"Volatile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a volatile humour, too—fidgets; denies fidgeting; reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum chimney—no wonder my work's rotten! Besides, she's in a tub of water, wearing that suit of fish-scales I had ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... were perfectly clear and perfectly intolerable. When a point was reached at which one half the girls of each generation were rendered invalids for life, and the other half protected only by a dense stupidity or volatile idleness which no school punishments could overcome, the Equalists were driven from one untenable point to another, and forced at last to demand a reduction of the masculine standard of education to the level of feminine ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... here into any but a brief and general description of the craft. The Wondership, then, was a combination of dirigible balloon, automobile and boat. Her motive power was furnished by engines driven by an explosive volatile gas which was also used when occasion arose to inflate the bag of the balloon feature of her design. The gas was generated in the lower part of the ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... gas had been light and volatile. It caused terrible suffering to those caught by it, but it did not hover long over any given place and a gust of wind was ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... and Horsa English history really begins, for Caesar's capture of the British Isles was of slight importance viewed in the light of fast-receding centuries. There is little to-day in the English character to remind one of Caesar, who was a volatile and epileptic emperor with ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... to the education of both the young men, otherwise as excellent as the best teachers could render it, something of a narrow and restricted character; but though the disposition of the young Earl was lighter and more volatile than that of Julian, both the one and the other had profited, in a considerable degree, by the opportunities afforded them. It was Lady Derby's strict injunction to her son, now returning from the continent, that he should not appear at the Court of Charles. But having been for some time ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... process of the vinous and acetous stages of fermentation, are interesting, beyond comparison, to the brewer, malt and molasses distillers, vintager, cider and vinegar maker, &c. The elastic fluids and volatile principles that are extricated and escape, formerly so little attended to, are now better understood. The method of commodiously saving, and advantageously applying them, and other volatile products, to the improvement of the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... moments such as these that Frances Freeland was herself. Her face flushed a little and grew terribly determined. Conscious that she was absolutely alone in the house, she ran to her bag, took out her sal volatile, applied it vigorously to his nose, and poured a little between his lips. She did other things to him, and not until she had brought him round, and the best of it was already made, did she even say to herself: 'It's no use fussing; I must make the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "simply gives a runaway rap at a man's head." Dr. Druitt, equally distinguished by his studies upon wine and his standing as a physician, pronounces good champagne to be "a true stimulant to body and mind alike, rapid, volatile, transitory, and harmless. Amongst the maladies which are benefited by it," remarks he, "is the true neuralgia, intermitting fits of excruciating pain running along certain nerves, without inflammation of the affected ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... to Elsie and said, "I think as how the missis wants some sal volatile; she looks a bit faint—she don't ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... a complication of jealousies and quarrels. [72] Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but, though they held the same political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile, dissipated, and generous. The wits of that time laughed at the way in which he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress, politics, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... since I 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 than fall for ever, O Jove-nurtured, from ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... camphorated sal volatile in a small wine-glassful of hot water, taken several times in the course of ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... in the South. As he finished, Bertrand himself came in, and was introduced formally to his Kentucky cousin. Harry would have taken him for a Frenchman, and he was, in very truth, largely of French blood. His black eyes and hair, his swarthy complexion, gleaming white teeth and quick, volatile manner showed a descendant of France who had come from the ancient soil by way of Hayti, and the great negro rebellion to the coast of South Carolina. He seemed strange and foreign to Harry, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had sat beside him, holding, almost unconsciously, his burning hand in hers. Often she bathed his temples with sal-volatile and water, but so deep were his slumbers, so blessed was the perfect cessation from mental misery, that he continued to sleep until the sun disappeared behind the oak hills, and then, with a deep sigh, he once more awoke to a painful consciousness ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... 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 Indian nature of Juarez. It remained ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... strange disposition, as they had already found out. With all her volatile gaiety, when she chose to say, "I will!" she was as firm as a rock. No persuasions—no commands—could move her. In this case none were tried. Her fortunes seemed to arrange themselves; for Mrs. Fludyer, coming in one day to make the final arrangements for the Rothesays' arrival ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... quantities: also, that owing to the immense number of organic beings on the earth, their daily death and decomposition, an enormous amount of gases is produced similar to those which can be obtained by artificial means; and besides these, a quantity of gaseous or volatile products, 'whose chemical nature,' as the author observes, 'is as yet unknown, but of which we can easily admit that some, at least, diffused through the air, even in very small quantities, and breathed with it, exert a most deplorable action on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... off rain; and he puffs in the direction from which the rain threatens to come, holding in his hand a packet of leaves and bark which derive a similar cloud-compelling virtue, not from their chemical composition, but from their names, which happen to signify something dry or volatile. If clouds should appear in the sky while he is at work, he takes lime in the hollow of his hand and blows it towards them. The lime, being so very dry, is obviously well adapted to disperse the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Vance Cheney had in mind another species when he composed the following metrical description, but it aptly characterized the volatile broad-tail as well: ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... myself in procuring words for an incipient vocabulary. My principal informant was called Wadai, a little withered old man with shaved head, on which someone had stuck a red night-cap which greatly took his fancy. Not being of so volatile a nature as the others he remained patiently with me for ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... a small phial containing spirits of hartshorn, sal volatile, very strong, that would stab through the nostrils, like a stiletto, deep into the gray kernels that lie in the core of the brain. Excellent in cases of sudden syncope or fainting, such as sometimes ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stiffened, and the moment had gone never to come back. In after years, when Annie had magnified it to herself and him, accusing him of throwing her love back in her face when she had offered it, he was wont to reproach himself bitterly. But Annie was so volatile in emotion, except where Archelaus was concerned, that her new flow would, in all likelihood, not have held its course for more than a few weeks at the best. Ishmael knew this, but Annie, by dint of telling herself the contrary, never did. The awkwardness of the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... however, academies 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 of Amelot's translation ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... illustrating the formation of dew is the production of a deposit of moisture, in minute drops, upon the exterior surface of a glass or polished metal vessel by the cooling of a liquid contained in the vessel. If the liquid is water, it can be cooled by pieces of ice; if volatile like ether, by bubbling air through it. No deposit is formed by this process until the temperature is reduced to a point which, from that circumstance, has received a special name, although it depends upon the state ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... agree on delimiting 80% of their common border, leaving certain small, strategic segments and the maritime boundary unresolved; OSCE observers monitor volatile areas such as the Pankisi Gorge in the Akhmeti region and the Argun Gorge in Abkhazia; UN Observer Mission in Georgia has maintained a peacekeeping force in Georgia since 1993; Meshkheti Turks scattered throughout the former Soviet Union ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... reader wishes to know if certain men whose names he has seen and whose reputations he knows took part in these amusements! He may be sure that the "Professor" (Dana) was there, for those charming black eyes and raven hair, and the quick, nervous, volatile, lovely owner of them, with her southern accent, was there to charm him. And he may be sure that the "Poet" (Dwight) was there, for the man of music and song could not despise the poetry of motion, neither ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... 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
... be now. The volatile bridegroom had upset the wisely conceived plan, and "all the fat was in the fire," as Margaret philosophically put it. Mr. O'Rourke had been fully instructed in the part he was to play, and, to do him justice, had honestly intended to play it; but destiny was against him. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... rise, swim, be buoyed up. render light &c. adj.; lighten, leaven. Adj. light, subtile, airy; imponderous[obs3], imponderable; astatic[obs3], weightless, ethereal, sublimated; gossamery; suberose[obs3], suberous[obs3]; uncompressed, volatile; buoyant, floating &c. v.; portable. light as a feather, light as a thistle, light as air; lighter than air; rise like a balloon, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... about in quaint attitudes, to do duty as tray-holders or match-boxes. Lizards make good paper-weights, and wide-mouthed frogs are converted into small jugs with perfect ease. There is evidently a peculiar charm possessed by the grotesque, which appeals to, and is gladly accepted by, our volatile neighbours. We are ashamed to laugh at a child-like absurdity, and take it to our hearts with the thorough delight which they do not scruple to display. In this we more resemble the Germans, and, like them, we have a sombre element ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... leisure to analyse, but, not understanding it, never got very far, except that, superficially, it had been more or less physical. From the moment he saw her he was conscious that she was different; insensibly the exquisitely volatile charm of her enveloped him, and he betrayed it, awaking her, first, to uneasy self-consciousness; then uneasy consciousness of him; then, imperceptibly, through distrust, alarm, and a thousand inexplicable psychological emotions, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... with that resolute light in his eyes, that resolute compression of his lips, turned and walked up-stairs. It was an unusually lengthy, and unusually grave speech for him, and his volatile sister was duly impressed. She shrugged her shoulders, and went ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... now changed by the fermentation; it contains no longer the same principles, but has acquired those which it had not, which are volatile, and evaporate easily. They must therefore be managed carefully, in order not to lose the fruits of an already tedious labor. The spirit already created in the fermented liquor, must be collected by the distillation; but in transporting it to the still, the ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... found the following substances in the bark of the Champana: a volatile oil with a pine-like odor; a fixed oil, insoluble in alcohol, melting at 15 and forming soap with soda; a resin extremely bitter, acrid, brown in color; tannin; sugar; a bitter principle, albuminoids, coloring ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... illuminating oil, "Standard Oil" had early become familiar with the problems of supplying large communities—cities—with gas light; and with the advent of water-gas, as sellers of petroleum they controlled an important factor in the production of that volatile commodity. All the talent of the "System," trained in "handling" municipal authorities, came into play in this big new business of lighting cities—a business which perforce became a monopoly as soon as the powerful tentacles grasping it were ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... illness, a kind neighbour, who had not only frequently come to see me, but had brought me many nourishing things, made by her own fair hands, took a great fancy to my second daughter, who, lively and volatile, could not be induced to remain quiet in the sick chamber. The noise she made greatly retarded my recovery, and Mrs. H—- took her home with her, as the only means of obtaining for me necessary rest. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... by caricature merely, as volatile, fickle, deceitful, full of artifice, should sit in judgment upon them. He has the least heart of all who thinks that there is not some heart everywhere! The charity which tarrieth long and suffereth much ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... ecclesiastical arrangements, sided of course with these impoverished and haughty lords; and, in a word, the first tumult of the restoration being over, the troops of the Allies withdrawn, and the memory of recent sufferings and disasters beginning to wax dim amidst the vainest and most volatile of nations, there were abundant elements of discontent afloat among all those classes who had originally approved of, or profited by, the revolution ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the local application of dilute alkalies such as ammonia water, solutions of carbonate or bicarbonate of soda, or sal-volatile. Weak carbolic lotions, or lead and opium lotion, are useful in allaying the local irritation. One of the best means of neutralising the poison is to apply to the sting a drop of a mixture containing equal parts of pure carbolic acid and ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... taste of the day lies in more direct caricature, and our volatile friend Punch does the needful in his wicked sallies of wit, and his fertile pencil. His sharp rubs are perhaps more effective to John Bull's temper, who can take a blow with Punch's truncheon and bear no malice after it,—the heavy lectures of the ancients are not so well suited ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when Aziza had led him out of the underground walls—the very bit of pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile creature had effected ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... was on Monday morning, when we made them into a dish very like gooseberry-fool; they had a very pleasant acid taste, and were very refreshing. They are of a light yellow colour, nearly round, and about half an inch in diameter; the volatile oil of the rind was not at ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... evil nature peers out sullenly and doggedly, or sparkles on you a pair of small snake-eyes, fruitful of deceit and cunning. The better boy, easily moved, that might become anything, mercurial and volatile, "most ignorant of what he's most assured," reflects on his face the pleasure of having his picture taken, and smiles good-humoredly, standing in this worst of pillories, to be pelted along a lifetime with unforgetting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... an expression of tragic fretfulness. It was the uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself unwatched. Hilda moved silently to descend, and then demanded in a low tone whose harsh self-possession was a reproof to that volatile creature, her mother: ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... trumpet, somebody—and stop the boat. You take that bottle, Neelie, my dear; and you take this one, Mr. Armadale; and give them to me as I want them. Ah, poor dear, I know what's the matter with him! Want of power here, major—cold, acid, and flabby. Ginger to warm him; soda to correct him; sal volatile to hold him up. There, Sammy! drink it before it settles; and then go and lie down, my dear, in that dog-kennel of a place they call the cabin. No more music!" added Mrs. Pentecost, shaking her forefinger at the proprietor of the concertina—"unless it's a hymn, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... sharp-eyed, spectacled; diminutive, warm-blooded, he is about the most animated priest we know of. He has English and Italian blood in his veins, and that vascular mixture works him up beautifully. No man could stand such an amalgam without being determined, volatile, practical, and at times dreamy; and you have all these qualities developed in Father Papall. He is 40 years of age, and has seen more foreign life than many priests. He has been in Italy, where he resided for years, in Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, America, &c.; and he has been ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... cent. solution; Perchloride of mercury, 0.1 per cent. solution; Carbolic acid, 5 per cent. solution; Absolute alcohol; Ether; Chloroform; Camphor; Thymol; Toluol; Volatile oils, such as oil of ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... his pile 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 to benefit mankind ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... bombardier-beetle, common in certain other countries, but also found in England, which if chased will discharge from its stern a puff of bluish-white smoke, accompanied by a slight detonation. It can fire many shots from its stern chasers. It is said that a highly volatile liquid is secreted by glands, which when it meets the air passes into vapour so suddenly as to produce ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... naughty, and said we must not suffer merit to think itself neglected. Clifton began to sing Britons strike home; which he soon changed to Rule Britannia: sure tokens that he was not pleased; for these are the tunes with which he always sings away his volatile choler. But one of the columns, on which I raise my system is a determination to persist in the right. Frank Henley was therefore invited, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... neglected by a nation proud of his genius, and by a court which he had served too well. His Grace consented to see poor Butler; and an appointment was made. But unhappily two pretty women passed by; the volatile Duke ran after them; the opportunity was lost, and could never ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... But the volatile lover, before receiving these answers, had added a fourth string to his bow of courtships, having decided to propose for the Princess Christina of Hesse. By this time he had spent on his threefold courtship vast sums of money and had gone far towards making himself ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... kept his eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix and command his gaze. A sort of languor next seized his frame, but without, as he thought, communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over him, he felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence. At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled through his veins. The languor increased, still he kept his gaze upon the star, and now its luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate. It became gradually ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... international agreements: party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulfur 85, Air Pollution-Sulfur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic-Marine Living Resources, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... saved and spend it in 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 her healthy ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... happy time at Truro for Hugh. Speaking generally, I should call him in those days a quick, inventive, active-minded child, entirely unsentimental; he was fond of trying his hand at various things, but he was impatient and volatile, would never take trouble, and as a consequence never did anything well. One would never have supposed, in those early days, that he was going to be so hard a worker, and still less such a worker as he afterwards ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... boisterous in denouncing the very idea. He impressed upon him the importance of his continuing at that crisis. He had not been President long enough to establish precedents for the new Nation. There were many volatile incidents which, if treated with less judgment than his, might do grievous harm. One wonders how sincere all the entreaties to Washington were, but one cannot doubt that the great majority of the country was perfectly sincere in wishing to have him continue; for it had sunk ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... different treatment: each suggested and verified by laborious experience and vigilant attention. In some cases the pure silver is separated by mechanical means; in others the ore is roasted, in order to throw off the sulphur, arsenic, and other volatile matters, which are separately collected and form no inconsiderable portion of the valuable produce of the mine. These roastings again are smelted with a variety of fluxes, and in different states of purification, until ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Reading what he had to say, I should know in a very few words, I was sure, the fate to which he looked forward. There would be no working up, no preamble, to prepare my mind. I wasn't strong enough to bear it. I should have to take Tony's letter first, like a dose of sal volatile. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... In some instances, however, these are not sufficiently available, especially is this true of potash. Gypsum or land plaster has been often used to correct this condition, and frequently with excellent results. It also aids in fixing volatile and escaping carbonates of ammonia, and conveys them to the roots of the clover plants. It is applied in the ground form by sowing it over the land, and more commonly just when the clover is beginning to grow. The application of 50 to 200 pounds per acre has in many instances ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... and presided over noontime feasts, served in several sittings, in the tent. Before the workers left in the evening, Aaron would give each a drink out back, scharifer cider, feeling that they'd steamed hard enough to earn a sip of something volatile. There are matters, he mused, in which common sense can blink at a bishop; as in secretly trimming one's beard a bit, for example, to keep it out of one's soup; or plucking a guitar to raise ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... days allowed her for preparation Kitty continued charmed with Hayden's idea of a butterfly dinner. It suited her volatile fancy. Her enthusiasm remained at high pitch, and she exerted herself to the utmost in behalf of her favorite cousin. As a consequence, although she made a pretense of consulting Hayden about the various arrangements, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... licence. These fur traders of Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... constantly accompanying grace. We found here the young brother of the wife with the servant, who had come with the horses from the falls overland, and had been at the house several days. We also saw here Ephraim's sister, Miss Margaret Hermans,[219] who showed us much kindness. She was a little volatile, but of a sweet and good disposition. She had been keeping house during the absence of Ephraim. Truly the Lord has in all these things been very good to us, for we knew not where to go, and He has ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... doing of a successful stroke of business, the defeat of a social rival, the success of a philanthropic undertaking. There is no normal human being who does not exhibit such limited volitional units. The most idle and purposeless of vagrants, the most scatter-brained school-boy, the most volatile coquette, may, for a time, be dominated by some desire which calls into its service other desires and thus realizes some ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... 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 ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... Sigurd's death had shocked him considerably by its suddenness, but he was too much of a volatile Frenchman to be morbidly anxious about ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... heroes, towering spirits among men, Rush to their aim on wild and stormy wings, And far beneath them view the world, whose form For ever varies on from hour to hour. What would they ask of love? That, volatile, In changeful freshness it may charm their ears With proud, triumphant songs, when high in air Victorious banners wave; or sweetly lull To rapturous repose, when round them roars The awful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as 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 ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... stone, carbuncle most or chrysolite, Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shone In Aaron's breastplate, 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 limbec to his native form. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run Potable gold, when, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... topic-sentence appears in the paragraph. In such a case it is easily discovered; or at times it is too fragile to be compressed into any definite shape—a feeling, or a sentiment too delicate, too volatile for expression. A paragraph with no topic-sentence is most ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... angrily into the waste-paper basket, as though it were the embodied day-dream he was mentally apostrophising. It was sermon-day, and he had to write his discourse that very afternoon. A quaint idea seized him. 'Aha,' he said, almost gaily, in his volatile irresponsible fashion, 'I have my text ready; the hour brings it to me unsought; a quip, a quip! I shall preach on the Pool of Bethesda: "While I am coming, another steppeth down before me." The verse seems as if it were made on purpose for me; what a pity ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... streets about the saloons, restaurants, and theaters, were thronged with the fairest and gayest girls of the island. They poured in from the country to share in the lovemaking. The cafes were filled with dancing and singing crowds, the volatile Argentineans matching the Tahitians ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Huxham, in his Treatise on the ulcerous sore Throat, p. 54, &c. condemns the Use of the volatile alcaline Salts, in Fevers of the putrid, pestilential, or petechial kind, as being apt to heat too much, and to hasten the Dissolution and consequent Putrefaction of the Blood. However, I cannot help ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... he, "the princess is very handsome; but flatterers, poets, and painters always overstep the truth. Her portrait has deceived me: its large blue eyes bear assuredly some resemblance to those of Papillette, but they bespeak an ardent and feeling heart, while hers is frivolous, volatile, and incapable of love. Her smile would be charming, but for its satirical irony. And what is the value of the loveliest lips in the world, if they open but ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... at Stump. That broad-beamed navigator emptied his glass again, and gazed into it fixedly, apparently wondering why champagne was so volatile a thing. Tagg followed the skipper's example, but fixed his eyes on the bottle, perhaps in calculation. Royson, deeming it wise to hold his tongue, contented himself with closing the medicine chest, and thus making it possible for ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... deities, male and female, as many as you can use. Separate them into two equal parts, and keep Jupiter in the middle. Let Juno put him in a ferment, and Venus mollify him. Remember on all occasions to make use of volatile Mercury. If you have need of devils, draw them out of Milton's Paradise, and extract your spirits from Tasso. The use of these machines is evident; for since no epic poem can possibly subsist without them, the wisest way is to reserve them for your greatest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... bubbles forth gases, and that heaves and sighs with internal agitations. And in the midst of all this are a dozen of us. We are lean and wretched, and our bones show through our tight-stretched skins. We do not sing and chatter and laugh. We play no pranks. For once our volatile and exuberant spirits are hopelessly subdued. We make plaintive, querulous noises, look at one another, and cluster close together. It is like the meeting of the handful of survivors after the day of the ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... 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
... in nothing but the production of exactly a hundred and fifty thousand unusable bricks: the four oxen, Tug, Lug, Haul and Crawl, who were to be the instruments of another economy and proved to be, at least in Sydneian language, equal to nothing but the consumption of "buckets of sal volatile:" the entry of the distracted mother of the household on her new domains with a baby clutched in her arms and one shoe left in the circumambient mud: the great folks of the neighbourhood (Lord and Lady Carlisle) coming to call graciously on the strangers, and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Kingdom with seven swords, trusting sublimely in the loyalty of his devoted Highlanders, may better be imagined than described. Donald Roy flung up his bonnet in a wild hurrah, Aileen beamed pride and happiness, and Creagh's volatile Irish heart was in the hilltops. If I had any doubts of the issue I knew ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... your rights depended wholly on Miss Vernor's choice. Fair lady, two hearts and four arms are at your immediate disposal. If you could make up your volatile mind ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... analysed, perhaps it cannot be defined; the insufficiency of all attempted definitions of poetry is in great part due to the impossibility of their including this final quality, which, like some volatile essence, escapes the moment the phial is touched. In the poetry of all ages, even in the periods where it has been most intellectual and least imaginative, come sudden lines like the /Cette obscure clarte qui tombe des etoiles/ of Corneille, like the /Placed far ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... appeared to them the only obstacle between themselves, and the supreme authority. All valued him as their present preserver, and all hated him as their future impediment. Such were the conflicting sentiments entertained towards Mirabeau, during the last incidents of his eccentric and volatile career. And in the midst of so many antagonistic interests, he alone remained unshaken and unappalled, his oratory rendering him still the mouth-piece of the Revolution, his duplicity its diplomatist, and his intellectual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... 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
... country. Moreover, Maud has a passion for knowing all the village people, and takes the children with her, so that they really know the village-folk all round; they are certainly tremendously happy and interested in everything. Of course they are volatile in their tastes, but I rather encourage that. I know that in the little old moral books the idea was that nothing should be taken up by children, unless it was done thoroughly and perseveringly; but I had rather ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... molecules being wrecked by a moderate amount of heat of the proper quality: let us examine this point for a moment. There is a liquid called nitrite of amyl—frequently administered to patients suffering from heart disease. The liquid is volatile, and its vapor is usually inhaled by the patient. Let a quantity of this vapor be introduced into a wide glass tube, and let a concentrated beam of solar light be sent through the tube along its axis. Prior to the entry of the beam, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... to with the smell and taste of some powerful volatile spirit, and the vague vision of Mr. Bradley still standing at the window of the mill and vibrating with the machinery; this changed presently to a pleasant lassitude and lazy curiosity as he perceived Mr. Bradley smile and apparently ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... member of our party was a man of about thirty who wore a Cossack cap over his left ear, and had a Cossack forelock, rounded features, a large nose, a dark moustache, and a retrousse lip. When the volatile young engineering student first brought him to us and said, "Here is another man for you," the newcomer glanced at me through the lashes of his elusive eyes—then plunged his hands into the pockets of his Turkish overalls. Just as we were departing, however, he withdrew one hand ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Force, or Nervous Ether, is clearly a very volatile, and at the same time a very searching fluid. It can easily pass through the skin from a nerve in one person to a nerve in another. There is no difficulty about that; the difficulty is to set up a rapid enough vibration to whirl the current through!" He said that in meditative fashion: ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... 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
... 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)
... 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 ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... to its great cheapness, acetic acid distilled from wood (besides being employed for pickling and other purposes, for which it is well adapted), diluted and treated with volatile oils, is every year superseding to a larger extent the vinegars in general use. That this bears no comparison as regards the agreeable qualities, even with the ordinary vinegars, need scarcely be ...
— The Production of Vinegar from Honey • Gerard W Bancks
... little note in his hand. He would wait, he said, for an answer, and the maid bade him step inside while she ran up-stairs. Mrs. Sumter answered her knock at the door of Miss Kate's room, into which the damsels were now doubled. To the disappointment of that somewhat volatile domestic, Mrs. Sumter closed the portal before proceeding to open the missive, but her announcement, "From Mr. Lanier," caused Miriam Arnold to ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... been consulting me—the women in tears. He will marry his grandchildren's German governess, and there is nothing to be done. In such cases nothing is ever to be done. You can easily distract an aged man's volatile affections, and attach them to a new charmer. But she is just as ineligible as the first; marry he will, always a young woman. Now if a respectable virgin or widow of, say, fifty, could hand him a love philtre, and gain his heart, appearances would, more or less, be saved. But, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... caused easy diffusion of electricity. He considered the effect as due to the removal of the obstacle which the air presented to the expansion of the substances from which the electricity passed[A]. But platina balls show the phenomena in vacuo as well as volatile metals and other substances; besides which, when the rarefaction is very considerable, the electricity passes with scarcely any resistance, and the production of no sensible heat; so that I think Fusinieri's view of the matter is likely to ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... religious, without Formality; affable, without 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 ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... effect of reducing the volatile Horace to a state of quiescence, and inducing him to come and share the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... or on the outskirts of civilization on the western continent, they will set apart seasons for innocent mirth, in which they enter into its spirit with a joyousness totally devoid of calculation or of care. I love this trait in their character, because, perhaps, my own spirits incline to the volatile. I like not that puritanical coldness of intercourse which acts upon men as the winter winds do upon the surface of the mountain streams, freezing them into immovable propriety; and less do I delight in that festivity where calculation seems to wait on merriment. Joy at such a board can never rise ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... in the preceding pages, especially as many of the terms are to some extent technical in character. The most abundant of these substances is steam or water-gas, which, as we have seen, issues in prodigious quantities during every eruption. But with the steam a great number of other volatile materials frequently make their appearance. Though we have named a number of these at the beginning of this chapter, it will not be out of order to repeat them here. The chief among these are the acid gases known as hydrochloric acid, sulphurous acid, ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Psmith had confided to Mike, meeting him at the station in the family motor on the Monday, 'is a man of vast but volatile brain. He has not that calm, dispassionate outlook on life which marks your true philosopher, such as ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... from the clay, with which it was at first formed in decomposing 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 part of it; whence it is probable their becoming solid may in great ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... her look, and dismissed Felicie, with all her smelling-bottles. Rose, though not ordered away, judiciously retired as soon as she saw that her services were of no further use, and that there was something upon her young lady's mind, for which, hartshorn and sal volatile could ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Elsie was eighteen then. She had a school-friend, to whom she had been greatly attached; a girl older than herself, and so different in every respect, that it was a wonder Elsie's volatile character had been attracted to her, or that her liking ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... And death. Watch! The little metal cylinder is plugged still, but in a moment that plug will disappear—simply a volatile solid, you understand. It is going rapidly ... rapidly ... it is almost gone now! Watch ... In ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... every time, for a space of one year and seven months, when first unfolded, I distinctly perceived the odour. This appears an astonishing instance of the permanence of some matter, which nevertheless in its nature must be most subtile and volatile. Frequently, when passing at the distance of half a mile to leeward of a herd, I have perceived the whole air tainted with the effluvium. I believe the smell from the buck is most powerful at the period when its horns are perfect, or free from the hairy skin. When in this state the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... 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
... diluted according to its strength, but usually about one part to fifty of water. It may be made by boiling one pound of good tobacco stems in two gallons of water for one-half-hour. Objections to it are that it evaporates very quickly, although it is supposed to be non-volatile, and that it is expensive, but it is very convenient to use, can be readily mixed with other summer sprays, and is very effective against plant lice ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... it was carried on in the Council Chambers; there was Millions of Contributions raised, and vast Sums Collected, but no Taxes lessen'd; whole Plate Fleets surpriz'd, but no Treasure found; vaft Sums lost by Enemies, and yet never found by Friends, Ships loaded with Volatile Silver, that came away full, and gat home empty; whole Voyages made to beat No body, and plunder Every body; two Millions robb'd from the honest Merchants, and not a Groat sav'd for the honest Subjects: There we saw Captains Lifting ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... caught, by the light of his candle, a scribbling in red chalk, on the white door-post, and he stooped to read it, and muttered, 'Them mischievous young blackguards!' and began rubbing it with the cuff of his coat, his cheek still wet with tears. For even our grief is volatile; or, rather, it is two tunes that are in our ears together, the requiem of the organ, and, with it, the faint hurdy-gurdy jig of our vulgar daily life; and now and then this ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... February 1, we suffered a net loss of nearly $2 billion in gold. In the 11 months that followed, the loss was just over half a billion dollars. And our deficit in our basic transactions with the rest of the world—trade, defense, foreign aid, and capital, excluding volatile short-term flows—has been reduced from $2 billion for 1960 to about one-third that amount for 1961. Speculative fever against the dollar is ending—and confidence in the dollar has ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "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 papa likes to ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... 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 the arrow from my own wound, barb and all. In ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the excessive fluctuation that prevailed in it. Change of scene, change of teacher, both express and implied, was incessant with him; and gave his young life a nomadic character,—which surely, of all the adventitious tendencies that could have been impressed upon him, so volatile, swift and airy a being as him, was the one he needed least. His gentle pious-hearted Mother, ever watching over him in all outward changes, and assiduously keeping human pieties and good affections alive in him, was probably ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... present condition of literary criticism. This is a novel preoccupation for them and one which is, we believe, symptomatic of a general hesitancy and expectation. In the world of letters everything is a little up in the air, volatile and uncrystallised. It is a world of rejections and velleities; in spite of outward similarities, a strangely different world from that of half a dozen years ago. Then one had a tolerable certainty that the new star, if the new star was to appear, would burst upon our vision in ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... received so great a shock, that they could not recover from it as quickly as the volatile youngsters. The shutters and doors were kept fastened, and every few minutes they peeped out in quest of the tiger that showed so much enmity toward them. When darkness closed in, however, not the first glimpse had been caught of him, and all began to hope he had taken his final departure. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... he had sent below for his medicine-bag and had given Mrs. Luke some sal volatile and smelling-salts, said he thought the best thing to do would be for him to lend them some money and put them ashore at Penzance with Matthew. He also wrote a letter for Luke to take with him to a friend the Doctor had in the town of ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... her sensibility in a swoon; and truly her sobs, and small screeches, and little stampings and kickings, amazed young gallipot. Smelling salts were applied;—they were rather weak, so the widow inhaled the pleasing odour with a sigh, but did not recover. Sal volatile was next put into requisition;—this was something stronger, and made her wriggle on her chair, and throw her head about with sundry "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" The boy, beginning to be alarmed at the extent of the widow's syncope, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Dalby had introduced his "Carminative" for "all those fatal Disorders in the Bowels of Infants." The committee decided that a grain of opium to the ounce, together with magnesia and three volatile oils, were essential "for this mild carminative and ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... called artificial manures are required during growth. But without some skill in this matter it is not safe, for if much of the material is not thoroughly decayed (which, however, has then lost most of its volatile ingredients) it is, in the common vernacular of the gardener, too rank to give good growth and results, whether it be in fruits, flowers, or foliage. For example, in Henderson's horticulture he recommends, as the best soil for potting, loam and hops. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... consciousness fades gradually away, as the blood is pressed out by 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 ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... calf in a lane." This so exactly expressed the awkward desperate plunges to the right and left which Mr. Ramsay was executing at the moment, that Mr. Heathcote had another of his acute attacks of appreciation, and became almost a subject for sal volatile and burnt feathers, Mr. Ramsay saying good-naturedly, "What a fellow you are for chaffin', Ketchum! Just you hook it out of this, will you, and let us get on with this? One and two and a kick, you say, Miss Brown? I am such a duffer I can't get ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... God-fearing comfort of the Mountain, nor the tarnished grandeur of Undern, were her life. She had so deep a kinship with the trees, so intuitive a sympathy with leaf and flower, that it seemed as if the blood in her veins was not slow-moving human blood, but volatile sap. She was of a race that will come in the far future, when we shall have outgrown our egoism—the brainless egoism of a little boy pulling off flies' wings. We shall attain philosophic detachment and emotional sympathy. We have even now far outgrown ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... ben communicated to an individual from one infected by means of the perspirable matter; this, therefore, is a proof that the contagious part of the disease is not of a volatile nature. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Coffee, and Cocoa. The active principle of tea is called theine; that of coffee, caffeine, and of cocoa, theobromine. They also contain an aromatic, volatile oil, to which they owe their distinctive flavor. Tea and coffee also contain an astringent called tannin, which gives the peculiar bitter taste to the infusions when steeped too long. In cocoa, the fat known as cocoa butter amounts ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... subjoin the able development of her character which appeared in the Quarterly Review for May, 1811, in its critique on her Letters to Walpole:—"This lady seems to have united the lightness of the French character with the solidity of the English. She was easy and volatile, yet judicious and acute; sometimes profound and sometimes superficial. She had a wit playful, abundant, and well-toned; an admirable conception of the ridiculous, and great skill in exposing it; a turn for satire, which she indulged, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... of his own engagements to Margaret, the emperor's daughter, to whom he had been affianced from her infancy. This twofold insult, which sunk deep into the heart of Maximilian, seems to have made no impression on the volatile spirits of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... populace. He set forth the necessity of complying with the capitulation, from the famine that reigned in the city, the futility of defence, and from the hostages having already been delivered into the hands of the besiegers. The volatile population agreed to adhere to the capitulation, and there was even a faint shout of "Long live Boabdil the unfortunate!" and they all returned to their homes in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... all our economic and social policies must recognize this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little. One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Naples they had agreed to take the Sicilian trip together, then up Italy, through France, to England. The scholar and the merchant at play were like two boys out of school; the dry whimsical humor of the Scotsman and the volatile sparkle of the Irishman made them ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... of female education is to get a husband, this likewise is the general subject of female advice: and the dreadful denunciation against those volatile girls, who will not listen patiently to the lectures of wrinkled wisdom, is, that they will die unmarried, or throw themselves away upon some worthless fellow, who will never be able ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... myself?" said the volatile damsel. "Not a doubt of it. That's my style, you know. But I have some sense; I know who's who. Now, Jones, junior, make your man handle the ribbons. I've always had a grudge against that ordinance about fast ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... planted along the margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with their perfumes, and refreshing him by their shades, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics. In the strips of sandy waste, which occasionally intervened, where the light and volatile soil was incapable of sustaining a road, huge piles, many of them to be seen at this day, were driven into the ground to indicate the route to ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... 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 slow, brooding, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Tricopherous was essential to her well-being: indeed, she often said she would rather give up coffee than Tricopherous, for her hair was black and wiry and curly, and caps she abhorred, so that of a winter's day her head presented the most irrelevant and volatile aspect, each particular hair taking a twist on its own responsibility, and improvising a wild halo about her unsaintly face, unless subdued into propriety by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... little hands extended, to catch 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... remember I had arranged with myself to marry this girl, but I could not work my feelings into a state of indignation against the heir to Rutland. The truth is, my hope of winning Dorothy had evaporated upon the first sight of her, like the volatile essence it really was. I cannot tell you why, but I at once seemed to realize that all the thought and labor which I had devoted to the arduous task of arranging with myself this marriage was labor lost. So I frankly told ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Leaving the volatile earl to put what construction pleased him best on this last sententious remark, he resumed his march after George, and was ushered, at last, into an ante-room near the audience-chamber. Count L'Estrange, still attired ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... he see?" repeated the girl. "Don't hurry, Augustina; you know the doctor told you not. Shall I take the sal volatile?" ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was going to die, and expected no other result, the same effect was produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up in the breasts of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion. As a rule, he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then administer a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other strong stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric acid to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it as a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... 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 known ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Adrian, a big boy of twelve, wanted to go his own way, and only handed her over with "Hallo, Miss Prescott! you'll look after this pussy-cat of ours while Aunt Jane is dosing Aunt Ada with salts and sal volatile. She—I'll introduce you! Miss Prescott, Miss Felicia Vanderkist! She wants to be looked after, she is a little kitten that has never seen anything! I'm off ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... employed is carbolic or phenic acid, a volatile organic compound, which appears to exercise a peculiarly destructive influence upon low forms of life, and hence is the most powerful antiseptic with which we ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... transcendent element in man which endows him with the proud if tragic sense of personality is the first message of the preacher to a chattering and volatile world, and the second is the setting forth of what this endowment demands and how pitiably man fails to meet it, then the third message is of the Rock that is higher than he, even inclusive of his ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... long since subsided, and much of what was then seething has gone off in vapor or other volatile products. But some very solid matters have also been precipitated, some crystals of poetry translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a record of failed experiments, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... very ill judged; for it not only does not expedite, even in the smallest degree, the process of cooking, but it occasions a most enormous waste of fuel; and by driving away with the steam many of the more volatile and more savoury particles of the ingredients, renders the victuals less good and less palatable. —To those who are acquainted with the experimental philosophy of heat, and who know that water once brought to be BOILING HOT, however gently it may boil in fact, CANNOT ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... actors formed part of the army-train of Marshal Saxe. At night there was a comedy, a ballet, or a ball, and in the morning a battle. Saxe, however, himself a sturdy German, while he recognized their fighting value, and knew well how to make the best of it, sometimes complained that they were volatile, excitable, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 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 spirits rose. ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... wrappers, I found what seemed to me a simple, crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about half-full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version-book, and contained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be alarmed at," he said, "but your brother has fainted. Bring me some sal volatile if you have it, and I think that you had better run out and get a doctor. I will stay with him. I know exactly what ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. They contained colourless volatile essences, of what nature I shall say no more than 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 lump of rock-crystal, and another of amber—also ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... deliberate economy of means which marks the accomplished artist. Among English conductors one may regard Wood (lucus a non lucendo!) as an exception. Most of the rest—I speak of those of the old school, since those of the new school can sometimes be volatile and feverish enough—seem to be saying all the time: "I am in an awkward and embarrassing position, though I shall muddle through successfully. The fact is I am rather out of my element here. I am ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... using other means of raising the temperature to the respective boiling points of such hydrocarbons, and so driving them off by evaporation." In the centrifugal method carbon-bisulphide, or some other volatile agent, is admitted and is driven through the material by centrifugal force, when the necessary reactions take place, and is allowed to escape in the form of hydrocarbons. A machine differing only in slight particulars from the above is used ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... thermal. V. be light &c adj.; float, rise, swim, be buoyed up. render light &c adj.; lighten, leaven. Adj. light, subtile, airy; imponderous^, imponderable; astatic^, weightless, ethereal, sublimated; gossamery; suberose^, suberous^; uncompressed, volatile; buoyant, floating &c v.; portable. light as a feather, light as a thistle, light as air; lighter than air; rise like a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget |
