"Transitory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beautifully dressed in black satin; Olive was lost in a mass of tulle; Alice wore a black silk trimmed with passementerie and red ribbons. Behind the Clare mountains the pale transitory colours of the hour faded, and the women, their bodies and their thoughts swayed together by the motion of the vehicle, listened to the irritating barking of the cottage-dog. Surlily a peasant, returning from his work, his frieze coat swung over one shoulder, stepped aside. A bare-legged woman, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... departed breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. It is similar, if not identical, in all temperate climates; a kind of neutral tint, which forms the perpetual background upon which the banquet of today strikes out its keener but more transitory aroma. I don't think it necessary to go into any further particulars, because this atmospheric character has the effect of making the dining-rooms of all boarding-houses seem very much alike; and the accident ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... expressed, as work that is done for support, for daily bread, and work which is done because certain faculties of mind and heart and soul demand expression, development, and scope. We all have powers which are willing to be set in action primarily for self-preservation—for personal, material, and transitory ends. We are also endowed with faculties which react, primarily, in behalf of universal aims, though that may not debar them from also bringing an advantage to ourselves. In proportion as we are talented, magnanimous, and high-minded, we delight in ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... when I ventured to doubt his sincerity. He takes truth more seriously than you do. He regards it not only as beautiful and right to be truthful, he says, but as prudent too; for lies can only procure us a small short-lived advantage, as transitory as the mists of night which vanish as soon as the sun appears, while truth is like the sunlight itself, which as often as it is dimmed by clouds reappears again and again. And, he says, what makes a liar so particularly contemptible ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rolling upon his tongue, with evident satisfaction, that high-sounding title—once the acknowledged appellation of a conqueror, but now claimed as a right by the imperial line alone, and no longer elsewhere bestowed except as an informal and transitory compliment. 'It was a splendid ovation, and well earned by a glorious campaign. There is no one in all the Roman armies who could ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... transitory; it was made of nothing, and it must to nothing: wherefore, if we will do the will of our high Creator, whose will it is that it pass to nothing, we must help to consume it to nothing. Gold is more vile than men: men die in thousands and ten ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... older works come in time to have only an antiquarian interest. Their pages are consulted only by that very limited number of persons who are anxious to learn what has been and view with stolid indifference what actually is. Something of this transitory nature belongs to all sketches of travel. It is the one great reason why so very few of the countless number of such works, written, and sometimes written by men of highest ability, are hardly heard of a few years after publication. Travels form a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... able, active, and zealous partisan of those changes with which the country was at present threatened. The principles of the noble earl were principles by which any man might safely abide; the principles of Mr. Canning fluctuate daily, and depend upon transitory reasons of temporary expediency. These are the conscientious reasons of my resignation." As for the absurd calumny, that he had threatened the king with his resignation unless he was made prime minister, the duke said it hardly deserved an answer. "Could any man believe," ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... applies everywhere!" cried the editor joyously. He added: "But I really think that for the present you can't do better than let Barker alone. He's getting on very well at Mrs. Harmon's, and although the conditions at the St. Albans are more transitory than most sublunary things, Barker appears to be a fixture. Our little system has begun to revolve round him unconsciously; ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... of prayer, to the lifting of the Host, and to the blessing of the priest; and it is their mournful notes which announce to us that one of our generation has been summoned away, and has quitted this transitory abode. Their offices are Christian offices, and therefore are they received into ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... outrage, she (like another Lucretia) will assert the purity of her heart: or, if her piety preserve her from this violence, that wasting grief will soon put a period to her days. And, in either case, will not the remembrance of thy ever-during guilt, and transitory triumph, be a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... church. The desire, the personal desire, to acquire property is a fundamental trait of character more or less strong in every individual. If a society cannot be adjusted to that trait it will fail. We think one can be. We think ours is so, as fairly as the nature of our transitory conditions will allow. We want capital here. That we can make it here in time, there is no doubt, but we must labor long to secure a plus of labor that we can dry and store for future use. Meanwhile we want to build a suitable unitary building, which is almost an absolute necessity; farming ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... aim of this movement, for the establishment of ethical religion, to re-discover to man's wondering eyes the imperishable beauty of a religion allied to no transitory elements, wrapped up in no individual philosophy, bounded by no limitations of time, place or race, but ever the self-same immutable reality, though manifesting itself in most diverse ways, the sense of the infinite in man, and the communion of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... As stated above (Q. 171, A. 2), prophecy is by way, not of an abiding habit, but of a transitory passion; wherefore there is nothing inconsistent if one and the same prophet, at different times, receive various degrees of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... she was three along in February;" and she sighed again, more heavily than before, though there was no earthly reason that I know of why she should sigh, unless, perhaps, the flight of time, thus brought to mind, suggested the transitory nature of human things. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the noble Prioress landed safely in heaven, without even the most transitory visit to purgatory; Mother Sub-Prioress, rolling into purgatory, remained there; while the pale and speckled pea went ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... to straighten his shoulders and to stiffen his chin. He seemed vaguely aware of a military tradition which might make it necessary for him, as a very senior officer indeed, to say something. But the impression was transitory. Instead of using any rigour he held out his hand. Laura took it reverently, and the bones shut up, like the sticks of a fan, in her grasp. "Welcome, comrade!" he said, and there was a pause, as there should ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... transitory days (of earthly existence as contrasted with the heavenly, unending): acc. pl. ln-dagas, 2592; ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... are (though this may to some seem strange) people who consider the Church at least as important as the State, and even more so, inasmuch as its concernments relate to an eternal instead of a transitory order. What are the prospects of the Church? Here the mists are thicker than ever. Is the ideal of the Free Church in the Free State any nearer realization than it was three years ago? All sorts of discordant voices reach me through the layers of cloud. Some cry, "Our one hope for ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... which has passed away and is no more cannot be restored. Now justice and injustice are about certain actions and passions, which are unenduring and transitory. Therefore restitution would not seem to be the act ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... although I remained aloft there in the top for a good half-hour, with my eye glued to the telescope all the while, only once did I detect what had the appearance of something moving on board her; but the sight was so transitory and unsatisfactory that I might easily have been mistaken. However, we had by this time neared her to within some five miles; so, as another hour would decide the question, I determined to possess my soul in patience until then, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... from the marshes at the foot of Parnassus. During my first Cambridge vacation, I assisted a friend in a contribution for a literary society in Devonshire: and in this I remember to have compared Darwin's work to the Russian palace of ice, glittering, cold and transitory. In the same essay too, I assigned sundry reasons, chiefly drawn from a comparison of passages in the Latin poets with the original Greek, from which they were borrowed, for the preference of Collins's odes to those of Gray; and of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... has fallen into that abeyance, awaiting all authors, great or small, at some time or another; but I think that with him, at least in regard to his most important book, it can be only transitory. I have not read the story of his hermitage beside Walden Pond since the year 1858, but I have a fancy that if I should take it up now, I should think it a wiser and truer conception of the world than I thought it then. It is no solution of the problem; men ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... warming faith in the unfailing wisdom of elders. A great need of something to lean on, and a great weariness of independence and responsibility took possession of my soul; and looking round for support and comfort in that transitory mood, the emptiness of the present and the blankness of the future sent me back to the past with all its ghosts. Why should I not go and see the place where I was born, and where I lived so long; the place where I was so magnificently happy, so exquisitely wretched, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... narration with a front worthy of her exalted rank. Then was produced the first capital witness, the ancient damsel who was present at her first marriage. To this witness her Grace was benign, but had a transitory swoon at the mention of her dear Duke's name; and at intervals has been blooded enough to have supplied her execution if necessary. Two babes were likewise proved to have blessed her first nuptials, one of whom, for aught that appears, may exist and ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts,—wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... itself, a buccaneering ship in the harbor, Indians, Spanish sailors, rough matrons, clergy; this will serve, for such was Hawthorne's fine economy, knowing that this story was one in which every materialistic element must be used at its lowest tone. Though the scene lay in this world, it was but transitory scaffolding; the drama was ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... infinite blessings that are attained by it; I know that the path of virtue is very narrow, and the road of vice broad and spacious; I know their ends and goals are different, for the broad and easy road of vice ends in death, and the narrow and toilsome one of virtue in life, and not transitory life, but in that which has no end; I know, as our great ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... where there is no tradition, no discipline, no reverence; where those who know the least make the most noise; where those who stand for public order are alarmed by every chance comer whose power lies in his making a great outcry and respecting nothing. It insures the reign of transitory passion, the triumph of the inferior will. I compare these two educations—one, the exaltation of the environment, the other of the individual; one the absolutism of tradition, the other the tyranny of the new—and I find them equally baneful. But the most disastrous of all is the combination ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... not a usual course of reading for a transitory visitor," said Hammond. "What could ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Is it in the Grave? Alas! all the Loveliness of Person, of Genius, and of Temper, serves but to point and to poison the Arrow, which is drawn out of our own Quiver to wound us. Vain, delusive, transitory Joys! "And such, Oh my Soul," will the Christian say, "such are thine earthly Comforts in every Child, in every Relative, in every Possession of Life; such are the Objects of thy Hopes, and thy Fears, thy Schemes, and thy Labours, where Earth alone is concerned. Let me then, ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men." Verily not; for of what avail are trumpets, compared with the millions of copies of newspapers which daily go forth to tell of Mr. Rockefeller's benefactions? How transitory are they, compared with the graven marble or granite which Mr. Carnegie sets upon the front of each ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... of Thaddeus. "Though yet so young, I have seen thee in all thy phases which might wean me from this earth. But there are still some beings dear to me in the dimmed aspect, that seem to hold my hopes to this transitory and yet too lovely world." He was then thinking of his restored friend Pembroke Somerset, and of her whose name had been so fondly uttered by him, as a possible bond of their still more intimate relationship. He tried to quell ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... observed changes may be due to the existence of a resisting medium. If the changes already suspected should be confirmed by repeated observations with the same instruments, it will be worth while to investigate more carefully whether Saturn's rings are permanent or transitory elements of the solar system, and whether in that part of the heavens we see celestial immutability or terrestrial corruption and generation, and the old order giving place to the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is "fixed" for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... to us in that way, master, to remind us to place our trust in Heaven, not on earth, where all is transitory and uncertain; for if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all, let him remember the days of darkness, for they are many! We are no strangers to the vanity and shadows of human life, master! Pierre's return is like sunshine breaking through ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... earlier process. It is radical, always identical with itself, but transitory. It goes out from ourselves toward other things. It consists in attributing life to everything, in supposing in everything that shows signs of life—and even in inanimate objects—desires, passions, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... do not know each other, and after the moment when they find themselves together, they may never see each other again. To use a metaphor, it is a psychological meteor, of the most unforeseen, ephemeral, and transitory kind. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... my Lords to be advertised that this present Sunday, the 6th September, Edward Lewkner, prisoner, attainted by long sickness, departed this transitory life to God, about the hour of eight of the clock of the night. Who was a willing man in the forenoon of this day to have received the blessed Sacrament, but the priest that did serve in the absence of the . . . * did think ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... passage of the chapter which more obviously tells its own story of occasion and aim. The Writer recurs to the supreme theme of the Epistle, the antithesis between the Lord Jesus, with His finished work and absolute permanence, and the transitory antecedents of the older dispensation. Once more the Hebrews are to remember His eternity, His eternal personal identity, unbeginning and without end (ver. 8); He is "the same, yesterday, and to-day, and unto the ages." Before all types and preparations, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... born and buried without leaving by their coming and going more trace than the swarms of insects which for a moment glide through the rays of the sun—such a one loses the belief in the importance of all transitory phases, and doubts the inner necessity of an eternal continuance for all those ephemeral, ant-like existences which in endless, unchanging repetitions ever rise anew to disappear again." Modern astronomy and geology, by expanding the world beyond all conception, seem, in fact, but ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Francisco Exposition, where, wedded to light, it became the dominant note of the whole architectural concert. Now these great expositions in which the architects and artists are given a free hand, are in the nature of preliminary studies in which these functionaries sketch in transitory form the things they desire to do in more permanent form. They are forecasts of the future, a future which in certain quarters is already beginning to realize itself. It is therefore probable that architectural ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... work does not displease me. We are men of the day, people in love with the passing moment, with all that is fugitive and transitory and the lasting quality of our work preoccupies us little, so little that it can hardly be said to ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... that is my case, I must bear the reproach ... but I am sure it will be as I say. Caesar will fall, either by his enemies or by himself, who is his worst enemy.... I hope I may live to see it, though you and I should be thinking more of the other life than of this transitory one: but so it come, no matter whether I see it or foresee it."—To Atticus, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... example of the true goods which all mortal men desire to obtain, tho they by various ways think to arrive at them. For every man has natural good in himself, because every man desires to obtain the true good; but it is hindered by the transitory goods, because it is more prone thereto. For some men think that it is the best happiness that a man be so rich that he have need of nothing more; and they choose life accordingly. Some men think that this is the highest good, that he be among his fellows the most honorable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... immoral and outward honors for the virtuous antedate history. Decorations, tattoos, songs, for the conspicuously brave and efficient, death or some lesser penalty for the cowardly, the traitorous, the insubordinate, figure largely in primitive life. These honors are capricious, uncertain, and transitory; but they are undoubtedly more stimulating to the savage, who lives in the moment, than they are in the more complex existence of the modern man. And while in general the savage is more callous to punishments, he has to fear much severer penalties than our humane ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... author, "as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole into its separate parts—is seeing the one in many. Definitions were to Plato, what general or abstract ideas were to later metaphysicians. The individual thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper definitions, had no conception of the classification of those definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction of this ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... All things transitory But as symbols are sent; Earth's insufficiency Here grows to Event; The Indescribable, Here it is done: The Woman-Soul ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... which it is possible to suggest. Ah, my friends, after we die, it would not be expedient, even if it were possible, to come back. Many of us would not like to find how very little they miss us. But still, it is the manifest intention of the Creator that strong feelings should be transitory. The sorrowful thing is when they pass and leave absolutely no trace behind them. There should always he some corner kept in the heart for a feeling which once possessed it all. Let us look at the case temperately. Let us face and admit the facts. The healthy body and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... vaster the interests involved in them, they do not affect us with half that wretched sorrow with which we gaze upon the wreck of a human mind. In the former case, that which has passed away has performed its part; on every thing terrestial "transitory," is written, and it is a doom we expect, and are prepared for; but in the latter it is a shrouding of the heavens; it is a conflict betwixt light and darkness, where darkness conquers; it is an obscuration and eclipse of the godlike. We therefore feel no desire to dwell upon this part of our history, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... mercy offer'd to my view From its dark sphere, a radiant avenue: Cheer'd with fresh hope, its limits I forsook, And, wing'd with new-born speed, a fresh direction took. If Heaven prohibit not the blow, my fate Lies in thy hands; my transitory date This hour may close; and thou, e'en thou, mayst be The doom'd assertor of his wrath on me: So let it be! E'en so, thy friendly hate Will snatch its victim from a heavier fate: And when the storms of vengeance, that impend ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... time when men's minds are dominated by a definite religious creed, the poet may hope to achieve success in such an undertaking without departing from his legitimate method. His vision pierces to the world hidden from our senses, and realizes in the transitory present a scene in the slow development of a divine drama. To make us share his vision is to give his justification of Providence. When Milton told the story of the war in heaven and the fall of man, he gave implicitly his theory of the true relations of man to his Creator, but the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... or luxury, or happiness? How many thousands saintly souls have flung aside all that the world could offer sweet and beautiful to embrace this hard, this cruel Cross! And meet they no reward? Hard Cross and cruel to eyes not comprehending, because separate from transitory joys, but yielding balm and incense sweeter and more as most closely pressed to the heart. And woman, first at the sepulchre, first in every good word and work, is it not her glory to suffer for the Cross of Christ? How much has ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Ungulates, we find many strange side-branches which flourished for a time, but are unknown to-day. Machoerodus, usually known as "the sabre-toothed tiger," though not a tiger, was one of the most formidable of these transitory races. Its upper canine teeth (the "sabres") were several inches in length, and it had enormously distensible jaws to make them effective. The great development of such animals, with large numbers of hyaenas, civets, wolves, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... some of the people we meet in real life," said his mother, smiling. "The men who even in the eyes of the world are the best and bravest, are the men who have forgotten themselves and their own transitory interests to live or die for the sake ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... fear, not only of him, but of herself. She had received him under the depressing chaperonage of Mr. Gooch and Mrs. Ivy, and she remembered now how Connie had taken possession of him on both occasions. But even if Connie's transitory affections were temporarily engaged, surely Donald ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... somewhat thoughtful mood that he pursued his way through the woodland paths. Conversation about the burning questions of the day always left him with a feeling akin to depression. He longed for the restoration of the house he loved and served, but knew that a transitory triumph was not a true victory. There was still much to be done before Henry's seat upon the throne could be called secure; and what would be the result of the inevitable ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... wrote to Manning (January 26, 1851), that I did not know before, one in particular. The temporal power of the pope, that great, wonderful, and ancient erection, is gone. The problem has been worked out—the ground is mined—the train is laid—a foreign force, in its nature transitory, alone stays the hand of those who would complete the process by applying the match. This seems, rather than is, a digression. When that event comes, it will bring about a great shifting of parts—much ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... these quiet fields, and gallows and guillotines erected in these squares, which never yet have seen an execution." "But is it not true also," I reflected later, "that this present happiness may be transitory up to a certain point, and that a changing of the captain-general or of the alcalde can cause great evils, and change the aspect of so pleasing a picture? Yes, it is a lamentable truth; and I shall do ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... eastward of Temple Bar—he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred privileges of "The House" more astounded by ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... could have had no bearing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them now, were the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a literary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and eloquently with me about literature and life, his own national characteristics and mine, with such kindly endurance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith I assailed him, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... characteristic feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple English, quite free from the over- ornamented style which might be expected from so young a writer. One of her juvenile effusions is given, as a specimen of the kind of transitory amusement which Jane was continually ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... occurred offers an apposite parallel to what I have now to advance, I shall make a tender of the facts in the way of illustration. The circumstances show the awful uncertainty of things in this transitory life, Captain Ludlow, and forewarn the most vigorous and youthful, that the strong of arm may be cut down, in his pride, like the tender plant of the fields! The banking-house of Van Gelt and Van Stopper, in Amsterdam, had dealt largely in securities issued ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the wisdom which enables us to profit by it, a warning against double-mindedness, Christianity exalts the lowly, riches are transitory, trial brings blessing, trial due to lust is not a trial from God but from self, God is the Source of all our good ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... he loves my soul than its transitory shrine, And did I prize the vase alone, when all it held was mine? Let hallowed dust return to dust, give Nature what she gave, For all that dearest was to me, is victor ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... resolved to sustain the risk of such an offer? Presently, what was my emotion at the sudden and abrupt entrance into the room of an officer of the king's garde du corps! in the self-same uniform as that from which I had parted with such anguish in the morning! A transitory hope glanced like lightning upon my brain, with an idea that the body-guard was all at hand; but as evanescent as bright was the flash! The concentrated and mournful look of the officer assured me nothing genial was awaiting me - and when the next minute we recognized each other, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Queen, a haughty beauty such as should be a Rajput lady; for the name "Rajput" signifies Son of a King, and this lady was assuredly the daughter of Kings and of no lesser persons. And since that beauty is long since ashes (all things being transitory), it is permitted to describe the mellowed ivory of her body, the smooth curves of her hips, and the defiance of her glimmering bosom, half veiled by the long silken tresses of sandal-scented hair which a maiden on either side, bowing toward her, knotted upon her head. But even he who with his ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... our retirement as the end of the world," said Rastignac, modestly; "there are men to come after us, and many of them well able to govern; only, as we expected to give but few more representations in that transitory abode called 'power,' we have not unpacked either our costumes or our scenery. Besides, the coming session, in any case, can only be a business session. The question now is, of course, between the palace, that is, personal influence, and the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... 'transitory world wisdom alone is enduring and permanent. And woe to him who deserts the eternal for things as fleeting as clouds are. His heart will never know peace, and his mind will dance like ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... revise and correct my beliefs one of these days when I have thought a little further.' She suddenly breathed a sigh and added, 'How transitory our best emotions are! In talking of myself I am heartlessly forgetting Charlotte, and becoming happy again. I won't be happy to-night ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... places that I dare not venture into now, as to the resemblance between the human person and the Divine Person, notwithstanding all the differences which of course exist, and which only a presumptuous form of religion has ventured to treat as transitory or insignificant. Let me use a technical word, and say that it is no pantheistic absorption in an impersonal Light, no Nirvana of union with a vague whole, which the Apostle holds out here, but it is the closest possible union, personality being saved and individual ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease excluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of things for which there is neither reward nor punishment. We cling to the painful necessities of shame and blame. We would indict our ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... art for museum purposes. But—broadly—dramatic and didactic art should be universally national, the luster of our streets, the treasure of our palaces, the pleasure of our homes. Much art that is weak, transitory, and rude may thus become helpful to us. But the museum is only for what is eternally right, and well done, according to divine law and human skill. The least things are to be there—and the greatest—but all ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... time of Gregory the Great monasticism [18] was well established in the Christian Church. Its origin must be sought in the need, often felt by spiritually-minded men, of withdrawing from the world —from its temptations and its transitory pleasures—to a life of solitude, prayer, and religious contemplation. Joined to this feeling has been the conviction that the soul may be purified by subduing the desires and passions of the body. Men, influenced by the monastic spirit, sought ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Yet, swift and transitory as they were, these glimpses brought in their train sensations that were too powerful ever to have troubled his child-mind in its present body. They stirred in him the strong emotions, the ecstasies, the terrors, the yearnings of a much more distant past; whispering ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... tempestuous girl! He knew that he had mortally offended her by his rudeness. But it was after, not before, the cruel treatment of his beloved work. Yet, how like a man had been his rapid succumbing to transitory temptation! For it was transitory—of that he was sure. The woman he loved, with a reverent love, was next to him, and if his pulse did not beat as furiously at this moment as earlier in the day, why—all the better. He was through ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... hues of the mountain-ash; while here and there a huge old fir, the native growth of the soil, flung his broad shadow over the rest of the trees, and seemed to exult in the permanence of his dusky livery over the more showy, but transitory brilliance ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Earl Dorset, Lord Buckhurst, 1536-1608: author, or rather originator of "The Mirror for Magistrates," showing by illustrious, unfortunate examples, the vanity and transitory character of human success. Of Sackville and his portion of the Mirror for Magistrates, Craik says they "must be considered as forming the connecting link between the Canterbury Tales and the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... been written and detect therein an occasional note of exacerbation and disharmony which amuses me, knowing, as I do, its transitory nature. Dirty work, touching dirt. One cannot read for three consecutive years of nothing but poison-gas and blood and explosives without engendering a corresponding mood—a mood which expresses ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... have produced. It would have been impossible to make it clear to any child. She herself was helpless before the situation and therefore her only refuge was to make the two think of other things. She had so well done this that Robin had gone home later only remembering the brightly transitory episode as she recalled others as brief and bright, when she had stared at a light and lovely figure standing on the nursery threshold and asking careless questions of Andrews, without coming in ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... height, very massive and large boned, though not fleshy, and apparently of immense muscular power. His Aides were elegant young men, very near, if not quite six feet in height, and in their splendid uniforms all three presented a brilliant appearance. But how transitory and evanescent the gratification of that day and that event!" [the taking of Detroit]. "In a few short weeks—less than two months—on the 13th October, 1812, two of these noble men and gentlemanly officers had ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... form, disgusted with perception, disgusted even with knowledge itself—for thought does not outlive the transitory fact that gives rise to it; and the spirit, like the ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... with fashion du Maurier scores with posterity. Beauty, when it really is recorded, is the one element in any transitory fashion that survives the challenge of time. It is natural for one generation to hate more than anything else in the world the fashions immediately preceding the one affected. Pointed contemporary satire has, from the very shape it must ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... need for this long wait under a transitory form that requires no feeding. The egg is laid by the mother on the surface of the nest, somewhere near a suitable cell, I dare say, but still at a distance from the fostering larva, which is protected by a thick rampart. It is for the new born grub to make its own way to the provisions, not ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... to me abruptly that the old order was gone,—had slipped away during my absence. The church I had known in boyhood had been torn down to make room for a business building on Boyne Street; the edifice in which I sat was expensive, gave forth no distinctive note; seemingly transitory with its hybrid interior, its shiny oak and blue and red organ-pipes, betokening a compromised and weakened faith. Nondescript, likewise, seemed the new minister, Mr. Randlett, as he prayed unctuously in front of the flowers massed on the platform. I vaguely resented ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... conversed now like old acquaintances. One grand impulse seemed to move the multitude—one patriotic feeling beamed from all eyes—one vow burned in all hearts: to be faithful soldiers to their country. It was no mere transitory enthusiasm, soon to disappear, and to be succeeded by a corresponding reaction—it was no momentary ardor kindled by the manifesto issued at Breslau, but the sacred fire of patriotism burning in the heart of the whole people ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the tawdry finery of the poor Spanish singers and dancers, whose weary night's work would enable them to live upon the travellers' bounty for the next week or so. These few hours of gaiety and excitement were to provide the Cruces people with food and clothing for as many days; and while their transitory sun shone, I will do them the justice to say they gathered in their hay busily. In the exciting race for gold, we need not be surprised at the strange groups which line the race-course. All that I wondered at was, that I had not foreseen what I found, or that my rage ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... spiace che il mondo politico ch'e pur tanto passeggero, rubbi il grande Franklin al mondo della natura, che non sa ne cambiare, ne mancare. In English. "I am sorry that the political world, which is so very transitory, should take the great Franklin from the world of nature, which can ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... the second a large public thing. Our minute private thing is: the presence, in the Prussian host, in that war-game of the Argonne, of a certain Man, belonging to the sort called Immortal; who, in days since then, is becoming visible more and more, in that character, as the Transitory more and more vanishes; for from of old it was remarked that when the Gods appear among men, it is seldom in recognisable shape; thus Admetus' neatherds give Apollo a draught of their goatskin whey-bottle (well if they do not give him strokes with their ox-rungs), not dreaming that he is the Sungod! ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is the date of Zimmermann's walk of contemplation,—among the pale Statues and deciduous Gardenings of Sans-Souci Cottage (better than any Rialto, at its best),—the eternal stars coming out overhead, and the transitory candle-light of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... need to explain here in detail the different transitory systems which have been put into practice. We have had occasion to criticise them elsewhere.[248] Now that most of what we objected to has been abolished, what is the use of reviving old controversies? We shall not even mention the points in which the present system ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... these 'clusters' and 'trains'? Mill answers by a theory of 'naming.' Language fulfils two purposes; it is required in order to make our ideas known to others; and in order to fix our own ideas. Ideas are fluctuating, transitory, and 'come into the mind unbidden.' We must catch and make a note of these shifting crowds of impalpable entities. We therefore put marks upon the simple sensations or upon the 'clusters.' We ticket them as a tradesman tickets ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... of the emotional vigour without the characteristic defects of Kipling, and in many cases a charm which was entirely his own. But he very early shook off what there was of that Kipling influence. It was superficial and transitory. Mr. Kipling, as I have said, represented a transition period; and another—an experimental period—has followed. It is probable that Joseph Conrad became a far more potent influence on the imagination of Mr. Masefield than any one ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... of our Church gives a plain and positive answer. For it says that those are not to be heard who pretend that the old Fathers, i.e. Moses and the Prophets, looked only for transitory promises—i.e. for promises which would pass away. No. They looked for eternal promises which could not pass away, because they were according to the eternal laws of God, which stand good both for this world and for all worlds for this life ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... mind is either sad, amusing, or exasperating, according to the mood of the hearer; but, whatever be his mood, he yet knows in his heart that it is a transitory phase, and an almost inevitable result of theoretical knowledge. A few years of personal grip with life and its problems will make short work of that over-confidence, and replace it with a ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... inside which their trousers were pushed, and with their petticoats tucked round their waists, all laughing, gesticulating, and splashing each other as they stood in the water. These thaws, however, were but transitory; the frost returned, harder and more obstinate than ever, and recourse was had to sledges, pushed along by skaters, or drawn by roughshod horses along the causeways, which were like polished mirrors. The Seine, frozen many feet deep, was ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... rivers of Australia have in general a transitory existence, now swollen by the casual shower, and again rapidly subsiding under the general dryness and heat of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... and machines are mistaken, because they judge by immediate and transitory consequences, instead of looking at ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... returned, and composed her features to fitting solemnity. As the lawyer slowly read the instrument, which he could have rattled off from memory, Mrs. Weatherwax punctuated the pious phrases of its exordium with approving wags. "'Frail and transitory,'" she interpolated; "that's jest what life is. I might be took any minute." At the reference to the payment of her lawful debts she recovered her spirits sufficiently to put in that she did not ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... are the hopes, and fond desires Of mortals' transitory race? This day, with harmony of voice and soul, Ye woke the long-extinguished fires Of brothers' love—yon flaming orb Lit with his earliest beams your dear embrace At eve, upon the gory sand Thou liest—a reeking corpse! Stretched by ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... said: 'Fix not thy heart on what is transitory, for the Tigris will continue to flow through Baghdad after the race of Caliphs is extinct!' You make it clear to me that you are of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... its character, the Myth will be seen to be one of the transitory expressions of the religious sentiment, which in enlightened lands it has already outgrown and should lay aside. So far as it relates to events, real or alleged, historic or geologic, it deals with ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... moment on this unfortunate expression of poor Hepzibah's brow. Her scowl,—as the world, or such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it,—her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at herself in a dim looking-glass, and perpetually ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... standpoint which alone could maintain peace was also the German policy observed in further developments. It was upheld when confronted by strong pressure from Russia, as also against other tendencies and a certain transitory ill-feeling in Vienna. ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... Netherlanders were consistent with themselves. They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft, in the divine speciality of a few transitory mortals to direct the world's events and to dictate laws to their fellow-creatures. What they achieved was for the common good of all. They chose to live in an atmosphere of blood and fire for generation ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of it, praying him to take it in gree of me William Caxton, his poor servant, and that it like him to remember my fee, and I shall pray unto Almighty God for his long life and welfare, and after this short and transitory life to come into everlasting joy in heaven, the which he send to him and to me and unto all them that shall read and hear this said book, that for the love and faith of whom all these holy saints hath suffered death ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... cardinal fact never to be forgotten considering its each and every phenomenon and stage is that the experiences of adolescence are extremely transitory and very easily forgotten, so that they are often totally lost to the adult consciousness. Lancaster[11] observes that we are constantly told by adults past thirty that they never had this and that experience, and that ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and shrubberies Nature, however, reserves the evergreen pride of firs and pines; and even flowers are left to gladden the eye of the winter observer; and the rose, that sweet emblem of our fragile and transitory state, will live and prosper during this month. In the forest, the oak, beech, and hornbeam in part retain their leaves; there, too, is the endless variety of mosses, and lichens, and ivy, spreading and clinging round aged trunks, as if to protect them with their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... wife's room, where he heard Lydia's voice, to see if her mother had hit upon some happy inspiration to quiet the girl's exaggerated maidenly shyness. He had the tenderest indulgence to his daughter's confusion, but he was not without a humorous, middle-aged realization of the extremely transitory nature of this phase of youth. He had lived long enough to see so many blushing girls transformed into matter-of-fact matrons that the inevitable end of the business was already present to his mind. He was vastly relieved that Lydia had a mother to understand ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... surprised; 'what kind of books?' I had an idea he could take no interest in anything save grammars and dictionaries. Somehow, in spite of all his acquirements, one didn't associate that transitory creature with books at all. 'Eh?' he said, harshly, 'I don't understand. You understand, I wish for books.' 'Yes, what sort?' I asked again. 'It doesn't matter,' he muttered, calmly, taking the finished article from the lathe and putting it beside the screws, 'all books are the same. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... way. It was perhaps while looking upon the dead that man first conceived the idea of the supernatural, and to have a hope beyond what he saw. Death was the first mystery, and it placed man on the track of other mysteries. It raised his thoughts from the visible to the invisible, from the transitory to the eternal, from the human to ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... rifle-bullet had passed through his heart. Several other men had been killed and wounded on board. Such is one of the chances of war. I returned sadly on board my own ship. In those days such an occurrence had but a very transitory effect. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... transitory stay, made his headquarters nearly on the summit of the rising ground, two hundred and fifty yards east of the Mill, on which had been fought the severe battle between the Whigs, under Colonel Francis Locke, and the Tories, under Lieutenant ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... quietist spirit, which may owe something to India. But Plotinus seems to me nearer to India than were the Gnostics and Manichaeans, because his teaching is not dualistic to the same extent. He finds the world unsatisfying not because it is the creation of the Evil One, but because it is transitory, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... this order. The newspapers were evidently subsidized, for their clamor was half-hearted and hypocritical. Once or twice Warrington felt a sudden longing to take off his coat and get into the fight; but the impulse was transitory. He realized that he loved ease ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... praise the learning and the wit, And though the title seems to show The name and man by whom the book was writ, Yet how shall they be brought to know Whether that very name was he, or you, or I? Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise, And water-colours of these days: These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry Is at a loss for figures to express Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy, And by a faint description makes them less. Then tell us what ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... ethical ideal from the utterances which anticipate an abrupt and immediate end. Jesus spoke indeed the language of His time and race, and often clothed His spiritual purpose in the form of national expectation. But to base His moral maxims on an 'Interim-Ethic' adapted to a transitory world is to 'distort the perspective of His teaching, and to rob it of its unity and insight.' On the contrary, the Ethics of Jesus are everywhere characterised by adaptability, universality, and permanence, and in His attitude to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... but a mirror of the invisible; as Paul says (13th of the 1st Corinthians): 'Here we see in a glass darkly,' and Goethe: 'Everything transitory ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... abdicated on that battle-field where an Austrian victory over the Sardinians sealed the fate of the Italian states allied with him, and his son, Victor Emmanuel, succeeded him. As to what took place ten years later, when the Austrians were finally expelled from Lombardy, and the transitory sovereigns of the duchies and of Naples flitted for good, and the Pope's dominion was reduced to the meager size it kept till 1871, and the Italian states were united under one constitutional ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... Doctrine teacheth men that they may become Buddhas in reciting the Holy Name, and so therefore is it that all other faiths and moralities are but transitory doorways unto the Truth. Man comprehendeth not that Pure Land of Peace unless he holdeth fast the true Doctrine, casting aside ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... transitory, for the dark shadow soon engulfed the distant plain, blurring the fair scene even while we looked upon it. The change was something marvellous, so sudden and so complete. Up to this time the air had been still, and very ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... if the days of our old age are more numerous than those of our youth, of them must we think. From those who brought me up I learned to properly estimate this life, and I know that everything therein is transitory, except the security of the natural affections. Thus I wish for the esteem of everyone, and above all that of my husband, who is all the world to me. Therefore do I desire to appear honest in his sight. I have finished, and I entreat you to allow me unmolested to attend ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac |
