"First moment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disappearing in a grey haze, while ahead the thickness was becoming more and more impenetrable. The skipper kept walking from end to end of the bridge, restlessly, and I could sympathize with him. He was in a hurry, a deadly hurry, which he had shown plainly enough from the first moment my eyes had rested upon him, and now this mist was rendering all his haste futile, as far as I could see. Every moment now I expected to see him ring down to the engine room for reduced speed, but we kept on going, doggedly, blindly, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... she, "you must have thought my first welcome somewhat unceremonious, but my first thought was for my father. He is a great invalid, as you may have noticed, and for the first moment I feared that he had been ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... since the day she found a smiling young gentleman ready to talk German to her and answer questions, she was perfectly aware that she had only to close her hand and her victims would squeeze into any shape she liked. She proposed to do this closing at the first moment of sheer intolerableness, and that moment seemed well reached when she entered Creeper Cottage and realized what the attic, the kitchen, and the pump ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... equally pleased and surprised when Miss Edmonds, after a long and careful examination in regard to my acquirements, placed me in one of the higher classes. There was to me an irresistible attraction in the countenance and manner of my teacher; and, from the first moment I saw her I loved her. Although her home is now far distant from mine, and we have not met for many years, I love her as dearly now as when she took me by the hand when a child of eleven years. She conducted her school in a very systematic and orderly manner, and was very particular to require ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... of instance that made me think of you. What would you feel first, let us say, if I mentioned Michael Angelo? For the first moment, perhaps, boredom: such as I feel when Americans ask me about Stratford-on-Avon. But, supposing that just fear quieted, you would feel what I and every one else can feel. It might be the sense of the majestic hands ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... dark eyes—sad rather, and of the pale remote colour that the Virgin in the St. Dreot's east end window wears. Standing there in the dusky hall, quietly, quite apart from the little bustle that surrounded her, she seemed to Maggie even in that first moment like some one wrapt, caught away into ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... has a momentary existence only admit that when the thing existing in the second moment[393] enters into being the thing existing in the first moment ceases to be. On this admission it is impossible to establish between the two things the relation of cause and effect, since the former momentary existence which ceases or has ceased to be, and so has entered into the state of non-existence, cannot be the cause of the later ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... lost the first moment when he might have been stern with her. Clumsily he tried to loosen her embrace. But for the first time in his life he was in the grip of an elemental natural force, a thing foreign to his experience of women in marriage or out ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... is also made in a simplified form without the wheel W2. It then gives the area and first moment of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... which collective activity manifests and exercises itself, the expression of social spontaneity, the emblem of democracy and equality, the most energetic instrument for the constitution of value, the support of association. As the essay of individual forces, it is the guarantee of their liberty, the first moment of their harmony, the form of responsibility which unites them all and makes ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... be impossible. My life from my earliest childhood has been passed in these solitudes;—a happy life, though tranquil and monotonous, till you suddenly broke upon it. You seemed to me the living form of the very poetry I had worshipped—so bright—so heavenly—I loved you from the very first moment that we met. I am not like other men of my age. I have no pursuit—no occupation—nothing to abstract me from your thought. And I love you so purely—so devotedly, Camilla. I have never known even a passing fancy for another. You are the first—the only ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first moment nothing could exceed the tone of fraternal feeling between our soldiers and the people. Without any means of communicating their thoughts by speech, they seemed to acquire an instinctive knowledge of each other in an instant. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... evolved into Bengali Baboos must have seized the first moment of consciousness and thought to regret the step it had taken; for however much we may desire to diffuse Babooism over the Empire, we must all agree that the Baboo itself is a ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... I could remember the first day, First hour, first moment of your meeting me, If bright or dim the season, it might be Summer or Winter for aught I can say; So unrecorded did it slip away, So blind was I to see and to foresee, So dull to mark the budding of my tree That would not blossom yet for many a May. If only I could recollect it, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Father Holt made her calm: indeed he had a vast power of subjecting those who came near him; and, among the rest, his new pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment to the good Father, and became his willing slave almost from the first moment he saw him. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... came the first sign of peace, or rather of capitulation. He fought no more because he realised that there was nothing for which to fight. There had never been, from the very first moment, a possibility of escape, the smallest ray of hope. Fate had met him squarely and the issue had never ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... first moment of pure gladness, a feeling of deep awe and great sorrow came over the Crusaders as they gazed at the city where Christ had suffered and died for their redemption. Following the example of their loved Godfrey, the Christians laid aside with tears and sighs their ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... from behind a tree; and before he could be stopped, seized the Emperor's bridle. In an instant the Emperor struck his hand with a heavy hunting stock; and being free, touched his horse with the spur and cantered on. I took particular notice of his features and his demeanour, from the very first moment of the surprise. Nothing happened but what I have described. The man seemed fierce and reckless. The Emperor showed not the faintest signs of discomposure. All he said was, turning to my wife, 'Comme il avait ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... some of the adjacent territory, quietly put himself in possession and then offered to treat. Were I a South Carolinian, as I am a Texan, and I knew that my State was going out of the Union, and that this Government would attempt to use force, I would, at the first moment that that fact became manifest, seize upon the Forts and the arms and the munitions of war, and raise the cry 'To your tents, O Israel, and to the God of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... gentlemen, over and above the sum for which they had contracted. This behavior greatly surprised me, as I knew not how to account for it, nothing having happened since we parted from the captain the evening before in perfect good humor; and all this broke forth on the first moment of his arrival this morning. He did not, however, suffer my amazement to have any long continuance before he clearly showed me that all this was meant only as an apology to introduce another procrastination (being the fifth) of his weighing anchor, which was now postponed till Saturday, ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... the first moment or two Pip felt a little disinclined to quit the stronghold of his horse's back. The thunder of hoofs and horns, the wild charges made by the desperate animals against the fence, made him expect to see it come crashing ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... could not inflict, because Hopkins had recovered; and banishment they thought impractical at that time, as it might prolong discussion indefinitely, and enforce a longer term in service than the Committee cared for. It was the earnest wish of all to disband at the first moment that they considered their state and city fit to take care of themselves, and the sacredness of the ballot-box again insured. To assure this latter fact, they had arrayed themselves against the federal government, as certainly they had against the ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... friend to introduce her to Mrs. Cardew, who for the first moment, remembering what Lady Lysle had said, was a trifle stiff to Maggie Howland, but two minutes afterward was chatting to her in a pleasant and very friendly manner. She even went the length of personally introducing Maggie to Lady Lysle, excusing herself for the act by saying ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... outlined against the night, should be within his house, where his wife and his children were, and where his venerable mother was sitting beside the fire. That this man should be there! He knew now that from the first moment when he had been aware of his existence he had hated him, that his subconscious ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... did not give way, but was sustained, like Maggie, by the bustle of preparation for the return, and in answering the innumerable questions of Johnnie and Alf. Webb's assurance to his mother that he would bring Burt back safe and sound was her chief hope. From the first moment of greeting he had inspired her with a confidence that had steadily increased, and from the time that he had admitted the possibility of this awful emergency he had acted so resolutely and wisely as to convince her that all that man could do would be done. She did not think ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... sorrowful to be liable to her usual faults which would seem so much worse now; but she found herself more irritable than usual, and doubly heedless, because her mind was preoccupied. She hated herself, and suffered more from sorrow than even at the first moment, for now she felt what it was to have no one to tame her, no eye over her; she found herself going a tort et a travers all the morning, and with no one to set her right. Since it was so the first day, what ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was cured. He looked at it more sensibly after the first moment. It was not thought of the girl that had brought him here. Habit is strong in most of us. The urge of a healthy appetite was more likely what had caused him to halt before the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... possible—very possible. Her two years with the Municipal League had taught her how common were astute dishonest practices. The idea filled her. She began to burn with a feverish hope. But from the first moment she was sufficiently cool-headed to realize that to follow up the idea she required intimate knowledge of Westville ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... parlour in a highly abrupt and undignified manner. My mother sat by the open window laughing and fanning herself. Pesca was one of her especial favourites and his wildest eccentricities were always pardonable in her eyes. Poor dear soul! from the first moment when she found out that the little Professor was deeply and gratefully attached to her son, she opened her heart to him unreservedly, and took all his puzzling foreign peculiarities for granted, without so much as attempting to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... hers, too, fear was to be read, but accompanied by other impressions. And yet, if her face had expressed only fear, perhaps that which happened would not have happened. But in the expression of her face there was at the first moment—at least, I thought I saw it—a feeling of ennui, of discontent, at this disturbance of her love and happiness. One would have said that her sole desire was not to be disturbed IN THE MOMENT OF HER HAPPINESS. But these expressions appeared upon their faces ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... murmured tenderly. "I am sure of it. I have realized something of this from the first moment that I met you. But always since that moment I could stake my life on this, that any—any mystery that might seem to exist was not of your making or choosing. And I want to assure you of something, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... themselves at liberty to do what they please. It is enough for them that there had been an enemy on the ramparts; and, without considering that the poor inhabitants may, nevertheless, be friends and allies, they, in the first moment of excitement, all share one common fate; and nothing but the most extraordinary exertions on the part of the officers can bring them back to a sense of ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... subjects, and his powers of varying a given theme and of unfolding from it ever something new. These wonderful gifts, for such they were rather than laboriously acquired attainments, Brahms showed at the first moment when the light of musical history shines upon him. It was in 1853, when the Hungarian violinist, Edouard Remenyi, found him at Hamburgh and engaged him as accompanist and having ascertained his astonishing ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... now that she had been jealous from the first moment when she and George had come into contact with Marcella Maxwell. During the long hours of this night her jealousy burnt through her like a hot pain—jealousy, mixed with reluctant memory. Half consciously she had ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sally, after the first moment, had run screaming toward the house, with all a child's forward eagerness, to be the bearer of news; but the little Mara stood, looking anxiously, with a ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... out and solved long before the dawn of the present social awakening and the conclusions have been tabulated in the closest detail from the first moment of embryonic life, faithfully defining the paths that inevitably lead to the desired goal of Hygienic Birth, of Physical Perfection and the Mental State ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... with her. Of course she made a great difference in the work to be done—far more difference than her size warranted, but Nanny was no end of help, and Diamond was as much of a sunbeam as ever, and began to sing to the new baby the first moment he got her in his arms. But he did not sing the same songs to her that he had sung to his brother, for, he said, she was a new baby and must have new songs; and besides, she was a sister-baby and not a brother-baby, and ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... you that you have met a person whom you have never heard of and never thought of before—a person who was destined to affect your fate in some way—and that from the first moment of your encounter you seemed fated to renew acquaintance with him? It has happened more than once to me, and it happened so in this case. That very afternoon, when I returned from a lonely tramp upon the hills, I found the man Hinge in the kitchen of the inn. He bore a note from Breschia ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... through a mist of angry tears, Rose-Marie felt her first moment of homesickness for the friendly little town with its wide, tree-shaded streets, its lawn parties, and its neighbours; cities, she had discovered, discourage the art of neighbouring! She felt a pang of emptiness—she ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... deserve. It is I that love you! Marry me, Edward! and I will this very day settle all my property on you." The Lover's eyes were now opened; and thus taken by surprise, whether from the effect of the horror which he felt, acting as it were hysterically on his nervous system, or that at the first moment he lost the sense of the guilt of the proposal in the feeling of its strangeness and absurdity, he flung her from him and burst into a fit of laughter. Irritated by this almost to frenzy, the woman fell ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... She did not speak any more, but finished her breakfast somewhat hastily. At the first moment she could find herself alone Florence rushed into the cherry orchard and tore open her letter. ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... From the first moment of his introduction to her, Ancrum had taken particular notice of David's handsome sister, who, on her side, had treated her old minister and teacher with a most thoroughgoing indifference. He saw that now, after some three months of life together, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you! I never spoke these words to woman before, for I never loved before. Marian, the first moment that I saw you I loved you, without knowing what new life it was that had kindled in my nature. I have loved you more and more every day! I love you more than words can tell or heart conceive! I only live in your presence! Marian! not ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... most ridiculous creature that ever was born,' said my aunt. 'I knew, from the first moment when I saw her with that poor dear blessed baby of a mother of yours, that she was the most ridiculous of mortals. But there are good points ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and easy deportment of Madame Polozov would probably for the first moment have disconcerted Sanin—though he was not quite a novice and had knocked about the world a little—if he had not again seen in this very freedom and familiarity a good omen for his undertaking. 'We must humour ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... harbour boats—strong affairs, but good enough to perform the rough sort of work required in fitting out. The boatswain's demand for scrapers, buckets, and junk for swabs, is made out and approved, that, from the first moment to the last, the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... that, upon the first moment I was discovered sleeping on the ground after my landing, the emperor had early notice of it by an express; and determined in council that I should be tied in the manner I have related (which was done in ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... concerned only to stop my eyes from burning," answered Mr. Green, in a towering rage at finding reproof where he had come in quest of sympathy. "I have come to you at the first moment, damn you!" he burst out, in full rebellion. "And you'll use me civilly now that I am come, or—ecod!—it'll be the worse for ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... from the first moment of their institution, had been an eyesore to the people of Boston. This, though partly owing to their active zeal in detecting smugglers, principally arose from the association which existed in the minds of the inhabitants between the Board of Customs and an American revenue. The ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... next proceeded to put into execution was in the mind of Deerfoot from the first moment be learned of the situation of the endangered ones. It was impossible to succeed without a perfect understanding with his friends, for they necessarily had an important part ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... her silken brows lower in a spirited frown and he was glad. She was showing some other feeling than that dead level of unhappiness that had possessed her from the first moment he had seen her. His was not the heart contented to go astray after a tear. Men ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... exquisite and most renowned lyrics. I grew used to her afterward, though never completely; but as she sat there before me my heart beat as fast as if the miracle of resurrection had taken place for my benefit. Her presence seemed somehow to contain his, and I felt nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her than I ever had been before or ever have been since. Yes, I remember my emotions in their order, even including a curious little tremor that took me when I saw that the niece was not there. With her, the day before, I had become sufficiently familiar, but it almost exceeded my ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... admiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just is the very woman. Wait—I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for a moment or two alone,—a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was the first moment in their lives that they had ever been ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... From the very first moment when his eyes beheld this—to him—perfection of loveliness he felt in his inmost heart the conviction that she would be his; he felt the subtle breath of mutual understanding passing between their two savage natures, and he did not want Mrs. Almayer's encouraging smiles to ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... felt like crying. It had been increasing, the oppression to her spirits, ever since she entered this house to which she had come filled with gay anticipation and innocent curiosity. It had struck her from the first moment as gloomy, and it was undoubtedly cold, with its three sticks of wood ceremoniously smoking in the unaccustomed chimney-place. Its esthetic bareness had affected her like the meagerness of poverty. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... His mother, after the first moment's fright, had reassured herself somewhat on his account; he was so mere a boy that it was not likely that Algernon Sydney, who then commanded at Chichester, would put him to death; a short imprisonment was the worst that was likely to ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... world about us into my soul, for it seems to me that my happiness is written large over it all; I am seeing it for the first time in all its splendor, lighted up by love, grown fair through you. Eve, dearest, this is the first moment of pure and unmixed joy that fate has given to me! I do not think that Lucien can be as ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... lying), so I took for granted old grumbling Thurlow would be obliged to lower his top-sail to him—but it seemed as if the very look and voice of Thurlow scared him out of his senses from the first moment. So Tooke tried to recruit himself by wine, and, though not generally a drinker, was very drunk, but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of them." Clemency looked at James with sudden concern. "I am going to tell you something," she said, "even if it is rather betraying confidence. I think I ought to. Annie told me she had taken a great dislike to you, from the very first moment she saw you, so it would ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... elsewhere. And now that this very moment of her agony had come, and that this man to whom she had given a promise was there to claim her, how was she to go down and say what she had to say, before all the world? It was perfectly clear to her that in accordance with her reception of Urmand at the first moment of their meeting, so must be her continued conduct towards him, till he should leave her, or else take her away with him. She could not smile on him and shake hands with him, and cut his bread for him and pour out his wine, after such a letter as she had written to him, ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... action: for before acting one must exist. Now that would be two instants where we only assume one. It is therefore certain in this hypothesis that creatures have neither more connexion nor more relation with their actions than they had with their production at the first moment of the first creation.' The author of this Reflexion draws thence very harsh conclusions which one can picture to oneself; and he testifies at the end that one would be deeply indebted to any man that should teach those who approve this system how to extricate ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... and I sat petrified with astonishment, whilst the elder man spoke again. I knew him from the first moment he had opened his lips, despite his disguise, to be the Duke of Rittersheim, or "Saumarez," as he ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... debts will absorb; a particular woman who doesn't care for me, and whom, knowing the hideous tangle of motives that hangs round the central idea of winning her, I am almost ashamed to ask; but a woman that any man might court; a woman I have loved from the first moment my eyes met hers, who has haunted and distracted me ever since, and who is, I dare say, a great deal too good for me; but a creature I will strive to win, no matter what the cost of success. This ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... look into her mind, you would see how she has nerved it to a great determination; how that, mustering visions and hopes once cherished, she had gone forward to a bleak and barren path, and stands there very resolute, yet, in the first moment of her resolve, miserable; no, she had not yet grown strong in the suffering; she cannot this night stand up and bear her burden with a smile ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... the girl from the first moment she had seen it. In the summer months, tourists came from afar to gaze on its fancied resemblance to one of the illustrious dead. But to Sisily there was a secret brooding consciousness in the dark mask. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... arrived safe on the other side of the Rhine. His forgeries were only discovered after he had written a letter from Frankfort to Louis, acquitting his daughter of all knowledge of what he had done. In the first moment of anger, her Imperial lover ordered her to be arrested, but he has since forgiven her, and taken her back to his favour. This trick of Deroux has pleased Fouche, who long opposed his release, from a knowledge of his dangerous talent and vicious character. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... the war has inflicted, and to secure the benefit of the lessons it teaches as fully and as speedily as possible. This duty was, upon the termination of the rebellion, promptly accepted not only by the executive department, but by the insurrectionary States themselves, and restoration in the first moment of peace was believed to be as easy and certain as it was indispensable. The expectations, however, then so reasonably and confidently entertained were disappointed by legislation from which I felt constrained by my obligations to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... thoroughly realized the great loss he had met with, in connection with his Wall street conspiracy, than he began to revolve in his mind a scheme which he had held in reserve from the first moment of his control of the Crooked Valley Road. He had nourished in every possible way the good-will of those who lived along the line. Not only this, but he had endeavored to show his power to do anything ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... bitterest sorrow. Meleager was his name, and ere his birth his mother dreamed a dream that the child that she bore was a burning firebrand. But when the baby came he was a royal child indeed, a little fearless king from the first moment that his eyes, like unseeing violets, gazed steadily up at his mother. To the chamber where he lay by his mother's side came the three Fates, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... they stood, the old man and the young man, looking into each other's eyes, and Derrick's—no shame to him—were moist. For, think of it! he feared that he had lost the girl on whom his heart had been set ever since the first moment he had seen her; and now this old man had put him in the way of finding her. They stood with clasped hands for longer than is usual; and Derrick was too absorbed in his own emotion to notice the tremor in the ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... he was unable to rise. The last drop of his vitality had run out. At length the connection between his will and his body had been severed, so that the latter was no longer under his command. After the first moment he knew well enough what this meant, knew that here he must die, here he must lie crushed finally under the sheer weight of his antagonist. It was as though she, the great North, had heard his defiant words the night before, and thus proved to ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... be done? After his first moment of passion there had come thoughts of the poor old lady below. And these made him hesitate. It was all over with the captain now; when a man sank as low as that he was hardly worth the few shovelfuls of earth that are thrown over carrion to prevent them from polluting the atmosphere. Whatever ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Lovel, then manager of the Press Association. I have since had reason to believe that he deliberately deceived me from the first moment of our encounter, and that later in the day he was guilty of a plagiarism. If deceit were always as kindly and guileless, lying would grow to be the chief of human virtues; and if plagiarism always covered a jest ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... In the first moment they were both too much agitated to speak; for Stephen had learned from the servant that the others were gone out. Maggie had started up and sat down again, with her heart beating violently; and Stephen, throwing down his cap and gloves, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... good and honest to wish to throw me away, now when you have seen how my soul has hungered for the sight of you these many years, how even now I cling to you with a despairing clutch. But you can not disguise yourself, Ralph, and I saw from the first moment that you loved ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... you. The first moment I saw you I wanted you. I thought then that, whatever the cost, I would have you. That was in the early days of our talks here—before you made it so courageously clear to me that it would never be possible for you to ignore ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... illness had been mentioned, checking at the first moment any rush of panic in Lady Valleys, left her confused by the situation conjured up in Barbara's last words. Instead of feeding that part of man which loves a scandal, she was being fed, always an unenviable ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... daughter, my grown-up daughter. You'll see how she resembles me—or, rather, how I resembled her—no, it is not quite that; she is just like the 'me' of former days—you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past. Pray ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... rejection of his advances, still he was not the man to be easily thwarted. His fertile brain had evolved a means by which to achieve his end, and, to his scheme-loving nature, the process was anything but distasteful. He had always, from the first moment he had decided to make Jacky Allandale his wife, been prepared for such a contingency as her refusal, and had never missed an opportunity of ensnaring her uncle in his financial toils. He had understood the old man's weakness, and, with satanic cunning, had set himself to the task of wholesale ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the painted dome above, the diamonds and rubies enriching her handsome corsage gleamed and flashed white, green and blood-red. Indeed, so covered was her breast by the fiery gems that as it heaved and fell their flashing dazzled us; yet in her eyes was a cruel, crafty gleam that from the first moment I saw her roused instinctively ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... seized Gergovia, the capital of his nation. Thence his messengers spread over the centre, north-west, and west of Gaul; the greater part of the peoplets and cities of those regions pronounced from the first moment for insurrection; the same sentiment was working amongst others more compromised with Rome, who waited only for a breath of success to break out. Vercingetorix was immediately invested with the chief command, and he made use of it with all the passion ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had had his way, and had effected an introduction between his sisters and Mrs. Herrick; and as they had mutually taken to each other, a pleasant intimacy had been the result, and Anna had paid two or three visits to the Wood House. From the first moment of their meeting Anna had fallen in love with Dinah. "You must not think that I do not care for Miss Elizabeth Templeton," she had observed rather shyly to Malcolm, after her first visit to Staplegrove—"for I admire and like her more than I can say, and I am never ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... He was anxious to stand face to face with McDowell. Not until then would the real fight begin. For the first time the fact seized upon him that the Englishman was wrong—he would NOT win or lose in the first moment of the Inspector's scrutiny. In that moment he could lose—McDowell's cleverly trained eyes might detect the fraud; but to win, if the game was not lost at the first shot, meant an exciting struggle. Today might ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... for the world, nothing. You are the world to me," said Alick. "Give me your love, and I care for nothing else. Tell me you will be my wife, and I can live then—live as nothing else can make me. Leam, can you love me, dear? I have loved you from the first moment I saw you. Will you be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... informed me of their having seen several neat plantations, so that it remained no longer a doubt of there being settled inhabitants on the island, for which reason I determined to get what I could, and to sail the first moment that the wind and weather would allow us ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... ashore. He was in full dress uniform, his sabre lay on the bench and he was wearing spurs. No one wears spurs on shipboard. I presented myself and we exchanged several remarks, but I must have seemed somewhat strained for from the first moment I knew that he sensed something. Under some pretext he left the Captain, and led me aft near the great rudder wheel. There, I dared speak. Colonel, what did I say? How I must have stammered! He did not look at me. Leaning ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... this?" said he, in a cheery tone and with a pleasant face. "Did not you know that I was here? I came down yesterday; landed from Hamburg only yesterday morning. How do you do, Mrs. Robarts? This is a terrible bore, isn't it?" Robarts, at the first moment, hardly knew how to speak to his old friend. He was struck dumb by the disgrace of his position; the more so as his misfortune was one which it was partly in the power of Lord Lufton to remedy. He had never yet borrowed money since he had filled a man's position, but he had had words ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... is not an economic question. It is a question of supplying a nation with ideals. It is a problem which only an American National Ideal Supply Company could hope to handle. The very first moment three or four purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires and for labourers have been found and set up in the great show window of the world, the industrial unrest of this century ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... fleeting glimpse that Robert had of the second man, but he believed that it was Garay. He not only looked like the spy, but he was convinced that it was really he. After the first moment or two he did not doubt his identity, and making an excuse that he wanted a little fresh air and would return in an instant he walked quickly to the door. He caught another and fugitive glimpse of ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... confess at the same time I should have risked the measure the first moment I saw the mediation given up by her Majesty; because I did not view the United States as humble supplicants at this Court; as they were not seeking aids from her Majesty, and had nothing to ask but what they intended to give an ample equivalent for. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... by her side, deliberately removed his muffler and unfastened his overcoat. It struck her, from the first moment she heard his voice, that his manner was somehow altered. She was altogether unprepared, however, for the almost stern directness of his first question. "Miss Beverley," he began, "will you allow me to ask you how long you have known ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... At the first moment of the check, Marcus Decius had pushed the sturdy horse that he rode well to the fore. He saw Hostilius riding back, waving one arm and crying out incoherent words: his spear was gone, and the head of a Spaniard's lance had been thrust through his shoulder ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... after the first moment he felt surprisingly little satisfaction in his triumph. He could not help being sorry for Westby; the boy was after all right in feeling that he had been deprived of a victory to which he had been entitled. And as Irving looked at his downcast face, he softened still ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... could find him. For a long time he held back from the thought of open-air preaching, but now he saw that it must be done. There was a period of his life, he says, when he would have thought the saving of a soul "a sin almost if it had not been done in a church." But from the first moment when he began to preach to crowds in the open air he must have felt that he had found his work at last. His friend and colleague Whitefield, who had more of the genius of an orator than Wesley, had preceded him in this path. One is ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the mistress, "in a dazed-like way," she said afterward, and at the first moment had scarce a word for Marjorie, who ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... from a sick bed to undertake his capture. He had been confined for some time in Charleston with fever. The first moment of convalescence was seized upon for carrying into effect the wishes of Cornwallis. He concerted his plans before he left the city. His legion, which was at Camden, were instructed to meet him, while with a troop of horse he set forward for some point upon the Wateree. From this point he was ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... day, gave Jimmy a chance to rest. He supplied himself with as many papers as he could get in Lentone and began reading what others had to say about the most sensational murder case in a decade. From the first moment when Professor Brierly had pronounced the Miller death a murder the affair ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days of violent struggle in the miller's mind, as the gradual access of bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in one view all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself. Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... no answer but to take her hand, grasping it with rough heartiness as if this was the first moment of their meeting. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... not to leave them, her very heart-strings must have been rent with agony. Well may the voice quiver or the hand tremble that attempts to portray the anguish of this mother during that farewell interview. From the very first moment, her resolution to return to her husband remained unshaken. The members of the relief party entreated her to go with her, children and save her own life. They urged that there could only be a few hours of life left in George Donner. This was so true that she once ventured ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... and with a satisfied nod Mrs. Dobson put down her bowl of gruel and went down to communicate the startling news to Hannah, who nearly lost her senses in the first moment of surprise. ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... somewhat taken aback at the first moment," Luis admitted. "But—well, we are both in love—Santiago no less than I, although I have had these six long years of waiting and am likely to have another. And we love Concha as few men love their sisters, for there ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... reason why the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure; for when the total cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot be altered. Now this soul, at the second moment of its existence, does not receive a new faculty of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it had at the first moment, and it is as independent of the concourse of any other cause at the second [43] moment as it was at the first. It must therefore produce again at the second moment the same thought it had produced just before. If it be objected that it ought ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... usual he was taking his obsession along with him, though, if he had but known, he might have got it to do the work by the simple formality of turning the petrol tap from OFF to ON. His was ever a curious life, from the first moment of his joining the Army in tails, a bowler hat, and a large sword wrapped in a homely newspaper. But the inward fun of it all is not for the present, Charles; our clear old friends, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... it and the wall. Then I laughed aloud, and was somewhat startled to hear another laugh directly behind me. I jumped down on the floor again, and swung round my torch like a searchlight on a battleship at sea. There was no human presence in that chamber except myself. Of course, after my first moment of surprise, I realised that the laugh was but an echo of my own. The old walls of the old house were like sounding-boards. The place resembled an ancient fiddle, still tremulous with the music that had been played on it. It was easy to understand how a superstitious ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... unity and the universal belongs to it quite as much as the tendency to difference and the particular; just as in the life of feeling the tendency to isolation and self-assertion against others is combined with the tendency to society and union with others. From the first moment of intellectual life the world is to us a unity; subjectively a unity, as all its varied phenomena are gathered up in the consciousness of one self, and objectively a unity, as every object and event is definitely placed ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... or broken down with grief. He had come to that place where, whatever the shock or the ill-turn of fortune, he could accept it, and even in that first moment of loss he realized that, for Jean at least, the fortune was not ill. Her malady had never been cured, and it had been one of his deepest dreads that he would leave her behind him. It was believed, at first; that Jean had drowned, and Dr. Smith ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... After the first moment of stupefaction, all who had an injury to avenge arose and hurried to the chase. Sforza retook Pesaro, Bagloine Perugia, Guido and Ubaldo Urbino, and La Rovere Sinigaglia; the Vitelli entered Citta di Castello, the Appiani Piombino, the Orsini ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on that very first evening of my acquaintance with the Hills. You know that I have been long engaged to Arthur, and I will speak to you freely about him. He has often told me since that he liked me from the first moment he saw me. I felt it even that evening; though I could not believe in it. But the possibility of it dazzled and bewildered me, so powerful was the fascination ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... severe simplicity of the Kitzuki-no-oho-yashiro was what I expected to see. But this shrine of the Goddess of the Sun is a spectacle of such splendour that for the first moment I almost doubt whether I am really in a Shinto temple. In very truth there is nothing of pure Shinto here. These shrines belong to the famous period of Ryobu- Shinto, when the ancient faith, interpenetrated and allied with Buddhism, adopted the ceremonial magnificence and the marvellous ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... sleepyhead, up and into your clothes, sir. We are late for the Capitol now," were the words I heard in what seemed almost the first moment after I had closed my eyes. Behold, my Uncle, the General Robert, fully dressed, stood beside the bed and a morning sun was shining through the windows. I had slept through a long night like a small child upon the bosom of the bed of my beautiful Grandmamma ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... heads occasionally worked in the handles of our whip-stalks. A similar badge was once braided about my wrist by the royal hand of Mehevi himself, who, as soon as he had concluded the operation, pronounced me "Taboo." This occurred shortly after Toby's disappearance; and were it not that from the first moment I had entered the valley the natives had treated me with uniform kindness, I should have supposed that their conduct afterwards was to be ascribed to the fact that I had ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... for the compliment," he said, with a grimace. "But I'm not up in the classics, so the comparison didn't strike me. But what did strike me, after the first moment of annoyance, was the humour of the situation. I turned and walked beside her—under cover of an elaborate apology for my dashing behaviour. She seemed quite concerned at my regret, and insisted that ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... circumstances to rely on what she called her wits, laid the crystal temple in ruins, and drove the demon from its lurking-place naked and shrieking into the open. But, after all, was not she rather deceived than Julian? Julian, from the first moment of meeting Valentine, looked upon him as saint. Cuckoo, from the first moment of meeting, looked upon him as devil. Each put him aside from the general run of humanity, the one in a heaven of the imagination, the other in a ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... had her instructions, perhaps it was only her own disposition left by her knowing husband to do his trick for him. Sheila had not overstated the unhappiness that Mrs. Hudson's evident dislike had caused her. In fact, she had greatly understated it. From the first moment at the station, when the hard eyes had looked her over and the harsh voice had asked about "the girl's trunk," Sheila's sensitiveness had begun to suffer. It was not easy, even with Babe's good-humored help, to go down ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... every crisis in the period. In the Rebellion Losses debate in 1849, Gladstone, taking in this matter a view more restricted than that of his leader Peel, held that Elgin should have referred to the Home Government at the very first moment, and before public opinion had been appealed to in the colony.[28] The fall of the Whig ministry in 1851 was followed by the first of three brief Derby administrations: and the Earl of Derby proved himself to be more wedded than he had been as Lord Stanley to the old restrictive system. ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... evening there with him in peace and quietness. On receiving the tardy acceptance he departed hastily, much pleased with the results of his diplomacy—which would hardly have been the case had he been able to read the young man's mind. One thing had been plain to Gerrard from the first moment in which he realised fully what Charteris's death would mean to him. It set an absolute barrier between Honour and himself. He could no more take advantage of Bob's removal from the field by an accident than if he had ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... said Matt. He added, not very consequently, "I suppose it must have happened to me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise and I came up about the accident. I couldn't truly say that she had ever been out of my mind a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it, though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time," ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... most at the first moment was the plainness of the ladies' dresses. She, herself, was rather gorgeous in a shot-silk gown and a fashionable bonnet crowded with flowers. She had been ashamed of the splendour of the article as she put it on, and yet had been ashamed also of her ordinary ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... started. Impossible for her to speak in that first moment. But when she had dried her eyes, she said, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... carles, and queans, who have been turned into stone by I wot not what deed; but that whiles they come alive again, and can walk and talk as erst they did; and that if any man may be so bold as to abide the time of their awakening, and in the first moment of their change may frame words that crave the fulfilment of his desire, and if therewith he be both wise and constant, then shall he have his desire fulfilled of these wights, and bear his life back again from out the dale. ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... than Fenella herself. He asked himself as he stood there whether her vagaries were merely temperamental, the air of mystery which seemed to surround her simply accidental. He thought of that night at her house, the curious intimacy which from the first moment she had seemed to take for granted, the confidence with which she had treated him. He remembered those few breathless moments in her room, the man's hand upon the window-sill, with the strange colored ring, worn with almost flagrant ostentation. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... recede ... to vanish ... and he beheld before him the boulevard beneath grey skies and her in her black mantilla ... then her again on the platform ... he even beheld himself by her side.—That which had smitten him so forcibly in the breast at the first moment, now began to rise up ... to rise up in his throat.... He tried to cough, to call some one, but his voice failed him, and to his own amazement, tears which he could not restrain gushed from his eyes.... What had ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... poet had, from the first moment, interested me in his misfortunes; and being a smatterer in learning myself, my vanity, perhaps, was flattered with the idea of becoming the protector of a man of letters in distress. Without appearing to show any particular ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the streets were muddy, I had to part with him. He was sent to a clergyman in the island of Westray, one of the Orkneys; and though he had a wretched voyage, and was as sick as any dog, he signalized the first moment of his arrival at the manse, by strangling an ancient monkey, or "puggy," the pet of the minister,—who was a bachelor,—and the wonder of the island. Jock henceforward took to evil courses, extracting the kidneys of the best young rams, driving whole hirsels down steep ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... attracting the general attention of the neighbourhood. She had no time, be it observed, to divest herself of shawl or mantilla in order to show how sumptuously she could blush—for her salutation is made to Sir Hubert, and its roseate consequences ensue the very first moment she sees him. But let that pass. We should have been very sorry if such a "splendiferous" phenomenon had been obscured by envious boa or pelisse, or lost to the proprieties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... At the first moment of its release the lion halted in the arena, raised itself half on end, snuffing the upward air with impatient sighs; then suddenly sprang forward, but not on the Athenian. At half speed it circled ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Gerusalemme and thrown himself at her feet, she would hardly have felt it more strangely dream-like than the transformation of her kind doctor into her own Joe: and on the other hand, she had from the first moment nestled so entirely into the home that it would have seemed more unnatural to be torn away from it than to become a part of it. As to her being an extraordinary and very disadvantageous choice for him, she simply knew nothing of the matter; she ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... restless mind.—Humility has not fled me;—my heart has not fallen a sacrifice to title, pomp, or splendor.—Yet, has it not foolishly, unasked, given itself up?—Ah! my Lady, not entirely unask'd neither; or, why, from the first moment, have I seen him shew such tender, such respectful assiduities?—why so ardently solicit to attend me into Oxfordshire?—why ask, if I refused my hand in the same peremptory manner, what would become of the man who without it was lost to ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... entangled itself in her gown and feet, and before she had freed herself of the encumbrance, Cynthia had opened the drawing-room door, and stood in it, looking at her mother, at Molly, at Mr. Preston, but not advancing one step. Her colour, which had been brilliant the first moment of her entrance, faded away as she gazed; but her eyes—her beautiful eyes—usually so soft and grave, seemed to fill with fire, and her brows to contract, as she took the resolution to come forwards and take her place among the three, who were all looking at her with different emotions. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... her. The scene which then followed may be better imagined than described. We may be sure that the count used every effort in order to prevail upon his prisoner, but without success. Miralda's invariable response was a gleam of her dagger, which never left her hand from the first moment of entering the odious building. Finding that mild measures would not win the pretty tobacconist, the count, as is usual under such circumstances with persons of his nature, threatened her with violence; and he would, doubtless, have carried ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... There are times when the grave words of the Dhammapada fall like shadows along the path: "What is life but the flower or the fruit which falls when ripe, yet ever fears the untimely frost? Once born, there is naught but sorrow; for who is there can escape death? From the first moment of life, the result of passionate love and desire, there is nought but the bodily form transitional as the lightning flash." Yet apart from all transitory passions and the ephemeral results of mortal love, the song of the Taoist lover soars unstained, untrammelled. ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... M., I congratulate you on the courageous frame of mind which this event causes you to evince. It is exactly that which, as a friend, I wish for you for the whole of life, and which I perceived and loved in you from the very first moment. It delights me especially at this time, when your contemporaries are even more dark and confused than mine are sluggish and old-fashioned. The reality of life, as we enter the period of full manhood, destroys the first dream of youth; ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller |
