able also to carry war and devastation along the coasts of her enemies, even to the uttermost parts of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... spoke thus and feelingly at times, yet with perfect dignity he displayed that executive ability which in after years made him such a prominent man. Of course the people, especially the boys, had heard fine words spoken before, and at once a little smile seemed to flit across the faces of the leading spirits in ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... bed-room in a shabby little out-of-the-way street. When in town he took his meals at his club, and to that address all letters and papers for him were sent. But of late even the purlieus of his club had become dangerous ground. Round the palatial portal duns seemed to hover and flit mysteriously, so that the task of reaching the secure haven of the smoking-room was one of danger and difficulty; while the return voyage to the shabby little bed-room in the shabby little street could be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... ill Adonais that note of personal bereavement which wails through Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' or Cowley's 'Ode on the Death of Mr. Hervey'. Much, especially in the earlier stanzas, is common form. The Muse Urania is summoned to lament, and a host of personified abstractions flit before us, "like pageantry of ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... yet murky storm of the cloud and the lightning-flash, though but few boys pause to record the crisis from which slowly emerges Man. And these first desultory grapplings with the fugitive airy images that flit through the dim chambers of the brain had become with each effort more sustained and vigorous, till the phantoms were spelled, the flying ones arrested, the Immaterial seized, and clothed with Form. Gazing on his last effort, Leonard felt ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flit to and fro From mast to mast; They feel the distant tempest That nears them fast: Great rocks are straight ahead, Great shoals not past; They shout to one another Upon ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... ominous night-bird of Error, Scared by a sudden irruption of day, Flap his maleficent wings, and in terror Flit to the wilderness, dropping his prey. Then should we, growing in strength and in sweetness, Fusing to one indivisible soul, Dazzle the world with a splendid completeness, Mightily single, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... names began to flit past, like palaces on a river-brink, their bases washed by the pouring liturgy—Peter and Paul, Simon and Thaddeus, Cosmas and Damian—vast pleasure houses alight with God, while near at hand now gleamed the line ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... said my uncle Jervas, viewing me languidly through his quizzing-glass. "How confoundedly the years flit! Nineteen—and on me soul, our poor youth looks as if he hadn't a single gentlemanly vice to bless ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... slung to his side, and, as he held the mouth to his comrade's lips and forgot the pain he suffered in his strained and stiffening joints, he watched with a feeling of pleasure the avidity with which the boy drank; and as he saw the strange bird flit by once more he recalled having heard of such a bird living in the ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... 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 may drive a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... flower the wild bee roams, Then buried within the cowslip's cup, He murmurs his low and music tones, Till she folds the wanton intruder up; The spring bird, wakening, soars on high, Gushing aloft its melting lay; Whilst painted clouds flit o'er the sky, All ushering in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the earnest request of his friend. He did not like the looks of himself bedraggled and wet, and dead, on the deck of the "Hatty," with that curious crowd looking at him, Mandy Ann with the rest. Strange that thoughts of Mandy Ann should flit through his mind as he decided against the cold bath in the St. John's and to face it, whatever it was. Occasionally some one spoke to him, and he always answered politely, and once offered his chair to a lady who seemed ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... rare palaces where beings of a loftier nature glide. The incense of all prosperities sends up its smoke, the altar of all joy flames, the perfumed air circulates! Beings with divine smiles, robed in white tunics bordered with blue, flit lightly before the eyes and show us visions of supernatural beauty, shapes of an incomparable delicacy. The Loves hover in the air and waft the flames of their torches! We feel ourselves beloved; we are happy as we breathe a joy we understand not, as we bathe in the waves of ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... cunning hand, ready brain, broad back, and warm heart; in want of a wife mayhap; a man that can earn his own bread and another's;—half a dozen others' when the half dozen come? Would not that be a good sort of lodger? Such a question as that too did flit, just flit, across the widow's sleepless mind. But then she thought so much more of the wolf! Wolves, she had taught herself to think, were more common than stalwart, ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... my choice of crimes. The woods flit and fly—in summer there are bluebells; in the opening there, when Spring comes, primroses. A parting, was it, twenty years ago? Vows broken? Not Minnie's!... She was faithful. How she nursed her mother! ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... of the emotions through which he had been passing of late, that Roland felt but a faint interest at the prospect of meeting face to face a genuine—if exiled—monarch. The thought did flit through his mind that they would sit up a bit in old Fineberg's office if they could hear of it, but ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously: "One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit—now struggling to quit its material tenement—flit when at length released?" ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... be. And, as long as they lived or until the Procyon made port, all responsibility rested: First, upon First Officer Deston; and second, upon Second Officer Jones. Therefore Theodore and Bernice Jones came aboard Lifecraft Two, and Deston asked Newman to flit across ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... this unnatural sanity of intellect: it is like the calm in the whirlwind's centre, where the waves run higher though the air is deadly still, and the surly mariner wishes the mad wind back again.—To and fro you flit, goaded on and strengthened by untiring anguish. You are but the body of a man; your thought and emotion are abroad, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne |
