"Instantaneous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... near the top he may capture the burrowing ant-eating porcupine, though if perchance he place it for a moment in the stoniest ground, it will tax all his strength to drag it from the instantaneous burrow in which it will ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the tiger was instantaneous and astounding. With a demi-volt or backward somersault it hurled itself into the jungle whence it had come with a terrific roar of alarm, and its tail—undoubtedly though ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... use of the papyrus had undoubtedly much effect upon the formation of prose composition in Greece, but it was by no means an instantaneous one. At the period on which we now enter (about B. C. 600), the first recorded prose Grecian writer had not composed his works. The wide interval between prose in its commencement and poetry in its perfection is peculiarly Grecian; many causes conspired to produce it, but the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unlike anything I had ever heard, was, nevertheless, significant of the nature of the catastrophe. I felt an instantaneous conviction that the boilers had burst, and such ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... sir, if you please?" A dainty little native touch in this turn of speech, and in its tone, made it perfectly captivating, thought George Vendale, when again he noticed an instantaneous glance towards Madame Dor. A caution seemed to be conveyed in it, rapid flash though it was; so he quietly took heed of Madame Dor from ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... from Sieber-Mason's. The Man from Nome looked and saw, first, that she was supremely beautiful after his own conception of beauty; and next, that she moved with exactly the steady grace of a dog sled on a level crust of snow. His third sensation was an instantaneous conviction that he desired her greatly for his own. This quickly do men from Nome make up their minds. Besides, he was going back to the North in a short time, and to act quickly ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... is on. Athanase Georgevitch himself was not brilliant, and his sanguine face had quite changed, as though he had difficulty in digesting his last masterpiece with knife and fork. But, in justice to them, that was the first instantaneous effect. No one could learn like that, all of a sudden, that they were about to die in an indiscriminate slaughter without the heart being stopped for a little. Ermolai's words had turned these amiable loafers into waxen statues, but, little by little, their hearts commenced to beat again and ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... so terrifying that I stopped with chilled blood and beating heart, gripping my knife-hilt and peering forward into the dark as frightened as ever I was in my life. I heard Burns gasp and half turn; then, before I could move, even had I dared venture such a thing, an instantaneous flash lit up the black interior. I caught one confused glimpse of a huge object, topped with a head of tumbled hair, of two flapping wings stretching out upon either side, and then the impenetrable curtain of the dark hid everything once more. Sweat bathed me in cold drops; ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... originality of genius to which the conqueror of Marengo might have vailed, that the neck of the foe was the point at which the first fatal shaft of his excommunicating ire should be hurled. With rapid and decisive energy he concentrated all his powers for instantaneous action. He retired for a day to the seclusion of solitude, to summon and to spur the energies of the most self-reliant mind in Europe, as the lion draws back to gather courage for the leap. As, like the lion, he drew back; so, like the lion, did he spring forward ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... snarled and roared among the trees. The rain drove at her in maddened sheets, found every opening in her raincoat, and soon she was as wet as though dropped in the river yonder. The night was as black as the interior of a camera, save when—as by the opening of a snapshot shutter—an instantaneous view of the valley was fixed on Katherine's startled brain by the lightning ripping in fiery fissures down the sky. Then she saw the willows bending and whipping in the wind, saw the gnarled old sycamores ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... by the Deity to be a source of delight; and whether seen perpetually over your head, or crystallized once in a thousand years into a single and incomparable stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty is equally natural, simple, and instantaneous. Pardon me for engaging you in a metaphysical discussion; for it is necessary to the establishment of some of the greatest of all architectural principles that I should fully convince you of this great truth, and ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... the University, and carried some of my best friends from my side; and, concurrently with this disturbance, an American teacher attacked our faith from the opposite quarter. He taught an absolute disregard of all forms and rites, and, not content with the ordinary doctrine of instantaneous conversion, preached the absolute sinlessness of the believer. The movement which, in 1874, he set on foot was marked by disasters, of which the nature can best be inferred from a characteristic saying, "The believer's conflict with ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... secured instantaneous success. Siegfried Sassoon, on its publication, became one of the leading young poets of England. The book begins with the long monologue of a retired huntsman, a piece of remarkable characterisation. It continues ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... life is composed of feelings which Western theology never could explain. Such are those which cause the still speechless infant to cry at the sight of certain faces, or to smile at the sight of others. Such are those instantaneous likes or dislikes experienced on meeting strangers, those repulsions or attractions called "first impressions," which intelligent children are prone to announce with alarming frankness, despite all assurance that "people must not be judged by appearances": a doctrine no child in his heart believes. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... an instantaneous response. His mail required the exclusive attention of several clerks. The stream of gold became a rushing torrent. Every Monday morning the Floyd Street house was crowded with depositors who drew their interest, added to it, deposited it again, and went upon their way rejoicing. Nobody ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... later, M. de Camors, not seeing her in the salon, became uneasy. She saw him, as he entered the conservatory, in one of those instantaneous glances by which women contrive to see without looking. She pretended to be examining the flowers, and by a strong effort of will dried her tears. Her husband advanced ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... industry, I went round and assisted the caracoling producer in stemming the crowd. Among others I stemmed a pushful policeman. I didn't notice he was a policeman until he was biting the dust, with my stick between his legs. However an instantaneous application of palm-oil made it all right between us, and he squatted half-stunned on the kerb, nursing his brow with one hand, my five bob with the other and took no further interest in the proceedings. And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... said. "Bergman will appreciate the boost for one of his girls. Help yourself to those you want. If you need any more stuff I'll supply it. Blushing country lass just out of the alfalfa belt—first appearance on any stage—instantaneous hit, and a record for pulchritude in an aggregation where the homeliest member is a Helen of Troy. Every appearance a riot; stage-door Johns standing on their heads; members of our best families dying to lead ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... his comrades fly; "Make way for Liberty!" they cry, And through the Austrian phalanx dart, As rushed the spears through Arnold's heart; While, instantaneous as his fall, Rout, ruin, panic, scattered all: An earthquake could not overthrow A ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... Lennop's nerveless hand and he sat staring at it where it lay. He picked it up and read the last paragraph, for his dazed brain had not yet grasped its meaning. But when its entire significance was made clear to him it came with a rush: it was like the instantaneous effect of some powerful drug or stimulant that turned the blood to fire and crazed the brain. The blind rage which made the room swing round was like the frenzy of insanity. Van Lennop's face went crimson and oaths that never had passed his lips ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... said to be the instantaneous, ready appreciation of the fitness of things. To most of us who may regret the want of it in ourselves, it seems to be the instinct of the fortunate few. Some women look as if they had simply blossomed out of their inner consciousness into a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... wherever it was that most of him lived with the stiff repeating ache of a nerve struck again and again by the same soft hammer, he couldn't help laughing a little. The popular college remedy for disprized love had always been an instantaneous mingling of conflicting alcohols—calling a large policeman a big blue boob seemed to produce the same desired result of bringing one to one's senses by first taking one completely out of them without the ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... at the most pathetic of gallops. Nor seemed indeed the beauteous lightning to regard at all that restless mote upon the cirque of its entranced fairness. In an instantaneous silence I heard a tiny beat of hoofs; in instantaneous gloom recognised almost with astonishment my own shape bowed upon the saddle. It was a majestic entry into a kingdom ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... shows, too, that the landmarks of civilization of the past are few and far between—distant mile-posts appearing at intervals of thousands of years. Such a contemplation gives us food for thought and should invite patience when we wish in modern times for social transformations to become instantaneous, like the flash of the scimitar or the burst of an ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... MOBILITY on land and water, and, more recently, in the air and, still more recently, in outer space. Easy and rapid movement, and almost instantaneous communication brought people together in towns and cities, built up trade in goods and services, increased speed of communications and enabled people living at a distance from one another to keep in close ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... headstrong, obstinate young animal grinning good-naturedly at her futile protests. How long would he grin and bear her suggestions with patience? The transition from this lazy grin to the growl of an angry bulldog might be instantaneous. ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... intervals, and at the moment at which they become most violent habit already causes them to be no longer felt. The advantages which freedom brings are only shown by length of time; and it is always easy to mistake the cause in which they originate. The advantages of equality are instantaneous, and they may constantly be traced from their source. Political liberty bestows exalted pleasures, from time to time, upon a certain number of citizens. Equality every day confers a number of small enjoyments ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back like ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Papers" attracted universal attention, and were still running when he moved to Young Street. Here he began more serious work, and scarcely a year later "Vanity Fair" was brought out in numbers, according to the fashion made popular by Dickens. It did not prove an instantaneous success, but by the time it had run its course its author's position was assured. In spite of the sorrow that overshadowed his domestic life—and he had by this time for many years given up any hope of communicating with his wife—the time he spent in this house cannot have ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... curiosity or suggests excitement or emotion will draw a crowd of readers the moment it appears, while a book soberly named must force its merits on the public. The former has all the advantage of a pretty girl over a plain one; it is given an instantaneous chance to prove itself worth while. A middle aged, unalluring title ('In Search of Quiet,' for instance) may frighten people away from what proves to be a mine of wit and human interest. A book headed by a man's name unmodified and uncommented ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... half a scruple of pulverized cochineal, sweeten it with loaf sugar, give an infant a tea-spoonful of this mixture four times a day, and a child four years old or upwards, a table-spoonful. In some cases the relief is instantaneous. ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... rotation of a solid body according to Poinsot's method, we have to consider the successive positions of the instantaneous axis of rotation with reference both to directions fixed in space and axes assumed in the moving body. The paths traced out by the pole of this axis on the invariable plane and on the central ellipsoid form interesting subjects of mathematical investigation. But when we attempt to follow with ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... that it will surely be ranked hereafter among the very highest works of modern art. If I find no fault in it, it is because I have none to find; because the first sight of the picture produced in me instantaneous content and confidence. There was nothing left to wish for, nothing to argue about. The thing was what it ought to be, and neither more nor less, and I could look on it, not as a critic, but as ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Lithograph Company calling for "copy," and, write as he might, he could not supply the biographies fast enough. He, at last, completed the first hundred, and so instantaneous was their success that Mr. Knapp called for a second hundred, and then for a third. Finding that one hand was not equal to the task, Edward offered his brother five dollars for each biography; he made the same offer to one or two journalists whom he knew and whose accuracy ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... of the horseman. He was not more than half a mile away now, but the view he obtained was so instantaneous that he could not ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... to strut and posture and externalize and inflate your art. For you were the virtuoso. You were the man whose entire being was pointed to achieve an effect. You were the man whose life is lived on the concert-platform, whose values are those of the concert-room, who finds his highest good in the instantaneous effect achieved by his performance. From childhood you were the idolized piano-virtuoso. All your days you were smothered in the adulation showered upon you in very tangible form by the great ladies of every capital of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... his hand for his glass, and, with a dull sigh, dropped on the table, in the instantaneous slumber of intoxication. Oaksmith soon fell back in his chair, breathing heavily. Kerplonne followed. And the heavy, stertorous breathing of Filomel told that she slumbered also; but still her chair retained its rocking motion, and still the bottle of souls balanced itself on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... above described suggests the key to the matter as well as the manner of speaking. The American audience properly demands, above everything else, that the speaker get to the point. Our lives are so rapid; the telephone, telegraph, and all the instantaneous agencies of our neurotically swift civilization have made us so quick in seeing through propositions; a hundred years of universal education have produced a mentality so electric in its rapidity, that effective oratory has ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... was transferred to the Conservative party, and towards the end of the general election of 1906 a picture of a Chinaman thrown suddenly on a lantern screen before a working-class audience would have aroused an instantaneous howl of indignation ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... too easily do I understand how natural instinct rebels against the evils that have fallen upon Catholic Belgium. The spontaneous thought of mankind is ever that virtue should have its instantaneous crown and injustice ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... have an action not successive but instantaneous; for the time of a picture is a single moment. For this reason, the death of Hercules cannot well be painted, though, at the first view, it flatters the imagination with very glittering ideas: the gloomy mountain, overhanging the sea, and covered with trees, some ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... mechanical contrivances has produced instruments by which, not only may extremely small intervals of time be exactly measured, but the varying rapidity of movements, which take place in such intervals and appear to the ordinary sense instantaneous, is recorded. The duration of the winking of an eye is a proverbial expression for an instantaneous action; but, by the help of the revolving cylinder and the electrical marking-apparatus, it is possible to obtain a graphic record of such an action, in ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... the altar which enclosed St. Gall's mortal remains was an instantaneous cure for toothache, diseased eyes, and total deafness; a vase used by the martyred Willabrod for bathing thrice a year, still holding its partially solidified water by divine invocation after her death, had great remedial energy in diverse ailments; the water ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... And when we reach the mind and soul, this mobility is found in its most developed form. Whether we regard its susceptibility to impressions, its lightning-like response even to influences the most impalpable and subtle, its power of instantaneous adjustment, or whether we regard the delicacy and variety of its moods, or its vast powers of growth, we are forced to recognize in this the most perfect capacity for change. This marvellous plasticity of mind contains at once the possibility and prophecy of its transformation. The soul, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... of this declaration is to place in the hands of the military authorities the power to give instantaneous effect to existing laws, and to supply such deficiencies as the conditions of war demand. But it is not intended to suspend the ordinary tribunals of the country, where the law will be administered by the civil officers in the usual manner and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... had moved rapidly for Adrian. Everybody was talking about his book; everybody was buying it. The rare phenomenon of the instantaneous success of a first book by an unknown author was occurring also in America. Golden opinions were being backed by golden cash. Adrian continued to draw on his publishers, who, fortunately for them, had an American house. Anticipating possible alluring proposals ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... in the past and will serve in the future as stepping-stones towards another kind of knowledge of which at present we only dream, and will lead us on to a renewed power of perception which again will not be the laborious product of thought but a direct and instantaneous intuition like that of the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... this strong coffee, and all will be well again," said Clayton, putting a cup of the smoking beverage to my lips, which I swallowed eagerly, instinctively. The effect was instantaneous, and I was able to speak and stand, as well as hear and comprehend, while my bonnet was being tied on, and my throat muffled in a veil, by the dexterous fingers of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... their way, and in that momentary flash her eyes encountered those of the man she had thus accused. Field stood like one turned suddenly to stone, gazing at her with wild, incredulous eyes. One instant she seemed to sway, as though the sight had staggered her, but the rally was as instantaneous. Before the general could interpose a ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... medical and otherwise that seemed to show beyond doubt the time and manner of his death and the possible motive of the murderer. The base of the skull was smashed in, evidently by some violent blow dealt from behind with a blunt heavy instrument of some sort, and death had probably been instantaneous. In one of the pockets was a first edition of an evening paper published in London on Thursday last, which fixed the earliest possible time at which the murder had been committed, while in the opinion of the doctor who examined the body late on Saturday night, ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... they partake of the same knowledge. In the hours of their own affliction they retain their courage and keep their minds unsoured. They are the sure-enough "good fellows" of life and their presence is the signal for instantaneous good cheer. We all know them by their gentle knock at the door. In a thousand ways they impress themselves upon our lives, have entered into our councils, have given us the right advice at the right time—and when the sad day comes along their strong shoulders ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... At seven the shrill "tweedledee" of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground bass from Elijah New, the parish clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... spasms. He was paralyzed. The experience lasted for seconds only. It was as if he'd flown into a searchlight beam which produced those sensations and then had flown out of it. He'd instinctively used evasive maneuvers and got away, but twice before he passed the horizon there were instantaneous flashes of the paralysis and the pain. Scientists determined that the report of the men who'd been paralyzed and released agreed with the report of the pilot. It was assumed that whatever or whoever had landed in Boulder Lake possessed a ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and maliciously causing the death of her late liege husband, Herbert de Montespan, by thrusting a long pin, or bodkin of gold into his right ear, well knowing that the same entering into his brain, would cause his instantaneous dissolution. Master Nicolais, it appeared, in sawing open the skull of the deceased with anatomical science and precision, had found a pin or Golden Bodkin like that described in the indictment, and like what were at this period much used by ladies in fastening up their hair, bearing the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... Collodion, for obtaining Instantaneous Views, and Portraits in from three to thirty ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... perspiration; or which discharge themselves into chalk-stones, which sometimes remain in their beds, sometimes make their passage outwardly? I have experienced all three. It may be objected, that the sometimes instantaneous removal of pain from one limb to another is too rapid for a current of chalk—true, but not for the humour before coagulated. As there is, evidently, too, a degree of wind mixed in the gout, may not that wind be impregnated ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... a tremendous bang, followed by an instantaneous yell. The children jumped nearly out of their own skins, and the little one on the window-sill fell flat on the ground in speechless horror; but the tooth was not yet out. The cord ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the men a second gazing up at the sky. Even the enemy paused to watch him. Then turning to the hill men who had wavered in the rear, he merely pointed his outstretched arm towards the enemy. The effect was instantaneous; they swept past the mercenaries, swept past Wilson, yelling and screaming like a horde of maniacs. They waved queer knives and spears, brandished rifles, and then, bending low, charged the frightened ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... that I could hear. I expected to have seen the infuriated buffalo among us. I peeped over the horse's back, and, to my delight and surprise, I saw the carcass of the bull lying within three feet of him. His head was pierced by the ball exactly between the horns, and death had been instantaneous. The horse, having reared to his full height, had entangled his hind legs in the grass, and he had fallen backwards without being touched by the buffalo, although the ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... not alarmed. The man who holds the ace of trumps has no need to be alarmed. His position was impregnable. The enemy was held in check by the locked door, while the other door offered an admirable and instantaneous way of escape. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... curved like a hook, carrying on its back an ample pouch or hunch, forming part of its alimentary canal. The reserve of excreta in this hunch enables it to seal accidental perforations of the shell of its lodging with an instantaneous jet of mortar. These sudden emissions, like little worm-casts, are also practised by the Scarabaeus, but the latter rarely ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... to see him rise with undiminished hauteur, and leave the room, disdaining further parley with one who had insulted him. Doubtless that is the way in which his master would have acted, but even in the underling I was unprepared for the instantaneous crumbling of this monument of pomp and pride. A few moments after I began to speak in terms as severe as his own, his trembling hands grasped the arms of the chair in which he sat, and his ever-widening eyes, which ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... music—the sound of the chief orchestra hinders the conductor from hearing that which is being performed at a distance from him, the intervention of a special conducting mechanism becomes indispensable, in order to establish instantaneous communication between him and the distant performers. Many attempts, more or less ingenious, have been made of this kind, the result of which has not everywhere answered expectations. That of Covent Garden Theatre, in London, moved by the conductor's foot, acts tolerably well. But ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... popular, and—not to put too fine a point of it—sell. His books have a regular market value, and this value increases rather than diminishes with years. This is, we confess, rather a suspicious circumstance. Did Milton sell? Did Wordsworth sell? Must not the fame that is instantaneous prove hollow and ephemeral? Are we not acquainted with a certain volume of poems that shall be nameless, the whole edition of which lies untouched and unclaimed on the publisher's shelves? And are we not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... The latest instantaneous system which acquired a certain degree of temporary popularity was that introduced from the western prairies, by Mr. Ellis, of Trinity College, Cambridge, which consisted in breathing into the nostrils of a colt, or buffalo colt, while its eyes ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... give the ship a line: the ball is fired from this mortar, the line being fastened to the shot by a spiral wire. Mortar, powder and matches are set, you see, ready for instantaneous use. The ball must be shot so that the line falls over the ship. Not an easy mark to hit in the night and the storm driving. Sometimes it is not done until after many trials: sometimes, as in the case of the Giovanni, it cannot be reached at all. I saw the Argyle go down eight years ago with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... report of a rapid-fire gun cut short his words. Another followed almost instantly, then came a regular volley. The effect on the crew of the "Yankee" was instantaneous. The men sleeping at the guns scrambled to their feet, hammocks were kicked out of the way, and before the word to go to general quarters was passed, every member of the crew ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... painted window on the silk coverlet; the same face, which had all the colourless reality of death, without any of its ghastliness—a smiling repose, such as is seen only at the beginning and end of life's tumult—in the cradle and in the coffin. Its effect upon Agatha was instantaneous. Her trembling ceased; she stepped lightly, as one does ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... composing words. But his honest face, always accustomed to tell the truth, told the truth now. The poor lost creature, whose feeble intelligence was so slow to discern, so inapt to reflect, looked at him with the heart's instantaneous perception, and saw her doom. She let go of his hand. Her head sank. Without word or cry, she dropped on ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... look natural on you, either. Do you suppose anybody believes that the Lord sent you hair in seventeen rows of pipes, so that, red as it is, it looks like an instantaneous water-heater?" ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... first report the pistol dropped from Ekstrom's grasp. He carried a hand vaguely to his throat, staggered a single step, uttered a strangled moan, and fell forward, his body fairly riddled, his death little short of instantaneous. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... other but do not melt into each other. Now and again, to be sure, this uncertainty, this very irregularity, powerfully represents the thought and emotion of the poem; but nevertheless there can be little doubt that except in the limited field of instantaneous flashes the most adequate and pleasing medium is the skilfully varied regularity ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... the poor old woman's locked and guarded sanctuary! He stooped to gather another lily, and offered the flowers to his father. Old Daniel looked at the lilies, but his unready hand did not move forward to take them; in fact, it seemed that he slightly shrank back. With an instantaneous flash of surprise Valentine felt rather than thought, "If you were dead, father, I would not decline to touch what you had loved." But in the meantime his uncle had put forth a hand and received them. "And yet," thought Valentine, "I know father must have felt that old lady's ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... trading-principle government, only renders, to a disinterested looker on, the old antipathies more apparent, I made an occasion, indirectly, to let our new associate understand that we came from the other side of the Atlantic. This produced an instantaneous change in his manner, and it was now that he began to favour us with specimens of his humour. Notwithstanding all this facetiousness, I soon felt suspicion that the man was an employe of the Carlists, and that his business in Switzerland was connected with political plots. He ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The instantaneous banging of a shutter in one of its windows proved the room to be the very one which we had seen lighted from below. Otherwise all was still; nor was I able to detect, in my first hurried glance, any ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... was instantaneous. The girl's heart warmed; then she flashed him a smile of sympathy and understanding. "Forgive me," she said. "I'll try to be brave. I'll try to stiffen up. I know you'll do everything you can to get me out. You're so good to me—so kind. And now—I only ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... diminish my nervousness; but upon my entering the assembly hall, where my young friends were gathered together awaiting my coming, all sense of trepidation vanished, so spontaneous and uproarious was their greeting. The chorus of lusty young voices raised in instantaneous cheering was to me sufficient reward for all the pains to which I had been put. One and all, they manifested the deepest interest in the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... small a pain must that be! Yet I think that it is false; and that it is very often unaccompanied by any sensation at all, and sometimes even attended with pleasure: but certainly the whole must be very trifling, whatever it is, for it is instantaneous. What makes us uneasy, or rather gives us pain, is the leaving all the good things of life. But just consider, if I might not more properly say, leaving the evils of life; only there is no reason for my now occupying myself in bewailing the life of man, and yet I might, with very good reason; but ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the hour to enter it. But the nightshade of his friend's listlessness seemed to be diffusing in the air around him a tenuous and deadly exhalation and He found himself glancing from one casual word to another on his right or left in stolid wonder that they had been so silently emptied of instantaneous sense until every mean shop legend bound his mind like the words of a spell and his soul shrivelled up sighing with age as he walked on in a lane among heaps of dead language. His own consciousness of language was ebbing from his brain and trickling into the very words themselves which set to ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... their complete twin-ship, always blended them—were aware of this disfiguring habit, but relegated the curing of it to the day of their future prosperity. They couldn't afford glasses now, they said. They'd rather put their money into books. This according and instantaneous grimace Lydia found engaging. She could not possibly help hiring them, and they appeared again that night with two battered tin boxes and took up ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... to the beautiful itself—at least not to any sensible manifestation of it—but to that unseen original of which material beauty is the type. From this admiration, this new-awakened recollection, and this instantaneous inspiration, spring all higher knowledge and truth. These are not the product of cold, leisurely, and voluntary reflection, but occupy at once a station far superior to what either thought, or art, or speculation, can attain; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... belongs to Nature. The end of, man is to enter into union more and more complete with the active intellect—reason. In that the happiness of the soul consists. Our destiny is quietude. It was the opinion of Averroes that the transition from the individual to the universal is instantaneous at death, but the Buddhists maintain that human personality continues in a declining manner for a certain term before ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... humanity of any epoch, but less unsatisfactorily representing our own fashions than those of a hundred years ago. Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old times, would have been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ourselves, only in the sense that we meet the required conditions. It is impossible for us to grow into purity. This is beyond our individual power; it requires the power of God. We purify ourselves by making the separation of everything outwardly; God then purifies our hearts by an instantaneous work of grace. This grace by no means implies a maturity in growth. It only brings us into a position where we can the more rapidly grow up in ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! The whole swarm fainted! their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... require an hour, or two or three hours, to transmit a telegraphic message to a distant city, yet it is the mechanical adjustment by the sender and receiver which really absorbs this time; the actual transit is practically instantaneous, and so it would be from here to China, so far as the current itself ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... instantaneous. A little earlier, a messenger sent out by Gaudin, afterwards Duke of Gaeta and Napoleon's trusted finance minister, reported that he had found Robespierre triumphing and receiving congratulations. Even in ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... diseased parts with the hand had before been proclaimed by Dr Greatorex, whose pretensions had no less an advocate than the Honourable Robert Boyle. The extraordinary tales of Mesmer's immediate and instantaneous personal power over individuals are probably part exaggeration, part the real result of his confidence and practice in the use of the means he wielded. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... as the Child Sir Lancelot. But Mr. Wilson himself, dastard but eloquent foe of Harold Ramorez, could not have expressed, with all the vile dashes at his command, the sentiments which animated Penrod's bosom when the instantaneous and unalterable conviction descended upon him that he was intended by his loved ones to make a public spectacle of himself in his sister's stockings and part of an old ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... a crayon from life undoubtably requires considerable talent and some education as an artist; but photography, in recent times, has made such advances from the old fashioned daguerreotype to the dry plate process and instantaneous exposure, and such developments have recently been made in the field of enlargements and in photographic papers, that it is now possible for anyone, who will carefully follow the plain instructions given in the following pages, to ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... made a mental note of our location, as they returned the same evening and dropped several bombs, though, strange to say, no damage was effected. However, towards midnight, a 4.2 battery suddenly opened fire with instantaneous fuse action, and many casualties were inflicted before the horses could be removed, owing to difficulties ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... possible the release and the channeling of the primordial inner energies of man into full and divine expression. The removal of these inhibitions, so scientists assure us, makes possible more rapid and profound perceptions,—so rapid indeed that they seem to the ordinary human being, practically instantaneous, or intuitive. The qualities of genius are not, therefore, qualities lacking in the common reservoir of humanity, but rather the unimpeded release and direction of powers latent in all of us. This process of course ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... human figure spoke the single word that brought his team to an instantaneous dead stop. His first care was then the woman, next the man clinging to the front seat, then the oxen. Before starting he clambered to the top of the wagon and cast a long, calculating look across the desolation ahead. Twice he even further reduced the meagre contents of the wagon, appraising each ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the rush of water which seemed to hurry us on at almost railroad speed, he could stop for an instant, work directly sideways, shoot forward at a slant, swing either his bow or his stern. An error in judgment or in the instantaneous acting upon it meant a hit; and a hit in these savage North Country Rivers meant destruction. How my man kept in his mind the passage he had planned during his momentary inspection was always to me a miracle. How he got so unruly a beast as the birch canoe to follow it in that tearing volume of ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... adjusted on the said knife, and then a slight turn of the wrist, and presto—it disappeared. As the performer's mouth was nowhere near, what had become of the greasy mass at first puzzled me, but watching closely, for the sleight-of-hand was marvellous and the passage between knife and mouth instantaneous, I ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... possession which meant so much to them in power and wealth. Finally, it was unfortunately true in the eighteenth century, as it is in the twentieth, that an argument of right and justice, based upon Christianity, did not have instantaneous effect upon professing Christians. But Woolman seemed divinely inspired to perform his mission. He travelled extensively and never hesitated to approach Friends on the subject of slavery.[188] At the Yearly Meeting for 1759, he was gratified to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... went to bed about half-past eleven, just as usual. No one knows when he got up and left the house. He was not missed until this morning. About ten o'clock his body was found by a gardener. It was lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the head, through the left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The body was not robbed, but there were marks on the wrists which pointed to a struggle having taken place. Dr. Stock, of Marlstone, was at once sent for, and will conduct the post-mortem examination. The police from Bishopsbridge, who were soon on the spot, are reticent, ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Governor's nephew had been her most ardent admirer, notwithstanding the fact that he had been in Virginia but sixty days. His surrender had been instantaneous. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... thread, to which the thread that he had so long held in his hand—the hereditary thread that ancestor after ancestor had handed down—might seem ready to join on. He felt as if they were the two points of an electric chain, which being joined, an instantaneous effect must follow. Earnestly, as he would have looked forward to this moment (had he in sober reason ever put any real weight on the fantasy in pursuit of which he had wandered so far) he now, that it actually appeared ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the beads were all unheeded; the playthings which were offered to her were utterly disregarded; her playmates, for whom but a moment before she gladly left the stranger, now vainly strove to pull her from her mother; and though she yielded her usual instantaneous obedience to my signal to follow me, it was evidently with painful reluctance. She clung close to me, as if bewildered and fearful; and when, after a moment, I took her to her mother, she sprang to her arms, and clung to her ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... consent to a month of very hard work. You would have to learn a little elementary juggling. You would have to give me instantaneous replies in act and speech. But if you would give yourself up to me I could ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... With 10 Plates, 39 Illustrations in the in the Text, and from Instantaneous Photographs, and 4 Maps of the Rowing Courses at Oxford, Cambridge, Henley, and Putney. ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... reached the hill summit beyond the coulee, Helen Messiter was aware that a rider in ungainly chaps of white wool was rapidly approaching. He dipped down into the next depression without seeing her; and when they came face to face at the top of the rise the result was instantaneous. His pony did an animated two-step not on the programme. It took one glance at the diabolical machine, and went up on its hind legs, preliminary to giving an elaborate exhibition of pitching. The rider indulged in ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... use of her right arm, in consequence of a dislocation, suddenly felt it restored to its original state, and swinging round the once paralyzed limb, she exclaimed, in a transport of joy and gratitude, 'And I also am cured!' A third cure, although not instantaneous, is not the less striking. Another woman, known in the country for years as being paralytic, could not ascend the mountain but with the greatest difficulty, and with the aid of crutches. On the first day of the neuvane, that of her arrival, she felt a sensation as if life was coming ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... up, and immediately the liquid was filled with a million sparks of fire. It was the aqua tofana undiluted by mercy, instantaneous in its effect, and not medicable by any antidote. Once administered, there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of that bright water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, would shrivel him up ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... measures should be regarded as a permanent settlement. In 1852, the Democrats, assembled in national conventions at Baltimore, indorsed them in their platform. So did the Whigs; and Rufus Choate, their convention orator, was excusable for his hyperbole when he described "with what instantaneous and mighty charm they calmed the madness and anxiety ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... simple, rather old-fashioned dress evolved for her by the combined geniuses of Maria Pinckney and Madame Organdie, produced that sensation which can only be evoked by newness, her effect was instantaneous and profound, it touched not only every one of these strangers but also Maria Pinckney and Richard. They had come with her, but it was only in the ballroom that they recognised with whom they ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... an only surviving brother who was killed in fighting, and whose death was instantaneous. She was exceedingly distressed, and observed, in reference to this awful circumstance, "I should not have thought of his soul after death, at one time; but now I can read my Testament, I am sure that none can go to heaven but those who are born again." And she made ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... in never ceasing prayer, to wholly emancipate him from the control of the evil habit. The Lord will surely hear it. He can as truly deliver the body from the most persistent and enchaining habit, as he can wholly convert the mind and heart. The result is not always instantaneous; more often gradual, but always sure if ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... An instantaneous hush falls upon the assembly; the very fans drop silently into their owners' laps; not a whisper can be heard. The opening chords are played by some one, and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... and successful mode" of treating lumbago, advocated by Dr. Day, is a form of counter-irritation, said to have been introduced into this country by the late Sir Anthony Carlisle, and which consists in the instantaneous application of a flat iron button, gently heated in a spirit-lamp, to the skin. Dr. Corrigan published, about three years ago, an account of some cases very successfully treated by nearly similar means. Dr. Corrigan's plan was, however, to touch the surface of the part affected, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... and unmoved, as Centeno's rapidly advanced; but when the latter had arrived within a hundred paces of their antagonists, Carbajal gave the word to fire. An instantaneous volley ran along the line, and a tempest of balls was poured into the ranks of the assailants, with such unerring aim, that more than a hundred fell dead on the field, while a still greater number were ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... preserve my puir bairn!" was the instantaneous and instinctive exclamation of the agonized and now demented mother, springing at the same time from her couch, and catching up her child with a look of the most despairing alarm. A cloud of darkened feeling seemed to pass over the face and features of the infant,[*] and a cry of helpless ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... obliged to live in the bush, and rarely show his face, except to attack a train, that petty knaves were always awed when one of the fierce rovers of the prairies made his appearance and condescended to speak. The doorkeeper's manners underwent an instantaneous change, and from the fierce bully he softened ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... learned about the "demonstration" he went to the statue and from there immediately to the Foreign Office, where he saw Secretary of State von Jagow. Gerard demanded instantaneous removal of the wreath. Von Jagow promised an "investigation." Gerard meanwhile began a personal investigation of the League of Truth, which had purchased and placed ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... still before them and obscured their silent, headlong transaction. Now, thinning as they dropped below the corner of the wall, it left them naked to their enemies on the knoll. At the same instant, from the marsh ahead, the sentinel in the round hat sprang up again, like an instantaneous mushroom. He shouted, and waved to ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... it was no use. My face was deep in the pillow, but I made sounds as of a hen who has laid an egg. It broke on the Doctor with a total instantaneous smash, quite like ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... his words was instantaneous. Almost as he spoke, the creature crouched for a spring. There was wild hatred in its close-set eyes, the snarl of something fiend-like in its contorted mouth. Quest ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... morning when he fell asleep. And no wonder! In the blast of that instantaneous summer hurricane, he had almost as instantaneously felt, not that Gemma was lovely, not that he liked her—that he had known before ... but that he almost ... loved her! As suddenly as that blast of wind, had love pounced down upon him. And then this senseless duel! He began to be tormented by mournful ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev |
