"Flutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the race for the hand of the beautiful Miss Effingham; but the prize was not for them. She cared not a jot for either their persons or their purses and would not consent to be caught, and like a bird in a golden cage, flutter without the means ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... meet—it may be we shall meet And count our days up-gathered, one by one, Like poppies plucked among the burnished wheat, Beneath the red gaze of the August sun; And all our scattered dreams shall flutter home At last. Oh! silent, age-long wandering What since your setting forth have ye become? What gift from those far waters do ye bring?— A splash of rain, salt taste of frozen foam, Green sea-weed trailing ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... steam-engines—and to endure it all. But for him, who could fly over a hundred tree-tops before a man could climb to one, it was hard to swing outside a ship, and to watch other birds use their wings, when his, which quivered to fly homewards, could only flutter against the bars. As he thought, a roll of the ship threw him forward, the wind shook the wires of the cage, and loosened the fastening; and, when the vessel righted, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... which in the night Flutter towards a light, Drawn to their fiery doom, flying and dying, So to their death still throng, Blind, dazzled, borne along Ceaselessly, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... heads, the leaves of the old lindens rustled with a murmur which recalled that of the sea; and now and then a blossom of a yellowish white would flutter down, which the girls disputed, holding up their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... elfin playhouses. Perplexity as to Terry's whereabouts gave way to deep anxiety. Then his eyes caught the flicker of something white in the shadowy grove that fronted Ohto's house. Looking closely, he watched it flutter away among the trees, then a darker figure ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... more line—that's false eyes and teeth. But it ain't a profitable line. I want to drop it. And besides I'm thinking of leaving all this business. I understand, it's all right for a young man, in the bloom of his powers, to flutter around like a moth, but once you have a wife, and may be a whole family even ..." he playfully patted the woman on the knee, from which she became scarlet and looked uncommonly better. "For the Lord has blessed us Jews ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... relations, and agreements or disagreements, one with another, has been, I suppose, the ill use of words. It is impossible that men should ever truly seek or certainly discover the agreement or disagreement of ideas themselves, whilst their thoughts flutter about, or stick only in sounds of doubtful and uncertain significations. Mathematicians abstracting their thoughts from names, and accustoming themselves to set before their minds the ideas themselves that they would consider, and not sounds instead of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... farther. They become so excited that they flutter about on the sand, with dragging wings and limping legs, as if badly wounded. Sometimes they perform somersaults in their intense excitement. The nearer the intruder approaches their eggs the more vigorous do their ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... the direct descendants of many a failing line, which the policy of England has seen fit to sustain by collateral supporters, are now discharging the simple duties of citizens in the bosom of this republic. The hive has remained stationary, and they who flutter around the venerable straw are wont to claim the empty distinction of antiquity, regardless alike of the frailty of their tenement and of the enjoyments of the numerous and vigorous swarms that are culling the fresher sweets ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had was to accompany Lady Bray, to one of the families acquainted with the Mowbrays; and where it was expected we should meet Olivia, and her aunt. This expectation, which kept my spirits in a flutter the whole day and increased to alarm and dread in the evening, was disappointed. Whether from any real or a pretended accident on the part of the aunt, who sent an apology, was more than I ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... soul bore her away from the tabernacle of flesh, the welcoming Savior said: "Come, thou blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world." And heaven swung wide its gate for her; and excited fancy conceives that, as she passed in, there was a gratulatory flutter of wings and waving of palms through ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... tell. For, between the hands and before the faces of his sorrowing parents, lo! above Iuelus' head there seemed to stream a light luminous cone, and a flame whose touch hurt not to flicker in his soft hair and play round his brows. We in a flutter of affright shook out the blazing hair and quenched the holy fires with spring water. But lord Anchises joyfully upraised his eyes; and stretching his hands to heaven: "Jupiter omnipotent," he cries, "if thou dost relent at any prayers, look on us this ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... manner as in the last century, when all Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany, however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings), there was properly speaking only one kind of public and APPROXIMATELY artistical discourse—that delivered from the pulpit. The preacher was the only one in Germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a sentence strikes, springs, rushes, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and flutter, high expectation and renewed hopes, were occasioned at Puddingdale, by the receipt of those episcopal dispatches. Mrs Quiverful, whose careful ear caught the sound of the pony's feet as he trotted up to the vicarage kitchen door, brought ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... all was quiet; only the flutter and whisper of the leaves broke the silence, but broke it only to cause it to appear yet ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... since the early autumn. Undoubtedly the war was the cause. Not that we were among the earlier victims of the fever. I took disgracefully little interest in the Negotiations, while the Ultimatum appealed to Raffles as a sporting flutter. Then we gave the whole thing till Christmas. We still missed the cricket in the papers. But one russet afternoon we were in Richmond, and a terrible type was shouting himself hoarse with "'Eavy British lorsses—orful slorter o' the Bo-wers! Orful slorter! Orful slorter! ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... with all truth, that when I asked your grandmother's hand I did not demean myself as if I were chief mourner at a funeral. She will bear me out that I walked up to her with a smile upon my face, though mayhap there was a little flutter at my heart, and I took her hand and I said—but, lack-a-day, whither have I wandered? What has all this to do with Taunton town and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flutter in his breast. It seemed to heave him upwards. The way grew steeper and more steep. The stream of grass, faithful so far, ended abruptly five feet below the top. Those feet were sheer, the chalk darkening ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Windsor Castle was hove-to, the courses of the enemy were seen to flutter a few moments in the breeze, and then the canvas was expanded. When the vessel had gathered sufficient way, she hove in stays, and crossed the Windsor Castle on the ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... flutter before we're done. Stiffen your lip and stand, my son; We'll take this bloomin' circus on: Ball-cartridge load! Now, steady!' With a curse and a prayer the two faced round, Dogged and grim they stood their ground, And their breech-blocks ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sharp pair of scissors, and without otherwise touching the butterflies, I cut off their antennae near the base. The victims barely noticed the operation. None moved; there was scarcely a flutter of the wings. Their condition was excellent; the wound did not seem to be in the least serious. They were not perturbed by physical suffering, and would therefore be all the better adapted to my designs. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of dreams,[1] and at that time dreamed profusely, but recently I have been dreaming very rarely, and when I do dream the experiences are not at all vivid. I use the term "nightmare" in a somewhat popular sense to mean a painful or frightful dream accompanied by physical disturbances, such as heart flutter and disturbances of breathing, and followed on awakening by a certain amount of the painful emotion which was a part of the dream. Accepting this definition, the experience which I have to relate was a typical nightmare. A few words of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... myself in my own chamber in the tower of the palace. I was so weak that I scarce could lift my hand, and life seemed but to flutter in my breast as flutters a dying dove. I could not turn my head; I could not stir; yet in my heart there was a sense of rest and of dark trouble done. The light from the lamp hurt my eyes: I shut them, and, as I shut them, heard the sweep of ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... well-fashioned eagles, letters, figures and animals hung up in conspicuous places over a beautiful frame-work of gothic structure, astonishing and eliciting remark from passers by. Besides these, there were all kinds of machinery fluttering and struggling in the air on long poles. Flutter mills and gunboats could be seen making their hasty rounds; men wrestling and turning many kinds of machinery could be taken in at the same glance of the eye. Each regiment had a meeting house and bowers, weather-boarded and ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... broken in the sky, And thro' the mountain-walls A rolling organ-harmony 75 Swells up, and shakes and falls. Then move the trees, the copses nod, Wings flutter, voices hover clear: "O just and faithful knight of God! Ride on! the prize is near." 80 So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide, Until ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... wings being folded over its back, too much absorbed to have been startled by my first approach. Occasionally, without any cause which I could detect from my present position—certainly in no way connected with my presence—a small swarm of the butterflies would rise in a flutter above the bush, as though actuated by a common whim—a brief winged tangle in which a beautiful sprite of velvety black hovering in a globular halo, shot through with two white semicircular arcs, was ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... squirrel. Here, too, are a myriad of pigeons as green as the leaf and with eyes and feet of a brilliant red. They are so like the foliage in color that they can be seen only by the practiced eye of the hunter, and even he would fail to detect them were it not for their restless movements. As they flutter about from branch to branch they are apt to fall victims to his ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... flowers; Could talk of powder, patches, paint, With the same zeal as of a saint; 380 Could prove a Sibyl brighter far Than Venus or the Morning Star; Whilst something still so gay, so new, The smile of approbation drew, And females eyed the charming man, Whilst their hearts flutter'd with their fan; Trifle, who would by no means miss An opportunity like this, Proceeding on his usual plan, Smiled, stroked his chin, and thus began: 390 'With shears or scissors, sword or knife, When the Fates cut the thread of life, (For if we to the grave are sent, No matter with what ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... a ship's yards so that the wind strikes on the edges or leaches of the sails, making them flutter in the wind. The same effect may be intentionally produced by ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to be a very quiet talk, for Miss Podsnap replied in a flutter, 'Oh! Indeed, it's very kind of you, but I am afraid ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the second act of Faust.[22] The effect was great, and gave me a high satisfaction. We are once more transported into Faust's study, where Mephistopheles finds all just as he had left it. He takes from the hook Faust's old study-gown, and a thousand moths and insects flutter out from it. By the directions of Mephistopheles as to where these are to settle down, the locality is brought very clearly before our eyes. He puts on the gown, while Faust lies behind a curtain in a state of paralysis, intending to play the doctor's part once more. He pulls the bell, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... raised to mine as I spoke. There came now a flutter of the eyelids, a curious smile about the lips. Then her head drooped again and was laid against my breast; a sigh escaped her, and ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... and gardens of the wealthy; and gay people sunning themselves along Prince's Street, with its mile of commercial palaces all beflagged upon some great occasion, see, across a gardened valley set with statues, where the washings of the Old Town flutter in the breeze at its ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... just eighteen, going to be married, and married to a man that Alix or Anne would have been only too glad to win! A real man, from the outside world, a man of twenty-eight, ten years older than she was. And how the letters and presents and gowns and plans would begin to flutter through the bungalow—she would be married in cafe-au-lait rajah cloth, as Miss Pinckney in San Francisco was; she would be Mrs. Lloyd! She could chaperone Alix ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... flew very low,—not more than five feet above our heads. When they were least expecting it, I threw up the net, and three of them flew bang into it. They were so much stunned by the blow, that only one of them could flutter out before I had drawn in the net; and the Dean was quick enough to seize the remaining two before they could escape. This, being the first experiment, gave us great encouragement, as it was more successful than we had ventured to hope. We went on with ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... is, I was conscious of a flutter of skirts, but I am not sure it was Miss Van Allen. I didn't see her clearly enough even to notice the color of her gown. It was merely a glimpse of some one flying round the newel post and up the stairs. It might ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... looked out through the narrow window and saw, rising high above the house-tops, like a finger pointing heavenward, the old gray tower and the gleaming cross. The city's din was far below, and through the summer air the faint coo of the doves and the flutter of their wings came down, like ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... the child Clara, whose marvelous musical powers were the talk of Leipzig, was a sweet consolation to him in his troubles and his toil, though ten years his junior. The love, which became a part of his life, had already begun to flutter into unconscious being in his feeling for a shy and ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore
... favoured flower, delicate of scent and chaste in beauty. Yet the night of the tropics has many drawbacks: noxious, unsightly creatures then forsake their lair, lithe snakes uncoil their glossy rings, bats flutter in the moonbeams, and croaking frogs disturb ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... shoes, the silken rustle of the trains, the jingling of rich bracelets pushed up the arm while gloves are being buttoned. All these people seem excited, nervous, pale beneath their paint, and under the skilfully prepared satin-like surface of the shoulders, tremors flutter like shadows. Dry-mouthed, they speak little. The least nervous, while affecting to smile, have in their eyes and voice the hesitation that marks an absent mind—that apprehension of the battle behind the foot-lights which is ever one of the most powerful attractions of the comedian's ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... friends who will drop off, if let alone,—who must be kept awake to be kept at all,—who will talk and laugh with you as long as it suits your respective humors and you are prosperous and happy,—the blessed butterfly-race who flutter about your June mornings, and when the clouds lower, and the drops patter, and the rains descend, and the winds blow, will spread their gay wings and float gracefully away to sunny southern lands ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a flutter of excitement at the English table, the only other party, except two old men in a corner, who had dined so late, and they were half-way through their repast before she began hers. Paul was annoyed to see how they ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... Neco's funeral Mysa and her mother were thrown into a flutter of excitement by a message which arrived from Bubastes. Some months before the sacred cat of the great temple there—a cat held in as high honor in Lower Egypt as the bull Apis in the Thebaid—had fallen sick, and, in spite of the care and attendance lavished upon it, had died. ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... which was the cause after each service of much divided opinion. Opinion was divided because the choir was divided—separated, in fact, into several small, select cliques, each engaged in deadly and bitter feud with the rest. When the moon-eyed soprano arose, with a gentle flutter, and opened her charming mouth in solo, her friends settled themselves in their pews with a general rustle of satisfaction, while the friends of the contralto exchanged civilly significant glances; and on the way home the solo in question was disposed of in a manner ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and underneath the quiet voice sounded a savage note and his teeth bit through his cigar, which he threw out into the dew-carpeted grass. Just then there came from up under the eaves a soft disturbed flutter of wings and a gentle dove note was answered ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to another room, where stood a table, covered with the whitest of linen damask. Each child, in a flutter of pleasure, laid a shoe upon it, and each shoe held a little hay for the good saint's horse. The door was then carefully locked, and its key hidden in the mother's bedroom. Next followed good-night kisses, a grand family procession to the upper floor, merry farewells at bedroom ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... Milly pushed from her the mass of newspapers and lay with upturned face, hands crossed beneath her head, staring out of her blue eyes at the dusty ceiling, dreaming of triumphs to be, social heights to surmount, a flutter of engagement cards winging their way like a flight of geese to the little Acacia Street house; dreaming of men and women—and somewhere at the end of the long vista she saw a very gorgeous procession, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... a drug clerk in Austin, being filled with literary aspiration, bought the press and the name of The Iconoclast for $250; but O. Henry's Iconoclast after two issues also ceased to flutter. Later, when Brann again accumulated the necessary funds to permit him to throw off the hireling's yoke, he asked for and received back from O. Henry the legal right to the title ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... up almost before she could catch her breath, and landed her on the fifth floor. The man pointed along a hallway, and she followed this until a name in big gilt letters arrested her attention and caused her heart to flutter spasmodically. "Cornelius McVeigh—Investments," it read. And this was really her son's Eldorado! A mist crept over her eyes as she turned the brass knob and entered. A score of young men and women were ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... know it," I replied. Mac was bending over his plate, rubbing the ink in with deft fingers, and I saw his lowered glance flutter in my direction for ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... daily grind was the immense disparity, the difference and contrast, from class to class, of every instant and every motion. There were times when all the wires in the country seemed to start from the little hole-and-corner where she plied for a livelihood, and where, in the shuffle of feet, the flutter of "forms," the straying of stamps and the ring of change over the counter, the people she had fallen into the habit of remembering and fitting together with others, and of having her theories and interpretations of, ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... the children, ready dressed for their parts, were in a tremendous flutter. Even the little wee ones were to do something. They were stationed at the parlor door with baskets, and charged not to let a soul come in, unless the pair of mittens were paid into one of the baskets. I warrant you they ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Peck had received that very morning a letter from Mrs. Fordyce of Bellairs Crescent—a letter which had put her all in a flutter. It was a letter of warning, counsel, and reproof concerning Miss Peck's duty towards her young charge, and laying a strong injunction upon her to be exceedingly judicious in her treatment of the eccentric ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... in a serious manner, there were few of us whose hearts did not flutter responsively to this surmise, for the danger became every minute more imminent, and we knew what a terrific surf there must be then running on the shingle beach. But we now rapidly approached the shore; we were near to the floating light, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... thousand a Year, and resolve to live single, and enjoy it; I have made the Tour of Italy and France, have given my self the Accomplishment of both Sexes, and design to Visit, Game, Revel, dust the Park, haunt the Theatres, and out-flutter e'er a Fop i'the Nation; and I know not why a Lady that has the best Estate i'the County shou'd n't ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... was, as she could dimly see, a game that might prove exceedingly dangerous to play, and the Count had spoiled it all, anyway. And a curious flutter in her heart, as she watched the Boy take his punishment with as good grace as possible, pled for his pardon until she finally desisted and bade ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... clouds unite, Like thick battalions halting for the fight; The sun sinks back, the tempest spirits sweep Fierce through the air and flutter on the deep. Till from their caverns rush the maniac blasts, Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts, And the lash'd billows, rolling in a train, Rear their white heads, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eye Such is the race of Man: And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began. Alike the busy and the gay But flutter thro' life's little day, In Fortune's varying colours drest: Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance, Or chill'd by Age, their airy dance They ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... I will tell you, said she. Your father received a letter to-day from your aunt, which put him in a terrible flutter:—he immediately ordered his carriage and directed us to attend him. He met your aunt at a tavern somewhere away back, and she told him that the gentleman who used to come to our house so much once, had contrived to carry you off from the place where you lived with ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... Why, in some respects, a bite is better than a fish. Only very occasionally does a fish look as well on the bank or in the boat as it appeared to the excited imagination of the angler when he first felt the flutter on the line. I have caught thousands of fish in my time; but most of them I have dismissed from memory as soon as they went flapping into the basket. But some of the bites that I have had! I catch myself wondering now what beauteous ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... alcohol in 1885 for the Michigan State Medical Society in which he cited experiments showing that the opinion that alcohol stimulates the heart by an increase of real force, is an error. It creates a flutter, but decreases power. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... white doves, to baby and me; Softly whirr in the silent air, Flutter about his golden hair: Hark, child, the doves are ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... man. Take heed lest his beams fall on you, For the rays he darts around him Are the power of his enchantment, Are the arrows that he uses.' "Many years, in peace and quiet, On the peaceful Star of Evening Dwelt Osseo with his father; Many years, in song and flutter, At the doorway of the wigwam, Hung the cage with rods of silver, And fair Oweenee, the faithful, Bore a son unto Osseo, With the beauty of his mother, With the courage of his father. "And the boy grew up and prospered, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that the coronation as King of Bohemia of a man of such decided purposes—a country numbering ten Protestants to one Catholic—should cause a thrill and a flutter. Could it be doubted that the great elemental conflict so steadily prophesied by Barneveld and instinctively dreaded by all capable of feeling the signs of the time would now begin? It had begun. Of what avail would be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... special compliments to the favourites," she calls, as we set out for Whitehall; and she must run to the door in a flutter and ask if Pierre Radisson has any love-verse ready writ, in case of an amour with ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... are dead; Dead, and neither prose nor rhyme Tells the praises of their prime. Thou didst know them old and grey, Know them in their sad decay. Thou hast seen Atossa sage Sit for hours beside thy cage; Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird, Flutter, chirp—she never stirr'd! What were now these toys to her? Down she sank amid her fur; Eyed thee with a soul resign'd— And thou deemedst cats were kind! —Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... too stiff. Neither Dundas nor Wilberforce moved in the highest circles. Portland, Spencer, and Windham held somewhat aloof, and Leeds, Sydney, and others had been alienated. Accordingly, the news that Pitt was paying marked attentions to Auckland's eldest daughter caused a flutter of excitement. Her charm and tact warranted the belief that in the near future the Prime Minister would dominate the social sphere hardly ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... exclaimed Mrs. Whitney, which had the satisfactory result of bringing her father out of his irritation, into a flutter over the concealment of the ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... investigation, Mr. Ruby, as usual, varying its monotony, or mitigating its wearisomeness, by occasionally, or suddenly, exhibiting some splendid or startling production of his art. The parure of an empress, the bracelets of grand-duchesses, a wonderful fan that was to flutter in the hands of majesty, had all in due course appeared, as well as the black pearls and yellow diamonds that figure and flash on such occasions, before eyes so ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the year gone by, St. Jude's Church was in a flutter of expectation. It expected to see a whole paraphernalia of bridal finery, and again it was doomed to disappointment, for Isabel had not put off the mourning for her father. She was in black—a thin gauze dress—and her white bonnet ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... black Snake get outside the cave, than she saw the Kookooburra fall like a stone from its branch, right on top of the Snake. For a second, Dot thought the bird must have tumbled down dead, it was such a sudden fall; but a moment later she saw it flutter on the ground, in battle with the poisonous reptile, whilst the Snake wriggled, and coiled its body into hoops and rings. The Kookooburra's strong wings, beating the air just above the writhing Snake, made a great noise, and the serpent hissed in its ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... was a little flutter, a rustling of silken robes, more kissing and hand-shaking, and "good bye, loves," and ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... sparrow was first, as usual, to inquire into their right to be out of their own tree. He came near them, alighted, and began to hop still closer. Not in the least startled by his threatening manner, the nearest youngster looked at him, and began to flutter his wings, to call, and to move toward him, as if expecting to be fed. This was too much even for a ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of the windows to a servant passing below, caused her to look towards the house, just in time to see something white flutter from an open bedroom window on the breeze. The bedroom regions ran all around the third story of Danton Hall—six in each range. Mr. Stanford's chamber was in the front of the house, and it was from Mr. Stanford's room the white object had fluttered. Rose ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... and unless mercy abounds towards him. He cannot stand if mercy doth not compass him round about, nor go unless mercy follows him. Yea, if mercy that rejoiceth against judgment doth not continually flutter over him, the very moth will eat him up, and the canker will consume him (Job 4:19). Wherefore it is necessary to the making of Israel live and flourish, that everlasting mercy should be over his head, and everlasting mercy under his feet, with all the afore-mentioned mercies, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... arrived, but the frost had been keen, and the air on the uplands was biting. We speed first across a famous battlefield, where French and English bones lie mingled below the quiet grass, and then turn south-east. Nobody on the roads. The lines of poplar-trees fly past, the magpies flutter from the woods, and one might almost forget the war. Suddenly, a railway line, a steep descent and we are full in its midst again. On our left an encampment of Nissen huts—so called from their ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which would, with some ramification of the supporting ribs, become a bat's or moth's; that is to say, an extension of membrane between the ribs (as in an umbrella), which will catch the wind, and flutter upon it, like a leaf; but cannot strike it to any purpose. The flying squirrel drifts like a falling leaf; the bat flits like a black rag torn at the edge. To give power, we must have plumes that can strike, as with the flat of a sword-blade; and to ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Some are like the pallid shades of the past, altogether unlike the living and with an unmistakable spectral form—or lack of it. They sweep like mist through the air, or flutter like dead leaves in the gale—a gale always accompanying them as part of the stock furnishings. On the other hand, some revenants are so successfully made up that one doesn't believe them when they pridefully announce that ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Let it brim with dew; Try if you can cry, We will do so, too. When you're summoned, start Like a frightened roe; Flutter, little heart, Colour, come and go! Modesty at marriage tide ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the moralities of Ulrici. Fresh follies spring up in new paths of criticism, and fresh labourers in a fruitless field are at hand to gather them and to garner. A discovery of some importance has recently been proclaimed as with blare of vociferous trumpets and flutter of triumphal flags; no less a discovery than this—that a singer must be tested by his song. Well, it is something that criticism should at length be awake to that wholly indisputable fact; that learned and laborious men who can hear only with their fingers should open their eyes to admit ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... since then. I believe he is dead myself; and it sometimes fidgets me that we have never put on mourning for him. And then again, when I sit by myself, and all the house is still, I think I hear his step coming up the street, and my heart begins to flutter and beat; but the sound always goes ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... silent, musing, at the girl's side. He was fond of vistas. There was rest in them, a peace not to be found even in the twilight caverns of cathedrals; wind blowing over waters, the flutter of leaves, the bend in the grasses. To dwell in a haven like this. No care, no worry, no bother of grubbing about in one's pockets for overlooked coins, no flush of excitement! It is, after all, the homeless man who answers quickest the beckon of ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter—and the Bird ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... little time I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase very fast, and my box was tossed up and down like a sign in a windy day. I heard several bangs or buffets, as I thought, given to the eagle (for such I am certain it must have been, that held the ring of my box in his ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... other two were only a little behind. As they sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him should have a boy around and having a boy around where there is a girl around, and spring around and lilacs around and a moon and music and joy around,—what is more natural in all this world than that in the fire struck by the simple joy of youth there should be the flutter of unseen wings around, and when the two had finished singing, with something passing between their hearts not in the words, what is more natural than that the girl, half frightened at the thrill in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... sprang lightly to her feet; there came a whirring flutter, a twittering shower of sweet notes, soft wings beating almost in their very faces, a distant shadow against the sky, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... up to the water-front of Orlog before they remembered their situation. It was the Very Young Man who first became aware of the danger. Without explanation he suddenly pulled Aura into the bottom of the boat, leaving it to flutter ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... reluctantly, by short and difficult stages, awakened. A rumbling, grating, strident noise first confuses, then startles me. Is it robbers? Is it an earthquake? Is it the coming of fate? I lie rigid, bathed in a cold perspiration. I hear the tread of banditti on the moaning stairs. I see the flutter of ghostly robes by the uncurtained windows. A chill, uncanny air rushes in and grips at my damp hair. I am nerved by the extremity of my terror. I will die of anything but fright. I jerk off the bedclothes, convulse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... probably awaken, at the blast of the horn, a fit subject for a hospital. The night proved a feverish one. During the greater part of it, I was in that vilest of states when a fixed idea remains in the mind, like the nail in Sisera's brain, while innumerable other ideas go and come, and flutter to and fro, combining constant transition with intolerable sameness. Had I made a record of that night's half-waking dreams, it is my belief that it would have anticipated several of the chief incidents of this narrative, including ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... infection, I suppose, and all the people present wore the red badge, like Mr. Warren, only he wore one on each arm. This somewhat amazed me, but as I had never spoken in public before I was rather in a flutter. However, I conquered my girlish shyness, and if the audience was not large it was enthusiastic. When I came to the peroration about wishing them all happy endings and real beginnings of true life, don't you know, the audience actually ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... sighingly; "indeed I am sure that she does not. She is dazzled by his showiness and his fluency, his horsemanship and his dancing; but love him she does not It is fascination, such a fascination as leads a moth to flutter round a candle, or a bird to drop into the rattlesnake's mouth,—and never was flame more dangerous, or serpent more deadly. He is unworthy of her, Lucy,—thoroughly unworthy. This man, who calls himself devoted to a creature as innocent as she is lovely,—who ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... after her father had broken the news to her. He had not asked her consent; he had told her, in a flutter of pride, that this thing must be, and for her country's sake. She came to me, in the short dusk, upon the terrace overlooking the Taravo. She was of heart too heroic to linger out our agony. In the dusk she stretched out both hands—ah, God, the child she ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... are they so when one awakens to them, for the first time, in a novel and romantic situation, with the soft sweet air of a tropical climate mingling with the fresh smell of the sea, and stirring the strange leaves that flutter overhead and around one, or ruffling the plumage of the stranger birds that fly inquiringly around, as if to demand what business we have to intrude uninvited on their domains. When I awoke on the morning after the shipwreck, I found myself in this most delightful condition; and as I ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... fragrance, which seemed to come from her old brocades and silks. It was very sweet, but unlike any thing I had ever known before; and it was by reason of this that afterward I often knew, with a little flutter at my heart, she had been in some other rooms of the great house beside her own. This perfume seemed to linger for a little while wherever she had been, and yet it was so faint! I used to go into the darkened chambers often, or even stay for a while by myself in the unoccupied lower ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... The patient's eyelids flutter—as one waves a handkerchief from the deck of a departing steamer—then, breathing in the ether steadily, he falls into ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... flutter and fly, Bear him my heart of gold, Bid him be brave little carrier dove! Bid him ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon
... a sudden Tom stood up on his hind legs and put his forepaws on the edge of the bowl. As he did this the fish began swimming around swiftly, very much frightened, indeed, just as you may have seen a canary bird flutter in a cage when some cat came ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... close, warm pressure of her fingers. Never before had he so poignantly realized that innate splendor of femininity that was uniquely hers, a quality more potent than any mere beauty. Her look met his straight and frankly, but he heard the breath flutter at her lips, and he thought to read in her eyes a question, a hunger, and a delight. His voice was under rigid control ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the hill they are crowding together, In the stand they are crushing for room, Like midge-flies they swarm on the heather, They gather like bees on the broom; They flutter like moths round a candle— Stale similes, granted, what then? I've got a stale subject to handle, A very stale ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... subtle intricacies of fascination," and asks if these "incalculable frivolities and vanities and coquetries and caprices" are, to us, an essential part of their charm? And she watches them with amusement as they flutter about her, petting her as if she were a nice child, a child or a toy, not dreaming that she is saying to herself sorrowfully: "How utterly empty their lives must be of all spiritual beauty IF they are nothing more than they ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... 'Can't bear to think of them!' They had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts; wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of conformity to the sense of property—wounding too grievously the deepest thing in him—a love of beauty which could give him, even now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society of a pretty woman. And he went downstairs, through the swinging doors, to the back regions. There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock worth at least two pounds a bottle, a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the first time a suspicion flashed across her mind, which, while it made her heart flutter like a frightened bird, seemed to her the one drop hitherto lacking in the cup of her unhappiness. Had, then, after all, that gentle indifference of her friend masked an immense hunger, a deeply-felt need of personal tenderness, which she might have supplied—ah, how ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... sermon, and in this sermon he said to the people: "Listen, now, dearly beloved brethren. This morning, when I came into the church here, there comes up to me one of my flock, and she says to me, all in a flutter: 'Oh, Father, what a fright I have had this night! I was asleep in my bed, and the ghosts came and twitched away my coverlet!' But I answered her: 'Dear daughter, that is not possible; because where the dead are, there they stay.'" ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... immediately and the weights will be light," he thought. "She likes a bit of a flutter and I'll see that she gets it. There is plenty of corn in the old man's manger, and if it comes to bursting the bag, I will carry home the pieces. There's where I drive the car. She shall play and I will be her pet lamb. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... during the Matabele campaign that Baden-Powell came across a fine wild boar, which, he remarks, caused quite a flutter in his breast. "'If I only had you in the open, my friend,' thought I. 'If only you had a horse that was fit enough to come anywhere near me,' grinned he. And so we parted." A ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... gratified my pride, and increased my importance in my own eyes. I was nearly fifteen, and my term of apprenticeship had almost expired, when one bright day in March, I saw one of the lay sisters of the asylum enter the work-room. She was in a flutter of excitement; her face was crimson, and she was so breathless from her hurried ascent of the stairs that she gasped rather than said to me: 'Quick! come—follow me! Some one is waiting for you!' 'Who?—where?'—'Make ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... method of training is interesting. From the nest upwards the bird was taught that the only possible place to obtain food was from between a pair of antlers. At first fed sitting between them, as she learnt to flutter she was encouraged to bridge a short gap to her dinner. Then, as she grew stronger, she flew short distances to get her food as before. The next step was the use of a stuffed deer on wheels, which, when the hawk was loosed, was run along, and thus accustomed her to ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... memory of the teachings of their Druid bards and the firm belief in reincarnation which sent the Celtic warrior laughing to his death; but in the traditions of the peasantry, abounding with nature myths, sorcerers still haunt their mountain caves, fairies and May maidens still flutter ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... for the absence of the flowers. And the wind—no, there was no wind—there was only a memory of wind that woke now and then in the bosom of the wood, shook down a few leaves, like the thoughts that flutter away in sighs, and then ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... as the breeze through the cryptomerias, And pause like long flags flapping, And dart and flutter aloft, ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... upon her bluntness and practicability. As she spoke she took her cheque-book out of her reticule, and, opening it, dipped her pen into the ink. I am inclined to think that the flutter of that cheque-book was her ladyship's mistake. The girl had common sense, and must have seen the difficulties in the way of a marriage between the heir to an earldom and a linen-draper's daughter; and had the old lady been a person of discernment, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... clouds. Then I recovered my wits, and when I began to come down again I tried to fly. I knew the Valley of Mo must be somewhere to the west; so I flew in that direction until I found myself just over the Valley, when I allowed myself to flutter to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... the grave exhortations to a greater reverence for the public—as if the passive page of a book, by having an epigram or doggerel tale impressed on it, instantly assumed at once loco-motive power and a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in the ear of the public to the sore annoyance of the said mysterious personage. But what gives an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to these lamentations is the curious fact, that if in a volume of poetry the critic should find poem or passage which he deems more ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of those butterfly beings who seem to have been created that they may flutter about from flower to flower in the summer hours of such gala times as those now going on at Chiswick, just as other butterflies do. What the butterflies were last winter, or what will become of them next winter, no one but ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... party set out for the nearest street-car, and a flutter of mingled gratification and embarrassment stirred Ann Eliza's bosom when it was found that Mr. Ramy intended to pay their fares. Nor did he fail to live up to this opening liberality; for after guiding them through the Mall and the Ramble he led the way to a rustic restaurant where, also at his ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... it was so warm that the bees were all around among the blossoms, and two thrushes, who had built in a yew-tree that watched over the Scotch garden, were in a violent flutter because one of their chicks had fallen out of the nest. The mother bird, at the edge of the long orchard grass, was silent, trying by example to still the tiny creature's cheeping, lest it might attract some large ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... blossoms white and red— Look up, look up! I flutter now On this fresh pomegranate bough. See me! 'tis this silvery bill Ever cures the good man's ill. Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear! The flower will bloom another year. Adieu, adieu—I fly—adieu! I vanish in the heaven's blue,— Adieu, adieu! ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... it made his heart flutter tremendously. When at length he and Miss Clampett were admitted to the theater and walked down the aisle Kedzie came from the background of the screen forward as if to meet him. She came on and on, and finally as he reached his seat, a close-up ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... There was a flutter and a scream, and Mr. Bobolink flew away, and soared high into the air, and soon joined his travelling companions on their ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... sat and talked together for an hour before he returned. A short time before Edith intended going home, he came in, with his ever cheerful face, and after greeting her cordially, turned to his wife, and spoke in a voice so full of tenderness and affection, that Edith felt her heart flutter and the tears steal unbidden to her eyes. It was so different from the way her husband spoke. The contrast caused her to feel more deeply, if possible, than ever, her own sad, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various |
