"Fleeting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as Clerk of the Acts, to whom he paid part of the salary. Barlow held the office jointly with Dennis Fleeting.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to 'get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, Would with the ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... corporal's squad; on the intelligence of subordinate leaders in grasping and applying the commander's plans; on the discipline which ensures intelligent obedience to the directing will; and on the mobility which gives rapid effect to that will, and permits advantage to be taken of fleeting opportunities. Every fresh development in the means of transmitting orders and information rapidly, permits of an extension of the commander's influence, and makes more perfect combination possible and over wider areas" (General Sir E. B. Hamley). Even when, and particularly when, forces are ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... the words, by the novelty and beauty of the music to which they were sung, were powerful auxiliaries to the arguments of the theologian. They entered the house of the peasant and invested its homely scenes with a calm derived from the contemplation of the bliss of a heaven where the fleeting distinctions of the present shall melt away. They nerved the humble artisan to patience and to the cheerful endurance of obloquy and reproach. They attracted to the gathering of persecuted reformers in the by-street, in the retired barn, or on the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Yet the fleeting shadows of metaphysics were pursued with more curiosity and ardor. After a long oblivion, Plato was revived in Italy by a venerable Greek, [108] who taught in the house of Cosmo of Medicis. While the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... solitary romance stealing in once, and but once, amidst the world's hard realities; the "fire filched for us from heaven." Has it to arise yet for you—you, who read this? Do not trust it when it comes, for it will be fleeting as a summer cloud. Enjoy it, revel in it while you hold it; it will lift you out of earth's clay and earth's evil with its angel wings; but trust not to its remaining: even while you are saying, "I will make it mine for ever," ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of his profession this arose. His was a singular career. He pursued the fleeting testimonial through the mazy symptoms of disease (largely imaginary) and cure (wholly mythical). To extract from the great and shining ones of political life commendations of Certina; to beguile statesmen who had never tasted that strange concoction into asseverating their faith in the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... distant and savage countries like the echoes of distant voices. In front the Meuse, covered with boats and barks, and the distant shore with a forest of beech trees, windmills, and towers; and over all the unquiet sky, full of gleams of light, and gloomy clouds, fleeting and changing in their constant movement, as if repeating the restless labor on ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... and fleeting, Our delible paths we tread; And fade as the crimson sunset, When the heavens are tinged with red; As the gorgeously tinted rainbow Retains not its varied dyes, We change, with the constant mutation, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... have been expected from the best of fathers! what more could children, born to the highest fortunes, have enjoyed! nor was their happiness like to be fleeting: Dorilaus was a man steady in his resolutions, had always declared an aversion to marriage, and by rejecting every overture made him on that score, had made his friends cease any farther importunities; he had besides (as has already ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... vision of his, vague and fleeting then, but very real now. He was standing here at Ticonderoga, looking at the battle as it passed before him, and now it was no vision, but the truth. Had Tayoga's Manitou opened the future to him for a moment? Then the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Anne to herself. "I do wish uncle—" she caught a fleeting glimpse of him beside the workman with the canvas bag—"if just he hadn't hurried so. How could I forget Rosy Posy? I wish that fat girl would let me hold her baby doll. She's just dragging ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... life-like. It is a criticism of life that all writers, from the highest to the humblest, aim at. They are amazed, thrilled, enchanted by the sight and the scene, by the relationships and personalities they see round them. These they must depict; and in a life where so much is fleeting, they must seek to stamp the impression in some lasting medium. It is the beauty and strangeness of life that overpowers the artist. He has little time to devote himself to things of a different value, to the getting of position or influence or wealth. He cannot give himself up to filling ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... comes into view, and again retreats into space to perform another revolution. The question then arises as to how we are to recognise the body when it does come back? The personal features of its size or brightness, the presence or absence of a tail, large or small, are fleeting characters of no value for such a purpose. Fortunately, however, the law of elliptic motion established by Kepler has suggested the means of defining the identity of a ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... She never dressed much for the Cooneys. Also, by wholly mechanical processes of adjustment to environment, her manner and air became simpler, somewhat unkeyed: she unconsciously folded away her more shining wings. Nevertheless, there was about her to-night a fleeting kind of radiance which had caught the notice of more than one of her cavalier cousins, notably of pretty little Looloo, who had kissed the visitor shyly (for a Cooney) at greeting, and said, "Oh, Cally! You do look so lovely!" Cally herself was aware of an inner buoyance oddly at variance ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... strain'— he excelled all his contemporaries except Lord Abinger, with whom it was more liable to be swayed by prejudice or modified by taste, as it was adorned with happier graces. The perfection of this faculty was remarkably exemplified in the fleeting visits he often paid to the trials of causes which he had left to the conduct of his juniors; a few words, sometimes a glance, sufficed to convey to his mind the exact position of complicated affairs, and enabled him to decide what should be done or avoided; ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames with the lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on, and was soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the story; but his partisan bias is correspondingly emphasized.] Was it the heroism of a martyr? The voice of England had doomed her; she appealed to a higher Tribunal than England. King or Queen never faced their end more triumphantly. Mary Stewart, royal in the fleeting moments of her prosperity, royal throughout the long years of her adversity, was never so supremely royal as in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... "that it illustrates the point I wanted to make. Part, I mean, of the peculiar charm of works of Art consists in the fact that they arrest a fleeting moment of delight, lift it from our sphere of corruption and change, and fix it like a star ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... after a brief stay in the quiet little Australian country town where his sisters lived, he would again sail out to seek the ever-fleeting City of Fortune that has always tempted men like him into the South Seas, never to return to the world of civilisation, but with an intense, eager desire to leave it again as quickly as possible. To him the daily round of conventional existence, the visitings, the theatres, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... through the dancers and beyond; and in her eyes was the deepest look of sadness Pinckney had ever seen in a girl's face; a look such as he had thought no girl could feel. A moment after, and it was gone, as some one spoke to her; and Pinckney wondered if he had not been mistaken, so fleeting was it, and so strange. An acquaintance—one of those men who delight to act as brokers of acquaintances—who had noticed his gaze came up. "That is the famous Miss Mary Warfield," said he. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... nevertheless, for her sake, it was good to remember that some one had said that Dr. Leslie, unlike most physicians, was a man of fortune. And nothing remained but to win an affection which should match his own, and this impatient suitor walked and drove and spent the fleeting hours in waiting for a chance to show himself in the lists of love. It seemed years instead of weeks at last, and yet as if he had only been truly alive and free since love had made him captive. He could not fasten himself down to his work without ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... all his trails, and sometimes I found tracks so fresh that I was satisfied he had heard me coming and had turned aside. There were cougar and lynx tracks all over the mountains, but I seldom saw the animals and then only got fleeting glimpses of them as they ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... morning there had been a dress rehearsal in the salon of the music hall. Twenty men and women, chiefly journalists and artists, had assembled there to get a first glimpse of the debutante, and cameras had lurked behind portieres and in alcoves to catch her poses, her expressions, her fleeting smiles, and humorous grimaces. Then the company had adjourned to Drake's chambers. The luncheon was now over, the last guest had gone, and the host was in ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the gate at the foot of the hill as Anne and Gilbert passed. She stood with her hand on the fastening of the gate, and looked steadily at them, with an expression that hardly attained to interest, but did not descend to curiosity. It seemed to Anne, for a fleeting moment, that there was even a veiled hint of hostility in it. But it was the girl's beauty which made Anne give a little gasp—a beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention anywhere. She was hatless, but heavy braids of burnished hair, the hue of ripe ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... important a secret. If your passion be unworthy, it is for the steady hand of friendship to pluck it forth; if honorable, none but an enemy would seek to stifle it. On nothing does the character and happiness so much depend as on the first affection of the heart. Were you caught by some fleeting and superficial charm—a bright eye, a blooming cheek, a soft voice, or a voluptuous form—I would warn you to beware; I would tell you that beauty is but a passing gleam of the morning, a perishable flower; that accident may becloud and blight it, and that at best it must soon ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... before her, she had almost taken him for a young man; and sometimes he said something in a settled kind of way that was almost adult. This fondest aunt went on to add, however, that of course, the next minute after one of these fleeting spells, he was sure to be overtaken by his more accustomed moods, when his eye would again fix itself with fundamental aimlessness upon nothing. In brief, he was at the age when he spent most of his time changing his ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... that fleeting vision in the moonlight, West felt no doubt as to the identity of his visitor—the woman was Natalie Coolidge. His one glimpse of her vanishing figure assured him of this fact, and he drew back instantly, unwilling ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... put him in charge of this place. The isolation for a white man must be terrible; sometimes two months will go by without his seeing another white face but that in his looking-glass, and when he does see another, it is only by a fleeting visit such as we now pay him, and to make the most of this, he ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... shoulder of the man that fires it is as certain as the flight of the bullet from its muzzle. The chalk cliffs that rise above the Channel entomb and perpetuate the relics of myriads of evanescent lives; and our fleeting deeds are similarly preserved in our present selves. Everything that a man wills, whether it passes into external act or not, leaves, in its measure, ineffaceable impressions on himself. And so we are not only dungeoned in, but ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is the meaning of a "perennial plant" in botany? Ans. A plant continuing more than two years.—Give the contrary of "perennial." Ans. Fleeting, short-lived. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... most clearly audible elements of speech. As such they are the carriers of practically all significant differences in stress, pitch, and syllabification. The voiceless sounds are articulated noises that break up the stream of voice with fleeting moments of silence. Acoustically intermediate between the freely unvoiced and the voiced sounds are a number of other characteristic types of voicing, such as murmuring and whisper.[16] These and still other types of voice are relatively unimportant in English and ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... grasp the fleeting dreams, Else shall I doubt that which I fondly hope.— Sleep, love, and let thy spirit bask awhile In Heaven's ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... of it all. The horizon behind them swarmed with moving dots—dots that grew larger and more distinct with every fleeting minute. Garvey had obtained reenforcements, without doubt, for there seemed to be no ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... could ever be the mistress of such a beautiful home as this? What folly to even dream of such a possibility! Possibly, he was attracted to her and liked her company, but there was a vast difference between a fleeting whim and wishing to make her his wife. And when her glance fell on Jimmie and Fanny squabbling in the distance it was with some bitterness that she realized the difference in their station, the width of the social chasm between her and the ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... all to be understood by those with whom lightness of heart is a chronic affection. The man who dwells for long periods face to face with the bitter truths of life learns so to distrust a fleeting moment of joy, gives habitually so cold a reception to the tardy messenger of delight, that, when the bright guest outdares his churlishness and perforce tarries with him, there ensues a passionate revulsion unknown to hearts ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... eyes stared at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now? After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year, nobody ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... ne'er ruffled by the rude breathings of the wind, shines with golden tints to the homage of the rising sun, while the light bark gallantly lashes the surge, rocking before the propelling gale, and forcibly brings to the appalled mind the fleeting hours of time. But I must pause— my pen refuses to do justice to the subject, and the remainder will furnish us hours of conversation during the tedious moments of the delightful visit to Park-Place. You speak of Antonio—dear girl, with me the secret is ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... in growing worse Occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude" Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous Occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal cause Of the fleeting years each steals something from me Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate Oftentimes agitated with divers passions Old age: applaud the past and condemn the present Old men who retain the memory of things past Omit, as ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... waiting in the hope of Gianluca's recovery. It was no longer for her own, nor for his. It was out of her deadly love for Taquisara that all her nature rose against that final bond of the law, and the world, and society. So long as that was not yet welded and made fast upon her, there was the fleeting shadow of a desperate hope that she ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... met her at the elevator, and led her back into what she called "your corner" of the room. Evidently the room was divided into countless corners, for several groups were clustered together in different sections. But Eveley gave them only a fleeting glance. Her heart and soul were centered on the group before her, eight boys, dark-eyed, dark-skinned, of fourteen years or thereabouts. They looked at Eveley appraisingly, as we always look on those who come to do us good. Eveley looked upon them with tender solicitude, as philanthropists have looked ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... minutes of banter which followed, there was a serious something underneath the fun which I could not but relate to the strange and fleeting expression I had caught in her eyes. What was it? Could it be that our eyes were speaking beyond the will of our speech? My eyes had spoken, I knew, until I had found the culprits out and silenced them. This had occurred several times. But had she seen the clamour in them ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... were few and far between. The estates in Yorkshire that Madam Purefoy had brought to her husband on her marriage were the children's real home. It was several years after this before Cecily saw her fairy princess again. The next glimpse was even more fleeting than their appearance in church, just a mere flash at the lodge gates as Jocosa and her brother cantered past on their way out for a day's hunting. Old Thomas, sitting in his arm-chair in the sun, looked critically and enviously at the man-servant who accompanied them. 'Too young—too young,' ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... third-class compartment, a thousand recollections thronged his imagination: the events of the night before at his uncle's mingled in his mind with fleeting impressions of Madrid already half forgotten. One by one the sensations of distinct epochs intertwined themselves in his memory, without rhyme or reason and among them, in the phantasmagoria of near and distant images that rolled past his inner vision, there stood out clearly ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the visible appearance of them was exceedingly fleeting. I no longer saw anything, though I still felt convinced of their immediate presence. They were, moreover, of the same order of life as the visitant in my bedroom of a few nights before, and their proximity to my atmosphere in numbers, instead of singly as before, conveyed to my ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... was determined that when this meeting took place their relations should be of so impersonal a character that he should find it well-nigh impossible to recall the fact that any hint of romance had ever hovered even for a fleeting moment between them. He had his career before him. He followed the way of ambition, and he should continue to follow it, unhindered by any thought of her. She was dependent upon no man. She would pick up the threads of her own life and weave of it something ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... his fast dimming brain the films of approaching dissolution began to swirl, now thick and fast, now tenuous again, so that he recognised Ishmael and what had happened for a fleeting moment during which the old glee peeped out of his blurred eyes. Then he drifted into sleep with the suddenness of an infant, a sleep quite peaceful, as of one who has accomplished well his task and now may rest. Ishmael sat on by the bed; sometimes he looked at him, even laid his fingers ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... It was a slight shift, barely enough to make the kicker miss, and two powerful hands closed upon that flying foot in midair like the sprung jaws of a bear-trap. Closed and twisted viciously, in the same fleeting instant. There was a shriek, smothered as a heavy boot crashed to its carefully pre-determined mark: the pirate was out, definitely ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... led to the bridge, and the shrinking stranger, with his hopelessly timid manner, who had drawn back at their approach; and he thought he heard himself saying, 'Shall I get him some partners, or leave the people who brought him to the dance to look after him?' It was only a fleeting look that he had caught of the man's face, and he recalled it with difficulty now, but it was not a far-fetched conclusion to decide that the two were ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... by a fleeting look on her face what the true state of her feelings was, although I fancied that the readiness of her assent had perhaps more meaning than she would have placed in a ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... extraordinary conductor of sensation: she seemed to transmit it physically, in emanations that set the blood dancing in his veins. He had not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament, and he felt a fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for his ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... honesty itself Nothing is more confident than a bad poet Nothing that so poisons as flattery Obedience is never pure nor calm in him who reasons and disputes Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous Of the fleeting years each steals something from me Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate Old age: applaud the past and condemn the present One may be humble out of pride Our will is more ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... way of superior seductive pleasures to a pair who had tasted pure and natural enjoyments? The vain amusements and allurements of the world have no sympathy with anything but dissipation, in which, the mind, yielding to the fleeting seductions of art, leaves the heart empty as soon as ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... those undergoing slight appreciable change under the same conditions as "fairly fast." "Moderately fast" colors are those altering considerably in fourteen days; and those more or less completely faded in the same time (fourteen days) are designated as "fleeting." ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her garments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced and gibbered behind her. And, as she gazed down on the girl, it was as if the end of life, with its pathos, its cruelties, its bitterness and its disillusionment, had stopped for a fleeting instant to look back at life in the pride and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... novel to him. Most of it had no meaning for him, but at intervals some fragment detached itself from the mass, and stood out beautiful. It was as if he were gazing at a stage in gloom, but lighted momentarily by fleeting rays that revealed a lovely detail and were bafflingly cut off. Occasionally he thought he noticed a recurrence of the same fragment. Murmurs came from behind the piano. He looked cautiously. Alicia ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... are her eyes: Wherein who gaze See wan effulgencies Flicker and blaze— Lorn fleeting shadows ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... dayes in one whole year there be, So many windows in one church we see, So many marble pillars there appear, As there are hours throughout the fleeting year. So many gates, as moons one year do view, Strange tale to tell, yet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... further into her shell of silence. She cast a fleeting glance at Myra Karr, nervously trying to obey Mary Hastings' directions and "act like a frog"—then her eyes searched again for Olga, now far out in ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... approach, for the trusting heart of genial humanity throbbed not in his sad breast. He was no Pharisee, but he dined not with the Publican, and the precious ointment of the Magdalen never bathed his weary head. His language was: 'All is fleeting and evil, save Thee, O my Father; in Thee ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... be over in six weeks," said the doctor easily. And there they left it. Only, with a fleeting thought, Alvina wondered if it would affect the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She had never heard any more ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... much fascinated with this western beauty that I began to conclude his common stock of gallantry had much improved since his arrival in this fertile country. Indeed, they appeared mutually pleased and the fleeting hours seemed almost too short for the full enjoyment of each other's conversation. Myself and fellow-travelers enjoyed their mirth and jokes. Little did my friend dream a frightful cloud was hovering over him which threatened ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... wonderful to enter the precincts of our warm, dry Cape Evans home. The interior space seemed palatial, the light resplendent, and the comfort luxurious. It was very good to eat in civilised fashion, to enjoy the first bath for three months, and have contact with clean, dry clothing. Such fleeting hours of comfort (for custom soon banished their delight) are the treasured remembrance of every Polar traveller. They throw into sharpest contrast the hardships of the past and the comforts ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... thou pleasing Companion of this Body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown Region? Thou art all trembling, fearful, and pensive. Now what is become of thy former Wit and Humour? thou shall jest and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to comprehend, as in the end she does, that she must lose far more than she could gain by the exchange she contemplates. Surely this is no argument in favor of loyalty as against love: it is only a defense of loyalty, which does not need it, as against a fleeting instability; and so it is hardly half as significant as it might have been had the conflict been squarely met, great love contending with great loyalty. Yet while the novel thus falls short of what ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... with the Queen had come to be the dominating interest in his life; to have been deprived of it would have been heartrending; that dread eventuality had been—somehow—avoided; he was installed once more, in a kind of triumph; let him enjoy the fleeting hours to the full! And so, cherished by the favour of a sovereign and warmed by the adoration of a girl, the autumn rose, in those autumn months of 1839, came to a wondrous blooming. The petals expanded, beautifully, for the last time. For the last time in this unlooked—for, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... and Pope and Turk, who are as father and son to each other, can afford to despise the judgment of the true Church on the strength of fleeting and meager successes in this life, why can not we afford in turn to despise their power and censure, on the strength of the everlasting blessings which we possess? Ham was not moved by his father's curse. Full of anger against him, and despising him as a crazy old man, he goes ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... happy. I look only on the present, and leave the future with Him who has hitherto been so kind to me. 'Take no thought for the morrow' is my motto, and my comfort is to rest on Him in whose house there are many mansions provided when these fleeting earthly ones pass away. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... that George got the first glimpse of her face, he was troubled with one of those fleeting and indefinite likenesses, which almost every body can remember, and has been, at times, perplexed with. He could not keep himself from looking at her, and watchin her perpetually. At table, or sitting at her state-room door, still ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fleeting breath When my eyelids close in death When I rise to worlds unknown, And behold Thee on thy throne Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... under a pot,' which dies down into a doleful ring of black ashes in the pathless desert. Choose whether you will have joy dwelling with and conquering sorrow, or unrest and sorrow, darkening and finally shattering your partial and fleeting joys. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... gambler, too, and more than once had he been watched and shadowed because of some ill deed connected with his name; we had seen his face, and his picture adorned the rogues' gallery. Delbras, however, was likely to give us some trouble; we had seen him, it is true, but it was only a fleeting glimpse, with the possibility that he was at the ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... chimes, That summoned men in olden times To pray the Virgin grace impart; Ye solemn voices of a day gone by, Whose mystic strains of melody Alike touched peer and peasant's heart: Your music falters in the fleeting years, Yet still comes faintly to our ears, Saved by ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... light upon the serrated mountain-crests kept constantly altering their tone and outline. Black and white they stood in midday glare, but a new grandeur was born when these tattered crags appeared above storm-clouds. Fleeting glimpses of the crests through a surging storm arouse strange feelings, and one is at bay, as though having just awakened amid the vast and vague on another planet. But when the long, white evening light streams ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... get time," answered Rose Mary with a smile as she bestowed both a fleeting kiss and the old hat on Uncle Tucker's forelock over the wall. "Now I want to run in and make a few cup custards, so I can save one for Mr. Mark when he gets home to-night. He loves them cold. Little cooking attentions never spoil men, they just nourish ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... 'Grandfather's Clock.' Hard by lay the pipe, fashioned of the 'foam of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,' the pipe on which, perchance, some swain had discoursed sweet music near the shady heights of High Holborn. The cradle of infancy, the gamp of decrepitude, the tricycle of fleeting youth, the paraffin lamp which had lighted bridal gaiety, the flask which had held the foaming malt,—all were gathered here, and the dust lay ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... A piece of lamp-black would produce no such effect in most peoples minds. The difference is in the reception accorded to an idea. The meaning and importance of an idea or event depend upon the interpretation put upon it by our previous experience. "Many a weak, obscure, and fleeting perception would pass almost unnoticed into obscurity, did not the additional activity of apperception hold it fast in consciousness. This sharpens the senses, i.e., it gives to the organs of sense a greater degree of energy, so that the watching eye now sees, and the ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... hard upon the heels of romantic fancy in the mind of Spotswood. His Order of the Knights of the Horseshoe had a fleeting existence, but the Vision of the West lived on. Frontier folk in growing numbers were encouraged to make their way from tidewater to the foot of the Blue Ridge. Spotsylvania and King George were names ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... they rested disheartened and hopeless. Then, as they drifted, a sound struggled to them against the wind—a faint cry, illusive and fleeting as a dream voice—and, still doubting, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... not have been sorry to have had me supply the vacancy; for I had immediate notice sent me of her death by Miss Planta, so written as to persuade me it was a letter by command. But not all my duty, all my gratitude, could urge me, even one short fleeting moment, to weigh any interest against the soothing serenity, the unfading felicity, of a hermitage such ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... 'Well! Well! I'll be hanged if I ever, . . . ' it is probably because this very thing that there should be a past to look back upon, other people's, is very astounding in itself when one has the time, a fleeting and immense instant to think of it . ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... A fleeting smile lighted up the saturnine gloom of his present mood. "It was hardly worth mentioning," he answered, with bitter mirth. "Between five and six thousand shares were subscribed, all told. I think the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... universal stimulus to progress is the love of self which she has implanted in every soul, it is folly to assume that we can better Nature's work by substituting for the universal stimulus to effort a more or less fleeting emotion which takes hold of but a very few and persists with but a still smaller number. Whatever scheme of collectivism we may establish, we know in advance that every member of the collective group will continuously strive to get for himself to the utmost limit regardless, ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... fact in 1875 or '6, when very young, in the West Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... women did most of the talking, and as we sat chatting on every subject under the sun, our husbands looked on in indulgent amusement. Dan soon wearied of the fleeting conversation and turned in, and the little lad slipped away to the black folk; but late into the night we talked: late into the night, and all the next day and evening and following morning—shaded from the brilliant sunshine all day in the leafy "Cottage," and scorching around the camp fire during ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... and his page doing the same, shook off a plentiful load of sand, and beheld, careering furiously away, between them and the western sun, what looked like a purple column, reaching from earth to heaven, and bespangled with living gold-dust, whirling round in giddy spirals, and all the time fleeting so fast that it was diminishing every moment, and was gone in a wink ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... followed I had little chance to note aught else than the movements of my immediate adversaries, but now and again I caught a fleeting glimpse of a purring sword and a lightly springing figure of sinewy steel that filled my heart with a strange yearning and ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the past night, the very existence of the passengers below had been forgotten by most of those whose duty kept them to the deck. If they had been recalled at all to the recollection of any, it was at those fleeting moments when the mind of the young mariner, who directed the movements of the ship, found leisure to catch stolen glimpses of softer scenes than the wild warring of the elements that was so actively raging before his eyes. Nighthead had named them, as he would have made allusion ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... of England and his wife desire? Mr. and Mrs. Daintree, at all events, had wished for nothing better. But this blissful state of things was not destined to last; it was, perhaps, hardly to be expected that it should, seeing that man is born to trouble, and that happiness is known to be as fleeting as time or beauty or any other ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... obtain, like your adorable Lord, this "ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price." Be "clothed" with gentleness and humility. Follow not the world's fleeting shadows that mock you as you grasp them. If always aspiring—ever soaring on the wing—you are likely to become discontented, proud, selfish, time-serving. In whatever position of life God has placed you, be satisfied. What! ambitious to be on a pinnacle of the temple—a ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... of the waiting room. To be sure, the ticket-seller was there, and the lady who checked packages left in her charge, but these must have seen so many endearments pass between passengers,—that a fleeting caress or so would scarcely have drawn their notice to our pair. Yet Isabel did not so much even as put her hand into her husband's; and as Basil afterwards said, it was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... full crown of which was not entirely bald, but partially covered with a few sparse long hairs. And full across this crown, disappearing in the thicker fringe above the ears, ran the most prodigious scar I had ever seen. Because the vision of it was so fleeting, ere the match blew out, and because of the scar's very prodigiousness, I may possibly exaggerate, but I could have sworn that I could lay two fingers deep into the horrid cleft and that it was fully two fingers broad. There seemed no bone at all, just a great fissure, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... this time with two boxes of a smaller size. They vanished; and as the lift rose once again, Gurdon had barely time to hide himself behind the bedroom door, and thus escape the observation of two men who now occupied the cage. He just caught a fleeting glimpse of them, and saw that one was an absolute stranger, but he felt his heart beating slightly faster as he recognised in the other the now familiar form of Mark Fenwick. The mystery ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... angel, Mounts above Mount Hara (Alborz) In advance of the sun immortal Which is drawn by fleeting horses; He it is, in gold adornment First ascends the beauteous summits Thence beneficent he glances Over all the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... some horses near the back door of Platt & Fortner's. He was partially screened from Bob's view by one of the broncos and by a freight wagon, but the young cattleman had a fleeting impression that he was Bandy Walker. Was he, too, waiting to get a shot at the bandits? Probably so. He had a rifle in his hands. But it struck Dillon he was taking chances. When the robbers came out of the bank they would be within thirty ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... walk on the hills, I heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as I stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards the scant fields. As the spring-tide advanced I discovered a new likeness to you in the daffodil; it is so shapely a flower. I should be puzzled to give a reason, but it reminds ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... feel a sensation when my sensory nerve is touched? Whence comes it that a pressure on the epitrochlear nerve gives me a tingling in the hand? Whence comes it that a blow on the eyeball gives me a fleeting impression of light? One must read the page where M. Bergson struggles against what seems to me the evidence of the facts. "If, for one reason or another," he says, "the excitement no longer passes, it would be strange if the corresponding perception took ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... critical faculty and cold blood, he loved the paint for itself and deemed it very good. The storm was over, the transitory lightnings drowned lesser lights no more, and that steady beacon-flame of his life, which had been merged, not lost, in the fleeting blaze, now shone out again, steadfast and clear. Such a revulsion of feeling argued well for the completion of his picture, ill for the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... his stone there beneath the bole and made his way back to the great ledge. His share of Obe would last yet a day or two. The thought of food was only fleeting, because the anger was still inside him, larger now, demanding now ... ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... hour of intimate excitement, when the burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated, promised; had been ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Baster's love was of his life a thing apart, but his social aspirations were the chief fact of his existence. Besides, there was no haste; he knew that Mrs. Dangerfield was awaiting his avowal with a passionate eagerness; any time would do for that. But he must seize the fleeting hour and bind Sir Maurice to himself by the bond of ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... joy of earth is fleeting, The bliss of heaven remains; More sweet than earthly music The angel's glad refrains; And hearts of saints uprising Find vent in sweetest song, And lips of saints and angels ...
— Hymns from the Greek Office Books - Together with Centos and Suggestions • John Brownlie
... madness for women. He had within him the madness for Bella Donna. But he knew how to wait for what he wanted. He was waiting now. The question that had presented itself to Mrs. Armine again and again during her exile with Nigel was this: "Will he wait too long?" She knew how fleeting is the Indian summer of women. And she knew, though she denied it to herself, that if she brought to Baroudi not an Indian summer as her gift, but a fading autumn, she would run the risk of being confronted by the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... next morning, being Sunday, and, as Mr. Marble expressed it, "the better day, the better deed," the pilot came off, and all hands were called to "up anchor." The cook, cabin-boy, Rupert and I, were entrusted with the duty of "fleeting jig" and breaking down the coils of the cable, the handspikes requiring heavier hands than ours. The anchor was got in without any difficulty, however, when Rupert and I were sent aloft to loose the fore-top-sail. Rupert got into the top via the lubber's hole, I am sorry to say, and the loosing ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... lonely cabins. And Peter was always making pictures of them—Mindel at the wash-tub, Emma Campbell picking a chicken, old Maum' Chloe churning, Liza playing with her fat black baby, Joe Tuttle plowing, old Daddy Neptune Fennick leaning on his ax. Sometimes these sketches caught some fleeting moment of fun, and were so true and so amusing that they were received with shouts of delighted laughter, passed from hand to hand, and ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... brought back my fleeting senses, and I made a convulsive clutch with the other hand at the gunwale; while the next thing I remember is feeling myself helped over the side by the boy, who had climbed in, and lying in the bottom with the sun beating down upon me—sick ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... in Spanish. The man assured me it was by one of the best authors, and quite proper." As he spoke, he placed the little volume in her hand. Her eyes fell as she turned the pages, and a flush rose and died again upon her cheeks, as deep as it was fleeting. "You are angry," he cried ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nobody knew from where, ushered in under Mrs. Hazeldine's wings, with not a decent connection in the world to her name! What did she want—this girl who had only her beauty to depend upon? and everybody knows how fleeting that is! ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... it be a soft one, And undereaten to the fall. Mine amulet ... This last ... upon thine eyelids, to shut in A happier dream. Sleep, sleep, and thou shalt see My grayhounds fleeting like a beam of light, And hear my peregrine and her bells in heaven; And other bells on earth, which yet are ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... listened to anything but 'No,' 'No, dear,' 'Of course you can't,' 'I think you had better not,' and 'Once for all, I forbid it.' She wondered why this should have been so, and why its strangeness had not impressed her before. She had a distant fleeting vision of a household in which parents and children behaved like free and sensible human beings, instead of like the virtuous and the martyrised puppets of a terrible system called 'acting for the best.' And ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... master's seat. There are, likewise, the ruins of the mill; and the mill-stream, which is just as new as ever it was, still goes murmuring and babbling, and passes under two or three old bridges, consisting of a low gray arch overgrown with grass and shrubbery. That stream was the most fleeting and vanishing thing about the ponderous and high-piled abbey; and yet it has outlasted everything else, and might still outlast another such edifice, and be none the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Byron sound to our ear, in whom COLLECTIVELY the same fate of Europe was able to SPEAK, which knew how to SING in Beethoven!—Whatever German music came afterwards, belongs to Romanticism, that is to say, to a movement which, historically considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and more superficial than that great interlude, the transition of Europe from Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the rise of democracy. Weber—but what do WE care nowadays for "Freischutz" and "Oberon"! Or Marschner's "Hans Heiling" and "Vampyre"! Or even Wagner's "Tannhauser"! That is extinct, although ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance"?(23) But no single phrase in the writings can compare for directness with the famous aphorism which has gone into the literature of all lands: "Life is short and Art is long; the Occasion fleeting, Experience ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... them. If you will turn your faces to God, amidst all the flaunting splendours and vain shows and fleeting possessions of this present, His face will dawn on you yonder. We can say but little of what is meant by such a hope as that. But only this we can say, that there will be, as yet unimaginable, new wealths of revelation of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he lay there wondering vaguely at his strange misfortunes. The fever in his blood was running high, and, instead of harboring sober thought, his mind was filled with fleeting fancies. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the dog, even if dumb, which in justice he could scarcely be thought, was thus judged entitled to a consideration never vouchsafed to others, and duly received it, therefore, at all times in this enlightened land. And not only in the fleeting years of his existence, but equally when he lay down under the common hand of death. The dog, in those forgotten days, received embalmment, just as his master and mistress, and was then carried with some solemnity to the burial-ground that was set apart for dogs ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... boat full of negroes, who had come out to catch flying-fish. They had perceived the spar on the water, and hastened to secure the prize. They dragged us all in, gave us water, which appeared like nectar, and restored us to our fleeting senses. They made fast the boom, and towed it in-shore. We had not been ten minutes on our way, when Swinburne pointed to the fin of a large shark above the water. "Look there, Mr Simple." I shuddered, and made no answer; but I thanked God ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... riding-habit which hid nothing of the undulating grace of her active young body. In her hand she carried the riding-quirt and the spurs which she had not had time to leave behind. Her wide, soft gray hat was pushed back so that her face was unhidden. And as she walked by her eyes rested for a fleeting second upon the eyes of ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the motives which induce men to change the place of their abode, these must unavoidably be fleeting and mutable. If not bound to one spot by conjugal or parental ties, or by the nature of that employment to which we are indebted for subsistence, the inducements to change are far more numerous and powerful, than ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... are transitory, but foliage and plant forms are abiding. The common roses have very little value for landscape planting because the foliage and habit of the rose-bush are not attractive, the leaves are inveterately attacked by bugs, and the blossoms are fleeting. Some of the wild roses and the Japanese Rosa rugosa, however, have ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... and swept by a faint sheen. Among children occur the most exquisite samples of the kind designated as the angelic child. The face is finely moulded and beautifully proportioned, features artistically chiselled, eyes blue or brown with long lashes, cheeks transparent with rapid, fleeting variations in coloring, thin lips, and oval chin. In the adult, the chin is receding, and the mouth seems ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... on their starboard one evening when the sun was low; and as the plumes of spray from the incoming waves rose high in the air a rainbow formed itself in the fleeting mist. It was a fairy picture, repeating itself two or three times, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... each fleeting hour of grace And the chiming bells remind me That to earth I must not bind me But Thy life and gifts embrace. And when dawns my final morrow, Let me go to Thee for aye, Let my sin and care and sorrow With my dust ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... said she, turning in elfish mood to brush her lips across the frustrated fingers. "Art is long, if time is fleeting," she sang to the measure of her Non piu mesta, beginning again to shower its diamonds about till all the air seemed bright with her young and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... triumph shot over the Southerner's face, turning it savage for that fleeting instant. He understood now, and was unable to suppress this much answer. But he ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... luncheon-bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries, bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him. The spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which father and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then for a fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their generation, seated in an embrasure arguing. The sound of their voices ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in a fleeting moment of lucidity, Warrington had mentioned Garrick's name in such a way that Dr. Mead had looked it up in the telephone directory and then at the earliest ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... illusions before him; it would be wrong to say that they had never been associated with the charming vivacity of Adele, as well as, at other times, with the sweet graces of Rose Elderkin. But these illusions had been of a character so transitory, so fleeting, that he had come to love their brilliant changes, and to look forward with some dread to the possible permanence of them, or such fixedness as should take away the charming drift of his vagaries. If, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... even at that instant, for a fleeting moment was conscious of the beauty of the country spread beneath him. Almost as far as eye could reach extended an immense, partly pastoral plain, studded with villages, groves, winding streams, cultivated farms, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... back in spirit to the day he left for camp. To the look in her eyes as he moved away on the train. The look had been real then, and not just a fleeting glance helped out by his fevered imagination. There had been true friendliness in her eyes. She had intended to say good-bye to him! She had put him on a level with her own beautiful self. She had ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... fair, Depressing now with fell Despair, The nurse of Guilt, the slave of Pride, That, like a wayward child, Who, to himself a foe, Sees joy alone in what's denied, In what is granted, woe! O thou poor, feeble, fleeting, pow'r, By Vice seduc'd, by Folly woo'd, By Mis'ry, Shame, Remorse, pursu'd; And as thy toilsome steps proceed, Seeming to Youth the fairest flow'r, Proving to Age the rankest weed, A gilded but a bitter pill, Of varied, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... people of Eigg, I requested the teacher to arrange, if possible, for a musical programme. The reply staggered me: "No man, woman, or child in this island would for a moment even dream of singing a worldly song. We are all converted here, except a few benighted Catholics. The vain, fleeting joys of this world are as dross to us. The missionary has a modulator, and he trains the young men and women in the sol-fa so that they may sing Sankey's hymns in all the parts." I was dreadfully floored by this answer, and could only mutter mechanically, "Dross," "Missionary,'" ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Though the Church made the attempt in "Parzival", it could never lay its hands so effectively upon this Celtic material, because it contained too many elements which were root and branch inconsistent with the essential teachings of Christianity. A fleeting comparison of the noble end of Charlemagne's Peers fighting for their God and their King at Ronceval with the futile and dilettante careers of Arthur's knights in joust and hunt, will show better than mere ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes |
