"Volatile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this solution into a bottle and closed it tightly. After 14 days the yellow colour had disappeared, and of 20 parts of air 4 parts had been lost. The solution contained no sulphur, but had allowed a precipitate to fall which was chiefly gypsum. (b.) Volatile liver of sulphur likewise diminishes the bulk of air. (c.) Sulphur, however, and volatile spirit of sulphur, undergo ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... interests; but not the will to endure sacrifice for the sake of another. Her sister was larger and possessed a reserve that might have been mistaken for deepness. He felt that she was hardly in sympathy with the motives of the younger, more volatile woman. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... become the slave of every propensity, lives in the perpetual harvest of criminal gratification. A daughter whose sole delight is in her rapid transitions from one scene of expensive brilliancy to another, who dissipates every care and fills every hour among the frivolities and fascinations of her volatile society,—she leads a life than which nothing can be imagined more opposite to a life of preparation for the coming judgment or the coming eternity. Yet she reaps rather than sows. It lies with another to gather the money ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... necessities, any love of truth in nature, any hatred of darkness, any desire for the purification of the understanding, we must entreat men again and again to discard, or at least set apart for a while, these volatile and preposterous philosophies which have preferred theses to hypotheses, led experience captive, and triumphed over the works of God; and to approach with humility and veneration to unroll the volume of Creation, to linger and meditate therein, and with minds washed ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... overbalances these and all its other deficiencies. A sedulous scholar might often approach more nearly to the dead letter of Virgil, and give an exact, distinct, sober-minded idea of the meaning and scope of particular passages. Trapp, Pitt, and others have done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it escapes during such an operation, like the life of the poor criminal, whom the ancient anatomist is said to have dissected alive, in order to ascertain the seat of the soul. The carcase indeed is presented to the English reader, but the animating vigour is no more. It is in ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and then I said, "Lean forward, Tom; it will stop your hurt from bleeding." He leaned almost on the neck of the mare, which, as I knew, must close the wound; and the light of his eyes was quite different, and the pain of his forehead unstrung itself, as if he felt the undulous readiness of her volatile paces ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... to his wife in the depths of his heart, there can be no doubt. But the circle he moved in, and his volatile, mischievous, beauty-idolising nature played havoc with his good intentions, though not to the extent implied by some critics who have pictured him as a reckless voluptuary. But just herein is the final proof of Constanze's devotion and her understanding of him, for, while there never was a breath ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... get into the papers as a consequence of being blown up, although his daily life was certainly a continuous exposure to that risk. Destiny has a constant passion for the incongruous, and it was George's lot to manipulate wholesale quantities of terrific and volatile explosives in safety, and to be laid low by an accident so commonplace and inconsequent that it was a comedy. Fate had reserved for him the final insult of riding him down under the wheels of one of those ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... rough, eager gatherers shall be shaken. Their eyes grow dim, Their hearts flutter like taken birds in their bosoms, As the light dies out of heaven, And a faint, delicious tremor runs through every limb, And faster the volatile blood ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Ferrier's garments may have been white or blue or yellow; I remember only her satin arms and neck, the rosy color of her face, and the powder on her hair making it white as down. Where this assembly was collected from I did not know, but it acted on the spirits and went like volatile ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... have no more of this," said Dr. May, seeing that the discussion was injuring Margaret more and more. "Go away to my study, sir, and wait till I come to you. All of you out of the room. Flora, fetch the sal volatile." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... our volatile guest, "you see you are not of a grasping nature. Come, Harry, try your luck ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... in haste, had in his seventeenth year eloped with Martha, daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes, and married her in the Fleet on March 2, 1715. As was only to be expected from a person so volatile he from the beginning neglected his wife; but, as is put quaintly in that unreliable work, Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia, which was concocted by Mrs. Eliza Haywood, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... asleep, increased to a tempest. It was one of those sudden uprisings of the elements common in all tropical countries, but especially so in the desert tracts of Arabia and Africa,—where the atmosphere, rarefied by heat, and becoming highly volatile, suddenly loses its equilibrium, and rushes like a destroying angel over the surface of ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... it not so? but yet it haunts me like a phantom; I know it is unsubstantial and vain; but it will be present; will intrude its horrors on my mind; will whisper that my brother, as volatile as ardent, would have divided his energies amid a hundred objects. It was I who taught him to concentrate them and to gage all on this dreadful and desperate cast. Oh that I could recollect that I had but once said to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... inhaled with ecstasy the delicious, the heavenly odour of "the Atar Gul, more precious than gold?" Who hath not in fancy wandered, as he inspired it, to the terrestrial paradise from whence it is procured? And who that knew not how so volatile an essence was collected, hath not marvelled, over the enjoyment of Otto of Roses? Persia, Turkey, and Egypt, are the principal countries in which it is manufactured, and the Atar of Persia is generally allowed to be the most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... most people regard their first birthday as something of an event; a harvest-home of innocence, touched with I know not how delicate a bloom of virginal anticipation; of emotion too volatile for analysis, or perhaps eluding analysis by its very simplicity. But whatever point the festival might have had for me was rudely destroyed by my parents, who chose this day for jolting me back to London in a railway-carriage. We have just arrived home from Newquay, Cornwall, where we have ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of separation, which a savage dreamer or seer would feel after a dream or vision in which he visited remote places, would satisfy him that his soul, at least, was volatile. But some experience of what he would take to be visits from the spirits of others, would be needed before he recognised that other men, as well as he, had the faculty of sending their souls ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and presently reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade, meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm goin' to pack up and light out for home!" ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... it more readily penetrable by solvents than does that of the green bean. However, the great objection to this method arises from the fact that at the same time as the caffein is extracted, the volatile aromatic and flavoring constituents of the coffee are removed also. These substances, which are essential for the maintenance of quality by the coffee, though readily separated from the caffein, can ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... is generally cultivated, though it grows where its cultivation has been abandoned. A volatile oil, used to keep away insects from textiles, is obtained from the leaves. The leaves are used in Tanay, Rizal, in ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... twisting and turning and tearing to pieces and placing embankments so that the volatile and fugacious species should be as it were caught in a net and held behind the hedges of definitions, and he considered that superior things were, by participation, and according to similitude, reflected in those inferior, and these in those according to their greater ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... place in a little while and proceeded towards the railroad depot. Ralph had conceived quite a liking for his volatile new acquaintance. Clark had shown himself to be a loyal, resourceful friend, and the young engineer felt that he would miss his genial company if the other did not take the return trip to Stanley Junction. He told Clark this as they ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... not like his friend's allusions, though they were much too subtle for his ready comprehension, for the intellect of the Swiss was a little frosted by constant residence among snows and in full view of glaciers, and it wanted the volatile play of the Genoese's fancy, which was apt to expand like air rarefied by the warmth of the sun. This difference of temperament, however, so far from lessening their mutual kindness, was, most probably, the real cause of its existence, since it is well ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... almost unconquerable tendency to sleep. Frank felt the highest possible relief, since he was now freed from the responsibility that had of late been so heavy. In Bob, however, there was the exhibition of the greatest liveliness. Bob, mercurial, volatile, nonsensical, mobile, was ever running to extremes; and as he was the first to fall asleep, so now, when he had awaked, he was the most wide awake of all. He sang, he shouted, he laughed, he danced, he ran; he seemed, in fact, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... cavalcade not only attracted the curiosity of Wamba, but excited even that of his less volatile companion. The monk he instantly knew to be the Prior of Jorvaulx Abbey, well known for many miles around as a lover of the chase, of the banquet, and, if fame did him not wrong, of other worldly pleasures still more inconsistent with ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... satisfaction in breathing their own atmosphere, which was always impregnated with stercoraceous effluvia: that the learned Dr B—, in his treatise on the Four Digestions, explains in what manner the volatile effluvia from the intestines stimulate and promote the operations of the animal economy: he affirmed, the last Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Medicis family, who refined upon sensuality with the spirit of a philosopher, was so delighted with that odour, that he caused the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... with a bitter secretion, of a purgative and rather dangerous quality, than which nothing can be more distinct from the gum. The fruit is replete, not only with acid, mucilage, and sugar, but with its own peculiar aromatic and highly volatile secretion, elaborated within itself, on which its fine flavour depends."—Introduction ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... into his works which critical dissection should not be able to extract again, as his confidence in it was such, that he conceived it exhausted every thing which pleases and charms us in poetry. He was not aware that, in the chemical retort of the critic, what is most valuable, the volatile living spirit of a poem, evaporates. His pieces are in general deficient in soul, in that nameless something which never ceases to attract and enchant us, even because it is indefinable. In the lyrical pieces, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... ours must be wearing a perfectly overwhelming aspect, and that their heads contained respectively awfully serious and extremely desperate thoughts—and trying to imagine what an exciting time they must be having of it in the inscrutable depths of their being. This last was difficult to a volatile person (I am sure that to the Fynes I was a volatile person) and the amusement in itself was not very great; but still—in the country—away from all mental stimulants! . . . My efforts had invested them with a sort of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... uncleI had forgot that," exclaimed the volatile Hector; "but you said something just now that put everything out ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... father's mind beyond that of her own. She had been beautiful; but her beauty was pensive: a fair yet melancholy child; for the charm that ever encompassed her was one of sorrow and tenderness. Had she been volatile and mirthful, as children usually are, he would not have carried so far into his future life the love of her which he cherished. Another reason why he still loved her strongly, was a consciousness that her death had been occasioned by ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... a brain burning high and kindling everything lighted up herself against herself.—Was one so volatile as she a person with a will?—Were they not a multitude of flitting wishes that she took for a will? Was she, feather-headed that she was, a person to make a stand on physical pride?—If she could yield her hand without reflection (as she conceived she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her ladyship up against Pen's very door-post, and drove his chair-pole through the handsomest pink bottle in the surgeon's window, alighted screaming from her vehicle, and was accommodated with a chair in Mr. Pendennis's shop, where she was brought round with cinnamon and sal-volatile. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... instant relief to her volatile mind. She began to chatter gaily about how she and Carmena would entertain him during the wait for Slade. In this the older girl joined with cordial heartiness. Elsie displayed a high stack of women's magazines, for which Carmena was a regular subscriber. Every three or four months they were ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... smile came over Juarez's face, but he said nothing. All the stolid Indian in his nature came to the surface. He merely grunted contemptuously at the Mexican's remark and this made the volatile Manuel uneasy in his turn, for he wanted to realize that his malice had struck home, but Juarez did not give him that satisfaction. There was a sort of hidden duel between these two, the subtle Mexican and the crafty ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... departed for the ship. Little was silent, too; he was trying to gather up the threads of the connection between Mrs. Goring, the missing seaman, and the trader. He wasn't sure the threads led anywhere; but Barry discouraged conversation, and the volatile ex-salesman could not exist without either talking, surmising, or planning things. So they arrived in silence at the wharf, and neither raised his head to notice their whereabouts until Little tumbled over the Barang's breast line. Then both looked up. Simultaneously ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... they classified the eloquent speeches and dashing articles under the sweeping phrase of "hot air," these things pleased them a good deal, although they never have admitted it. The country, it appeared, had learned to appreciate them—a little late, it is true; still, in the volatile imagination of the public, they had arrived. They were quietly pleased, and awoke to the realisation of ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Here, the heavy embers and cinders are collected and prevented from directly discharging into the countryside as dangerous firebrands. Wire netting is stretched overtop of the deflecting cone to catch the lighter, more volatile embers which may defy the action of the cone. The term "bonnet stack" results from the fact that this netting is similar in shape to a lady's bonnet. The cinders thus accumulated in the stack's hopper could be emptied by opening a plug at the base ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... willingly have admitted any one to partake but the lovely child who was presented to her for this purpose. Her beautiful form prejudiced everyone in her favour; but the distress and sorrow which were impressed on her countenance, at an age generally too volatile and thoughtless to be deeply affected, could not fail of exciting a tender sensibility in the heart of a person of ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... they are away from the sun they are invisible. It is only as they get near him that they begin to expand and throw off tails and other appendages. The sun's heat is evidently evaporating them, and driving away a cloud of mist and volatile matter. This is when they can be seen. The comet is most gorgeous when it is near the sun, and as soon as it gets a reasonable distance away from ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... raised an unknown musician from penury and obscurity to affluence and fame. In the face of such an experience it was scarcely to be wondered at that judgment was flung to the winds and that the most volatile of musical nations and the staidest alike hailed the young composer as the successor of Verdi, the regenerator of operatic Italy, and the pioneer of a new school which should revitalize opera and make unnecessary the ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... am much younger than thou, O king Menelaus, and thou art older and superior. Thou knowest of what sort are the errors of a youth; for his mind is indeed more volatile, and his counsel weak. Therefore let thy heart endure, and I myself will give thee the steed which I have received. And if indeed thou demandest anything else greater from my house, I should be willing to give it immediately rather ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... Volatile, restless, "always children longing for something new," as the Egyptian priest said of them, they were too ready to believe that they had attained laws, and then, tired with their toy, throw away those hastily assumed laws, and wander off in search ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... of the fact that different liquids assume a spheroidal form at widely different temperatures, one may obtain some startling results. For example, liquid sulphurous acid is so volatile as to have a temperature of only 13 degrees F. when in that state, or 19 degrees below the freezing point of water, so that if a little water be dropped into the acid, it will immediately freeze and the pellet of ice may be dropped into the hand from the still red-hot disk. Even mercury ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... why Molly paid so poor a compliment to her own denomination as to suppose that the natural gravitation of piety was towards Dissent. But Molly's volatile nature passed to a different subject the ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... their enemies. The most stinking example I know is that of a large hairy caterpillar I have found on dry wood in Patagonia, and which, when touched, emits an intensely nauseous effluvium. Happily it is very volatile, but while it lasts it is even more detestable than that of ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... is young, volatile, capricious, but generous as the day. Be open with her; tell her why you leave Oakhurst and how ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... dissimilarity in their dispositions, habits, and characters; to which, perhaps, nature might also in some degree contribute. ALMORAN was haughty, vain, and voluptuous; HAMET was gentle, courteous, and temperate: ALMORAN was volatile, impetuous, and irascible; HAMET was thoughtful, patient, and forbearing. Upon the heart of HAMET also were written the instructions of the Prophet; to his mind futurity was present by habitual anticipation; his pleasure, his pain, his hopes, and his fears, were ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... even affect the happiness of the newly-married pair; but John did not wish to hint at these graver views of the subject; he was afraid to give them too much importance, and he confidently reckoned on Valentine's volatile disposition to stand his friend, and soon enable him to get over his attachment. All that seemed wanting was some degree ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... fixed on the calm skies, getting courage from them to persevere. Wasn't it clever of her? We dined together in a small restaurant and I spent the evening with her in the lodging-house; the landlady let us her sitting-room. Lucy is charming, and her happiness is volatile and her melancholy too; she's persuasive and insinuating as a perfume; and when I left the house, it was as if I had come out of a moonlight garden. 'Thy green eyes look upon me... I love the moonlight ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... of disappearing in transit. Two car-loads of building lumber sent to repair the station at Red Butte vanished somewhere between the Angels shipping-yards and their billing destination. Lime, cement, and paint were exceedingly volatile. House hardware, purchased in quantities for company repairs, figured in the monthly requisition sheet as regularly as coal and oil; and the lost-tool account roughly balanced the pay-roll of the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... by the epithet. But how much better, to call themselves Swedes?—to preserve the fine, manly characteristics of their ancient stock, rather than imitate a people so alien to them in blood, in character, and in antecedents. Those meaningless social courtesies which sit well enough upon the gay, volatile, mercurial Frenchman, seem absurd affectations when practiced by the tall, grave, sedate Scandinavian. The intelligent Swedes feel this, but they are powerless to make headway against the influence of a court which was wholly French, even before Bernadotte's time. "We are a race of apes," said ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... "How funny!" exclaimed the volatile child, as the door closed after him. "He spoke as solemn as a minister; but I suppose that's the way with Yankees. I think cher ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... whittle's sharp edge, and I thank my Lord for my escape and for the loosing of my prosperity from the trap of trouble." Now when the Birder heard these words of the Birdie he repented and regretted his folly, and he cried, "O my sorrow for what failed me of the slaughter of this volatile," and as he sank ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Meanness; generous, without View; and hospitable, without Reserve: In their Converse, easy; in their Dealings just; placable in their Resentments, in their Friendship steady:—They have neither the volatile Airyness of the Frenchman, the stated Gravity of the Spaniard; the supicious Jealousy of the Italian; the forbidding Haughtiness of the German; the saturnine Gloominess of the Flandrican, nor the sordid Parsimony of the Dutchman: ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... the light of future events, to note that young Morse's parents were fearful lest his volatile nature and lack of steadfastness of purpose should mar his future career. His dominating characteristic in later life was a bulldog tenacity, which led him to stick to one idea through discouragements and disappointments which would have overwhelmed ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... too much tenderness for their volatile offspring to subject her to either of the schemes of the equally unscrupulous philosophers. Indeed the most complete knowledge of the laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was impossible to classify her. She was a fifth imponderable body, sharing all the other properties ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... was desperately in love with Heathcote. As long as that volatile youth had owned his allegiance and proved amenable to his influence, so long had Pledge liked the boy and set ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... eating half a dozen of them, they were secured against drunkenness, however deeply they might imbibe. Almonds, however, are considered as very indigestible. The bitter contain, too, principles which produce two violent poisons,—prussic acid and a kind of volatile oil. It is consequently dangerous to eat them in large quantities. Almonds pounded together with a little sugar and water, however, produce a milk similar to that which is yielded by animals. Their oil is used for making fine soap, and their cake ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... quick and pointed. The Tea Act of 1773 raised two highly volatile issues: the right to tax and the granting of a trade monopoly on tea. In both instances the principle was most bothersome. The tea tax was small, but as Bland had said of the Pistole Fee, "the question then ought not to be the smallness of the demand, but the Lawfulness of it." A small ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... prevailed with some Brazilian tribes. After burying food, utensils, arms, etc., with the body, a month after death the body was disinterred, put in a pan over a fire, the volatile substances driven off, the black residue reduced to powder and mixed with water and drunk by ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... broken off, with now and then a whisper of good-natured scandal; sometimes, too, he condescends to criticise a sermon, or a lyceum lecture, or performance of the glee-club; and, to be brief, catch the volatile essence of present talk and transitory opinions, and you will have Time's gossip, word for word. I may as well add, that he expresses great approbation of Mr. Russell's vocal abilities, and means to be present from beginning to end of his next concert. It is not every ...
— Time's Portraiture - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. The French language has visibly changed under the inspection of the Academy; the style ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... indeed, that afternoon, the order of the day, as from the Grosvilles to Lady Kitty. Ashe wondered how she liked it. The girls followed her about with shawls. Lady Grosville installed her on a sofa in the back drawing-room. A bottle of sal-volatile appeared, and Caroline Grosville, instead of going twice to Sunday-school, devoted herself to fanning Kitty, though the weather—which was sunny, with a sharp east wind—suggested, to Ashe's thinking, fires rather ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... river charioting clouds, silence now reigned; and the whole height of the atmosphere stood balanced. On the endless ribbon of island that stretched out to either hand of him its array of golden and green and silvery palms, not the most volatile frond was to be seen stirring; they drooped to their stable images in the lagoon like things carved of metal, and already their long line began to reverberate heat. There was no escape possible that day, none probable on the morrow. And still ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the robe, precisely as if she wore a crinoline with an incense-burner beneath it, which would be a far more simple way of performing the operation. She now begins to perspire freely in the hot-air bath, and the pores of the skin being thus opened and moist, the volatile oil from the smoke of the burning perfumes ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... widely different temperament. Henry, even as a little boy, was sturdy, industrious, and dependable. Sam was volatile and elusive; his industry of an erratic kind. Once his father set him to work with a hatchet to remove some plaster. He hacked at it for a time well enough, then lay down on the floor of the room and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... that desideratum, an universal tongue, since in the most foreign lands she is never at a loss to render herself understood, nor to comprehend that which is addressed to her; she is of a melancholy cast of mind, and carries sal-volatile in her reticule, and fountains of tears in her eyes, for use on the most public occasions; she likes gloomy apartments, looking upon the sea, mountains, or black forests, and leading into endless corridors; she has an AEolian ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... republicans, that we have no farther inclination for it. A federal government may suit a country with a scanty population, like Switzerland; or a new nation, like America; but it would be a calamity to our old France: we are too volatile, too impassioned; we want a ruler, a master who knows how to make himself obeyed. Hark you, M. Werner, I must continue to speak to you frankly: the only chief, that suits us, is Napoleon: no longer Napoleon the ambitious and the conqueror, but Napoleon corrected by adversity. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... inspired found her cold and unresponsive. Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her studies and teased her about her unwillingness for society, which they attributed to a lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on making herself coquettish, gay, volatile,—a woman, in short. But she expected in return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in harmony with the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its knowledge. Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... it cool, restful, and, in spite of the dust, absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope, entirely inodorous. The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious emanations and decay—the very dust itself in its fine impalpability was volatile with a spicelike piquancy, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... with surer aim, than his time-worn frame, and impaired vision would allow. Even the French, with their fleets of periogues, ascended the Missouri to points where his stiffened sinews did not permit him to follow. These volatile and babbling hunters, with their little, and to him despicable shot guns, could bring down a turkey, where the rifle bullet, now directed by his dimmed eye, could not reach. It was in vain that the sights were made more conspicuous by ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... I was volatile enough to repeat to him a little epigrammatick song of mine, on matrimony, which Mr. Garrick had a few days before procured to be set to musick by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the guard. The Kennedy administration was not the first to wrestle with the problem of applying a single racial policy to both the regulars and the guard. It was aware that too much tampering with the politically influential and volatile guard could produce an explosion. At the same time any appearance of timidity courted ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Compounds: Protocol to the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Concerning the Control of Emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds or ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... gave way to feelings of severity. Don Pedro regretted his misconduct, and being lifted up for the moment above his ordinary view, perceived that he might have done better, and shaped the pattern of his tongue to it. Firm, hearing this, had good hopes of him; yet knowing how volatile repentance is, he strove to form a well-marked track for it. And when the captain ceased to receive cowhide, he must have had it long enough to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Masonic revelations in Paris had become too numerous for one more or less to fix the volatile quality of public interest unless a new horror were attached to it. Passwords and signs and catechisms, all the purposes and the better half of the secrets—everyone outside the Fraternity who concerned themselves with Masonry and cared for theoretical initiation knew these, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... of men who, being nearly all Irish, are of all others the most volatile and easily led astray. Should they, therefore, hereafter be seduced by the various temptations by which they are surrounded, I hope to escape the imputation of judging too hastily and partially. The men were principally raised in the north of Ireland, and are nearly all Protestants; ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... women is at all hostile to what he is so anxious to prove. The cardinal element of character is the speed at which its energies move; its rapidity or its steadiness, concentration or volatility; whether the thought and feeling travel as quickly as light or as slowly as sound. A rapid and volatile constitution like that of Madame de Warens is inconsistent with ardent and glowing warmth, which belongs to the other sort, but it is essentially bound up with sensibility, or readiness of sympathetic answer to every cry from another soul. It is the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... raisins. I can get a good many if Cephas gives me wholesale price, with family discount subtracted from that. Cephas would treat me to candy in a minute, but if I let him we'd have to ask him to the picnic! Good-bye!" And the volatile creature darted down the hill singing, "There'll be something in heaven for children to do," at the top of ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gas, which is formed by an action of its lungs in drawing in air. We have adapted this principle in the wings and fuselage of this little machine. They are airtight and filled with compressed helium-gas, which is non-inflammable and nearly as light as its highly volatile rival, hydrogen-gas." ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... active elements of the coffee-berry are necessary to insure its grateful effects,—that the volatile and odorous principle alone protracts decomposition,—and that careful preparation in roasting and decocting are essential to secure the full benefits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... by the whole cast of your letter, that you are as giddy and volatile as ever: just the reverse of Mr. Pope, who has always loved a domestic life from his youth. I was going to wish you had some little place that you could call your own, but, I profess I do not know you ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. They contained colorless, volatile essences, of the nature of which I shall only say that they were not poisons,—phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of mind did not last very long with the volatile youth; for, truth to say, the sudden dereliction of mortality on the part of his quarrelsome old father, did not come altogether amiss to him. What hindered him now from wedding the girl of his heart, and leading as jolly a life as any? According to good old custom, he put on his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... beetles (Carabidae) almost all possess a disagreeable and some a very pungent smell, and a few, called bombardier beetles, have the peculiar faculty of emitting a jet of very volatile liquid, which appears like a puff of smoke, and is accompanied by a distinct crepitating explosion. It is probably because these insects are mostly nocturnal and predacious that they do not present more vivid hues. They are chiefly remarkable for brilliant metallic tints or dull red ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Musset was thirty years old, and on his birthday he had one of those reckonings with himself, which the most deliberately careless and volatile men cannot escape. At twenty-one he had held a similar settlement: he was then uncertain of his genius, dissatisfied with his way of life and with the use he made of his time: the result was his adoption of a more serious line ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... a little sal volatile and nux vomica to the swooning patient; while Hilda set about remedying the damage. "That's better," Sebastian said, in a mollified tone, when she had brought another basin. There was a singular note of cloaked triumph ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... through this country, the olfactory nerves are frequently excited by a strong disagreeable odor. This is caused by a large jet-black ant named "Leshonya". It is nearly an inch in length, and emits a pungent smell when alarmed, in the same manner as the skunk. The scent must be as volatile as ether, for, on irritating the insect with a stick six feet long, the odor is ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... design, encouraged his proposals, and subscribed with great liberality. He related of the Duke of Chandos particularly, that upon receiving his proposals he sent him ten guineas. But the money which his subscriptions afforded him was not less volatile than that which he received from his other schemes; whenever a subscription was paid him, he went to a tavern; and as money so collected is necessarily received in small sums, he never was able to send his poems to the press, but for ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... forms which it assumes, and which flatter the mind and senses by their rapid and constant changes. Hence it is that women endowed with this doleful gift have the sad privilege of drawing around them persons of volatile minds and inconstant hearts. They invariably finish by becoming the dupes of their own fickle impressions, and are taken in the snares in which their vanity sought ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... the intercourse which had for him nothing but distress, and his volatile acquaintances were perhaps the first to set him the example. Often in his solitary walks he stopped afar off to gaze upon the sports which none ever solicited him to share; and as the shout of laughter and of happy hearts came, peal after peal, upon his ear, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the volatile Fanny, laughing—"Ralph and myself just called by; we are past our time now. That horrid old Miss Sallianna will scold me, though she does talk about the beauties of nature—I wonder if she ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... human knowledge is," said Mannering, "and grant that we have not exhausted its possibilities yet. There may be some physical peculiarity about the room, some deadly but perfectly natural chemical accident, some volatile stuff, in roof or walls, that reacts to the lowered temperatures of night. A thousand rare chance combinations of matter may occur which are capable of examination, and which, under skilled experiment, will resolve their secret. Nothing it more bewildering than a good conjuring ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the faculties of a gentle, benevolent giant, starting aside from his course to befriend a little child, listening with the docility of a child to his driver's rebuke or exhortation. The light, airy, volatile bird seems to glow with a new instinct of affection and of perseverance under the shelter of the firm hand and eye of man. The dog, in all Eastern nations, even under the Old Testament itself, represented as an outcast, the emblem ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... their acquaintance a shade of perplexity seemed to come over the enthusiastic face of the volatile Frenchman. ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... was, we considered, a pretty good chemist. "It is the evaporation of the spirit; it is so volatile that it turns of itself into vapour or gas and it makes itself evident to our nostrils as it ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... in her face quiver or change. But as she held the parcel in her hand her whole being seemed to undergo some exquisite suffusion. As the medicines which the Arabian physician had concealed in the hollow handle of the mallet permeated the languid royal blood of Persia, so some volatile balm of youth seemed to flow in upon her with the contact of that strange missive and transform her ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... motives, my little seraph," replied William; "probably he thinks her quiet and serious manner would well accord with his own little sister's nature; in preference to her volatile and spirited character; and that her calm and dignified manner, would suit you well in your new capacity of housekeeper. But I can support his opinion that she is an amiable and charming creature; and I strongly suspect that he is somewhat ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... that a slight inflammation should be so difficult to dissipate. But their surprise would cease, were they to consider, that medicines act more generally upon the whole body than abstractedly upon the part affected. Suppose to attenuate some coagulated blood, six grains of volatile salt were given, how small a proportion must come to the part diseased, when these grains, by the laws of circulation, will mix with the entire mass of blood, consisting at ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... no! Do you want to kill me at once? I only want rest and a chance to get my breath again. Tea? Wine? Faugh! I hope I know better than that after the agonies I have had to go through. Sal- volatile! Do you take me for an hysterical old woman? Feet up? Ay, young sir, I expect I shall have a longer dose of that position than I care for after this adventure! As if I had not had enough of it already—five weeks on my ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... which was prolonged and repeated from one end to the other by command and obedience. The subordination, regularity, silence, and serious deportment so remarkable on this ship, formed a system of social order rigid and free, in contrast with the city of Naples, so volatile, so passionate, and tumultuous. Oswald was occupied with Corinne and the impressions she received; but his attention was sometimes diverted from her by the pleasure he felt in finding himself in ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... beyond his years wary as well as enterprising, calm as well as ardent, quite as rich in patience as in promptitude and vigour. But Alec Bolt was a headlong youth, volatile, hot, and hasty, fit only to fish the Maelstrom, or a torrent of new lava. And the moment he had laid that wager he expected his crown piece; though time, as the lawyers phrase it, was "expressly of ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... omit. It was easier, and far more agreeable to expatiate in a general field of controversy,—than to remain tethered to distinct points. It was particularly in these confused conferences, where neither party was entirely sincere, that the volatile word was thought preferable to the permanent letter. Already so many watery lines had been traced, in the course of these fluctuating negotiations, that a few additional records would be if necessary, as rapidly effaced ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... she left me. She was very erratic, and before she left the room she had quite got over her depression. The sun shone out, and with the gleam of brightness her volatile ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... also contains small quantities of related substances—nicotellin, nicotein, a camphoraceous substance termed nicotianin, said to give tobacco its characteristic flavor, and likewise a volatile oil developed during the process preparation. On heating, pyridin (a substance often used to denature alcohol), picolin, collidin, and other bases are formed, as well as carbolic acid, ammonia, marsh gas, cyanogen and hydrocyanic acid, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... timidly glanced at them, had no lack of subjects for conversation. But the Queen! Linda had thought she could never have talked to a Queen without swooning, and indeed had arrived primed with much sal volatile. Yet there, as in some realistic dream, she was led on to talk about her war charities and Sir Michael's experiments without trembling, and found herself able to listen with intelligence to the Queen's practical suggestions about war work and the application of relief funds in crowded districts. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... has been our endeavour to cater for his "amusement and instruction," so as to combine interest and novelty—or, in a homely phrase, to make each sheet like "the punch of conversation." Thus, we have spirit, volatile and fiery in our leading articles; lemon in our pungent Notes; sugar in our "Gatherer;" and water quant. suff.—mixed in a form, which, like old bowls or drinking-glasses, is variegated with figures and scenes of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... again, they succeeded in overtaking us. In the effort to accomplish this, they left all those to their fate who were still swimming about in search of their lost oars, and took no notice whatever of their cries for assistance. We pointed their attention to their forsaken companions, but the volatile creatures only laughed, and not a single canoe would return to take them in. At length, towards nightfall, they left us with the cry of ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... play on the harp," asked the volatile lady, scarcely waiting till the first stanza was ended; "and, apropos, have ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... for a race of troops may go along into the field. Only the man versed in statecraft should be allowed to participate in the talk about the results of war. Not he who has out yonder proved an unworthy diplomat, nor the dilettante loafer sprayed with the perfume of volatile emotions. Manhood liability to military service requires manhood suffrage? That question may rest for the time being; likewise the desire for equality of that right shall not be argued today. But common sense should warn against the assumption of an office without ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... prevent your thinking of us. It would show too much confidence in you, or too high an estimation of my own merits, were I to attribute the sentiment to you, "That people are not together only when present, but that the absent and the dead also live with us." Who could ascribe such a thought to the volatile Therese, who takes the world so lightly? Among your various occupations, do not forget the piano, or rather, music in general, for which you have so fine a talent: why not then seriously cultivate it? You, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... to session, the volatile heart of San Francisco throbs responsive to the sliding values of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... the contraction of the arteries. So, also, the consciousness and the directing will may be abolished by altering the quality of the blood passing through the convolutions of the brain. We may introduce a volatile substance, such as chloroform, and its first effect will be to abolish consciousness and induce profound slumber and a blessed insensibility to pain. The like effects will follow more slowly upon the absorption of a drug, such as opium; or we may induce hallucinations by introducing into ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... of page and secretary I followed Joan to the council. She entered that presence with the bearing of a grieved goddess. What was become of the volatile child that so lately was enchanted with a ribbon and suffocated with laughter over the distress of a foolish peasant who had stormed a funeral on the back of a bee-stung bull? One may not guess. Simply it was gone, and had left no sign. She moved straight to the council-table, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... anonymous letters, Princess Charlotte made a kind of toy of the little officer, and behaved in a most volatile manner. There was evidence of such intense malignity in these letters against Princess Charlotte that they were attributed to a jealous woman, and that if not actually written by one, they had at any rate been inspired by a member of the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... passion, once kindled in a breast so steady as yours, would never be extinguished but with life. I am of another and more volatile temper, and though I shall open your next with a trembling hand and uncertain heart, yet let it bring a frank confession that this fair unknown has made a deeper impression on your gravity than you reckoned for, and you will see I can tear ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... sitting indoors noticing what the poet did and said. I was mighty proud when I learned how to prepare his daily pipe for him. It was a long churchwarden, and he liked the stem to be steeped in a solution of sal volatile, or something of that kind, so that it did not stick to his lips. But he and all the others seemed to me very old. There were my young knights waiting for me; and jumping gates, climbing trees, and running paper-chases are pleasant ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... mass, composed of ore, coal and flux.—By coal is here meant charcoal; when any other species of fuel is alluded to, it will be specified. In the upper half of the fire-room the materials are subjected to a comparatively low temperature, and they lose only the moisture, volatile matter, hydrogen, and carbonic acid, that they may contain; this change taking place principally in the lower part of the upper half of ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... of a winter storm, bringing all the aid she could to her unfortunate consort, those who witnessed this appearance of energy imagined that her character was equally powerful in the cabinet. Yet Henrietta, after all, was nothing more than a volatile woman; one who had never studied, never reflected, and whom nature had formed to be charming and haughty, but whose vivacity could not retain even a state-secret for an hour, and whose talents were quite opposite to those of deep ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... course not. But she probably did know that ammonia is good for just that sort of faintness which she must have experienced after taking the powder. Perhaps she thought of sal volatile, I don't know. But most people know that ammonia in some form is good for faintness of this sort, even if they don't know anything ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... of the great Abdurrahman, named Hisham Al-Mutadd; whom the inhabitants, after expelling the troops of the Beni-Hammud in 1027, invited to ascend the throne of his ancestors. "He was a mild and enlightened prince and possessed many brilliant qualities; but notwithstanding this, the volatile and degenerate citizens of Cordova grew discontented with him, and he was deposed by the army in 422, (A.D. 1031.) He left the capital and retired to Lerida, where he died in 428, (A.D. 1036.) He was the last member of that illustrious dynasty which had ruled over Andalus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... do her justice, there was a sense of bitter pain in her heart, as she sat with her head bowed down, while the Brownes and Lord Hardy stood around trying to comfort her. Mrs. Browne offered her sal-volatile and called her "my poor dear;" Augusta put her arms around her neck; Allen fanned her gently, and Lord Hardy asked what he could do, while Mr. Browne said it was "plaguey hard on her, but somebody must go and see to them confounded ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... readers of these pages may remember a previous chronicle by the same historian wherein it was recorded that the volatile spirit of Mr. Hamlin, slightly assisted by circumstances, passed beyond these voices at the Ranch of the Blessed Fisherman, some two years later. As the editor stood beside the body of his friend on the morning of the funeral, he noticed among the flowers ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... kilns in existence use heat to season timber; that is, to drive out that portion of the "sap" which is volatile. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... the other hand, there are the relatively volatile substances, such as phosgene, which can be used immediately before an attack. The chief sternutatory compound, diphenylchlorarsine, although not volatile, could also be used in this way, for, being a solid and in a very finely pulverised state, its presence on the ground was not a distinct ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... is a yellow oil which boils at 150deg C. and is readily volatile in steam. Benzene-azo-ethane, C6H5.N2.C2H5, is a yellow oil which boils at about 180deg C. with more or less decomposition. On standing with 60% sulphuric acid for some time, it is converted into the isomeric acetaldehyde-phenylhydrazone, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... volatile, yet noble-minded Belfield, to whose mutable and enterprising disposition life seemed always rather beginning than progressive, roved from employment to employment, and from public life to retirement, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... from a hair-like prolongation of the receptacle known as the gynophore. Each half fruit (mericarp) is tipped by a persistent style, and marked by vertical ribs, between or under which lie, in many genera, the oil tubes or vittae. These are channels containing aromatic and volatile oil. In examination the botanist makes delicate cross sections of these fruits under a dissecting microscope, and by the shape of the fruit and seed within, and by the number and position of the ribs and oil tubes, is able to locate the genus. It, of course, requires skill and experience ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... morasses; the petroleum seems to have been separated and condensed again in superior strata, and a still finer kind of oil, as naphtha, has probably had the same origin. Some of these liquid oils have again lost their more volatile parts, and become cannel-coal, asphaltum, jet, and amber, according to the purity of the original fossil oil. Dr. Priestley has shewn, that essential oils long exposed to the atmosphere absorb both the vital and phlogistic ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the butterfly that tempted her on from flower to flower. My brother Henry was two years younger than myself, and was at the time I speak of a remarkably handsome, active boy, of ten years of age—full of fun and mischief, unsteady and volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... a purer man, who acted more conscientiously and persistently within his smaller range of life and thought. It would have been inconsistent with Mr. Choate's nature for him to have been "wrong-headed" in any direction. Such largeness of view, such dramatic and interpretative imagination, such volatile play of thought and fancy, and such perception of the pettiness and hollowness of nearly all the aims and ambitions of daily life we cannot expect to find coexisting with the coarser "blood-sympathies," the direct passion, and the dogged and tenacious hold of temporary and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... exile, the once gay, volatile Miss Milner lay dying with but one request to make—that her daughter should not suffer for her sin. Sandford was with her; by all the influence he ever had over Lord Elmwood, by his prayers, by his tears, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... years before he ever came to live there—and he repaired it and cleaned it out, because he thought it might come in useful some day, in case of trouble or danger; and he showed it to me. 'Don't let my son know about it,' he said. 'He's a good boy, but very light and volatile in character, and simply cannot hold his tongue. If he's ever in a real fix, and it would be of use to him, you may tell him about the ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... Purity to the Writers of a neighbouring Nation; which now shall have an Opportunity to receive English Bullion in Exchange for its own Dross, which has so long passed current among us in Pieces abounding with all the Levities of its volatile Inhabitants.} The reigning Depravity of the Times has yet left Virtue many Votaries. Of their Protection you need not despair. May every head-strong Libertine whose Hands you reach, be reclaimed; and every tempted Virgin who reads you, imitate the Virtue, and meet the ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... the equilibrium of gases at high temperatures in furnaces and gas producers. The investigations also bear directly on the coking processes, especially the by-product process, as showing the varying proportion of each of the volatile products derivable from types of coals occurring in the various coal fields of the United States, the time and temperature at which these distillates are given off, the variation in quality and quantity ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... be calm,' exclaimed Lady Armine. 'This is most unfortunate. Dear, dear Katherine, but she has such a heart! All the women have in our family, and none of the men, 'tis so odd. Mr. Glastonbury, water if you please, that glass of water; sal volatile; where is the sal volatile? My own, own Katherine, pray, pray restrain yourself! Ferdinand is here; remember, Ferdinand is here, and he will soon be well; soon quite well. Believe me, he is already quite another thing. There, drink that, darling, drink ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shone In Aaron's breast-plate, and a stone besides Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seen, That stone, or like to that which here below Philosophers in vain so long have sought, In vain, though by their powerful art they bind Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, Drained through a limbeck to his native form. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth Elixir pure, and rivers run Potable gold, when with one virtuous touch The arch-chemick sun, so ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... persons are barren and useless. If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are transmitted[107] by tradition. We know how few can pourtray a living acquaintance, except by his most prominent and observable particularities, and the grosser features of his mind; and it may be easily imagined how much of this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Pekah, conscious of his inability to suppress the rebellion, called in Rezin to help him. The latter was already on the way when Jotham was laid with his fathers (736 B.C.), and it was Ahaz, the son of Jotham, who had to bear the brant of the assault. He was barely twenty years old, a volatile, presumptuous, and daring youth, who was not much dismayed by his position.** Jotham had repaired the fortifications of Jerusalem, which had been left in a lamentable state ever since the damage done to them in the reign of Amaziah;*** ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... in the fish business, but it is not monumental; it will not live after him in memorial grandeur, and the business itself is far from imposing—the phosphate of ammonia and its volatile allies passing even from the recollection of reminiscent contemporaries. The people with rare collections to sell work among that class of trade represented by Tescheron, a man with money seeking ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... the macrocosm, returned to his chamber, put on kid gloves, and from the odds and ends of his dishevelled wits wrote at a gallop, without ever looking back, his "Mysteres de Paris." The latter lived in an attic year after year, contemplated with cheerful anxiety the volatile world of France and the perplexed life of man, and elaborated word by word, with innumerable revisions, his short songs, which are gems of poetry, charming at once the ear and the heart. Novels are perhaps too easily written ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various |
