"Swift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for you now; please to come quickly," and with a swift glance at her "missy" obeyed; the purdah fell heavily behind her slim, white figure and Shafto was alone. His mission had been fruitless, and yet when he rode away from "Heidelberg" in his heart he carried ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... had pronounced Your glorious name, and bid me urge your speed, Than, with a voice as though it answered heaven, "He shall confound them in their dark designs," Cried he, and turned away with that swift stride Wherewith he meets and quells ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Swift ran the pedler as a hind, The old priest followed on his trace, They reached the Ghat but could not find The lady of the noble face. The birds were silent in the wood, The lotus flowers exhaled a smell Faint, over all the solitude, A heron as a sentinel Stood ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... wounds, and one gash, deeper than the others, was bleeding freely; so he tore a strip from his shirt and rudely bound it up. It felt better now and he arose, knowing that both man and beast would soon be coming like a swift pursuing vengeance. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... dethrone the Magi, and in another place the inscription has these words: "Thus saith the King Darius: That which I have done was done in every way by the grace of Auramazda. Auramazda helped me, and such other gods as there be. Auramazda and the other gods gave me help, because I was not swift to anger, nor a liar, nor a violent ruler, neither I nor my kinsmen. I have shown favor unto him who helped my brethren, and I have punished severely him who was my enemy. Thou who shalt be king after me, be not merciful unto him who is a liar or a rebel, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... imagination; he may also forget all about the spoken tongue and spread his ideas on the page at first hand. This is not so common because one writes slower than he speaks, whereas he reads very much faster. The swift reader could not imagine that he was speaking the words, even if he would; the pace is too ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... of the preceding night, Stuart had come back from the direction of Ely's Ford, at a swift gallop, burning with ardor at the thought of leading Jackson's great corps into battle. The military ambition of this distinguished commander of Lee's horse was great, and he had often chafed at the jests directed at the cavalry arm, and at himself as "only a cavalry-officer." He had now ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... was at the oven in a leap, turning the bread. For Miriam he was too quick. She started violently, and it hurt her with real pain. Even the way he crouched before the oven hurt her. There seemed to be something cruel in it, something cruel in the swift way he pitched the bread out of the tins, caught it up again. If only he had been gentle in his movements she would have felt so rich and warm. As ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... his feet, turned to the door. Brett rose. A towering brown shape, glassy and transparent, hung in the door, its surface rippling. Dhuva whirled, leaped past Brett, dived for the rear door. Brett stood frozen. The shape flowed—swift as quicksilver—caught Dhuva in mid-stride, engulfed him. For an instant Brett saw the thin figure, legs kicking, upended within the muddy form of the Gel. Then the turbid wave swept across to the door, sloshed it aside, disappeared. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... was drawn aboard; the lines were cast off; the great paddle-wheels began to turn; the swift current laid hold upon us—and the Gladiateur, slipping away from the bank, headed for the channel-arch of the Pont-du-Midi. The bridge was thronged with our friends of Lyons come down to say good-bye to us. Above the parapet their heads cut sharp against the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... laid his shyness and brusquerie, which were only the expression of a dominant self- consciousness, to genuine modesty. He was depressed and moody, because he was bored for want of acquaintance, and missed the adulation and caresses that he received at home as an only child; but Jo's swift imagination painted this as the trait of a reflective and melancholy nature disgusted with the world, and pitied him accordingly; a mild way of misanthropic speech, that is apt to infest young men, added to this delusion; and, with all the energy of her sweet, earnest disposition, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... swift motion through the soft June air, the delightful sensation of the breeze which was caused by the motion of the car, and the ever-changing natural panorama on either side of her, gave Patty the sensation of having suddenly been transported to some other ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... the paper deftly slipped a shilling into the cold, skinny palm. At its first touch the face of the paper-vender fell, for it was the same size as a halfpenny; but even before the swift fingers had had a chance to feel the coin, or the glance went down, the face regained its confidence, for the eyes looking at him were generous. He had looked at so many faces in his brief day that he was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the stormy scenes of changing dynasties and revolutions of earth's kingdoms. How calm the one, how tumultuous the other! How the one witnesses to Him by its apparently unchanging continuance! how the other witnesses by its swift mutations! In the one, He is revealed as Preserver; in the other, the most clear demonstration of His power is given in His destroying of rebel kingdoms. But in these acts by which ancient and firmly rooted dynasties are rooted up or withered as by the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... women, who carried on most of the hostilities, had re-erected their front populaire and were sharing a common pleasure in the recovery of the stolen pistols. And finally, there was a distinct possibility that the swift and dramatic justice that had overtaken Walters and Gwinnett at Rand's hands was having a sobering effect upon somebody ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... ladders. The arms have sails on them to catch the wind. It is the wind that makes the arms go round. With these windmills the people pump up water, and grind corn, and saw wood. The land is very flat and low. There are no swift running streams to turn the mills. So the ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... of a word. Ruth was standing behind the captain and he saw the frightened look in her eyes and the swift movement of her finger to ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which is only another name for poetic proportion, and shocks us sometimes with an Unflaethigkeit, as at the end of his Deutschland, which, if it make Germans laugh, as we should be sorry to believe, makes other people hold their noses. Such things have not been possible in English since Swift, and the persifleur Heine cannot offer the same excuse of savage cynicism that might be pleaded for ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... three kinds of satire, corresponding to as many different views of humanity and life, the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean. Of Stoical satire, with its strenuous hatred of vice and wrong, the type is Juvenal. Of Cynical satire, springing from bitter contempt of humanity, the type is Swift's Gulliver, while its quintessence is embodied in his lines on the Day of Judgment. Of Epicurean satire, flowing from a contempt of humanity which is not bitter, and lightly playing with the weakness ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... saw the ghastly wound that had laid open cheek and forehead. Being partly healed, it was no longer bandaged, but held together with strips of that transparent plaster which I never see without a shiver and swift recollections of the scenes with which it is associated in my mind. Part of his black hair had been shorn away, and one eye was nearly closed; pain so distorted, and the cruel sabre-cut so marred that portion of his face, that, when I saw it, I felt as if a fine medal had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... and which must convince you that our marriage was a perfectly regular and legal transaction, and that you are, therefore, my lawful wife, and I exhort you to be wise, prudent and faithful to your marriage bonds; for, be assured, I am not one who will brook offense, but who will follow with swift, sharp vengeance the slightest infringement of my rights. I remain, and I intend to remain, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Political Tale, and the Epistles of Brevet Major Pindar Puff. These I have heard spoken of as the joint productions of Verplanck and Rudolph Bunner, a scholar and a man of wit. The State Triumvirate is in octo-syllabic verse, and in the manner of Swift, but the allusions are obscure, and it is a task to read it. The notes, in which the hand of Verplanck is very apparent, are intelligible enough and are clever, caustic and learned. The Epistles, which are ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... from this point of view. The same tendency is also illustrated by the vain re-iterations of ordinary speakers. The English intellect, with all its fine qualities, is not sufficiently nimble for either speaker or hearer to keep up with the swift brevity of the English tongue. It is a curious fact that Great Britain takes the lead in Europe in the prevalence of stuttering; the language is probably a factor in this evil pre-eminence, for it appears that the Chinese, whose language ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... immovable, firm, rigid; impregnable, strong, invincible, invulnerable, fortified; steadfast, faithful, true; permanent, durable; rapid, swift, fleet, quick, expeditious, speedy; unrestrained, dissolute, dissipated, rakish, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... refer more particularly, when we shall see that the reason of Mr. Collier's suppression of so large a portion of these alterations and additions was, that their publication would have made the condemnation of his folio swift and certain. We have here a distinct statement of the thing that is not, and a manifest and sufficient motive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... colleague, to Leicester Square and its neighbourhood, and there watched their methods of work, following them at a little distance. Dressed in their uniform they mingled with the women who marched the pavements, and now and again, with curiously swift and decisive steps glided up to one of them, whispered a few earnest words into her ear, and proffered a printed ticket. Most of those spoken to walked on stonily as people do when they meet an undesirable acquaintance whom they do not ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... and gave, for one swift instant, a glance at Trenchard, who was, very clumsily, climbing into the carriage. Nikolai looked at him gravely. His round, red face was quite expressionless as he turned back and began to abjure his horses in that half-affectionate, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... gleamed through the dark leaves. The old sword-bearer, shouldering the silver scabbard, shuffled hastily at his heels with bowed head, and his eyes on the ground. And in the midst of a great stir they passed swift and absorbed, like two men hurrying through a ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... haunts, into the realm of myth and moonshine. His old habits! His old haunts! They hung aloof in his consciousness, shadow pictures, colourless and remote.... That zestful young life at New Haven, the swift years of it, the fine last day of it, Yale honours upon him, his enthusiasms cutting away into the future, his big shoulders squared, his face set toward great things, the righting of wrongs, grand reforms, the careers of nations.... ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... face. These brief visits to his shores were now remembered only when the tribes gathered around the great camp fires at night, and listened to the tales told by ancient braves and squaws, to whom the appearance of the swift ships of the strangers now seemed only ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... marriage between a poor and unselfish man of forty, and his wealthy ward of eighteen; but far from me such shifts and palliatives, far from me such temporary evasion of the actual, such coward fleeing from the dread, the swift-footed, the all-overtaking Fact, such feeble suspense of submission to her the sole sovereign, such paltering and faltering resistance to the Power whose errand is to march conquering and to conquer, such traitor defection from ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... profound, though wholly unintentional, confirmation of this view. Every form in which literary genius has set forth the conception of an earthly immortality represents it as an evil. This is true even down to Swift's painful account of the Struldbrugs in the island of Laputa. The legend of the Wandering Jew,16 one of the most marvellous products of the human mind in imaginative literature, is terrific with its ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Past the cliffs, so swift and strong; Like a tempest is his weeping, Flies his spray like tears along. O'er the steppe now slowly veering— Calm but faithless looketh he— With a voice of love endearing Murmurs to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... answer Questions addressed to him. To-day the lot fell upon Mr. BECK, who good-temperedly explained, when a shower of "supplementaries" rained down upon him, that he really knew nothing about the Department he was temporarily representing. This led to a tragedy, for Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL worked himself into a paroxysm of excitement over this constitutional enormity, and finally sat down on his hat. "I only wish his head had been in it," muttered a brother ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... city of blank casements, a city of citizens feverishly asking questions whose answers they knew beforehand, a city of swift feet and hushed voices, was Verona on the morrow of Can Grande's murder. They carried the two torn bodies covered with one sheet to Sant' Anastasia, and laid them there, not in state but just huddled out of sight, while the bishop and his canons ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... was the state of the Universities, which ought to be the centres of light diffusing itself throughout the whole nation, the training-grounds of those who are to be the trainers of their fellow men, we have the evidence of such different kinds of men as Swift, Defoe, Gray, Gibbon, Johnson, John Wesley, Lord Eldon, and Lord Chesterfield all agreeing on this point, that both the great Universities were neglectful and inefficient in the performance of their proper work. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... a swift glance at him, reading in his eyes, in his face, in his attitude, the confirmation of what she knew from ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... There, where every idea is the author's, and every phrase is scrupulously adapted to the best expression by the author of his own idea, we get the true originality in art. Through all the play of fancy, the wit and humour, the swift transitions, the caprice and jesting, that ultimate sincerity shines; and it is that which lights Mr. Beerbohm's fine taste and knowledge of his craft ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... much of anything about the world. All that he really knew was that there was a world, and that he was in it, and that there were fierce wild animals in it too, which would kill him and eat him if he didn't kill them first. And he knew very well that he was not as swift as the deer, or as big as the elephant, or as strong as the lion, or as fierce as the tiger, and it seemed to him as if he hadn't much chance to stay alive at all in a world so full of terrible creatures who ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the starlings are, they will seldom do this. But in the swallow the instinct of suspicion is reversed, an instinct of confidence occupies its place. In addition to the eave-swallow, to which I have chiefly alluded, and the chimney-swallow, there is the swift, also a roof-bird, and making its nest in the slates of houses in the midst of towns. These three are migrants in the fullest sense, and come to our houses over thousands of ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... in the young man's expression and bearing impressed her, causing her to stretch out her hands to him in swift fear and entreaty. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to (Collocalia troglodites) is a specie of swift; the nests, composed of a gelatinous secretion from the salivary glands in the mouths of the birds, sell at high price almost their weight in gold, when fresh and clean. The best nests are obtained on the precipitous sides of the Penon de Coron, between Culion and Busuanga, where the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... the maiden Spring? Who heard her footfall, swift and light As fairy-dancing in the night? Who guessed what happy dawn would bring The flutter of her bluebird's wing, The blossom of her mayflower-face To brighten every shady place? One morning, down the village street, "Oh, here am I," we heard her sing,— And none had been awake to greet The ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... first time that adventurer came in sight of the ocean, he expresses his sentiments on this occasion in the following manner:—'He saw the sea, which he had never seen before, and thought it much bigger than the river at Salamanca.'" On this occasion Pope suggests,—"Dr. Swift's fable to Ph——s, of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... (c. 1735-c. 1812) was an Irishman, whose name, strange to say, had no connection with the nom de guerre of the same style under which Swift had masqueraded in his outrageously satirical attacks on Partridge the almanac maker, or with the more celebrated imaginary Isaac Bickerstaffe under cover of whose personality Steele conducted the Tatler. The real Bickerstaffe was a prolific playwright. His best known pieces ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... One swift glance told Rawson that Killen was not in his seat, and as his eyes swept the room he noted also the absence of Pitts, Bentley, and Miller. Of the doubtful votes only Ashton ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... abstract myself from the present, when for a moment I can turn my eyes away from all the crimes, from all the blood spilt, from all the victims, from all the proscribed, from those hulks that echo the death rattle, from those deadful penal settlements of Lambessa and Cayenne, where death is swift, from that exile where death is slow, from this vote, from this oath, from this vast stain of shame inflicted upon France, which is growing wider and wider each day; when, forgetting for a few moments these painful thoughts, the usual obsession of my ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... is face at once and gave Genestas a swift, keen, and searching look, one of those glances by which old soldiers are wont at once to take the measure of any impending danger. He saw the red ribbon that the commandant wore, and made a silent and respectful ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... the swift going; the shrinking of the flood under the beating of the oars; the sky and the wooded heights, and the stretches of shore, town and palace lined; the tearing through the blue veil hanging over the retiring distances; the birds, the breezes, the ships ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the slightest sigh of regret, causing the massive episcopal cross of gold filigree, set with a single sapphire, which rested thereon, to rise and fall gently. Miss Matilda's hawklike eye saw and noted this as the first slight sign of rebellion, and she hastened to mete out justice swift ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... scene. All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed; I catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my wandering eye like basking snakes. Where this thick brush displays its emerald tent, I stretch my wearied frame, for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... swift run, leaped in the air, and before Bingo could gather himself for a plunge, Ted ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... She'd seen recordings of those swift, clever, constitutionally murderous creatures in action. "You say it looked like catassin killings. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... should make such a spectacle of herself. Such husbands as I had been familiar with had never hesitated to vent their feelings under such circumstances. But from Douglas van Tuiver there came—not a word! He sat, perfectly straight, staring before him, like a sphinx; and Sylvia, after one or two swift glances at him, began to gossip cheerfully about her plans for the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the shepherd drew a knife which he carried in his girdle, and struck at the opening of the descending beak. The bird uttered a shrill cry of pain as the knife pierced its tongue, and in a few moments it had disappeared in the air. So swift was its flight that almost instantly it was a mere speck ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the case. The street door had opened and closed again. Footsteps, those of three men, his acute, trained hearing told him, sounded on the stairs. Again there came that queer, hesitant indecision as he stood there, while his eyes travelled in swift succession from the bank's securities in his hand to the note on the desk, to the empty bottle on the floor, to the white, upturned face of the silent form huddled against ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... contrary, the land is richly covered with food, or the trees with mast, (the fruit of the oak and beech trees,) the birds fly low, in order to discover the portion of woods most plentifully supplied, and there they alight. The form of body of these swift travellers is an elongated (lengthened) oval steered by a long, well-plumed tail,"—just as you know, Harry, you steer your boat by the rudder in the great tub of water; "they are furnished with ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... dough-pills in peace.—Hateful to us; as is the Night! Bestir yourselves, ye Defenders of Order! They do bestir themselves: all Kings and Kinglets, with their spiritual temporal array, are astir; their brows clouded with menace. Diplomatic emissaries fly swift; Conventions, privy Conclaves assemble; and wise wigs wag, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... cold. The proprieties, those gods of modern social worship, as well as their progenitors, the improprieties, were unknown to these simple souls; they did things because they were right and wrong. They were not nice according to Swift's definition, nor proper in the mode of the best society, but they were good and pure; are the disciples and lecturers of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... At the close, he said, in a low tone, like the murmur of distant thunder, "what I have told you, is true,—true, as that we stand on this solid ground,—true, as that sky that bends above us. This book says it. It is, therefore, eternal truth. I have it impressed upon my mind, that a judgment, a swift, tremendous judgment, is about to descend upon this people on account of their sins. I cannot shake off this impression, and, under its power, I warn you to prepare your souls to ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the last of the satellites to be mentioned, Wooln-garin. Lying 300 yards off the south-western end of Dunk Island, across a swift and deep channel, it is naught but a confused mass of weather-beaten rocks, the loftiest not being more than 50 feet above high-water. A few pandanus palms, hardy shrubs and trailers, and mangroves, spring ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift succession. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the wakening waters Comes the cool, fresh morning breeze, Lifting the banner of Britain, And whispering to the trees Of the swift gliding boats on the waters That are nearing the fog-shrouded land, With the old Green Mountain Lion, ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... Egypt is all this scene. Her reverence, it is true, sits behind a curtain; but her virtue uses language which would shame the lowest European prostitute; and which is filthy almost as Dean Swift's. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... capacity to talk about all themes, secular and religious—this acquaintance with science and art—this power to appreciate the beautiful and grand? Next to the Bible, the newspaper,—swift-winged, and everywhere present, flying over the fences, shoved under the door, tossed into the counting-house, laid on the work-bench, hawked through the cars! All read it: white and black, German, Irishman, Swiss, Spaniard, American, old and young, good and bad, sick ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... space without. I started up in amaze and hastened to the window. The child was already in the air, buoyed on his wings, which he did not flap to and fro as a bird does, but which were elevated over his head, and seemed to bear him steadily aloft without effort of his own. His flight seemed as swift as an eagle's; and I observed that it was towards the rock whence I had descended, of which the outline loomed visible in the brilliant atmosphere. In a very few minutes he returned, skimming through the opening from which he had gone, and dropping on the floor the rope and grappling-hooks ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the COUNTER DISENGAGEMENT a swift attack is made into the opening disclosed while the opponent is attempting to change the engagement of his rifle. It is delivered by one continuous spiral movement of the bayonet ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... snatched back to life from death in the deep, recall how, before seeming to yield the ghost, the picture of their whole existence passed in vivid light before the eye of their mind. Swift beyond the power of understanding are such revelations; in one flash the events of a good or an evil life leap before the seeing soul—moment of anguish intolerable or ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... had gone from all the foot-hills and had long since disappeared in the broad river bottom. It was fast going from the neighboring mountains, too—both the streams told plainly of that, for while the Platte rolled along in great, swift surges under the Engineer Bridge, its smaller tributary—the "Larmie," as the soldiers called it—came brawling and foaming down its stony bed and sweeping around the back of the fort with a wild vehemence ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... hope of understanding the welter of life in which we are immersed, as in a swift and muddy river, is in ascending as near to its pure source as we can. That source is in consciousness and consciousness is in ourselves. This is the point of view from which each problem dealt with has been attacked; but lest the author be at once set down as an impracticable ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... within the low-lighted room, pausing before her dressing-table near the tall silver lamp, to remove the weight of jewels which loaded her, aimless, and with slow uncertain steps like a child too weary to know rightly what it does. And from the darkness by the wall a figure coming with swift silent strides across the turf to the marble steps, black as a shadow in the moonlight, lean and lithe and with an untamed shock of hair. The figure stood upon the lowest step and called softly,—a tender, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... his friend Jonathan Swift, lose interest in the purchase of books during the last third of his life. For Swift's library we have an inventory made when Swift was about fifty. Another inventory at his death more than twenty-five ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... broke forth on the night air a song so strange, so beautiful, that the Blackbird held his breath to listen. It came suddenly; and from a tree close beside him, a sweet low murmuring song, and then it changed to a swift "jug, jug." This was followed by a shake, clear and prolonged, and then came a "low piping sound," which, as the song ceased, the air gave back, as if it were loth to lose ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... of rage had gone entirely. There had come upon him a swift compunction. "Why did you try ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Swift and complete reaction had come upon him, and choked with the moral sulphur of the last twenty-four hours, he craved the breath of purity. He must talk of Plato's Republic, of Wagner's operas, of Schopenhauer; ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... been written and made known which I might read for my improvement. For some hide their art in great secrecy, and others write about things whereof they know nothing, so that their words are nowise better than mere noise, as he that knoweth somewhat is swift to discover. I therefore will write down with God's help the little that I know. Though many will scorn it I am not troubled, for I well know that it is easier to cast blame on a thing than to make anything better. Moreover, I will ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... fleshy part of his forearm, thrust clean from side to side by a lightning-swift stroke, he saw ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... execution of my duty! Certainly not. Now I'll tell you what I'll do, to teach you to corrupt the King's officer. I'll put you under arrest until the execution's over. You just stand there; and don't let me see you as much as move from that spot until you're let. (With a swift wink at her he points to the corner of the square behind the gallows on his right, and turns noisily away, shouting) Now then dress up and keep 'em back, ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... desires whom reason could not guide! Oh hopes of love that intimate redress, Yet prove the load-stars unto bad betide! When will you cease? Or shall pain never-ceasing, Seize oh my heart? Oh mollify your rage, Lest your assaults with over-swift increasing, Procure my death, or call on timeless age. What if they do? They shall but feed the fire, Which I have ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... window, which was open to let in the sweet scent of the spring and the merry chirping of the birds, sat my sweet young mistress, Jeannette, reading out of a book to the little sister who sat on her knee; and ever and anon looking out at the swift, shining river, as it washed past ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... part gave me no more time to think. I was not Maxine de Renzie, but Princess Helene of Hungaria, whose tragic fate was even more sure and swift than miserable Maxine's. When Princess Helene had died in her lover's arms, however (died as Maxine had not deserved to die), and I was able to pick up the tangled threads of my own life, where I'd laid them down, the questions were still crying ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain: "Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane. Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore; Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core; Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat, Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat. Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones; Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... every noise a rumbling earthquake, the swift running feet of the children as if the house was coming down, the noisy thumping of the washing stones as indicative of the rocks falling over us. This induced us to think, much to Schillie's horror, of seeking a new abode during the very hot weather ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... wing may be observed in chickens and turkeys, but not in water-fowls, nor in birds that are safely housed in the nest till full-fledged. The other day, by a brook, I came suddenly upon a young sandpiper, a most beautiful creature, enveloped in a soft gray down, swift and nimble and apparently a week or two old, but with no signs of plumage either of body or wing. And it needed none, for it escaped me by taking to the water as readily as if it had flown ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the population by Rhodesian methods to the desired limit is a return to the old-time slow-misery and lingering-death system of a discredited time and a crude "civilization." We humanely reduce an overplus of dogs by swift chloroform; the Boer humanely reduced an overplus of blacks by swift suffocation; the nameless but right-hearted Australian pioneer humanely reduced his overplus of aboriginal neighbors by a sweetened swift death concealed in a poisoned pudding. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... right about the capabilities of the horses. They responded without any apparent effort to the further demand made of them. The one in particular that Diana was riding moved in a swift, easy gallop that was ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... are alluded to in the comparison made by one of King Edwin's chiefs, in discussing the welcome to be given to the Christian missionary Paulinus: "The present life of man, O King, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the hall where you sit at your meal in winter, with your chiefs and attendants, warmed by a fire made in the middle of the hall, while storms of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... mysterious certainty! O strange truth of these my guesses In the wide thought-wildernesses! —Truth of one divined of many flowers; Of one raindrop in the showers Of the long-ago swift rain; Of one tear of many tears In some world-renowned pain; Of one daisy 'mid the centuries of sun; Of a little living nun In ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... blanched to a pasty gray. The Master was frozen. But Bell saw Ribiera's eyes move in swift calculation. There was a solid wall behind The Master. It seemed as if the greenhouse were a sort of passageway between two larger structures. And there was a door almost immediately behind Ribiera. Ribiera ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... rose the dark wooded hills of Pavant, descending abruptly to that narrow strip of fertile plain which borders the river on both sides, but now half-veiled in a heavy blue mist. Below me the swift current sped onward like a silver arrow, and before so impressive a spectacle I could not help thinking how meager is the art of the scene painter and dramatist which tries to depict a real battlefield. For battlefield I felt this was, and ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... sail on the coast of Africa heaves in sight of a slaver, it is always best for the imperilled craft, especially if gifted with swift hull and spreading wings, to take flight without the courtesies that are usual in mercantile sea-life. At the present day, fighting is, of course, out of the question, and the valuable prize is abandoned by its valueless owners. At all times, however,—and as a guard ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... only been a few minutes at his window when he saw Roquefinette appear at the corner of the Rue Montmartre. He was mounted on a dapple-gray horse, both swift and strong, and evidently chosen by a connoisseur. He came along leisurely, like a man to whom it is equally indifferent whether he is seen or not. On arriving at the door he dismounted, fastened up his horse, and ascended the stairs. As on the day before, his face was grave and pensive, his ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... spells enough to make the world his own:— Light, lovely limbs to which the spirit's play Gave motion, airy as the dancing spray, When from its stem the small bird wings away; Lips in whose rosy labyrinth when she smiled The soul was lost, and blushes, swift and wild As are the momentary meteors sent Across the uncalm but beauteous firmament. And then her look—oh! where's the heart so wise Could unbewildered meet those matchless eyes? Quick, restless, strange, but exquisite withal, Like ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... her to Count Rechberg, the aide-de-camp on duty. With him Lola had more success. Boldness conquered where bashfulness would have failed. After a single swift glance, Count Rechberg decided that the applicant was eligible for admission to the "Presence," and reported the fact ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... frolicsome, rare old cock As ever did nothing was our dog Jock; A gleesome, fleasome, affectionate beast, As slow at a fight as swift at a feast; A wit among dogs, when his life 'gan fail, One couldn't but see the old wag in his tail, When his years grew long and his eyes grew dim, And his course of bark could not strengthen him. Never more now shall our knees be pressed ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... bridal bed, and will have nothing to do with marriage. But Dian, the sister of Phoebus, daughter of Jove, he honors, esteeming her the greatest of deities. And through the green wood ever accompanying the virgin, with his swift dogs he clears the beasts from off the earth, having formed a fellowship greater than mortal ought. This indeed I grudge him not; for wherefore should I? but wherein he has erred toward me, I will avenge me on Hippolytus this very ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... them to be guanicoes, many of which we afterwards saw come down to the water-side; they resemble our deer, but are much larger, the height of some being not less than thirteen hands; they are very shy and very swift. After I returned to my boat, I went farther up the harbour, and landed upon an island that was covered with seals, of which we killed above fifty, and among them many that were larger than a bullock, having ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Paquita and the duenna, in order to find himself on the same side as the girl of the golden eyes, when he returned, Paquita, no less impatient, came forward hurriedly, and De Marsay felt his hand pressed by her in a fashion at once so swift and so passionately significant that it was as though he had received the emotions surged up in his heart. When the two lovers glanced at one another, Paquita seemed ashamed, she dropped her eyes lest she should meet the eyes of Henri, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... broach the barrel, fill the bowl, And let us pledge the hearty soul, Though swift the waning minutes roll, And ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... what is called inanimate, nature. March is the trying month of indecision, the tug-of-war between winter and spring, pulling us first one way and then the other, the victory often being, until the final moment, on the side of winter. Then comes a languid period of inaction, and a swift recovery. When the world finally throws off frost bondage, sun and the earth call, while humanity, indoors and out, in city tenement as well as in farmhouse, hears the voice, even though its words ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... fleetness of a fawn. But, long before she reached its extremity, the light, which Verezzi carried, flashed upon the walls; both appeared, and, instantly perceiving Emily, pursued her. At this moment, Bertolini, whose steps, though swift, were not steady, and whose impatience overcame what little caution he had hitherto used, stumbled, and fell at his length. The lamp fell with him, and was presently expiring on the floor; but Verezzi, regardless of saving it, seized the advantage this accident gave him over his rival, and followed ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... A swift deployment was then made, and the edge of the wood was held astride of the road. After everything had been arranged, there was a wait of thirty to forty minutes. Nothing could be seen, as the position was on the "reverse slope" of the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... too, a quite irritating trick of remaining, to all outward seeming, stolidly unmoved by events which were causing an otherwise general commotion; but in cases of danger or emergency she was essentially swift to act—as on one occasion, for instance, when the Hamilton House twins were ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Turn swift, my wheel, my busy wheel, And leave my heart no time to feel; Companion of my widow'd hour, My only friend, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to be true: the rest from labor, the swift flight across southern seas, the landing, amid strange, dark faces on a burnished shore, the slow, delicious journey through tamarisk groves and palm forests, and the halt in the Desert that ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... had been a new and delightfully salt taste and smell to the water, it became stronger and stronger as he went on; then there was a roar of breakers along the shores, and the swift tide swept Sammy away from the river's mouth, and out into ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... him a swift, glad look; then their talk drifted into those sweet remembrances which happy husbands and wives know by heart: what he thought when he first saw her, how she wondered if he would speak to her. "And oh, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... roughly down again. Yet he showed no enmity toward her, and with the swift intuition of youth she comprehended that he wished her to stay and see him fish. He, the tramp, was to give her her first lesson in angling! What, what ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... clear of the Imperialists comes to Nuremberg, made his entrance into that city the 21st of March, and being nobly treated by the citizens, he continued his march into Bavaria, and on the 26th sat down before Donauwerth. The town was taken the next day by storm, so swift were the conquests of this invincible captain. Sir John Hepburn, with the Scots and the English volunteers at the head of them, entered the town first, and cut all the garrison to pieces, except such as ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... anxious." Mary read so far when the paper fell from her hands and she trembled all over. Jane read it, and said, "It is all over." Mary replied, "No, my dear Jane, it is not all over; but this suspense is dreadful. Come with me; we will go to Leghorn; we will post, to be swift and learn our fate." ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... panoramic dream he beheld a swift procession of mine-and-cattle scenes troop past for swift review. He lived again whole months of nights spent out alone beneath the sky, with the snow and the wind hurled down upon him from a merciless firmament of bleakness. Once more he stumbled ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... gingerly on. Bob looked back. Against the light the two graceful, erect figures, immobile, but carried back and forth over thirty feet with lightning rapidity; the brute masses of the logs; the swift decisive forays of the "nigger," the unobtrusive figures of the other men handling the logs far in the background; and the bright, smooth, glittering, dangerous saws, clear-cut in outline by their very speed, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... for it was little else, bore sharply out between two huge bowlders that might well have fallen from the mighty pile of Grand-pere itself. Pointed and angular they were, and set like a gateway to an abode of giants. Beyond, there was a shimmer of swift-moving water, with a silver mist on the surface, though from a height of a few feet it would have been easy to distinguish the bold contours of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... creatures, on account of their beauty or power, wherefore it is written (Wis. 13:1, 2): "All men . . . neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman, but have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and the moon, to be the gods ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... we praise the swift horse, for whose easy mastery many a hand glows in applause, and victory exults in the hoarse circus. —"Juvenal, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... running his district to suit himself. The way he did it brought him under the just accusation of being guilty of every kind of rascality known to politics. When next our paths would cross each other, it would very likely be on some errand of mercy, to which his feet were always swift. I recall the distress of a dear and gentle lady at whose table I once took his part. She could not believe that there was any good in him; what he did must be done for effect. Some time after that she wrote, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... ELECTOR). But you, my liege, who bore in other days A tenderer name I may no longer speak, Before your feet, stirred to my soul, I kneel. Forgive, that with a zeal too swift of foot I served your cause on that decisive day; Death now shall wash me clean of all my guilt. But give my heart, that bows to your decree, Serene and reconciled, this comfort yet: To know your breast resigns all bitterness— And, in the hour of parting, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the bed in the darkened room, in that profound and swift-coming sleep known, alas! only to the stage hero or heroine. The paper on the wall began to move noiselessly aside, and in the opening thus disclosed at the head of the bed, lamp-illumined, appeared ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... was singular, and remarkably singular to Mrs. Adair, who from the angle in which she sat commanded a view of that open window through which the moonlight shone. She had seen Ethne turn out the lamp, and the swift change in the room from light to dark, with its suggestion of secrecy and the private talk of lovers, had been a torture to her. But she had not fled from the torture. She had sat listening, and the music as it floated out ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... among trees on the far side of Bester's Valley. Neither side in fact could move either to advance or retire without exposing itself on open ground. Therefore they stayed blazing away at each other until the grey dawn gave place to swift sunrise. Then the Boers, who had a heliograph with them behind Intombi Spur, flashed to Bulwaan the signal "Maak Vecht," and our friend "Puffing Billy"—as the big 6-inch Creusot is called—promptly made fight in a way that was astonishing ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... most religious; nor those who have the clearest notions of legality and illegality, the most honest. Just as lawyers are of all men the least noted for probity; as cathedral towns have a lower moral character than most others; so, if Swift is to be believed, courtiers are "the most insignificant race of people that the island can afford, and with the smallest tincture ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... have peeped out of the windows, in perfectly proper curiosity, to watch the Bottle River jacks flounder into town. Not she! Pattie Batch was busy. Pattie Batch was so desperately employed that her swift little fingers demanded all the attention that the most alert, the brightest, the very most bewitching gray eyes in the whole wide world could bestow upon anything whatsoever. Christmas Eve, you see: Day done. Something of soft fawn-skin engaged her, it seemed, with white patches matched and ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... wise men consulted parchments, astrologers sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtle prophecies. "Is he not swift?" said the young. "How glad ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... about this time, and uttering some half-audible words, apologetical, partly, and involving an allusion to refreshments. As he spoke, he opened a small cupboard, and as he did so out bolted an uninvited tenant of the same, long in person, sable in hue, and swift of movement, on seeing which the Scarabee simply said, without emotion, blatta, but I, forgetting what was due to good ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... myd-daies hower came sayling in, A thought-swift-flying Pynnase, taught by winde, T' outstrip in flight Times euer flying wing; And being come where vertue was inshrinde, First vaild his plumes, and wheeling in a ring, With Goat-like dauncing, stays where Grinuile shynd, The whyle ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... the mountain slope, and presently they came to a swift little brook, in which they bathed their faces, removing, at the same time, fragments of twigs and dried ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... being in swift motion all this while, it was beyond the danger of pursuit by the time these little events had occurred; and the savages, as soon as the first burst of their anger had subsided, ceased firing, with the consciousness that they were expending ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... he demanded, impatiently, taking the intruder's measure in a swift glance shot from beneath ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... are also a long series of the first editions of Dryden; the earliest issues of the first complete edition of 'Pilgrim's Progress'; of 'Robinson Crusoe' (the three parts); of 'Gulliver's Travels,' besides about a score of other editiones principes of Swift, Pope, Goldsmith, Fielding, Richardson, Johnson, Gay, Gray, Lamb, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Thackeray, Dickens and many others. The two early printed books of especial interest are the 'De Senectute,' printed by Caxton, 1481, and Barbour's 'Actis and Lyfe of the maist Victorious Conquerour, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... He had been so absorbed in the spells wrought by this dainty woods fairy that he had forgotten the flight of time. It was enough for him to watch the turn of her wrist, the swift certainty of her movements, to catch the glow lit in her face by the fire over which she bent. Then he suddenly remembered that her movements had all along tended toward dinner, and were not got up simply and merely that he might discover new ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... song now pass in swift review before the mind's eye. We recall Marietta Alboni, the greatest contralto of the middle of the last century, with a voice rich, mellow, liquid, pure and endowed with passionate tenderness, the only pupil of Rossini; Theresa Tietiens, with her mighty dramatic soprano, whose tones ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... in West Virginia had been complicated by the political situation, and it is necessary to recollect the dates of the swift following steps in Virginia's progress into the Confederacy. Sumter surrendered on Saturday, the 13th of April, and on Monday the 15th President Lincoln issued his first call for troops. On Wednesday the 17th the Virginia Convention passed the Ordinance of Secession ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... The colours are gay," said he, "but the substance slight." Of James Harris's Dedication to his "Hermes," I have heard him observe that, though but fourteen lines long, there were six grammatical faults in it. A friend was praising the style of Dr. Swift; Mr. Johnson did not find himself in the humour to agree with him: the critic was driven from one of his performances to the other. At length, "You must allow me," said the gentleman, "that there are ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... our repose, as I was smoking my pipe, with my camels kneeling down around me, I perceived a herie [a swift dromedary] coming from the direction of Cairo, at a very swift pace; it passed by me like a flash of lightning, but still I had sufficient time to recognise in its rider the maribout who had prophesied evil if my camel was employed to carry the Koran ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... English heart will hear with fierce amaze That England lags so far behind in these electric days— England, whose seamen are her shield, who vaunts in speech and song, The love she bears her mariners! Wake, CAMPBELL, swift and strong Of swell and sweep as the salt waves you sang as none could sing! Rouse DIBDIN, of the homelier flight, but steady waft of wing! Poetic shades, this question, sure, should pierce the ear of death, And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... the wrong direction—are still moving with a swift velocity that cannot be checked without painfully jarring the whole machinery of life; but all this progress is toward misery, not happiness, and, as wise men, it behooves us stop, at no matter what cost of present pain, and begin retracing ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... long distance down, but what they saw was enough to justify their worst anticipations. The canon was narrower than any they had traversed, and the current extremely swift. There seemed but few broken rocks in the channel, but on either side the walls jutted out in sharp angles far into the ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... these troops were retained in Tuscany on the pretext that the Papal fief of Imola required protection. Of course the real purpose was a menace to Lorenzo: the force being at hand to strike a swift ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... amongst all those huffing cardinals, swelling bishops that flourished in his time, and rode on foot-clothes. It is not honesty, learning, worth, wisdom, that prefers men, "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," but as the wise man said, [3962]Chance, and sometimes a ridiculous chance. [3963]Casus plerumque ridiculus multos elevavit. 'Tis fortune's doings, as they say, which made Brutus now dying exclaim, O misera virtus, ergo nihil quam verba eras, atqui ego te tanquam ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... them the city was a blaze of light, and the sky above it was painted crimson. From the fortress, rockets, hissing and roaring, signalled to the barracks; from the gun-boat, the quick-firing guns were stabbing the darkness with swift, vindictive flashes. In different parts of the city incendiary fires had started and were burning sullenly, sending up into the still night air great, twisting columns of sparks. The rattle of ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... bites, since it dips all its food in water: it is a figure of a man who will not take advice, and does nothing but what is soaked in the water of his own will. The heron [*Vulg.: herodionem], commonly called a falcon, signifies those whose "feet are swift to shed blood" (Ps. 13:3). The plover [*Here, again, the Douay translators transcribed from the Vulgate: charadrion; charadrius is the generic name for all plovers.], which is a garrulous bird, signifies the gossip. The hoopoe, which builds its nest on dung, feeds on foetid ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... may mean "swift in power," was god of medicine, and, with Creidne's help, fashioned a silver hand for Nuada.[264] His son Miach replaced this by a magic restoration of the real hand, and in jealousy his father slew him—a ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... in the florotund manner of Macready, what a row there would be in the gallery! It is only by the impalpable process of evolution that change comes to the theatre. Likewise in the sphere of costume no swift rebellion can succeed, as was exemplified by the Princes effort to revive knee-breeches. Had his Royal Highness elected, in his wisdom, to wear tight trousers strapped under his boots, 'smalls' might, in their turn, have reappeared, and ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... dim twilight where everything seems confused. The physical eye appears to see, but the light never quite pierces the dimness nor reflects its beauty there. If the ears hear the song of birds, the cooing of babes, the heart- beat in the organ tone, then the swift little messengers that fly hither and thither in my mind and yours, carrying echoes of sweetness unspeakable, tread more slowly here, and never quite reach the spirit in prison. A spirit in prison, indeed, but with one ray of ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and temples in India), when the maina exclaimed, "What wickedness is this?" upon which the raja went to the cage, took out the maina, and dashed it to the ground, so that it died. But the parrot, taking warning, said, "The steed of Rasalu is swift, what if he should surprise you? Let me out of my cage, and I will fly over the palace, and will inform you the instant he appears in sight"; and so she released the parrot. In the sequel, the parrot betrays the rani, and Rasalu kills ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... on the old farm back at Cloverdale, Ohio, my mother's advice was as useful to me as my father's." Swift through Asher's mind ran the memory of that moonlit April night on his father's veranda five years before. "Out here it is our wives who bear the heaviest burdens. Let us have ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... England growth. It does not resemble the smoky cities of the iron regions, nor the languid towns of the South. The swift, powerful current of water does its work without confusion, smoke or waste. Pure breezes sweep along the valley through the mountain rifts, and the mountains serve as barriers to ward off heavy gales and destructive tempests. The slope of the land toward the river gives opportunity ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... at the fellow with a swift dislike for his vacant, heavy face and his greasy, saffron hair. His bare arms were tattooed boldly and in many colors, distorted with ropes of muscle. He seemed a little drunk, and the green clouds cast a copper shade into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... boozing ken on Boiler avenue. I do not mean to say that all Texas Baptists are bad; at least 50 per cent. of them are broad-gauge, tolerant, intelligent; the remainder are small-bore bigots upon whom nature put heads, as Dean Swift would say, "Solely for the sake ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... an unconscionably long time falling. Still, through the clouds he went, and, it seemed to him at the end of five minutes, began to get glimpses of the earth. Down he went like a shot. The rushing noise in his ears grew more intolerable. There was a swift upgrowth of the hedgerows, a sudden vision of cows and horses, and of people running across fields. Then a heavy bump, and Josiah, opening his eyes, found himself lying on the floor in the ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... have baffled any clodhopper,—a race whose calves are generally absorbed in the soles of their hobnail shoes. But the Hellenic Institute, with its classical gymnasia, had trained its pupils in all bodily exercises; and though the Will o' the Wisp was swift for a clodhopper, he was no match at running for any youth who has spent his boyhood in the discipline of cricket, prisoner's bar, and hunt-the-hare. I reached him at length, and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the very day that the Sylph lifted anchor for her second cruise, that London heard of the prowess of the German cruiser Emden, a swift raider which later caused so much damage to British shipping as to gain the name "Terror of the Sea." The news received on the day in question told of the sinking of an English liner ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... you'll see—George! what a stunning horse!" and Ben forgot everything else to feast his eyes on the handsome creature who now came pacing in to dance, upset and replace chairs, kneel, bow, and perform many wonderful or graceful feats, ending with a swift gallop while the rider sat in a chair on its back fanning himself, with his legs crossed, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the coast of Borneo may be classed into those who make long voyages in large heavy-armed prahus, such as the Illanuns, Balignini, &c., and the lighter Dyak fleets, which make short but destructive excursions in swift prahus, and seek to surprise rather than openly to attack their prey. A third, and probably the worst class, are usually half-bred Arab seriffs, who, possessing themselves of the territory of some Malay state, form a nucleus for piracy, a rendezvous and market ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... invasion of Miss Vancourt into the happy quietude of the village of St. Rest, till he experienced a sense of pain and aversion almost amounting to anger. Why, he asked himself, seeing she had stayed so long away from her childhood's home, could she not have stayed away altogether? The swift and brilliant life of London was surely far more suited to one who, according to 'Putty' Leveson, was 'rapid as a firework, and vain as a peacock.' But was 'Putty' Leveson always celebrated for accuracy in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... day of spring, the season of swift changes. For the first time the sky was lighter than the ground. Its brilliant clouds threw heavy shadows on the earth, fugitive shadows which ran with the warm wind, alert with colour. Nothing was quiet or hidden. There was not yet ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... is related. Speaking of the land seen from the Tschukotskoi Noss, it is said, "that in summer time they sail in one day to the land in baidares, a sort of vessel constructed of whale-bone, and covered with seal-skins; and in winter time, going swift with rein-deer, the journey may be likewise made in one day." A sufficient proof that the two countries were usually ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... said, I must have been precipitated head-foremost; but I was conscious, at length, of a swift, flinging motion of my limbs, which involuntarily threw themselves out, so that at last I must have fallen in a heap. This is more likely, from the circumstance, that when I struck the sea, I felt as if some ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... mouse, in the midst of the play. Instantly the fox nearest you stands, with one foot up, listening. Another squeak, and he makes three or four swift bounds in your direction, only to stand listening again; he hasn't quite located you. Careful now! don't hurry; the longer you keep him waiting, the more certainly he is deceived. Another squeak; some more swift jumps that bring him within ten feet; and now he smells or sees you, sitting ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Antarctic scientific research in general. It would be a beautiful example of whole-hearted co-operation among scientific groups of different nationalities. It should set a charming example for the rest of the world. But members of the staff, arranging this swift block of possible trouble-making by unwelcome visitors, wore the unpleasant expression of people who are preparing to be very polite to people attempting to put something over on them. It was notable that the ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... could go into shallower waters than the large ships. There were also monitors—immense fighting machines with decks but a little height above the water and big guns in circular turrets. Then there were torpedo boats—very swift vessels armed with deadly torpedoes, any one of which could sink the largest ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... moons hath there been no blood of the snake," returned the old man perfunctorily, as he lifted his eyes from a swift appraisement of the tusk to ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... present order of things it seems to be inevitable that the gain of one class in the community is loss to another. Probably the law has always existed, and only the very rapid and sudden changes bring it into prominence, because of the swift readjustment needed, an operation which torpid human nature ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... Jean's swift-roving eye reverted to the men, three of whom were absorbed in the greasy checkerboard. The fourth man was the one who had spoken and he now deigned to look at Jean. Not much flesh was there stretched over his bony, powerful physiognomy. He stroked a lean chin with a big mobile hand that ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... hill toward her, plunged a swift body. She rather felt the new presence than saw it. The cat yowled again, and spit. There was the impact of a clubbed gun upon the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr |
