"Transient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Monsieur Manuel had but a transient effect. It brought no consolation with it. What I had heard, seemed to clog the usual healthy beating of my heart; my respiration laboured, and I fell into a bitter reverie. The profoundest pity, the most impassioned admiration, and the most ardent ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... in his early writings and born perhaps of his early struggles; for he puts this delicious pastoral, which tinkles through the page like Milton's "L'Allegro," into the mouth of a Roman capitalist, who, bitten by transient passion for a country life, calls in all his money that he may buy a farm, pines in country retirement for the Stock Exchange, sells his estate in quick disgust, and returns to ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... enough of women, and had no pose of "understanding" them. His experience was of the slightest; the love and veneration felt for his own mother had set the entire sex upon the heights. His affairs with women, if so they may be called, had been transient—all but those of early youth, which having never known the devastating test of fulfilment, still remained ideal and superb. There was unconscious humour in his attitude—from a distance; for he regarded women with wonder and respect, as puzzles that sweetened but complicated ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... now and then heard long rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for a moment, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... true-hearted old man. He would rather that he and his fellow-victims were saved, if his own safety and ultimate gain could be secured otherwise than through their betrayal and death. There is no hardness or cruelty in him, save when its transient displays toward Romola are necessary for furthering some present end: he never indulges in the luxury of unnecessary and unprofitable sins. The sharp, steadfast, unwavering consistency of Tito is even more ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... by my side once more, 'Tis long since thus we' met; And though our dream of love is o'er, Its sweetness lingers yet. Its transient day has long been past, Its flame has ceased to burn,— But Memory holds its spirit fast, Safe ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... who sent Mohammed unto man, * A just successor for Imm[FN112] assigned. His ruth and justice all mankind embrace, * To daunt the bad and stablish well-designed. Verily now I look to present good, * For man hath ever-transient ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... obtrusive in Mr. Clark's peculiarities either of feature, dress, or deportment, by which a graded estimate of his really quaint character might aptly be given; but rather, perhaps, it was the curious combination of all these things that had gained for Mr. Clark the transient celebrity of being a very ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the most beautiful thing in life is novelty. In it is the chief charm of youth and travel and honeymoons. I will not say it is the most valuable thing there is, and it is likely to be about the most transient. But while it lasts it is precious, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... giant ferns and purple heather. Great good was wrought in my soul by these beauties of nature so abundantly scattered abroad. They lifted it to Him Who had been pleased to lavish such masterpieces upon this transient earth. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... you specimens enough from the English poets. I have made some transient mention of their philosophers, but as for good historians among them, I don't know of any; and, indeed, a Frenchman was forced to write their history. Possibly the English genius, which is either languid or impetuous, has not yet acquired that ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... say that he knew of no job, or else to refer his accoster to the head canvas man, who hired transient help in putting up the main top and in pulling or driving stakes. But as Joe observed the man curiously watching him, he had another idea. Before he could act on ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... is still supreme. Yet in some ways it is a very unsatisfying world. In its deeper aspects woe predominates over joy. All phases of suffering and anguish find their language here; but of rapture there are only transient glimpses, of great and abiding happiness there is almost none, and there is scarcely a suggestion of "the peace that passeth understanding." We sometimes feel the sharpest pressure of the problems to which ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the Girl is not so much that transient, exquisite thing as she is the Woman-in-love; thus, even for Rosalind, there ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... a visit under ordinary circumstances, you leave a single card. If there be residing in the family, a married daughter, an unmarried sister, a transient guest, or any person in a distinct situation from the mistress of the house, you leave two cards, one for each party. If you are acquainted with only one member of a family, as the husband, or the wife, and you wish to indicate that your ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... me pass away when my work is done, Like a cloudless day whose setting sun Leaves a smile on the evening sky; Let this transient clay when deprived of breath, With the earth yet stay, it alone knows death, Myself must ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the only book which God has ever sent, and the only one he ever will send into the world. All other books are frail and transient as time, since they are only the registers of time; but the Bible is as durable as eternity, for its pages contain the records of eternity. All other books are weak and imperfect, like their author, man; but the Bible ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... conceived as absolute and unchangeable, and then the abstract idea of pleasure will be equally unchangeable with that of knowledge. But when we come to view either as phenomena of consciousness, the same defects are for the most part incident to both of them. Our hold upon them is equally transient and uncertain; the mind cannot be always in a state of intellectual tension, any more than capable of feeling pleasure always. The knowledge which is at one time clear and distinct, at another seems to fade away, just as the pleasure of health after sickness, or of eating after hunger, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... women. He knew very little of them, never having had any but very transient connections as a medical student, broken off as soon as the month's allowance was spent, and renewed or replaced by another the following month. And yet there must be some very kind, gentle, and comforting creatures ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... So near was the gorgeous cavalcade—the grand falconer, whippers-in, and the bearers of hooded birds mingling with the courtiers immediately behind the king—the escaped prisoner and the jestress could hear the panting of horses. Fleeting, transient, it passed; fainter sounded the din of hounds and horn; now it almost died away in the distance. The last couple had scarcely vanished before the fool and his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... facilities for public entertainment reflected perhaps as correctly as anything else the general chaos consequent upon its swift expansion into a city. Such hotels as had been capable of caring for the transient trade of pre-petroleum days were full and carried waiting lists like exclusive clubs; rooming houses and private dwellings were crowded. A new and modern fireproof hotel was stretching skeleton fingers of steel skyward, but meanwhile the task of sheltering, and especially ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... presence; and their well-trained, gallant manners were such as to make them interesting visitors now as at all times. For it was a period when romance had not so greatly faded out of military life as it has done in these days of short service, heterogeneous mixing, and transient campaigns; when the esprit de corps was strong, and long experience stamped noteworthy professional characteristics even on rank and file; while the miller's visitors had the additional advantage ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... after my first crude attempt, that after it has lain for many years 'out of print,' I have ventured to launch it once more—imperfections and all—though it is guilty of the error of pointing rather to a transient phase of difficulty than to a general principle. The wheels of this world go so quickly round, that I have lived to see that it would have been wiser in the clergyman to have directed rather than obstructed the ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... novelty of her situation, her ignorance of the world, and her embarrassment under this overpowering condescension, the good-tempered and fussy daughter of Lord de Mowbray proceeded to re-assure Sybil, and to enforce on her that this perhaps unprecedented descent from superiority was not a mere transient courtliness of the moment, and that she really might rely on her patronage and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... confinement remained with her in the hut. All joy was taken from her life. If her anguish with time became less intolerable it was replaced by a settled melancholy. You would not have thought that among these people, whose emotions, though so violent, are very transient, a woman could be found capable of so enduring a passion. She never lost the profound conviction that sooner or later Red would come back. She watched for him, and every time someone crossed this slender little bridge of coconut trees she looked. It might ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. And when this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... himself be taught His rashness, who hath thus dishonor'd foul The life itself, and bulwark of his cause. To him, with streaming eyes, Thetis replied. 510 Born as thou wast to sorrow, ah, my son! Why have I rear'd thee! Would that without tears, Or cause for tears (transient as is thy life, A little span) thy days might pass at Troy! But short and sorrowful the fates ordain 515 Thy life, peculiar trouble must be thine, Whom, therefore, oh that I had never borne! But seeking the Olympian hill snow-crown'd, I will myself plead ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... desert of Mesopotamia; and the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils, returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a Saracen ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... maintain the arrest. Some more enlightened magistrates at Penzance relieved him of suspicion and left him at liberty to pursue his journey,—"which I did with so much eagerness," he adds, "that I gave the two coal lights on the Lizard only a very transient look." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Grandissimes and De Grapions, through certain efforts of Honore's father (since dead) were making some feeble pretences of mutual good feeling, and one of those Kentuckian dealers in corn and tobacco whose flatboat fleets were always drifting down the Mississippi, becoming one day M. De Grapion's transient guest, accidentally mentioned a wish of Agricola Fusilier. Agricola, it appeared, had commissioned him to buy the most beautiful lady's maid that in his extended journeyings he might be able to find; he wanted to make her a gift to his niece, Honore's sister. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the tangled wilderness of Earth, another gate, wide opening to welcome him to the Immortal Land. She was silent for a little time, and then she murmured, lingering gently on the words, 'No, it must not be. We are, indeed, inalienably one, in a nearer and dearer sense than can be expressed by any transient symbol. Let us not seek to quit the spiritual sphere in which we have long dwelt and communed together, for one liable to discord and misinterpretation. I have an irresistible impression that my life here will be very brief. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... business called them to Columbus, invariably maintained parlor chambers at the hotel. One of them, Senator Brander, was looked upon by the proprietor as more or less of a permanent guest, because he was not only a resident of the city, but an otherwise homeless bachelor. Other and more transient guests included Congressmen, State legislators and lobbyists, merchants, professional men, and, after them, the whole raft of indescribables who, coming and going, make up the glow and ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... question of Reform."[274] And, at last, the prevalence of this feeling Lord John Russell could not conceal even from himself, but confessed to Lord Palmerston, then Prime-minister, who had always silently discouraged the movement, that "the apathy of the country was undeniable; nor was it a transient humor. It seemed rather a confirmed habit of mind. Four Reform Bills had been introduced of late years by four different governments, and for not one of them had there been the least enthusiasm. The conclusion to which he had come was, that the advisers of the crown of all parties having offered ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the note suggested by her lover. The pungent flavor of coquettish spice is far indeed from spurring affection so much as this gentle sympathy of tenderness. The smartness of a coquette too clearly marks opposition; however transient it is displeasing; but this intimate comprehension shows a perfect fusion of souls. The hapless Emilio was touched by the unspoken divination which led the Duchess to pity a fault ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... her quiver'd Loves, Schools her bright Nymphs, and practises her doves; Calls round her laughing eyes in playful turns, The glance that lightens, and the smile that burns; 100 Her dimpling cheeks with transient blushes dies, Heaves her white bosom with seductive sighs; Or moulds with rosy lips the magic words, That bind ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... me to decide. It is sufficient to say that such an effect appears to be the first general law of the tropical winds. Whatever may be the degree of the sun's influence upon the atmosphere in his transient diurnal course, it cannot be doubted but that, in regard to his station in the path of the ecliptic, his power is considerable. Towards that region of the air which is rarefied by the more immediate presence of the heat, the colder and denser parts will naturally flow. Consequently ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... wife? He tried to speak of her to Agnes, but again she was reluctant. And perhaps it was this aversion to acknowledge the dead, whose images alone have immortality, that made her own image somewhat transient, so that when he left her no mystic influence remained, and only by an effort could he realize that God ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... but transient. My aunt, who was almost as resolute a personage as your uncle, sir, (turning to the old story-teller,) became instantly calm and collected. She went on adjusting her dress. She even hummed a favorite air, and did not make a ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... best with the transient though close view with which I had perused the stranger's features," replied Bridgenorth; "for although I dispute not that it may please Heaven, on high occasions, even to raise one from the dead in defence of his country, yet I doubted not then, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... girlhood into womanhood. The first chapter of her life was, at that moment's laying of her hand on Martin's forehead, closed. The love for him that filled her so utterly was in great part maternal. It was to be her destiny to know the deep tranquil emotions of life rather than the passionate and transient. She was perhaps the more blessed ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Order simply held the relation of probationary membership, until they were rendered competent through the educational capacity of the society, to advance into full fellowship with its diabolical design. A glance at this organization will suffice to show the shrewdness of the transient and local agents of the Confederacy, in their formation of an Order, having for its mission the attainment of so many incidental objects, without in the meantime subjecting themselves to the dangers of collision in their machinery. Accordingly, the Order ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... travelled on the Continent. Our meeting was extremely cordial; for the countenance of an old fellow-traveller always brings up the recollection of a thousand pleasant scenes, odd adventures, and excellent jokes. To discuss all these in a transient interview at an inn was impossible; and finding that I was not pressed for time, and was merely making a tour of observation, he insisted that I should give him a day or two at his father's country-seat, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which mere science propounds. What led men to imagine gods at all? What still prompts enlightened nations to worship? Is prayer of any avail, or of none? Is faith the last ground of adoration, or is reason? Is religion a transient phase of development, or is it the chief end of man? What is its warrant of continuance? If it overlive this day of crumbling theologies, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... encouraged, was the River Jaik. This was not 10 above 300 miles from the main point of departure on the Wolga; and, if the march thither was to be a forced one and a severe one, it was alleged, on the other hand, that the suffering would be the more brief and transient; one summary exertion, not to be repeated, and all was 15 achieved. Forced the march was, and severe beyond example: there the forewarning proved correct; but the promised rest proved a mere phantom of the wilderness—a visionary rainbow, which fled before their hope-sick eyes, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... was beautiful, and she was vain. Much of her apparent artlessness was assumed. She was pleased to be admired, and felt gratified to see the effect of her glance, as she favoured one with a languishing look, and another with a haughty stare, or a wicked, sparkling, mischief loving gleam,—transient on her part but fatally ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... eleven others, with their wives and children, went from Chester, N.H., to Plymouth, N.H., then a wilderness, about forty-five miles north of Penacook, now Concord, and there, on the Pemigewasset, near the juncture of Baker's River (afterwards so called), they erected a log-cabin, in that hitherto transient abode of the wild animals of the forest and the still wilder Indians, who at intervals passed through the place on their way to Penacook, Contoocook, Hooksett, Suncook, and Soucook, their old camping-grounds. These men, having selected lands for farms, had no alternative but ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... impressed with admiration of her business qualities than of her sympathetic virtues? But let me do the poor woman justice; life is held so cheap, and the knife acts so large a part in Mexico, that violence and sudden death produce a mere transient effect. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... dismal place, "Eighteen shillings," he said. "Thank you ... I'll let you know." The woman smiled with the corners of her mouth down, and without a word moved wearily towards the door. Lewisham felt a transient wonder at her hopeless position, but he did not pursue ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... she was wasteful. Their objection sounds sensible, but it belongs to the low levels of life. One flash of lofty love would have killed it. Christ's reply to it draws a contrast between constant duties and special, transient moments. It is coloured, too, by His consciousness of His near end, and has an undertone of sadness in that 'Me ye have not always.' There are high tides of Christian emotion, when the question of what good this thing will do is submerged, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Virginian hills were blithe in May, And we were plucking violets—thou and I. A transient gladness flooded earth and sky; Thy fading strength seemed to return that day, And I was mad with hope that God would stay Death's pale approach—Oh! all hath long passed by! Long years! long years! and now, I well know ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... severely exercised. We were all so hungry that Charley consented to serve out a small piece of biscuit to each of us, just to stay our appetites; but that produced a very transient effect. At first I saw him tightening his waist-belt; then I had to tighten mine, as Harry did his. Poor Tom was suffering too much pain to care about eating, and Aboh was well accustomed to endure long hours ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... and military establishments, and all other items of current outlay. Upon this basis of unexampled prosperity the Minister proposed to remit a large amount of taxation, and to apply a further sum towards the extinction of the National Debt. He did not regard this surplus as a temporary or transient incident, but as the genuine and natural result of regular and permanent causes. In the existing state of the continent, it was impossible to calculate with certainty upon the future, and Mr. Pitt, even in this solid condition of the national finances, was careful not to indulge ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... week and had a bully time. The place had been a fashionable watering place before the war, and when I was there the transient population was largely wealthy Belgians. They entertained a good deal and did all they could for the pleasure of the four thousand boys who were at the camp. The Y.M.C.A. had a huge tent and spread themselves in taking care of the soldiers. There were entertainments ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... took me by the hand, and told me how happy she was that she had been with the Queen at a moment when she stood in need of a friend. I never knew what could have created in the Queen so lively and so transient an alarm; but I guessed from the particular care she took respecting the King that attempts had been made to irritate him against her; that the malice of her enemies had been promptly discovered and counteracted by the King's penetration and attachment; and that the Comte ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to their own souls wed, And ages as the dead. And over these living, and them that died, From one to the other side A lordlier light than comes of earth or air Made the world's future fair. A woman like to love in face, but not A thing of transient lot— And like to hope, but having hold on truth— And like to joy or youth, Save that upon the rock her feet were set— And like what men forget, Faith, innocence, high thought, laborious peace— And yet like none of these, Being not as these are mortal, but with eyes That sounded ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he thought the world made up entirely of those three rooms, where he, his parents, Granny—his maternal grandmother—and a more or less transient servant girl had lived for ever. Visitors drifted in, of course, but he seemed to think that they had come from nowhere and would return to the same place. What instilled the first idea of a wider outside world in his mind ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... Father, says he, you are in a very miserable Condition if there is not another World. True, Son, said the Hermit; but what is thy Condition if there is? Man is a Creature designed for two different States of Being, or rather, for two different Lives. His first Life is short and transient; his second permanent and lasting. The Question we are all concerned in is this, In which of these two Lives it is our chief Interest to make our selves happy? Or, in other Words, Whether we should endeavour to secure to our selves the Pleasures and Gratifications of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... popular choice. "Elections cannot be safe there long," said the lawyer Lechford. The same prediction has been made these two hundred years. The public mind, ever in perpetual agitation, is still easily shaken, even by slight and transient impulses; but, after all vibrations, it follows the laws of the moral world, and safely recovers ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... rapid. The main belts never entirely disappear, and never depart very far from their mean positions with respect to the equator, but the smaller belts toward the north and south are more or less evanescent. Round or oblong spots, as distinguished from belts, are still more variable and transient. The main belts themselves show great internal commotion, frequently splitting up, through a considerable part of their length, and sometimes apparently throwing out projections into the lighter equatorial zone, which occasionally resemble bridges, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... of the self reveals the fact that all our passions and antipathies, all our limitations of experience, all that is ignoble and small in us, all that is transient and finite in us is false. We "do not know" but are "pure knowledge" ourselves. We are not limited by anything, for we are the infinite; we do not suffer death, for we are immortal. Emancipation thus is not a new acquisition, product, an effect, or result of any action, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... to make the best of a commercial contract of property and slavery by subjecting it to some religious restraint and elevating it by some touch of poetry. But the actual result is that when two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. And though of course nobody expects them to do anything so impossible and so unwholesome, yet the law that regulates ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... learning, a most retentive memory, of the deepest and most unaffected piety and morality, mingled with those numerous weaknesses and prejudices which his friends have kindly taken care to draw from their dread abode[802]. I brought on myself his transient anger, by observing that in his tour in Scotland, he once had "long and woeful experience of oats being the food of men in Scotland as they were of horses in England."' It was a national reflection unworthy of him, and I shot my bolt. In return he gave me ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... European imitation. "Byron's characters," he says, "are not real people, but rather incarnations of the various moods of the poet," and he ends by saying that Byron is "great but monotonous." We find the same thing in Lermontov, who was fond of Byron, not only in a transient mood of snobbery, but because the very strong and sombre character of his imagination naturally led him to choose this kind of intense poetry. He was exerting himself to regard reality seriously and to reproduce it with exactitude, at the very time when ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... he is a man of family and property—surely if we can depend on anyone we can depend upon him, and if by giving his wife a vote we can double his—we have done something to offset the irresponsible transient vote of the man who has ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... you are 'bout right there: if you want to keep the devil out of your heart, you must keep an angel in it. If you can't find a permanent resident, why you must take up with transient customers. First and last, I've had the pictures of half the pretty girls in Saint Louis hanging up in my gallery: as one grows dim I take up another, and that's the way I preserve my youth. If it hadn't been for business, I should have ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hand, and yet it dare Seize some drops of that perennial stream; As they fall they catch a transient gleam— ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... spectacles in a droll, owlish, improbable way, instead of letting his eyes travel across the lines of print, was skeptical at first. He suspected Bonbright of being a youth scratching the itch of a sudden and transient enthusiasm. But he became interested. Bonbright compelled his interest, for he was earnest, intense, not enthusiastic, not effervescing ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... and mark you! this is the chiefest glory of all! ... He will rise again triumphant from the grave to prove his God-head, and to convince Mankind beyond all doubt an question, that there is indeed an immortal Hereafter,—an actual, free Eternity of Life, compared with which this our transient existence is a mere brief breathing-space of pause and probation, . . and then for evermore His sacred Name shall dominate and civilize ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... enlists in the crusade against dulness which has recently succeeded the hereditary crusade of American literature against wickedness. But from too complete an absorption in that transient war she is saved by the same strength which has lifted her above the more trivial concerns of local color. The older school uncritically delighted in all the village singularities it could discover; the newer school no less uncritically condemns and ridicules all the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... that "there are a hundred thousand hands ready." Another, that "we may overthrow the bishops and all the government in one day." Such was the style, and such the confidence in the plans which the lowest orders of revolutionists promulgated during their transient exhibition in this country. More in this strain may be found in "Maddox's Vindication Against Neale," the advocate for the Puritans, p. 255; and in an admirable letter of that great politician, Sir Francis Walsingham, who, with many others of the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... at Adele McComas's funeral—or, at least, others had made her a figure at it. She began to be seen here and there in the company of the widower, and it was reported privately to me that she had been perceived standing side by side with him in decorous contemplation, as it were in a sort of transient, elegiac revery a deux, before the monument. It was no surprise, therefore, when we heard, two months later, that they ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... this had presented itself to her mind had been a matter of a month or six weeks previous. At that time she had seemed to discover a shadow in the sparkling eyes and a transient pensive droop of the lips. Then on the night of Charley Graham's visit, she had been frightened by the worn look upon the beloved little face, and had feared some ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... regard for her solid, honest, if somewhat explosive bear. He troubles her a little now and then, it is said, with whiffs of jealousy; but they are whiffs only, the product of accidental moodinesses in him, or of transient aspects, misinterpreted, in the court-life of a young and pretty woman. As the general rule, he is beautifully good-humored, kind even, for a bear; and, on the whole, they have begun their partnership under good omens. And indeed we may say, in spite of sad tempests that arose, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... in thy journeyings hast thou made thee instant friends, Found, to be loved a little while, and lost, to meet no more; Friends of happy reminiscences, although so transient in their converse, Liberal, cheerful, and sincere, a crowd of ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... there was!—Here, at any rate, my reader shall he free of it. Indeed he may perceive, the negotiation was by this time come to a safe point, the Nosti-Grumkows triumphant, and the interest of the matter mainly out. Farther transient anxieties this amiable couple had,— traceable in that last short croak from Grumkow,—lest the English might consent to that of the "Single-Marriage in the mean time" (which the English never did, or meant to do). For example, this other screech of Nosti, which shall ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... will not be so agreeably ELECTRIFIED where this letter will find you, as you were both at Manheim and Mayence; but I hope you may meet with a second German Mrs. F——-d, who may make you forget the two former ones, and practice your German. Such transient passions will do you no harm; but, on the contrary, a great deal of good; they will refine your manners and quicken your attention; they give a young fellow 'du brillant', and bring him into fashion; which last is a great article at setting ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the effect of fortune's influence on the man whose adventures I have now related. So long as his star was propitious, he succeeded in everything; but whenever it changed, his efforts to correct its malignity were fruitless. The transient instances of success which seemed to arrest the current of his misfortunes soon plunged him into greater evils than those which he had escaped. Circumstances that were unforeseen, and steps that were innocent, gave him the appearance of ingratitude ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... sweet Charity, Havana for Cigars to solace me, And Turkey for the transient Cigarette - Was all I ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... great a proportion of the time that history describes, war was the normal condition and peace the abnormal, few realize now in our country, because of the aloofness of the present generation from even the memory of war. Our last great war ended in 1865; and since then only the light and transient touch of the Spanish War has been laid upon us. Even that war ended seventeen years ago and since then only the distant rumblings of battles in foreign lands have been borne across ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... her words displayed: She still began with quiet sense, But oft the force of eloquence Came to her lips in aid; Language and voice unconscious changed, And thoughts, in other words arranged, Her fervid soul transfused Into the hearts of those who heard, And transient strength and ardour stirred, In minds to strength unused, Yet in gay crowd or festal glare, Grave and retiring was her air; 'Twas seldom, save with me alone, That fire of feeling freely shone; She loved not awe's nor wonder's gaze, Nor even exaggerated praise, Nor even notice, if too ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... that of the child, has remote affinities with mentalities less mature than our own, like those of savages. But even if we refrain from interfering with the belief of those who interpret childish mentality as "a savage state," we may point out that as, in any case, this savage state is transient, and must be superseded, education should help the child to overcome it; it should not develop the savage state, nor ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the heart are told, We greet with joy our dear, domestic hearth, And think how strong the viewless bonds that hold Unwearied love to transient ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... where mingling foes should boast and bleed. Peace to the perished! may the warrior's meed And tears of triumph their reward prolong! Till others fall where other chieftains lead, Thy name shall circle round the gaping throng, And shine in worthless lays, the theme of transient song. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... whose transient moodiness had passed away like a bad devil exorcised by the power of good wine, joined heartily in the praise bestowed on this ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... For this not transient beauty he felt a passion proof against the tooth of time, a passion which took such hold of him that his permanent attitude towards his wife was that of those mortal husbands on whom, in the mythological age, the gods occasionally bestowed their daughters. Nor did he quit this ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... abide by his last engagement, honor should have led him to break the unwelcome news to Alice as best he might, and extricate himself from his false and embarrassing position. If he still loved the girl of his first choice, and felt that his untruth to her was only the result of a transient, sensuous passion, it was equally plain that he must resolutely break away from the beautiful tempter. But he oscillated, pendulum-like, between the two. When Marcia began to recover, and he was allowed to see her in her ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... embellishment. They combine to one result with the merely outward and ceremonial ornaments of royalty, its pageantries, flaunting so naively, so credulously, in Shakespeare, as in that old medieval time. And then, the force of Hotspur is but transient youth, the common heat of youth, in him. The character of Henry the Sixth again, roi faineant, with La Pucelle* for his counterfoil, lay in the direct course of Shakespeare's design: he has done much to fix the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... and negative—i.e., of commission and omission, or forbearance; external or corporal, and internal or mental; transitive, affecting some body other than the agent's, or intransitive; transient or continued (mere repetition is not the same as habit). Circumstances are material when visibly related to the consequences in point of casuality, directly or indirectly. They may be criminative, or exculpative, or ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... much to the actual process of being shaved. Indeed there is something restful and soothing to the average male adult in the feel of a sharp razor being guided over a bristly jowl by a deft and skillful hand, to the accompaniment of a gentle grating sound and followed by a sensation of transient silken smoothness. Nor do I refer to the barber's habit of conversation. After all, a barber is human—he has to talk to somebody, and it might as well be you. If he didn't have you to talk to he'd have to talk to another barber, and that would ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... is the real pledge of immortal life, for nothing can be more incredible than that a soul which has risen to have God for its very own, and has bowed itself to accept God's ownership of it, can be affected by such a transient and physical incident as what we call death. We rise to the assurance of immortality because we have an inheritance which is God Himself. And in that inexhaustible Inheritance there lies the guarantee that we shall live while He lives, because He lives, and until we have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... sharp feeling of relief, followed the actor downstairs and into the tap-room. A dozen men were there, gathered around two tables that had been drawn together. Transient lodgers, in various stages of dishabille, popped out of all sorts of passageways and joined the throng. The men about the table, on which was stretched the figure of the wounded man, were undoubtedly natives: farmers, woodsmen or employees of the tavern. At a word from Putnam Jones, they ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the varied and transient beauties of the northern skies in winter, the long arctic night is undoubtedly depressing in the extreme. In these regions men speak of being able to read the thermometer on the 7th of November at noonday "without a light," as being matter for ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thoughts from Abroad, are only a few out of many. It is pleasant to think of the ultimate appearance of Waring, flashed out for a moment on the sea, only to disappear. In method, swiftness and colour, but done in verse, it is an impressionist picture, as vivid in transient scenery as in colour. He did the same sort of work in poems of nature, of human life, of moments of passion, of states of the soul. That is another reason why he was not read at first, and why he is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... superstition; can hear the one sex praised without envy, and converse with the other without permitting the torch of inconstancy to kindle the unhallowed fire in her breast; considers her husband as the most accomplished of mortals, and thinks all the sons of Adam besides unworthy of a transient glance from the corner ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... a woman plowed through the wind and the snow and mounted wearily the steps of the little coach which comprised the branch line's passenger service. The two men took it all as a matter of course—the bare little coach with plush seats and an air of transient discomfort. They were used to it, and they ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... After a transient pause Hilland remarked: "Think of poor Graham in the fiery furnace of New York to-day. I can imagine what a wilted and dilapidated-looking specimen he will be if he escapes alive—By Jove, there he is!" and the subject ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Homeric poems, we can see that these ideas are transient. Parities of circumstance were probably commoner in the simple mechanism of ancient society than they are now, and in the succession of similar cases awards are likely to follow and resemble each other. Here we have the germ ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... air, And view with scorn two pages and a chair. As now your own, our beings were of old, And once enclosed in woman's beauteous mould; Thence, by a soft transition, we repair From earthly vehicles to these of air. Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled, That all her vanities at once are dead; Succeeding vanities she still regards, And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards. Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, And love of ombre, after death survive. For when ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... slimy pools, and the tenement houses on each side blotted out the faint starlight. The night was sultry, and door and casement stood wide, making pits of darkness. Few lights were visible, but a continuous hum of voices issued from the human hives, and now and then a transient red glow at an upper window showed that some one was smoking a pipe. This ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... month in solitary was an event. And yet we could learn nothing from such transient and ofttimes stupid Dantes who would remain in our inferno too short a time to learn knuckle-talk ere they went forth again into the bright ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Queen who rules the tide Now forward thrown, now bridled back, Smile o'er each answering smile, then hide Her grandeur in the transient rack, And yield her power, and veil her pride, And move along ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... dangers have been few and transient. The product of mistake or enthusiasm, they were remedied by explanation and kindliness. There are dangers threatened now, and against them we shall try the same prompt and frank policy which never failed us yet. Already the English press are quarrelling for the spoils of the routed Repealers. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge their own pride in thinking that my fall makes them higher, or seems so at least. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. This news will make sad hearts at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford, which I do not cherish the least ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... night-cap: he took me up to a window, and gave me but a dismal history : the night had been very unfavourable, and the late amendment very transient. I heard nothing further till the evening, when my constant companion came to me. All, he said, was bad: he had been summoned and detained nearly all the morning, and had then rode to St. Leonard's to get a little rest, as he would not ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the emblem of earthly grandeur, a kingly crown; but it is made only of wood, painted and gilt, and is hung on a wooden peg driven into the wall. The worms have gnawed the gilded wood, the spider has spun her web from the crown down to the sand, like a mourning banner, frail and transient as the grief of mortals. How quietly they sleep! I can remember them quite plainly. I still see the bold smile on their lips, that so strongly and plainly expressed joy or grief. When the steamboat winds along like a magic snail over the lakes, a stranger often comes to the church, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... began to soften and mellow under Mother's gentle touches. The living-room assumed an air of comfort; my books now had a real corner of their own; the guest-chamber—or, rather, the little spare-room—already had entertained its transient tenants; and as our friends came and went the walls caught something from them all, to remind ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... blubbered faces of widow and orphans, intimation of the event in the newspapers, with a request that friends will accept of it, the day after—a man, as he draws near middle age, begins to suspect every transient indisposition; to be careful of being caught in a shower, to shudder at sitting in wet shoes; he feels his pulse, he anxiously peruses his face in a mirror, he becomes critical as to the colour of his tongue. In early life illness is a luxury, and draws out toward the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... during open water in my little hospital ship, and in winter with dogs and sleigh, I recognize that it is but transient help which I can give alone. So I love the little hospitals, which speak of permanence. When a call for help comes for me, often enough my place is vacant. But the cheery haven of ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... thought, is human life, if all that thus we see Of pageantry and of parade devoid of pleasure be! If only in the conscious heart true happiness abide, How oft, alas! has wretchedness but grandeur's cloak to hide? And when upon the outward cheek a transient smile appears, We little reck how lately hath its bloom been damp'd by tears, And how the voice, whose thrillings from a light heart seem'd to rise, Throughout each sleepless watch of night gave utterance but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... may produce intermittent and transient dysphagia. The lesions are rarely limited to the esophagus alone; they may occur in any portion of the gastrointestinal, genitourinary, or respiratory tracts, and concomitant cutaneous manifestations usually render the diagnosis clear. The treatment ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... thankful to God that ever I knew you on earth, because I am persuaded that through his abundant mercy in Christ Jesus, I shall hereafter know you in heaven, and there be permitted to resume and perfect that intercourse and acquaintance, which here were so transient, and so speedily suspended by separation. In the General Assembly, and Church of the First-born, I hope to meet my honoured friend again, and to mingle with his, and with those of ten thousand times ten thousand others, my everlasting Hosannas to the Lamb that was slain. ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... offer flowers to a stranger. The poorest child can proffer them to the richest. A hundred persons turned into a meadow full of flowers would be drawn together in a transient brotherhood. ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... considered. In a sparsely settled grain and livestock region it would be quite inadvisable to grow strawberries or other crops which require a maximum of hand labor during a very brief period. Berries, however, may be perfectly well suited to sections where either transient workers or city children can be ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... appraise them more at their true and spiritual worth. We are then enabled to pass from circumstances (which are results) to the realm of causes: the balance is transferred from the seen to the unseen, and the point of view approximates more to the eternal than the transient. A greater poise and certainty follow as a matter of course, since the mental outlook is centred in the true rather than ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... curiously and eagerly about the premises. The steward had an idea; perhaps not a very brilliant one, but as brilliant as could be expected of a man whose intellect had been so rudely jarred twice within a brief period. The conduct of the two transient guests at the Hotel de Poisson had been suspicious, to say the least. That afternoon the robbery had been fully discussed, and he was confident that the visitors were in some manner connected with that affair. His idea was, that the fish-house ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... of, but never expected to suffer from,—a malady in which his memory had become almost a blank as regarded the past events of his life—though every now and then shadowy images of by-gone things flitted across his brain, like the transient reflections of wind-swept clouds on still, translucent water. Presently in the midst of his painful indecision, an answer suggested itself like a whispered ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... her basket comfortably. It is so easy to think people cruel and coarse who have more money than ourselves! Not for Andy, however. His agrarian proclivities were shallow and transient enough. So presently, as they bowled along the level road, he forgot Joe Starke, and began drumming on the foot-board and humming a tune,—touching now and then the stuffed breast-pocket of his coat with an inward chuckle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... there are three several states of feeling with which women regard their masters, and these are love, hate, and indifference. Of all, love is the weakest and the most transient, because the essentially unstable creatures naturally fall out of it as readily as they fall into it. Hate being a sister excitement will easily become, if a man has wit enough to effect the change, love; and hate-love may perhaps last a little longer than love-love. Also, man has the occupation, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... wisely consistent with our just principles has been the action of our Government that we have under the most critical circumstances avoided all censure and encountered no other evil than that produced by a transient estrangement of good will in those against whom we have been by force of evidence compelled ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... the members of the Opposition, which at that time was not represented in the Cabinet. But even with this indication before us, we cannot believe that even now this premature solution of a secular problem on lines suggested by transient episodes of a military campaign, has struck the responsible statesmen in proportion to its specific weight, the depth of its importance, and the nature of its consequences. To take but one of these, we find that towards the end of the second year of the campaign, Turkey ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the vast sea might weep for ever upon his grave, as in contempt of the transient and shallow tears of hypocritical and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his lineage was not so interesting. The girl had arrived the night before, sent on by an Oil City agency, and Mrs. Rawling had accepted the Amazon as manna-fall. The lumber valley was ten miles above a tiny railroad station, and servants had to be tempted with triple wages, were transient, or married an employee before a month could pass. The valley women regarded Rawling as their patron, heir of his father, and as temporary aid gave feudal service on demand; but for the six months of his family's residence each year house servants must be kept at any price. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... includes the Philosophers, Poets, Scientists—the Thinkers of all kinds—who are in advance of the best institutions of either Monarchical or Democratic countries; who see farther into the future than even the great bulk of men of intelligence and high development; who especially understand the transient nature and inadequate provisions of existing societies, and feel the need of better conditions for intellectual, social, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the sword. The former defined and justified their position in the world as the living link and representative of the continuous family comprising all their ancestors and all their descendants; the latter was at first regarded merely as a transient, secular possession, and a source of wealth and profit. This powerful hereditary right probably rested on a religious basis. The village community was considered to be bound up with its village god in one joint ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... duty, Mrs. Mangenborn," said Miss Husted severely, "nor do I require to be put in the path of my duty by anybody, be it he, or be it she, be it transient, or ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... great a name, we may venture to assert that this performance, though not without merit, is wholly unworthy of the high reputation of its author. The sources of our English law are not well, nor indeed fairly, laid open; the ancient judicial proceedings are touched in a very slight and transient manner; and the great changes and remarkable revolutions in the law, together with their causes, down to his time, are ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... concealed existence far beyond the ordinary—that they are aware of many things which you can never know. It is as though their souls, during former incarnations, had trafficked with the secret forces of nature, and so acquired a mysterious and nameless quality above all the transient attributes of beauty, wit, and talent. They exist: that is enough; that is their genius. Whether they control, or are at the mercy of, those secret forces; whether they have in fact learnt, but may not speak, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... into the glaring publicity of the main floor, the first object that their eyes fell upon was Mr. Hugo Canning in the flesh. The second was Cousin Willie Kerr, even more in the flesh, trotting loyally at his side. At this precise instant, in short, the celebrated transient quitted the dining-room for the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... or else some transient wind Whistling through hollows of this vaulted isle: We'll ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson |
