"Lapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away, I could not bear to gaze On that grey angler with his rod and line; I turn'd away—for to my heart the sight Brought back, from out the twilight labyrinth Of bypast things, the memory of a day, So sever'd from the present by the lapse Of many a motley'd, life-destroying year, That on my thoughts the recognition came Faintly at first—as breaks the timid dawn Above the sea, or evening's earliest star Through the pavilion of the twilight dim— Faintly at first—then kindling to the glow Of that refulgent sunshine, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... people were indignant at Henderson's coming. They barricaded the door of the church. The delegates that had come to ordain him, not being able to effect an entrance through the door, entered by a window. Henderson was that day settled as the pastor of an absent congregation. In the lapse of time he won the people. He was faithful and powerful as a preacher of the Word, and the Lord Jesus honored him in ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neighborhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed as a small village of thatched houses, clustered round a priory; and it would still have been precisely such a rural village, but for a certain Dr. Jephson, who lived within the memory of man, and who found out the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... take notice that when your hostess, with apparent inadvertence, used the expression in connection with sugar in your demi-tasse, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... wandered over many things, but here, I do not know why, we were speaking of the taking up of old friendships, and the comfort and delight of those serene and undisturbed relations which one sometimes establishes with a congenial person, which no lapse of time or lack of communication seems to interrupt—the best kind of friendship. There is here no blaming of conditions that may keep the two lives apart; no feverish attempt to keep up the relation, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... when the facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads on to the complete truth. At the time the circumstances made a deep impression upon me, and the lapse of two years has hardly ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... columns, which are still standing, and of which the largest measures ten feet in diameter, and more than seventy-two feet in height. They are covered with carvings and paintings whose colors are still bright, even after a lapse of ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... English freedom she enjoys. But we cannot venture to pronounce dead or idle the Greek tradition, and we must confess that the romanticism which brought into literary worship the trumpery picturesqueness of the Middle Ages was a lapse from generous feeling. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... violated by fools and snobs. Now you might as well turn your head away when you shoot at a bird, or look over your shoulder when you have opened a new book,—instead of looking at the bird, or looking at the book,—as lapse into any of the habits of a man who pretends to talk to one person while he is listening to another, or watching another, or wondering about another. If you really want to hear what Jo Gresham is saying to Alice Faulconbridge, when they are standing next you in the dance, say so to Will Withers, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... influence of his face-to-face fight with poverty and inactivity disappeared. Sylvia lived again, fresh, vital and strong in her hold upon him. He was renewed by the purpose in life which he had allowed to lapse in his desperate days of defeat. He would find Sylvia. She might be in sorrow, in trouble; he could not wait, but leaped out of his office and ran down the long stairways, too hurried and restless to wait for the lagging ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... four or five, I believe, the former lover returned to his village. He thought that after this lapse of time he would be safe from prosecution, and ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... under-secretary for the colonies, but the coalition was broken up by Canning's death in August. Lord Goderich succeeded to the premiership, but he never was really in power, and he resigned his place after the lapse of a few months. During the succeeding administration of the duke of Wellington (1828-1830), Stanley and those with whom he acted were in opposition. His robust and assertive Liberalism about this period seemed curious afterwards to a younger generation who knew him only as the very embodiment ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... combined with the practical assistance of Englishmen, would, no doubt, have enabled him to improve upon his invention until it had obtained sufficient credit to be secure against the misfortune of being totally forgotten. After the lapse of 100 years from the date of Papin's invention, when the first steamboat was put upon the river Rhine, the vessel was fired into by concealed marksmen on shore, and navigation was more dangerous than it is now on the upper waters of the Missouri in times of Indian hostility. It was ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... that one failure, that sad lapse from honesty, stamp his old life with shame? Had he not expiated his sin? Why was he so beaten down and crushed with remorse and suffering that he had only longed to end an existence that seemed God-forsaken and utterly ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... privilege of the highest natures thus creatively to err. The brilliant attempts of great men to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim, form the best treasure of the nations. It was owing to the work of Caesar that the Roman military state did not become a police-state till after the lapse of several centuries, and that the Roman Imperators, however little they otherwise resembled the great founder of their sovereignty, yet employed the soldier in the main not against the citizen but against ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Then he seemed to lapse again into unconsciousness. The doctor and Allbright remained working over him, but it was within fifteen minutes before the time when the last train for Banbridge was due to leave New York that he made the first ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the texts of the surreptitiously obtained Quartos are particularly subject include omissions and alterations due to lapse of memory on the part of the actors, additions due to the tendency to improvise which Shakespeare censures in Hamlet, omissions due to the reporter's failure to hear or to write quickly enough, garbled paraphrases ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... Wednesday that followed his birthday party—the mere mention of which, after the lapse of four days, was enough to send Sissy into hysterics—that young lady was seated in the parlor, ready for her guest. She was ready for him in all the senses a Madigan knew how to infuse into that frame of mind. She intended to make ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... defeat his malice, and snatch from him his prize. Francesca and Vannozza had gone to St. Peter's on an intensely hot day in July, in the year 1399. Absorbed in prayer, they had hardly noticed the lapse of time, and twelve o'clock had struck when they set out on their way home. In order to avoid observation, and the marks of veneration which the people lavished upon them as soon as they set eyes on the two saints (as they always ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... and uncertain. Had it been another Who sang, it would have ravished every ear, But thee must I remember at thy best, And what in others we count excellence In thee we count a lapse, and falling off. ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... was induced by her uncle Ethelwold, then king of East Anglia, to give her hand to Egfrid, son of Oswy, king of Northumberland, and she afterwards became queen by the accession of her husband to his father's kingdom. After the lapse of twelve years she gained the permission of her husband to withdraw from his court, and retired to the Abbey of Coldingham, where she took the veil; thence withdrew to Ely, and repaired the old ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... conspiracy, to defraud an honourable man and legitimate descendant of his property, is hardly upon record; for, waiting the accidents that might occur by death, or otherwise, in the lapse of twenty years, the cause was brought into the Vice Chancellor's Court with the most sanguine hope of success. I was present during one of the days of argument, and heard my own letter read, of which I had (contrary to my usual habits) taken a copy. The plaintiffs ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be put upon these coincidences is this: that supposing Sun and Moon to start together from a Node they would, after the lapse of 6585 days and a fraction, be found again together very near the same Node. During the interval there would have been 223 New and Full Moons. The exact time required for 223 Lunations is such that in the case supposed ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... too clever to appear to notice the sudden lapse in the Congressman's dignity, and only said, with ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... another meaning. Spenser and Shakespeare, besides this practice, sometimes use words in a way that can only be justified by their choosing to have it so; whilst their contemporaries, Beaumont and Fletcher, write the perfect modern language, as Dryden observed. Lapse of time, however, is not the chief cause of variation in the sense of words. The matters which terms are used to denote are often so complicated or so refined in the assemblage, interfusion, or gradation of their qualities, that terms do not exist in sufficient abundance and discriminativeness to ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... much of him had he permitted it. But he was there for work and quiet. A shoal of invitations were fired at him and refused; he preferred to lapse into obscurity. A few of the more obtrusive attempted to force their society on him: to these he was frankly rude. The more tactful fell in with his humour, and were content to ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... "After the lapse of what seemed to be many hours, the man got his knife and arm in readiness for action. Then he moved his body a little, causing the serpent to lift its head once more. As it did so, the man made a quick ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... darling. Henceforth he is a constant dweller in the desert, having for his companions the beasts and birds of the wilderness—his clothes in tatters, his hair matted, his body wasted to a shadow, his bare feet lacerated with thorns. After the lapse of many more years the husband of Layla dies, and the beautiful widow passes the prescribed period of separation ('idda),[121] after which Majnun hastens to embrace his beloved. Overpowered by the violence of their emotions, both are ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos, to the end that 1 neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works 2 great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... materials for an extended sketch of his life, and I still have several envelopes on which the inscription "For My Memoirs" bears witness to that purpose. But after serving as a source of eccentric and roguish humor for several months, the idea was suffered to lapse, only to be revived in suggestive references as he consigned some bit of manuscript to my care or criticism. Any study of Field's life and character based on such materials as he thus furnished would have been absolutely misleading. It would have eliminated fact entirely ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... conduct after it, and prevents unduly large families without entailing the moral injury which reckless conduct involves. On the other hand, there may be an indefinite postponement of marriage by classes that lack moral stamina and readily lapse into vice. There are vicious measures, not here to be named in detail, which keep down the number of births or increase the number of deaths, mostly prenatal, though the infanticide of earlier times is not extinct. By strength and also by weakness, by virtue and also ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... appeared likely to be small, the government has rendered aid in one of three or four modes. The government will not permit any parallel or competing lines; and it holds the power of purchasing the railways after a lapse of thirty years, on certain specified terms. On this principle have been constructed the railways which radiate from Berlin in five different directions—towards Hamburg, Hanover, Saxony, Silesia, and the Baltic; together with minor branches springing out of them, and also the railways which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its original quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time. In the following July, Darton went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil the bridal office which had been in abeyance ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... slow years bring, but likewise as having left behind all the weariness of accomplished aims, the monotony of a formed character, the rigidity of limbs that have ceased to grow. Think of them as receiving again from the hands of Christ much of which they were robbed by the lapse of years. Think of them as then crowned with loving-kindness and satisfied with good, so that 'their youth is renewed like the eagle's.' Think of them as again joyous, with the joy of beginning a career, which has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... referred it to a committee with Master Calvin at the head; who reported that it was written in a rude and familiar style, quite beneath the dignity of history, and that for this and other reasons it had better not be printed. The precious manuscript was laid on the shelf until in the lapse of years it was found that the very reasons why those solemn critics rejected it were the things that gave it supreme value to a later age. It has been the pride of Geneva scholars to print in elegant archaic style every page written by the Prisoner of Chillon in prose or verse, on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... tempus, &c., the law maxim Nullum tempus occurrit regi, lapse of time does not bar the crown. The Parliament which met in February 1624 passed 'An Act for the generall quiett of the Subject agaynst all pretences of Concealement' (21 deg. Jac. I, c. 2) which declared sixty years' possession of Lands, &c., to be a ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... object of attainment and the sole aim of Spirit. This result it is at which the process of the world's history has been continually aiming, and to which the sacrifices that have ever and anon been laid on the vast altar of the earth, through the long lapse of ages, have been offered. This is the only aim that sees itself realized and fulfilled, the only pole of repose amid the ceaseless change of events and conditions, and the sole efficient principle that pervades them. This final aim is God's purpose with the world; but God ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... present time, and to adapt its counsels to the new light that is breaking in upon us in the progress of events. These changes, however, have been few, and relate chiefly to the policy of emancipation, for so truly has this remarkable book proved a prophecy, that the author, on reviewing it after a lapse of several eventful months, can find nothing to strike out as having proved untrue. We are indebted to the kindness of Count de Gasparin for one or two corrections of trifling biographical ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... penetrate, with Heraclitus himself, below the surface, and 'all men have it in them to understand themselves and to think straight'.[6] It is failure to think, not some distinct and illogical sort of thinking, that is the cause of the trouble: the lapse of that 'organized common sense' which is the ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... clashed in former years. Dr. Douglass had been most in the wrong, though what man, unhelped by Christ, was ever known to believe this of himself? But there had been wrong also on the other side, hasty words spoken—words which rankled, and were rankling still, after the lapse of years. Dr. Van Anden had never said: "I should not have spoken thus; I am sorry." He had taught himself to believe that it would be an unnecessary humiliation for him to say this to a man who had ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... agreeable to the precedent in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh, and execution was awarded on his former offence, judgment not being again pronounced, having been given on the former arraignment. This mode of proceeding might be law, but no one after the lapse of thirty years, and the frequent communications of the prisoner with the English Government, can regard such a proceeding as justice: and, as in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh, it brought odium upon the memory of James ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Langley, the steward has brought aft the dishes containing the cabin supper. A savory smell issues from the open sky-light, through which also ascends a ruddy gleam of light, the sound of cheerful voices, and the clatter of dishes. After the lapse of a few minutes the turns of Mr. Langley in pacing the deck grow shorter, and at last, ceasing to whistle and beginning to mutter, he walks up to the sky-light and looks down into the cabin below. Gentle reader, place yourself by his side, and now attend as closely as the favored ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... not to speak of the inarticulate suggestions of the plastic arts. He will at once make for the principles which art cannot express, even if it can embody them, and when those principles are attained, the works of art, if they had no other value than that of suggesting them, will lapse from his mind. Forms will give place to formulas as hieroglyphics have given place to the letters of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... if you lapse into such talk, you fully justify the precaution. I was just thinking what a young lady you had grown into,' he answered in a tone of banter, under which, however, she felt a rebuke; and while directing her ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... desire to receive and acknowledge it. It would be otherwise if they received and acknowledged it and afterwards denied it. This seldom occurs, however; for many among them acknowledge it outwardly but deny it inwardly and are like hypocrites. But those who first accept and acknowledge and later lapse and deny, are the ones who profane holy things by mingling them ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Henri, had been a hundred times on the point of giving himself up and confessing everything. He was torn to pieces with remorse. Remarks escaped him which he thought he might make without ulterior consequences; seeing the lapse of time, but they were noted and commented on. Sometimes he would say that he held in his hand the life and honour of Madame the Marchioness de Bouille; sometimes that the count and countess had more reasons than they knew of for loving Henri. One day he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Sandy read a line with greedy interest. "She took the 'leven-twenty," he added then. Another mental lapse. "You seen her to the ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... have been built and enriched by noble families, whose arms are sculptured on the pedestals of the pillars, sometimes with a cardinal's hat above to denote the rank of one of its members. How much pride, love, and reverence in the lapse of ages must have clung to the sharp points of all this sculpture and architecture! The cathedral is a religion in itself, —something worth dying for to those who have an hereditary interest in it. In the pavement, yesterday, I noticed the gravestone of a person who fell six centuries ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... after paragraph, and finally, not being stopped by our pleased tutor,[E] page after page, till I finally went through in that way the greater part of the eleven recitations of the week. The celebrated passage on the Memory happened to be included. A portion of it, after the lapse of forty-seven years, remains in my recollection as distinctly as it did the day after I learned it. I refer to the passage beginning, 'Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... such other parts of the mummies as were in a fitting state of preservation, with the corresponding parts of the representatives of the same species now living in Egypt. He arrived at the conviction that no appreciable change had taken place in these animals in the course of this considerable lapse of time, and the justice of his conclusion ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... has not come down to us, but no doubt he reminded the clergy and congregation that the day of Thanksgiving had been selected because it was the dedication of their metropolitan temple to the public worship of the religion of the Prince of Peace; that after a lapse of thirty years, and in spite of the hardship and distress engendered by plague, fire, and war, London was raising another building on the spot consecrated by centuries of prayer and praise; and that as the result of the treaty of peace, their national religion ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... functionaries, be not envious. If we envy others, they, in turn, will envy us. The evils of envy know no limit. If others excel us in intelligence, it gives us no pleasure; if they surpass us in ability, we are envious. Therefore it is not until after the lapse of five hundred years that we at last meet with a wise man, and even in a thousand years we hardly obtain one sage. But if wise men and sages be not found, how shall ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... or sermons (discourses) on theology every year,—and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become actually better educated in theology than any one of them. We are all theological ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... stories, articles, and poems, and intrusted them to the machine. He folded them just so, put the proper stamps inside the long envelope along with the manuscript, sealed the envelope, put more stamps outside, and dropped it into the mail-box. It travelled across the continent, and after a certain lapse of time the postman returned him the manuscript in another long envelope, on the outside of which were the stamps he had enclosed. There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Mohammedan officials were held responsible for the good conduct of the people and the due collection of the taxes, and as long as the Chinese garrison was maintained in strength and efficiency they discharged their duties with the requisite good faith. The lapse of time and the embarrassment of the government at home led to the neglect of the force in Central Asia, which had once been an efficient army. The Chinese garrison, ill-paid and unrecruited, gradually lost the semblance of a military force, and was not to be distinguished ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... is the same with that of the ancient; but everything of the latter that had been built by hands has gone to decay and been removed, and only the earth beneath and around it remains the same. The modern building, a house of two stories, after a lapse of twenty years, is yet unfinished. On this account, it has retained the appellation of the "New Inn," though, like many who have frequented it, it has grown old ere its maturity. Its dingy whiteness, and its apparent superfluity of windows (many of them being closed with rough boards), ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of genius and of sorrow-whose existence he had only learned by her song, and whose death created, in the simple heart of her sister, so passionate a grief, after the lapse of so many years—supplied to the romance awaking in his young heart the ideal which it unconsciously sought. He was pleased to hear that she had been beautiful and good. He paused from his books to muse on her, and picture her image to his fancy. That there was some mystery in her ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... executive shook his head. "Perhaps it's not best. Perhaps he did have a lapse into his boyhood habits. Not that it makes any difference ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... me very weak and ill, And while, last night, I lay quite still, And, as he fancied, in the deep, Exhausted rest of my short sleep, I heard, or dream'd I heard him pray: 'Oh, Father, take her not away! Let not life's dear assurance lapse Into death's agonised "Perhaps," A hope without Thy promise, where Less than assurance is despair! Give me some sign, if go she must, That death's not worse than dust to dust, Not heaven, on whose oblivious ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... offspring of the violent Cain that the arts and amenities of civilization are traced, iv. 1-22. Thus the first song in the Old Testament is a song of revenge, iv. 23, 24, though this dark background of cruelty is not unlit by a gleam of religion, iv. 26. After the lapse of ten generations (v.) the world had grown so corrupt that God determined to destroy it by a flood; but because Noah was a good man, He saved him and his household and resolved never again to interrupt the course of nature in judgment (vi.-viii.). In establishing ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... "black and bad," and fills human hearts with shadows. When it falls, the very branches of the trees "contract, filled with terror." Under the influence of the disturbing sounds of the tocsin, the high linden-trees "suddenly begin to talk, only to become quiet again immediately and lapse into a sullen silence." The tocsin itself is animated. "Its distinct tones spread with rapid intensity. Like a herald of evil who has not the time to look behind him, and whose eyes are large with fright, the tocsin desperately calls men ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Miniature of a Lady Unknown. It is impossible at this lapse of time to identify the original of this portrait. No doubt she belonged to a short-lived and somewhat degraded class known as "professional beauties." In one hand she holds an instrument called an opera-glass, which was used in the last ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... demonstration is not so clear, for some of the links in the chain of variation are wanting. The process of origination of a species in nature as it takes place successively, must be ever, perhaps, beyond man's power to trace, on account of the great lapse of time it requires. But we can obtain a fair view of it by tracing a variable and far-spreading species over the wide area of its present distribution; and a long observation of such will lead to the conclusion that new species must ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... one moment he was awake, feeling rather drowsy; the next he was gone—plunged deep down in one of those heavy, dreamless sleeps in which hours pass away like moments, and the awakened sleeper wonders at the lapse of time. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... there are many languid thinkers who lapse into a forlorn belief that if this or that man had never lived, or if this or that other man had not ceased to live, the country might have gone on in peace and prosperity, until its felicity merged in ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... by taking her to see the house where Goethe was born. The public is apparently much more expected there, and in the friendly place they were no doubt much more welcome than they would have been in the Rothschild house. Under that roof they renewed a happy moment of Weimar, which after the lapse of a week seemed already so remote. They wondered, as they mounted the stairs from the basement opening into a clean little court, how Burnamy was getting on, and whether it had yet come to that understanding between him and Agatha, which Mrs. March, at least, had meant to be inevitable. Then they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... But this did not put an end to the controversy; the streets of Ephesus were disturbed by the brawls and the pavement of the cathedral was literally stained with the blood of the contending parties Theodosius arrested both the patriarchs; but after the lapse of only a few days, Cyril triumphed over his adversary: with him triumphed the cause of the Virgin. Nestorius was deposed and exiled; his writings condemned to the flames; but still the opinions he had advocated were adopted by numbers, who were regarded as heretics by those ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... a fourth way, as to the body, which is sometimes buried with honor and sometimes left unburied, and finally falls to dust utterly. In a fifth way, as to the things upon which a man's heart is set, such as temporal concerns, for example, some of which quickly lapse, while ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... vessel, the Two Brothers, I continued nearly a twelvemonth; and here I got acquainted with nautical terms, and contracted a love for the sea, which a lapse of thirty years has but ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... understanding her words. All his attention was concentrated upon her eyes, as if the five days in which they had not met were the same as a long voyage, and as if he were seeking in Luna's countenance some effect of the extended lapse of time that had intervened. Was she the same?... Yes it was she. But her lips were somewhat pale with emotion; she pressed her lids tightly together as if every word cost her a prodigious effort, as if every one of them tore out part of her soul. Her ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... United States Senator, the Hon. Shelby M. Cullom. I took occasion at that time to predict that in the office to which he had been elected he would show his usefulness and increase his reputation not only among the people of our own State, but the whole people of this country. After the lapse of twelve years and with his record perfectly familiar to the people of the whole country, I ask you Senators whether my prediction has not been fulfilled. His name has been connected with every important measure introduced in the United States Senate; and his discussion ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... evening, with lights half extinguished, that the Roman preachers deliver their sermons in Holy Week. All the women are then clad in black, in remembrance of the death of Jesus Christ, and there is something very moving in this anniversary mourning, which has been so often renewed during a lapse of ages. It is therefore impossible to enter without genuine emotion those beautiful churches, where the tombs so fitly dispose the soul for prayer; but this emotion is generally destroyed in a few ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... inexperienced reader may at first sight imagine, a literal transcript from one of the glowing descriptions that crowd the beautiful pages of Ouida; it is a faint attempt to parallel in the brief moment of historical time the glaring anachronisms perpetually committed as regards the vast lapse of geological chronology even ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... her head scornfully. "I wouldn't trouble trouble till trouble troubles you, Kitty-Kat. If you can go to church with as clear a conscience as mine, I'll take off my hat to you. One lapse ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... nineteen years after its establishment, and there are many who regret its passing, and who realize that it was one of the wisest and, in a certain sense, most advanced measures instituted by Mr. Durant. But it was a despotic measure, and therefore better allowed to lapse; for to the student mind, especially of the late '80's and early '90's it was an attempt to fetter thought, to force religion upon free individuals, to prescribe times and seasons for spiritual exercises ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... a species means that not one individual of it remains alive. Judgment to this effect is based upon the lapse of time since the last living specimen was observed or killed. When five years have passed without a living "record" of a wild specimen, it is time to place a species in the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... after the lapse of a few minutes, the two gloomy figures slowly pursued their way, still conversing in low tones, toward the place whence the prisoner had come; HE HAD NOT BEEN SEEN! Amid the horrible confusion of the rabbi's thoughts, the idea darted ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... a dignity and energy worthy of the greatest orators. Before he had been many days in Parliament, he incurred the bitter dislike of Pitt, who constantly treated him with as much asperity as the laws of debate would allow. Neither lapse of years nor change of scene had mitigated the enmities which Francis had brought back from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us we ought ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... maintain the Pax Britannicum. There were over twenty-five thousand men in thirty-one transports. They were anchored in the harbor in lines, and as the tide rose and fell they shifted about, now heading one way, and after the lapse of a few hours, in another direction. The Government had kindly issued to the officers Colt Automatic Pistols and high power field glasses. My glasses were of a very high power, and I could pick out the figures of the women and men working about the farm houses five ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... Pompeii," and "Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings," are both powerful, ingenious, and interesting narratives, and they give as definite an idea, perhaps, of the times of which they treat as is possible after so long a lapse of time. "Rienzi" leaves a greater impression of verisimilitude. "The Last of the Barons" is somewhat clogged by its superabundance of historic incident, but still affords a striking view of declining feudalism. In the "Tale ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... and other weapons. And the diadem-decked (Arjuna) suddenly came upon Drona's divisions, covering it with a thick net-work of arrows and confounding the very sense (of those that followed Drona). Incessantly placing his arrows on the bow-string and quickly shooting them, none could notice any lapse of time between these two acts of the renowned son of Kunti. Neither (four cardinal) directions, nor the firmament above, nor the earth, O king, could any longer be distinguished, for everything then became one dense mass of arrows. Indeed, O king, when the wielder of Gandiva caused ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Lord Montbarry abroad made it desirable to obtain more complete information relating to his illness, and to the circumstances which had attended it, than could be conveyed in writing. We explained that the law provided for the lapse of a certain interval of time before the payment of the sum assured, and we expressed our wish to conduct the inquiry with the most respectful consideration for her ladyship's feelings, and for the convenience of any other members of the ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the London County Council ever succeeds at last in making the congeries of villages into—I do not say a city, for that is almost past praying for, but something analogous to a second-rate Continental town, it will only be after long lapse of time and violent struggles with the vestryman ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... down on a block of lava, and became so interested in the specimens he had obtained that he did not notice the lapse of time. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... him to the grave. To praise him inordinately was the only consolation his three daughters could find in the first fervour of their grief. Time was when they had been apt to confess to one another that papa was occasionally rather "trying," a vague expression which scarcely involved a lapse of filial duty on the part of the grumbler. But to hear them to-day one would have supposed that they had never been tried; that life with Lord Calderwood in a small house in Chapel-street, Mayfair, had been ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... but by the intention an object of activity toward the world and humanity. The Middle Ages summoned up the business of life in the words, 'Ora et Labora.' They are beautiful words, and after this lapse of time we take the meaning out for ourselves, in other words, 'Think ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... it, as it only repeated the story he had told me, but I will commence my extract at the point where he broke off. The style, as will be seen, is that of a continuous narrative, apparently compiled from a diary; and, as it proceeds, marking the lapse of time, the original dryness of manner gives place to one more animated, more in keeping with the temperament of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... not forgotten that the lapse of three years since the date of the letters, left some uncertainty as to the present state of affairs among Ellen's friends in Scotland; but this doubt was not thought sufficient to justify her letting pass so excellent ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of history than had been displayed by any of the preceding speakers. Sergeant Glynn had asserted, that in conquering the Irish and Welsh our laws had been imposed upon them; but Wedderburne clearly showed that this was only effected in the lapse of ages; English laws not being introduced into Ireland till the time of James I., and in Wales till the time of Henry VIII. He argued, that it was the custom of all conquering states to leave the conquered countries in the possession ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me, and protected me from myself. Apparently they had learned something of my story from me during the days of my lapse. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... his deceased uncle; since the descent of Mr. Aubrey from Geoffrey Dreddlington would, in that event, clothe him with an indefeasible title at law, by virtue of that deed; and any equitable rights which were originally outstanding, would be barred by lapse of time. But the difficulty occurring to my mind on this part of the case is, that unless Harry Dreddlington, who executed that deed of mortgage, survived his father, (a point on which I am surprised that I am furnished with ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... admit that these facts can only be explained by the greater or less lapse of time since the islands were upraised from beneath the ocean, or were separated from the nearest land; and this will be generally (though not always) indicated by the depth of the intervening sea. The enormous thickness of many marine deposits through wide areas ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... savoir faire that causes one to regard her as mated, not matched to the little creature in that cocked-hat, which he does not take off even when she stands before him. The pair, nevertheless, embrace: it is a triennial ceremony performed when the king goes or returns from Hanover, but suffered to lapse at other times; but the condescension is too great: and Caroline ends, where she began: 'gluing her lips to the ungracious hand held out ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and loveliness were thus surely passing away. Other priests, as we know, more fortunate than he, had forewarnings of such impending sacrilege, and were able to anticipate the mob, and bury their beautiful images in safe and secret places, there to await, after the lapse of twelve centuries, the glorious resurrection of the Renaissance. A resurrection, however, by no means free from danger, even in that resplendent dawn of intelligence; for Christianity was still the enemy of beauty, save in the Vatican, and the ignorant priest of the remote village where the spade ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... concerning the gifted companion of their golden days—looked up from their desks in office or counting-house to ask each other the question. Their faces were keen with interest for their admiration and affection for The Dreamer had been sincere; yet it was not strong enough after the lapse of years to make any one of them lay down work and go forth to seek a solution of the mystery. Such an errand not one of them felt to be his business. A quixotic errand it would indeed have been considered and one which, if half the rumors were true, might ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... first think of questioning the theoretical right and overlordship of the central power, will eventually brook but little interference with its modes of procedure and with its exercise of functions, which the lapse of time has transformed from enforced duties ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... of the propriety of the measure, or from the spirit of ecclesiastical fidelity, the higher clergy upheld the patriarch, but their inferiors and the common people made a determined fight. And even now, after the lapse of more than two centuries, a large body adhere immovably to the ancient books and the ancient ritual, which are made sacred to them by the approbation of national councils and the blessing of generations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... piracy in general; piracy in the times of the Greeks, piracy in the times of William the Conqueror... pirata nequissima Eustachio, and thanking God that a case of the sort had not been heard in that court for an immense lapse of years. Below me was an array of wigs, on each side a compressed mass of humanity, squeezed so tight that all the eyeballs seemed to be starting out of the heads towards me. From the wig below, a translation of the florid phrases of the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... things. He was selfish, she knew now, self-centered, and not as much charmed by her as he had been. The fear she had originally felt as to the effect of her preponderance of years had been to some extent justified by the lapse of time. Frank did not love her as he had—he had not for some time; she had felt it. What was it?—she had asked herself at times—almost, who was it? ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... tendency to treat patients not as human beings but as cases—objects to experiment on, and verify hypotheses regarding pathology and disease, all which betray a nature not attuned to the highest and noblest pitch, and that cannot be expected to stand in the hour of trial. His first direct lapse is when, against his secret conviction, he supports Tyke as hospital chaplain in opposition to Farebrother; but mainly in mere defiance and resentment of the general style of his reception at the Board meeting, and the opposition ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... of London. If in now endeavouring to recall their characteristic gifts I use words which I have used before, my excuse must be that the contemporary record of a personal impression cannot with advantage be retouched after the lapse of years. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the mantelpiece alone gave evidence of life. It had been wound for the wedding and had not yet run down. Its tick-tick came faint enough, however, through the darkness, as if it too had lost heart and would soon lapse into the deadly ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... on the floor of the oven a tablespoonful of new flour. If the flour takes fire, or assumes a dark brown color, the temperature is too high and the oven must be allowed to cool; if the flour remains white after the lapse of a few seconds, the temperature is too low. When the oven is of the proper temperature the flour will slightly brown and look ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... in Egypt, the human intellect arrived with the lapse of time at something beyond this childish and primitive belief. Men did not, however, repel it altogether as false and ridiculous; they continued to cherish it at the bottom of their hearts, and to ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... I date his lapse from one evening when I was dining by the window. I had to repeat my order "Devilled kidney," and instead of answering brightly, "Yes, sir," as if my selection of devilled kidney was a personal gratification to him, which is ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... its existence. I do not know how to enter it, but I know it is there; I know what it was formerly used for, and I suspect that last night it was used for that same unholy purpose again—after a lapse of perhaps four thousand years! Even you would doubt me, I believe, if I were to tell you what I know, if I were to hint at what I suspect. But no doubt in your reading you have ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... years, maintained themselves in a state of independence, no one calling it in question? For, if the circumstance of their having been once subject to a foreigner, when crushed under the severity of the times, conveys a right to enforce that subjection again after a lapse of so many generations, what can be said of our having delivered Greece from Philip, but that nothing was accomplished by us; and that his successors may reclaim Corinth, Chalcis, Demetrias, and the whole nation ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius |
