"Take flight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since Peace and I have been acquainted that I hardly yet dare look her full in the face for fear she will take flight and leave me in utter darkness again. Even if she has not come to live with me, she is at least my next door neighbor, and I offer her incense ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... his lean, long figure bent forward like a bird about to take flight, stared into the darkness ahead of the boat with his hawk eyes, and turning his rapacious, hooked nose from side to side, gripped with one hand the rudder handle, while with the other he twirled his mustache, that was continually quivering with smiles. Chelkash was pleased ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... golden tresses, teeth of pearly white, Those cheeks' fair roses blooming to decay, Do in their beauty to my soul convey The poison'd arrows from my aching sight. Thus sad and briefly must my days take flight, For life with woe not long on earth will stay; But more I blame that mirror's flattering sway, Which thou hast wearied with thy self-delight. Its power my bosom's sovereign too hath still'd, Who pray'd thee in my suit—now he is mute, Since thou art captured ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... they all made for, and poised upon wings, with an omnipresence to annoy our race? Robins were good to eat, and they were more harmless, than others; but why were blackbirds let loose on earth? and for what did crows and hawks take flight in our air? Why were the brutal beasts and troublesome fowls, saved out of the things that were drowned ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... flourishing sects whose followers could be numbered by millions, there existed other communities, founded upon naive and child-like superstitions, strange fruits of the tree of faith. The members of one of these believed that it was only necessary to climb upon the roofs in order to take flight to heaven. The deceptions practised on them by charlatans, the relentless persecution of the government, even the loss of reason, all counted for nothing if only they might enjoy some few moments of supreme felicity and live in harmony with the ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... a Syndic's greed hath left its trail The picturesque and beautiful take flight; The Past's inspiring influences fail, As stars ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... come, and hath subdued the Midianites!" he answered, with a ring of triumph in his voice. "King David is come, and the Philistines will take flight, and Israel shall sit in peace under his vine and fig-tree. May God ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... was soon over. In a few moments the whole company appeared to take flight at once, without her having stirred a muscle. Away they went, with such speed and noiselessness that they appeared not to touch the ground. From point to point of the rock they sprang, and the last branchy head disappeared over the ridge, almost before Erica could stand upright, to ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... back turned towards the east, and his head bowed to the earth, his whole attitude denoting the most profound attention; the duty he had now to perform was a very important one, being no less than to discover in which direction the boyl-yas, when drawn out of the earth by the fire, would take flight. Their departure was not audible to common ears or visible to the eyes of ordinary mortals, but his power of boyl-ya gaduk enabled him to distinguish these sights and sounds which were invisible and inaudible to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... bite and kick an unfortunate or a diseased one. It is intended by this instinct that none but the perfect and healthy ones should propagate the species. In this case they manifested their usual propensity to gore the wounded, but our appearance at that moment caused them to take flight, and this, with the goring being continued a little, gave my men the impression that they were helping away their wounded companion. He was shot between the fourth and fifth ribs; the ball passed ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the six Danish earls who came To aid his force, and raise his name, No mighty thanks King Svein is owing For mighty actions of their doing. Fin Arnason, in battle known, With a stout Norse heart of his own, Would not take flight his life to gain, And in the foremost ranks ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... and let what has befallen us draw our Thoughts upwards. Perhaps they will sometimes, before we are aware, sink to the Grave, and dwell in the Tombs that contain the poor Remains of what was once so dear to us. But let them take Flight from thence to more noble, more delightful Scenes. And I will add, let the Hope we have of the Happiness of our Children render GOD still dearer to our Souls. We feel a very tender Sense of the Kindness which our ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... with black slaves and Cafres, [8] brought by the Portuguese, and these are the worst that the Portuguese have. They do a great deal of damage, transgress the law, and will cause the ruin of this city and country; for they rebel at least every year, seize vessels, and take flight, committing many outrages and thefts. It is contrary to the law to bring these slaves, unless very young, but this law is poorly observed. It is advisable to take the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... their son Marmaduke. A very small Marmaduke, for he was the only one left of a pretty flock who, one after the other, had but hovered down into the world for a year or two to spread their tiny wings and take flight again, leaving two desolate hearts behind them. And in this same parlour at Arbitt Lodge had that little Marmaduke learned to walk, and then to run, to gaze with admiring eyes on the treasures in the glass cupboards, to play bo-peep behind the ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... matter of money, before that mighty king, ignorance and poverty, together with all their allies, take flight. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... news has been received that the English enemy, against whom this expedition is directed, is stationed in the harbor of Marayuma, and inasmuch as he might take flight without awaiting attack, should he, by any chance, hear of our fleet, it is ordered that our fleet, with the least possible delay, shall start in pursuit of the enemy, in order to engage and fight him, until, with our Lord's help, he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... apprenticed to Cima. He was appointed to decorate S. Antonino. His early work there is hard and coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour dusky and uniform; but owing to the Turkish raid, he had to take flight, and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. In the meantime, Pellegrino's years had been spent partly in Venice and partly, perhaps, in Ferrara, for the reason Raphael gave for refusing to paint a ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... compact; however do thou make haste and delay not.' But when she looked at me and heard mine intent regarding the marriage she shook with joy and pride and she inclined towards me as she sat before me and my senses were like to take flight. Then she rose up and left me for an hour and came back dressed in sumptuous garments and fairer than before, and perfumes reeked from her sides as she walked between four handmaidens like unto the refulgent moon. But I, when I looked upon her in this condition, cried out ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... silence, and holding flying drills in preparation for their journey; wad all the strand birds were assembling, in order to take flight together. Even the lark had lost its courage and was seeking convoy voiceless and unknown among the other gray autumn birds. But the sea-gull stalked peaceably about, protruding its crop; it was ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Down with the tricolor flag!" Bordeaux, regarding Montauban as in rebellion against France, dispatches fifteen hundred of its National Guard to set the prisoners free. Toulouse gives its aid to Bordeaux. The fermentation is frightful. Four thousand of the Protestants of Montauban take flight; armed cities are about to contend with each other, as formerly in Italy. It is necessary that a commissioner of the National Assembly and of the King, Mathieu Dumas, should be dispatched to harangue the people of Montauban, obtain the release of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... attributes which led the early architects to rest the pilasters of the pulpit and portal upon lions' backs. But the eagle of St. John is superb, even grander than the famous classical marble of the same subject.[199] It has the broad expanse of wings, vibrating as though the bird were about to take flight: the long lithe body with its soft pectoral feathers, the striking claws, and the flattened head with cruel gleaming eye, all combine to give a terribilita which is, perhaps, unsurpassed in all ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... sprinkled the holy water, Messire Jean Fournier expected, if the damsel were possessed, to see her struggle, writhe, and endeavour to take flight. In such a case he must needs have made use of more powerful formulae, have sprinkled more holy water, and made more signs of the cross, and by such means have driven out the devils until they were seen ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... that he would come to her like this. She had believed that he would take flight into the night, escaping from her as he would have run from a plague. She put up her two hands, in the trick they had of groping at her white throat, and her lips formed a word which ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... gesticulating as if she was in a fit, and in a voice between a croak and a whisper, she stammered out, "Master wake, senora; senora, master wake: him getting up, and coming." Whoever has seen a flock of pigeons feeding tranquilly in the field, and has marked the fear and confusion with which they take flight at the terrible sound of the gun, may picture to himself the fluttering dismay of the dancers at the unexpected news blurted out by Guiomar. Off they ran in all directions, leaving the musico in the lurch, and in a pitiable state of perplexity. Leonora wrung her beautiful hands; ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... asked the news. They told the tribe what had passed; and, when they heard that their chief was a prisoner, they set out for the valley vying one with other in their haste to deliver him. Now when King Gharib had captured Jamrkan and had seen his braves take flight, he dismounted and called for Jamrkan, who humbled himself before him, saying, "I am under thy protection, O champion of the Age!" Replied Gharib, "O dog of the Arabs, dost thou cut the road for the servants of Almighty Allah, and fearest thou not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods, but is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid the corn and potatoes. When routed by the plough, I have seen the old one take flight with half a dozen young hanging to her teats, and with such reckless speed, that some of the young would lose their hold, and fly off amid the weeds. Taking refuge in a stump with the rest of her family, the anxious mother would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... rosaries, or bundles of Lyons silk, wrapped in oilcloth; in front, loaded with merchandise less valuable, walk two men who are the skirmishers, those who will attract, if necessary, the guns of the Spaniards and will then take flight, throwing away everything. All talk in a low voice, despite the drumming of the rain which ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... new artistic sense. A new music is arising, the music of rhymed poetry, and in the songs of Aucassin and Nicolette, which seem always on the point of passing into true rhyme, but which halt somehow, and can never quite take flight, you see people just growing aware of the elements of a new music in their possession, and anticipating how pleasant such music might become. The piece was probably intended to be recited by a company ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... loneliness by filling his great house with guests and holding a feast that should cause him to be remembered ever afterwards for boundless hospitality. Just at this time came Helge and Halfdan with their sister Ingeborg to visit him. Then indeed did Frithiof's gloom take flight as he sat by Ingeborg's side or with her roamed the woods and fields, living over again the days of their happy comradeship and building hopes for an even happier reunion in the future. In renewing their love, they had secretly become betrothed, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... quit weepin' fer a spell, honey," he announced with a tense authority which sought to recall her to herself. "I'm obleeged ter take flight right speedily now, an' afore I goes thar's things ter be studied out an' sottled ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... bent, Lamenting as my child would! Let my surplice-shroud be spun Of sparkling summer clover; While the great and stately treen Their rich rood-screen hang over! For my bier-cloth blossomed may Outlay on eight green willows! Sea-gulls white to bear my pall Take flight from all the billows. Summer's cloister be my church Of soft leaf-searching whispers, From whose mossed bench the nightingale To all the vale chants vespers! Mellow-toned, the brake amid, My organ hid be cuckoo! Paters, seemly hours and psalm Bird voices calm re-echo! ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... remained till nightfall without uttering a word. The crickets sang in their holes, and the lovers listened to that music as if to employ their senses on one sense only. Certainly they could only in that hour be compared to angels who, with their feet on earth, await the moment to take flight to heaven. They had fulfilled the noble dream of Plato's mystic genius, the dream of all who seek a meaning in humanity; they formed but one soul, they were, indeed, that mysterious Pearl destined to adorn the brow of a star as yet unknown, but ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... Enakanee, enakanee!" shouted the game herald. "It is always best to get the game early; then their spirits can take flight with the coming of ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... said the old man, slowly, and with some difficulty, "I am about to leave this world. My soul will take flight from this frail body when the sun has sunk behind the horizon. I have lived long and have amassed great wealth which will soon be thine. Use it well, as I have taught thee, for thou, my son, art a man of learning, as befits our ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the under surface for that purpose. Its attitude in this situation much resembled that of a woodpecker. One that was kept alive with its wing broken sat across the finger, like another bird. When about to take flight it makes a cracking noise, as if the wings smote together, after the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... narrow escape for the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. The story is told that Jefferson had only five minutes in which to take flight into the woods, before Tarleton's hard riders surrounded his house ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... this despondence, sweet Osvalde! be gay! See open before thee the gates of delight! Where the Hours are now lingering on tiptoe, away! They view thee with smiles, and are loth to take flight. ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... obtains by looking over the drawers of a well-filled cabinet. On the under sides of the trunks clung numbers of smaller or more sluggish Longicorns, while on the branches at the edge of the clearing others could be detected sitting with outstretched antenna ready to take flight at the least alarm. It was a glorious spot, and one which will always live in my memory as exhibiting the insect-life of the tropics in unexampled luxuriance. For the three following days I continued to visit this locality, adding each time many new species to my collection-the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... centuries the American colonies, from Massachusetts to South Carolina, were at intervals subject to visitations of pirates, who were wont to appear suddenly upon the coasts, to pillage a settlement or attack trading vessels and as suddenly to take flight to their strongholds. Captain Kidd was long celebrated in prose and verse, and only within a few years have credulous people ceased to seek his buried treasures. The arch-villain, Blackbeard, was a terror to Virginians and Carolinians ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... citron, and the first fairy came forth. Carlino scarcely glanced at her, and suffered her to take flight. It was the same with the second; but as soon as the third appeared he gave her the cup, from which she drank with a smile, and stood before him ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... arranged fanlike upon small hillocks, and along the narrow walks laid out between the beds walked carefully two tame storks, which from time to time snapped their bills and fluttered their wings as if about to take flight. At the angles of the court the twisted trunks of four huge persaeas exhibited a mass of metallic green foliage. At the end a sort of pylon broke the portico, and its large bay, framing in the blue air, showed at the end of a long avenue ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... water, even at low tide. Among the rocks, I found a great bird, whether a wild-goose, a loon, or an albatross, I scarcely know. It was in such a position that I almost fancied it might be asleep, and therefore drew near softly, lest it should take flight; but it was dead, and stirred not when I touched it. Sometimes a dead fish was cast up. A ledge of rocks, with a beacon upon it, looking like a monument erected to those who have perished by shipwreck. The smoked, extempore fireplace where a party cooked their fish. About midway ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... his not frequent visits to his old home at the Mendips, found Bryda more and more irresistible, and gave her reason to know, as at this time, that the sight of her was indispensable to his happiness. Poor Jack, he was to find out that the very temptation he put in Bryda's way—to take flight to the busy, toiling city, now lying at the distance of some miles below them, wrapt in the gathering blue haze of the May evening—was to widen and not lessen ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... shrill scream seems yet to linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in the erectile feathers of the head and neck. It reminds me of the Argonautic expedition, and would inspire the dullest to take flight over Parnassus. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... discomposure, however, just as he spoke these words, the Veiled Lady arose. There was a mysterious tremor that shook the magic veil. The spectators, it may be, imagined that she was about to take flight into that invisible sphere, and to the society of those purely spiritual beings with whom they reckoned her so near akin. Hollingsworth, a moment ago, had mounted the platform, and now stood gazing at the figure, with a sad intentness that brought the whole ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is up; we are in for it for two mortal hours! I take flight to the library, and devote those hours to you. Don't be conceited, but that picture of yourself which you have placed before me has struck me with all the force of an original. The state of mind which you describe so vividly must be a very common one in our era of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mother moose was thinking when she stopped out there in the plain? Wasn't she turning the situation over in her mind, if you want to speak of it as that, and mentally figuring just where the danger lay, and in which direction she ought to take flight? And besides reason wild animals have instinct. One proof of this is their sixth sense; the sense ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... the key to his father, and while Lucy hastened to release her husband, Mr. Kendal seized the boy, finding him already about again to take flight. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... being sent by Cneius Pompey with a fleet of sixteen sail, a few of which had beaks of brass, to the assistance of Lucius Domitius and the Massilians, passed the straits of Sicily without the knowledge or expectation of Curio, and, putting with his fleet into Messana, and making the nobles and senate take flight with the sudden terror, carried off one of their ships out of dock. Having joined this to his other ships, he made good his voyage to Massilia, and, having sent in a galley privately, acquaints Domitius and the Massilians of his arrival, and earnestly encourages them to hazard ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... style of Paul Veronese, in the capricious compositions of Tintoret, he will find something that will assist his invention, and give points, from which his own imagination shall rise and take flight, when the subject which he treats will, with propriety, admit of ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... interested me, and I have alluded to the case in the Third Edition. The difficulty does not seem to me so great as to you. Think of bustards, which inhabit wide open plains, and which so seldom take flight: a very little increase in size of body would make them incapable of flight. The idea of ostriches acquiring flight is worthy of Westwood; think of the food required in these inhabitants of the desert to work the pectoral muscles! In the rhea the wings seem of considerable ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Jurgis tried not to listen. They frightened him with their savage mockery; and all the while his heart was far away, where his loved ones were calling. Now and then in the midst of it his thoughts would take flight; and then the tears would come into his eyes—and he would be called back by the jeering laughter of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... stalking sedately through a shallow pool—his brilliant black and orange plumage and scarlet legs glistening in the rays of the early sun as he scanned the sandy bottom for fish. We had no desire to shoot such a noble creature; and let him take flight in his slow, laboured manner. And, for our reward, the next moment "Peter," the black boy, brought down two out of three black duck, which came flying right for his gun from ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... street, the scaffold came in sight; the condemned man raised his hands towards heaven, and exclaimed in a cheerful voice, while a smile lit up his face, "Courage, my soul! I see thy place of triumph, whence, released from earthly bonds, thou shah take flight to heaven." ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... flow, oh, make me but immortal there! Where there is freedom unrestrain'd, where the triple vault of heaven's in sight, Where worlds of brightest glory are, oh, make me but immortal there! Where pleasures and enjoyments are, where bliss and raptures ne'er take flight, Where all desires are satisfied, oh, make me but ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... does really savour of comic opera, is not so farcical as it appears on the surface. It is an unwritten law that the police shall not pigliare him till the sessions are nigh. He is on parole, so to speak, to come up when called upon; if he were really to take flight, he would be declared an outlaw, and the only reason the police cannot find him is that they know where he is. How sensible! Why board and lodge him gratis for weeks? He has outraged the community: shall the community reward him with free meals? Even when he is caught he will be treated with the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... eight o'clock in the evening, I pause and say, "Let's see if Downy is at home." A slight tap on the post and we hear Downy jump out of bed, as it were, and his head quickly fills the doorway. We pass hurriedly on and he does not take flight. ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... on the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its downy breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other skies; so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest its foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou art sinking in those golden sands, the heavy morsels clog thy flapping wing—in vain—in vain thou triest ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... be back in a few minutes, papa. Your horse is dead, but there is one of the Indians' standing by his dead master. Let us catch him and shift the saddle." The animal, when they approached it, made no move to take flight, and they saw that his master's foot, as he fell, had become entangled in the lasso, and the well-trained beast had stood without moving. In three minutes the saddles were transferred, and the party again ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... wolves, being very fond of young foals; so they constantly prowl round the herds, never attacking them by day if they are numerous; but come at night, and if they are scattered, they make a rush upon their victims. The stallions, however, charge at them; and they take flight only, however, to return and secure a straggling foal, to whose rescue the mother comes, and herself perishes. When this is found out, a terrible battle ensues; the foals are placed in the centre, the mares ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Guy began to sing— He was a courtly knight: "Feign would I have a birdie's wing, And to my love take flight!" ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... were but wanting, for some such adventure, to snatch their moment; whether either had at any instant seen it as workable, save in the form of a toy to dangle before the other, that they should take flight, without wife or husband, for one more look, "before they died," at the Madrid pictures as well as for a drop of further weak delay in respect to three or four possible prizes, privately offered, rarities of the first water, responsibly reported on and profusely photographed, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... felt that feeling, Sister Teresa? As if one were detached from everything, and ready to take flight." ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... think that I am any longer the soft cheese you squeezed the water away from when I sat watching you dance. I have laid on many shelves to dry since that time. Neither am I like those long-haired dogs who drop their ears at the least provocation and take flight from people, as in former days. I can stand fire now. Your letter was very playful, but it jested where it should not have jested at all, for you understood me very well, and you could see that I did not ask in sport, ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... no time to lose; the swift creature would take flight in an instant; and, almost as he caught sight of it, the rifle went up to his shoulder. For a moment the foresight wavered across the indistinct form, and then his numbed hands grew steady, and, trusting that nothing would check the frost-clogged action, he ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... once were we take flight and fly, Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, Not lost but disunited. Life lives on. It is the lives, the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... determine. Filipinos are very quick to follow a lead; and if, owing perhaps to a concurrence of events which may be perfectly foreign to the occasion, a number of prominent people leave early, the rest soon take flight. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... is to hear: at length it seems hardly a human voice; it sounds like a series of magic formulas, unwinding themselves from an inexhaustible roller, and escaping to take flight through the air. By its very weirdness, and by the persistency of its incantation, it ends by producing in my half-awakened brain an almost ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... threshold of Kaga we turned abruptly to the left, and attacked the pass leading over into Etchiu. As we wound our way up the narrow valley, day left the hollows to stand on rosy tiptoe on the sides of the hills, the better to take flight into the clouds. There it lingered a little, folding the forests about with its roseate warmth. Even the stern old pines flushed to the tips of their shaggy branches, while here and there a bit of open turned a glowing cheek full to the good-night kiss of the sun. And over beyond it all rose ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... Ferris, who was evidently quite wide awake. "Do you remember how well Buckle says that the feminine intellect is the higher, and that the great geniuses of the world have possessed it? The gift of intuition reaches directly towards the truth, and it is only reasoning by deduction that can take flight into the upper air of life and certainty. You remember what he says ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... challenge my weapon close at hand. Their cooing seems to proceed from a great distance, but, conscious of the enemy's ventriloquial power, his muffled music does not deceive me. My companion has now levelled his gun, and, taking steady aim, presently fires. At the sound of fire-arms my pigeons take flight, and as they rise I fire into their midst. My companion now discharges his second barrel into a covey of quails, which had been feeding unobserved within a few paces of him. I take a shot at one of these birds as it flutters incautiously over my head, and it falls with a heavy ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... stubbornly close in a little depression between two clods, till the horses' hoofs were all but upon them, then sprang out from their hiding-place at the last second. Others ran forward but a few yards at a time, refusing to take flight, scenting a greater danger before them than behind. Still others, forced up at the last moment, doubled with lightning alacrity in their tracks, turning back to scuttle between the teams, taking ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... doubt that speaks in the silence of earth and sea, The sense, more fearful at noon than in midmost night, Of wrath scarce hushed and of imminent ill to be, Where are they? Heaven is as earth, and as heaven to me Earth: for the shadows that sundered them here take flight; And nought is all, as am I, but ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of affairs, there were certainly more Indians than one in ambush; and that, in all probability, there were at that moment two or three dozen arrows resting on their respective bows, and pointed towards his and his comrade's hearts, ready to take flight the instant they should come within sure and deadly range, were ideas which did not follow each other in rapid succession through his brain, but darted upon the young hunter's quick perceptions instantaneously, and caused his heart to beat on his ribs like a sledge-hammer, and the blood to ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Tasso's heroines. The soldiers burst into cries of enthusiasm, as they saw their warlike Queen; before her were bowed the flags she had embroidered with her own hands, and the old, torn, and battle-stained standards of Frederick the Great. After the battle she was obliged to take flight, at full gallop, to avoid being captured ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... an answering smile, but the curve broke into a quiver of distress, and she came close to him, with a gesture that seemed to take flight from herself. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... boys noticed the abundance of the pretty little whidah bird, a lovely little creature, about the size of a lark, but with a tail of such enormous length that in a breeze the power of the wind upon the tail drives the bird to take flight into shelter, so that it shall not be blown away. Pigeons in abundance flew over their heads, and parrots of such gaudy colours that Dick felt obliged to shoot three or four as specimens, to skin and ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... the turrets and the cypresses of San Isidro cemetery; a round cupola stood out clearly in the atmosphere; at its top rose an angel with wings outspread, as if about to take flight against the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... said Chauvelin, with a steady voice, "I have no thought that you will take flight just yet.... Methinks you desire conversation with me, or you had not paid me so ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... my heart. All that I behold seems new and different; over all a breath of some glad, brooding mystery, and already I catch the swift rustle of steps, and I stand intent and alert as a bird with wings folded ready to take flight anew, and my heart burns and shudders in joyous dread before the approaching, the ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... seems their very essence. If they approach a blossom and find it faded, they mark their spite by hasty rending of the petals. Their only voice is a weak cry, "screp, screp," frequent and repeated, which they utter in the woods from dawn, until at the first rays of the sun they all take flight ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... hours take flight! What's read at morn is dead at night; Scant space have we for art's delays, Whose breathless thought so briefly stays, We may not work—ah! would ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... night of light to thee be chary? What though stars of hope like flowers take flight? Seest thou all things here, where all see vary ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Cavour that before Garibaldi could reach Naples a popular movement in the city itself would force the King to take flight, so that Garibaldi on his arrival would find the machinery of government, as well as the command of the fleet and the army, already in the hands of Victor Emmanuel's representatives. If war with Austria ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... district, the oldest of the foxes bit off his right earlap. As soon as this was done, all the young foxes began to yowl from blood-thirst, and threw themselves on Smirre. For him there was no alternative except to take flight; and with all the young foxes in hot pursuit, he rushed ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... this change shall have come over them, they will feel restless and take flight, and fall like locusts upon the Aryavartta (land of India). Starving in their own country, they will find enough to eat here, and to carry away also. They will be mischievous as the saw with which ornament-makers ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... affectionate mother towards them. If the choice is unhappy; if there be a want of sound religious and moral principle, a neglect, or carelessness and impatience in the discharge of domestic duties; if a discontented, suspicious, cold, and unkind spirit accompany the new bride, domestic comfort must take flight, and all the proverbial evils of such a state must be realized. The marriage of Henry of Monmouth's father with Joan of Navarre does not enable us to view the bright side of this alternative. Of the new Queen we hear little for many years;[125] but, at ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... joyful spirit of this dear friend at last take flight for the Heavenly Country, when, as he said himself in his sickness, 'Soul separated from body, the Spirit returning to God that gave it, and the body to the earth from whence ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... oneself off; start, issue, march out, debouch; go forth, sally forth; sally, set forward; be gone; hail from. leave a place, quit, vacate, evacuate, abandon; go off the stage, make one's exit; retire, withdraw, remove; vamoose*, vamose* [obs3][U.S.]; go one's way, go along, go from home; take flight, take wing; spring, fly, flit, wing one's flight; fly away, whip away; embark; go on board, go aboard; set sail' put to sea, go to sea; sail, take ship; hoist blue Peter; get under way, weigh anchor; strike tents, decamp; walk one's chalks, cut one's stick; take leave; say ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... were eager to attack them, to see if they could capture them. Now they did not think it good yet to sail against them directly for this reason,—for fear namely that the Hellenes, when they saw them sailing against them, should set forth to take flight and darkness should come upon them in their flight; and so they were likely (thought the Persians) 6 to get away; whereas it was right, according to their calculation, that not even the fire-bearer 7 should ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... him away from my table into the broad sunlight of the window. After a few seconds of this bath of heat and light, the insect half-opens his wing-cases, using them as levers, and turns over, ready to take flight if my hand did not instantly snap him up. He is a passionate lover of the light, a devotee of the sun, intoxicating himself in its rays upon the bark of his blackthorn-trees on the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... your eagle in attitude commanding, the same as Nelson stood in in the day of battle on the Victory's quarter-deck. Your pie will seem crafty and just ready to take flight, as though fearful of being surprised in some mischievous plunder. Your sparrow will retain its wonted pertness by means of placing his tail a little elevated and giving a moderate arch to the neck. Your ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... cast down or occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs. Pendennis is disquieting herself about losing her son, and that anxious hold she has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother's nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world beyond—while the Major's great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as he thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he might be sunning himself in the glances ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to shepherd those spring lambs!" he exclaimed, with misgiving in his heart. He had followed her across the sea and now she was about to take flight again! ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... their thoughts conceive 'Tis as if some masterpiece they weave. One thread, and a thousand strands take flight, Swift to and fro the shuttles going, All unseen the threads a-flowing, One stroke, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... watchful hen-mother was apparently seeing nothing, and yet all the time was tenderly brooding over the little chick whom she hoped was soon about to take flight from the parent nest, saw at a glance that her chick looked nothing at all beside that superior chicken of Mrs. Meadowsweet's. For Matty's little nose was sadly burnt, and one lock of her thin limp ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... What boots the archer's skill, if, when the foe draw near, His bowstring snap and leave him helpless in the fight? And when afflictions press and multiply on man, Ah, whither then shall he from destiny take flight? How straitly did I guard 'gainst severance of our loves! But, when as Fate descends, it ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... see that this boy was their chiefest foe. If they could but slay him, the rest might perchance take flight. Already their own ranks were terribly thinned, and they saw that mischief was meant by the deadly fury with which their assailants came on at them. They were but half armed, and the terror and bewilderment of the moment put them at ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... clearly recognized that, for the present, it was useless to offer any resistance; he determined, therefore, to transform all his valor into patience and keep his lips closed as if they were doors through which his hopes might take flight. He, the freest of men, had to pass the radiant spring days, the fragrant summer nights, in a damp hole which rendered one's own breath offensive; he, to whom animals spoke, for whom flowers had eyes, the earth at times a semblance of the glow of love, who walked, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... indeed, necessary to take flight, for Perseus had not done the deed so quietly but that the clash of his sword and the hissing of the snakes and the thump of Medusa's head as it tumbled upon the sea-beaten sand awoke the other two ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... one, especially in such a place—and one to whose eye the female form had so long been a stranger. Su-wa-nee's I had seen only at a distance; and hers, to my sight, was no longer beautiful. I hesitated to show myself—lest the sight of me should alarm this lovely apparition, and cause her to take flight. The thought was not unnatural—since the tricoloured pigments of black, red, and white were still upon my skin; and I must have presented the picture of a chimney-sweep with a dining-plate glued upon his breast. In such a guise I knew that I must ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... myself from laughing. Turning round, therefore, I saw everybody with their hands upon their mouths, and their shoulders in motion. At last a third belch, still louder than the two others, threw all present into confusion, and forced me to take flight, followed by all my suite, amid shouts of laughter, all the louder because they had previously been kept in. But all barriers of restraint were now thrown down; Spanish gravity was entirely disconcerted; all was deranged; no reverences; each ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... gave place to conventionality, until men actually came to prefer the absurdities of Ciceronianism, and a cold, colorless adherence to hard-and-fast rules of composition, to a work throbbing with the pulsation of virile life. Humanism was beginning to take flight from Italy, to find a home and a welcome beyond ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... which she thought she saw. They nodded, and raised the empty feather dress between them. 'What are they going to do with it?' said I to myself; and she probably asked herself the same question. The answer came too soon, for I saw them take flight up into the air with her charmed feather dress. 'Dive thou there!' they cried. 'Never more shalt thou fly in the form of a magic swan—never more shalt thou behold the land of Egypt. Dwell thou in the wild morass!' And they tore her magic disguise into a hundred ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... not fly, though every instant made the danger more deadly. 'If I forsake you, if I take flight,' he said, 'I shall bring eternal shame ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... the salon...." said the death-stricken man. La Cibot made a sign to the three ravens to take flight. Then she caught up Pons as if he had been a feather, and put him in bed again, in spite of his cries. When she saw that he was quite helpless and exhausted, she went to shut the door on the staircase. The three ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... head a wise shake, and only observed, "I dare say, it will be a hanging business among us. In what direction do you think, Mansie, we should all take flight?" ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... appears upon the field. His coming turns the tide of battle. The victorious Greeks are driven back before his shining spear, many of them are slain, and the whole host is driven to its ships and almost forced to take flight by sea from the victorious onset of Hector and his triumphant followers. While the Greeks cower in their ships the Trojans spend the night in bivouac upon the field. Homer gives us a picturesque description of this night-watch, which Tennyson has thus ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... hit the cougar, and turning, he now rushed to the bank, and, bellowing with rage, plunged into the river. My position now became critical in the extreme. Once the rock was gained, I would certainly be mangled by the fierce creature. I could not take flight by water, as he could ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... since you won't, I will tell the company the reason of so nice an old gentleman wearing Baltimore flour in his hair instead of perfumed Mareschale powder, and none of the freshest either, let me tell you; why, I have seen three weavels take flight from your august pate since we sat down ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Smerinthinae group; and there are others, feeders and non-feeders, forming a list too long to irncorporate, for I have not mentioned the Catocalae family, the fore-wings of which resemble those of several members of the Sphinginae, in colour, and when they take flight, the back ones flash out colours that run the gamut from palest to deepest reds, yellows, and browns, crossed by wide circling bands of black; with these, occasionally the black so predominates that it appears as ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... strength they abandon their birth-place, destroy all kinds of vegetation that comes in their way, and direct their course to the cultivated fields, which they desolate until the period when their wings appear. They then take flight in order ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... a dropsical stomach which threw her trunk far out behind her, opened wide her astonished eyes, ready to take flight. The husband, a shoemaker socialist, a little hairy man, the perfect image of a monkey, murmured, quite unconcerned: "Well, what next? ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... find Bombay come in with all my rear property and a great quantity of Musa's, but with out the old man. By a letter from Sheikh Said I then found that, since my leaving Kaze, the Arabs had, along with Mkisiwa, invested the position of Manua Sera at Kigue, and forced him to take flight again. Afterwards the Arabs, returning to Kaze, found Musa preparing to leave. Angry at this attempt to desert them, they persuaded him to give up his journey north for the present; so that at the time Bombay left, Musa was ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... obstruction. The dogs of Jezebel were howling under her very windows, when there came a man blundering on to the scene and spoiled everything,—a man who is a man, who is more than a prince, a man from top to toe, in short, who carried off the woman from Rome. I hoped they would take flight to some foreign land, whence we might have obtained an official announcement of her death. Of course it might not have been true, but the fugitives would have changed their names, in all probability, and an official certificate ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... feeding-place, a clump of young bamboos. The tame elephant with its burden had followed steadily, and now Jack shouted no more. He feared lest his cries should disturb the herd so much that the wild creatures should take flight, and run a great distance. If they did so, the pad-elephant would be sure to follow them, and thus very possibly carry Jack completely out of reach of the human beings, whoever they were, that he had heard at work among the trees high up on ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... cloak of attacking Calvinism, he aimed a deadly shot at the Thomists, and particularly at a Dominican friar, whom he considered as bad as Calvin. Raynaud exults that he had driven one of his adversaries to take flight into Scotland, ad pultes Scoticas transgressus—to a Scotch pottage; an expression which Saint Jerome used in speaking of Pelagius. He always rendered an adversary odious by coupling him with some odious name. On one of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... works these wondrous changes, though I am sure I could not say what. It may be oxygen in double doses, or it may be ozone, or even laughing gas; but there it is, and whosoever reads these lines and doubts what I say, has only to take flight for the beautiful province of Mendoza, and he shall remain ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... seem to know that their riders have the means of defending them, so that they very seldom run away," answered Mrs Vallery, "occasionally they take flight. Nothing can be more uncomfortable than having to sit on the back of an elephant under such circumstances. The creature sticks out its trunk and screams as it rushes onward, trampling down everything in its way. Should it pass under trees, it happens occasionally that a branch sweeps ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... sprang two little wings resembling in some degree those on the famous Greek head of Hypnos, lord of Sleep. Between the folds of the wrappings on the back sprang two other wings, enormous wings bent like those of a bird about to take flight. Indeed the whole attitude of the figure suggested that it was springing from earth to air. It was executed in black basalt or some stone of the sort, and very highly finished. For instance, on the bare feet and the arm which held the torch could be felt every muscle and ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... twenty feet from them, but Dick's shot-gun was resting against a tree fifteen feet from its owner, while Ned's rifle lay on the ground five feet from his hand. Both kept as quiet as graven images, for they knew that at the motion of a hand the big bird would take flight. If Dick's gun had been within five feet he would have jumped for it, trusting to be ready with it to cut down the turkey before it could get out of sight among the trees. But a run of fifteen feet made his chances too small and he waited to see what ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... at this time by a sore throat, and I thought it would be well to get it cured if I could before I again started on my travels. I therefore inquired for a Frank doctor, and was informed that the only one then at Cairo was a young Bolognese refugee, who was so poor that he had not been able to take flight, as the other medical men had done. At such a time as this it was out of the question to send for an European physician; a person thus summoned would be sure to suppose that the patient was ill of the plague, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the Colony. It was there, said he, that a numerous fleet, commanded by one of the bravest Admirals of the English navy, failed before a handful of French, who covered themselves with glory and saved Teneriffe; the Admiral was obliged to take flight, after having lost an arm in the contest, which ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... came to a fair castle, and as he passed by he was ware of a falcon that came flying over his head toward a high elm. As the bird flew into the tree to take her perch, the long lines about her feet caught on a bough, and when she would take flight again she hung fast by the legs. Sir Launcelot saw how the fair falcon hung there, and he was sorry ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... of our firm. How he came to be so I must explain. Up to this time, as the reader will have noticed, I was the only one of the party known at the bank, and, of course, was the only one who seemed to be taking any risk. Even in the event of discovery it would apparently be necessary for me only to take flight. George and Mac, not being known in connection with the fraud, could remain in London until such time as they chose to go home. To make matters absolutely safe for me as well ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Berta with a certain audacious familiarity as if they recognized in her an old friend. A few grains of wheat and a few crumbs of bread scattered on the window-sill gradually attracted the more timid, who grew at last to be familiar. The slightest movement, indeed, caused them to take flight precipitately; but they soon recovered their lost confidence and they returned again to hop gayly on the iron railing of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... the shore and of the spirit of the tender, glancing April days, running over your lawn but a few yards from you! Their dovelike heads, their long, slender legs, that curious, mechanical jerking up-and-down movement of their bodies, their shrill, disconsolate cries as they take flight, their beautiful and powerful wings and tail, and their mastery of the air—all arrest your attention or challenge your admiration. They bring the distant and the furtive to your very door. All climes and lands wait upon their wings. They fly around ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... him in consternation. At that moment I could have made my escape, I doubt not, had I chosen to dash for the door, and indeed, I was on the point of doing so when I was stayed by some feeling that it would be hardly becoming to take flight then. Besides, the coin for which I had fought was still in ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... would be free, and take flight on his own wings; and that day of liberation would come when he got to be deputy. He waited for his coming of age much as an heir-apparent waits for ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bamboos: he says, "the merchants and travellers passing through these countries at night collect a quantity of these canes and make a large fire of them, for when they are burning they make such a noise and crackle so much, that the lions, bears, and other wild beasts take flight to a distance, and would not approach these fires on any account; thus both men, horses, and camels are safe. In another way, too, protection is afforded by throwing a number of these canes on a wood fire, and when they become heated and split, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... of the lanista had failed him. Already Drusus's reinforcements in the peristylium had become so numerous and so well armed that the young chieftain was pushing back the gladiators and rapidly assuming the offensive. Gabinius was the first to take flight. He plunged into one of the rooms off the atrium, and through a side door gained the open. The demoralized and beaten gladiators followed him, like a flock of sheep. Only Dumnorix and two or three of his best men stood at the exit long enough to cover, in some measure, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... bear thou sad tidings of our plight; * From doom th' All-wise decreed shall none of men take flight: Low art thou laid, O brother! strewn upon the stones, * With face that mirrors moon when shining brightest bright! Good sooth, it is a day accurst, thy slaughter-day * Shivering thy spear that won the day in many a fight! Now thou be slain no rider shall delight ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... piercing eye, and fight resolutely till death. The gunners say there is something in its wailing, piteous cry, when dying, almost human in its agony. The loon is, in the strictest sense, an aquatic fowl. It can barely walk upon the land, and one species at least cannot take flight from the shore. But in the water its feet are more than feet, and its wings more than wings. It plunges into this denser air and flies with incredible speed. Its head and beak form a sharp point to its ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... most enticing field of natural history is that in which common flowers and common insects work out their unending co-partnery. A blossom by its scent, its beauty of tint, allures a moth or bee and thus, in effect, is able to take flight and find a mate across a county so as to perpetuate its race a hundred miles from home. Our volume closes with a sketch of the singular ties which thus bind together the fortunes of blossom and insect, so that at last the very form of a flower ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... take flight?" said Isabelle to herself, as she anxiously watched Chiquita's movements, not knowing what to expect. Exactly opposite to the window, on the other side of the moat, was an immense tree, very high and old, whose great ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... by him who has betrayed me; he would have murdered also my three children, if a noise in the next room had not caused him to take flight. He had come from Versailles for the express purpose of accomplishing this quadruple crime, and, by this means, obliterate every trace of his past villany. His name is Jules Ferry. You who ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... telling the horse to rear, open its mouth, &c. Their object, of course, is to obtain money. The horse will sometimes seize persons, and hold them fast till they pay for being set free; but he is generally very peaceable,—for in case of resistance being offered, his companions frequently take flight, and leave the poor horse to fight it out. I could never learn the origin of this strange custom. I remember, when very young, having a perfect horror of meeting this ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... only a journey to a better life. In the unknown world to which my soul will take flight, I shall rejoin those whom I love and who have gone before: the Marquis, whose benevolence sheltered me from misery and want; his wife, who lavished all a mother's tenderness upon me; my mother, herself, who died soon after giving ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... dream of you to wake: would that I might Dream of you and not wake but slumber on; Nor find with dreams the dear companion gone, As Summer ended Summer birds take flight. In happy dreams I hold you full in sight, I blush again who waking look so wan; Brighter than sunniest day that ever shone, In happy dreams your smile makes day of night. Thus only in a dream we are at one, Thus only in a dream we give and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... reduction of a part, until at last it has become rudimentary—as in the case of the eyes of animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birds inhabiting oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced by beasts of prey to take flight, and have ultimately lost the power of flying. Again, an organ, useful under certain conditions, might become injurious under others, as with the wings of beetles living on small and exposed islands; and in this case natural ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... bail before their trial. The Athens city jail ("The House," as it is familiarly called—"Oikema") is a very simple affair, one open building, carelessly guarded and free to visitors all through the daylight. The inmates have to be kept in heavy fetters, otherwise they would be sure to take flight; and indeed escapes from custody ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... which he took austere repose. One narrow window near the saint's abode commands a proud but melancholy landscape of distant hills and seaboard. To this, the great absorbing charm of San Marino, our eyes instinctively, recurrently, take flight. It is a landscape which by variety and beauty thralls attention, but which by its interminable sameness might grow almost overpowering. There is no relief. The gladness shed upon far humbler Northern ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Selina was that worse things were to come (looking into her fire, as the night went on, she had a rare prevision of the catastrophe that hung over the house), and she considered, or tried to consider, what it would be best for her, in anticipation, to do. The first thing was to take flight. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... toward her poor little home. She had experienced one of those convulsions of being which we know at the hour of a great misfortune, when we see no possible refuge and all our hopes take flight. If then a ray of light illumine some little corner, we fly toward it without ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... quite warm and white, Were waiting for the brooding wing, That from each shell there might take flight A ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... his friends had met in a little room near the old castle; their countenances were sad and irresolute—Du Couedic announced that he had received a note recommending them to take flight. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... very good sport. The clams are shy, and endeavour to take flight when they hear the strokes of the hoe; so that it comes to a trial of speed between the pursuer and the pursued; ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... I were to predict on my own experience, I should say she would take flight as fast as she could, to avoid falling under the evil influence herself. The man would never hear of her again, and she would ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... as a bird ready to take flight. This conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it lingers as a metaphor in poetry. The Malays carry out the conception of the bird-soul in a number of odd ways. If the soul is a bird on the wing, it may be attracted by ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... narrow passage to reinforce the others at the town; and brought his boat so near the pass, that he completely stopt their passage that way. The whole of our men were now landed, and soon constrained the enemy to take flight with considerable loss; after which they set the town on fire, but did not think it prudent to pursue the runaways, as they were not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... be united, if not, woe to them, for love and friendship will die an untimely death.—Godila tries to offer his carnations to Helga, but she dextrously avoids him, and succeeds in having a short interview with Erhard, with whom she is to take flight on a ship, whose arrival is just announced. Erhard goes off to prepare everything, and a few minutes afterwards Helga comes out of the house in a travelling dress. But Godila, who has promised Wandrup to watch over his daughter, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... almost never marry. She has no more idea of it than have I. We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to encounter the real thing. But as soon as the right man comes along Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight—" ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... succeed each other in the course round the ball-room! Commencing at first with a kind of timid hesitation, the lady sways about like a bird about to take flight; gliding for some time on one foot only, like a skater, she skims the ice of the polished floor; then, running forward like a sportive child, she suddenly takes wing. Raising her veiling eyelids, with head erect, with swelling bosom and elastic ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... applied to Balzac by his friends) "would like to know if you are at Poissy, as it is possible he may come and request you to hide him. There is a warrant out against him on Werdet's account, and his counsellors recommend him to take flight, seeing that the conflict between him and the officers of the Commercial Tribunal is begun. If you are still at Poissy, a room, concealment, bread and water, together with salad, and a pound of mutton, a bottle of ink, and a bed, such are ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... they were, evidently, unaccustomed to hearing sounds of such forcefulness issue from a living creature no larger than themselves, they were not faint-hearted, and the air ship did not, as we half expected it would, take flight. The momentary commotion was quickly quieted, and our visitors continued their inspection. All of us immediately recognized the personage whom Jack had singled out as the subject of his startling exclamation. It was clear ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... indeed necessary to take flight; for Perseus had not done the deed so quietly but that the clash of his sword, and the hissing of the snakes, and the thump of Medusa's head as it tumbled upon the sea- beaten sand, awoke the other two monsters. There they sat, for an instant, sleepily rubbing their eyes ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the white man, has many superstitions, some ugly, and some beautiful, and of the latter class, I quote one: he believes that the spirits of still-born children or very young infants take flight, when they die, and enter the bodies of birds. A delightful thought—especially for the mother. For as Kingsley says of St. Francis, "perfectly sure that he himself was a spiritual being, he thought it at least ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... good evidence for absence of insects in small islands? I found thirteen species in Keeling Atoll. Flies are good fertilizers, and I have seen a microscopic Thrips and a Cecidomya take flight from a flower in the direction of another with pollen adhering to them. In Arctic countries a bee seems to go as far N. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin |
