"Swifter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than hydrogen, by which, in accordance with the most ordinary natural laws, you would not only rise to the ceiling and float there in quasi-angelic posture, but perhaps, as one of your feminine adepts is said to have done, flit swifter than train or telegram to "still-vexed Bermoothes," and twit Ariel, if he happens to be there, for a sluggard? We have not the presumption to deny the possibility of anything you affirm; only, as our brethren are particular about evidence, do ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold on his head, and upon him a saddle of costly gold. And in the youth's hand were two spears of silver, sharp, well-tempered, headed with steel, three ells in length, of an edge to wound the wind, and cause blood to flow, and swifter than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at the heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was upon his thigh, the blade of which was of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of the hue of the lightning of heaven: his war-horn was of ivory. Before him were ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... vision, and admired cunning. The possession of these qualities was the very condition of existence, and they valued them accordingly; but in each one of them they found their equals, and in fact their superiors, among the brutes. A lion was stronger than the strongest man. The hare was swifter. The eagle was more keen-sighted. The fox was more cunning. Hence, so far from looking down upon the animals from the remotely superior height that a hundred centuries of civilization have erected for us, the primitive savage looked ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I first saw him he was a child, a baby, but he came to me and took one finger of my hand in his small fist and looked up to me. Ah, Gabrielle the smile of an infant goes to the heart swifter than the thrust of a knife! I looked down upon him and thought many things, and I knew that I was chosen to teach the child. There was a voice that spoke in me. You will smile, but even now I ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... 30. In accordance with their plan the insiders began to sell, and soon the price began to slide downward, for the great majority of the stock was held by the people. There was a halt when the denials of the management were heard, but only for a moment. The decline continued, growing swifter as it got lower until the stock struck $2 per share. At this stage, while the stock was on the way to $2, just as I had predicted, the property was cleverly slid into a receiver's hands by the very men who had so indignantly denied my statement that such ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... forms—sense and the object of sense—which come to the birth together. There are two kinds of motions, a slow and a fast; the motions of the agent and the patient are slower, because they move and create in and about themselves, but the things which are born of them have a swifter motion, and pass rapidly from place to place. The eye and the appropriate object come together, and give birth to whiteness and the sensation of whiteness; the eye is filled with seeing, and becomes not ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... either side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down great branches, from time to time, which choked up the current and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages, there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... entrails into the salt flood and pour liquid wine.' He spoke, and far beneath the flood maiden Panopea heard him, with all Phorcus' choir of Nereids, and lord Portunus with his own mighty hand pushed him on his way. The ship flies to land swifter than the wind or an arrow's flight, and shoots into the deep harbour. Then the seed of Anchises, summoning all in order, declares Cloanthus conqueror by herald's outcry, and dresses his brows in green bay, and gives gifts to each crew, three bullocks of their choice, and wine, and a large talent ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... with perfect love; In us the work of faith fulfil: So not heaven's host shall swifter move, Than we on earth ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... reasserted itself. The personal want tugging at her senses, the personal soreness, the cry of resentful love, were silenced. What place had they in the presence of this lonely agony of death, this mystery, this opening beyond? The old heroic mood revived in her. Her step grew swifter, her carriage more erect, and as she entered the farm kitchen she felt herself once more ready in spirit for what ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the king!' but as he listened to the cries, a vision, swifter than lightning, flashed across his brain. He saw himself seated on a throne, spending his life trying, and never succeeding, to make poor people rich; miserable people happy; bad people good; never doing anything he wished to do, not able even to marry the girl ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... land. My fancying hate Had made a man-beast of him, a thing, like man, Tall in his walk, but in the mood of his eyes A beast, and in the noise of his mouth a beast. He came, and lookt at me; and, in a while, I saw that he was speaking to me there. And all the maiden went in me before him, Swifter than in a moon which looks against The morning, all the silver courage fails.— How cam'st thou ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... sparkled the fountain's flow, Boose sittan ba kaum uzo; Swifter and sweeter the strings did go, Mutrib i khoosh nuwa bejo; Never such singing was heard, I trow; Taza ba taza, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... the particles of water recede from the stroke of the oar, whence the comparative power acquired is but as the difference of velocity between the striking oar and the receding water. So a ship moves swifter with an oblique wind, than with a wind of the same velocity exactly behind it; and the common windmill sail placed obliquely to the wind is more powerful than one which directly recedes from it. Might not some ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... pushing Quart and Tierce, keep the Wrist in Tierce, in order to push Quart the swifter, which is a Fault; because they accustom themselves to a Situation, which, when they come to assault, is unsafe and dangerous, for want of being in the Guard ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... pushed through the dust together, she told me that her days were swifter than a weaver's shuttle and spent without hope. If it wasn't one thing it was another. What she'd like—she'd like to wake up in a strange place and find she'd clean forgot her name and address, like these here parties you read about in the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... clearly anticipated by Olbers. The amount of tail-curvature, he pointed out, depends in each case upon the proportion borne by the velocity of the ascending particles to that of the comet in its orbit; the swifter the outrush, the straighter the resulting tail. But the velocity of the ascending particles varies with the energy of their repulsion by the sun, and this again, it may be presumed, with their quality. Thus multiple ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... I pray thy matchless craft, Poised in air, then slipping wave-ward, Mounting again like an arrow-shaft, Circling, swaying, wheeling, dipping, All with never a flap of wing, Keeping pace with my flying ship here, Give me a key to my wondering! Gales but serve thee for swifter flying, Foam crested waves with thy wings thou dost sweep, Wonderful dun-colored, down-covered body, Living thy life on ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect. Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... you could Be always kind and good! So quick to hear; to tend My smallest ills; to lend Such sympathising ears Swifter than ancient seer's. I never yet knew hands so soft and kind, Nor any cheek so smooth, nor any mind So full of tender thoughts. . . . Dear mother, now I think that I can guess a little how You must have looked for some response, some ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... of his mother's immaculate breast now becomes apparent. A school of small fish basking near the surface rise and fall with the gentle undulating swell, seeing dimly overhead the blue sky, flecked with hosts of fleecy white clouds. A nearer, swifter cloud approaches, hesitates, splashes into their midst,—and the parent gull has caught her first fish of the day. Instinctively the young bird dives; in his joy of very life he cries aloud,—the gull-cry which his ancestors of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... came from the top of glory to the bottom of humiliation, and changed a circumference seraphic for a circumference diabolic. Once waited on by angels, now hissed at by brigands. From afar and high up He came down; past meteors swifter than they; by starry thrones, Himself more lustrous; past larger worlds to smaller worlds; down stairs of firmaments, and from cloud to cloud, and through tree-tops and into the earners stall, to thrust His shoulder under our burdens and take the lances of pain through ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... could save him—nothing, and in imagination he saw himself lose his hold of the branch, slip sidewise, and go down headlong as the bears had fallen, to strike against the rocks, glance off, and then plunge down, down, swifter and ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... dropped upon the ground. When it dropped, the slave was anchored; and at night his arm was tied to the end of the pole which he carried, so that a whole file was hobbled during sleep. If any one became too enfeebled to preserve his place, the brutal keepers transferred him to the swifter voracity of the hyena, who scented the wake of the caravan across the waste to the sea's margin, where the shark ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... Swifter feet had anticipated him. Two days after the arrival of Dr. Cameron at the fort in Colombia, a dust-stained, tired negro was ushered into the presence ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... saw—Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city. The country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed aristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts and consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not inherited, wealth, tends towards democracy. Peisistratos left the Dionysia "in the fields," but he added the Great Dionysia ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... time, who aspires to take the place of a stoker? One sees occasionally in the country a dismal old drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... past quarter of a century there had been tragic scenes enough in France, but now the only man who could have conducted Philip's schemes to a tragic if not a successful issue was gone. Friendly death had been swifter than Philip, and had removed Alexander from the scene before his master had found fitting opportunity to inflict the disgrace on which he was resolved. Meantime, Charles Mansfeld made a feeble attempt to lead an army from the Netherlands into France, to support the sinking fortunes of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... confronted a squadron of Federal Cavalry. With a yell his troops charged and cleared the field. They must ride now with swifter hoofbeat than ever. The news would spread and avengers would be on their heels. They were now far in the rear of McClellan's grand army. They had felt out his right wing and knew to a mile where ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... saving stupidity marks and protects their perception as the curtain of the eagle's eye. Our swifter Americans, when they first deal with English, pronounce them stupid; but, later, do them justice as people who wear well, or hide their strength.—High and low, they are of an unctuous texture.—Their daily feasts argue a savage vigor of body.—Half their strength they put not forth. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... other. It were making a helot of a free man, and you do not love me, Fanfulla, if you drive this argument further. Do you think me sad, cast down, at the prospect of this banishment? Why, boy, the blood runs swifter through my veins since I heard the sentence. It frees me from Babbiano in an hour when perhaps my duty—the reciprocation of the people's love—might otherwise have held me here, and it gives me liberty to go forth, my good Fanfulla, in quest of such adventure as I choose to follow." He ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... but very striking, and I understood, without difficulty, all that he said to me. We then rejoined the rest of the party, and the engine having received its supply of water, the carriage was placed behind it, for it cannot turn, and was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five miles an hour, swifter than a bird flies (for they tried the experiment with a snipe). You cannot conceive what that sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible, too. I could either have read or written; and as it was, I stood up, and with my ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... later, while they were still several planetary diameters from their destination, they had been shocked to find more than two score alien ships of space closing in on them—ships that were swifter and more maneuverable than their own. These ships had rapidly and competently englobed the Star Seeker, and had then tried to herd it away from the planet it ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher
... the Horse; While my spirit I feel, and my figure I view In the brook, I'm inclined to believe it is true; But still, mighty Jupiter, still, by your aid, In my form might some further improvements be made. To run is my duty, and swifter and stronger I surely should go, were my legs to be longer: And as man always places a seat on my back, I should have been made with a saddle or sack; It had saved him much trouble, on journies departing, And I had ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... civilized white has always exhibited toward the savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure, and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter, and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, it does not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature makes it stand out and attract an amount ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the battle; Their bright hair blazed behind, As deadlier than the bolt they fell, And swifter than the wind. And all the stellar continents, With that fierce hail thick sown, Recoiled with fear, from sphere to sphere To Saturn's ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... will carry one; as fast as one can lay legs to the ground, at the top of one;s speed; by leaps and bounds; with haste &c. 684. Phr. vires acquirit eundo[Lat]; "I'll put a girdle about the earth in forty minutes" [M.N.D.]; "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow" [M.N.D.]; go like a bat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... duly considered, all this guard and safeguard by mercy notwithstanding, how hardly this people do escape being destroyed for ever, yea, how with hearts broken, and loins broken, many of them with much difficulty get to the gates of heaven! it will be easily concluded, that her enemies are swifter than eagles, stronger than lions; and that they often overtake her between ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... flung the reins upon his horse's neck, and swifter than the wind the gallant horse swept on and on, and it was not long until he was bounding over the enchanted moor. Wherever his hoofs struck the ground, grass and flowers sprang up, and great trees with leafy branches rose on ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... slope into the chasm was swifter than that up the canyon but no more pleasant. Carrying a heavy pack down such a grade exerted a torturous strain upon the backs of ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... let down from the low sky might be fatally difficult to identify till too late. But add to all these inevitable confusions and misreckonings of time, shape, and distance, charges at every angle of squadrons through and across other squadrons; sudden shifts of the centres of the fights, and even swifter restorations; wheelings, sweepings, and regroupments such as accompany the passage across space of colliding universes. Then blanket the whole inferno with the darkness of night at full speed, and—see what you can ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... pressed forward at a pace swifter than they would have thought possible on this steep road. For lack of breath, they talked very little. Twenty miles was a full day's journey—but it was just midnight when the two men hastened past the guards at the Joppa ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... service of so vile and frail a thing as his body? Now they who boast of the habilities of their body, upon how unsteadfast a possession do they ground themselves! For can you be bigger than elephants, or stronger than bulls? Or swifter than tigers? Look upon the space, firmness, and speedy motion of the heavens, and cease at length to have in admiration these base things. Which heavens are not more to be admired for these qualities than for the manner of their ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... stride lengthened. He was not galloping. He was pouring himself over the ground with an endless succession of smooth impulses. The wind of that running became a gale. The blown mane of Alcatraz whipped and cut at the face of Perris, and still the chestnut drove swifter ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... This soul of mine they will in pieces tear. Come, then, and let us both expostulate The case betwixt us, till we animate And kindle in our hearts that burning love To Christ, to grace, to life, that we may move Swifter than eagles to this blessed prey; Then shall it be well with us in that day The trump shall sound, the dead made rise, and stand, Then to receive, for breach of God's command, Such thunder-claps as these, Depart from me Into hell-fire, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... into a swifter run, almost losing his presence of mind from his great, agonizing fear. The picture of the Indian, whom he had felled to the floor, when he insulted his wife years before, rose before him, and he saw his ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... ill-disciplined servants, a wife in a wrapper and a bad humour, to go to a place where everything is nice, comfortable, elegant (in a land where the orange tree blossoms, where the breeze is softer and the bird swifter of wing). ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... fish have a wonderful way of changing colour. Put them on light sand, and they become lightish. Put them on dark sand and pebbles, and they soon match it by becoming brown and mottled. This is a most useful dodge where so many enemies abound, all swifter in the water than the ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... flower-bright brows the day-star sits above, Whose hand unweariable and untiring wing Strike music from a world that wailed and strove, Each bright soul born and every glorious thing, From very freedom to man's joy thereof, O time, O change and death, Whose now not hateful breath But gives the music swifter feet to move Through sharp remeasuring tones Of refluent antiphones More tender-tuned than heart or throat of dove, Soul into soul, song into song, Life changing into life, by laws that work ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the spirit of the stone snatched the soldier up, and flew away with him swifter than the wind. Over forest, over field, over mountain and over valley he flew, until at last, just at the crack of day, he set him down in front of his own palace gate in the far country where the magician ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... devil tempting him by the worldly suggestion of fitting out his desultory, miraculous trough with mast, sail, and rudder for swifter progression (the idea of haste has sprung from the pride of Satan), the simple old saint lent his ear to the subtle arguments of the progressive enemy ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... expose The innocent whose love he knows?" In her sad breast as thus she thought, And heaved deep sighs with anguish fraught, With wondrous speed away she fled, And back to Saint Vasishtha sped. She hurled by hundreds to the ground The menial crew that hemmed her round, And flying swifter than the blast Before the saint herself she cast. There Dapple-skin before the saint Stood moaning forth her sad complaint, And wept and lowed: such tones as come From wandering cloud or distant drum. "O son of Brahma," thus cried she, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... think us at a sufficient distance [and I shall raise my voice urging her swifter flight, that you may guess at that] then open the door with your key: but you must be sure to open it very cautiously, lest we should not be far enough off. I would not have her know you have a hand in this matter, out of my great regard ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the other after; and he will have as it were the shadow of the true constellation, and of the double dance, which was circling the point where I was; because it is as much beyond our wont as the motion of the heaven which outspeeds all the rest is swifter than the movement of the Chiana.[5] There was sung riot Bacchus, not Paean, but three Persons in a divine nature, and it and the human in one Person. The singing and the revolving completed each its measure, and those holy lights ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... additional excitement was toward. Many of them stood up and waved their arms, possibly as a signal to their allies on shore. The canoes raced madly. Where speed was vital the rough-hewn native craft were far swifter than the solidly-built lifeboat, with its broad ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... active at the paddle and the oar, Eau-douce, I will allow, but an accursed Mingo is more active at his mischief; the canoes are swift, but a rifle bullet is swifter." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... sweeps me like the sea Toward my pale star, Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free I sail afar. With front outspread and swelling breasts, On swifter sail I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests Under night's veil. Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash A bark in distress: By the blast I am lulled—by the tempest's wild crash On the salt wilderness. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... other floods as is the sea Vouru-kasha, so much above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and fairness is this Law, this fiend-destroying Law of Zarathustra. As much as a great stream flows swifter than a slender rivulet, so much above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and fairness is this Law, this fiend-destroying Law of Zarathustra. As high as the great tree stands above the small plants it overshadows, so high above ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... swallow o'er the heath, Swifter than skims the cloud-rack of the skies; As swiftly flies its shadow underneath, And on his wing the twittering sunbeam lies, As bright as water glitters in the eyes Of those it passes; 'tis a pretty thing, The ornament of meadows and clear skies: With dingy breast and narrow ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... time to practise some on the motor-cycle. He had mastered the method of controlling and driving it, and all he needed now was practice. Joe had been a good bicycle rider, and this stood him in good stead though the motion was much swifter, and the exhilaration of fairly flying through space with no effort on his part was new ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... of Keawe; things had gone quickly; but so an arrow goes, and the ball of a rifle swifter still, and yet both may strike the target. Things had gone fast, but they had gone far also, and the thought of Keawe rang in the maiden's head; she heard his voice in the breach of the surf upon the lava, and for this young man that she had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... obeying her, pulled at the reins to urge the horses to a swifter pace, and before he could find a suitable answer, she had glanced up at the sun, and pointing to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he who for his country dies, Since death pursues the coward as he flies! The youth in vain would fly from Fate's attack; With trembling knees, and Terror at his back; Though Fear should lend him pinions like the wind, Yet swifter Fate will seize him from behind. Virtue repulsed, yet knows not to repine; But shall with unattainted honour shine; Nor stoops to take the staff, nor lays it down, Just as the rabble please to smile or frown. Virtue, to crown her favourites, loves to try Some new unbeaten passage ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... battle, When a score of miles away, He has come to the feast and banquet, By the iron horse to-day. Its pace is not much swifter Than the pace of that famous steed Which bore him down to the contest And saved the day ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Swifter grew the current, giving plain warning to one so well versed as this lad must be in the vagaries of these mad rivers of the Silent Land that presently it would be racing furiously down a steep incline, with razoredge rocks on every side, apparently ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... exist vibrations of every conceivable degree of rapidity, filling the whole vast space intervening between the slow sound waves and the swift light waves; nor is even that all, for there are undoubtedly vibrations slower than those of sound, and a whole infinity of them which are swifter than those known to us as light. So we begin to understand that the vibrations by which we see and hear are only like two tiny groups of a few strings selected from an enormous harp of practically infinite extent, and when we think how much we ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... glimmering foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning; the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... midst of which I cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater than I. They cannot feel, but there may be something in them that feels,—a glorious intelligence, as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;—the spirit of all light, and truth, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... acknowledged leader of the school. Athletics, indeed, were my strong point, for I may say, almost without egotism, that I had so cultivated my muscles to the sad neglect of my proper studies, that I could swim like a fish, dive like an Indian pearl hunter, run swifter than anybody else, and play cricket and football with the best; but, as far as my real school duties were concerned, I'm afraid I was a sad dunce, as I was always at ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... huge the body may confine, And iron gates obstruct the prisoner's gaze, And massive bolts may baffle his design, And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways; But scorns the immortal mind such base control: No chains can bind it and no cell enclose. Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole, And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes. It leaps from mount to mount; from vale to vale It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers; It visits home to hear the fireside tale And in sweet converse ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... thrives til he free himself from them, which is till warm weather comes, and then as he growes stronger, he gets from the dead, still water, into the sharp streames and the gravel, and there rubs off these worms or lice: and then as he grows stronger, so he gets him into swifter and swifter streams, and there lies at the watch for any flie or Minow that comes neer to him; and he especially loves the May flie, which is bred of the Cod-worm or Caddis; and these make the Trout bold and lustie, and he is usually fatter, and ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... must be superb: it is the very sublimation of "rocketing." You must hold straight and forward to stop a cock-pheasant whizzing over the leafless tree-tops—well up in the keen January wind; but a swifter traveler yet is the canvas-back drake, as he swings over the bar, at the fullest speed of his whistling pinions, disdaining to turn a foot from his appointed course, albeit vaguely suspecting the ambush below. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Seems the wild ear to fill; And my muse feels the Golden Shepherd-hours, When from thy lips the silver music pours Slow, as against its will. I see the young Loves flutter on the wing— Move the charm'd trees, as when the Thracian's string Wild life to forests gave; Swifter the globe's swift circle seems to fly, When in the whirling dance thou glidest by, Light as a happy wave. Thy looks, when there love sheds the loving smile, Could from the senseless marble life beguile— Lend rocks a pulse divine; Into a dream my very being dies, I can but read—for ever read—thine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... pulled an oar. The little flotilla crawled up-stream slowly, hugging the bank and keeping to the shadows. At last they were opposite a low, willow-covered island, and within a narrow channel where the water, confined between two banks, flowed with swifter current. At length, at Dunwody's quiet signal, all the boats paused, the crews holding fast to the overhanging branches of the trees on the main ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... and sped back to the house, their hearts thumping with excitement. They knew the value of moments in a case like this. Thure was a little longer-legged, a little the swifter runner, and he reached the open door perhaps a rod ahead of Bud and sprang through it, thinking only of how he could get hold of the kettles and the pails and the pans ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... country of his blood-foes, the Glenorchy Campbells. He objected that by turning to the east, we should come almost at once among the Athole Stewarts, a race of his own name and lineage, although following a different chief, and come besides by a far easier and swifter way to the place whither we were bound. But the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of Cluny's scouts, had good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in every district, and alleging finally ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... minnows, like shivers in a glass, assailed the deceptive bait. The roots of the tree—great yellowish, twisted ropes of roots—clutched air, earth, and water in their convolutions. Among them the current, swifter here than in mid-stream, uttered at times a guttural, uncanny sound as ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... distinguish Garth's slim, agile figure, in white flannels and the violet shirt; and young Ronnie, huge and powerful, trusting to the terrific force of his cuts and drives to counterbalance Garth's keener eye and swifter ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... need $500 more for advertising contracts. And you need two weeks' time for the fish to begin to bite. Your line of relief would be about as useful in an emergency as advocating municipal ownership to cure a man suffocated by eighty-cent gas. And your graft ain't much swifter, Brother ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... being upon the thigh of his divine mother. Those who are in Nu (i.e., the sky) are made wolves, and those who are among the sovereign princes are become hyenas. Behold, I gather together the charm [from every place where] it is, and from every man with whom it is, swifter than greyhounds and quicker than light. Hail, thou who towest along the Makhent boat of Ra, the stays of thy sails and of thy rudder are taut in the wind as thou sailest up the Pool of Fire in the underworld. Behold, ...
— Egyptian Literature
... sky had been burst in. You can just hear, through the crash, the shriek of a third and fourth shell as they come tearing down the vault of heaven—crash—crash. Clouds of dust are floating over you. A swifter shriek and something breaks like a glass bottle in front of the parapet, sending its fragments slithering low overhead. It bursts like a rainstorm, sheet upon sheet, smash, smash, smash, with one or two more of the heavier shells ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... but partaking of the character of both, a something more than either, namely, the substance of which both are formed—the undeveloped elemental life, risen a little way, and but a little way, towards consciousness. The swifter flow of this stream is passion, the gleams of it where it ripples into the light, are thoughts. This sort of nature can endure much without being unhappy. What would crush a swift-thinking man is upborne by the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... fish are swifter. The alligator, by means of his webbed feet, and particularly his flat tail—which acts on the principle of a stern-oar to a boat, and a rudder as well—can pass through the water as swiftly as most of the finny tribe. It is not by hunting it down, however, but by stratagem, that ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... elsewhere, her brilliant, persevering sons had repeated on a lesser scale in Egypt the marvellous evolution which is working out in India. Smaller systems circulate more rapidly. The administrators were guided by experience. The movement had been far swifter, and the results were more surprising. Such was the wonderful story, and it was told in a happy moment. The audience were eager and sympathetic. The subject was enthralling. The story-teller had a wit and ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... assigning to each its separate intellectual capacities. From these orderings follows his idea that poetry is of an earlier date than philosophy, the product of an irregular faculty, less governable than the reason and of swifter development. In turn, these assumptions lead into a form of historical primitivism in which the products of the first poets were "extemporary effusions," rudely imitative of pastoral scenes or celebratory of the divine being. Thus the first generic distinction Ogilvie makes is ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... my sainted kinsman,[89] no! This foul disgrace must not be so; No, by the Shrines of Hy, I've sworn, This foulest wrong must not be borne. A better steed!—a fairer wife! Was ever truer cause of strife? A swifter hound!—a better steed! Columba! ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Piso, was this disastrous night. Surely all was done on our part to secure a successful issue. I can discern no defect nor fault. We could not have been more fleet. Swifter beasts never trod the sands of Arabia. What then? Hath there not been, think you, foul play? Whence got the Romans knowledge, not only of our flight, but of the very spot for which we aimed? I doubt not there has been treachery—and that too of the very color ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... stir, it rustled as the wings of eagles rustle, it took life. Bright eyes gazed upon me, strange whispers shook my soul. Upon the darkness were bars of light. They changed and interchanged, they moved to and fro and wove mystic symbols which I could not read. Swifter and swifter flew that shuttle of the light: the symbols grouped, gathered, faded, gathered yet again, faster and still more fast, till my eyes could count them no more. Now I was afloat upon a sea of glory; it surged and rolled, as the ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... not hear me, madam. By Heaven! but you carry it off easily!" cried the young cavalier, setting off at speed, as if to follow her. "But you must run swifter than a roe if you look to 'scape me;" and with the words, he attempted to rush past Raoul, of whom he affected, although he knew him ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... "When you see me pull, you must pull, too, and you must be very quick, for the nearer we get to the cascade the swifter runs the current. On a calm day I could save you, there wouldn't be a bit of fear; but on a rough day, in a storm like this, I mightn't be able to manage it. Now then, a strong pull, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... limbs, her breasts and her hips, She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glare Of the tempest that bears her away,— That bears me away! Away, over forest and foam, over tree and spray, Far swifter than thought, far swifter than sound or than flame. Over ocean and pine, In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine ... Though Sylvan and Nymph do not Exist, and only what Of terror and beauty I feel and I name As parts of the storm, the awe and the rapture divine That here in the tempest are mine,— ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... water was up to her hips, and no river in the Rockies has a swifter current than the Gunnison. The bottom too is covered with smooth slippery stones and bowlders, so that a misstep might send her plunging down. Deprived of the use of her landing pole, she could make less resistance to the tug of the stream, and the four ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... can bring upon the patient; and thus he will in time be worn out, and led miserably, though slowly, to the grave. Let him not indulge his inactivity so far as to give way to this, because it is represented as far off; the disease may suddenly and frightfully change its nature; and swifter ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... white face over his shoulder and jerked out his orders; then he kicked his tired mount into a swifter gallop. It was he who first broke out into the clearing. One glance, and the story ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... days'll last forever. We all know better'n that when it comes right down to straight reasonin'. A country'll sleep about so long, same as a man; and then it'll wake up. I've seen the States come West for forty years. They're comin' swifter'n ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... his salutary rigor, crimes and factions, mischievous arts and pernicious connivance, the luxurious growth of a feeble and oppressive government, were eradicated throughout the Roman world. [87] But if we attentively reflect how much swifter is the progress of corruption than its cure, and if we remember that the years abandoned to public disorders exceeded the months allotted to the martial reign of Aurelian, we must confess that a few short intervals of peace were insufficient for the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... drought Doth make a rippling and a rout, Sleeps from Nabshawtuck to the Cliff, Unruffled by a single skiff. But by a thousand distant hills The louder roar a thousand rills, And many a spring which now is dumb, And many a stream with smothered hum, Doth swifter well and faster glide, Though buried deep beneath ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Egg, one every day, That simpleton's Goose used to lay; So he killed the poor thing, Swifter fortune to bring, And dined off ...
— The Baby's Own Aesop • Aesop and Walter Crane
... for the dear boy lying upstairs had friends everywhere, and older neighbors thought of him even more anxiously and tenderly than his mates. It was not fever, but some swifter trouble, for when Saturday night came, Ed had gone home to a longer and more peaceful Sabbath than any he had ever ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... commander-in-chief would not disgrace us by yielding to his claim, and 't is for us to prove that he was right. We have shown the French artillerists that we can serve our guns quicker and more accurately; now let us see if we cannot prove ourselves the swifter and steadier at this work. Let the sergeants see to it that each man in his file has a piece of paper in his hat, and that each has removed the flint from his gun. I want you to carry the redoubt without a shot, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... to represent the Halsted Camp Fire in the race arrived in the cove late in the morning, and from the shore there seemed to be no difference in size between the two little craft. They were different, and one might prove swifter than the other, for no two boats of that sort were ever exactly alike. But so far as could be judged, the race was likely to be a test rather of how the boats were sailed than of their speed, boat ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... result of their labors was, accordingly, as narrow as the pathway of the faithful into the Mahometan paradise,—so slender, indeed, that Blondin should have been selected as the only candidate who could hope to keep his balance on it, with the torrent of events rushing ever swifter and louder below. It might sustain the somewhat light Unionism of Mr. Pendleton, but would General McClellan dare to trust its fragile footing, with his Report and his West Point oration, with his record, in short, under his arm? Without these documents General ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... scenes of his boyhood. I let him dream, for I knew the sweetness of a melancholy reverie. Sometimes the soul is impatient of the body's dogged hold on life, and steals away to view its future domain, to draw in advance upon its coming freedom—now lingering, now swifter than a hawk—and then it comes back and we say that we have been absent-minded. Alf started—his soul had returned. "And weren't you surprised to see them drive ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... hard work went on. The men, whitened by the indoor life of the winter, were beginning to take on a bronze tan. Muscles hardened and become more springy. Running legs improved. The pitchers were sending in swifter balls, Joe included. The fungo batters were sending up better flies. The ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... the knight went on, "if we dig a channel to let the waters run to the river by a shorter swifter way there will be no more trouble. I think that we will make an excuse of draining the marsh. Then if we can, when the underground way is no more the channel of the stream, we will wall it in to make a secret passage from the castle ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... o'er the fence; The double crack of every lifted gun, The dinting thud of birds whose course is done— These sounds, delightful to his listening ear, He heeds no longer, for he cannot hear. None stauncher, till the drive was done, defied Temptation, rooted to his master's side; None swifter, when his master gave the word, Leapt on his course to track the running bird, And bore it back—ah, many a time and oft— His nose as faultless as his mouth was soft. How consciously, how proudly unconcerned, Straight to his master's side he then returned, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... butcher had gone off on another man's horse—the man owed him money, he said, and the only way he could get his money was to take the horse as security. But the sergeant did not know this, and he and the colonel rode after him, and the colonel, having the swifter horse, but not having had time to get his own pistol, took the sergeant's and went ahead. He fired quite close to the running butcher twice, and the butcher thought it wise to halt. When he saw the child who had captured ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... confided an important missive to a swifter agent than himself, and a few minutes afterward it flashed along the electric wire to London, to appear next day in the Times and Morning Chronicle in the following words: "For information respecting the fate of the three-mast vessel BRITANNIA, of Glasgow, Captain Grant, apply to Lord Glenarvan, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... understanding or, at least, fancying I understand, that Comte's famous 'Classification of the Sciences' may be extremely serviceable as indicating in what order the sciences may most profitably be studied. That a student's general progress would be swifter and surer if, before entering on physics or chemistry, he had already made considerable progress in algebra, geometry, and mechanics, than if he commenced all five sciences simultaneously, seems probable enough. If, however, the classification be intended also to indicate historically ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... snakes hissed as they rose in knotted clusters round their heads, and the Gorgons gnashed their teeth in fury, not for any love of the mortal maiden whose woes were ended, but because a child of weak and toiling men had dared to approach the daughters of Phorkos and Keto. Swifter than the eagles they sped from their gloomy cave, but they sought in vain to find Perseus, for the helmet of Hades was on his head, and the sandals of the nymphs were bearing him through the air like a dream. Onwards ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... however, that he could easily outrun his pursuer, he halted a moment, as if waiting for him. The man was hurrying on, thinking that the boy could go no farther, when the saucy marionette, putting his hand to his mouth, shouted "Cuckoo!" Then at a pace swifter than the wind he set off once more, pausing now and again to ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... more highly organised negation of all those principles which we may sum up under the general term of civilisation. The comparatively humane neglect of the unfortunate alien peoples herded within the frontiers of earlier Sultans was improved upon by Abdul Hamid, who struck out the swifter and superior methods of maintaining the dominating strength of the Turkish element in the kingdom not by the absorption of subject peoples, but by their extermination. This in turn, this new and effective idea, served as ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... sea-horses of the deep, And we race through the waters blue, Faster than wind and swifter than tide We gallop the ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... white tail of a bonefish stick out of the water. I put my thumb on the reel and jerked hard. Instantly I felt the fish, heavy and powerful. He made a surge and then ran straight out. The line burned my thumb so I could not hold it. I put on the click and the fish made a swifter, harder run for at least a hundred yards, and he tore the ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... between the breeder's method of "artificial selection," and the world-wide process of natural selection. As every one knows, the breeder of race horses finds that colts vary much in their speed; discarding the slower animals, he uses only the swifter for breeding purposes, and so he perfects one type of horse. With other objects in view, the heavy draught horse, the spirited hackney, and the agile polo pony have been severally bred by exactly the same method. Among cattle many kinds occur, again the products of an artificial or human ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... the right answer instantaneously, quicker than the brain itself could have solved the problem. And what the heart told him was right, indubitably and indisputably right. Then he was to die for something he felt but could not understand, for the decision of some power within him, wiser and swifter and surer than the cool head to which he had trusted so long. To call that power the heart was nonsense, as absurd as to call it a function of the brain. It was distinct from both, it had a being of its own, independent, dominating, tremendous in its effects. In danger the head said, stop; the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... property as to transfuse into men and animals the qualities, either of the food they use, or of those objects that are presented to their senses; he who feeds on venison is, according to their physical system, swifter and more sagacious than the man who lives on the flesh of the clumsy bear, or helpless dunghill fowls, the slow-footed tame cattle, or the heavy wallowing swine. This is the reason that several of their old men recommend, and say, that formerly their greatest chieftains observed ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... movement of the disc, so can that of the concealing pendulum be represented. The only difference is that the pendulum is narrower, and moves more slowly. The slower rate is represented by a steeper locus-band, PP', than those of the swifter sectors. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... and idlers who were watching the sport. Despite their efforts to intercept me I cleared them in an instant, and ran down the valley with the whole yelling mob at my heels. Some half dozen of my pursuers being swifter of foot forged ahead of their comrades, but they did not seem to gain upon me, and for a time it seemed that I would distance them entirely; but I had overestimated my strength, and to my alarm found myself growing weak, and running heavily ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... throbbed swifter Bakahenzie began to shuffle in a stooping posture as if he were snuffing a trail. To the continuous grunting he continued this dance for fully a quarter of an hour. Then stopping abruptly in front of ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... own clubs, I fancy that the cricketers would win; for the difficulty of hitting our bowling with a club would be greater than of hitting their pitching with a bat. But their wonderful fielding and far more accurate and swifter throwing than ours might just save them. Such throwing we see only very rarely, for good throwing is no longer insisted upon in cricket, much to the game's detriment. That old players should lose their shoulders is natural—and, of course, our players remain in first- class cricket for ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... is the sword of thought? And Holy Earth in her increase perisheth: The child dies and the mother awaketh not. I-e! I-e! We have seen them, one on another, gone as a bird is gone, Souls that are flame; yea, higher, Swifter they pass than fire, To the rocks ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... from Mlle. Celeste's look of incredulous wonderment, and went off through the woods, with swifter strides than I usually took, to our chateau. Of course I dared not tell my parents my reason for wishing to go to Paris. It was enough, to my mother at least, that I should desire to go on any account. The best way in which I could put my resolution to them, which I did that very afternoon, on ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... electricity are swift, but thought is swifter. As I said, this was all in the fraction of a second. Then Mrs. Laughton was on her feet again and before a pendulum could have more than swung backward. The man must know she saw him. She took the light brass bedstead and sent it rolling away from her ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... of his own making. They could not be distinguished from the regular article, not even by an experienced professional—until they were hit. Then! The fact that after every bounce one of these rubber balls bounded swifter and higher had given it the name of ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... his way out and was speeding down the street. But fleet-footed men were at his heels, a roar of rage burst from the mob, and in a body it took up the chase. Down the stumpy, muddy trail went the pursuit, and every command to halt spurred the fleeing man to swifter flight. Cabin doors opened; people came running from their tents; some tried to fling themselves in the way of the escaping criminal; packers toiling up the trail heard the approaching clamor, shook off their burdens and ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... tradespeople, and each division was marked with a suitable device, and text from Scripture. On the bakers' portion a sheaf of wheat was painted; a balance and weights on the grocers', and on the weavers', which was opposite to our pew, there was a shuttle, and below it the motto, "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hop job." The artist ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... the eagle is the swiftest. 2. Certain animals are swifter than the swiftest horse. 3. The Roman name was most hateful to the enemies of the commonwealth. 4. The Romans always inflicted the severest[2] punishment on faithless allies. 5. I was quite ill, and so I hastened from the city to the country. 6. Marcus had some friends dearer than Caesar.[3] ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... each with five squadrons under him. Consider the effect of such a spectacle: the grim advance of rival squadrons front to front; the charge; the solemn pause as, having swept across the hippodrome, they stand once more confronting one another; and then the trumpet sounds, whereat a second and yet swifter hostile advance, how fine the effect!—and once again they are at the halt; and once again the trumpet sounds, and for the third time, at the swiftest pace of all, they make a final charge across the field, before dismissal; after which they come to a halt ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... no more, and they are cut off from thine hand." Yea, they may be driven to the very border of despair, and conclude that there is no hope, as the church did, Ezek. xxxvii. 11, "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off for our parts;" and as Job, chap. vii. 6, "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope;" and chap. xix. 10, "He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: mine hope hath been ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... "He was swifter than an eagle; he was stronger than a lion." Over the humble grave in which he sleeps no shaft of granite rises to point to passers-by where this martyr to the cause of freedom lies. But when Justice shall write the names of true heroes upon the immortal scroll, she will write the names of Leonidas, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... with swifter foot within the prison. Alaric was allowed the use of books and pens and paper, but even with these he found a day in prison to be almost an unendurable eternity. This was the real punishment of his guilt; it was not that he could not ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... prevailed at court; couriers were despatched swifter than the winds wafted the unhappy Arabella, and all was hurry in the seaports. They sent to the Tower to warn the lieutenant to be doubly vigilant over Seymour, who, to his surprise, discovered that his prisoner had ceased to be so for several ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... George Fox's company but alone, when, as he crossed a desolate moor on horseback, he heard the thunderous sound of horses' hoofs coming after him down the road. Looking round, he beheld a masked and bearded highwayman, his figure enveloped in a long flowing cloak, rapidly approaching on a far swifter horse than his own 'Truth's pony.' A moment later, a pistol was drawn from the newcomer's belt and pointed ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... life and the lives of my three sons that are the best fighting men in the whole world." "We will take the beast for you if you have a mind," said Finn. "Do not try to do that," she said, "for I myself am swifter than you are, and I cannot come up with it." "We will not let it go till we know what sort of a beast is it," said Finn. "If you yourself or your share of men go after it, I will bind you hand and foot," said she. "It is ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... saw her lips, and was not satisfied with only seeing them. He admired her hands and arms, naked to the shoulder, and whatever was hidden from view he imagined more beautiful still. He followed her; she fled, swifter than the wind, and delayed not a moment at his entreaties. "Stay," said he, "daughter of Peneus; I am not a foe. Do not fly me as a lamb flies the wolf, or a dove the hawk. It is for love I pursue you. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... It spreads far and wide among our Clergy in these days; a most notable symptom, very cheering to me many ways; whether or not one of the fatalest our poor Church of England has ever exhibited, and betokening swifter ruin to it than any other, I do not inquire. Thank God, men do discover at last that there is still a God present in their affairs, and must be, or their affairs are of the Devil, naught, and worthy ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... are my helpers all, And thought finds not a sword to fray This hated pestilence from hearth or hall. Earth's blossoms blasted fall: Nor can our women rise From childbed after pangs and cries; But flocking more and more Toward the western shore, Soul after soul is known to wing her flight, Swifter than quenchless flame, to ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... eagles in flight, And swans be swifter than hawks of the tower, And wrens set gos-hawks by force and might, And muskets make verjuice of crabbes sour, And ships sail on dry land, silt give flower, And apes in Westminster give judgment and sentence, Then put women ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... sordid cost our steps can stay, We travel free as air. Our wings are fancies, incense-borne, That feather-light upbear. Begone! ye powers of steam and flood. Thy roads creep far too slow; We need thee not. My pipe and I Swifter than ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... growing bodily higher every moment, as if by magic. Amyas looked up in astonishment and saw what it was. The Spaniard was keeling fast over to leeward away from him. Her masts were all sloping forward, swifter and swifter—the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... abutment of the old bridge, and looked so solid that I supposed it would yet remain for a day or two. Large cakes and masses of ice came floating down the current, which, though not very violent, hurried along at a much swifter pace than the ordinary one of our sluggish river-god. These ice-masses, when they struck the barrier of ice above mentioned, acted upon it like a battering-ram, and were themselves forced high out of the water, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... motion and, conceiving thus, Of that true constellation, and the dance Twofold, that circled me, he shall attain As 't were the shadow; for things there as much Surpass our usage, as the swiftest heav'n Is swifter than the Chiana. There was sung No Bacchus, and no Io Paean, but Three Persons in the Godhead, and in one Substance that nature and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... spurring madly onward, They saw the host appear In numbers overwhelming, In numbers ten to one; They knew the conflict must be waged Beneath the scorching sun; They knew the British soldiers grave Might lie beneath their feet; But they never knew dishonour, And they would not know defeat. And swifter, ever swifter Swept on the savage horde, And from the serried British ranks A murderous fire was poured; And like the leaves in autumn Fell Arab warriors slain, And like the leaves in spring-time ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... to the sea, where they exercised piracy, under the command of Sigefert, a Northumbrian. This freebooter, well acquainted with Alfred's naval preparations, had framed vessels of a new construction, higher, and longer, and swifter than those of the English; but the king soon discovered his superior skill, by building vessels still higher, and longer, and swifter than those of the Northumbrians; and falling upon them while they were exercising their ravages in the west, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... his head was immediately cut off. At every half league on the public roads throughout the whole empire, there were Indians in constant attendance to relieve each other in carrying dispatches, which they did swifter than our post horses. When any province or district was subdued, the natives of the place, or at least all their chiefs and principal people, were immediately removed to other parts of the empire, and natives from other places which had been long subjected ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... is, dearie. Love's not a spiritual nor a mental thing. It's purely physical. A love affair is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear. And it's a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact. They've nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... less foul-bottomed and slow—in the care of Captain Rause, with just sufficient men to work them. With the three dainty pinnaces and the oared shallop that Rause had taken, he hoped to make rather swifter progress than he had been making. He took with him in the four boats fifty-three of his own company and twenty of Captain Rause's men, arranging them in order according to the military text-book: "six Targets, six Firepikes, twelve Pikes, twenty-four Muskets and Callivers, sixteene ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield |
