"Swift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a comparison of the poems, whether the experiment of changing his metre was successful. The short eight-syllabled line displayed Byron's capacity for vigorous concision and swift movement; it is eminently suited for strength and speed; whereas in the slow processional couplet he becomes diffuse, often tedious; he has room for more rhetoric and verbosity; he falls more into the error of describing at length the character and sentiments of his gloomy heroes, instead ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of this place are all of a tawny colour, of reasonable stature, swift of foot, and much given to pick and steal. Their language is entirely uttered through their throats, and they cluck with their tongues in so strange a manner, that, in seven weeks which we remained here, the sharpest wit among us could not learn one word ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... logs of which the raft was made was much longer than the other, and on the end of the longer log they put the flag. And over the rough swift current father walked the dizzy length of that single log and took down the flag. Mother still keeps that flag as a precious relic. Several years ago one of the men engaged in that mob ran for office in Northern ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just! Who, in the fear of God, didst bear The sword ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... money and of energy, (5) by appeals to reason or resort to force. His the privilege alike to gladden the prosperous in the hour of success and to sustain their footing who have well-nigh slipped. All that the hands of a man may minister, all that the eyes of each are swift to see, the ears to hear, and the feet to compass, he with his helpful arts will not fall short of. Nay, not seldom that which a man has failed to accomplish for himself, has missed seeing or hearing or attaining, a friend acting in behalf of friend will achieve vicariously. And yet, albeit ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... hung like a cloud over land and river. There was a stiff north-east wind, which we avoided by seeking the Ohio shore, where the high hills formed a break; there too, the current was swift, and carried us down right merrily. Shattered by the wind, great banks of fog rolled up stream, sometimes enveloping us so as to narrow our view to a radius of a dozen rods,—again, through the rifts, giving us momentary glimpses on ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... have such a swift succession of guests, that we seldom see the same faces two days running. We have as many changes ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... startling happened. Giving one swift glance about him, our guide uttered a cry, and rushed out into the night, and disappeared. We followed to the door, and called after him, but only a voice came to us out of the blackness, and the only words that we could catch, shrieked back in terror, were: "The woman of the saeter—the woman ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in two, three, a swift pain comes, like a needle, you understand? Perhaps in the foot, in the hand, in the arm. It is exquisite, deathly, while it lasts, but it only lasts for a few moments. It is agony. And then it goes, leaving nothing to show what has caused it. But, my friends, it ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... between the two wings, in which Evie was victorious. She neatly avoided the Clinton Right Half, but the ball went off the line. The opposing Half-back rolled in—to her wing, as she thought—but with a swift movement, Ingred Saxon, the Left Inner, reached the ball first, and taking it with her, ran up the field like lightning. The Inner on the other side was an equally fast runner, but Ingred easily evaded her opponent's continued efforts ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... went like the wind, but not like the hurricane—that was too swift for us. The fire had outstripped us over-head, and I could see it dimly through the infernal choking reek, leaping and blazing a hundred yards before me, among the feathery foliage, devouring it, as the south wind devours the thunder clouds. Then I could see nothing. Was I clear of ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a bulky MS. at my chambers, in the bottom drawer on the right side of my desk. It is my Life of Swift—unfinished as my own life. If, after reading it, you should think it worth publishing, as a fragment, with my name to it, I should wish you to arrange its publication. I should be glad to leave my ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... would stop at nothing; he would not believe that there was no hope; he knew he could force the miscreants to give up their secret, and had a hair of his little sister's head been harmed the punishment should be swift and terrible. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... process of evolution by insensible gradations. There is, as I understand it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden removal from a structural position which by slow accumulation of prior changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability, involving a swift readjustment of organic parts. May not similarly important mutations occur in the evolution of political institutions, when a similar stress of circumstances makes itself felt? Nay, we may further ask, whether the special function of man's reasonable will is not ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Haven in the race back to New York leaped at them with siren shrieks of warning, and dancing, dazzling eyes. It passed like a thing driven by the Furies; and before the Scarlet Car could swing back into what had been an empty road, in swift pursuit of the first came many more cars, with blinding searchlights, with a roar of throbbing, thrashing engines, flying pebbles, and whirling wheels. And behind these, stretching for a twisted mile, ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... counts the Entente Powers had not only the right but the duty to intervene. Thus only could they justify, in the eyes of the Greek people, the blockade by which the whole population suffered, and which it would otherwise not understand. There was no time to lose: the dignity of France demanded swift and drastic action: the Athenians had gone so far as to ridicule in a cinema the {102} uniform of the heroes of Verdun. If England would not join her, she ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... But it was not easy to control William Cobbett. Adams may have thought that Cobbett was a being created for the express purpose of being let alone. There are such beings. Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods. William ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... making a feint of dining. Her cheeks were mottled, her eyes heavy; she had neither slept nor eaten; even her dress had been neglected. In short, she was out of health, out of looks, out of heart, and hag-ridden by her conscience. The Countess drew a swift comparison, and shone brighter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... long night for Philip, and a restless one. At any other time the swing of the cars would have lulled him to sleep, and the rattle and clank of wheels and rails, the roar of the whirling iron would have only been cheerful reminders of swift and safe travel. Now they were voices of warning and taunting; and instead of going rapidly the train seemed to crawl at a snail's pace. And it not only crawled, but it frequently stopped; and when it stopped it stood dead still ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... board of his ship, the sails are spread to catch the playful gale, swift as an arrow he cuts the rolling wave. A few days thus sporting on the briny wave, when suddenly the sky is overspread with clouds, the rain descends in torrents, the sails are lowered, the gale begins, the vessel is carried with great velocity, and the shrouds, unable ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... Charlemagne, still presents a picturesque and imposing appearance to the traveller, who sees the red-brick walls and gates of the old fortifications and the slender bell-towers of its Romanesque churches rising out of the green plains on the banks of the broad and swift Ticino. But it was a far grander and more beautiful sight in the days when Lodovico Sforza's bride landed near the chapel on the bridge, and in the fading light of the short winter afternoon rode at his side through ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... the retaliation of the box on the ears; the nakedness of the souls and of the judges who are stript of the clothes or disguises which rhetoric and public opinion have hitherto provided for them (compare Swift's notion that the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale of a Tub). The fiction seems to have involved Plato in the necessity of supposing that the soul retained a sort of corporeal likeness after death. (3) The appeal of the authority ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... forget; one ought to condole with you: the Duke of Newcastle is your cousin, and as I know by experience how much one loves one's relations, I sympathize with you! But, alas! all first ministers are mortal; and, as Sir Jonathan Swift said, crowned heads and cane heads, good heads and no heads at all, may all come to disgrace. My father, who had no capacity, and the Duke of Newcastle, who has so much, have equally experienced the mutability of this world. Well-a-day, well-a-day! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... moment, the scattered pieces forming the asteroids. Accident? More likely it was a huge, interplanetary missile from competing Mars. The Martians had died, too—as surely, though less spectacularly. Radioactive poison, perhaps... Here, there had been an instant of unimaginable concussion, and of swift-passing flame. The drying out was soon ended. Then, what was left had been preserved in a vacuum ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... of her whip: it was Francie Gordon! She tried to rouse him. She could not; he was cold as ice, and seemed all but dead. But for the groan she had heard she would have been sure he was dead. She blew out the light, and, swift as her hands could move, took garment after garment off, and laid it, warm from her live heart, over and under him—all save one which she thought too thin to do him any good. Last of all, she drew her stockings over his hands and arms, and, leaving her shoes where Steenie's had lain, darted ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... came before him, all encased In glittering arms, fresh from the siege and sack Of Carcasonne, holding an apple red; And thus his uncle greeted: 'Sire, behold! I lay the crowns of all Kings at your feet.' Swift punishment should overtake such pride, For ev'ry day he blindly runs to death. Were he but slain, all lands might rest ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... time Jacintha asked permission to pass the rest of the evening with her relations in the village. But why that swift, quivering glance of intelligence between Jacintha and Rose de Beaurepaire when the baroness said, ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... to everything but her story, which I shall have to put into my own words: "Swift as the mountain ram he climbs the rugged rocks and takes the trail to the great shrine wheel. Soon he finds her moccasin tracks, and with all the fleetness of an Indian runner he climbs the rocky trail, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... to custom, too inimical to community interests; but to Tarzan it was the first and most natural thought. His senses told him that there was but a single bull connected with the attack upon Teeka and Gazan. A single enemy did not require the entire tribe for his punishment. Two swift bulls could quickly overhaul ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and looking out of the windows first on one side and then on the other. They passed quickly through the lines of trees and the open spaces of frosty park-land, they drew up at the lodge for a moment, he heard his prison gates swing open, the harness jingled and the hoofs began to clatter again, a swift vision of lighted windows and a man looking on them incuriously swept by, and then they were rolling over a country road between hedgerows and under ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... red and green velvet habits all gold bespangled, riding so gracefully the high-stepping horses to the music of the band, perched high on a scarlet-and-gold mirrored chariot—not to forget the calliope bringing up the rear. Then, with glowing countenance and swift-beating heart, Lafe and his companions had followed the parade to "the bottoms," a level space sacred to the circus and baseball, where men were busy erecting tents for the ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... exceedingly chalah or swift. Achalah is nasti chalo yasmat; hence chaleshu (api) achalah is swift amongst the swift, or swifter ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... army post at the reservation, and he had made swift progress toward it. The ice-bound Vermilion did not check him, and the sealed sloughs shortened his path. Onward he had sped, tirelessly. In half an hour his scarlet nubia had blended into the black of his fur-lined coat; in an hour he was only a speck, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... cannibal in return calls him "child of my sister." Fiske, quoting from Dr. Callaway, at p. 166, says, "It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends are not common men; they are magnified into giants and magicians; they are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible warriors." In the Hottentot story of the "Lion who took a woman's shape," the lion and the woman address each other as "my aunt," and "my uncle" (Bleek's Hottentot Fables and Tales, pp. 51, 52). ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... his gray castle at the dawn of the morning, and with many a knight to bear him company rode, not eager and swift, like a prince who went to find a treasure, but steady and slow, as we should go to meet sorrow. Not one of the hundred men who followed dared to lilt a lay or fling a laughing jest from his mouth. All rode silent among their gay trappings, ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... of shuffling feet, of tinkling piano and whining fiddle, gave notice in advance that the dancers were on the floor. Clanton took the precaution to ease the guns in their holsters in order to make sure of a swift draw. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... The swift motion of the train was most exhilarating, for every single click of the car-wheels meant a turn which brought her just that much nearer to her father and Elinor and ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... One swift glance into her bright, eager, happy face had told him a story that thrilled his soul and made him, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... recorded murders by Negroes of owners or overseers between 1850 and 1860 twenty resulted in legal execution and twenty-six in lynching. Violent crimes against white women were not relatively any more numerous than now; but those that occurred or were attempted received swift punishment; thus of seventeen cases of rape in the ten years last mentioned Negroes were legally executed in five ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... effect, to prevent any one from leaving the town. About the same time a lantern was hung out of an upper window of the north church, in the direction of Charlestown. This was a preconcerted signal to the patriots of that place, who instantly despatched swift ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... and Jess. They had set out on a sky cruise to the Prescott home, and Jess's bright eyes had espied the confusion in the road beneath them as they flew over. The swift descent ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... when they got down the far side of the ridge they came to a swift, open water-course. Blent and the constable were evidently "stumped." Blent was ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... like wildfire. Stirring preachers, whereof the most notable was Peter the Hermit, set all France, peasant and noble, to arming. It was the old gospel of Mohammed recast in Christian guise:—pardon for sin and the spoils of the infidel if victorious!—a swift road to heaven if slain in the battle! Pressed with this hope and enthusiasm, armies to be reckoned by the hundreds of thousands were launched upon the East." (Davis, W. S., Mediaeval and Modern Europe, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... trading ship, the Longtail, to traffic with the Indians. If he were attacked he would defend himself. He soon had an opportunity to make good his boasts. Leonard Calvert seized the Longtail, and Claybourne sent a swift pinnace with fourteen fighting men to recapture her. This was in the year 1634, when John Stevens was nine years of age; but the affair was the talk of the time, and consequently was indelibly stamped on his young mind. Two Maryland pinnaces went to meet Claybourne, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... it all, and there came a momentous pause, a pause in her swift running, a moment's suspension in her life, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... for me to realise that contemporary Europe and America, the Europe and America of railroads, industries, monstrous swift-growing cities, might find present in ancient Rome a part of their own very souls, restless, turbulent, greedy. In the Rome of the days of Caesar, huge, agitated, seething with freedmen, slaves, artisans come from everywhere, crowded with ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... pressing need so to organize our system of administering criminal justice as to establish full vigor and effectiveness. We need to reestablish faith that the highest interests of our country are served by insistence upon the swift and even-handed administration of justice to all offenders, whether they be rich or poor. That we shall effect improvement is vital to the preservation of our institutions. It is the most serious issue before ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... she became aware that during the last few minutes Dr. Mackenzie's mind had been concentrated upon something else. She had not filled it at all. The next moment it was turned upon her and two swift turquoise gleams from under the shaggy brows swept over her, with the rapidity and brightness of search-lights. Dr. Mackenzie commenced speaking quickly, with a wonderful rolling ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the receiver, tore up his note to Becky, asked the office about trains, packed his bag, and went swift in ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... it would or not," returned Larry in his deliberate way, which occasionally exasperated the swift-minded, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... on the ice by the ship, and as I was sitting down by a hummock my eyes wandered northward and lit on a bird hovering over the great pressure-mound away to the northwest. At first I took it to be a kittiwake, but soon discovered it rather resembled the skua by its swift flight, sharp wings, and pointed tail. When I had got my gun, there were two of them together flying round and round the ship. I now got a closer view of them, and discovered that they were too light colored to be skuas. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... ancient stories tell— Full knowledge upon Ragnar fell In lapse of time, that this was she Begot in the felicity Swift-fleeting of the wondrous twain, Who afterwards through change and pain Must live apart to meet in death." WILLIAM ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... so unconcernedly, like a final, almost vaporous bedizening, its bunch of stamens, slender as gossamer, which clouded the flower itself in a white mist, that in following these with my eyes, in trying to imitate, somewhere inside myself, the action of their blossoming, I imagined it as a swift and thoughtless movement of the head with an enticing glance from her contracted pupils, by a young girl in white, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Gibbon; The Middle Ages, of Hallam; The History of England, of Macaulay; and The Invasion of the Crimea, of Kinglake? Do we not know the elephantine tread of The Saturday, and the precise toe of The Spectator? I have sometimes thought that Swift has been nearest to the mark of any,—writing English and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether an accurate observer would not trace even here the "mark of the beast." Thackeray, too, has a strong flavour of Thackeray. I am inclined ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... in the plain old house, and seemed to make a swift dazzle. Aunt Lois warmed curiously toward her, feeling as if the sun was shining after a spell ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... run In shade and sun, And laugh because the winter's done. Now swift, now slow, The pace they go, Shining between Their banks of green, Whither, they neither care ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the Mission girl. She was light as a feather, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks grew rosy, her laugh rang out, and the flaming spirit of her was kindling fires of which she never dreamed. Pleasant saw her dance first with Ham and then with King, and he grinned with swift recognition of her purpose. And he grinned the more when he saw that she was succeeding beyond her realization—saw it by the rage in Polly's black eyes, which burned now at Ham and now at King, for Miss Mary had no further ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... underrated by his fellow-countrymen. Moliere was the only man who really appreciated him. For some centuries his works have been more esteemed in England than in France. Many English writers, from Dean Swift to Samuel Butler, the author of "Erewhon," have been inspired by his "Voyage to the Moon," the English equivalent of the original title being, "Comic History of the States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun." This entertaining ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... in the mountains, and it was far out of its banks, rushing and foaming over great rocks, circling in swift whirlpools, plunging in smooth, glassy sheets down sudden descents, and maddening ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my wandering eye like basking snakes. Where this thick brush displays its emerald tent, I stretch my wearied frame, for solitude To steal ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... in essay-writing. He kept copies of the letters he liked best, and was flattered to find that he was superior to his correspondents. He studied the essayists of Queen Anne's time, and formed his style upon theirs, and that of their most distinguished followers. Steele, Addison, Swift, Sterne, and Mackenzie were his models. He liked their rounded sentences, and caught their conventional phrases. He found delight in imitating them. He volunteered his services with the pen on behalf of his fellow-swains. He became the "Complete Letter-Writer" of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... days, during which time we made some excursions into the heart of the mountains. One of our drives took us some miles along the side of the beautiful river Theiss, which though a proverbial sluggard when it reaches the plain, is here a swift and impetuous stream. Our object was to see the timber-rafts pass over the rapids; it was a very exciting scene, and as this was a favourable season, owing to the state of the river, we came in just at the right time. The Rusniacks—the people generally ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... sister to bed at 9.30, I climbed every night by starlight up to Am Hof, where we talked and read out loud till one and often two in the morning. I learnt more in those winter nights at Davos than I had ever learnt in my life. We read The Republic and all the Plato dialogues together; Swift, Voltaire, Browning, Walt Whitman, Edgar Poe and Symonds' own Renaissance, besides passages from every author and poet, which he would turn up feverishly to illustrate what he wanted me ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... supporters of Mary. But the adventures of Arthegal mainly preserve the memory of Lord Grey's terrible exploits against wrong and rebellion in Ireland. These exploits are represented in the doings of the iron man Talus, his squire, with his destroying flail, swift, irresistible, inexorable; a figure, borrowed and altered, after Spenser's wont, from a Greek legend. His overthrow of insolent giants, his annihilation of swarming "rascal routs," idealize and glorify that unrelenting policy, of which, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... softly down over the wild Ohio valley bringing keen anxiety to a traveler on the lonely river trail. He had expected to reach Fort Henry with his party on this night, thus putting a welcome end to the long, rough, hazardous journey through the wilderness; but the swift, on-coming dusk made it imperative to halt. The narrow, forest-skirted trail, difficult to follow in broad daylight, apparently led into gloomy aisles in the woods. His guide had abandoned him that morning, making excuse ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... Sartin we must trust to Him an' let things slide a bit, jest as He may direct 'em. To go out of our kiver now 'ud be the same as steppin' inter the heart o' a forest fire. Them sogers air mounted on swift horses, an' 'ud ketch up wi these slow critturs o' mules in the shakin' o' goat's tail. Thurfor, let's lie by till night. Tain't fur off now. Then, ef we see any chance to steal down inter the valley, we'll take edvantage ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... of inconceivable length. The rank and file came thus, with the aid of fossil records, to realize the import of an idea which James Hutton, and here and there another thinker, had conceived with the swift intuition of genius long before the science of paleontology came into existence. The Huttonian proposition that time is long had been abundantly established, and by about the close of the first third of the last century geologists had begun to speak of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... parade runs swift the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we had our little ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... him further along the passage. Suddenly her voice seemed to change to angry denunciation, and the word "Liar" rang upon his ears. It was followed by his own name uttered sardonically by Clarence, the swift rustle of a skirt, the clash of the gate, and then—forgetting everything, he burst ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... little adventure, personal to herself on the way. Though there were neither posts nor telegraphs in those days, there has always been a strange swift current in the air or soil which has conveyed news, in a great national crisis, from one end of the country to the other. It was not so great a distance to Domremy on the Meuse from Troyes on the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... friendship's ardor at your heart, From sickness snatch'd her early prey And bade fair health—the goddess gay, With sprightly air, and winning grace, With laughing eye, and rosy face, Accustom'd when you call to hear, On her light pinion hasten near, And swift restore with influence kind, My weaken'd frame, my ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... no; and she told him there were a hundred and twenty children packed in one room, three in a seat, and solid all round the wall. She went on, with swift anger—the school was supposed to be paid for out of taxes, but as nobody owned any property but the company, it was all in the company's hands. The school-board consisted of Mr. Cartwright, the mine-superintendent, and Jake ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... the same. I observe no difference either between the hawks of this coast and those of the Atlantic. I have observed the large brown hawk, the small or sparrow hawk, and the hawk of an intermediate size with a long tail and blewish coloured wings remarkably swift in flight and very firce. sometimes called in the U States the hen hawk. these birds seem to be common to every part of this country, and the hawks crows & ravens build their nests in great numbers along the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... a swift rush of red to her face, too, as I stopped. Up till then she had been quietly listening. But she saw my thought then. It was visible to both of us and for a moment a deadly silence dropped on us. Of course, I ought not to have stopped, but the thought ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... too busy admiring Gloria to know what effect that announcement had on Fred and Will. She shook herself free from the women, and stood up, splendid in the flickering yellow light. There was a sort of swift move by every one to be ready against contingencies, and I judged it the right moment ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... all hands, that, a sloop-of-war being the fastest description of vessel, and we having got the better of one of them, it might be fairly inferred we could outsail the whole British navy. I endeavoured to console him, by reminding him that "the race was not always to the swift." He growled out some sort of an answer, denouncing all sayings, and desiring to know out of what book I ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... seest parting, be patient still, * Nor let foreign parts deal thy soul affright: But abide, expecting a swift return, * For all hearts hold ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... a magnet, highly and singularly sensitized. Some draw to them fields and woods and hills, and are drawn in return; and some draw swift streets and the riches which are known to cities. It is not of importance what we draw, but that we really draw. And the greatest tragedy in life, as I see it, is that thousands of men and women never have the opportunity to draw with freedom; but they exist in weariness and labour, and are ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... Engineering News says: Those living on swift streams, and using small boats, often have occasion to tow up stream. So do surveyors, hunters campers, tourists, and others. One man can tow a boat against a swift current where five ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... they knew that the shore they loved was not far away; and when they cried in strong faith, "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly," they heard the still small voice of their God saying, "It is I, be not afraid." Death by drowning was for them only a short swift passage to the heavenly land, where "there shall be no more sea." And though life must have been dear to them—for every one had some tie to keep him below—still, there was not one Christian but would be willing "to depart and be with Christ, which is far better," and the summons, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... place,—a rambling brick house with sharp, pointed roofs, and a long stretch of evergreens. It was beautiful in this soft atmosphere. The birds made a swift dazzle now and then, and filled the air ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... a mountain's height By Jove's command direct their rapid flight; Swift they descend, with wing to wing conjoin'd, Stretch their broad plumes, and float upon the wind. Above the assembled peers they wheel on high, And clang their wings, and hovering beat the sky; With ardent eyes the rival train they threat, And shrieking loud denounce ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... military organisation on the other. He felt that an enormous amount of human enthusiasm and energy was being refused and wasted; that if things went on as they were going there would continue to be a quite disastrous shortage of gear, and that some broadening change was needed immediately if the swift exemplary victory over Germany that his soul demanded was to be ensured. Suppose he were to write some noisy articles at once, an article, for instance, to be called "The War of the Mechanics" or "The ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Swift to her aid her mother came, "Ah! say," cried she, "in mercy's name, "What means this frantic grief?" "Mother 'tis past—all hopes are fled, "God hath no mercy, William's dead, "My ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... sight, was often startled at the swift approach of the resistless, high-winged things threatening to dart in any and every possible direction. It required all his energies to keep out of the way of the passersby and to prevent those screaming little urchins from upsetting him with their sleds. Once he ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Rockies is a vast area part plateau and part mountains. It is scarred with deep canyons and crossed by swift streams fed from springs and mountain snows. Roughly the elevation of farm lands varies from five hundred to over forty-five hundred feet. Depending largely on slope and elevation, rainfall varies from about eight to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... path to disorder. Revolutions and civil commotions followed in swift succession. A liberal president, Madero, installed as the successor to Diaz, was deposed in 1913 and brutally murdered. Huerta, a military adventurer, hailed for a time as another "strong man," succeeded Madero whose murder he ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... that the earth is a sphere; and that, like the other planets, it revolves about a central globe of fire. From him comes the pretty conceit of the "music of the spheres." He imagined that the heavenly spheres, by their swift, rolling motions, produced musical notes, which united in a celestial melody, too refined, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... it hammer and tongs. From my chair beside Miss Gore I watched the girl. Her hands were clasped over her knees as she leaned forward, her eyes glowing, watching the swift motions of the two men as they moved backward and forward. Miss Gore wore the fixed smile of the perpetually bored. She watched Jerry and Carty exchanging their blows, with a sphinxlike air as though inspecting half-naked men dancing ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Settle, Durfey, Tate, That early propped the deep intrigues of state, Dull Whiggish lines the world could ne'er applaud, While your swift genius did appear abroad: And then, great Bayes, whose yet unconquered pen Wrote with strange force as well of beasts as men, Whose noble genius grieved from afar, Because new worlds of Bayes did not appear, Now to contend ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... any in which he had ever been engaged. The puffs of wind were quite as much as the boat would bear; but this he did not mind, as he was running off before it, and there was little danger of the yawl capsizing with such a weight in her. It was also an advantage to have swift way on, to prevent the combing waves from shooting into the boat, though the wind itself scarce outstrips the send of the sea in a stiff blow. As the yawl cleared the brig and began to feel the united power of the wind and waves, the following short ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... work of creation. "And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:2). "By his Spirit the heavens are garnished; his hand hath pierced the swift serpent" (Job 26:13). "By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" (Ps. 33:6). "The Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth me ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... A swift ride brought them to old Pecos, a distance of ten miles, where they supped and passed the night. Their wounds were mere scratches and did not necessitate any delay, and the next day, after a long, slow gallop, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... lifted her head quickly, gave a swift look of recognition, a brief smile of gratitude, and continued her pace. She had not taken his arm, but had grasped the handle of the umbrella, which linked them together. Not a word was spoken. Two people cannot be conversational ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... only of ridicule, for deceiving themselves. Strip off the thin disguise of wisdom from self-conceit, of plenty from avarice, and of glory from ambition. Come, thou that hast inspired thy Aristophanes, thy Lucian, thy Cervantes, thy Rabelais, thy Moliere, thy Shakespear, thy Swift, thy Marivaux, fill my pages with humour; till mankind learn the good-nature to laugh only at the follies of others, and the humility to grieve ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... me, thou crone; I like not flattery out of doors; go in and let's hear thy speech." In went the crone, and when her back was to him he drew his sword and whips off her head; but the sword flew out of his hand. And swift the crone gripped her head with both hands, and put it on her neck as it was before. The dog sprang on the crone, and she struck the generous dog with the club of magic; and there he lay. But the herd ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... to be employed. The jeweller told him, he thought nothing remained, but that he should immediately take horse, and hasten away towards Anbar, that he might get thither before day. "Take what servants and swift horses you think necessary," continued he, "and suffer me ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... depths of misery. It is not that this misery went undescribed or unlamented, or that it was not realized by a small number of Englishmen. Some of the most famous writings of the time, from the mordant satire of Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... work of the Prince. The day for helping literature had perhaps gone when he came upon the scene and newspapers were then supposed to do for budding genius what royalty and aristocracy did for Johnson, Goldsmith, Swift or Pope. It is a curious fact of later-day democracy that, with the obvious exception of Kipling, most of the greater lights in literature—Browning, Rossetti, Tennyson, Mathew Arnold or Swinburne—were born ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... toward her, plunged a swift body. She rather felt the new presence than saw it. The cat yowled again, and spit. There was the impact of a clubbed gun ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.' And, Norman, that is not the struggle where the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; nor the contest, where the conqueror only wins vanity and vexation ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... geographers, in Afric maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns. SWIFT. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... beheld a swift procession of mine-and-cattle scenes troop past for swift review. He lived again whole months of nights spent out alone beneath the sky, with the snow and the wind hurled down upon him from a merciless firmament ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to manage our boat, and I often sat in it, with my little Anastasia, while it glided on through the water, swift as a bird flying through the air. Then, when the sun sank down, the mountains were tinted with a deeper and deeper blue, one range seemed to rise behind the other, and behind them all stood Parnassus with ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... sand-martins' nests, and slipped down or rolled down, and climbed again, and along ledges, and thrust in our arms, but nesting was over for the year, and the swift little birds made their nurseries beyond our reach, for we did not find the bottom ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... crystal song, he turns his wee head from side to side eyeing me wisely as slowly I plod with moccasined feet. Then again he yields himself to his song of joy. Flit, flit hither and yon, he fills the summer sky with his swift, sweet melody. And truly does it seem his vigorous freedom lies more in his little spirit than ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... had been the approach of the Priestess some interior vibration had informed Sarthia of her coming and, with a quivering and swift movement, she sprang from her couch and threw herself impulsively into the arms ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... Lepanto-Bontoc. Bontoc pueblo lies inland only about 35 miles farther, but the greater part of two days is usually required to reach it. Twenty minutes will carry a horseman down the bluff from Cervantes, across the swift Abra — if the stream is fordable — and start him on the eastward ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... We thank Swift T., of Yonkers, for his very kind and friendly letter. It pleases us very much to know that our young friends like the paper and are anxious ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... one side, and bounded by the river on the other, gave little trouble. The poor fellows, in fact, were unable to stir, and many a man of them sprang into the river in his desperation, only to be hopelessly carried away by the swift current, and drowned. ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... and at peace. Nearer, a great hawk circled slowly on widespread wings, his neck craned downward as if he were watching his own shadow move ghostlike over the grass. Annie-Many-Ponies, turning her eyes disappointedly from the empty mesa, envied the hawk his swift-winged freedom. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... backward inclination proper for her head, what the relative positions of her knees and chin should be, and if she had taken the least forethought might have redeemed the declining reputation of her boyhood. The knowledge flashed across her in her swift descent that her spine had not preserved the proper perpendicular, and that she was coming down wrong. Chin and knees knocked together as she fell in a heap ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... in air,—"I shall carry it to God!"—and so fled, up the broken stairway, out into the moonlight, across the meadow,—the three men following fast,—over the fallen boughs that winter had strewn along the shore, out under the crooked elm, swift as light, poising on the stern of the boat, that had swung out toward the channel,—and once more lifting her hand high into the white light, with one spring she dropped into the river, and its black waters rolled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... goods in order to discourage their consumption in Great Britain, have, in many cases, served only to encourage smuggling, and, in all cases, have reduced the revenues of the customs below what more moderate duties would have afforded. The saying of Dr. Swift, that in the arithmetic of the customs, two and two, instead of making four, make sometimes only one, holds perfectly true with regard to such heavy duties, which never could have been imposed, had not the mercantile system taught ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... geometric, fashion, with roomy spaces between. There was little undergrowth, and I could see a long way in every direction. The forest was like a great church, solemn and silent and empty, for I met nothing on two feet or four that day. Now and then, it is true, some swift thing, and again some slow thing, would cross the space on which my eye happened that moment to settle; but it was always at some distance, and only enhanced the sense of wideness and vacancy. I heard a few birds, and saw plenty of butterflies, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... speaks of the breed of horses here attempted to be described as "excellent, large, strong and swift, said to be of the race ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... done with! Swift from shine to shade The roaring generations flit and fade. To this one, fading, flitting, like the rest, We come to proffer—be it worst or best— A sketch, a shadow, of one brave old time; A hint of what it might have ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... The poet, I suppose, must be a seer as long as he is a worker, and a seer only. He has no time to philosophize—to "think about thinking," as Goethe, I have somewhere read, says that he never could do. It is too often only in sickness and prostration and sheer despair, that the fierce veracity and swift digestion of his soul can cease, and give him time to know himself and God's dealings with him; and for that reason it is good for him, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... young partridges gradually become strong and swift, the nuts are increasing in size, and ripening upon the bough. The very hazel has a pleasant sound—not a nut-tree hedge existed in the neighbourhood that we did not know and visit. We noted the progress of the bushes from the earliest spring, and the catkins ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent's hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulae, said: "Thanks, old man." But suddenly the man cried: "What's that?" He pointed a swift finger. The correspondent ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... glance up a moment later the men were matching coins at the counter. When they went out he left a half-eaten meal and presently might have been observed on a swift-rolling street-car. He mumbled as he blankly surveyed palm-bordered building sites along the way. He was again rehearsing a tense scene with the Montague girl. In actor parlance he was giving himself all the best of it. But they were new lines he ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... world he saw the lives of trees, now pale green, now of woodsmoke blue, now of amethyst; the gray lives of stone; breaths of the grass and reed, creatures of the air, delicate and wild as fawns, or swift and fierce and terrible tigers of that undiscovered wilderness, with birds almost invisible but for their luminous ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... mongrels from the south; and upon these unfortunates the others preyed. Packs of fierce Labrador dogs, never vanquished except by death, came from close to Hudson's Bay. Team after team of the little yellow and gray Eskimo dogs, as quick with their fangs as were their black and swift-running masters with their hands and feet, met the much larger and darker-colored Malemutes from the Athabasca. Enemies of all these, fighting, snapping, and snarling, with the lust of killing deep born in them ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... study of the fistic art From mawkish softness guards the British heart." The study of the betting British curse From swift depletion guards ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... a snap of the fingers could have been heard the length of the field, Whipple glanced deliberately around at the backs, slapped the broad back of the center sharply, seized the snapped ball, and made a swift, straight pass to Joel. Then through the Hillton line went the St. Eustace players, breaking down with vigor born of desperation the blocking of their opponents. With a leap into the air the St. Eustace left-guard bore down straight upon Joel; there was a concussion, and the ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a lively affair. At the long tables in the eating room the riders gathered, lean, tanned men, young mostly, all alert, quick-eyed, swift in judgment. Their days were full and earnest enough, running Last's cattle on the Lost Valley ranges. The evenings were their own, and they made the most of them. The big house was free to them, and they made it home, smoking, playing ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... The leak had been partially stopped, and if we continued to enjoy fine weather, we might get into port very well; and, as Andrews observed, "The prize is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift." Our consort might run his head into the very dangers he was so ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston |
