"Transient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... business, for such grounds of comfort to be of much service to him. Little as the gardener allowed himself to have his attention dissipated by other tastes and inclinations, he could the less bear to have the peaceful course interrupted which the plant follows toward its enduring or its transient perfection. A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way. A calm eye, a silent method, in all seasons of the year, and at every hour, to do exactly what has then to be done, is required ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... my power, and would even have made sacrifices to serve them."—"And yet if you were to see them again, you would perhaps not know them."—"Very possibly," replied she. "But I can see no reason why every affection should be necessarily permanent. We never pretend to permanence. We are certainly transient, but ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... added, "I will not again ask whether the meeting of last night was an appointed one; for you surely would repel the suspicion, if you could do so with truth. It is too evident that this insinuating man has fascinated you, as he already has done hundreds of others; and for the sake of his transient flattery, you have thrown away Philaemon's pure and constant love. Yet the passing notice of Alcibiades is a distinction you will share with half the maidens of Athens. When another new face attracts his fancy, you will be forgotten; but you cannot ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... his hotel, his head was full of plans for the girl's transient pleasure and lasting benefit. "Poor lonely child," he thought. "And what a mother! She ought not to be left with a person like that. She ought to marry. It would be a good deed to take her away from such an influence. ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... my hostess, more 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
... were transient moments of a better light. As meteors, darting across the sky, illumine for a few seconds the dark vault of heaven, and in the sudden exit of their brilliant flash seem to leave greater darkness in the night, thus the impulses of grace shot across the soul of Cassier; ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Reasons I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways find their account in the Speculation of the Day. And to the End that their Virtue and Discretion may not be short transient intermitting Starts of Thought, I have resolved to refresh their Memories from Day to Day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate State of Vice and Folly, into which the Age is fallen. The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... queen was performed at Westminster-Abbey, with the usual solemnity.* By this time the courts of France and Spain were perfectly reconciled; all Europe was freed from the calamities of war; and the peace of Great Britain suffered no interruption, except from some transient tumults among the tinners of Cornwall, who, being provoked by a scarcity of corn, rose in arms and plundered the granaries ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... now, Could I have dealt so harshly with him?—No! Why, one would think I lov'd him. She said so But yesterday. Indeed I love them both— Him for his love of her. Elizabeth! Why burns thy cheek thus?—Yet a transient thought Might stain the wanderings of a seraph's dream, And thou art mortal woman. Oh, beware! Dwell not on "might have," "could;" since "cannot be" Points from thy past to thy futurity. ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... a myth is the incarnation of the spirit of natural fact, a legend is the embellishment of an historical event: a very different thing. A natural fact is permanent and elemental, an historical event is transient and superficial. Take one instance out of a score. The rainbow links heaven and earth. Iris then, to the myth-making Greek, was Jove's messenger, intermediary between God and Man. That is to incarnate a constant, natural fact. Plato afterwards, making her daughter ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... This small but valuable contribution to the subject of design and manufacture of furniture is full of interest, and points out the defects of our present system. Amongst other regrets, one of the writers (Mr. Halsey Ricardo) complains, that the "transient tenure that most of us have in our dwellings, and the absorbing nature of the struggle that most of us have to make to win the necessary provisions of life, prevent our encouraging the manufacture of well wrought ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... Mr. Pennell's sketchy and transient human figures seem altogether right to me. He sees these forges, workshops, cranes and the like, as inhuman and as wonderful as cliffs or great caves or icebergs or the stars. They are a new aspect of the logic of physical ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... visions, and proposing new and romantic enterprises, he was broken down by age and infirmities, racked by pain, confined to his bed, and shut up in a wreck on the coast of a remote and savage island. No stronger picture can be given of his situation, than that which shortly follows this transient glow of excitement; when, with one of his sudden transitions of thought, he awakens, as it were, to ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... whom the boy, now Kaiser Wilhelm, and his royal family fled to Koenigsberg by the Baltic, while the conqueror held Berlin and reduced Prussia to a second-rate province. To this boy the flames of burning Moscow were a transient aurora-borealis under the pole-star; and Nelson and Wellington were unknown to the stories of his childhood, for as yet their fame was not. Goethe and Schiller were in the prime of early manhood; Kant and Klopstock elderly, but with years ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... befell me. Not on account of the wages —for that is a secondary consideration—but from the fact that the City of Memphis is the largest boat in the trade and the hardest to pilot, and consequently I can get a reputation on her, which is a thing I never could accomplish on a transient boat. I can "bank" in the neighborhood of $100 a month on her, and that will satisfy me for the present (principally because the other youngsters are sucking their fingers.) Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge! and what vast respect Prosperity commands! Why, six months ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the apple-tree as I had never seen it before. Even its bark and its gnarly trunk will hold converse with me, and its first tiny leaves of the budding spring will herald me a welcome. Once again I shall be a youth with the apple-tree, but feeling more than the turbulent affection of transient youth can understand. Life does not seem regular and established when there is no apple-tree in the yard and about the buildings, no orchards blooming in the May and laden in the September, no baskets heaped with the crisp smooth fruits; without all ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... questionable whether the infants suffered any great harm, and the popular estimate of the crime of extinguishing a life before any interests had clustered around it was very lenient. "The criminality of abortion was immeasurably aggravated when it was believed to involve not only the extinction of a transient life, but also the damnation of an immortal soul."[978] The religious interest was thus brought to reenforce the love of children in the struggle against the old custom. The canon law also construed it as murder. Through the Middle Ages the sale of children was not common, but ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... claimed the suzerainty over part or the whole of Wallachia (and we shall have occasion hereafter to refer to their relations with that country), their domination during the ninth and tenth centuries was of a very partial and transient character. They probably moved westward from the Ukraine at the beginning of the ninth century, and between the years 839 and 860 they were actively aggressive in Eastern Wallachia. They are said to have attacked Constantine, the Christian missionary, on his way through the district they occupied, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... allusion in the magazines, attaining, at last, a dim knowledge of what was going on in the great outside world of letters and discovery. Of course there were elections and tariff reforms and other comparatively unimportant matters taking place in the state but they made only the most transient ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Hotel, lower down, and the Washington Hotel, which occupied the site of the Stewart building above the Park, were the principal public houses. The Boston stages stopped at Hall's North American Hotel, at the corner of Bayard Street and the Bowery, and there were many boarding-houses where transient guests were accommodated. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... feeding in the rich pastures around; and now and then fallow deer, which appeared to have lost the shyness of their nature, tripped across the glades of the woodland, or stood and lay in small groups under some great oak. The transient pleasure which such a scene of rural quiet was calculated to afford, changed to more serious feelings, when a sudden turn brought her at once in front of the mansion-house, of which she had seen nothing since she first beheld it ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the passage by the Butter Cross, and along the railed pavement by the Minster Close. On the colonel's ear their three footfalls sounded as though a dream. The vast bulk of the minster, glimmering above the leafless elms, the solid Norman tower with its edges bathed in starlight, were transient things, born of faery, unsubstantial as the small figure that tripped ahead of him clutching a pair ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... perfection, the face was one likely to attract and then to charm; gentleness, thoughtfulness, intellectual power, might be read in those fair features, as well as an almost infantine candor and innocence, and the subtle and all too-transient bloom of extreme youth. Her hair, which constituted one of her best "points," was simply parted in the middle, fastened with a clasp at the nape of her neck, and then allowed to fall in a smooth, shining shower down to her waist. Mrs. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... succeed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But those who talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listen to them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet and elbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true of transient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be won by such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise of diversity, and about the right of each to live according to its own nature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... you wept, and slowly raising Your dozed eyelids, sought again, Half in doubt, they say, and gazing Sadly back, the seats of men;— Snatch'd a turbid inspiration From some transient earthly sun, And proclaim'd your vain ovation For those mimic raptures you ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... unaltering eyes like Planets—signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and stout billets. Fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient blazes, now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance. The great ones had perished, but these remained. They occupied the remotest visible positions—sky-backed summits rising out of rich coppice and plantation districts to the north, where the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the advertisement of a hotel, done in quaint, old-fashioned, fancy script with many curly-cues and printers' ornaments. The advertisement set forth that the Thayer House at Sycamore Ridge was "First class in every particular," and that "Especial attention was paid to transient custom." On a line in the right-hand corner the reader was notified that the tavern was founded by the Emigrant Aid Society, and balancing this line, in the left-hand corner, were these words: "The only livery-stable west of Lawrence." John Barclay's eyes have read it a thousand times, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... about it was radiant with a fleeting glory and a beauty due to chance, such as is sometimes seen for an instant in a human face, beneath the influence of a strong emotion that brings warmth and color into it. In a life under the open sky and among the fields, the transient and tender grace of such moments as these draws from us the wish of the apostle who said to Jesus Christ upon the mountain, "Let us build ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... so thou neededst not our human skill To fix what thus were transient—there it grew Wedded to thy perfection; and anew With every coming vision rose there still Some living principle which did fulfil Thy most legitimate manhood; and unto Thy soul all Nature rendered up its due With not a contradiction; and each hill And mountain torrent ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... possibly be imagined. The sweet scent from the honeysuckle flowers stole around you with a welcome as you moved along, and set you a dreaming of some far-off region where the delicious sensations produced by the odour of flowers may not be as transient as ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... still striking countenance was deeply marked with lines of sorrow and care, and his dark luxuriant locks were thinned and grizzled, while his features, which had long been schooled to betray no sign of emotion of a transient or superficial nature, were now, as his eyes met those of Mrs. Beauchamp's, convulsed as by the working of a strong passion. A slight blush tinged Emily's usually pale cheek; she drew a rapid breath, and her voice faltered perceptibly as she said ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... taking possession of the Rhenish provinces and of Westphalia, concluding a treaty with the then newly-restored pope, Hardenberg had, as late as 1820, during a visit to Borne, merely entered upon a transient agreement, by which Rome was bound to no concessions. The war openly declared by Rome was now attempted to be turned aside by means of petty and secret artifices. Several bishops, in imitation of the precedent given by Count von Spiegel, the peace-loving archbishop of Cologne, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... reveling in blissful ignorance of its tortures, with any description of sea-sickness. They will know all in ample season; or if not, so much the better. But naked honesty requires a correction of the prevalent error that this malady is necessarily transient and easily overcome. Thousands who imagine they have been sea-sick on some River or Lake steamboat, or even during a brief sleigh-ride, are annually putting to sea with as little necessity or urgency as suffices ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... comparative decency and decorum. The Mountain Lion, which is in every respect a well-conducted hostelry, tolerates no disorderly persons, and it is therefore the chosen resort, not only of the better class of transient visitors, but of the resident aristocracy as well. In the spacious office are gathered together each evening, mining-engineer and real-estate broker, experts and prospectors from Denver, men from Springtown in search of business and diversion, to say nothing of visitors from the eastern and western ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... writers of falling into the opposite error, of dwelling so entirely on the moral causes, in forgetfulness of the intellectual, as to teach not only that unbelief of the Christian religion is sin, (which few would dispute,) but that even transient doubt of it is sinful; and thus to repel unbelievers by imputing to them motives of which their consciences ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... large sheet of rubber about a sixteenth of an inch thick for a background, and by a process only known to themselves veneer it with a Turkish towel, and put it in brine to soak. The unsuspecting boarding house keeper, or restaurant man buys it and cooks it, and the boarder or transient guest calls for tripe. A piece is cut off the damnable tripe with a pair of shears used in a tin shop for cutting sheet iron, and it is handed to the victim. He tries to cut it, and fails; he tries ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... and that his own name was, as the newspapers say, mentioned in connection with that of his friend's wife. The discovery greatly disgusted him; Bernard Longueville's chronicler must do him the justice to say that it failed to yield him an even transient thrill of pleasure. He thought it very improbable that this vulgar rumor had reached Gordon's ears; but he nevertheless—very naturally—instantly made up his mind to leave the house. He lost no time in saying to Gordon that he had suddenly determined to go to California, and that ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... American citizen, and that you are considered universally in that character by the people of America. As such you are entitled to my attention; and so far as it can be given consistently with those obligations which are mutual between every government and even a transient passenger, you ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... disease be general in the system, moving from place to place, or causing transient acute pains here and there, give general tonic treatment, three times a week, for several weeks—perhaps a month or two, provided the case be an old one. This will invigorate the nervous system and equalize the electric action. Relief will be afforded soon; but for the sake of cure, ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... or thank God, that our grief is so often transient? I speak of such grief as has its source in the wellsprings of life itself, and seems so identified with our lost friend, as almost to fill up the void he has left; and his hallowed image seems fixed within the sanctuary of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... perhaps these verses intimate less decidedly, the transient idea of Miss Cecilia Stubbs passed from Captain Waverley's heart amid the turmoil which his new destinies excited. She appeared, indeed, in full splendour in her father's pew upon the Sunday when he attended service for the last ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... one of those beautiful, glowing Irish girls who leaves footsteps that endure (in bettered lives), instead of merely transient tracks in mud, so there has been a Burke, a Wellington, an O'Connell, a Sheridan, a Tom Moore and an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... heads united on one body. It is difficult to give any satisfactory explanation of these abnormal developments. From age to age, the type is constant, and preserves a race-unity. The crossings of the races are only transient deviations, not capable of perpetuation, and quickly return again to the original stock. This force is persistent, for inasmuch as the individual represents the race, so does his offspring represent the parental characteristics, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... become the type with which he compares, and by which he estimates, his sentiments and proceedings at other times: and his habitual purposes assume a character moulded by and assimilated to the moments of lofty excitement, although those, from the physical nature of a human being, can only be transient. Experience of races, as well as of individuals, does not show those of excitable temperament to be less fit, on the average, either for speculation or practice, than the more unexcitable. The French, and the Italians, are undoubtedly by nature more nervously excitable than the Teutonic ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... 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 marked than that of Romola, for twice Romola falters, and turns to flee. The supple, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... such as interest themselves in clearly comprehending those contemporary facts of which the import is not merely local, but universal. As in all theatres of war, and in all campaigns, there exist in South Africa particular conditions, permanent or transient, to utilise or to overcome which introduces into the character of the forces employed, and into their operations, specific variations, distinguishing them from methods elsewhere preferable. Such differences, however, being accidental in character, involve questions strictly of ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... when a slave, he earned his freedom by the adroit use of the flower. One day he presented a rose to his master, with the remark, made with all humility, 'Do good to thy servant whilst thou hast the power, for the season of power is often as transient as the duration of this flower.' This was in allusion to the Eastern fancy, which makes the white rose the emblem of life—transient and uncertain. In Persia they have a festival called 'The Feast of the ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... offer itself up, that we have only to meet along our pathway some one who, doubting neither himself nor us, demands it without reserve, and we yield it to him at once. Reason may understand a partial gift, a transient devotion; the heart knows only the entire sacrifice, and like the lover to his beloved, it says to its vanquisher, "Thine ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... and benevolently, seemed to have proved faithless in this ruinous hole! What had that Persian girl taken into her crazy head that she must rush upon him like some furious beast of prey? He had been bound to her once, no doubt, by a transient passion—and what youth of his age was blind to the charms of a pretty slave-girl? She had been a lovely child, and it was a vexation, nay a grief to him, that she should have been so shamefully punished. If she should recover, and he could have prayed that she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the honour of being presented to their Great Emperor, than for the sake of gratifying the eye or the mind, by the acquirement of information or new ideas. The vessel, although so very different from their own, was an object of little notice; and although eager to get a transient glance at the passengers, their curiosity was satisfied in a moment, and was generally accompanied with some vague exclamation, in which the words Ta-whang-tee occurred; and the main drift of which seemed to imply, "is this person to appear before our ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... effort, of hope, of balked ambition, of bitter questioning, and of tragic disillusionment, a new quality had developed in his character, and the generous sympathy of youth had hardened at thirty-four to the cautious cynicism of middle-age. It is doubtful if even he himself realized how transient such a state must be to a nature whose hidden springs were moved so easily by the mere action of change—by the effect of any alteration in the objects that surrounded him. Because the enthusiasm of youth was exhausted at the minute, it seemed to him that he had lost it forever. And to Virginia, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and Alves found it hard to mix with the other "guests." After they had been in the house several months, he fancied that the people avoided them. The harmless trio left their table, and in place of them came a succession of transient boarders. For a time he thought he was oversensitive, inclined to suspect his neighbors of avoiding him. But one evening Alves came into their room, where he was working at the anatomy plates, her face flushed with ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... but there is good ground to believe that we have, in several extant statues and busts, the artist's conceptions of the countenances of both. They are characterized by grave and dignified beauty, and freedom from any transient expression, which in the language of art ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... he once more fell under the imperial displeasure. A letter seized in the post, and expressive of atheistical sentiments (possibly but a transient vagary of his youth) was the ostensible cause of his banishment from Odessa to his paternal estate of Mikhailovskoe in the province of Pskoff. Some, however, aver that personal pique on the part of Count ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the nature of it, such popularity is transient; your "series of years," quite unexpectedly, sometimes almost all on a sudden, terminates! For the stupidity of men, especially of men congregated in masses round an object, is extreme. What illuminations and conflagrations ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... It is well that the children's chamber, which is to act constantly on their impressible natures for years, should command a better prospect, a sunnier aspect, than one which serves for a day's occupancy of the transient guest. It is well that journeys should be made or put off in view of the interests of the children,—that guests should be invited with a view to their improvement,—that some intimacies should be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... accident, you see. They came to an understanding, across some stile, most likely. Little Fyne held very solemn views as to the destiny of women on this earth, the nature of our sublunary love, the obligations of this transient life and so on. He probably disclosed them to his future wife. Miss Anthony's views of life were very decided too but in a different way. I don't know the story of their wooing. I imagine it was carried on clandestinely and, I am certain, with portentous ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... element, the activity of each compound depends only on the contents of the element, and is independent of the nature of its combination. Thus radio-activity is a property of the element, and is not affected by its state of isolation or chemical combination. (3) The radio-activity of a simple transient product decays in a geometrical progression, the loss per second being proportional to the mass of substance still left at the moment, and independent of its state of concentration or dilution. This type of reaction is well known in chemistry ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the clergymen of the Broad Highway are prepared to teach the doctrines of Hell under the guise of "Broad-Minded Theology." I envied not Mr. World's position, for I could also see what his wondering eyes beheld. As I took a transient view of this vast group of Theological Halls, and saw how many human beings resorted hither for information, I could the better understand why the world is kept so full of perverted truth. There is a daily inflow of ecclesiastics into this College, even such ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... From the magnificent prose of Congreve it is absent. His it was to sublimate all that was most artificial in an artificial state of society: he was the consummate artist of a phase that was merely transient, the laureate of a generation that was only alive for half-an-hour in the course of all the twenty-four. He is saved from oblivion by sheer strength of style. It is a bad dramatic style, as we know; it leaves the Witwoulds ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... day's departing hour Sings in the sunbeam of the transient shower, Forgetful though its wings are ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Pythagoras and his wife formed a close corporation. For each member there was an initiation, strict and severe, the intent of which was absolutely to bar the transient triflers. Each member was to turn over to the Common Treasury all the money and goods he had of every kind and quality. They started naked, just as did Pythagoras when he stood at the door of the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... back—in the views and feelings of the people—both the invidiousness of the distinction between patricians and plebeians, and the strict and haughty line of demarcation between -cives Romani- and aliens. But the former civic distinction was in its nature transient, while the latter political one was permanent; and the sense of political unity and rising greatness, which was thus implanted in the heart of the nation, was expansive enough first to undermine and then to carry away with its mighty ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of care upon her beautiful face. I could not account for it, unless my earnestness had impressed her. Her point of view made the serious letters comedy for her at first; perhaps this was the reaction. There could be no reason for her agitation, based on her transient interest in Miss Tescheron, I imagined, for she had only met her for a few minutes at a time. It must have been my eloquence, the power of my dramatic art to so vividly portray the hideous Hosley that she became quite as much affected as if she had intimately known ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... she said in a voice that trembled, though she spoke lightly. "But can you suppose that a woman who, in spite of her absurdities, has some intelligence, will have reserved the best treasures of her heart for a man who will regard her merely as a transient pleasure?—I am not surprised to hear from your lips the words which so many ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the frequent subject of their conversation; for how can benevolence be shown more strongly than by a concern for the well-being of the soul, which is to exist forever, in comparison with which, the transient wants of the body are as nothing? Accordingly, the poor widow, after her scanty meal, and over her dim and cheerless hearth, was exhorted by her fur-clad and well-fed friends, to disregard the evils of this fleeting life, and receive with resignation the chastenings ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... temerity, tenable, tenacious, tentative, tenuous, termagant, terrestrial, testimentary, thaumaturgic, therapeutic, titular, torso, tortuous, tractable, traduce, transcendent, transfiguration, transient, transitory, translucent, transverse, travesty, tribulation, tributary, truculent, truncate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... I, who yesterday Dreamed forwards to long, undimmed ecstasy, Henceforward dream, because thou wilt not stay, Backward to transient pleasure and to thee? ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... aim, a greater mission. What is a kingdom? What are wealth and power? What crown and scepter? They are transient things, I yearn for the Immortal ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... 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 it, ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... God,' and recognised that they had seen something quite new. That was all. Their glorifying God cannot have been very deep-seated, or they would have better learned the lesson of the miracle. Amazement was but a poor result. No emotion is more transient or less fruitful than gaping astonishment; and that, with a little varnish of acknowledgment of God's power, which led to nothing, was all the fruit of Christ's mighty work. Let us hope that the healed man carried his unseen blessing in a faithful and grateful heart, and consecrated his restored ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... impatience of new conditions—perhaps surprise that he was not more equal to them. Till his return home—till now, almost—he had been an employer and a coal-owner by proxy. Other people had worked for him, had solved his problems for him. Then a transient impulse had driven him home—made him accept Fontenoy's offer—worse luck!—at least, Letty apart! The hopefulness and elation about himself, his new activities, and his Parliamentary prospects, that ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... misleads you!" said Ak, sternly. "You are a transient race, passing from life into nothingness. We, who live forever, pity but despise you. On earth you are scorned by all, and in Heaven you have no place! Even the mortals, after their earth life, enter another existence for all time, and so are your superiors. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... shafts of ardent light, far-flung Across the luminous azure overhead, Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hung The fragmentary rainbow's green and red. Joy it was here to love and to be young, To watch the sun sink to his western bed, And streaming back out of their flaming core The vesperal aurora's ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get out of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could be permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as Perrault and Francois and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in the night, in ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... surrounding cruder thought. But as the world goes, when the whole of the population is as instructed and as intelligent as in the case I am supposing, we need not care much about this. Great communities have scarcely ever—never save for transient moments—been ruled by their highest thought. And if we can get them ruled by a decent capable thought, we may be well enough contented with our work. We have done more than could be expected, though not all ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... quickness saw a change of expression in her of which in himself he was unconscious, exclaimed, with much emotion, "O how transient is human felicity! How rapidly fly those rare and exquisite moments in which it is perfect! Ah! sweetest Miss Beverley, what words shall I find to soften what I have now to reveal! to tell you that, after goodness, candour, generosity such as yours, a request, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... read character in the form of the human face and figure is a gift possessed by comparatively few persons, although most people interpret, more or less correctly, the salient points of human expression. The transient appearances of the face reveal temporary phases of feeling which are common to all men; but the constant qualities of the mind should be expressed, if at all, in the permanent forms of the executive instrument of the mind, the body. To detect the peculiarities ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... the pale meshes. But this heralded no harm, for the poisonous reptiles of that region never climb; and so, since I was worn out by a hard day, I shut my eyes and slept neither better nor worse because of the transient confidence of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... identical, each with other, and the relation of Father to Son, and of both to Holy Spirit is a relation of identicals. A relation of this kind is not to be found in created things, but that is because of the difference which we know attaches to transient objects. We must not in speaking of God let imagination lead us astray; we must let the Faculty of pure Knowledge lift us up and teach us to know all things as far ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... manifest 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 ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... When louder grief proclaim'd th'approach of death,— Thro' ev'ry vein an icy horror chill'd, Colder than marble ev'ry bosom thrill'd. Unsettled still, tho' exercis'd to grieve, Scarce would my mind the alter'd sight believe; Familiar scenes a transient calm inspire, Poor flutt'ring Fancy fann'd the vain desire, 'Till with sad proof thy wasted relics rise, And restless Nature pours uncall'd-for sighs. Ah! long, my William! shall thy picture rest, Time shall not wear it, imag'd in my breast; Yes, thou shall live while ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... for joy! It was all right then! he was willing to leave the neighborhood! he had no particular attractions here! his affections were not involved! his acquaintance with that girl had been only a piece of transient folly, of which he was probably sick and tired! These were her thoughts as she thanked her son for his ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... against the possibility of an attack,—no measures to secure a retreat, nor council held as to whither their course should be directed in case of such a necessity. The time was consumed in disputes, as to whether the wearied Vendeean army should pursue its transient success, and go on to Paris, or yield to the desire of the generality of the soldiers, and return to their beloved home, by crossing the Loire, which so many regretted ever to have passed. It appears that there were from sixty to seventy thousand persons in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... 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 ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... who arrive from Spain, from Asia, or from Gaul, who enquires [b] after Saleius Bassus? Should it happen that there is one, who thinks, of him; his curiosity is soon satisfied; he passes on, content with a transient view, as if he had seen a ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... 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 ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... have seen 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, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... also recognized that there is something more durable than forms of faith, which, like the organic forms of geological ages, once gone, are clean gone forever, and have no restoration, no return. They recognized that within this world of transient delusions and unrealities there is a ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Exile roams, Whom kingdoms on this day should hail; An inmate in the casual shed, On transient pity's bounty fed, Haunted by busy memory's bitter tale! Beasts of the forest have their savage homes, But He, who should imperial purple wear, Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head! His wretched refuge, dark despair, While ravening wrongs and woes pursue, And distant far the ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the suffocating atmosphere, he might have fallen, and been unable to regain his steed. Or happily he might have passed through the sand-drift in safety, and have been all the time suffering with anxiety for my sake. But this hope was very transient; the predominant feeling was that my father was lost, and that I was about to share his fate. I was thus giving way to despair, when I was aware of a considerable decrease in the density of the sand-laden atmosphere; the last breath of the fierce whirlwind passed by; ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... for solitude To steal within my heart. How hushed the scene At first, and then, to the accustomed ear, How full of sounds, so tuned to harmony They seemed but silence; the monotonous purl Of yon small water-break—the transient hum Swung past me by the bee—the low meek burst Of bubbles, as the trout leaps up to seize The skipping spider—the light lashing sound Of cattle, mid-leg in the shady pool, Whisking the flies away—the ceaseless chirp Of crickets, and the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... evident from the account of the campaigns that Tiglath-pileser occupied Khubushkia from the very commencement of his reign; we must therefore assume that the invasions of Argistis had produced only transient effects. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... dilapidated wardrobe. She supplied him with a new suit from head to heel, and then urged him to tie around his waist a small sheep's entrail filled with brandy, according to the custom of Mexican Indians. Thus had our transient friend had his inner and outer man supplied in this out-of-the-way hut, at the robbers' charges, after which, being shown the direction in which to reach the Jalapa road, he bade the kind old matron adios, and traveled on to Encerro ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags—fails—a revulsion ensues—and ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... custom, asked her to dance several times when he had met her at balls. Mrs. Miller said to herself that Sir John, not being a very young man, did not set much store upon mere personal beauty; that he probably valued mental qualities in a woman more highly than the transient glitter of beauty; and that Beatrice's good sense and sharp, shrewd conversation had evidently made a favourable ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... over a broken doll. That is all it really amounts to. That is what I mean when I say that you have not yet got your sense of proportion. Any grief and misery there is in the world you have left is of such an ephemeral, transient nature, that when we think for a moment of the free, untrammelled, and painless life there is beyond, those petty troubles sink into insignificance. My dear fellow, be sensible, take my advice. I have really a strong interest ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... and awe the uninterrupted progress of a hero, the sweep of whose conquests was as wide and rapid as that of her own barbaric kings, or the Scythian or Chaldaean hordes; but, far unlike the transient whirlwinds of Asiatic warfare, the advance of the Macedonian leader was no less deliberate than rapid; at every step the Greek power took root, and the language and the civilization of Greece were planted from the shores of the AEgean ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... I had a transient vision of swarthy, hairy legs, as Paragot leaped out of bed. He stood over me, man of all the luxuries that he was, in his nightshirt. Fancy having a shirt for the day and a shirt for ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... gentlemen," he proceeded, and his confidence and courage was infectious, "that I could at this moment, by a sudden dash, sweep everything before me between Fort Niagara and Buffalo, but our success would be transient. Disaffection and desertion is rife in the American camp. Only the other day we saw six poor fellows perish in mid-stream. To-day more deserters swam the river safely. Our own force, estimating even 200 Indians under Chief Brant and Captain Norton, though I expect less than 100 would ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... the beck of spring Live in the moment still: Thy boughs unquivering, Remembering winter's chill, And many other winters past and gone, Are mocked, not cheated, by the transient sun. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... this was a mark of attention that she wished the King to notice. The Duchesse de Polignac also 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; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... is that? Has a king of David's glorious rank occasion to speak thus? Is he a guest who occupies a royal throne, who is lord of landed estate and of more than twelve hundred thousand people according to his own calculation? This is David's meaning: In his kingdom he serves God as a transient here on earth, and set apart by God for that purpose; but at the same time as a citizen of God's kingdom in another life, another existence, which he regards more glorious than earthly glory, and as affording something better than ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... truths from a different point of view, and to belong to the same sphere with them. But we are not justified, therefore, in attempting to identify them, any more than in wholly opposing them. The great oppositions of the sensible and intellectual, the unchangeable and the transient, in whatever form of words expressed, are always maintained in Plato. But the lesser logical distinctions, as we should call them, whether of ontology or predication, which troubled the pre-Socratic philosophy and came ...
— Charmides • Plato
... clearness; zeal taking the place of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness, interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth, for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all, only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by miserable subtilties and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a relaxation from his ordinary study, and a circumstance interesting in itself, thus to look into faces so full of meaning as those of Julius and Leo—and to say, "That look—that glance, which seems so transient, will I fix for ever. Thus shall he be seen, with that exact expression (although it lasted but for an instant) five hundred years after he shall be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... enough to my youth, were necessarily transient, and soon gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving the curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still blocking my approach, I pushed my way resolutely through, and presently found myself stumbling upon the steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not of wood, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... which is transient, passing to some extrinsic object, is really a medium between the agent and the subject receiving the action. The action which remains within the agent, is not really a medium between the agent and the object, but only according to the manner of expression; for it really follows the union of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... without waiting for a reply. It was already in type, and during the next day was widely read and commented upon. The Lieutenant-Governor was not insensible to its cutting irony, but it did not admit of any sur-rejoinder, and after the first transient ebullition of his wrath, the matter, so far as he was concerned, was quietly permitted to drop out of sight. The document, however, acted as an additional stimulus to the public excitement, and it continued to be quoted against Sir Francis from time ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... of his end, dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind. And 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 forever upon his grave, as in contempt of the transient and shallow tears of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... has been married for several years, and is much, the same, in her present luxurious home, as when we first made her acquaintance, with no more aspiration beyond the transient pleasures of the world. Sophy, who has remained faithful to the memory of her betrothed, is a very angel of mercy, ministering continually to the poor and sick and disconsolate, and finding therein a higher happiness ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... but the name. With the most courteous generosity, he released all the prisoners whom the women requested, and loaded them with presents. Nor was this action, so worthy of a gentle and chivalrous knight, the consequence of a merely transient feeling of humanity; for when he had entered the city of Jerusalem, and heard of the tender care with which the military friars of St. John treated their sick countrymen, he allowed ten of their order to remain in the hospital till they could fully ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... cures, and every man and woman who had an accident or a new attack after applying to him, set the misfortune down to Master Marner's ill-will and irritated glances. Thus it came to pass that his movement of pity towards Sally Oates, which had given him a transient sense of brotherhood, heightened the repulsion between him and his neighbours, and made ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... goodness and in badness. Whereas the fact that habit is more lasting than act, is accidental to them, and is due to the fact that they are both found in a nature such that it cannot always be in action, and whose action consists in a transient movement. Consequently act simply excels in goodness and badness, but habit excels in a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the present state of things in France is not a transient evil, productive, as some have too favourably represented it, of a lasting good; but that the present evil is only the means of producing future and (if that were possible) worse evils.—That it is not an undigested, imperfect, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the Sophistic theory of the conventional origin of the moral law, he maintained that man's chief end was the good which was fixed in the eternal nature of things, and did not consist in the pursuit of transient pleasures. Hence, in two respects, Plato goes beyond Socrates. He puts opinion, which is his name for ordinary consciousness, between ignorance and knowledge, ascribing to it a certain measure of truth, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... the universe have no place in his life and thought. M. Paul Bourget's heroes might live without distinction in Newport or in Monte Carlo; they take root nowhere, but live in the large cities, in winter resorts and in drawing-rooms as transient visitors in ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... scarcely tell why, to look at the dying girl. A transient flush had again lit up her pale wasted face. She was evidently greatly excited. "Can you read me that riddle, Mr Cringle? Does no analogy present itself to you between what you have seen, between the mysterious power possessed by these subtle ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... buckler, glancing high amidst Each pointed cliff and copse which stretch along Yon mountain's bosom. Then he saw his fate; But saw it with an unaverted eye: Around his spear he called his countrymen, And with a smile that o'er his rugged cheek Pass'd transient, like the momentary flash Streaking a thunder-cloud—"But we will die" (He cried) "like Grecians; we will leave our sons A bright example. Let each warrior bind Firmly his mail, and grasp his lance, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... could hail any one he happened to pass in the street, begin an argument with him forthwith, and set a whole crowd thinking and inquiring about subjects the mere contemplation of which would raise them for the moment above matters of transient concern. For more than half a century any citizen might have gratis the benefit of oral instruction from such a man as he. And I sometimes think, by the way, that—curtailed as it is to literary proportions in the dialogues of Plato, bereft of all that personal ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske |
