"Fluttering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... protagonists appeared on the scene, 700 persons or more managing to find places. The very windows by which the room was lighted down the length of its west side were packed with ladies, whose white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the end of the Bishop's speech, were an unforgettable factor in the acclamation of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... and the glass windows were open wide to admit the morning breeze. Nothing was between us and freedom but the fluttering silk curtains and a drop of about seventy feet into an ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... Idleness, Satiety, and Over-growth. The Highest in rank, at length, without honour from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honour, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the CHURCH fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to get ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... come to a time of life when maidens really must begin to consider their responsibilities—a time when it does matter how the dress sits and what it is made of, and whether the hair is well arranged for dancing in the sunshine and for fluttering in the moonlight; also that the eyes convey not from that roguish nook the heart any betrayal of "hide and seek"; neither must the risk of blushing tremble on perpetual brinks; neither must—but, in a word, 'twas the seventeenth year of a ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... beauty reappear together, wild flowers and ferns abound, and pencil cedars in clumps rise above the artificial plantations of the valley. Wheat ripens at an altitude of 12,000 feet. Picturesque villages, surrounded by orchards, adorn the mountain spurs; chod-tens and gonpos, with white walls and fluttering flags, brighten the scene; feudal castles crown the heights, and where the mountains are loftiest, the snowfields and glaciers most imposing, and the greenery densest, the village of Kylang, the most important in Lahul as the centre of trade, ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... a change. If Dolly had watched from her balcony with interest the day before, now she was breathless with what she found. The sun was shining bright, a breeze was rippling the waters of the lagoon, and gently fluttering a sail and a streamer here and there; the beautiful water was enlivened with vessels of all kinds and of many lands, black gondolas darted about; and the buildings lining the shores of the lagoon stood to view in their beauty and magnificence and variety before Dolly's eye; the Doge's palace, here ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the noon train brought her through the oaks and the burdened olive orchards, past the lonely redwood Tree to the University. The brakeman's call: "Next station is Palo A-al-to!" stirred her with fluttering excitement. The crowded carriages and people at the station bewildered her. Eager 'busmen struggled for the hand-baggage of strangers, men with "Student Transfer" on their caps clamored for trunk-checks. Fellows in duck seized some of the men who came ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... the foot of the mountain, glorified by a thousand lights and fluttering flags, reaped a harvest of rins and rens paid to the priests for paper prayers and bamboo flower-holders with which to decorate the graves. The cemetery was on the side of the hill, and every step of the way somebody stopped at a stone marker to fasten a lantern to a small fishing-pole and ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... before the real flowering began. And then she had continual bowl-fuls of white and blue violets, she had sprays of almond blossom, silver-warm and lustrous, then sprays of peach and apricot, pink and fluttering. It was a great joy to wander looking for flowers. She came upon a bankside all wide with lavender crocuses. The sun was on them for the moment, and they were opened flat, great five-pointed, seven-pointed lilac stars, with burning centres, burning with a strange lavender ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... little feet tapped softly down the path. Her soul was listless; even the morning breeze Fluttering the trees and strewing a light swath Of fallen petals on the grass, could please Her not at all. She brushed a hair aside With a swift move, and a half-angry frown. She stopped to pull a daffodil or two, And held them to ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... neatness of a Peter de Hoogh garden path. The white balustrades and flights of steps around the great circle, the statuary and the fountains in the middle lake, flashed pure. The enormous white caps of nurses, their gay silk streamers fluttering behind them, the white-clad children, the light summer dresses of women; the patches of white newspaper held by other loungers on the seats; a dazzling bit of cirro-cumulus scudding across the clear Paris sky; the pale dome of the Pantheon rising ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... fluttering green banners there Are wrought with ladies' heads most fair, And a portraiture of Guenevere The middle of each ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... the room to the little writing desk in the corner. He followed with his eyes her graceful walk and the pretty fluttering movements of her hands as she drew out note paper and busied herself rather ostentatiously. He smiled as he noticed it; she was afraid of a tete-a-tete; she was trying to run away, if only to the farther side ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... peaks continually rape the rain-clouds. And the lotos—name, fragrance and sight of this flower—started a little lyrical wheel tinkling in his mind, turning off snatches of verses that sung themselves; and fluttering bits of romance, half-religious and altogether impersonal; and strange pictures, lovely, though ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his meat you throw along He'll repay you with a song; Never hurt the timid hare Peeping from her green grass lair, Let her come and sport and play On the lawn at close of day; The little lark goes soaring high To the bright windows of the sky, Singing as if 'twere always spring, And fluttering on an untired wing,— Oh! let him sing his happy song, Nor do these gentle ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... hesitated, the lace on her breast fluttering. Then, in desperation, she confessed herself first reluctantly, then ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but of these, many who had delayed leaving to the last, were drawn down in the vortex of the sinking ship. As the first English boat reached the spot, the streamer at her fore-royal-mast-head was alone to be seen fluttering for a moment above the eddying waters, and then downwards it was drawn after the mast to which it had been attached. Some were still striking out bravely towards their late antagonists. The boats were soon among them, taking up all they ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... any thing stirred] is my sister coming to declare the issue of all! Tears gushing again, my heart fluttering as a bird against its wires; drying my eyes again and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... submission at your shrine, Comes a heart your Valentine; From the side where once it grew, See it panting flies to you. Take it, fair one, to your breast, Soothe the fluttering thing to rest; Let the gentle, spotless toy, Be your sweetest, greatest joy; Every night when wrapp'd in sleep, Next your heart the conquest keep. Or if dreams your fancy move, Hear it whisper me and love; Then in pity to the swain, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... horses having been all secured, the fire was piled up, and those who were to rest gladly availed themselves of the opportunity, and in a very short time nothing was to be heard but the fluttering noise made by the burning fire, and the snorting sigh of one or the other ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... as that in "The Rehearsal," of King Usher and King Physician. It may well be so, when the disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle—those hands that are always groping and sprawling, and fluttering, and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person. But there is no describing him but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did t'other day: "Je ne scais pas," dit il, "je ne scaurois m'exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage." If one could conceive a dead body hung in chains, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... been such—would have convicted Snowe at once of the most artful penetration, could he have seen the lowering curve of his brows as he watched the nervous fluttering of Henrietta's hands over the pictures, and the decided but softly pleasant rounding of her white chin. But it was the general unconsciously powerful indifference of manner, that advised him to prefer, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... held aloft above him, below which there is safe hiding. So that great Hand bends itself over us, and we are secure beneath its hollow. As a child sometimes carries a tender-winged butterfly in the globe of its two hands that the bloom on the wings may not be ruffled by fluttering, so He carries our feeble, unarmoured souls enclosed in the covert of His Almighty hand. 'Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand?' 'Who hath gathered the wind in His fists?' In that curved palm where all the seas lie as a very little thing, we are held; the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the membraneous spheres drifted past in the light that came from those fluttering wings. A second showed in repulsive shininess. Chet was aware that there were many of ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... life! While yet an embryo, a worm, he grubs his way through a good estate, and not a little ready money. Then, after a long sojourn in the pupa or puppy state—longer far than that of any other maggot—he emerges a perfect butterfly, vain, empty, fluttering, and conceited, idling, flirting, flaunting, philandering, until the summer of his ton is past, when he dies, or is arrested, and expiates a life of puerile vanity in Purgatory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... pencil-thin legs and scuttled off with a half-terrified, half defiant squeak. It darted past us into the darkness too quickly even for Tweel, and as it ran, something waved on its body like the fluttering of a cape. Tweel screeched angrily at it and set up a shrill hullabaloo ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... contents run over! With what trembling, what slavering expectation must those contents have been perused! Alas! how the head must have turned slowly away and the Letter have fallen gently upon the table, when those contents became intelligible to the fluttering senses, now returned to a state ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the path to the edge of the falls, where she sat down on an old big trunk of birch fallen many years ago and partly covered with moss. For one or two long minutes she held it in her lap, gazing at the rushing waters without seeing them. A strange fluttering was at her heart, a curious trepidation that was akin to intense fear caused her neck to throb, but her face was very pale. Finally, with a swift gesture, she tore the envelope open ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... the morning of the day before. It no sooner came down than I threw myself off, happy to find that I was once more restored to the world. The eagle flew away in a few minutes, and I sat down to compose my fluttering spirits, which I did in a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... looked down into an abyss, so deep that tallest pines looked like twigs; yet, on the opposite side of the pass, I looked up the steep precipice to an equal height, where giant trees seemed white fluttering fringe. A dizzy sight. We swept round an angle, entered a dark tunnel blasted out through the solid rock, emerged, and saw before us, on our right, the far-famed Tete Noir, a black ledge, on whose face, so high is the opposite cliff, the sun never shines. A few ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... greater economy than she had ever before attempted. All her feeble efforts to find employment and earn money had failed. She felt herself slipping down, and with all her courageous determination to save herself from social chaos she was like a bird fluttering at the brink of a chasm, unable to wing itself steadily out of danger. The Reddons, she knew, would soon need their apartment, for Marion was coming north in the first warm weather. Then there would be for herself and Virginia nothing but a boarding-house, from which she shrank. And after ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the very first days of my arrival in Paris I observed that things wore, in reality, quite different colors from those which had been shed on them, when in perspective, by the light of my enthusiasm. The silver locks which I saw fluttering so majestically on the shoulders of Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, were metamorphosed into a brown perruque, which made a pitiable covering for a narrow skull. And even the dog Medor, which I visited in the Court of the Louvre, and which, encamped under tricolored flags ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... value. Nannie could not discern what it was, but as Constance shifted the contents of her work basket a little article came in sight, and all at once Nannie felt, as it were, an imprisoned soul within her fluttering against ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... incessantly with subdued, liquid murmurs, very plaintive; a cat, perfectly white, with a pink nose and thin, pink lips, dozed complacently on a fence rail, full in the sun. In a corner of the Plaza three hens wallowed in the baking hot dust their wings fluttering, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... adjusted, it needed very little contrivance to leave a not unwilling pair on one side of the doors, and cut off the rest. Robina, too much excited to stand still, flew about the stairs till Alda appeared in a tiny hat fluttering with ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... understanding; in the other, an answer which smites like a slap in the face. Thus, when a pert skeptic asked Martin Luther where God was before He created heaven, Martin stunned his querist with the retort,—"He was building hell for such idle, presumptuous, fluttering, and inquisitive spirits as you." And everybody will recollect the story of the self-complacent cardinal who went to confess to a holy monk, and thought by self-accusation to get the reputation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... other persons present had not observed. The failing heart felt that parting moment, and sank under it. "Take the child away," the surgeon whispered to the mother. Brandy was near him; he administered it while he spoke, and touched the fluttering pulse. It felt, just felt, the stimulant. He revived for a moment, and looked wistfully for his son. "The boy," he murmured; "I want my boy." As his wife brought the child to him, the surgeon whispered to her again. "If you have anything to say to him be quick ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... beside the black thing they had noticed, dry, oblong willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had guessed ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... basin when he heard a strange and dreadful noise above him. He glanced upwards, and saw the bulk of a huge dragon sailing high above the tree-tops. It was making swiftly for the valley; one of its claws held a pendent form in fluttering drapery, and he knew too well that the captive could only be she for whom he had been searching. He had saved her once from the malice of her enemies—this time he was powerless! He raved and cursed in impotent rage and despair while a sudden gust swept the pool ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... descended the steps; oddly enough, he felt as though it were an ascension of some sort. His life seemed to be going into higher planes, and his hopes and ambitions came fluttering into his brain like the shower of petals from some blossom-laden tree. He felt anew the spring of old dreams, and the ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... hens, ducks, and geese fell a prey to it, and were seen by their surviving relatives featherless, pale, and stiff, borne away to some unknown place whence no fowl returned. Blot was waked one night by a great cackling and fluttering in the hen-house, and peeping down from her perch saw a great hand glide along the roost, clutch her beloved mother by the leg, and pull her off, screaming dolefully, 'Good-by, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... tears crowding up to my eyes. Death in one place—all this gorgeous confusion and wild gayety here. A lonely widow, weeping bitter tears; all these gay fluttering young people reckless and happy, in spite ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... or affectation, or coquetry? No; the real tears, and real expression of look and word forbade each of these suppositions. One other cause for her conduct might have been suggested by a vain man. Harry Ormond was not a vain man; but a little fluttering delight was just beginning to play round his head, when Sheelah, leaning heavily on his arm as they ascended the bank, reminding him of her existence—"My poor old Sheelah!" said he, "are ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... of a certain hillside pasture, which, in another way, belongs to me also. Year after year he comes back and settles down upon it about the middle of May; and I have often been amused to see his mate—who is not permitted to wear a single blue feather—drop out of her nest in a barberry bush and go fluttering off, both wings dragging helplessly through the grass. I should pity her profoundly but that I am in no doubt her injuries will rapidly heal when once I am out of sight. Besides, I like to imagine her beatitude, as, five minutes afterward, she sits again upon the nest, with her ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the ensemble without visible interest for a few moments; the wind freshened from the sea, fluttering her veil, and she turned toward the east to face it. In the golden splendour of declining day the white sails of yachts crowded landward on the last leg before beating westward into Blue Harbour; a small white cruiser, steaming south, left a mile long stratum of rose-tinted smoke hanging parallel ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... thy heart once wailed, For years his weary form thy love assailed; Allala next, the eagle, lovest, tore His wings. No longer could he joyful soar And float above the forest to the sky. Thou leavest him with fluttering wings to die. A lusty lion thou didst love, his might Destroyed, and plucked his claws in fierce delight, By sevens plucked, nor heard his piteous cry. A glorious war-steed next thy love didst try, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered her heart's call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was Bob bowed forward ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... more commanding, and I dared not resist the mandate. The greater fear conquered the less. With a desperate effort I walked, or rather rushed, up the steps, the paper fluttering in my hand, as if blown upon by ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... for Cousin William, and, stepping off the edge of the hole, fell fluttering, cackling, and frightened, ...
— The Nursery, April 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... elegant young man with side-whiskers, genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste for elegant conversation and elegant literature and elegant Christianity: a tall, thin, brittle young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full of facile ideas, and with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful. Withal, of course, a tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older than himself, daughter of a Derbyshire ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... minute she remained thus, then with a quick yet almost gentle movement slid under the waves. The last seen of her was the weather-worn red ensign still fluttering from ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... up in the midst of the assembly, while Hauailiki and Poliahu were playing, then he sang a song while fluttering the end of the wand over Hauailiki and took away the wand and Hauailiki stood up. The sport master went over to Hinaikamalama, touched her with the wand and withdrew it. Then Hinaikamalama stood in the midst of the ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... the flight of thoughts here, shy, bold, scared, intrusive, Fluttering in the sun, between the green and blue, Wheeling, whirling, poising, lovely and elusive, How to cage the flying thoughts, my winged ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... gone quite a little distance, and Rigobert began to sing louder and louder as they neared his church. When suddenly there came a strange sound in the air over his head. And then with a great fluttering a big white goose came circling down right before Saint Rigobert's feet. The good Saint stopped short in surprise, and Pierre, turning about, could hardly believe his eyes. But sure enough, there was the very same goose, looking ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... her neck, all that went on in the cellar below. That the leaves are thick, and, to those within, apparently hang like a curtain between them and the outer world, would make no difference to a demon's eyes, you know. Such folk can see where black walls intervene; how much more when only a fluttering screen like that shuts off the view." And, drawing back, she looked into his dazed face, and then into mine, as though she would ask: "Have I convinced you that I am a ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... Fluttering and limping, she dragged herself along to the foot of the tree where her nest was. Her broken wing hurt her very much, but she chirped a little, in as cheerful a way as she could, so that her babies should not be frightened. They chirped back loudly, because they were ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... scarcely completed, when he espied fairies walk out of the mansion, all of whom were, with their dangling lotus sleeves, and their fluttering feather habiliments, as comely as spring flowers, and as winsome as the autumn moon. As soon as they caught sight of Pao-y, they all, with one voice, resentfully reproached the Monitory Vision Fairy. "Ignorant as to who the honoured guest could be," they argued, "we hastened to come out to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... history, to show that a standing army was invariably the instrument of despotism and the forerunner of doom to the liberties of a people. The financial policy of the Government gave them frequent opportunities for using the sword of the partisan behind the fluttering cloak of the patriot. On both sides of the House there was considerable confusion of ideas on the subject of political economy {310} and the incidence of taxation. Walpole was ahead of his own party as well as of his opponents on ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... forest-trees, each strong enough in the fork to hold safely the foundation of a small cottage; and the winding stairs by which you get up into the tree are hidden by a leafy drapery of ivy, which covers the trunk also, and hangs in fluttering festoons ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... in the streets, all melted into a confused and intoxicating murmur as the pedestrians passed into the residence portion of the town to the cottage where Miss Prime still lived. The garden was as prim as ever, the walks as straight and well kept. The inevitable white curtains were fluttering freshly from the window, over which a huge matrimony vine drooped lazily and rung its pink and white bells ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... recollect it, practically. It left no trace on her face or behaviour. The simplicity of both, unchanged in a whit, testified for her that her modesty would not take such hints from other people's testimony, and that there was no folly in her to be set fluttering at the suggestion. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... his kinsmen, with cheerless faces, behold Karna today, fallen down and stretched at his length on the earth, dipped in gore and with his weapons loosened from his grasp! Let the lofty standard of Adhiratha's son, bearing the device of the elephant's rope, fall fluttering on the earth, cut off by thee with a broad-headed arrow. Let Shalya fly away in terror, abandoning the gold-decked car (he drives) upon seeing it deprived of its warrior and steeds and cut off into fragments with hundreds of shafts by thee. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a woman's nature to be insensible to such pleading as this. She all but yielded. "I should like to say it, dear!" she answered, with a little fluttering sigh. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... illness and the disappointment, Harry leant against the railings to consider and recover. He had been so secure of finding Bluebell there, and during the whole hurried journey was picturing the meeting. How would she look? He knew so well the fluttering colour that changed in any emotion, pleasurable or otherwise: but would he see a true loving welcome in those transparent eyes? He had considered every probability or improbability of this sort, but not how he should act in such a dead lock ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... and without any apparent cause, they commenced screaming and fluttering around the tree, their cries and gestures betokening a high state ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... and Mollusca are adapted to live on the land; and seeing that we have flying birds and mammals, flying insects of the most diversified types, and formerly had flying reptiles, it is conceivable that flying-fish, which now glide far through the air, slightly rising and turning by the aid of their fluttering fins, might have been modified into perfectly winged animals. If this had been effected, who would have ever imagined that in an early transitional state they had been inhabitants of the open ocean, and had used their incipient organs of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... rapidly closing, when Seymour's keen eye detected a dash of color and a bit of fluttering drapery on the poop of the line-of-battle ship. Wondering, he examined it ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... poured it over his lightly-bent head. The edges of the clouds in the heavens shone with the crimson light of evening. The eyes of the bystanders were riveted by a white speck which showed itself in the windows of heaven, first like a flower-bloom and then like a fluttering pennon. It was a dove that flew down and circled round the head of him who ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... ship's boat, with nothing else to do; and what could be more delightful than to be rowed across the bay, under a bright awning, by four brown sailors with "Louisiana" in blue letters on their immaculate white shirts, and in gilt letters on their fluttering hat ribbons? The boat came to the steps of the garden of the pension, where the orange-trees hung over and made vague yellow balls shine back out of the water. Kate Theory knew all about that, for Captain Benyon had persuaded ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... in a gesture half imploring, half jocose, her laces fluttering, her ribbons waving, the ringlets about her face dancing. Her eyes were brimming with mocking light, and however poorly she might seem to represent ideas theological she certainly did not ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... coming now; it was coming at last! Rhoda's heart gave a wild, fluttering leap; she looked up breathlessly ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... decide between an automobile and an Irish mail, the goldfinches had crossed the river and were fluttering over the purple branches of the leafless saskatoon ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... drunk with dread, roll'd giddy from the heaven, And staggering worlds like wrecks in storms were driven; The pallid moon hung fluttering on the sight, As startled bird whose wings are stretch'd for flight; And o'er the East a fearful light begun To show the sun rise-not the morning sun, But one in wild confusion, doom'd to rise And drop again in horror from the skies. To heaven's midway ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... reverse. Aileen had been loved and petted and spoiled. She could not think of her father doing anything terrible physically to her or to any one else. But it was so hard to confront him—to look into his eyes. When she had attained a proper memory of him, her fluttering wits told her ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning to talk. He did not cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the proud Salopians like an eagle in a dove-cote'; and the Welsh mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... little, fluttering, cold fingers dropped so quickly from his clasp; he thought he heard a stifled sigh; the slight, delicate form looked strangely familiar, yet he could see it was neither Eve, Gerty, nor Bess. She bowed ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... returned to the poultry cellars they found old Madame Palette in front of her storeroom, removing the cords of a large square hamper, in which a furious fluttering of wings and scraping of feet could be heard. As she unfastened the last knot the lid suddenly flew open, as though shot up by a spring, and some big geese thrust out their heads and necks. Then, in wild alarm, they sprang ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... a grand Fourth of July celebration. A civic banquet, with Morris, Dickinson, Mifflin, and many another. Bells were rung and cannons fired, the Schuylkill was gay with pleasure parties and fluttering flags and picnic dinners along its winding and pleasant banks. And then in August they had most loyally kept the French King's birthday with banquets and balls. And though financial ruin was largely talked of, a writer of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... done and worn there. Novel social ventures had been tried—dancing and songs which seemed almost startling at first—but which were gradually being generally adopted. There had always been a great deal of laughing and talking of nonsense and the bandying of jokes and catch phrases. And Feather fluttering about and saying delicious, silly things at which her hearers shouted with glee. Such a place could not suddenly become pathetic. It seemed almost indecent for Robert Gareth-Lawless to have dragged Death nakedly into their midst—to have died in his bed in one of the little bedrooms, to ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Leto and Archer Artemis healed him in the mighty sanctuary, and gave him glory; but Apollo of the silver bow made a wraith like unto Aineias' self, and in such armour as his; and over the wraith Trojans and goodly Achaians each hewed the others' bucklers on their breasts, their round shields and fluttering targes. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... fattening. Hawks, buzzards and eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their nests at pleasure, while from twenty feet upward to the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber, for now the axe-men were at work cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded with nests, and seemed to fell them in such ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... other, toward the railway, passing and repassing their returning companions. Very picturesque in their ragged gowns of brilliant colors, they walk swiftly with lengthy strides, their long skirts defining the movements of their naked limbs and fluttering in the wind behind them, while their arms, with gestures like those of classic urn-bearers, sustain the heavy load that rests upon their heads without making them even stoop. All this is not out of keeping with the monuments that gradually appear above ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... civility; even the very children scraped and bowed, as if they feared the omission might be fatal to them, and, clinging to the hands and dress of their parents, looked up occasionally to their countenances to discover whether the apprehensions of their own fluttering and timid hearts were likely to be realised. Still there was sufficient of curiosity with all to render them attentive spectators of the passing troop. Hitherto, it had been imagined, the object of the English was an attack ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... an explorer and discoverer. He had never seen a crumb before, but he picked up one in his tiny bill and found it good. Then he announced the news to all the world that could hear his voice, and there was much fluttering of small wings in ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... shall break Diana's law, Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour or her new brocade; Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall, Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair: The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care; The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign; And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine; Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favourite lock; Ariel himself shall be ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... ashamed of himself. Nothing would induce him even to look at a hat again. But he thought it was no harm to worry other things. He attacked one thing after another, the rugs on the floor, curtains, anything flying or fluttering, and Miss Laura patiently scolded him for each one, till at last it dawned upon him that he must not worry anything but a bone. Then he got to be a ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Jupiter. The king of gods and men, hoary-headed and mild-eyed, is seated in his chariot drawn by eagles: before him kneels Ganymede, a fair-haired, exquisite, slim page, with floating mantle and ribbands fluttering round his tight hose and jerkin. Such were the cup-bearers of Galeazzo Sforza and Gianpaolo Baglioni. Then compare this fresco with the Jupiter in mosaic upon the cupola of the Chigi chapel in S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. A new age of experience ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... into a boat already deep in the water with other cuddy-passengers and their luggage, and were rowed out to where lay that good clipper-ship, the RED JACKET. Sitting side by side husband and wife watched, with feelings that had little in common, the receding quay, Mary fluttering her damp handkerchief till the separate figures had merged in one dark mass, and even Tilly, planted in front, her handkerchief tied flagwise to the top of Jerry's cane, could no longer be distinguished from ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the dull page danced the meaningless syllables, keeping time to the delicious strain in a way that was simply appalling to a mind whose intellectual processes were, as a rule, thoroughly well regulated. If he walked the street there was small chance but that some half-turned head or fluttering robe among the women he met would remind him of the sweetest head and prettiest drapery in ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... father stared at him with unbelieving eyes. His mother had gotten up and was coming over to him, her eyes blinking. "George," she said, "what did they do to you?" She patted his shoulder, her hands fluttering ...
— George Loves Gistla • James McKimmey
... love, It's certain to tell on his singing - You can't do chromatics With proper emphatics When anguish your bosom is wringing! When distracted with worries in plenty, And his pulse is a hundred and twenty, And his fluttering bosom the slave of mistrust is, A tenor can't do himself justice. Now observe - (SINGS A HIGH NOTE) - You see, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... when the palms, the mangoes, and gum trees, mass their verdure in distinct and isolated groups; when nature is making herself heard in a thousand melodious voices; when the hum of the insect is ringing in my ears, and the breeze is gently murmuring through the foliage; when thousands of birds are fluttering from grove to grove, sometimes breaking with their wings the smooth surface of the river; when the fish, leaping out of their own element, reflect for an instant from their silvery scales the departing rays of the sun; when the sea, stretching away like a vast plain of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... a little frightened now and her utterance was hurried and fluttering, "that you are mad and are going? You never go until ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... All that befals you, to the very numbering of your hairs, is known to God! Nothing can happen by accident or chance. Nothing can elude His inspection. The fall of the forest leaf—the fluttering of the insect—the waving of the angel's wing—the annihilation of a world,—all are equally noted by Him. Man speaks of great things and small ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... the rock, a vivid, charming, disquieting apparition, with his wild red hair and fluttering scarlet cloak. The arch-hypocrite wears always a consummately artless air. He comes near winning us by a bright perfect good-humour, which is as of the quality of an intelligence without a heart. The love of mischief for its own sake, which is one of his chief ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack, remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that he ever had any fixed thought that he was doing so. Young men in such matters are so often without any fixed thoughts! They are such absolute moths. They amuse themselves with the light of the beautiful candle, fluttering about, on and off, in and out of the flame with dazzled eyes, till in a rash moment they rush in too near the wick, and then fall with singed wings and crippled legs, burnt up and reduced to tinder by the consuming ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... generous young creature, her feet scarcely touching the polished oak, her hair all unbound and rolling in waves down her back. Struck with sweet compunctions, she had broken from the hands of her maid, and left her with the blue ribbon fluttering in her hand, while she ran back to make peace with the woman who was almost dearer to her than ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... to the northward with Hemp scampering at his heels, both running as if for dear life so long as the rogue is within sight of his employer, and certain to take the walk very easy so soon as he is out of ken. Stepping westward, you see Maggie's tall form and high-crowned hat, relieved by the fluttering of her plaid upon the left shoulder, darkening as the distance diminishes her size and as the level sunbeams begin to sink upon the sea. She is taking her quiet ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... which seemed very far away and unreal the words of the Psalmist came to ring in his ears like the muffled tolling of a passing-bell. So it must be soon for all the living; and whether a little sooner or a little later, what could it matter? A breath more or less to be drawn; a longer or shorter fluttering of the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... sense; discover may be used in either the good or the bad sense, oftener in the good; he was detected in a fraud; real merit is sure to be discovered. In scientific language, detect is used of delicate indications that appear in course of careful watching; as, a slight fluttering of the pulse could be detected. We discover what has existed but has not been known to us; we invent combinations or arrangements not before in use; Columbus discovered America; Morse invented the electric telegraph. Find is the most general word for every ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... himself unable to continue his concentration; he slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the south side of the yard. "Oh, nothin' ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... next day Vanderlyn appeared, to M'riar's satisfaction and Anna's fluttering joy. He was most respectful, plainly very anxious to be of further service to her and her father. She felt a little guilty because she had sent M'riar with the address—if her father had not left it he certainly had failed ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Darcy's fluttering heart was sinking. That morning, after Tom had gone, she found a dollar bill in the coffee-cup. She knew that he left it for her. She had been out and bought tea and sugar, and flour and butter, and a bit of tender steak; and all day long a ray of light had been dancing and glimmering before ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... used an umbrella in his life. Now he opened it eagerly. Anything to escape that frightful voice! In the windy street he clutched at his fluttering skirts as he had seen other men do, and, with a last terrified backward glance, ran breathlessly toward the ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... to you? Why should we wish to change from anything so free and delightful and poetical as lovers into anything so fettered, and commonplace, and prosaic, and BANAL, as wives and husbands? Why should we wish to give up the fanciful paradise of fluttering hope and expectation for the dreary reality of housekeeping and cold mutton on Mondays? Why should we not be satisfied with the real pleasure of the passing moment, without for ever torturing our souls about the imaginary but delusive ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... respirations, and the healthful glow of childhood were not there. A blue circle surrounded the closed lids, and a fever-flush burned in the centre of each cheek. The aunt saw her darling was ill. She took one thin, hot hand in hers, and felt the pulse fluttering fast and wild. The sleeper woke and started up, turning her ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton |
