"Flytting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... added the product of her imagination. Lords and ladies rode through the sea-weed, and Joan of Arc stood surrounded by palms. She had almost forgotten her woes in their icy beauty, and had quite forgotten the task her aunt had set, when Annie came flitting into the room. Annie's step was lighter than ever and her eyes were radiant. "Come down to breakfast, Lizzie," she whispered. "We're nearly through, and I've saved some toast for you. Aunt said if you said the verses before school-time it ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... its dear shade whose like we ne'er again shall know. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A lovely and rare bird within the wood, Whose crest with gold, whose wings with purple gleam'd, Alone, but proudly soaring, next I view'd, Of heavenly and immortal birth which seem'd, Flitting now here, now there, until it stood Where buried fount and broken laurel lay, And sadly seeing there The fallen trunk, the boughs all stripp'd and bare, The channel dried—for all things to decay So tend-it turn'd away As if in angry ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... but for the portress, who sat knitting in the shadow of the gateway, and for the occasional apparition of some ancient nun, showing her face, yellow and shrivelled as parchment, at a casement, or flitting with bowed head, and hands lost in the wide sleeves of her robe, across the spacious and solitary court. The red moss mantled the old walls, the bright green creepers dangled from their summits, the gardens and vineyard covering the slope ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... doing there. They seldom saw an enemy. They heard his songs and they were stricken by his missiles, but seldom saw more than, perhaps, a swiftly moving cap at a gap in the broken parapet, or a grey figure flitting from the light of a starshell. Aeroplanes brought back photographs of those unseen lines. Sometimes, in raids in the night, our men visited them and brought back prisoners; but they remained ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passes from life to his rest in ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Apia was a shock to me; every second person the ghost of himself, and the place reeking with infection. But I have not got the thing yet, and hope to escape. This shows how much stronger I am; think of me flitting through a town of influenza patients seemingly unscathed. We are all on ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of him flashed on her sense before recognition, the nothingness she always found gave way to a feeling as of something real, that almost might have been the right thing. As for him, though he saw her flitting figure, she did not for the twinkling of an eye pass for the ghost he had come to look for. He roused himself up in an instant. "Whew!" was his inward thought, "she is alone; what could be so lucky! I'll do the business at once, and ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... courage high, tho' strength was well-nigh spent; Grim spectres of pursuit the wearied brain perplexing, Fear-fraught, but ever met with spirit dedolent. The landscape reeled, there came a sense of slumber, And myriad shadows rose and wanned and waned, And flitting figures, visions without number, Took shape above the land till sight was pained, And floated round me till at last the longed-for ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Flitting fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can; She'll not tell me if she love me, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... name of Cranch was one that both he and I would not have smudged with the owner's misdeeds and folly. You may say that it was strange that pictures of love—the love which came and went like the shadow of a flying bird, flitting across a wall—should have still been locked up in an old woman's heart. But they were there to be called back, as they are now, with all their colors as clear and bright as the pictures of Julianna's future that the Judge used to see pass before ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... have been seen flitting about at the Manor-house, and early in the morning bugles sounded to horse. A huge procession, consisting of the Countess herself, and all her sons and daughters then at Sheffield, little Lady Arbell, and the whole of their ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was flitting before us in the acquisitive class, in the subdivisions of hunting, contests, merchandize, ...
— Sophist • Plato
... spear-makers and sword-cutlers. And Epameinondas and Gorgidas, with their party, came to help them, armed; for they had collected together no small number of the younger men and the strongest of the elder ones. By this time the whole city was roused, and there was great confusion, lights flitting about, and people running to one another's houses, but the people had not yet assembled, but being alarmed at what had happened, and knowing nothing for certain, they waited for daylight. And here the generals of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... Sainte Marie, popularly called the Soo, to witness our landing; men of all ages and complexions, in hats and caps of every form and fashion, with beards of every length and color, among which I discovered two or three pairs of mustaches. It was a party of copper-mine speculators, just flitting from Copper Harbor and Eagle River, mixed with a few Indian and half-breed inhabitants of the place. Among them I saw a face or two quite ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Chisholm, who excused herself from accompanying them, they set out an hour later. The day was bright, with glaring sunshine, and a moderate breeze drove up wisps of ragged cloud that dappled the hills with flitting shadow. Towering crag and shingly scree showed blue and purple through it and then flashed again into brilliancy, while the long, grassy slopes gleamed with silvery gray ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... partook of excitement. In ten minutes he went his way, drawing her musing eyes after him. Until he had reached his own door and turned it at the Casa Blanca the two girls on Struve's veranda were silent. Florrie's thoughts were flitting hither and yon, bright-winged, inconsequential, fluttering about Jim Galloway, deserting him for Roderick Norton, darting off to Elmer Page, coming home to Florrie herself. As for Virginia, conscious of a sort of dread, she was oppressed with the stubbornly insistent thought ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... world. Lord Pitsligo had made up his mind not to go abroad again, but to live or die among his own people. At one time he lay for days hidden in a damp hole under a little bridge, and at other times concealed himself in the mosses and moors. Here the lapwings, flitting and crying above him, were like to have drawn the English soldiers to his retreat. His wife gave him two great bags, like those which beggars carried; in these he would place the alms which were given to him, and in this disguise ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... beside; But dark are the days of winter-tide. Dark are the days, and the nights are long, And sweet and fair was Snbiorn's song. Many a time he talked with her, Till they deemed the summer-tide was there. And they forgat the wind-swept ways And angry fords of the flitting-days. While the north wind swept the hillside there They forgat the other Whitewater. While nights at Deildar-Tongue were long, They clean forgat the Brothers'-Tongue. But whatso falleth 'twixt Hell and Home, So many times over comes summer again, Full surely again shall summer ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... latter is but 7-1/2. Again, the red of the former is scarlet and that of the latter crimson rather than scarlet. These distinctions are sufficiently apparent when two species are seen side by side, but are scarcely sufficient to enable the ordinary observer to determine the species of a flock seen flitting about amid the foliage. This, however, need not disturb us. Most people are quite satisfied to know that these exquisite little ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... Of the down-stream flitting through the small hours of the warm midsummer night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page. As I recall it, no spoken word of Jennifer's or mine came in to break the rhythm of the hasting voyage. Our paddles rose and fell, dipping and sweeping in unison as if we ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... efforts to grasp it; it was too evanescent, or I was too dull. Sometimes I imagined that the meaning was at the threshold of comprehension, but yet it evaded me, like forgotten words whose general sense dimly irradiates the mind, while they refuse to take a definite shape, and keep flitting just beyond the reach of memory. Still, charity and good will shone out so plainly that anybody could read them, and I do not know how to express the feeling that came over me at this evidence of friendliness exhibited by an inhabitant of a world ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... after the lights went out, strange, flitting figures slipped through the halls and down-stairs into the front room, where the giant hemlock stood. And the very last one of all was clad in a bath robe and wore ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... his mother, with an expression akin to disgust flitting across her pale face. "How can you use that word after what has happened, and especially now that you are working among those vulgar factory people, and living with that profane old creature who goes by the name of 'Jerry Growler.' To think that you, who bear your father's ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... and nurses, I believe, but it all seemed confusion to me now; but poor, broken hearted Nannie I remember. She stood at a distance. Not a sound was uttered, and I took up my watch with the others, to watch that precious life ebbing away. The soft flitting backward and forward of nurses, a word now and then from the great man who held not only the life of Sara in his hands, but, it seemed to me, the life of my beautiful Diana, only broke the intense silence. The night came on and we ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... evening and night become the favourite hours for walking. As we returned through Boa Vista we passed many groups enjoying like ourselves the pleasant air, and gazing idly on the reflections of the white houses and waving trees in the water; while the fire flies flitting from bush to bush, seemed like fragments of stars come down to ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... some one observed, that the Finanzrathin and Mozart had put me quite in a blaze. I smiled with downcast eyes, very stupidly. I could but acknowledge it. And now all talents, which hitherto had bloomed unseen, were in motion, wildly flitting to and fro. They were bent upon a surfeit of music; tuttis, finales, choruses must be performed. The Canonicus Kratzer sings, you know, a heavenly bass, as was observed by the gentleman yonder, with the head ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the interpreter was kept hard at work, and Bahi divided her attention between the officers and the men, flitting in and out of the hall, and chattering away to the sailors and marines who were breakfasting outside on the stores they had brought up, supplemented by a bountiful supply of fruit, which grew in abundance round the village. It was not long before a meal was served to the officers, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... wore on, an extreme nervousness came over all at Harmony, a feeling of tense anxiety which no words can describe, and was betrayed in a restless flitting through the house, arranging something here, peering through the blinds at the camp ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... the ceiling with the air of a mysterious vellum. The gilded Buddha smiles eternally at the night-lamps burning before him; some great moth, a constant frequenter of the house, which during the day sleeps clinging to our ceiling, flutters at this hour under the very nose of the god, turning and flitting round the thin, quivering flames. And, motionless on the wall, its feelers spread out star-like, sleeps some great garden spider, which one must not kill because it is night. "Hou!" says Chrysantheme, indignantly, pointing it out to me with levelled finger. Quick! where is the fan kept for ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... of the Luxembourg were still open, Rodolphe passed into them to shorten his road. Amidst the deserted paths he often saw flitting before him, as though disturbed by his footsteps, couples mysteriously interlaced, and seeking, as a poet has remarked, the two-fold luxury ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... the shrines of the gods, nor the deities themselves, send down from the heavens those dreams which mock our minds with those flitting shadows,—we cause ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... oppressive. Sometimes a faint rustling whisper, the echo of some sound in the citadel above, passed among the columns; and the plaintive squeak of a bat was heard now and then, for numbers of these creatures were flitting noiselessly in the darkness, their forms visible for an instant as they passed and repassed between Malchus and the light. He wondered vaguely what they could find to eat here, and then remembered that he had heard that at nightfall numbers of bats could be seen ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... flock of snow-birds came flitting through the air. As was very natural, they avoided Violet and Peony. But,—and this looked strange,—they flew at once to the white-robed child, fluttered eagerly about her head, alighted on her shoulders, and seemed to claim her ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gallant Martians, when they saw the princess saved, came swiftly down upon us. Over the lapping of the water in my ears I heard their sigh—like cries of admiration and surprise, the rattle of spray on the canoe sides mingled with the splash of oars, the flitting shadows of their prows were all about us, and in less time than it takes to write we were hauled aboard, revived, and taken to Hath's barge. Again the prince's lips were on my fingertips; again the flutes and music struck up; and as I squeezed the water out of my hair, and tried to keep ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... who poked his nose into everything. This was why the news of the fresh "miracle" performed by Father Zossima reduced him to extreme perplexity. Alyosha remembered afterwards how their inquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been continually flitting to and fro from one group to another, listening and asking questions among the monks that were crowding within and without the elder's cell. But he did not pay much attention to him at the time, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... grass, the stems of bending wild flowers, the drooping sprays of woodland foliage, were so many forms of emerald velvet; the gnarled trunks of the trees were gray and brown velvet; the wings and breasts of the birds, flitting hither and thither, were of gold and scarlet velvet; the butterflies were stemless, floating velvet blossoms."Farewell, Kentucky! farewell!" he said, looking about him at it all. Two hours passed. The shadows ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... the chamber beside this little garden. The first night was full of frightful terrors. The garden was dark and sinister. "There was a slight rustling noise overhead; a bat suddenly emerged from a broken panel of the ceiling, flitting about the room and athwart my solitary lamp; and as the fateful bird almost flouted my face with his noiseless wing, the grotesque faces carved in high relief in the cedar ceiling, whence he had emerged, seemed to ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... resuming, not yet through with his tributes. His eye flitting over the shouting crowd had fallen upon ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... should not be forgotten. Donning an old suit of clothes, you can roam where you will, threading your way through brier and bush, wading the bog or the shallow stream, dropping upon your knees, even flinging yourself upon the ground, to spy upon a wary bird flitting about in the copse. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... open door she could see the ever restless sea, and hear its endless murmuring monotone, and imagination seizing the ill-omened legends she had heard recounted concerning this spot, peopled the corners of the hall with phantoms, and every flitting shadow on the lawn became ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... that meant something beyond a mere act of prudence well done. Then she went down to the library and began an eager search for a certain book. She found it at length, the "David Copperfield" in the "Charles Dickens" edition of the great novelist's works. For the next hour or so she was flitting over the pages with the cipher telegram spread out before her. A little later and the few jumbled, meaningless words were coded out into a lengthy message. Christabel read them over a few times, then with the aid of a vesta she reduced the whole thing, telegram and all, to tinder, which she carefully ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... evidently wasting away—like a candle burnt down to the socket, flitting and flaring alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe— I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Thom. Walsi. Hypod. pag. 161.] In this yeare Roger of Walden departed this life; who hauing bene tossed vp and downe with sundrie changes of fortune, tried in a short time how inconstant, vncerteine variable, wandering, vnstable, and flitting she is; which when she is thought firmelie to stand, she slipperinglie falleth; and with a dissembling looke counterfaiteth false ioies. [Sidenote: Roger of waldens variable fortune.] For by the meanes of hir changeablenesse, ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... beads were scattered all over the floor, the green kerchief slipped off, and Lyubka was transformed into a red cloud flitting by and flashing black eyes, and it seemed as though in another second Merik's arms and legs ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of light on our fate. We would have given the hair off our heads for half a dozen words with one of the waiters in Sol. Lowe's hotel. Such waiters were in the way of hearing, at the table, the probable course of things. We could see them flitting about in their white jackets in front of this hotel, but could speak to none ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... at sound of the terrific visitor,—the resistless chariot of civilization with scythed axles mowing down ignorance and prejudice as it whirls along,—tells a whole story of change and wonder. We can almost see the shadows of the past escaping into the dim woods, or flitting over the boundless prairie, shivering at the fearful whistle, and seeking shelter from the wind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light and the telephone will be in working order before very long—and it ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... the Staff secretaries. They are a part of the H.Q.—Headquarters—that is to say, a sort of General's suite. When they're flitting, they lug about their chests of records, their tables, their registers, and all the dirty oddments they need for their writing. Tiens! see that, there; it's a typewriter those two are carrying, the old ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... quiet sunset hours, when the glowing tints of the sky seemed to clothe the landscape in an unearthly glory, and then gradually each bright hue would fade out from the sky and from the land below, leaving the scene to the solemn repose of the shadowy evening, broken only by the flitting fireflies, or to the flood of silver light shed by the rising moon. But Amy was never to be allowed to be out in the night air, so that their rambles had to be over before the damp night dews. They generally found Mrs. Browne standing at the ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... wreck her love was to wreck her life. She had passed through all her life thus far without seriously noticing any young man, thus giving some the impression that she was incapable of love, being so intellectual. Others who read her better knew that she despised the butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, and was preserving her heart to give it whole into the keeping of ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... a sweet whistle, at first low, rising and falling, and then gradually becoming more distinct. It came nearer and nearer till it seemed to fill the air all about, and then, looking upward, they saw dark forms flitting between them and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... with decreasing elegance below the waist—his cloth-topped shoes but little more than distressing memories—and announced that he was now an able operator of this wondrous machine; and the harried editor of the Advance, stung to enterprise by flitting wastrels who tarried at his case only long enough to learn the name of the next town, had sought relief in machinery, even if it did take bread from the mouths of honest typesetters. Their lack of preference as to where they earned there bread, their insouciant flights from town ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... and he caught it and ran to a tall bureau opposite and unlocked it. After humming and flitting about in front of it for a little time, he pulled a thing like a slate off a shelf where there were ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... which becomes its home, and perishing in the stern solitude the other loves. Yet, too fond and faithful to regret the safer nest among the grass, the gentler mate it might have had, the summer life and winter flitting to the south for which ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... Something, a flitting shadow, had rounded one vat and was that much closer to the industrious fiddler on the floor. By some weird magic of its own the Hoobat was ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... so much as a "good night," he limped down the steps and along the street, flitting in and out of the lamplight like a ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... the flame of her eloquence, flared into enthusiasm, and they fell to discussing which town or castle should be the chosen spot for their new court. Urach, Tuebingen, Wildbad, all were reviewed. They spoke no longer of whether the great flitting should take place; it was now merely a question of where and how it should be accomplished. From which it may be seen that Wilhelmine, as usual, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... was as if they were passing. The conviction of one's own transit is difficult to achieve. Harry gazed out of the window, and it was to him as if the familiar trees which bordered the sidewalk, the shrubs in the yard, the houses which were within view, were flitting past him in a mad whirl. He was glad when Maria entered with the chocolate, in his own particular cup, and a dainty plate ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... myself at last from the drifts in the ravine, I began to climb the opposite side of the hill, though I had not the least idea in which direction I ought to go. As I made my way upwards, I saw just in front of me what looked like a small shadow flitting about, for owing to the white ground it was never completely dark. I was much surprised at this, especially as when I came close to it, it disappeared into the snow, with the exception of one round dark spot, which remained motionless. I put my hand down upon this dark object to ascertain ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... thought; then said, "I cannot tell just what Laura will do; she certainly must have some affection for our child, but not enough, I fear, to make her willing to resign any pleasure for her sake. I think she will not care for a settled home when I am gone, but will spend her time in flitting about from one fashionable resort to another; and in that case Evelyn would be only a burden and care to her: one she will probably be glad to get rid of. I see plainly that it could be for neither your happiness nor Laura's to attempt to ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... Mrs. Johnson descended into our kitchen, she conjured from the malicious disorder in which it had been left by the flitting Irish kobold a dinner that revealed the inspirations of genius, and was quite different from a dinner of mere routine and laborious talent. Something original and authentic mingled with the accustomed flavors; and, though vague ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... on the village green, the flaunting banners and wreaths of flowers hung in rich profusion over the cross-roads—with such scenes as these flitting through my memory, I could well understand that there is an absolute physical servitude to which men can be reduced, that, in the progress of generations, must crush down the human soul, and make life indeed a dreary struggle. In the splendor of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... been left behind. And the captain had every scrap of that paper stripped from the walls, and the latter re-covered with quaint, ugly, old-fashioned patterns, stripes and roses and flowered sprays with impossible birds flitting among them. The Bassett decorators has pasted the gilt improvement over the old Whittaker paper, and it was the Whittaker paper that the captain did his best to match, sending samples here, there, and everywhere in the effort. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Bell went to Lassens Peak last week. It is 10,600 feet high. There is no snow on the mountain now except a small patch on top. Hundreds of small butterflies were flitting about on the mountain-side and alighting on the rocks. As there is no vegetation, except a few hardy plants scattered among the ledges, I wonder what they find to live on. A lake which could be seen from the top of the peak had the appearance ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... disillusion, the bitterness of satiety, the deep slumber which comes with the morning. Athenians visiting the Macedonian capital would hear, and from time to time actually see, something of a religious custom, in which the habit of an earlier world might seem to survive. As they saw the lights flitting over the mountains, [58] and heard the wild, sharp cries of the women, there was presented, as a singular fact in the more prosaic actual life of a later time, an enthusiasm otherwise relegated to the wonderland of a distant past, in which a supposed ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... melody—which certainly never came to what could rightly be called an ending here on earth; and having also a sympathy with the cheerful genius of Dr. Martin Luther, with his good tunes, and that ringing laughter which sent dull goblins flitting. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... had long been a stranger to her. Never, since her mother's death, since she had fully realized the bearings of her own reprehensible act, had she known the joy of a light heart. Some such ideas were flitting through her mind as she was diligently copying Mrs. Needham's lucubrations one afternoon, when the parlor maid opened the door and said, as she handed her a card, "The lady is in ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... lift the mind, and to lift it to God. The mind is not lifted, if the man lives not an intellectual life, but the life of a swine wallowing in sensual indulgences; or a frivolous life, taking the outside of things as they strike the senses, and flitting from image to image thoughtlessly; or a quarrelsome life, where reason is swallowed up in anger and hatred. Again, however sublime the speculation and however active the intellect, if God is not constantly ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... finish the sentence, whatever rash notion was flitting through his active mind. Possibly he had indulged in a wild dream that for one of his climbing abilities it might prove feasible to reach a window above, and by thrusting his head through the aperture see something of the wonderful things going on in the passages ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... stopped as if with a bullet, then set off for home with the speed of a swallow, and going as smoothly and silently. I never had dreamed of such delicate motion, fluent, and graceful, and ambient, soft as the breeze flitting over the flowers, but swift ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... place, restless, pleased, a little guilty, but full of life. Two waiters, serious, silent, accustomed to seeing and forgetting everything, to entering the room only when it was necessary and to leaving it when they felt they were intruding, were silently flitting hither ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a glance upon him, then, as he passed, in a vain attempt to read the sombre expression of his inscrutable face grown five years older in the last five days, I shuffled after the girl now flitting before me down Broome Street. As I did so, I noticed her dress to its minutest details, somewhat surprised to find how ragged and uncouth it was. That Mr. Blake should stop a girl wherever seen, clad in a black alpaca frock, a striped shawl and a Bowery hat trimmed with feathers, I could ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... west; till the lonely sound of a sheep-bell, or the distant bark of a watch-dog, were all that broke on the stillness of the evening. Then, the gloom of the woods; the trembling of their leaves, at intervals, in the breeze; the bat, flitting on the twilight; the cottage-lights, now seen, and now lost—were circumstances that awakened her mind into effort, and led to enthusiasm ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... conscience drugg'd and deceived; Conscience which all that his self-belief whisper'd as duty believed. And though he sought earnest for God, in life-long wrestle and prayer, Yet the sky by a veil was darken'd, a phantom flitting in air; For a cloud from that seething cavernous heart fumed out in his youth, And whatever he will'd in the strength of the soul was imaged as truth:— Grew with his growth: And now 'tis Ambition, disguised in success; And he walks with ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... took down the leather harness that had adorned its armoury walls for many a year and spent an anxious day fitting it together, Begbie Lyte and the other officers who had volunteered for the front flitting from one group of ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... transmission to posterity. This want has now been supplied: an artist has been found who unites in himself all desirable qualities. The beauty can now feel assured that she will be depicted with all the grace of her charms, airy, fascinating, butterfly-like, flitting among the flowers of spring. The stately father of a family can see himself surrounded by his family. Merchant, warrior, citizen, statesman—hasten one and all, wherever you may be. The artist's magnificent establishment (Nevsky Prospect, such and such a number) is hung with portraits ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... was smouldering with excitement. The diners looked about them as they talked, some talked loudly and seemed to be expressing sentiments. Newspaper vendors appeared at the intersection of the arcades, uttering ambiguous cries, and did a brisk business of flitting white sheets among the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... dead-and-gone resident of Owl Hoot, and a few shrubs had sprung up as though to further indicate these obscure monuments. But it was not these things which had filled the spectators with such horror. It was the crowd of silent flitting figures that seemed to come from out of one of the stone-marked graves, and pass, in regular procession, in amongst the ruins of the log-hut, and there disappear. To the girls' distorted fancy they seemed ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... down and told them all about it—his moonlight flitting and his adventures in Montrose. Miss Salome exclaimed with horror over the fact of his sleeping in a pile of lumber for seven nights, but Clemantiny listened in silence, never taking her eyes from the boy's pale face. When Chester ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... clearly understand what were the duties of a cash-boy, though he supposed they must have something to do with receiving money. Looking in through the glass door he saw boys as small as himself flitting about, and this gave him courage to enter and make an application ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... black bird with yellow wings, usually met with along the brook flitting from stone to stone, diverted his thoughts from Jerusalem and set him wondering what instinct had brought the bird up from the brook on to a dry hill-top. The bird must have sensed the coming rain, he said, and he came up here to escape the torrent. On looking round the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... there was terror and confusion in Belgrave House. Nea, flitting like a humming-bird from flower to flower, was suddenly startled by the sound of heavy jolting footsteps on the stairs, and, coming out on the corridor, she saw strange men carrying the insensible figure of her father to his room. She uttered a ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... between them, they forgot everything but happiness. Swallows, on the first day of summer, in their discovery of the bland air, can neither remember that cold winds blow, nor imagine the death of sunlight on their feathers, and, flitting hour after hour over the golden fields, seem no longer birds, but just the breathing of a new season—swallows were no more forgetful of misfortune than were those two. His gaze was as still as her very self; her look at him had in at the quietude ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... quick the days are flitting! I mind me of a time that's gone, When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting, In this same place—but not alone. A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me. —There's no one now to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... three-bodied Shade. Then smitten by a sudden fear AEneas caught his blade, 290 And turned the naked point and edge against their drawing nigh; And but for her wise word that these were thin lives flitting by All bodiless, and wrapped about in hollow shape and vain, With idle sword had he set on to ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... director who is born to command fickle or imperious singers and musicians. He was naturally an actor. His refreshing mimicries amused Gard. Against the bovine background of the Villa Elsa circle, he stood out in relief as an enlivening figure with flitting ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... have to consider the position of this country with regard to the possibility of our gold flitting in the event of very great credits being established in this country. The position of the three great allied countries as to gold is exceptionally strong. Russia and France have accumulated great ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... feed a family for thirty years than to make a holiday feast for our neighbors once or twice in our lives. You talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed woman, who dies unsung and unremembered, has given out more of the real vital heat that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting through her humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a dozen theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, in the brains of so many men of genius. It is in latent caloric, if I may borrow a philosophical expression, that many of the noblest hearts give out the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... frocks, jackets, pocket-handkerchiefs, and other commonplace handicraft, is embroidering with green silk upon warm brown cloth the thready stems and frail diminishing fronds of a group of fern-leaves,—who alone among assured matrons and faded spinsters is visited by "a flitting blush, delicate and transient as the shadow of a rose tossed upon marble,"—and who matches the "glorious lay" of the hero, that "thrilled and shook her with its despairing solemnity," with an Alpine song, that, pure and sweet, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Once Bell had dined there with her uncle, the squire, and once Lily had gone over with her uncle Orlando. Even this had been long ago, before they were quite brought out, and they had regarded the occasion with the solemn awe of children. Now, at this time of their flitting into some small mean dwelling at Guestwick, they had previously settled among themselves that that affair of calling at the Manor might be allowed to drop. Mrs Eames never called, and they were descending to the level of Mrs Eames. "Perhaps we shall get game sent to us, and that will be ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... restless ocean, she realized that it would not be many days before it would break its bonds. The ice would then float away to points unknown. Little gasoline schooners would go flitting here and there like sea-gulls, and then would come the hoarse voice of the Corwin, mail steamer for Arctic. She would take that steamer to Nome. Would the boy be back by then, or would she carry the mysterious ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... Nasamonia's land, Fell too beside him: rich was he in fields; In wide extent no lands with his could vie; Nor equal his in hoarded heaps of grain. Obliquely in his groin, the missive spear Stuck deep,—a mortal spot: his Bactrian foe His rolling eyes beheld, and dying breath In sobs convulsive flitting, and exclaim'd;— "This spot thou pressest, now of all thy lands, "Possess,"—and turning left the lifeless corse. Avenging Perseus hurls at him the spear, Torn from the smoking wound; the point, receiv'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... she persisted in marrying a poor man, when a good half million awaited her acceptance, she did it at her own peril, not a penny of his should go to eke out the scanty living of a poor clerk. The end of it all was a quiet wedding one morning in her uncle's parlour, and a hasty flitting away of the young couple—away from ominous looks and cold politeness, out into their own bright world, where no dark shadows in the shape of grim mercenary uncles should ever ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... same instant the alcohol shot up its last flickering flame—as the spirit itself was consumed; and in the reddish light of the torches Don Cornelio could perceive the men flitting about like shadows, or rather like demons assisting in the horrible drama that ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Nothing could be more peaceful, fairer to see, than the routine of its days, with the simple pleasures, light tasks, and easy diligence of all. Summer and winter were alike sunny, and had each its own joys. There was not an antagonistic or jarring element; and, flitting back and forth, from veranda to veranda, garden to garden, room to room, equally at home and equally welcome everywhere, there went perpetually, running, frisking, laughing, rejoicing, the little child that had so strangely drifted into this happy shelter,—the little Ramona. As unconscious ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... all-inclusive thing in this universe seems to be inert matter with the energy it holds; while the slight, flitting, casual thing seems to be living matter. The inorganic is from all eternity to all eternity; it is distributed throughout all space and endures through all time, while the organic is, in comparison, only ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... never met a human creature; the streets were already deserted. He only saw a dark shadow flitting on before him, vanishing in the darkness now and then, and at last slipping round the corner. He followed, and found all the doors open; some helping hand had opened the wicket, the house-door, and even the closet in the wall. He could enter without any noise; ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... from his chair, with outstretched neck and attentive eye, was still listening, when Rose-Pompon, flitting like a bee from flower to flower of her repertoire, had already begun the delightful air of Colibri. Hearing no more, the Jesuit reseated himself, in a sort of stupor; but, after some minutes' reflection, his countenance again brightened up, and he seemed to see a lucky ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... white pine boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... witnessed it. His senses, refined and rendered acute by long vigils and slender diet, seemed to detect audible words in the voice of the storm. Looking out through the gloom his sight seemed to discern shapes flitting by like lightning, as though the fabled spirits of the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... taste. One other quality, however, which is intimately connected with the useful, has to be noticed. The substance should not be hard and unyielding. Witness, ye reminiscences—ye painful images of bygone headachs, even yet flitting through our brain like Titanic thunderbolts!—accursed be the memory of that fellow Tightfit in Old Bond Street, who used to screw his hats on our cranium when we were young, and ere London had awakened us! As you value your comfort, dear reader, never purchase a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... a riddle he could not solve—one that was best left alone. They had agreed to walk back the ten miles to Coniston, to save the money that dinner at the hotel would cost. And so they started, Cynthia flitting hither and thither along the roadside, picking the stately purple iris flowers in the marshy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... need not have been so; that it was not necessary that youth and beauty, even the sexual act itself if led up to by love, should be a subject of giggling and sniggering. I always left the beach and its flitting summer dresses ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... see the name of W. C. Clapp; and there are a pair of boots resting on the window-sill of an adjoining office, which probably belong to the person of the lawyer, himself. Now, we may observe Mrs. Hilson and Miss Emmeline Hubbard flitting across the street, "fascinating and aristocratic" ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... little gray Doctor June, flitting about as quietly as a moth, and all those of whom Delia More had asked me: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, wearing her cloak wine broadcloth side out to honour the occasion; Abigail Arnold, with a huge basket of gingerbread and jumbles from her ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... not sleep. Suddenly she was lifted from her thoughts by strange sounds that came to her from the hall without. She opened the door cautiously. A white figure was flitting up and down, wringing its hands, the gray hair bobbing about ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... deserted save for the still raging unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock in trade of a sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters and shoving bolts, and the only visible humanity is an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... When he started flitting from Bud to Debutante to Ingenue to Fawn to Broiler to Kiddykadee back in 1880, he was a famous Beau with skin- tight Trousers, a white Puff Tie run through a Gold Ring and a Hat lined with Puff Satin, the same ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... direct. No, decidedly he was not discomfited—not ill at ease at all! Apparently he found it much easier to look at her than at any of the points of interest in the landscape toward which her glances persisted in flitting. While he marveled, without any manifestations of sorrow whatever, at the curve of her throat and the satin texture of that cheek turned toward him, he told her drawlingly all there was to tell of the night before. And after a time Barbara forgot ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... wind by forests deep, Where soft the welcome shadows creep. Down the valley, up the hill, And then beside the rippling rill. The welcome flowers line the way, Throughout the livelong summer day, The birds are flitting ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... now," thought the boy, and he hoped that he was having better fortune, and he glanced cautiously in the direction where he must be, but all was still; butterflies were flitting about, birds darted by, and the old goat, the only one of the herd now ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... requires study, repetition, concentration, meditation, qualities absent from the art of reading as it prevails today. If we ever have time to look at a book, the habit of skimming with inattentive rapidity so urges us onward that we find ourselves flitting from page to page, from chapter to chapter, panting and uninstructed. And if we belong to the bookless majority who have no time to read, we rush to the moving picture theatre to get our mental pabulum—often a season's best seller—boiled ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... true life!" and he stood for a few minutes looking far away across the broad fields. The air laden with the freshness of spring drifted about them; the birds flitting overhead were pouring forth their joyous music, while on every side early flowers were lifting their tiny heads. All nature seemed to combine to give a glad ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... firm enough, and kept his temper (which, by the way, the king had not done, though none dared say no), he could bring any foolish girl to reason in good time. For in the softest voice, and with the strangest smile flitting to her face, the Princess Osra was pleased to bid the embassy come on the fifth day ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... although we dashed Your cities into shards with catapults, She would not love;—or brought her chained, a slave, The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, Not ever would she love; but brooding turn The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance Were caught within the record of her wrongs, And crushed to death: and rather, Sire, than this I would the old God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... hardly thus secreted, before the shrubbery was violently agitated, a footstep was heard in the lawn beneath her window, and then one leaped so lightly into the balcony, and from the balcony into the centre of the room, that the passage of the figure seemed like the flitting of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... combat in the forest and the dark deepened, and the thirty were so active that there was little time for question or answer. They crept back and forth from bush to bush and from log to log, firing whenever they saw a flitting form, and reloading with quick fingers. Now and then Willet, or some other, would reply with a defiant shout to the yells of the warriors, and thus, while the combat of the sharpshooters surged to and fro in the dim light, ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... generous or so gentle. An impulse stirred her to cross the fields to his door and fling herself into the breach that divided them; but again the phantom in the flames grew dim and then sent out the face that she had seen that afternoon—convulsed and quivering, with its flitting sinister likeness to Amos Burr. A voice that seemed to be the voice of old dead Aunt Griselda—of her whole dead race that had decayed and been forgotten, and come to life again in ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... distresses, new and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens of faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before them "like a thing reproved," not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, but the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and revenges of life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report lions in the path; they counsel a meticulous footing; but their serene, marred faces are more eloquent and tell another story. Where ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were flitting about the tree, giving it final touches that were never final. The Spangled Sisters were there in costume as Lady Violet de Vere and Marie, the maid, in their new drama, "The Miner's Bride." The theatre did not open until nine, and they were welcome assistants of the Christmas tree ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... falling in the coldest hour of the night, and the earth smelled sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... Frankie. I had something in hand towards my own possible flitting. Here is the key of my desk. Bring me my banker's book and my ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every side he viewed it, the puzzle seemed as unanswerable as ever. If only they could manage to slip away along about an hour or so after midnight, when the darkness was densest; but there was only the one way to leave, and that was evidently watched closely, if those silent figures flitting hither and thither on the beach stood ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... whether this could really be the pleasant officer of a few hours before. Down in the dark depths below him figures were flitting about under the dim lamp-light, sorting cargo and "setting things straight," as well as the rolling of the ship would let them; and our hero, wishing to be of some use, volunteered to help a grimy fireman in rolling ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... raising her finger to her lips, she arose and vanished; but from that hour my wound healed, my fever slaked, and whenever I beheld her flitting round my bed, or watching over me, or felt her cool fingers wiping the dew from my brow, or took from her hand my medicine or my food, in those moments, the blood seemed to make a new struggle through my veins, and I felt palpably within me a fresh and delicious life—a life full of youth and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... while the horses stand 220 Chewing the leaves, and their bells faintly ring. Two eyes are burning like lamps at the train's approach, Steadily, brightly they gleam in the night, Strange birds are flitting with movements mysterious, Somewhere at hand they are heard to alight. Straight over Jacob a raven exultingly Hovers and caws. Now a hundred fly round! Feebly the Barin is waving his crutch at them, Merciful ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... shore gave other touches of white, and the sea was taking a deep hue, and the town stretching back from it looked gay and bright, with pretty houses and palm trees and palaces, and, bright-coloured dresses flitting here and there in the streets; and white sails were on the sea. I had never seen, I have never seen, anything more lovely than Beyrout. I had come to the city rather anxious; for we expected there to meet a great budget of news, which I always dreaded; wandering about ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... he said, a faint, wan smile flitting across his face. "I was weak and selfish. I allowed myself to think for a moment that it might be, but now I know we ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... time he heard only the whispers of the snow and the grief of the wind. When he had rounded the lake and was some distance beyond it, however, the moaning reached him again, and through the fast-deepening twilight he saw, as indistinctly as he had before, a black feminine figure flitting among the trees in the direction of the lake. Graham's theory lost its value. It was impossible to fancy the brilliant, colourful dancer in this black, shadowy thing. He commenced to run in ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... multifarious memories these reminiscences of the darkened room, the waiting circle, the little taps on table and wall, the little touches on cheek and foot, the music in the air, the rain of flowers, the sense of something mysteriously flitting, were most tenderly cherished. She hated her husband for having magnetised her so that she consented to certain things, and even did them, the thought of which to-day would suddenly make her face burn; hated him for the manner ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... disembodied spirits, ere they left Their earthly mansions, lingered for a time Upon the confines of eternal night, Mourning their doom; and oft the astonished hind, As home he journeyed at the fall of eve, Viewed unknown forms flitting across his path, And in the breeze that waved the sighing boughs Heard shrieks of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... seemliness, This model of a child is never known To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er As generous as a fountain; selfishness May not come near him, nor the little throng Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path; The wandering beggars propagate his name. Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun, And natural or supernatural fear, Unless it leap upon him in a dream, Touches him not. To enhance the wonder, see How arch his notices, how nice his sense ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... groups of living statuary, strange and grotesque. Anxious faces-faces half painted, faces hectic of dissipation, faces waning and sallow, eyes glassy and lascivious, dishevelled hair floating over naked shoulders;—the flashing of bewitching drapery, the waving and flitting of embroidered underskirts, the tripping of pretty feet and prettier ankles, the gesticulating and swaying of half-draped bodies-such is the scene occasioned by ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... broad daylight and getting brighter, and accordingly I knew little fear, though I did think of the ghosts of other parties, flitting in spectral form over the ice-clad wastes, especially of that small detachment of the Italian expedition of the Duke D'Abruzzi, of which to this day neither track, trace, nor remembrance has ever been ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... fatherly Government has no intention that petticoats, even hobbled ones, should be flitting around while the habits and the methods of the busy insect were being examined through a microscope or a telescope. The choice of instrument depending, of course, upon the activity of ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... marsh, and in them I could see lights flitting. A month or two ago I should have feared them, thinking of Beowulf, son of Hygelac, and what befell him and his comrades from the marsh fiends, Grendel and his dam. Now I watched them, and half longed for a fight ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... tender ran upon the beach and had been secured, Halvard started to follow him, but Woolfolk waved him back. There was a stir on the portico as he approached, the flitting of an unsubstantial form; but, hastening, John Woolfolk arrested ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sing Wait joyfully on the morning. Ten thousand beset me And their spears ache for my heart. They will crush me and grind me to mire, So that none will know the man that once was me. But at the first light I shall be gone, Singing, flitting, o'er the grey waters, Outward, homeward, To thee, the Preserver, Thee, the Uniter, Mother ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... yawning rents peeped forth, from time to time, her bare red knees, with uncombed elf-locks, and a face and hands that looked as if they had been unwashed for a month—who did not know A from B, and despised those who did. While these reflections, combined with a thousand ludicrous images, were flitting through my mind, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... much less than seventy feet, being the entire height of the edifice. The hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and, it being a clear, bright day, was very radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thornhill in some allegorical design, (doubtless commemorative of Marlborough's victories,) the purport of which I did not take the trouble to make out,—contenting myself with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... that they had made a rendezvous for that very night. This rendezvous was not the first, for Maulear knew the secret of the veil he had found on the terrace on the first night he had passed at Sorrento. The veil belonged to Aminta, and the flitting shadow he had seen was the lady's self. Her accomplice was Gaetano. How could he doubt? Interrupted in their first intercourse by Maulear, they expected on another occasion to be more fortunate. No, cried he, that shall not be, they will find ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... when a city crowds to a review—or, as when bees have swarmed, the ground is horrible with lumps and clusters; and a strange sight, and a beautiful, to see the fleet put silently out against a rising moon, the sea-line rough as a wood with sails, and ever and again and one after another, a boat flitting swiftly by the silver disk. This mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats, is out of all proportion to the town itself; and the oars are manned and the nets hauled by immigrants from the Long Island (as we call the outer Hebrides), who come for that season only, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the Queen herself, but simply because of the knowledge that with her death must come a crisis and might come a revolution. Who was to snatch the crown as it fell from Queen Anne's dying head? Over at Herrenhausen, in {3} Hanover, was one claimant to the throne; flitting between Lorraine and St. Germains was another. Here, at home, in the Queen's very council-chamber, round the Queen's dying bed, were the English heads of the rival parties caballing against each other, some of them deceiving Hanover, some of them deceiving James Stuart, and more than one, it ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of the mown buckwheat in the fields of my native place! Would I might once more hear far away the modest tinkle of the cracked bell of our parish church; once more lie in the cool shade under the oak sapling on the slope of the familiar ravine; once more watch the moving track of the wind, flitting, a dark wave over the golden grass of our meadow!... Ah, what's the good of all this? But I can't go ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev |
