"Fleeting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1830, Mrs. Boardman writes to her sister from Maulmain, whither they had gone for the benefit of her children's health: "We must look beyond this frail fleeting world for our true peace. Alas, I know by most bitter experience, that it is in vain to seek for true happiness here below. My fondest earthly hopes have again and again been dashed. Torn from ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... objection to a pigment system. Without it a child has nothing tangible which he can keep in constant view to imitate and memorize. With it he builds up a mental image of measured relations that describe every color in nature, including the fleeting hues of the rainbow, although they appear but for a moment at rare intervals. Finally, it furnishes a simple notation which records every color sensation by a letter and two numerals. With the enlargement of his mental ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... vaudeville-producing career because of his artistic leaning toward the beautiful in stage setting. His subsequent successes were no less pleasing because he learned the magic of the scenery mystery. Lasky is but one example, and were it not that the names of vaudeville acts are but fleeting memories, dimmed and eclipsed by the crowded impressions of many acts seen at one sitting, there might be given an amazing list of beautiful little entertainments that have failed because of the transportation cost of the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... him a fleeting look). How did you know? (to BAXTER). Yes, Mr. Baxter, it was your article I was reading. If you'd come five minutes earlier you'd have found me wrestling—I ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... battle of Fair Oaks, and twice during the seven days' battles, a brilliant opportunity to take advantage of Confederate mistakes, and by a vigorous offensive to capture Richmond. But constitutional indecision unfitted him to seize the fleeting chances of war. His hope of victory was always overawed by his fear of defeat. While he commanded during a large part of the campaign double, and always superior, numbers to the enemy, his imagination led him continually ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... imagination. Some of Macaulay's best essays were written on board slow-going sailing-ships that were blown by vagrant winds from England to India. Darwin, Hooker and Huxley, all got their scientific baptism on board of surveying-ships, where time was plentiful and anything but fleeting, and most ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... in future years, When life serenely yields its best Of steadfast joy and fleeting tears, And, blessing, you move on, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Tzental names. Dr Seler's explanation is substantially as follows: That the word manik is from the root man or mal, which signifies "to pass quickly;" manik may therefore mean "that which passes by," "that which is fleeting." Dr Brinton gives the same explanation, and concludes that the deer is referred to metaphorically. In regard to the Tzental name moxic, Dr Seler suggests that it may be founded on the root max, from which is derived maxan, "swift." Dr Brinton objects to this derivation, ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... insects—one hand still resting heavily on the rim of the emptied caldron, and the face still hid behind the Black Veil. What! the wondrous elixir, sought with such hope and well- nigh achieved through such dread, fleeting back to the earth from which its material was drawn to give bloom, indeed—but to herbs; joy ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... The fleeting vision of Liz Hepburn's familiar face appeared to fill Gladys with excitement and unrest. As Mina looked at her flushed cheeks and shining eyes, she felt a vague uneasiness visit her own heart. They did not speak of her as they drove home, but when the girls gathered, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... could level him with the dust; but the stroke of lightning or apoplexy might be equally fatal; and it was the part of a wise man to forget the inevitable calamities of human life in the enjoyment of the fleeting hour. He was dignified with the appellation of the king's slave; had, perhaps, been purchased from obscure parents, in a country which he had never known; and was trained up from his infancy in the severe discipline of the seraglio. [53] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a mere trifle alters or produces the expression. But then, on the other hand, in pictures the whole effect of which lies in a kind of harmony, the treachery of a single colour must needs involve the failure of the whole to outlast the fleeting grace of those social conjunctions it is meant to perpetuate. This is what has happened, in part, to that portrait on the easel. Meantime, he has commanded Jean-Baptiste to finish it; and so ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... us that we should form just conceptions of the constitution of that system and of its past history. With relation to this universe, man is, in extent, little more than a mathematical point: in duration but a fleeting shadow: he is a mere reed shaken in the winds of force. But, as Pascal long ago remarked, although a mere reed, he is a thinking reed; and in virtue of that wonderful capacity of thought, he has the power of framing for himself a symbolic conception of the universe, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... In breezy rest among the nodding stalks. The charioteer with wond'rous gesture talks To the trees and mountains; and there soon appear Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear, Passing along before a dusky space Made by some mighty oaks: as they would chase Some ever-fleeting music on they sweep. Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep: Some with upholden hand and mouth severe; Some with their faces muffled to the ear Between their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom, Go glad and smilingly, athwart the gloom; Some ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... girl as much as possible in future; and, above all, be particularly careful not to fall in love with her. Of course, it was only a passing fancy as yet, and, like fruit, would never ripen unless the sun shone. He would avoid the sunshine! Meanwhile, of all these rapidly fleeting thoughts, he said never a word to his friend David Bowers, but after a little more conversation, begged him also to go away ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... that has elsewhere forgotten them. In the summer, it is true, a small contingent of visitors, adventurous in spirit, though mostly of sedate and solitary habits, make their appearance to swell its meagre population, and impart to the wide stretches of smooth sand that fringe its shores a fleeting air of life and sober gaiety; but in late September—the season of the year in which I made its acquaintance—its pasture-lands lie desolate, the rugged paths along the cliffs are seldom trodden by human foot, and the sands are a desert waste on which, ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... followed a picture of several streaks of fleeting clouds, and of a creek whose waters ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fancied he did—love Marie de Vere. What folly had blinded him then, he wondered? Marie had her charms, to be sure, with those dark, bewitching eyes of hers, so kind and sympathetic, so bright and witty and entertaining. But there was something about Marie that was fleeting, something about Beth that was abiding; Marie's charms bewitched while she was present and were soon forgotten, but Beth's lingered in the memory and deepened with the years. It was well, after all, he thought, that Marie had refused his offer of marriage that morning he received Beth's note, ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... occasionally mentioned in the brief and fleeting annals of the stage from the year 1798 to the year 1811, were those of Mr. David Poe and the beautiful Miss Arnold—afterward Mrs. Poe,—the father and mother of that most brilliant but erratic genius ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... in spite of herself, her thoughts went back to the private office of Mr. Seagraves. She recalled the expression on the faces of the two men—an expression denoting only the most fleeting interest in the problem of Mr. Pendleton. If he braced up, well and good; if he did not, then it was only a question of selecting some one else. It ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passeth from life to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... voice sweet nature's sweetest tunes Sang the glad song of twenty cloudless Junes. Her raiment,—nay; go, reader, if you please, To some sage Treatise on Antiquities, Whence writers of historical romances Cull old embroideries for their new-spun fancies; I care not for the trivial, nor the fleeting. Beneath her dress a woman's heart was beating The rhythm of love's eternal eloquence, And I confess to you, in confidence, Though flowers have grown a thousand years above her, Unseen, unknown, with all ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... and watching the ruins of the past, time and reality left behind, set sail for some strange land of bliss. And there is in the very sensuousness and love of beauty-of these men a vagueness and melancholy, a constant: sense of the fleeting and of the eternal, as in that passage, translated from the languidly sweet Italian perfection of Tasso into the timid, almost scentless, English of Spenser—"Cosi trapassa ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... tried to focus everything she knew of him, all her fleeting impressions, in one picture—and failed. He had made himself very agreeable, the single time she had met him; but.... There was Richard's opinion of him: Richard did not like him or trust him; he thought him ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... ardor, flame, passion; prender —— set fire. fuente f. spring, fountain, source. fuera adv. outside; —— de prep. out of. fuero m. privilege, statute law. fuerza f. force, strength, might. fugaz adj. fleeting. fugitivo, -a fugitive, fleeting, fleeing, flying. flgido, -a bright, resplendent. fulgor m. gleam. fulguroso, -a shining, flashing. fulgurante adj. shining. fnebre adj. funereal, lugubrious, mournful. funeral adj. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... A fleeting contempt stirred the beauty of the girl's face for a moment, and then she told him of that which was seething ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... his own flowing and eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite principles,—from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of everlasting repose; it ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... beautiful, how blest! And Granny, as she listened, fondly pressed Her darling's little hand, did she not bring Sweet consolation to her aged breast When th' sun of life was low—towards evening, And life's fast fleeting ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... standards set for translators makes us feel the truth of Mr. Lang's conclusion: "There can be then, it appears, no final English translation of Homer. In each there must be, in addition to what is Greek and eternal, the element of what is modern, personal, and fleeting."[459] The translator, it is obvious, must speak in the dialect and move in the measures of his own day, thereby very often failing to attract the attention of a later day. Yet there must be some place ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... "Snap-shot Harry," was known vaguely as "him," "Skeesicks," or "that coot." It was remembered long after, with a feeling of superstition, that he had never even met with the dignity of an accident, nor received the fleeting honor of a chance shot meant for somebody else in any of the liberal and broadly comprehensive encounters which distinguished the camp. And the inundation that finally carried him out of it was partly anticipated by his passive incompetency, for while the others escaped—or ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... hours. My friend was so much fascinated with this western beauty that I began to conclude his common stock of gallantry had much improved since his arrival in this fertile country. Indeed, they appeared mutually pleased and the fleeting hours seemed almost too short for the full enjoyment of each other's conversation. Myself and fellow-travelers enjoyed their mirth and jokes. Little did my friend dream a frightful cloud was hovering over him which threatened to darken all ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... that small chaparral to the south! To the east something stirred into bounding life and action; a coyote called twice—and then they came, on foot and silently as fleeting shadows, leaning forward to bring into play every ounce of energy in the slim, red legs. Smoke filled the room with its acrid sting. The crashing of the Winchester, worked with wonderful speed and deadly accuracy by the best rifle shot ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... several, but abandoned them one after the other. He tried to get a glimpse inside the tent where the Foger aeroplane Was housed, but it was too closely guarded. Andy himself was not much in evidence, and Tom only had fleeting glimpses of ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... Since even fleeting thoughts are germs of acts, it takes no great effort or self-torture if we will but understand the processes and smoke out the undesirable germs, and allow and encourage the growth of the preferred groups of thoughts. This may ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... other expectations; he must keep this," Mary said to herself, with a smile curling her lips. It was impossible to help fleeting visions of another kind—new dignities and an acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence. But these things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for the want of her, could never tempt her ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and lifting her eyes to his in a fleeting upward glance. "I hope I shall soon forget those few awful seconds. I knew he meant to stab you, and I wanted to scream, but could not. He seemed to be the leader of the party, and he flew into such a rage when the wheel gave way that I really believe he was ready to kill me out of spite. You ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... first Statement in each entry referred to the weather and the second to the deportment of the writer, and Rebecca Mary had remarked a sympathetic resemblance between the two statements. She had caught a fleeting glimpse of the weather part of "Thirsdy"—she could guess the rest. Better let the curtain fall on "Thirsdy." On her way home Rebecca Mary decided to keep a diary herself. Her first day's record had been a good deal like the "Mundy" of the minister's littlest ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... if you should chance yourself some day to follow the Friendly Road, you may catch a fleeting glimpse of a man in a rusty hat, carrying a gray bag, and sometimes humming a little song under his breath for the joy of being there. And it may actually happen, if you stop him, that he will take a tin whistle from his bag and play for you, "Money Musk," or "Old Dan Tucker," or he may produce ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... artfully conveyed on board. He walked, darkly scowling, to the rail, and flung the canteen into the sea. Hicks, who had saluted his appearance with a glare as savage as his own, yielded to his whimsical sense of the futility of this vengeance. He gave his fleeting, drunken laugh: "Good old boy, Captain Jenness. Means well—means well. But lacks—lacks—forecast. Pounds of cure, but no prevention. Not much on bite, but death on bark. Heh?" He waggled his hand offensively at the captain, and disappeared, loosely floundering down the ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... are somewhat hypercritical. Great thoughts must not be trimmed to the exact dialect of business-men. LONGFELLOW reveals important truths; he utters what is pent within him from the impulse of utterance: he tells us that 'Art is long and Time is fleeting;' now some arts are not long, and time often drags heavily. It will not do to be ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... lodge and climbed the stairs. She was profoundly depressed. Even the discovery that Peter had come home early and was building a fire in the kitchen brought only a fleeting smile. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bloom through the window beside his bed; and he was always glad that this vision of beauty was his very earliest memory. All his life he has never seen a peach-tree in bloom without a swelling of the heart, without some fleeting sense that ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... hour,—how swift it flies When poppies flare and lilies smile; How soon the fleeting minute dies, Leaving us but a little while To dream our dream, to sing our song, To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower, The Gods—They do not give us long,— One ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... the feet of Jeanne Lange, how exquisite they had been, how fleeting in the perfection of their happiness! Now they seemed to belong to a far distant past, evanescent like the perfume of violets, swift in their flight like the winged steps of youth. Blakeney's letter had effectually taken the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... that had been flapping the ground in agony, it had at last recovered itself, and taken to its great wings and flown. The sun shone out clear, and in all the blue abyss not a cloud was to be seen, except far away to leeward, where one was spread like a banner in the lonely air, fleeting away, the ensign of the charging storm—bearing for its device a ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... spirit that retains and reproduces them only in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of toleration for what we before gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly grows upon us. Leonard looked into his heart after the enchantress had breathed upon it; and through the mists of the fleeting and tender melancholy which betrayed where she had been, he beheld a new sun of delight and joy dawning over the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... three such items are charged to a single account. To offset them, there is placed on the credit side a little feverish excitement, too fleeting for calm enjoyment, followed by regret, remorse, and shame. Be sure your sins will find you ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... was to find an appeal for truth independent of revelation, the one produced an intuitional religion, the other, proximately, an ideal, but ultimately generates scepticism; for the one clings to the eternal ideas in the mind, the other views the fleeting, changing aspects of truth in the world. The spirit of the former is seen in Carlyle, Coleridge, and Cousin; the spirit of the latter in Renan and Scherer, and is beginning to appear in the younger writers of the English ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... phantom bear in flight; A breaking of branches under the hill; The noise of a going when all is still! And hens asleep on the perch, they say, Cackle sometimes in a startled way, As if they were dreaming a dream that mocks The lope and whiz of a fleeting fox! ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... to the present moment, with many minute circumstances belonging to one or other particular scene in it, has come across me like a dream, but distinctly, entirely involuntarily and unsought, occupying in duration a few minutes. For a long time I was disposed to consider these fleeting visions as a trick of the fancy—the more so as my dream-vision displayed to me the dress and movements of the actors, the appearance of the room, the furniture, and other accidents of the scene; till on one occasion, in a gamesome mood, I narrated to my family ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... what the Daguerreotype has done. It has fixed the most fleeting of our illusions, that which the apostle and the philosopher and the poet have alike used as the type of instability and unreality. The photograph has completed the triumph, by making a sheet of paper reflect images like a mirror and hold them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... abide; All free, nought owned of goods and gear, By men and women though it were. Common to all all wheat and wine Over the seas and up the Rhine. No manslayer then the wide world o'er When Mine and Thine are known no more. Yea, God, well counselled for our health, Gave all this fleeting earthly wealth A common heritage to all, That men might feed them therewithal, And clothe their limbs and shoe their feet And live a simple life and sweet. But now so rageth greediness That each desireth nothing less Than all the world, and ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... nigh two hundred years ago. Therefore, to read Pepys is to enjoy our own brief innings better, as men who know that our March is passing where Pepys' May has flown before, and that we shall soon be with him and his wife, and the Scot, and the red- faced parson. So fleeting is life, whose record outlives it for ever; so brief, so swift, so faint the joys and sorrows, and all that we make marvel of in our own fortunes and those of ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... years? Well, well, how the snows and the blossoms come and go. We're growing old, Croaker. We're nearing the time when the fleeting show will have flet. And hanged if I can see that we're growing any wiser, or better, or richer—hey? Thirty cents! Ye gods, Croaker, that man says thirty cents! Thirty cents, and my entire capital is a lonely ten-cent piece that I kept for luck. Thirty cents, and my last ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... knowledge of the laws of optics that it has come into current use in laboratories. In fact, it alone is capable of giving with an undoubted character of truthfulness a durable vestige of certain fleeting phenomena.— ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... at the crowded corner by the Cafe de la Paix, I caught a fleeting glimpse of Laploshka. He smiled, slightly raised his hat, and vanished. I never saw him again. After all, the money had been GIVEN to the deserving rich, and the soul of ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... is uncertain, and for ever running out of the beaten track. Why go to look at the flowers, and take delight in their beauty? When you return home, you will see the vanity of your pleasure. Why purchase fleeting joys of loose women? How long do you retain the delicious taste of the dainties you feast upon? For ever wishing to do this, wishing to see that, wishing to eat rare dishes, wishing to wear fine clothes, you pass a lifetime in fanning the flames which consume you. What terrible matter for ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... nations sent forth to reveal a new world to civilization, men of courage and fortitude, able in achieving the momentous tasks assigned to them. Columbus and Cabot, at least, thought less of riches and fleeting honors than of the proper and noble glories of discovery; it was left to their Spanish successors to kidnap the Indians, to rob their settlements and murder their women, and to invade the peaceful wilds of America, ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... has mastered the apparently capricious, yet logical, reasoning of her heart; who can track her thought through the seemingly contradictory workings of her mind, and read the sensations, shy or bold, written in fleeting red, a bewildering ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... thy form, I ask the night, but both are silent still: And e'en the sea which bears thee, gives reply But with a solemn sigh along the shore. With evening's ruddy glow I'll send to thee A greeting, when it sinks into thy waves. And heaven's long ship, the fleeting cloud, shall take On board the wail of the abandoned one. So shall I sit within my virgin bower, In mourning clad, of all life's joy bereft, And broken lilies sew into the cloth, Until the Spring its cloth doth weave, and sew It full ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... of day. Silent with upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; 40 "Bear Him, ye Winds! ye Stars benignant! guide." —The calm Philosopher in ether ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Spiritual World, spiritual and yet at the same time outward and common to all. You in one place, I in another, all men somewhere or at some time, meet with an assurance that the hopes and fears, the thoughts and yearnings that proceed from, or tend to, a right spirit in us, are not dreams or fleeting singularities, no voices heard in sleep, or spectres which the eye suffers but not perceives. As if on some dark night a pilgrim, suddenly beholding a bright star moving before him, should stop in fear and perplexity. But lo! traveller after traveller passes by him, and ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... professors and the 'Prex' of the college, par excellence (for there are some half dozen 'digs' or dignitaries so named in the town), sat in a body near the stage—'invited guests.' Songs were sung—the fleeting joys of earth, the delights of study, the beauty of flowers, the excellence of wisdom, and kindred themes discoursed upon by low-voiced essayists, till the valedictory came; but with Mr. S——, meanwhile, all went not merry as a marriage bell: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... self-sustaining nature and towering spirit to wreak their own will. Once let them give their love to man, and it is the passion of their lives. Of gossip and the wagging tongue of scandal, and of that vague, shadowy phantom, reputation, they reck not. These unsubstantial fleeting barriers are dissipated in an instant before the mighty breath of their omnipotent passion. Their love is the great fact of their lives. Why should it yield to less powerful sentiments, to inferior satisfactions. If the laws and sentiments of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the first great swells of the sea of the wilderness were clothed in a thousand sheens and shaded by the purple budding of the oaks and walnuts on the northern slopes. On the yellow sandbars flocks of geese sat pluming in the sun, or rose at our approach to cast fleeting shadows on the water, their HONK-HONKS echoing from the hills. Here and there a hawk swooped down from the azure to break the surface and bear off a wriggling fish that gleamed like silver, and at eventide we would see ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that lead to failure. And by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels are not in our thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a fourth of a fortunate barrister's gains) which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a Trollope. Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal of gossip—these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature is, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... had sworn, together and separately, should never come to pass,—that is, they were about to snatch from Fate a few days of such free happiness and communion as during their long years of intimacy they had never enjoyed. In order to secure these fleeting moments of joy, she, the woman in the case, was about to run the greatest risk which can in these days be incurred by ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... reason to think she would not have been sorry to have had me supply the vacancy; for I had immediate notice sent me of her death by Miss Planta, so written as to persuade me it was a letter by command. But not all my duty, all my gratitude, could urge me, even one short fleeting moment, to weigh any interest against the soothing serenity, the unfading felicity, of a hermitage such ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... asked consent; That smooth, unruffled brow which has not sorrowed— All these are mine; should I not be content? Yet are these treasures mine, or only lent me? And who shall claim them when I pass away? Oh, jealous Fate, to torture and torment me With thoughts like these in my too fleeting day! ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... river, On thy bosom sun-beams play; Though they're fleeting and retreating, Thou ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... camel-driver, the scent of whose sheepskin had led him back to his sheep, and he had given himself to their service with profit to himself, for it had kept his thoughts from straying backwards or forwards, fixing them in the present. He had lived in the ever-fleeting present for many years—how many? The question awoke him from his reverie, and he sat wondering how it was he could think so quietly of things that he had put out of his mind instinctively, till he seemed to himself to be a man detached as much from hope as from regret. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... gasoline which can be produced in a State in the coming year may be vital to a broad strategical estimate involving war against trade, that information may be of little use in a tactical estimate of a localized, fleeting situation. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... admit some careless, debonair, thousand-dollar-a-week comedian who sauntered in with a jaunty "Hello, Ike!" or some furred and scented female star, the rank and file of the profession were greeted, like Moses on Pisgah, with a fleeting glimpse of the promised land, consisting of a large desk and a section of a very fat man with spectacles and a bald head or a younger man with fair hair ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... notwithstanding what has passed, have a melancholy pleasure in drinking your good health. I had hoped,' said Brass, looking round with a mournful smile, 'to have seen you three gentlemen, one day or another, with your legs under the mahogany in my humble parlour in the Marks. But hopes are fleeting. Dear me!' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... perhaps few more devoted men than George Corson to the interests of the oppressed everywhere. The slave, fleeting from his master, ever found a home with him, and felt while there that no slave-hunter would get him away until every means of protection should fail. He was ever ready to send his horse and carriage to convey them on the road to Canada, or elsewhere towards ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to 'get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, Would with the sceptre straight ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... the best advantage implies the command of adequate time to read. The art of having time to read depends upon knowing how to make the best use of our days. Days are short, and time is fleeting, but no one's day ever holds less than 24 hours. Engrossing as one's occupation may be, it need never consume all the time remaining from sleep, refreshment and social intercourse. The half hour before breakfast, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... heavy mist, but it began to break up, and through peepholes one caught fleeting glimpses of distant patterning of field and forest, and hints of great hills. The sun showed like a great pale moon on the horizon. There were other travellers on the old Turkish trail, horsemen, Bosnians ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... immortal, makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts; Is its own origin of ill, and end— And its own place and time—its innate sense When stript of this mortality derives No colour from the fleeting things about, But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy, Born from the knowledge of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... change, was it refused; vainly Mahommed urged the happiness its acceptance would bring, that he knew not all he so rashly refused; still he wavered not, and Ali with a weary heart gave up the attempt. Time passed, but its fleeting years reconciled not Mordaunt to his situation, nor lessened the kindly interest he excited in the heart of the good old man; and when at length it happened that Mordaunt, almost unconsciously to himself, became the fortunate instrument ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... shadow of mortality awful to support; and he is so inured to the apprehension that he greets the reality with relief. He does not even seek to support a disappointment; at an affront, at a breach of one of his fleeting and communistic love-affairs, he seeks an instant refuge in the grave. Hanging is now the fashion. I heard of three who had hanged themselves in the west end of Hiva-oa during the first half of 1888; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pepys's predecessor as Clerk of the Acts, to whom he paid part of the salary. Barlow held the office jointly with Dennis Fleeting.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and lectures vanished, for the Candidate had entirely renounced his dissipated friends and companions, and now nobody could talk more edifying than he on the subject. He agreed so cordially with Elise, that the fleeting champagne of the orgies foamed only for the moment, leaving nothing but emptiness and flatness behind. "For once, nay, for a few times," he was of opinion, "such excesses might be harmless, perhaps even refreshing; ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... have loved too well the merry fleeting things; Run too lightly with the wind—chased too many shining wings; Thought too seldom of the night, and the silence that ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... of the soul will he get who accepts unqualifyingly the class of impulsive proverbs with their enormously overdrawn inferences: such as that of David, when he said in his haste, "All men are liars"; or that of Moore, when he said in his song, "The world is all a fleeting show, for man's illusion given"; or that maxim of Schopenhauer, so full of deadly misanthropy and melancholy that one would gladly turn his back on a world in which he believed such a rule necessary, "Love no one, hate no one, is the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... world will find a very engaging specimen of the genus Baronet in Sir Barnet Skettles, who was so kind to Paul Dombey and so angry with poor Mr. Baps. Sir Leicester Dedlock is on a larger scale—in fact, almost too "fine and large" for life. But I recall a fleeting vision of perfect loveliness among Miss Monflathers's pupils—"a baronet's daughter who by some extraordinary reversal of the laws of Nature was not only plain in feature but dull ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now? After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year, nobody had cared ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... ... cwidegiedda But these comrades of warriors [ those seen in vision] again swim away [ fade away]; the ghost of these fleeting ones brings not there many familiar words; i.e. he sees in dream and vision the old familiar faces, but no voice is heard: they bring neither greetings to him nor tidings ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... of them. If you will turn your faces to God, amidst all the flaunting splendours and vain shows and fleeting possessions of this present, His face will dawn on you yonder. We can say but little of what is meant by such a hope as that. But only this we can say, that there will be, as yet unimaginable, new wealths of revelation ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fleeting moment I felt that my tone was truculent, and almost hesitated; but as I saw no anger or indignation on my Lady's face, but rather an eager approval, I was reassured. A woman, after all, is glad to see a man strong, for all belief in him must ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... saw the strange new life with its modern episode, energy, and push, and realised that even the characteristics which marked the period just before the advent, and just after the advent, of the railway were disappearing, I determined to write a series of stories which would catch the fleeting characteristics and hold something of the old life, so adventurous, vigorous, and individual, before it passed entirely and was forgotten. Therefore, from 1905 to 1909, I kept drawing upon all those experiences of others, from the true tales that had been told me, upon the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Vast it loomed Through ground-fog seen; and vaster, close beside, That convent's church by great Augustine reared Where once old woodlands clasped a temple old, Vaunt of false Gods. To Peter and to Paul That church was dedicate, albeit so long High o'er the cloudy rack of fleeting years It bore, and bears, its founder's name, not theirs. Therein that holy founder slept in Christ, And Ethelbert, and Bertha. All was changed: King Eadbald, new-crowned and bad of life, Who still, whate'er was named ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... Sometimes the vapors were shadowy as gray phantoms, sometimes glowing red with the reflection of the fire within, and as they whirled round the dim ravine loud explosions broke the silence. The view was as fleeting and evanescent as a landscape in a dream; one minute there would be nothing but a bank of mist and deadly stillness, the next a vision of fire and sounds that rent ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... it! But we deserve this. None but idiots Would have come with you to this boiling land On a wild-goose chase; on each step of which One gets a fleeting panoramic view Of kinds of misery one did not guess Existed in the world. Those lepers, beggars, Cripples, fanatics, reptiles—all the swarms Of loathsome creatures we have passed—will haunt My dreams ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... onward, downward, upward,—always, always,—never could that Self of me reach nearer to any verge, never speed farther from any centre. For, in that Silence, all vastitude and height and depth and time and direction are swallowed up: relation therein could have no meaning but for the speck of my fleeting consciousness,—atom of terror pulsating alone through atomless, soundless, nameless, ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... rises to give a stronger and purer light to the dreadful spectacle, a light stronger and purer than that of night itself, which is never completely dark in the tropics. Away, away, and still on, on—outstripping time—running a race with the fleeting moments, till hours and hours of unrelaxing speed are numbered—thus goes the wolf. And now he snuffs the morning air: the fresh breeze from the east raises the foam of the Mediterranean waves, and allays the heat ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason; and no man, who reflects, ever doubted, that the existences, which we consider, when we say, this house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind, and fleeting copies or representations of other existences, which remain ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... of a hawthorn brake, Where bluebells draw the sky down to the wood, Where, 'mid brown leaves, the primroses awake And hidden violets smell of solitude; Beneath green leaves bright-fluttered by the wing Of fleeting, beautiful, immortal Spring, I should have said, "I love you," and your eyes Have said, "I, too . . . ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... image in a few verses two human souls so clearly that they live in our world for ever. Meeting at Night—Parting at Morning is another reminiscence, mixed up with the natural scenery of the meeting and parting, a vivid recollection of a fleeting night of passion, and then the abandonment of its isolation for a wider, fuller life with humanity. I quote it for the fine impassioned way in which human feeling and natural ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... long and life is fleeting; Artists, when their subjects treating, Should be very, very far ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... On thy bosom sunbeams play; Though they're fleeting, and retreating, Thou hast more deceit ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... always clever rogues ready to prey upon him, and, while degrading him, to accomplish their own base purposes. Some, under the guise of religion, will tell him: "The happiness of this world is shortlived and fleeting; eternal happiness can only be obtained by prayer and penance;" and so they persuade him to shave his head, wear a dress of skins, gird himself with a rope of sacred grass, and, renouncing all pleasures and luxuries, to betake himself to fasting and penance, and give away his riches to the ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... fleeting memories steal, Like far-off echoes to my dreaming ear, Away, ungrasped, the cheating visions wheel, As spectres start upon ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... prince that you dared not forge a document which would bring a traitor to his doom? Nay; let me tell you, friends, that the Republic has no use for curs, and calls him a traitor who allows one of her enemies to remain inviolate through his cowardice, his terror of that intangible and fleeting shadow—the wrath of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to this with a gruesome double-take that gave his face the fleeting appearance of an ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... infamy and scorn for the truth; all are silent in dust; the fight is over, but eternity will never efface from their souls whether they did well or ill— whether they fought bravely or failed like cowards. In a sense, our lives are irreparable. If we shrink, if we fail, if we choose the fleeting instead of the eternal, God may forgive us; but there must be an eternal regret! This man lived for humanity when hardest bestead; for truth when truth was unpopular; for Christ when Christ stood chained and scourged in the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... women did most of the talking, and as we sat chatting on every subject under the sun, our husbands looked on in indulgent amusement. Dan soon wearied of the fleeting conversation and turned in, and the little lad slipped away to the black folk; but late into the night we talked: late into the night, and all the next day and evening and following morning—shaded from the brilliant sunshine all day in the leafy "Cottage," and scorching around ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve it without any reason but its will. Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects: it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the stones at her feet; she did not know that she was beautiful. Shefford imagined there was some resemblance in her to the lily—the same whiteness, the same rich gold, and, more striking than either, a strange, rare quality of beauty, of life, intangible as something fleeting, the spirit that had swiftly faded from the plucked flower. Where had the girl been born—what had her life been? Shefford was intensely curious about her. She seemed as different from any other women he had known as this rare canyon lily was different from ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... not in Pee-wee's nature to run from anything or anybody. So there he stood amid the telltale mementoes of the dreadful game while Detectives Slippett and Spotson strolled into the field. They were just in time to behold a fleeting vision of forms wriggling through fences, gliding around buildings, ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... us. Over ridges covered with forests of oak and pine, we saw the valley of the Pursek, the ancient Thymbrius, stretching far away to the misty line of Keshish Dagh, The mountains behind Kintahya loomed up high and grand, making a fine feature in the middle distance. We caught but fleeting glimpses of the view through the trees; and then, plunging into the forest again, descended to a cultivated slope, whereon there was a little village, now deserted. The graveyard beside it was shaded with large cedar-trees, and near it there ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... to watch and pray For the coming dawn of a brighter day; But our lamps are trimmed—we have nought to fear, The darkness is fleeting—the dawn is near. ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... the big Dutchman, receiving an impression of quiet, ponderous efficiency that was yet strangely suggestive of a velvet-covered steel trap. This impression, however, was only a fleeting one as to the latter part; it struck Barry just once in that first early morning view of his ship, when the Hollander gave a softly spoken order to a brown Javanese, smiling ruddily as he spoke, and the sailor leaped to obey with fear so apparent in his face and movements that Barry ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... forming in his countenance. It stole upon the features as if they were being slowly sprinkled with fine dust, blotting their expression into a flat lifelessness. Then the rush of a train passing over the bridge disturbed him. With a fleeting look of pain he sat up, glanced first furtively at me, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... song called The Wanderer (Exeter Book) tells how fleeting are riches, friend, kinsman, maiden,—all the "earth-stead," and he also makes us think of Shakespeare's "insubstantial pageant faded" which leaves ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... vanished form of my Life, lonely as never yet was lonely man, driven by anguish unspeakable, powerless, and no longer aught but a conscious misery;—as there I looked about me for help, unable to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life with an endless longing: then, out of the blue distances, from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight, and at once snapped the bond of birth, the fetter of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world, and ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... to adjust his foot-gear for the long climb, and woke up. He had dozed the instant he sat down, though he had not slept thirty seconds. He was afraid his next doze might be longer, so he finished fixing his foot-gear standing up. Even then he was overpowered for a fleeting moment. He experienced the flash of unconsciousness; becoming aware of it, in midair, as his relaxed body was sinking to the ground and as he caught himself together, he stiffened his muscles with a spasmodic wrench, and escaped the fall. The sudden jerk back to ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... new policy, and the only interest Glen had in it was to take advantage of it. Let him get one single chance to go to town alone and the reform school would see no more of him. Just what he would do he did not know. Sometimes a fleeting thought of going home to see the mother whose heart must be almost broken by his waywardness and the young sister and brother who were carefully guarded from knowledge of the disgrace he had brought ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... But the words died on his lips. She was looking straight at him with a wonderful, transfiguring look. Many fleeting expressions he had seen on that face of his adoration, but never anything like this. He did not dare to think he could ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... but the landlord does not move—not he; what is to be gained by being in a hurry? why fidget? an hour hence is quite as good as the present quickly fleeting by. So soothing his conscience by the word straxt, he leisurely goes on with his work, and as "like master, like man," those below him do not hurry either, for which reason most things in Finland are dominated more by chance than ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... hour of intimate excitement, when the burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated, promised; had ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... pagan carelessness, and the light-hearted enjoyment of pleasure. He did his best and almost succeeded; but the effort was there. His creed now was what it used to be about 1892: "Let us get what pleasure we may in the fleeting days; for the night cometh, and the silence that can ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... The sun through heaven has shed, Though fast yon shower be fleeting, His beams have faster sped. For lo! above the western haze High towers the rainbow arch In solid span of purest rays: ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... impassive "monkey-puzzle" on four legs, but beyond tearing himself into an even more ghastly apparition than before, he accomplished nothing. Finally he broke away, and slid off, a rustling, half-guessed, fleeting vision, and there was fear at last in those awful eyes, that could ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Woermann's, who have put him in charge of this place. The isolation for a white man must be terrible; sometimes two months will go by without his seeing another white face but that in his looking-glass, and when he does see another, it is only by a fleeting visit such as we now pay him, and to make the most of this, he ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... logical conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, such a cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must give rise to the ennobling idea that there is only one truth, and that the external forms are only fleeting waves upon the vast ocean of human ideals. The attempt was made in Alexandria by the Judaeo-Hellenic philosophers. Unfortunately, however, the Hebrews, with all their adaptability, have not yet carried this attempt to its logical ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... material Universe cannot reasonably be thought of as having any existence outside, or independently of, Mind. It certainly does not exist merely in any or all of the human and similar minds whose knowledge is fleeting, and which have, there is every reason to believe, a beginning in time. We are bound then to infer the existence of a single Mind or Consciousness, which must be thought of as containing all the elements of our own Consciousness—Reason or Thought, ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... conjured up are fleeting in the shadows of summer clouds; and, soon passing, give place to pleasanter thoughts. Now that land is near, and a seaport soon to be reached, the young ladies are this night unusually elated; and, listening to the vivid description ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... fainting heart and feeble hand Fights a dim battle in a doubtful land, Where strength and courage were of no avail; And one is borne on fairy breezes far To the bright harbours of a golden star Down fragrant fleeting waters ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... the oar, float away down, Fleeting and gliding by tower and town; Life is so short at best! snatch, while thou canst, thy rest, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... he rose, fixed her with a comprehending look, nodded almost imperceptibly toward the chair he was vacating, and returned to his seat inside the car. Her fine brows lifted a trifle; her slight inclination of the head was robbed of the chill of brevity by a fleeting smile of gratitude, not so much for the sacrifice of his seat in her favor as for the fine courtesy which had moved him to proffer it without making of his action an excuse to sit beside her ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... would be required of her sooner or later, to be handed into the ruthless paw of a clerk at the mont de piete, she had little doubt. Everything that she or her husband had ever possessed worth possessing had so vanished—had been not an absolute property, but a brief fleeting joy, a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a pawnbroker's duplicate. The time would come. She showed the trinket to her husband with a melancholy foreboding, and read his thoughts as he weighed it in his palm, by mere force of habit, speculating what ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... that gives the flower Of fleeting life, its lustre and perfume; And we are weeds ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... left hand, and solemnly extending his right arm to the west. This gigantic and solitary apparition on a rock in the ocean was supposed to indicate the existence of a new world, and the direction in which it was to be sought, but it is probable that the shipwrecked Fleeting was quite innocent of any such magnificent visions. The original designation of the Flemish Islands, derived from their first colonization by Netherlanders, was changed to Azores by Portuguese mariners, amazed at the myriads of hawks which they found there. But if the Netherlanders had never ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
