"Fleeting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... state, it is altogether transient. All systems of civil life are therefore necessarily ephemeral. Time brings new external conditions; the manner of thought is modified; with thought, action. Institutions of all kinds must hence participate in this fleeting nature, and, though they may have allied themselves to political power, and gathered therefrom the means of coercion, their permanency is but little improved thereby; for, sooner or later, the population on whom they have been imposed, following the external variations, spontaneously ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... bending over the smoking skillet, with the lamp-light falling across her pale face. As she boiled the coffee and fried the eggs I studied her profile sketched against the blue, smoky background, and tried in vain to grasp the secret of its fleeting, evanescent beauty. For beautiful Henrietta was—beautiful with a beauty quite her own and all the more potent because of its very indefinableness. I watched her as one horribly fascinated,—that high, wide white forehead, that weak chin, those soft, tremulous lips, on which a ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... thirty, would "spread"; that the face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and red perhaps—in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women. Alyosha, of course, did not think of this; but though he was fascinated, yet he wondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as it were regretfully, why she drawled in that way and could not speak ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... supposed, long series of portraits of priests and priestesses continued through several centuries? We do not think so. The person represented in these statues appears to us to be the author of a vow or of a sacrifice made to the divinity of the temple . . . Vows and sacrifices were very fleeting things; it might be feared that the divinity would soon forget them. An inscription was already recognised as a means of rendering the memory of a vow more lasting; but a statue was a momento still more—nay, much more efficacious. By having himself represented under the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... eyes searched her face with sudden anxiety. It was the thing he was always watching, this look that told of spent energy. There was no fleeting shadow or hint of weariness he was not quick to understand, and to keep his strong arms at his side meant control of which she was as unconscious as ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... Will you wait? He will return in a very few minutes." Her voice was clear and low, her accent charming. The smile in her eyes somehow struck him as sad, even fleeting in its attempt at mirth. As she spoke, it disappeared altogether and an almost sombre expression came into ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... clenching between her fingers, dropped to the floor. With a purely automatic movement, I bent to recover it for her; she leaned down to receive it. Her pale face and lovely dilated eyes were close to me for a fleeting second, and though her lips did not move, I seemed to catch the merest breath, the faintest gossamer ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... was a glorious one. Old Sol cast his rays upon the sea which gave them back broken and shattered into a thousand shafts of shimmering light. The air was cool and clear. Here and there in the distance a white sail like a fleeting gull marked the position of a sailing vessel, while a smudge of smoke from a steamer far away to the west ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... body are really nothing more than reliefs from pains of one kind or another. And, next, the pleasures of the soul, being of the eternal order, are necessarily more real than those of the body, which are fleeting—in fact, mere ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... hand still resting heavily on the rim of the emptied caldron, and the face still hid behind the Black Veil. What! the wondrous elixir, sought with such hope and well- nigh achieved through such dread, fleeting back to the earth from which its material was drawn to give bloom, indeed—but to herbs; joy ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... that is scored therewith. In composition thereof is quicksilver and white brimstone, and therefore it is not so heavy as gold. There are two manner of silvers, simple and compound. The simple is fleeting, and is called quicksilver; the silver compounded is massy and sad, and is compounded of quicksilver pure and clean, and of white brimstone, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the third day that followed the gale; the sky once more took its steel-grey shade, the sharp breezes stole over gentle rollers and covered each sad-coloured bulge with fleeting ripples. That blessed breeze, so pure, so crisp, so potently shot through with magic savours of iodine and ozone, exhilarates the spirits until the most staid of men break at times into schoolboy fun. Do you imagine that religious people ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... with that fierce and fleeting little smile which rarely lit his face for a second, "if you don't know him he knows ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... at the only passenger remaining, caught the fleeting shadow of interest on his face, regarded him with natural indifference, and looked out of the window, forgetting him. A few moments later, accidentally aware of him again, she carelessly noted his superficially ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... this is poetry rather than history, although the legends and facts upon which it rests have been gathered with much painstaking research and careful verification. It should be kept in mind that these poems are impressionistic attempts to present the fleeting feeling of the moment, landscape moods, and the ephemeral attitudes of the past. Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded. Above all here ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... variations now occasionally appear, but these are rejected as faults or deviations from the standard of perfection in each breed. The common goose has not given rise to any marked varieties; hence the Toulouse and the common breed, which differ only in colour, that most fleeting of characters, have lately been exhibited as distinct ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... worth of a peace which is only secured by ignoring realities, and which can be shattered into fragments by anything that compels a man to see himself as he is? In such a fool's paradise thousands of us live. 'Use and wont,' the continual occupation with the trifles of our daily lives, the fleeting satisfactions of our animal nature, the shallow wisdom which bids us 'let sleeping dogs lie,' all conspire to mask, to many consciences, their unrest and their sin. We abstain from lifting the curtain behind which the serpent lies coiled in our hearts, because we dread to see its loathly length, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... juncture, the lady having been restored to her senses, you might suppose that the rescue-party would take at least some fleeting interest in the disposal of their prisoners. There you would be in error. The final curtain is due and there are peremptory affairs of the heart to be wound up before we can get away. So, to clear the ground, one of the admirers makes a gallant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... I know what fleeting and trifling things varieties very often are; but my query applies to such as have been thought worth marking and recording. If you could screw time to send me ever so brief an answer to this, pretty soon, it would be a great service ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... waken the vague foreboding, which slumbers in every feeling heart, into a distinct consciousness that the happiness after which we are here striving is unattainable; that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls; and that all earthly enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary illusion. When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, [Footnote: Trauerweiden der verbannung, literally the weeping willows of banishment, an allusion, as every reader must know, to the 137th Psalm. Linnaeus, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... somewhat hypercritical. Great thoughts must not be trimmed to the exact dialect of business-men. LONGFELLOW reveals important truths; he utters what is pent within him from the impulse of utterance: he tells us that 'Art is long and Time is fleeting;' now some arts are not long, and time often drags heavily. It will not do to be too ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... enemy. By night the Chinese soldiery work as openly as they please, for no outpost may waste its ammunition by indiscriminate shooting. But during the day, orders or no orders, it has become rash for the enemy to expose himself to our view; and even the fleeting glimpse of a moving hand is made the excuse for a hailstorm of fire. This has made excessive caution the order of the day, and you can almost believe, when no rifles are firing to disturb such a conviction, that there are only dead men round us. Yet with ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... to the country. The hostile climate gave them a very short time in which to admire nature, and for this reason the Dutch artists admire it only the more and salute the spring with greater joy. The fleeting smiles of the heavens are strongly impressed on their imagination. The country is not beautiful, but it is doubly dear to them because it has been wrested from the sea and from the hands of strangers. They painted it with affection, making ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... solace, so purely self-wrought, so utterly fanciful, that it may seem laughable. It was that the face of Olivia came before him at his most doleful moments—sometimes unsought by his imagination, though always welcome; with its general aspect of vague sweet sadness played upon by fleeting smiles, her lips desirable to that degree he could die upon them in one wild ecstasy, her eyes for depth and purity the very mountain wells. She lived, breathed, moved, smiled, sighed in this same austere atmosphere under the same grey sky that hung low outside ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... restored to its coign high above unlovely Greeley Square warned him that his hour was fleeting: in twenty minutes it would be six o'clock; at six, sharp, Blessington's would close its doors. Distressed, he scurried on, crossed Thirty-fourth Street, aimed himself courageously for the wide entrance of the department store, battled manfully through the retreating army of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Herrick reviewed this portion of his life, he owned to himself that during the five weeks that followed the Templeton Bean-feast he had lived in a fool's paradise—in a state of beatitude that was as unsubstantial and fleeting as the sunset clouds that piled themselves behind the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in 1875 or '6, when very young, in the West Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... securing a Chinese interpreter in Burma forced me to go to Hong Kong, and once there, lack of time made it necessary that I should choose the shortest route into West China, and that was by way of Haiphong and the Red River railway. After all, there were compensations. Even a fleeting vision from the windows of a railway carriage gives some idea of what the French are doing in their great Eastern colony. Moreover, there could be no better starting-point for such a trip as I had before me than the free port of Hong Kong, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... leg of an anchored data desk, he raised himself half upright as he lunged desperately at Brecken. Strangely, it occurred to Phillips for a fleeting lapse of time that old Varret had been reasonably astute in his selections, if he desired violent-tempered throwbacks. Then the breath was knocked out of him as he smashed into Brecken with a force that sent them both hurtling into ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... filled her days. He glanced about the room, beautiful, formal, exquisitely appointed. His father's portrait was gone from over the mantel, and an old French water-color hung there instead. That was too bad of Natalie. Or had it been Rodney? He would bring it back. And he gave a fleeting thought to Graham and his request to go abroad. He had not meant it. It was sheer reaction. But he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... portion in a wine-glass, according to the directions, proceeded to administer it to the gasping patient; but, while the glass was at her lips, the last paroxysm of death came on, and with it something more of that consciousness now fleeting for ever. Dashing aside the nostrum with one hand, with the other she drew the shrinking and half-fainting girl to her side, and, pressing her down beside her, appeared to give utterance to that which, from the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... own brief innings better, as men who know that our March is passing where Pepys' May has flown before, and that we shall soon be with him and his wife, and the Scot, and the red- faced parson. So fleeting is life, whose record outlives it for ever; so brief, so swift, so faint the joys and sorrows, and all that we make marvel of in our own fortunes and ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the emblem of thy state In flowers that bloom and die; Or in the shadow's fleeting form, That ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... Cain and Ham, and Pope and Turk, who are as father and son to each other, can afford to despise the judgment of the true Church on the strength of fleeting and meager successes in this life, why can not we afford in turn to despise their power and censure, on the strength of the everlasting blessings which we possess? Ham was not moved by his father's curse. Full of anger against him, and ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... she always did. And even had she suffered far more on the girl's account than she actually had, who could have resisted such pleading to be forgiven? Contrition had been so plainly visible in those grey-green eyes, and Arethusa had given so many kisses—soft and fleeting as thistledown they were, yet very satisfactory to Miss Letitia as kisses—that it was quite impossible for Miss Letitia not to believe in the perfect genuineness of ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... at 'Zekiel. His face was grave, but he nodded for her to go on. "She stayed in bed for three weeks, and during that time she lived over her short life a hundred, yes, a thousand, times; she knew that her fancy had been but a fleeting dream. A suspicion that perhaps the young man had imagined her feelings towards him was what had nearly broken her heart. Supposing you were the man, 'Zekiel, and I were the woman in this little story, could you forgive me if I said I was sorry and ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... years of preparation mark the pathway for the splendid souls, And generations live and die and seem no nearer to their goals, And yet the purpose of it all, the fleeting pleasure and the woe, The laughter and the grief of life that all who come to earth must know May be to pave the way for one—one man to serve the Will Divine And it is possible that he may be your little boy ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to 'get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, Would with the sceptre ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... brought the watch from the nail over the mantel, where, all through his sickness it had ticked away the weary hours, just as it ticked the night its first owner died, with only Hugh sitting near, and listening as it told the fleeting moments. ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... passed them in Whitehall a motorcar going very fast, the occupant of which, a handsome young man, caught the most fleeting glimpse of them—hardly enough to be certain he recognized Zara. But it gave him a ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... a near-by market is a little florist's shop, so small that one might pass twenty times without noticing it; the man, a local authority, who has kept it for years, makes a specialty of the great long-stemmed single violets, whose fleeting fragrance no words may express. They call them Californias now, but they are evidently the opulent kin of those sturdy, dark-eyed Russian violets of my mother's garden, and as they mean more than any other flower to me, Evan always ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... to you how this world and all its fleeting follies seemed to melt away before us, and how each of us felt our soul alone in the presence of our Maker, as though nothing mattered, or ever would matter, but how we stood with Him. One hardly dared to draw one's breath. Mademoiselle de Bourbon was almost stifled with the sobs she tried to restrain ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spell that he began to work that very night. After that he spent nearly all his time working with the magic palette. He often passed whole days beside the sheet of water in the forest. He painted it when the sun shone on it and it was spotted all over with the reflections of fleeting white clouds. He painted it covered with water lilies rocking on the ripples. He painted it by moonlight, when but two or three stars in the empty sky shone down upon it; and at sunset, when it lay ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. At least, those who have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must confess they are unfit to prescribe to ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... necessarily indulge the pleasing idea of gratitude, and join a thought of my first great friend Mr. LOFFT. And on this head, I believe every reader, who has himself any feeling, will judge rightly of mine: if otherwise, I would much rather he would lay down this volume, and grasp hold of such fleeting pleasures as the world's business may afford him. I speak not of that gentleman as a public character, or as a scholar. Of the former I know but little, and of the latter nothing. But I know from experience, and I glory in this fair opportunity of saying it, ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... soul about. It was certainly a dreary expanse, but the sunlight there seemed strangely brilliant, I thought, and, what was more curious, appeared to be alive. It was quivering. The transient glittering of some seagulls remote in the blue was as if you could glimpse, now and then, fleeting hints of what is immaculate in heaven. Nothing of our business was in sight anywhere except the white stalk of a lighthouse, and that, I knew, was miles away across the estuary whose waters were then invisible, for it was not only low tide, but I was descending ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... between the warning and the flood; and for all that time he held on his way, nor faltered in his faith. Does our faith realise that which lies before us with anything like similar clearness? Do we see that future shining through all the trivial, fleeting present? Does it possess weight and solidity enough to shape our lives? Noah's creed was much shorter than ours; but I fear his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... beaten and tossed, they rested disheartened and hopeless. Then, as they drifted, a sound struggled to them against the wind—a faint cry, illusive and fleeting as a dream voice—and, still doubting, they heard ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... How much beneficial reflection and conversation it excited! How necessary, in an age of sensation morals and free-love theories, to have self-indulgence occasionally exhibited in all its hideous nastiness, and without any of its fleeting, deceptive, imaginary charms! The instantaneous detection of the Otero murderers last autumn, and of the robbers of Adams's express-car last winter, as related in the daily papers, and the picture presented ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... jealous fancies thus conjured up are fleeting in the shadows of summer clouds; and, soon passing, give place to pleasanter thoughts. Now that land is near, and a seaport soon to be reached, the young ladies are this night unusually elated; and, listening to the vivid description of South Sea scenes, they reflect less sadly and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... knew little of the Mehrikans save what I had learned at college, a perfunctory and fleeting knowledge, as they were a people who interested ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... In the fleeting and impoverished life of Vauvenargues his friendships were the main adventure. We have mentioned a name which is too frequently the object of malignity on English lips, the name of Voltaire. No one would pretend that the multiform ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... was all Alice got. Her burning curiosity to know precisely how this young couple stood must go unsatisfied for the time being. She had only caught a few fleeting glimpses of the man who had given Joan the key to life, and every time had wondered, from something in his eyes, whether he found things wholly good. She was just a little suspicious of romances. Her own had worn thin so quickly. "Good-by, my dear," she said. "Don't forget you're dining ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... is the meaning of a "perennial plant" in botany? Ans. A plant continuing more than two years.—Give the contrary of "perennial." Ans. Fleeting, short-lived. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... just below the spot I was standing on, the water plunged down a nearly precipitous descent, from which it apparently (for the spray prevented one seeing exactly) fell perpendicularly into the pool below, sending up as it did so gossamer veils of spray full of fleeting, faint, and ever varying iris hues. This pool is flanked, and probably about 100 yards below the foot of the previously mentioned fall, on the northern side by a precipice about 250 feet high, down which, in four separate cascades, falls the water of the branch of the river which cuts off ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... jeweler had an impulse of shame—obscure, instinctive, and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... this theory what we call the world, with all its supposed infinitudes of space and time, its systems of suns and planets, its seemingly endless forms of inorganic matter and organic life, shrivels up, on a close inspection, into a fleeting, a momentary figment of thought. It is like one of those glass baubles, iridescent with a thousand varied and delicate hues, which a single touch suffices to shatter into dust. The philosopher, like the sorcerer, has but to wave his ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... such. To us it certainly often seems as if there were masses of human beings whose sole idea of living is to gratify their bodily needs,—but I fancy it is only because we do not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus. Few, if any, are so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting intuition of the Higher existence. They may lack the force to comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,—but in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous existence ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... not rather a mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of everything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... you like to see her?" Jewel gave a fleeting glance at Mrs. Forbes. "She always comes to the table with ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... a strange old superstition that even Death must listen to the voice of Time in gold; that, when the scanty numbered moments of the sick are fleeting, a gold watch laid in the wasted palm, and pointing the earthly hours, compels the scythe of Death to pause, the timeless power to bow before the two great gods of the human race—time ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... Think of the premise. As God the invisible is the changeless, what is the variable, fleeting, visible unreality? The real is everlasting, the unreal is transitory. The real is ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... I had launched was a wilderness indeed in comparison with the Eden I had left. I would not have made the slightest effort to escape from death in any form; and though I was not senseless enough to prefer an eternity of untried wretchedness to the fleeting sorrows of mortal life, yet as my conscience was lulled to rest by the self-delusion that I suffered more than I deserved, and had therefore a claim on divine justice, and as I was willing to receive the supposed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... dragged by. Jonas put in his time alternately going over the new plan and feeling more frightened than he had ever believed possible. Claerten reached him once, but the contact was weak and fleeting; the director hadn't enough strength to reach him again, at least not for a day or so. Jonas was exactly where he'd wanted to ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... seems to be the cause of this great danger of the Kurus. Alas, this sin was committed from temptation by foolish Duryodhana, desirous of wealth; I believe all this to be the untoward effect of ever-fleeting Time that bringeth on everything. Tied to the wheel of Time, like its periphery, I am not capable of flying away from it. Tell me, O Sanjaya, where shall I go? What shall I do, and, how shall I do it? These foolish Kauravas will all be destroyed, their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... roses: none of them had ever equaled the western light on the old red paint. Over and over again he had tried to recall the magic, to set the door at the precise angle to catch the level rays, but in vain. It was a moment of beauty, fleeting as the sunset itself, and only to be found in the one permanence that is memory. He remembered it now with a thousand other impressions as lasting and as lost, and childhood and youth came alive in him and hurt and helped him. Yes, this was home. In a hostile universe there was one ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the swifter they fly; Love takes no account of the fleeting hours; He walks in a dream 'mid the blooming of flowers, And never awakes till the blossoms die. Ah lovers are lovers the wide world over— In the hunter's lodge and the royal palace. Sweet are the lips of his love to the lover— Sweet as new wine in a golden chalice From ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... of his attire. He recalled it now, for the frosty gray eyes of Juliana ran about him and came to rest upon his own eyes. For the taut moment that he braved her glance it unaccountably seemed to him that the forbidding mouth of the woman twitched nervously into the beginning of a smile. It was a fleeting effect, but it did seem as if she had almost laughed, then caught herself. And there was a tremolo defect in the organ tone with which she now again demanded in blistering politeness, "May ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... no further obstacle to the free progress of our love; and accordingly my dear Dubois became my mistress, and we made each other happy during all the time we spent at Berne. I was quite cured of my misadventure with the horrible widow, and I found that if love's pleasures are fleeting so are its pains. I will go farther and maintain that the pleasures are of much longer duration, as they leave memories which can be enjoyed in old age, whereas, if a man does happen to remember the pains, it is so slightly as to have ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... much in the keen satire of his drawing and legends, but in his startling, his strikingly truthful creations. Creations we have had from Leech, Keene, and others—from Leech's pure sense of fun and jollity; from Keene's unerring observation of men and women, and fleeting emotion—but those of Mr. du Maurier go deeper into vices, virtues, habits, and motives, and are at the root of his pictorial commentaries. He has given us true pictures of the manners of his time; and those manners he has satirised with more ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... from his poem the termination of his exile; he reckoned on Fame as his mediator; but he died too soon to receive the palm of his country. Often is the fleeting life of man worn out in adversity! and if glory triumph, if at length he land upon a happier shore, he no sooner enters the port than the grave yawns before him, and destiny, in a thousand shapes, often announces the end of life by the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... Heaven and Earth. How silent! How solitary! It stands alone and changes not. It revolves without danger to itself and is the mother of the universe. I do not know its name and so call it the Path. With reluctance I call it the Infinite. Infinity is the Fleeting, the Fleeting is the Vanishing, the Vanishing is the Reverting." The Tao is in the Passage rather than the Path. It is the spirit of Cosmic Change,—the eternal growth which returns upon itself to produce new forms. It recoils upon itself like the dragon, the beloved ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... conversation. Even had not the chauffeur's presence acted as a restraint, none of the party would have had the heart to make perfunctory conversation; the tragedy of the moment had touched them too deeply. What a strange, wonderful unraveling of life's tangled skeins had come with the few fleeting hours. Each turned the drama over in his mind, trying to make a reality of it and spin into the warp and woof of the tapestry time had already woven this thread of new color. But so startling was it in hue that ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... careworn face reminded Charlotte of the smile on St. Stephen's face, when he was dying. It was unearthly, angelic; but it was also very fleeting. Presently he added ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... hawthorn brake, Where bluebells draw the sky down to the wood, Where, 'mid brown leaves, the primroses awake And hidden violets smell of solitude; Beneath green leaves bright-fluttered by the wing Of fleeting, beautiful, immortal Spring, I should have said, "I love you," and your eyes Have said, "I, too . . . " The ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... together, let not man put asunder.' I had received the soul's highest and clearest intuition as a direct revelation from the Divine, and I relied upon it as such implicitly, undoubtingly. Oh, with what earnest faith, for a brief and fleeting season, I believed that the seal of the Omnipotent had been set upon our union, earthly as well as spiritual, and that no power on earth or in hell could prevail against its consummation! How I revelled in this sweet belief; how this blest and silent consciousness wrapped my soul in light, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a winter hath my absence been From Thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood. She noticed, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... hundred years the fleeting Caesars of Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the church was distracted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... interested in a certain rare quality of delicate femininity in the girl's face and figure, and his ear too quick to appreciate the music of her cultured voice, that he should not be able to recall such pleasant memories later. Indeed, during those fleeting moments on the threshold of the theater, he had garnered quite a number of minor impressions, not only of the ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Ever since they had fallen into the habit of abstracted talks on this imponderable subject, Piney had seemed able, with a sort of elfin craft, to make Bruce remember Miss Elsie Gossamer's light, fleeting touch upon his life. He had never mentioned Miss Gossamer to Piney in all their mutual experience, yet the tramp-boy was constantly skirmishing up from afar with a generalisation, like a high-held transparency, that illuminated Miss Gossamer's ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... 29th of July, 1830, Mrs. Boardman writes to her sister from Maulmain, whither they had gone for the benefit of her children's health: "We must look beyond this frail fleeting world for our true peace. Alas, I know by most bitter experience, that it is in vain to seek for true happiness here below. My fondest earthly hopes have again and again been dashed. Torn from the bosom of my dear father's family, my heart was almost broken; and when ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Though the Church made the attempt in "Parzival", it could never lay its hands so effectively upon this Celtic material, because it contained too many elements which were root and branch inconsistent with the essential teachings of Christianity. A fleeting comparison of the noble end of Charlemagne's Peers fighting for their God and their King at Ronceval with the futile and dilettante careers of Arthur's knights in joust and hunt, will show better than mere words ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the tribes differ, but there is a prevalent belief in a principle of good that the Moros call Tuhan. The sun, moon, and stars are the light that shines from him,—he is everywhere, all-seeing, all-powerful; he has given fleeting souls to brutes and eternal souls to men. The soul enters a child's body at birth, through the soft space in the top of the head, and leaves through the skull at death. Their first men were giants, and Eve was fifty feet high, but as men's minds grew their bodies ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... fast asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating; But when she awoke, she found it a joke, For they were still a-fleeting. ...
— Ring O' Roses - A Nursery Rhyme Picture Book • Anonymous
... past life were razed to the ground, and the place they had once occupied was sown with salt, to be rebuilt no more for ever. It was like the change from this Life to that other hidden one, when so many of the motives which have actuated all our earthly existence, will have become more fleeting than the shadows of a dream. With a wrench of his soul from the past, so much of which was as nothing, and worse than nothing to him now, Mr. Carson took some hours, after he had witnessed the death of his son's murderer, to consider ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that my new companion could not have abandoned herself to me in this manner, without having made up her mind to be complaisant; but this was not enough for me, it was my humour to be loved. This was my chief aim, everything else was only fleeting enjoyment, and as I had not had a love affair since I parted with Zaira, I hoped most fervently that the present adventure would prove to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and restful inebriety. Life no doubt had moments with that quality of beauty, of unbidden flying rapture, but the trouble was, they lasted no longer than the span of a cloud's flight over the sun; impossible to keep them with you, as Art caught beauty and held it fast. They were fleeting as one of the glimmering or golden visions one had of the soul in nature, glimpses of its remote and brooding spirit. Here, with the sun hot on his face, a cuckoo calling from a thorn tree, and in the air the honey savour of gorse—here ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the midst of certain most important experiences— must lie in the nature of the feeling of personality. What is that feeling? On what is it based? How can it be described? The difficulties of introspection have led many to deny the possibility of such self-fixation. The fleeting moment passes, and we grasp only an idea or a feeling; the Ego has slipped away like a drop of mercury under the fingers. Like the hero of the German poet, who ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... for his suffering, and he thought how he must go away and travel again; only open solitude and wandering with rough men could still his pain; primitive Nature was the one balm.... That fellow Tahar—why did he delay? Owen thought of the eagles, the awful bird pursuing the fleeting deer, and himself riding in pursuit. This was the life that would cure him— how soon? In three months? in six? in ten years? It would be strange if he were to become a bedouin for love of her, and he walked on thinking how they had lain together one night listening to the silence, hearing nothing ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... that you are father to this child, this dispenser of immortalities. You who bear a name that will still live in the mouths of men when all the race of kings has been forgotten, it is not meet that you bare your head before the fleeting fames and dignities of a day—cover yourself!" And truly he looked right fine and princely when he said that. Then he gave order that the Bailly of Rheims be brought; and when he was come, and stood bent low and bare, the King said to ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... of this kind undergoing a slow decomposition and possessing little volatility, it, when mixed with other very fleeting scents, gives permanence to them on the handkerchief, and for this quality the ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... began afresh! The black night caught me in his mesh, Whirled me up, and flung me prone! I was left on the college-step alone. I looked, and far there, ever fleeting Far, far away, the receding gesture, And looming of the lessening vesture, Swept forward from my stupid hand, While I watched my foolish heart expand In the lazy glow of benevolence O'er the various modes of man's belief. I sprang up with fear's vehemence. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... recollection, yet living in the dreams of his soul. He thought of the period when he, a happy child like those before him, had knelt and heard the same sweet words breathed o'er his bending head: he remembered having received a father's kiss, and a mother's smile gleamed like a star in his memory; but the fleeting visions of childhood were fading again into darkness, when Kenneth arose, and, clasping the Indian wildly to his breast, exclaimed, "My son, my son! my long lost Charles!" The springs of the father's love ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. A more substantial, though less simple, hypothesis, was contrived by Cerinthus of Asia, [14] who dared to oppose the last of the apostles. Placed on the confines of the Jewish and Gentile world, he labored to reconcile the Gnostic with the Ebionite, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... positive relief, therefore, when the vehicle bowled swiftly into a quiet cross street, and he was vouchsafed only fleeting glimpses of broad avenues where fresh multitudes of lamps again ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... regard. After watching him a while the conductor suddenly turned his head and looked directly at Mary Louise, with a curious expression, as if connecting his two passengers. Then he went on through the train, but the girl's heart was beating high and the little man, while seeming to eye the fleeting landscape through the window, wriggled somewhat uneasily ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... reveal the soul, the mouth the flesh, the chin stands for purpose, the nose means will. But over and behind all is that fleeting Something we call "expression." This Something is not set or fixed, it is fluid as the ether, changeful as the clouds that move in mysterious majesty across the surface of a summer sky, subtle as the sob of rustling leaves—too faint at times for human ears—elusive as the ripples that play ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... them all our worldly hankerings after the seen and temporal. Then we shall bear fruit that He will gather into His garner. The cares and the pleasures and the wealth that terminate in, and are occupied with, this poor fleeting present are small and insignificant. Let us try to yield ourselves up wholly to the higher influences of that Divine Spirit, and in true consecration receive the engrafted word. And then He will give to us to drink of that river of His pleasures, drinking of which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that Jane would now look upon him with very different eyes. And even while he hoped, his spirit sank a bit now and again in her company. But he put the weak side away and told himself that love was at best a fleeting passion. ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... worth to win? Deserving rather of our blame were he Who having seen thee undisturbed could be.' None such was I, for, straightway stricken sore, My heart bowed low to Love, the conqueror. And ah! no false and fleeting love is mine, Such as for painted beauty feigns to pine; Nor doth my passion, although deep and strong, Seek its own wicked pleasure in thy wrong. Nay; on this journey I would rather die Than know that thou hadst fallen, and that I Had wrought thy shame and foully brought to harm The virtue which ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... rear parlour that was Mrs. Page's bedroom was a rather dim and dreary place; such light as it had fell through one long, high window that gave only upon a narrow air shaft; it was only in mid-July that the actual sunlight—a bright and fleeting triangle—touched the worn red carpet and the curly-maple bed. In winter the window gave almost no light at all. Julia dressed by gaslight ten months out of the year, and had to sit up in her warm blankets and stare ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Even Jill had a fleeting realisation that the true meaning of Christmas was something quite apart from presents, and turkey, and plum-puddings, while Betty's thoughts flew back to the day of her confirmation, and she vowed herself ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... unconscious selection, as far as pigeons are concerned, depends on a universal principle in human nature, namely, on our rivalry, and desire to outdo our neighbours. We see this in every fleeting fashion, even in our dress, and it leads the fancier to endeavour to exaggerate every peculiarity in his breeds. A great authority on pigeons (6/44. Eaton 'Treatise on Pigeons' 1858 page 86.), says, "Fanciers do not and will not admire a medium standard, that is, half and half, which is neither ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... wrong to say that they had never been associated with the charming vivacity of Adele, as well as, at other times, with the sweet graces of Rose Elderkin. But these illusions had been of a character so transitory, so fleeting, that he had come to love their brilliant changes, and to look forward with some dread to the possible permanence of them, or such fixedness as should take away the charming drift of his vagaries. If, in some wanton and quite impossible moment, the modest Rose had conquered her delicacy so far ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... years Of pleasure, and of varied pleasure too, Had worn the soft impression half away. What I once felt, I would recall; the faint Responsive voice grew fainter each reply: Imagination sank amid the scenes It laboured to create; the vivid joy Of fleeting youth I followed, and possessed. 'Tis the first moment of the tenderest hour, 'Tis the first mien on entering new delights, We give our peace, our power, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... ancient Gaul. It was a great, unregulated force, rushing hither and thither. Impelled by insatiate greed for the possessions of their neighbors, there was no permanence in their loves or their hatreds. The enemies of to-day were the allies of to-morrow. Guided entirely by the fleeting desires and passions of the moment, with no far-reaching plans to restrain, the sixty or more tribes composing the Gallic people were in perpetual state of feud and anarchy, apparently insensible to the ties of brotherhood, ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... me," she said cheerfully, resuming her seat. She dropped the matches into Mr. Corliss's hand with a fleeting touch of her finger-tips upon his palm. "Of course you wanted to smoke. I can't think why I didn't realize it ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... for Death's harvest, The fruits of life long tarrying, Full early to pluck them In the fleeting bloom of spring—Was it thy lot, was it thy bourn? Thy lot and thy ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... S. KING, NO. 1 CORNHILL. "'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes Their progress in the road of science; blinds The ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the great masters of style in the language. In his greatest passages, as in the Vision of Sudden Death and the Dream Fugue, the cadence of his elaborately piled-up sentences falls like cathedral music, or gives an abiding expression to the fleeting pictures of his most gorgeous dreams. His character unfortunately bore no correspondence to his intellectual endowments. His moral system had in fact been shattered by indulgence in opium. His appearance ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... once bright—genial—heavenly. So sudden and so early a prelusion of summer, it was generally feared, could not last. But that only made everybody the more eager to lose no hour of an enjoyment that might prove so fleeting. It seemed as if the whole population of the place, a population among the most numerous in Christendom, had been composed of hybernating animals suddenly awakened by the balmy sunshine from their long winter's torpor. Through every hour of the golden ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... you love me not—a man of the world, you have given me your plighted troth, and are ready to redeem it; but that entire affection, that love whole and abiding, where—where is that vision of my youth? I am but a pastime of your life, and I would be its all;—but a fleeting thought, and I would be your whole soul. I would have our two hearts one; but ah, my Arthur, how lonely yours is! how little you give me of it! You speak of our parting, with a smile on your lip; of our meeting, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sidney were treading the complicated measure; and simultaneously Henry ceased to be a youngish twenty-one and was even conscious of a fleeting doubt as to whether he was really ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... in one year there be, So many windows in this Church we see; As many marble pillars here appear As there are hours throughout the fleeting year; (8760) As many gates as moons one year does view. Strange tale to tell; yet not ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... knowledge of wild animals is gained from rare, fleeting glimpses of frightened hoof or wing in the woods, to consider that there can be such a thing as a school for the Wood Folk; or that instruction has any place in the life of the wild things. Nevertheless it is probably true that education ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... Nort heard Bud yell, seemingly from a great distance, though, in reality from a position directly behind him. Then as his vision dimmed again, Nort caught a fleeting sight of a lasso whirling and writhing through the air ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... who would linger till bright eyes grow dim, Kind voices mute, and faithful bosoms cold? Till carking care, and toil, and anguish grim, Cast their dark shadows o'er this fleeting world, Till fancy's many-coloured wings are furled, And all, save the proud spirit, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... hastened onward, never pausing for breath, till he found himself all at once in the great Ring. He knew the city well, but in his race he had bestowed no attention upon the familiar windings and turnings, thinking only of overtaking the fleeting vision, no matter how, no matter where. Now, on a sudden, the great, irregular square opened before him, flanked on the one side by the fantastic spires of the Teyn Church, and the blackened front of the huge Kinsky Palace, on the other by the half-modern Town Hall with its ancient ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... he lay there wondering vaguely at his strange misfortunes. The fever in his blood was running high, and, instead of harboring sober thought, his mind was filled with fleeting fancies. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... time to learn its name or to know whither I was driving; it whirled me past the houses and out into the country beyond; only when I had pulled up two miles beyond did I know what I had done and did I realise that I had missed for ever one of those pleasures which, fleeting as they are, are all that is to be discovered in human life. It went so fast, that before I knew what had happened the Griffin had flashed by me ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind, but habits are strong things, and my religious fervours are confined, alas! to some fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion. A correspondence, opening with you, has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me conscious of existence. Indulge me in it: I will not be very troublesome! ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... better to act folly than to talk it. The essence of pantomime is practical absurdity keeping the wits in constant chase, coming upon one by surprise, and starting off again before you can arrest the fleeting 'phantom:' the essence of this piece was prosing stupidity remaining like a mawkish picture on the stage, and overcoming your impatience by the force of ennui. A speaking pantomime such as this one is not unlike a flying waggon," ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... being on the verge of impertinence to Captain Merrifield, she submitted to the prospect more quietly than her friends had dared to hope. Lance had almost expected her to deport her charge, parrot and all, suddenly and secretly by an Australian liner, and had advised Bernard, on a fleeting meeting at Bexley, to be on his guard if she hinted at anything so preposterous; but Bernard shook his head, and said Angel was more to be trusted than her elders thought. "Waves and storms don't go over us for ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... as come he must, Grieve not that we this sorry dust Do leave behind. For when this fleeting life be run, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Another fleeting pause at the top rewarded his endeavor, and then a couple of hundred yards of hardly perceptible upward incline produced again the swift and ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... had herself been heard to use seemed to overwhelm her. Her calmness fled and she cast a fleeting look of anguish at Mr. Jeffrey. But his face was turned from sight, and, meeting with no help there, or anywhere, indeed, save in her own powerful nature, she recovered as best she could the ground she had lost and, with a trembling question ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... antecedent embodied existence, and for its cause the difference of degree of merit and demerit of animated beings, liable to faults such as ignorance and the like, is well known—from /S/ruti, Sm/ri/ti, and reasoning—to be non-eternal, of a fleeting, changing nature (sa/m/sara). The following text, for instance, 'As long as he is in the body he cannot get free from pleasure and pain' (Ch. Up. VIII, 12, 1), refers to the sa/m/sara-state as described above. From the following passage, on the other ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... tearful eye, Mary, Seems to ask me why, Mary, I can wait till sunset on'y. Ah! turn not away; I am out for the day On a Fleet and fleeting pony. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the Colonel, with the piety of a confessor, (wringing Mr. Lovelace's hand,) snatch these few fleeting moments, and commend yourself ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... outspread, In happy days ere Love, alas, was dead; So now, farewell! Ere the new day shall break Adown their gleaming track, my way I take." She turned; but ere the gate that looked without She reached, one fleeting moment paused in doubt Upon a river's brink. In one swift glance All coming time she saw. A weird romance Wherein she traced great peoples yet unborn, New springing cycles, strange lands cleft with tarn Or pleasant vale, and green plains stretching far, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... from the fresh, the soft and tender bed Of her still mother, gentle night out flew, The fleeting balm on hills and dales she shed, With honey drops of pure and precious dew, And on the verdure of green forests spread The virgin primrose and the violet blue, And sweet-breathed Zephyr on his spreading wings, Sleep, ease, repose, rest, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... eyes—the dreamy, cognisant expression; glance at the pretty mouth and the dainty ears. Her demeanour is obviously that of a meek and modest woman, but Punter, with his true genius, has caught that glint of inward fire, that fleeting look of shy mischief that earned for her the ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... repaired with the emperor to Malmaison, and the faithful, who were not willing to leave him in his misfortune, gathered around him, watched over his life, and gave to his residence a fleeting reflection of the old grandeur and magnificence. For they who now stood around Napoleon, guarding his person from any immediate danger that threatened him at the hands of fanatic enemies or hired assassins, were ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... preaching according to the forms of the new religion was to be practised in places where it had already taken place. Letters general were immediately despatched to the senates of all the cities, proclaiming these articles of agreement and ordering their execution. Thus for a fleeting moment there was a thrill of joy throughout the Netherlands. The inquisition was thought forever abolished, the era ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I represent the Denver Round-up. I'm interested in this sheep-herder killing—merely as a reporter," he added, with a fleeting smile. "Did you know old man Dunn, of Deer Creek, ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... very engaging specimen of the genus Baronet in Sir Barnet Skettles, who was so kind to Paul Dombey and so angry with poor Mr. Baps. Sir Leicester Dedlock is on a larger scale—in fact, almost too "fine and large" for life. But I recall a fleeting vision of perfect loveliness among Miss Monflathers's pupils—"a baronet's daughter who by some extraordinary reversal of the laws of Nature was not only plain in feature but ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... earth to-day, are living so close to the borderland of the new birth that they catch fleeting glimpses of the longed-for freedom, but the full import of its meaning does not dawn. There is yet another veil, however thin, ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... to wagering money," observed Rackliff wisely, "the fellow who bets on sympathy or loyalty is a chump. I always back my judgment and try to use some common sense about it. I hope you don't think for a fleeting moment that I contemplate finishing my preparatory school education in this stagnant hole. Not for little Herbert. I'd get paresis here in less than a year. I'm pretty sure the governor simply chucked me down here for a term, as sort of a warning. I'll go back ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... sea swept in a torrent. Fighting madly for the exit hatch into the chamber below, McClure was dashed off his feet by the lurch of the smitten submarine and sprawled against the steel side of the conning tower. With the spray dashing in his face Jack had a fleeting glimpse of his commander, and by a superhuman effort drew himself back into the turret against the mass of water. Hurling himself forward, he groped about for his captain and found him finally on the floor of the turret. Exerting all his strength, he succeeded in hurling "Little Mack" down into ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... must be done, too, according to the teacher's knowledge of the principles of evolution, and not merely out of regard to small and fleeting interests. The teacher must therefore gradually learn his own place in evolution, so that he may become one-pointed as to himself; unless he practises one-pointedness with regard to his own ideal for himself, he will not be able to bring it to bear on his surroundings. He must try ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... botanically, geologically, and otherwise. It was one of his vexations that nature, art, science, history, commerce, were so long, and time and a voraciously intelligent but mortal and limited baronet so fleeting. He would have liked to spend several months on the Pacific coast, looking into a thousand things with unflagging zeal and interest. It was really afflicting to turn his back upon the early Spanish settlers, the Jesuit missions, the grape and olive production, mining ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... had been too hurried for more than fleeting moments of self-study, but on this idle Sunday morning Price Ruyler's perturbed mind wandered to that inner self of his to which he once had longed to give a freer expression. It was odd that the conservative training, ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... our wedding day; Joyous hour, we give thee greeting! Whither, whither art thou fleeting? Fickle moment, prithee stay! What though mortal joys be hollow? Pleasures come, if sorrows follow. Though the tocsin sound, ere long, Ding dong! Ding dong! Yet until the shadows fall Over one and over all, Sing a merry madrigal - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert |
