"Fleeting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suicides a year take place here at the falls. People cannot resist the fascination of the rushing water. Many times no real reason can be given for these acts of self-destruction. You know there are moments when every human brain falters and seems touched by the fleeting finger of insanity. People who stand on great heights often feel an almost irresistible longing to fling themselves down. Here they are attacked by a mad longing to cast themselves into the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... and fifty, with Lennox deducted and less ten per cent, would not take her as far as the drawbridge. The fleeting vision of the castle passed, replaced by the bargain ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... lost a valuable art." There was a fleeting glance, and she vanished within, leaving him puzzled and astonished by the unexpected softening of her voice. How long he stood there, with his gaze fixed upon the vacant doorway, he never ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... turned to leave, but he stopped to examine the conchas on a pair of leathers. Steve had a fleeting thought that the man was listening; also that he was covering the fact with ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... covered by slender hands. It was like passing a garden of mignonette in the night, that fleeting perfume ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... luncheon, almost equalling in removes the dinner. A day of this kind you would imagine sufficient—but a to-morrow and a to-morrow. A never-ending, still-beginning feast may be bearable, perhaps, when stern Winter frowns, shaking with chilling aspect his hoary locks; but during a summer sweet as fleeting, let me, my kind strangers, escape sometimes into your fir groves, wander on the margin of your beautiful lakes, or climb your rocks to view still others in endless perspective; which, piled by more than giant's hand, scale the heavens ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Manufactory at Windsor, Pamela found in her crewel-work an all-absorbing labour. Matilda of Normandy could hardly have toiled more industriously at the Bayeux tapestry than did Mrs. Winstanley, in the effort to immortalise the fleeting glories of woodland blossom or costly ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence, without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sir, I recall most frequently and most willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of my youth: they were too rare, too much mingled with bitterness, and are now too distant. I recall the period of my seclusion, of my solitary walks, of the fleeting but delicious days that I have passed entirely by myself, with my good and simple housekeeper, with my beloved dog, my old cat, with the birds of the field, the hinds of the forest, with all nature, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... any man produce, Why we should be intemperate in the use Of any worldly good? Do we not see That all these things from us a fleeting be? What can we hold? What can we keep from flying From us? Is not each thing we have a dying? My house, my wife, my child, they all grow old, Nor am I e'er the younger for my gold; Here's none abiding, all things fade away, Poor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her face and he knew that it was the old maid of the train. Then something else was impressed upon his mind, something which he had not noticed at their first meeting, but which came to him at their second. He had seen a face like hers before, but the resemblance was so faint and fleeting that he could not place it, strive as he would. But he was sure that ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fleeting, And the seed must fall to-day; And care not what hands shall reap it, Or if you shall have passed away Before the waving corn-fields Shall gladden the ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... a black velvet curtain behind him which accentuated his fairness. He did not look nineteen. Jean had a fleeting vision of a certain steel engraving of the "Princes in the Tower" which had hung in her grandmother's house. Derry was not in the least like those lovely imprisoned boys, yet she had an overwhelming sense of his ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... such circumstances, in the midst of intense darkness, can "take no note of time." An hour of horror will sometimes seem an age, while a week of unalloyed pleasure will often glide by seemingly with the same rapidity as a few fleeting moments. It may have been one hour—it may have been ten—that the Corporal sat on the floor of his dungeon; when suddenly he was startled by the noise of the trap-door above his head being opened, and ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... in a frock of filmy grey-green chiffon whose colour reminded him of the spiky leaves of a carnation; but he had never seen her look prettier than on that mild spring night; and his eyes unconsciously softened as they dwelt upon her face for one fleeting moment. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... on, my happy child, Ere drop the tears of woe Upon that mirror, scattering all Those glorious shapes, and show A fleeting shadow, which thou think'st An angel, breathing, living— A shallow pebbly brook which thou ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... achievement, and in a camp made up of "Euchre Bills," "Poker Dicks," "Profane Pete," and "Snap-shot Harry," was known vaguely as "him," "Skeesicks," or "that coot." It was remembered long after, with a feeling of superstition, that he had never even met with the dignity of an accident, nor received the fleeting honor of a chance shot meant for somebody else in any of the liberal and broadly comprehensive encounters which distinguished the camp. And the inundation that finally carried him out of it was partly anticipated by ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... not suit me now to dispute that point with you. I have the means of knowing more of the secrets of the human heart than common men. I tell you, Flora Bannerworth, that he who talks to you of love, loves you not but with the fleeting fancy of a boy; and there is one who hides deep in his heart a world of passion, one who has never spoken to you of love, and yet who loves you with a love as far surpassing the evanescent fancy of this boy Holland, as does the mighty ocean the most placid lake that ever basked in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... time, and yet she found that she could not think at all; a succession of mere images and fragments of thought passed rapidly over her mind, and her will exercised no control upon their order or their nature. One of these fleeting reflections was that in all the offers of marriage she had ever heard, this was the most unsentimental and businesslike. As for his appeal to her ambition, it fell quite dead upon her ear, but a ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... that I walk undeserted, But forever attended By the glad heavens that bended O'er the innocent past; Toward fancy or truth Doth the sweet vision win me? 230 Dare I think that I cast In the fountain of youth The fleeting reflection Of some bygone perfection That ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... significant that among all the conceptions of the people as to the identity of Jesus there was no intimation of belief that He was the Messiah. Neither by word nor deed had He measured up to the popular and traditional standard of the expected Deliverer and King of Israel. Fleeting manifestations of evanescent hope that He might prove to be the looked-for Prophet, like unto Moses, had not been lacking; but all such incipient conceptions had been neutralized by the hostile activity of the Pharisees and their kind. To them it was a matter of supreme though evil determination ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Yet the fleeting shadows of metaphysics were pursued with more curiosity and ardor. After a long oblivion, Plato was revived in Italy by a venerable Greek, [108] who taught in the house of Cosmo of Medicis. While the synod of Florence was involved in theological debate, some beneficial consequences ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... coming and going, and to straighten out the causes of events, that reflection is inevitably turned toward something dynamic and independent, and can have no successful issue except in mechanical science. When on the other hand reflection stops to challenge and question the fleeting object, not so much to prepare for its possible return as to conceive its present nature, this reflection is turned no less unmistakably in the direction of ideas, and will terminate in logic or the morphology of being. We attribute independence to things in order to normalise their ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... from Newport life—Stanhope with mingled depression and relief, the artist with some shrinking from contact with anything common, while Marion stood upon the bow beside her uncle, inhaling the salt breeze, regarding the lovely fleeting shores, her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling with enjoyment. The passengers and scene, Stanhope was thinking, were typically New England, until the boat made a landing at Naushon Island, when he was reminded ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... examined leisurely and intently. The clear morning air made objects at a distance very distinct, and as Trevison had ridden past the car, Corrigan had seen a flutter at one of the windows; had caught a fleeting glimpse of Rosalind Benham's face. He had seen Trevison ride away, to return for a second view of the car a few minutes later. At breakfast, Corrigan had not failed to note Miss Benham's lingering glances at the black horse, and again, in the bank, with ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... little, flexed his muscles, grown stiff by his cramped position, and as he did so he caught a glimpse of a figure on the south face of the wall. But it was so fleeting he was not sure. If he had only brought his glasses with him he might have decided, but he was without them, and he concluded finally that it was merely an optical illusion. He and the Indian had the mountain walls to themselves, and the warrior could not ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... suspicion; but the boy whom I do suspect is one whose course lately has given me the deepest pain; one who has violated all the early promise he gave; one who seems to be going farther and farther astray, and sacrificing all moral principle to the ghost of a fleeting and most despicable popularity—to the approval of those whom he ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... She allowed a fleeting smile to play on her lips. She flashed a quick look at him and quickly turned away. He gave a gasp of desire. She raised her shoulders in a little shrug. With a savage bound he sprang upon her and seized her in his arms. Then she laughed. She put her arms, her soft, round arms, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... winter of 1850 I was a member of one of the leading colleges of this country. I was in moderate circumstances pecuniarily, though I was perhaps better furnished with less fleeting riches than many others. I was an incessant and indiscriminate reader of books. For the solid sciences I had no particular fancy, but with mental modes and habits, and especially with the eccentric and fantastic in the intellectual ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are in mortal terror of him, for he is still the absolute monarch—he has the power to promote or disgrace, to take their lives or let them go free. They laugh when he laughs, cry when he does, and watch his fleeting moods with ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... infinitely more than a naval lieutenant. But Nevil claimed her as little personally as he allowed her to be claimed by another. The graces of her freaks of petulance and airy whims, her sprightly jets of wilfulness, fleeting frowns of contempt, imperious decisions, were all beautiful, like silver-shifting waves, in this lustrous planet of her pure freedom; and if you will seize the divine conception of Artemis, and own the goddess French, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... got the first glimpse of her face, he was troubled with one of those fleeting and indefinite likenesses, which almost every body can remember, and has been, at times, perplexed with. He could not keep himself from looking at her, and watchin her perpetually. At table, or sitting at her state-room door, still she would encounter ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... if 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 straight be ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... Was it this fleeting radiance of color that always stirred the birds to sudden, joyous song at the charmed hour of sunset?—that outpoured upon the heavenly breeze, for which the long day often panted, this flood of perfume of a thousand odors? Or was it only because ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... air as she entered Simon Rattar's room seemed compounded of a little shyness, considerable trepidation, and yet more determination. In her low voice and with a fleeting smile she wished him good morning, like an acquaintance with whom she was quite familiar, and then with a serious little frown, and fixing her engaging eyes very straight upon him, she ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... face of Violette was veiled with sadness. The fear that Ourson would feel repugnance towards her made her heart tremble; but this thought, which was wholly personal, was very fleeting—it could not triumph over her devoted tenderness. Her only response was to throw herself in the arms ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... preparing a 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 action, and the few and audible words she made out to articulate, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... like a winter hath my absence been From Thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December's ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... good deal of bathing these days, as there is a beautiful little river about a stone's throw away from our billets. By the way, I hope you are continuing as keen as ever on your swimming. As to leave, it has again vanished into the limbo of futurity. I am not particularly sorry. Leave is such a fleeting joy. Just as one is beginning to get into the way of things at home one has to go back again to the Front. I would much prefer to get the War completely over than get leave. After all, in my present job I am not worried ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... said, "and you, my Julia, ye are unconscious how the fleeting hours have slipped away. The night hath far advanced into the third watch. I would not part ye needlessly, nor over soon, especially when you must so soon perforce be severed; but we must not forget how long a homeward walk awaits our dear Arvina. Come, then, and partake ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... with fleeting showers of rain. There was no moon and the stars were hidden. But about two hours before daylight there was a great outcry, and the sentinels, running to the spot, found a white man blindfolded and hands bound, tied in a thicket of briers. It was Private Myers, and his tale was practically the same ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to a religious revival of world-wide importance. We have struck the trail of our journey. For one person that Wycliffe stirred in England, he stirred hundreds in Bohemia. In England his influence was fleeting; in Bohemia it was deep and abiding. In England his followers were speedily suppressed by law; in Bohemia they became a great national force, and prepared the way for the foundation of the Church ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... seemed palatial, the light resplendent, and the comfort luxurious. It was very good to eat in civilised fashion, to enjoy the first bath for three months, and have contact with clean, dry clothing. Such fleeting hours of comfort (for custom soon banished their delight) are the treasured remembrance of every Polar traveller. They throw into sharpest contrast the hardships of the past and the comforts of the present, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... way as rapidly as possible toward the ancestral home of their enemies. It was a night perfectly suited to what they had to do, for the moon was full, the fleeting clouds hiding it from time to time and casting ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... an old man leaning on a scythe, with an hour-glass in his hand. The hour-glass symbolizes the fast-fleeting moments as they succeed each other unceasingly; the scythe is emblematical of time, which mows down ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... here and think—a monitory rhyme Demands one moment of thy fleeting time. Consult Life's silent clock. Thy glowing vein Seems it to say—'Health here has long to reign?'— Hast thou the vigour of thy youth? an eye That beams delight: a heart untaught to sigh? Yet fear. Youth ofttimes, healthful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... men sat in silence. At a nearby table two lieutenants were busy writing. They did not speak but looked eagerly as the door opened, and the prisoners entered. The Lieutenants shifted in their chairs and smiled at each other in anticipation. Gustav caught their fleeting grins and dismissed them from the room with a curt command, then turned his attention to the group standing just within ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... see" in the surrounding country which was waiting to be considered volcanically, 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... false to the lessons I have endeavored to teach you in these last fleeting hours of my ill-spent life, were I not to rejoice in any destiny that would wrap up your future career in the glory of God; but I fear the enthusiasm of your young heart will misguide you. I know, from ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... seemed to be forming in his countenance. It stole upon the features as if they were being slowly sprinkled with fine dust, blotting their expression into a flat lifelessness. Then the rush of a train passing over the bridge disturbed him. With a fleeting look of pain he sat up, glanced first furtively at me, and then stared ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... nature to run from anything or anybody. So there he stood amid the telltale mementoes of the dreadful game while Detectives Slippett and Spotson strolled into the field. They were just in time to behold a fleeting vision of forms wriggling through fences, gliding around buildings, and scrambling ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... "A young man of your attainments and tastes to be debarred from the everlasting secrets of nature, by the fleeting politics ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... song called The Wanderer (Exeter Book) tells how fleeting are riches, friend, kinsman, maiden,—all the "earth-stead," and he also makes us think of Shakespeare's "insubstantial pageant faded" which leaves "not a ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... that of your ordinary physician as heaven itself is high above this earth. Your physician wrestles with death to lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a million lives to prove that there is no such thing as death; that this human life of ours, by which we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of the permanent life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a truism; it is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the opposite pole. Religion is to me the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... 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
... his head upon his hands, and a sort of tremor ran through him, and when again he looked upon me his eyes shone with moisture, and the hot tears ran down his cheeks. Memory might be fleeting on Mars, but the loved ones of the earth were yet remembered, and the abysses of the eternal void of space could never be crossed by the wave of speech or recognition. This was the pathos of the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... buried his stone there beneath the bole and made his way back to the great ledge. His share of Obe would last yet a day or two. The thought of food was only fleeting, because the anger was still inside him, larger now, demanding now ... ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... immeasurable possibilities, the twice risen Phoenix, scene of the fairyland of 1893, when the wonders of the world were assembled for the fleeting admiration of man, is the arena in which a battle is to be waged that shall be remembered when the other events that add to the fame of the municipality shall ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... cross of snow. The winds pass lightly over that solemn tomb, and never a sunbeam lingereth there. White and majestic it lies where God's hands have placed it, and its mighty arms stretch forth as in a benediction upon the fleeting dust beneath. ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... crushing the papers in her hands. "I wished to read these pages once more. I wrote them after he had gone, and they are the history of my fleeting happiness. I wished to be satisfied that I had been happy. I doubt it sometimes, for during the three months the Count has been here, I see him every day resume more and more his old coldness to me. Formerly, I could reproach myself with nothing. I had betrayed no one; and he, in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... from the four cases which have been fully described, that they have the power of fixing each fleeting variety of colour, if they will fertilise the flowers of the desired kind with their own pollen for half-a-dozen generations, and grow the seedlings under the same conditions. But a cross with any other individual of ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... glow from the setting sun. Sunrise and rubies and 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 spot where ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... permanence to be continuance to this day; durability, not immobility. That the word establish does not necessarily imply fixture, is evident from its application, in Proverbs viii. 28: "He established the clouds," the most fleeting of all things. Nor is the Hebrew word kun (whence our English word, cunning), inconsistent with motion; else, the Psalmist had not said that "a good man's footsteps are established by the Lord."[304] "He established my goings." Wise arrangement ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... endurance, of sacrifice, and of martyrdom. She felt that she was born for the performance of some great deeds, and she looked down with contempt upon all the ordinary vocations of every-day life. These were the dreams of a romantic girl. They were not, however, the fleeting visions of a sickly and sentimental mind, but the deep, soul-moving aspirations of one of the strongest intellects over which imagination has ever swayed its scepter. One is reminded by these early developments of character of the remark ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... undergoing slight appreciable change under the same conditions as "fairly fast." "Moderately fast" colors are those altering considerably in fourteen days; and those more or less completely faded in the same time (fourteen days) are designated as "fleeting." ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... fresh-water animals live by drinking in the light,—feeling the necessity of the surface waters or the shallow depths with their limpid glades—and this light, spreading over the white interior of their dwelling, decorates it with all the fleeting colors of the iris, giving to the limestone ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... greatest things of herself, and what may be good enough for others is not good enough for her. As the poet says, "Art is long," though life may be short, and singing is one of the most fleeting of all arts, since once the note is uttered it leaves only a memory in the hearer's mind and since so many beautiful voices, for one reason or other, go to pieces ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... the old Army of the Tennessee never lost a battle and never surrendered a flag. Its Corps badges—"forty rounds" of the Fifteenth Corps; the fleeting arrow of the Seventeenth Corps; the disc, from which four bullets have been cut, of the Sixteenth Corps—are all significant of the awful business of cruel war, all of them suggestive of ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... the 'charmingly spontaneous' so dear to the 'photographic artist,' and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental. Apart from portraiture you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact you only want types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call expression, you destroy the typical character ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... cursory and partial, of this ancient speculation, has thus revealed at any rate two results of prime importance in the study of Nature Mysticism. The one is that the air has furnished the primary type of the soul as the principle of life—man's fleeting breath has suggested and fostered the idea of immortality; the wind that bloweth where it listeth, the idea of a realm of changeless spirit! The other result is that certain of nature's most obvious phenomena, when seized by intuition, can supply a key to some of her ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... long subsisting between the families prevented all unpleasant feeling, except, perhaps, a little towards Caroline herself. They gladly welcomed the intelligence that St. Eval was in England, and wished to join them at Oakwood, for they hailed it as a sign that his fancy had been but fleeting, and was now entirely conquered. Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton thought the same, though to them it was far more a matter of disappointment than rejoicing; but hope mingled almost unconsciously with regret, and they too were pleased that he was about to ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... come to work today," said he with a careless, fleeting glance at the grande toilette. "But we are prepared against such tricks. Garvey, take her down to the rear dressing-room and have the maid lay her out a simple costume." To Susan, "Be as quick as you can." And he seated himself at his desk and was ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... sick with apprehension. She had begun to like her husband during the latter part of their sojourn in London; had missed him terribly during this long period of lonely ennui at Hartledon; and his tender kindness to her for the past few fleeting hours of this their meeting had seemed like heaven as compared with the solitary past. Her whole heart was in her ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... still darkened by the clouds of political life, by the enmity of his opponents, by pettiness and misunderstanding, all these young people felt the power of the great Immortal, and were delighted with the idea of meaning something to him, even in the guise of an imaginary world and for only a fleeting hour or two. Agatha von Erfft, the wife of Herr von Erfft, was indefatigable in preparing the costumes, surmounting technical difficulties, and entertaining her guests. The twenty-four-year-old Sylvia had inherited neither the strength of her mother nor the amiability of her father: ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... running with all her speed. She heard them behind her—the pound, pound, pound of feet. She had gained the side of the shed. The light from the arc lamp was shut off from her now, and they would only be able to see her, she knew, as a dim, fleeting shadow. Where was that iron casting? Pray God, it was heavy enough; and pray God, it was not too heavy! Yes, here it was! She pretended to stumble—and caught the thing up in her arms. An exultant cry went up from behind her as she appeared ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... was because he was extremely young, perhaps it was because he was immoral, perhaps because he had never held a tight rein on his fleeting emotions, even the next moment he felt that it was because he was an idiot—but suddenly he found he had let himself go and was kissing the warm velvet of the slim little nape—had ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... spirit doth move me, friend Broadbrim,' quoth she, 'To take all this filthy temptation from thee; For Mammon deceiveth, and beauty is fleeting: Accept from thy maai-d'n a right loving greeting, For much doth she profit by this quaker's meeting. Heigho! yea thee ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... 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 ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... you will always see the curtains parted, and between them, like an idol in a shrine, the ugly wooden back of a little oval or oblong looking-glass. It gives one a sense of permanence in a world where all is fleeting." ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... time, I mean. If, later on, we recover the faculty with some such exclamation: 'Well! Well! I'll be hanged if I ever...' it is probably because this very thing that there should be a past to look back upon, other people's, is very astounding in itself when one has the time, a fleeting and immense ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... care; But shall I, then, forsake the unfinished war? How would the Trojans brand great Hector's name! And one base action sully all my fame, Acquired by wounds and battles bravely fought! Oh! how my soul abhors so mean a thought. Long since I learn'd to slight this fleeting breath, And view with cheerful eyes approaching death The inexorable sisters have decreed That Priam's house, and Priam's self shall bleed: The day will come, in which proud Troy shall yield, And spread its smoking ruins o'er the field. Yet Hecuba's, nor Priam's hoary age, Whose blood shall quench ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... I know no longer How to lead this life of sadness In this everlasting trouble, In an age when all is fleeting. Shall I rear in wind a dwelling, Build a house upon ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... joyful witness of their ease would willingly have sacrificed to them any amount of the facile industrial or agricultural prosperity about them and left them slumberously afloat, unmolested by dreams of landlord or tax- gatherer. Their existence for the fleeting time seemed the true interpretation of the sage's philosophy, the fulfilment of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... more than a fleeting glance at Rains' face, he must have seen that the latter was regarding him ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... a fleeting dream, of happiness to some, misery to others, but there is a home beyond, and for the faithful, a "crown of glory which fadeth not away." For we know that there is an ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... dark eye, gleaming vengefully, ran along the barrel. The little bead on the front sight first covered the British officer, and then the broad breast of Girty. It moved reluctantly and searched out the heart of Wingenund, where it lingered for a fleeting instant. At last it rested upon the swarthy ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... withal, and one that luckily was not known to Macaulay, whose colours would otherwise have been more brilliant. We find Bozzy paying his addresses at one and the same time to at least eight ladies, exclusive as this is of sundry minor divinities of a fleeting and more temporary nature not calling here for allusion. His first divinity was the grass-widow of Moffat, and here Temple had been compelled to remonstrate in spite of all the lover's philandering about her freedom from her husband, who had used her ill. ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... his physical machine has been the blind instrument of the force of evil he has himself slowly accumulated throughout the ages. But let there be no mistake; every time a man, who is tempted, has time to think, even in fleeting fashion, of the moral value of the impulse which is driving him onward, he has power to resist; and if he yields to this impulse, the entire responsibility of this final lapse is added on to ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... love was of his life a thing apart, but his social aspirations were the chief fact of his existence. Besides, there was no haste; he knew that Mrs. Dangerfield was awaiting his avowal with a passionate eagerness; any time would do for that. But he must seize the fleeting hour and bind Sir Maurice to himself by the bond of the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... Brand's fleeting mental picture of one of Earth's unwieldy, long-discarded war tanks registered ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... is true that now and then, on Friday at school, he read a composition, one of which—a personal burlesque on certain older boys—came near resulting in bodily damage. But any literary ambition he may have had in those days was a fleeting thing. His permanent dream was to be a pirate, or a pilot, or a bandit, or a trapper-scout; something gorgeous and active, where his word—his nod, even—constituted sufficient law. The river kept the pilot ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... retains and reproduces them only in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of toleration for what we before gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly grows upon us. Leonard looked into his heart after the enchantress had breathed upon it; and through the mists of the fleeting and tender melancholy which betrayed where she had been, he beheld a new sun of delight and joy dawning over ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... immortal, makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts; Is its own origin of ill, and end— And its own place and time—its innate sense When stript of this mortality derives No colour from the fleeting things about, But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy, Born from the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... beauty. She alone could not see its peerless charm. But I had provided for this. Chipping off a thin layer of the ice-block, I laid a silver-lined leaf from a neighboring bough behind it, and held this mirror before the fay's wondering eyes. Never have I seen anything so beautiful or so fleeting. Even as I held the reflected image before its reality, drops as of dew began falling over the lace, and in a moment the ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... on. Next came two white men, supporting between them a woman. They also behaved as though drunken, and their limbs shook with weakness. But the woman leaned lightly upon them, choosing to carry herself forward with her own strength. At the sight of her a flash of joy cast its fleeting light across Sitka Charley's face. He cherished a very great regard for Mrs. Eppingwell. He had seen many white women, but this was the first to travel the trail with him. When Captain Eppingwell proposed the hazardous undertaking and made ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... wonder not that I am calm; the fleeting things of earth Are passing with the flight of time, to their eternal birth: I feel that death will shed on him a halo like the sun, And I shall share it with him, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... the father's delight. It was almost as if he were in love with her. He saw in her the re-incarnation of her mother, his first impression of her, as beautiful as it had been fleeting. He was almost self-conscious in her company and never went into her room when she was dressing. He ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Tale of Second Sight," and in the course of it she introduced a hymn, which was afterwards set to music by Major Ewing and published in Boosey's Royal Edition of "Sacred Songs," under the title "From Fleeting Pleasures." ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... fleeting instant she touched to her cheek the hand that held hers. "No," she said, and gave him a sudden little look of renewed gayety. "Let's let ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... among 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 and manners have been thus described: "A short ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... sights and scenes of my youth! Oh, all ye gleams of love, ye divine fleeting gleams! How could ye perish so soon for me! I think of you to-day as my ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Mrs. Brewster met the gaze of Anne. But the two understood and exchanged a fleeting glance of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... plants will soon take the place of tender plants if left alone. The short dark people are still the main part, not only of the Welsh, but of the British people. It is true that their language has disappeared, except a few place-names. But languages are far more fleeting than races. The loss of its language does not show that a race is dead; it only shows that it is very anxious to change and learn. Some languages easily give place to others, and we say that the people who speak these languages ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... side of the bridge—caught one glimpse of a dark body fleeting and roaring down the foam-way. The colonel leapt the bridge-rail like a deer, rushed out along the buck-stage, tore off his coat, and sprung headlong into the boiling pool, 'rejoicing in his might,' as old Homer ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... not merely with Cicero and Virgil, not merely with heavy treatises on canon-law and school divinity, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time, nay even with the most admired poetry and the most popular squibs which appeared on the fleeting topics of the day, with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
