"Volatile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had received so great a shock, that they could not recover from it as quickly as the volatile youngsters. The shutters and doors were kept fastened, and every few minutes they peeped out in quest of the tiger that showed so much enmity toward them. When darkness closed in, however, not the first glimpse had ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... industrial plants and from trucks transiting Austria between northern and southern Europe natural hazards: NA international agreements: party to - Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... anxiety of Lady Frances on the score of her friend's indisposition, and it is but justice to admit she loved her with all the constancy of which her volatile nature was capable, her affection was nearly overpowered by her curiosity—curiosity to discover how Constance obtained the locket, and how she lost her most admired tress. Yet, to neither of these perplexities had ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the "Spider" was desperately in love with Heathcote. As long as that volatile youth had owned his allegiance and proved amenable to his influence, so long had Pledge liked the boy and set ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the fancy is not more sportive in dreams, than are the poets in their descriptions of her nocturnal vagaries. On the effects of the imagination in dreams, the following effusion, put into the mouth of the volatile ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... present case, the serpent was a volatile young gentleman of the name of Charteris. This indomitable person had the love of the stage ineradicably implanted in him. He wrote plays, and lived in hopes of seeing them staged at the leading theatres. Meanwhile, he was content ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... compared to its action on fire. In contrast to some of the other Hippocratic treatises the central nervous system is in the background; much attention, however, is given to the special senses. The brain resounds during audition. The olfactory nerves are hollow, lead to the brain, and, convey volatile substances to it which cause it to secrete mucus. The eyes also have been examined, and their coats and humours roughly described; an allusion, the first in literature, is perhaps made to the crystalline lens, and the eyes of animals are compared with those of man. There is evidence ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Professor Emanuel had noticed my reluctant acceptance of Dr. Bretton's badinage, or whether he perceived that I was pained, and that, on the whole, the evening had not been one flow of exultant enjoyment for the volatile, pleasure-loving Mademoiselle Lucie; but, as I was leaving the room, he stepped up and inquired whether I had any one to attend me to the Rue Fossette. The professor now spoke politely, and even deferentially, and he looked apologetic and repentant; but I could not recognise his civility at ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Montaigne, a true poet, would be among them, and would give the finishing touch that should deprive that delightful corner of the air of a literary school. There would La Fontaine forget himself, and becoming less volatile would wander no more. Voltaire would be attracted by it, but while finding pleasure in it would not have patience to remain. A little lower down, on the same hill as Virgil, Xenophon, with simple bearing, looking in no way like a general, but ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... home from the village that morning, a pale, hollow-eyed wreck, the mother had asserted her authority. She would not hear of the girl's crossing the threshold again; she had put her on the sofa and dosed her with sal-volatile. And Marcella was too exhausted to rebel. She had only stipulated that a note should be sent to Aldous, asking him to come on to Mellor with the news as soon as the verdict of the coroner's jury should be given. The jury had been sitting all ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said he, 'come to that time when I wish all bitterness and animosity to be at an end. I have never done her any serious harm—nor would I; though I could give her a bite!— but she must provoke me much first. In volatile talk, indeed, I may have spoken of her not much to her mind; for in the tumult of conversation malice is apt to grow sprightly! and there, I hope, I am ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... confronted by a Frenchman, affable, volatile, affectionate. "Ah cher ami, do not leave me with the abruptness. You desolate mon coeur. Alors—return to me ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulfur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... did she, as we shrewdly suspected, pay quite as much attention to the cares of her little menage as was rendered incumbent by the limited amount of her husband's income. She seemed, in short, the same thoughtless pleasure-loving, pleasure-seeking girl as ever; now that she was captured, the same volatile butterfly as when surrounded and chased by butterflies like herself. But her captor? asks some modern Petruchio—had he not, or could he not contrive ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... ceasing to pine for his mother and sister; and though he still came to Arthur for the night, or in any trouble, it was more and more difficult to get him to submit to be washed and dressed in his tight European clothes, or to say his prayers. He was always sleepy at night and volatile in the morning, and could not be got to listen to the little instructions with which Arthur tried to arm him against Mohammedanism into which the poor little fellow was likely to drift as ignorantly and unconsciously as ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inducing so volatile a people to persevere in so steady a system of conduct as that which you had laid down—a system attended with much inconvenience and loss to particulars, while it presented but little to strike ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... sure, therefore, that she would get her opportunity of talking to Aunt Sophia, she revived for the time being to enjoy herself. Her volatile spirits rose. She laughed and talked, and ate an enormous meal. After the sort of tea-dinner was over the three girls went out by ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... the room without express leave, the rest dissuaded him from asking, lest he should excite further suspicion. His apparent neglect made poor Wildney even more unhappy, for Wildney loved Eric as much as it was possible for his volatile mind to love any one; and it seemed hard to be deserted in the moment of disgrace and sorrow by so close ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... when they come to England they are generally put to learn to Persons that know little of their Temper, who keep them drudging on in what is of least Use to them, in pedantick Methods, too tedious for their volatile Genius. ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... The volatile urchin, who might have been about thirteen years of age, became preternaturally grave all of a sudden, and, looking up earnestly in his questioner's face, said, "Really, Henry, you are becoming unreasonable in your old age, to ask ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... temper of my soul; and the melancholy propensities of my earliest infancy seemed to revive with an instinctive energy, which rendered them the leading characteristics of my existence. Indeed, the world has mistaken the character of my mind; I have ever been the reverse of volatile and dissipated. I mean not to write my own eulogy, though with the candid and sensitive mind I shall, I trust, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... in a swoon; and truly her sobs, and small screeches, and little stampings and kickings, amazed young gallipot. Smelling salts were applied;—they were rather weak, so the widow inhaled the pleasing odour with a sigh, but did not recover. Sal volatile was next put into requisition;—this was something stronger, and made her wriggle on her chair, and throw her head about with sundry "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" The boy, beginning to be alarmed at the extent of the widow's syncope, bethought himself of assafoetida; ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... point the outraged feelings of Lady Craikshaw exploded, and she rang the bell, and ordered Miss Amabel to be put to bed with a dose of rhubarb and magnesia (without sal-volatile), for telling stories. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... beautiful, busy Paris—is as brilliant as ever; every one seemingly bent on pleasure, light and volatile as the air they breathe. In this city life hovers April-like between a tear and a smile! Visiting the great Cathedral of Notre Dame, we witnessed an impressive funeral service. The coffin in the centre of the nave, near the transept, was covered ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... such there are, which I very much doubt.] Milk, although manufactured in the body of an animal, is a vegetable substance; this is shown by analysis; it readily turns acid, and far from showing traces of any volatile alkali like animal matter, it gives a neutral ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... could suppose that the Dutchman, methodical, calculating, persevering, was next neighbour to the fiery, war-like, and impetuous Frenchman? Or that the southern and western Irish, vehement, impassioned, and volatile, came from the same stock which pervades the whole west of Britain? England, for centuries the abode of industry, effort, and opulence, is subject to the same government, and situated in the same latitude as Ireland, where indolence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... acting on the nerves of the nose. This is an invariable rule; and, when we perceive an odor, we may be sure that parts of the material, from which it emanates, are escaping. If we perceive the odor of an apple, it is because parts of the volatile oils of the apple enter the nose. The same is true when we ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... which it had been impregnated, though it had been heavy enough to adhere to the fabric for hours, had also been volatile enough to have disappeared completely, leaving a residue which was identified as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... friend, it is de fortune of war. Why you so sad?" exclaimed the volatile Frenchman. "Another day we take two English ship, and then make all right. Have you never been in England? Fine country, but not equal to 'la belle France;' too much fog ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... One would think it was the Bishop and all his Canons, and promotion depending on it, she has baked so many cakes and put out so many dinner napkins! I don't envy the young man. She will have no wits left at all to entertain him with. I actually wound up by administering some sal-volatile to her.' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in opinion, prone to regret his acts, prudent, rash, religious, reverent, self-confident, sincere, singular in mode of thinking, strong, temperate, unreserved, unsteady, valuable in friendship, variable, versatile, violent, volatile, wily, and worthy.' Zadkiel concludes thus:—'The square of Saturn to the moon will add to the gloomy side of the picture, and give a tinge of melancholy at times to the native's character, and also a disposition to look at the dark side of things, and lead him to despondency; ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Compassion[x]; who delighteth in Mercy[y]; who waiteth to be gracious[z]; and endureth, with much Long-suffering, even the Vessels of Wrath fitted to Destruction[a]. He intimately knows our Frame[b], and our Circumstances; he sees the Weakness of the unformed Mind; how forcibly the volatile Spirits are struck with a thousand new amusing Objects around it, and born away as a Feather before the Wind; and, on the other hand, how, when Distempers seize it, the feeble Powers are over-born in a Moment, and render'd incapable of any Degree of Application and Attention. ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... possibilities. Or, we may call it stored energy he has; for such is money, the finest, subtlest, most potent form of stored energy; it may command the highest fruits of genius, the lowest fruits of animality; it is also volatile, elusive. Our young friend has many powerful batteries of it. But he is no electrician. Some he will happily waste without harm to himself. Much of it, apparently, he will convert into that champagne he now drinks. For a ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... looking at each other, and then at M. de Bois, the only one who expressed no surprise, but seemed rather more gratified than moved when he beheld the countess sink back in her chair, and apply her bottle of sal volatile to her nose. The shock to her pride had been so terrible, that she appeared to be ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... buttercup again. Flirtations are forgotten, conquests are abandoned, brothers are worshipped with the old worship; and we start back, and rub our eyes, and wonder whether life is all a delusion, and whether this pure creature of home and bread-and-butter is the volatile, provoking little puss who gave our hand such a ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... her teeth hard. A strange light gleamed in the blue of her eyes. She moved across to the washing-stand and poured out a stiff dose of sal volatile. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Lady Thistlewood uttered a little cry and at once bells were rung for sal-volatile. Her ladyship, it seems, is subject to attacks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... turned to Elsie and said, "I think as how the missis wants some sal volatile; she looks a bit faint—she don't seem to ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... muscles. Inasmuch as it has hitherto been impossible to penetrate the economy of the invisible, men have sought to interpret this unknown mechanism through that with which they were already familiar, and have considered the nerves as a canal conducting an excessively fine, volatile, and active fluid, which in rapidity of motion and fineness was held to excel ether and the electric spark. This fluid was held to be the principle and author of our sensibility and power of motion, and hence received ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... up. render light &c. adj.; lighten, leaven. Adj. light, subtile, airy; imponderous[obs3], imponderable; astatic[obs3], weightless, ethereal, sublimated; gossamery; suberose[obs3], suberous[obs3]; uncompressed, volatile; buoyant, floating &c. v.; portable. light as a feather, light as a thistle, light as air; lighter than air; rise like a balloon, float like ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of tragic fretfulness. It was the uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself unwatched. Hilda moved silently to descend, and then demanded in a low tone whose harsh self-possession was a reproof to that volatile ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... murmuring to each other that all was lost. Drew tried in vain to rouse them, telling them that all depended on rigging a jury-mast forward as soon as possible. They answered only by growls; and at last broke into open reproaches. Even Will Cary's volatile nature, which had kept him up during the fight gave way, when Yeo and the carpenter came aft, and told ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... most accounts of particular persons are barren and useless. If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are transmitted[107] by tradition. We know how few can pourtray a living acquaintance, except by his most prominent and observable particularities, and the grosser features of his mind; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Psmith had confided to Mike, meeting him at the station in the family motor on the Monday, 'is a man of vast but volatile brain. He has not that calm, dispassionate outlook on life which marks your true philosopher, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... delighted to carry Patty off to her stateroom, there to talk to her or listen to her read aloud. Except for her maid, ma'amselle was alone, and Patty felt sorry for her and was glad to cheer her up. Not that she needed cheering exactly, for she was of a merry and volatile disposition, except when she gave way to exhibitions of temper, which were ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... rather than curse. Of course Caroline had done her harm, she had, perhaps ruined Martin's life as well as her own, but the mistake had been originally Maggie's in trusting Caroline with more confidence than her volatile nature would allow her to hold. And now, as she looked at Caroline and saw that pretty pink and white face, the slim beautiful body, the grace and gaiety, and childish amiability, her whole soul responded. Here was a friend, even though an indiscreet ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... relapse of its former distemper, that is, of the bite of the mad-dog. I told them, if any thing in the world would save his life, I judged it might be the former vomit of volatile salts; they could not tell what to do, nevertheless such is the malignancy of the world, that as soon as it was given, they ran away and left me, saying, he was now certainly a dead man, to have a vomit given in that condition. Nevertheless it ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... made up out of many people, were composite, and never individual. That the chair (for table) and other matters were undoubtedly from her, but that other traits were not hers at all; and that in Miss Moucher's "Ain't I volatile" his friends had quite correctly recognized the favourite utterance of a different person. That he felt nevertheless he had done wrong, and would now do anything to repair it. That he had intended to employ the character in an ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of Figaro: a character impossible for northern people to place outside of a madhouse, yet daily to be found in southern Europe. Rash, headstrong, full of deviltry, splendid appetite, and not much conscience—volatile, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... little sorrowfully. Now that they were nearing the end of the voyage, many cares pressed upon him, which to the volatile nature of Arthur seemed only theme for adventure. Whither to bend their steps in the first instance, was a matter for grave deliberation. They had letters of introduction to a gentleman near Carillon on the Ottawa, and others to a family at Toronto. Former friends ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... majesties had too much tenderness for their volatile offspring to subject her to either of the schemes of the equally unscrupulous philosophers. Indeed, the most complete knowledge of the laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was impossible to classify her. She was a fifth imponderable ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... from the Rev. John Clayton, rector of Crofton in Wakefield, in which he states the particulars of several cures which he had effected of persons bitten by mad dogs. His principal remedy seems to have been the "volatile salt of amber" every four hours, and in the intervals, "Spec. Pleres Archonticon and Rue powdered ana gr. 15." I am not learned enough to understand what these drugs are called in ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... A volatile pennant floated out from a near-bye peak, hanging about its crest like faint smoke. Then along the brow of the pass writhed a wisp of drifting, twisting flakelets, idling hither and yon, astatic and aimless, settling in a hollow. They sensed a thrill and rustle to ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... is illustrated by Fig. III., which is a perspective view of a furnace adapted for the reduction of ores and salts of non-volatile metals and similar chemical compounds. Figs. IV. and V. are longitudinal and transverse sections, respectively, through the same, illustrating the manner of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... thank my Lord for my escape and for the loosing of my prosperity from the trap of trouble." Now when the Birder heard these words of the Birdie he repented and regretted his folly, and he cried, "O my sorrow for what failed me of the slaughter of this volatile," and as he sank ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... less of what may be called artificial manures are required during growth. But without some skill in this matter it is not safe, for if much of the material is not thoroughly decayed (which, however, has then lost most of its volatile ingredients) it is, in the common vernacular of the gardener, too rank to give good growth and results, whether it be in fruits, flowers, or foliage. For example, in Henderson's horticulture he recommends, as ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... there followed a long silence. That volatile young person, little troubled as she was by sensitiveness, guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... manner, the magic of spoken words, are gone with the moment. The conversations of two centuries ago are today like champagne which has lost its sparkle. We may recall their tangible forms—the facts, the accessories, the thoughts, even the words, but the flavor is not there. It is the volatile essence of gaiety and wit that especially characterizes French society. It glitters from a thousand facets, it surprises us in a thousand delicate turns of thought, it appears in countless movements and shades of expression. But it refuses to ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... protracted doldrums dominated mostly by conversation, a spark was fired. Back to his old Eastern haunts came volatile, enthusiastic Dick Squires, a National Junior Davis Cupper while at school in Bronxville, a nationally ranked Squash Racquets player 10 years ago, now in mid-thirties and still a 'natural.' Exposed ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... had not been just as busy in trying to make me fond of her as she was in surmounting the difficulties of her lessons. But she was very young; and although, as her father declared, it was her natur' to run after the men, there was every reason to hope that a year or two would render her less volatile, and add to those sterling good qualities which she really possessed. In heart and feeling she was a modest girl, although the buoyancy of her spirits often carried her beyond the bounds prescribed by decorum, and often called forth ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... undignified scuffle a few hours before. No animosity seems to have persisted between these two princes of the realm of France, and this may be the moment to introduce the picture which Cardinal de Retz, whose head was held in the folding door, painted very soon after of the volatile duke who had held him there to be stabbed from behind. Both writers began their memoirs in 1652, and no one has ever decided which is the more elegant of the two unique conpositions. The conjunction between two of the greatest ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... in the drawing-room, he seemed to be making himself eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolized in a tete-a-tete, since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea-table. She resigned no domestic function to her daughter; and the matron's blooming good-natured face, with the two volatile pink strings floating from her fine throat, and her cheery manners to husband and children, was certainly among the great attractions of the Vincy house—attractions which made it all the easier to fall in love with the daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... shovelling down the guano, and a number of stout negroes are employed in the hold to distribute it as it comes down through a canvas shoot. They have to wear iron masks, as the fresh guano is stronger than volatile salts, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... of men who, being nearly all Irish, are of all others the most volatile and easily led astray. Should they, therefore, hereafter be seduced by the various temptations by which they are surrounded, I hope to escape the imputation of judging too hastily and partially. The men were principally raised in the north of Ireland, and are nearly all Protestants; ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... a little sal volatile and nux vomica to the swooning patient; while Hilda set about remedying the damage. "That's better," Sebastian said, in a mollified tone, when she had brought another basin. There was a singular note of cloaked triumph in his voice. "Now, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... sympathetic, but she had never admired the wife as much as she did the husband. She was too volatile in the early days, and held ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... it cool, restful, and, in spite of the dust, absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope, entirely inodorous. The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious emanations and decay—the very dust itself in its fine impalpability was volatile with a spicelike piquancy, and left ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... that Clove-gilly-flowers must never be boiled in the Liquor: that evaporateth their Spirits, which are very volatile: But make a strong infusion of them, and besides hang a Bag of them in the bung. I conceive that it is good to make the Liquor pretty strong (not too much, but so as the taste may be gratefull) of some strong herbs, as Rosemary, Bay-leaves, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... to be feared in a person of your disposition. Many of your volatile, thoughtless, worldly-minded companions, destitute of all your holier feelings, living without object or purpose in life, and never referring to the law of God as a guide for thought or action, may nevertheless manifest ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... be your friend, for that's too cold; I won't be your sister, for that's too familiar. Let me see—what ought I to be? I can't be your guardian, for I'm too volatile—what, then, can I be? Oh, I see! I'll tell you, Captain Randolph, what I'll be. I'll pretend that I'm your ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... to me, "this is the boot-room, where you will have to put on and take off your boots whenever you go out or come in. This boy is going out, and will take you into the playground with him," and away she went, leaving me in the hands of the volatile Flanagan. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... as a man caught in the pangs of removing, unattached to either home; and I bent from my windows over the throngs of festal promenaders, taciturn and uneasy. I fancied that wings were sprouting from my brown dressing-robe, and that they were the volatile wings of the moth or dragon-fly. But to establish myself at Marly before the baron, would not that be a breach of compact? Would he not make it a casus belli? Luckily, we were getting through April: to-morrow it would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... death had shocked him considerably by its suddenness, but he was too much of a volatile Frenchman to be morbidly anxious about ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... honoured guest at the houses of the citoyens Saint-Pierre and Florian. Not that, as an obedient daughter should, she held her father's consent to be an indispensable preliminary to her settlement in life. The latter, early left a widower, and a man of a self-indulgent, volatile temper, as enterprising with women as he was in business, had never paid much heed to her and had left her to develop at her own sweet will, untrammelled whether by parental advice or parental affection, more careful to ignore than to safeguard the girl's ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... of the day lies in more direct caricature, and our volatile friend Punch does the needful in his wicked sallies of wit, and his fertile pencil. His sharp rubs are perhaps more effective to John Bull's temper, who can take a blow with Punch's truncheon and bear ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... or painting, for the cultivation of which their circumstances would appear most propitious. It is as impossible to find a female Raphael, or a female Handel, as a female Shakespeare or Newton. Women are intellectually more desultory and volatile than men; they are more occupied with particular instances than with general principles; they judge rather by intuitive perceptions than by deliberate reasoning or past experience. They are, however, usually superior to men in ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... is young, volatile, capricious, but generous as the day. Be open with her; tell her why you leave Oakhurst and how impossible ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... that afternoon, the order of the day, as from the Grosvilles to Lady Kitty. Ashe wondered how she liked it. The girls followed her about with shawls. Lady Grosville installed her on a sofa in the back drawing-room. A bottle of sal-volatile appeared, and Caroline Grosville, instead of going twice to Sunday-school, devoted herself to fanning Kitty, though the weather—which was sunny, with a sharp east wind—suggested, to Ashe's thinking, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are the best. A distant friend, upon one of these occasions, wrote a letter as brief as brief might be, but of its kind altogether perfect. It ran thus: "I have heard of your great grief, and I send you a simple pressure of the hand." Coming from a gay and volatile person, it had for the mourner great consolation; pious quotations, and even the commonplaces of condolence, would have seemed forced. Undoubtedly those persons do us great good, or they wish to, who tell us to be resigned—that we ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... water on the face and hands, while the fit is on, and especially immersing the feet in cold water, will afford relief. Fetid smells are also proper; such as the burning of feathers, leather, or the smoke of sulphur, and the application of strong volatile alkali, or other pungent matters to the nostrils. To effect a radical cure, the cold bath, mineral waters, and other tonics are necessary. In Germany however, they cure hysteric affections by eating carraway seeds finely powdered, with a little ginger and salt, spread ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the volatile heart of San Francisco throbs responsive to the sliding values of these ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... treatment by the slow process of admitting steam, or using other means of raising the temperature to the respective boiling points of such hydrocarbons, and so driving them off by evaporation." In the centrifugal method carbon-bisulphide, or some other volatile agent, is admitted and is driven through the material by centrifugal force, when the necessary reactions take place, and is allowed to escape in the form of hydrocarbons. A machine differing only in slight particulars from the above is used ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... simple, gentlemen," he said, "and is merely one of the minor triumphs of knowledge over ignorance. On my journey from Johnson Castle to the lake I had not made very good time, and saw that only by heroic measures could I hope to overtake my volatile young friends here, before they passed this point. At Oswego I procured a larger craft and a fresh crew. From the outset I saw that these fellows regarded my innocent tub with a certain degree of suspicion, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... to suppress the rebellion, called in Rezin to help him. The latter was already on the way when Jotham was laid with his fathers (736 B.C.), and it was Ahaz, the son of Jotham, who had to bear the brant of the assault. He was barely twenty years old, a volatile, presumptuous, and daring youth, who was not much dismayed by his position.** Jotham had repaired the fortifications of Jerusalem, which had been left in a lamentable state ever since the damage done to them in the reign of Amaziah;*** his successor now set to work to provide ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... stubborn and irreclaimable imp of evil nature peers out sullenly and doggedly, or sparkles on you a pair of small snake-eyes, fruitful of deceit and cunning. The better boy, easily moved, that might become anything, mercurial and volatile, "most ignorant of what he's most assured," reflects on his face the pleasure of having his picture taken, and smiles good-humoredly, standing in this worst of pillories, to be pelted along a lifetime with unforgetting and unforgiving glances. With many of these boys, this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... flue, E. As this air rises through the mass of incandescent fuel, its oxygen combines with an atom of carbon and forms carbonic oxide. This gas that is disengaged from the upper part of the fuel consists chiefly of nitrogen and carbonic oxide, mixed with volatile hydrocarburets derived from the fuel used. This gas, through the action of the air upon the fuel, is called "air gas," in order to distinguish it from the "water gas" formed in the second period ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... business, and became one of the prominent citizens of the town. The leisurely, let-things-drift spirit of the region, which could be so easily stirred to violent storms and ardent enthusiasms, was near akin to his own volatile nature. Nobody in the town could be more quickly and more thoroughly convinced by first appearances than he, and nobody held opinions more volubly and more aggressively, so that from the start he had assumed ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... is not more certain that Sarah Gamp liked her beer drawn mild, than it is that your Englishman likes his poetry cut short; and so, accordingly, it often happens that some estimable paterfamilias takes up an odd volume of Browning his volatile son or moonstruck daughter has left lying about, pishes and pshaws! and then, with an air of much condescension and amazing candour, remarks that he will give the fellow another chance, and not condemn him unread. So saying, he opens the book, and carefully selects the very shortest poem ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... me—the women in tears. He will marry his grandchildren's German governess, and there is nothing to be done. In such cases nothing is ever to be done. You can easily distract an aged man's volatile affections, and attach them to a new charmer. But she is just as ineligible as the first; marry he will, always a young woman. Now if a respectable virgin or widow of, say, fifty, could hand him a love philtre, and gain his heart, appearances would, more or less, be saved. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... He trusts to Ingerman playing that part of the game. He's as artful as a pet fox. I bought soap, and a pound of sal volatile, but he did up ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... let my friend apply it as he please: Beat not the dirty paths where vulgar feet have trod, But give the vigorous fancy room. For when, like stupid alchymists, you try To fix this nimble god, This volatile mercury, The subtile spirit all flies up in fume; Nor shall the bubbled virtuoso find More than fade insipid mixture left behind.[6] While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come, And on my verse pronounce their saucy doom; The ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... only in trivial quantities, at enormous expense and with exceeding labour; it is so volatile that you cannot keep it for three days. I have sometimes thought that with a little ingenuity I might make it more stable, I might so modify it that, like radium, it lost no strength as it burned; and then I should possess the greatest secret that has ever been in the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... along with her little hands extended, to catch the butterfly that tempted her on from flower to flower. My brother Henry was two years younger than myself, and was at the time I speak of a remarkably handsome, active boy, of ten years of age—full of fun and mischief, unsteady and volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used to say to me—'How ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... obedient prostrating to the Supreame power the authoritie you would entrust me with, for which I give you my humble thanks; for this wisdome of yours hath animated my caution of assumeing this burden, which is so volatile, slippery and heavy, that I may justly feare it will breake my Limbs." It might be thought by some, he said, that the emergency would excuse his accepting this authority, but the King would judge him, and if his information were prejudiced, his punishment might be severe. ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... David Jenison had won more than his spurs; these volatile, impressionable people, in disdain for their own positions in life, were saying, "Blood will tell." Down to the lowliest menial the sentiment regarding him underwent a subtle but noticeable change. He was no longer the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in front of his eyes. "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of this," said Dr. May, seeing that the discussion was injuring Margaret more and more. "Go away to my study, sir, and wait till I come to you. All of you out of the room. Flora, fetch the sal volatile." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... haughty lords; and, in a word, the first tumult of the restoration being over, the troops of the Allies withdrawn, and the memory of recent sufferings and disasters beginning to wax dim amidst the vainest and most volatile of nations, there were abundant elements of discontent afloat among all those classes who had originally approved of, or profited by, the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... captain, which was prolonged and repeated from one end to the other by command and obedience. The subordination, regularity, silence, and serious deportment so remarkable on this ship, formed a system of social order rigid and free, in contrast with the city of Naples, so volatile, so passionate, and tumultuous. Oswald was occupied with Corinne and the impressions she received; but his attention was sometimes diverted from her by the pleasure he felt in finding himself in his native country. And indeed are not ships and the open sea a second country to an Englishman? Oswald ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... van with a red-hot poker; and, in my opinion, she was the most formidable of the party. The waiting maid brought up the rear, dreading to stay alone in the servants' hall, smelling to a broken bottle of volatile salts, and expressing her terror ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... attained as the husband of Aminta, forgot all else—even the terrible responsibility which weighed on him as the chief of a faction of forbidden societies, and the perpetual dangers with which it menaced him. Monte-Leone had an energetic heart but a volatile mind, over which the accidents of life glide like the runner of a sleigh over polished ice, almost without ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... distinct in all its parts, and then applying the gallo-nitrate, I have quite succeeded in obtaining first-rate negatives. It is well to prepare only a small quantity of aceto-nitrate at once, as the acetic acid is of a sufficiently volatile nature to escape from the solution, which is a not unfrequent cause of the general darkening of the picture. It would be well to substitute a more fixed acid for the acetic if this be practicable, as it is in the collodion process, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... the nobility countenanced his design, encouraged his proposals, and subscribed with great liberality. He related of the Duke of Chandos particularly, that upon receiving his proposals he sent him ten guineas. But the money which his subscriptions afforded him was not less volatile than that which he received from his other schemes; whenever a subscription was paid him, he went to a tavern; and as money so collected is necessarily received in small sums, he never was able to send his poems to the press, but for many ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... before named; but that only brother was a second self. Not that he resembled me in any respect, for he was beautiful to a prodigy, and I an ordinary child; he was wholly free from any predilection for learning, being mirthful and volatile in the highest degree; and though he listened when I read to him the mysterious marvels of my favorite nursery books, I doubt whether he ever bestowed an after- thought on any thing therein contained. The brightest, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... of which my coming interrupted, but let us all drink it together. Aimee, my love to you, dear. Let me congratulate you upon the fortitude and courage with which you ignored those lying reports of my death. I had fears that I might find you alone in a darkened room, with tear-stained eyes and sal volatile by your side. This is infinitely better. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... end of female education is to get a husband, this likewise is the general subject of female advice: and the dreadful denunciation against those volatile girls, who will not listen patiently to the lectures of wrinkled wisdom, is, that they will die unmarried, or throw themselves away upon some worthless fellow, who will never be able to keep ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... leisure to analyse, but, not understanding it, never got very far, except that, superficially, it had been more or less physical. From the moment he saw her he was conscious that she was different; insensibly the exquisitely volatile charm of her enveloped him, and he betrayed it, awaking her, first, to uneasy self-consciousness; then uneasy consciousness of him; then, imperceptibly, through distrust, alarm, and a thousand inexplicable psychological emotions, to a wistful interest that ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... I was volatile enough to repeat to him a little epigrammatick song of mine, on matrimony, which Mr. Garrick had a few days before procured to be set to musick by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... letters actively concerned with the present condition of literary criticism. This is a novel preoccupation for them and one which is, we believe, symptomatic of a general hesitancy and expectation. In the world of letters everything is a little up in the air, volatile and uncrystallised. It is a world of rejections and velleities; in spite of outward similarities, a strangely different world from that of half a dozen years ago. Then one had a tolerable certainty that the new star, if the new star was to appear, would burst upon our vision in the ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... places two or three miles of channel to count upon. But Offutt and his goods arrived at last, and Lincoln and he got them immediately into position, and opened their doors to what commerce could be found in New Salem. There was clearly not enough to satisfy the volatile mind of Mr. Offutt, for he soon bought Cameron's mill at the historic dam, and made Abraham superintendent also of that branch of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... The Bishop cauterized the wound, although it seemed too late to be any use; he was getting cold and faint. However, by dint of being walked up and down between two men, and having two whole bottles of brandy administered to him, a glass at a time, besides sal volatile, chloroform, and every stimulant we had, he got through the night. The Bishop sat up with him all night, and I could hear him, when at last I went to bed, calling out at intervals, "Oh, Allah! Oh, Lord Bishop!"—so terrible was the pain he suffered in his arm. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... is why I am no colourist. That is why I worship the inexorable rigour of form. We of the South, Mr. Heard, are drenched in volatile beauty. . . . And yet one never wearies of these things! It is what you call a glamour, an interlude of witchcraft. Nature is a-tremble with the miraculous. She beckons us to explore her strange places. She says: Tread ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... nitrogen is the most precious of plant foods, and as the nitrate beds and deposits are rapidly becoming exhausted, we must look to the useful legumes to help us out until the scientists shall be able to fix the unlimited but volatile supply which the atmosphere contains, and thus to remove the certain, though remote, danger of a nitrogen famine. That this will be done in the near future by electric forces, and with such economy as to make the product ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... Kelly returned to the cabin, he found that his sister had fainted away through terror. Volatile salts, and the assurance that all her future fears would be entirely groundless, had the effect of restoring her very ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... called the glory of God? And it was Jack who had set all this before her clear as daylight. No wonder the excellent woman was disconcerted. She went to bed gloomily with her headache, and would tolerate no ministrations, neither of sal-volatile nor eau-de-Cologne, nor even of green tea. "It always does Miss Dora a power of good," said the faithful domestic who made this last suggestion; but Miss Leonora answered only by turning the unlucky speaker out of the room, and locking the door against any fresh intrusion. Miss ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... 'Nothing. I have sal volatile in my room—stuff to take for a cold. I only want to get off my wet things and go to bed—I can sleep now. Don't be frightened ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... my dear; and you take this one, Mr. Armadale; and give them to me as I want them. Ah, poor dear, I know what's the matter with him! Want of power here, major—cold, acid, and flabby. Ginger to warm him; soda to correct him; sal volatile to hold him up. There, Sammy! drink it before it settles; and then go and lie down, my dear, in that dog-kennel of a place they call the cabin. No more music!" added Mrs. Pentecost, shaking her forefinger at the proprietor ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... attractions captivate foreigners, and induce them to squander considerable sums of money in the country. Hence, were the opera-house shut up, commerce would suffer; there would be an absolute void in the pleasures of the Parisians; and, as experience proves, these volatile people would sooner resign every thing most valuable than any portion of their amusements. Besides, without such an establishment, the talents of singers and dancers could not be maintained in their present perfection. It holds out to them constant encouragement ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... face, and the redness of her eyes, made this impossible, and she was obliged to lie down again. Esther left the room, and Miss Weston did not feel intimate enough with Jane to ask any questions; she gave her some sal volatile, talked kindly to her of her weakness, and offered to read to her; all the time leaving an opening for confidence, if Jane wished to relieve her mind. The book which lay near her accounted, as she thought, ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forth gases, and that heaves and sighs with internal agitations. And in the midst of all this are a dozen of us. We are lean and wretched, and our bones show through our tight-stretched skins. We do not sing and chatter and laugh. We play no pranks. For once our volatile and exuberant spirits are hopelessly subdued. We make plaintive, querulous noises, look at one another, and cluster close together. It is like the meeting of the handful of survivors after the day of the ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... smelling salts or sal volatile in this subdivision of the Ethiopian region, I should have forthwith fainted on reading this, but I well knew there was not, so I blushed until the steam from my soaking clothes (for I truly was "in a deuce of a mess") went up in a cloud ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a small phial containing spirits of hartshorn, sal volatile, very strong, that would stab through the nostrils, like a stiletto, deep into the gray kernels that lie in the core of the brain. Excellent in cases of sudden syncope or fainting, such as sometimes require the opening of windows, the dashing on of cold water, the cutting of stays, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dramatic as well as its musical beauties may be preserved. There is no lovelier merit in Mozart's music than the depth and tenderness with which the honest love of Susanna for Figaro and the Countess for her lord are published; and it is no demerit that the volatile passion of the adolescent Cherubino and the frolicsome, scintillant, vivacious spirit of the plotters are also given voice. Mozart's music could not be all that it is if it did not enter fully and unreservedly into the spirit of the comedy; it is what it ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the weight of care from my mind. Colin had got home, and my friends were out for rescue. So volatile is the mood of 19 that I veered round from black despair to an unwarranted optimism. I saw myself already safe, and Laputa's rising scattered. I saw my hands on the treasure, and Henriques' ugly neck below ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... for the sake of another. Her sister was larger and possessed a reserve that might have been mistaken for deepness. He felt that she was hardly in sympathy with the motives of the younger, more volatile woman. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... prowess and wonderful exploits, delivered in measured language and an imposing seriousness of aspect." The bishop represents him as vain and irritable, but distinguished by good feeling and principle. Another officer was Ponson, described as five feet six inches high, lively and animated in excess, volatile, noisy, and chattering a l'outrance. "He was hardy," says the bishop, "and patient to admiration of labor and want of rest." And of this last quality the following wonderful illustration is given: "A continued watching of five days and nights together, when the rebels were growing ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... fall into disorder unless officers of the law are in attendance. This is so well understood that the police are always in evidence where there are large congregations of people at church or theatre, where a prominent man is to be seen or a procession is to pass. But the popular mass is a volatile thing, and in proportion to its size it expends little useful energy. It is never to be reckoned as equal in importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has a definite purpose ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... flowed just as fast, and, to do her justice, there was a sense of bitter pain in her heart, as she sat with her head bowed down, while the Brownes and Lord Hardy stood around trying to comfort her. Mrs. Browne offered her sal-volatile and called her "my poor dear;" Augusta put her arms around her neck; Allen fanned her gently, and Lord Hardy asked what he could do, while Mr. Browne said it was "plaguey hard on her, but somebody must go and see to them confounded custom-house chaps, or they would have every dud out of the ten ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... not what she could bear. She went quickly upstairs, and took a strong dose of sal-volatile, even while she heard Miss Monro calling ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of ground beetles (Carabidae) almost all possess a disagreeable and some a very pungent smell, and a few, called bombardier beetles, have the peculiar faculty of emitting a jet of very volatile liquid, which appears like a puff of smoke, and is accompanied by a distinct crepitating explosion. It is probably because these insects are mostly nocturnal and predacious that they do not present more vivid hues. They are chiefly remarkable for brilliant metallic tints ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... royalty, and often turn greatness to corruption, were added the gay, volatile, voluptuous part of the officers, who had obtained leave of absence from their respective cantonments, and who thought the hardships of a soldier excused the excesses of a libertine. These were chiefly young men of high birth, neglected ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... manner of growth to the preceding, is another importation from Europe now thoroughly at home here in wet soil. The volatile oil obtained by distilling its leaves has long been an important item of trade in Wayne County, New York. One has only to crush the leaves in one's ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... is driven from the nest she seeks in haste to scrape down over the eggs in order that they may not be visible. She besides squirts over them a very stinking fluid, whose disgusting smell adheres to the collected eggs and down. The stinking substance is however so volatile or so easily decomposed in the air that the smell completely disappears in a few hours. The eider, which some years ago was very numerous on Spitzbergen,[63] has of late years considerably diminished in numbers, and perhaps will soon be completely driven thence, if some restraint be not laid on ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... of intensity, that I summarize it. "Therese M., aged 24, shows physical stigmata of degeneration. The heredity is also bad; the father is a man of reckless and irregular conduct; the mother was at one time in a lunatic asylum. The patient was brought up in an orphanage, and was a troublesome, volatile child; she treated household occupations with contempt, but was fond of study. Even at an early age her lively imagination attracted attention, and the pleasure which she took in building castles in the air. From the age of seven to ten she masturbated. At her first communion she felt that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... exquisite necktie indicated the proper colour.[1624] He was equally particular about his conduct. Whatever his environment he observed the details of court etiquette. His stately elegance of manner easily unbent without loss of dignity, and although his volatile spirits and manner of living gave him the appearance of a bon vivant, lively and jocose, with less devotion to work than to society, it was noticeable that he attracted men of severer mould as ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... in the chosen King. He charmed these volatile and romantic Serbs by his naturalness. He seemed to take it so thoroughly for granted that he was the one man living who could rule them according to their aspirations, that they adopted the notion without reserve. The morning passed in a blaze of enthusiasm. Alec, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... propositions the description of the means is ever more monstrous than the pretence or end. For it is a thing more probable that he that knoweth well the natures of weight, of colour, of pliant and fragile in respect of the hammer, of volatile and fixed in respect of the fire, and the rest, may superinduce upon some metal the nature and form of gold by such mechanic as longeth to the production of the natures afore rehearsed, than that some grains of the medicine projected ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... grimace, and then raised her elbows, slightly lifting her shoulders. "As it shall please you, Senor. But he is gone—thees passion. Yess—what you shall call thees sentiment of lof—zo—as he came!" She threw her fingers in the air as if to illustrate the volatile and transitory passage of her affections, and then turned again to Joan with her ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... be no doubt that the oil, which was specially volatile, tended to vaporize and escape through the stoppers, and that this process was accelerated by the perishing, and I suggest also the hardening and shrinking, of the leather washers. Another expedition will have to be very careful on this point: they ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... take a 10-minim capsule of Terebine after meals, or charcoal, either as French Rusks ("Biscols Fraudin") or a teaspoonful of powdered charcoal between meals. One drop of creosote on a lump of sugar, peppermint water, and sal volatile may also be used. Sufferers should toast bread, and use ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... a shriek. She would be in hysterics in another moment. Mary, who was on the point of nausea, went hastily into her dressing-room and poured out a dose of sal-volatile. "Here!" she said peremptorily. "Drink this. I'll not listen to another word. And I don't wish to be obliged ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Princess Pauline Borghese, a lady with an infinity of admirers, was far more subtle in her methods. Her presents to Lady Nugent took the irresistible form of dresses of the latest Parisian fashion, and were eagerly accepted by that volatile little lady. Indeed, for ten months she seems to have been entirely dressed by Madame Le Clerc, who even provided little George Nugent's christening robe of white muslin, heavily embroidered in gold. Ladies may be interested ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... contentment, I know not how to wish them wiser at the expense of gayety. They play before me like motes in a sunbeam, enjoying the passing ray; whilst an English head, searching for more solid happiness, loses in the analysis of pleasure the volatile sweets of the moment. Their chief enjoyment, it is true, rises from vanity; but it is not the vanity that engenders vexation of spirit: on the contrary, it lightens the heavy burden of life, which reason too often weighs, merely to shift from one shoulder ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, but very few are aware how its force is wasted by diffusion: it is like a volatile essence in a bottle without a cork. When, on the other hand, it is concentrated—you may call it 'narrowed' if you please—there is hardly anything within its own sphere of action of which it is not capable. So many high motives (though also some ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... mortality. He who succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the lead in any one mode or path of excellence, may think himself very well off. It would not be fair to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia as dull, as wanting volatile salt; nor of the style of an Essay because it is too light and sparkling, because it is not a caput mortuum. So it is rather an odd objection to a work that it is made up entirely of 'brilliant passages'—at ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... wandering ballad-singer. These scenes were so engaging to the comedians that they could not be restrained from going ashore and mingling in the village diversions; and the Marquess, though impatient to rejoin his divinity, was too volatile not to be drawn into the adventure. The whole party accordingly disembarked, and were presently giving an exhibition of their talents to the assembled idlers, the Pantaloon, Harlequin and Doctor enacting ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... volatile than leaf, when breeze Of autumn most its natural moisture dries, And strips the fluttering foliage from the trees, Which, blown about, before its fury flies, Changes her humour, and her husband sees, Whom she some time had loved, with other eyes, And in her every wish ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... picture? Not at all. I know it is so with many, I do not say all, but with many. They disregard evil thoughts because they are such trifling things—like flies, so easily brushed away; like flies, so light and volatile; like flies, so little. And yet they utterly degrade and corrupt the heart. "The land was corrupted by reason of the swarm ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... use is a common kind of slack, and contains, on an average, 33.5 per cent. of volatile matter, including water, and 11.5 per cent. of ashes, leaving 55 per cent. of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... the education of both the young men, otherwise as excellent as the best teachers could render it, something of a narrow and restricted character; but though the disposition of the young Earl was lighter and more volatile than that of Julian, both the one and the other had profited, in a considerable degree, by the opportunities afforded them. It was Lady Derby's strict injunction to her son, now returning from the continent, that he should not appear at the Court of Charles. But having been for some time of age, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... looked at Stump. That broad-beamed navigator emptied his glass again, and gazed into it fixedly, apparently wondering why champagne was so volatile a thing. Tagg followed the skipper's example, but fixed his eyes on the bottle, perhaps in calculation. Royson, deeming it wise to hold his tongue, contented himself with closing the medicine chest, and thus making it possible for ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... I am much younger than thou, O king Menelaus, and thou art older and superior. Thou knowest of what sort are the errors of a youth; for his mind is indeed more volatile, and his counsel weak. Therefore let thy heart endure, and I myself will give thee the steed which I have received. And if indeed thou demandest anything else greater from my house, I should be willing to give it immediately rather than fall for ever, O Jove-nurtured, from thy good opinion, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... so quiet and self-contained, suddenly collapsed upon the nearest seat and went off in a violent attack of hysterics. One of the Austrian women rushed off for a glass of water, while the countesses ministered to her, in true story-book fashion, having with them a bottle of sal volatile which seems to be an important part of the equipment of every well-appointed foreign lady. And what do you think that heartless Lydia said between her laughter and her sobs? "If only one of us had had a kodak with us, to take a snapshot of Aunt Cassie with the ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... disastrous if the physical conduction of heat were permitted, for though the relux will turn out any radiated heat, it is a conductor of heat, and we would roast almost instantly. These artificial metals are both absolutely infusible and non-volatile. The ship has actually been in the limb of a star tremendously hotter than your ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... from the hops in boiling. First, the hop tannin, which, combining with a part of the proteids derived from the malt, precipitates them; second, the hop resin, which acts as a preservative and bitter; third, the hop oil, to which much of the fine aroma of beer is due. The latter is volatile, and it is customary, therefore, not to add the whole of the hops to the wort when it commences to boil, but to reserve about a third until near the end of the copper stage. The quantity of hops employed varies according to the type of beer, from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... of those old narrow ordinances Let us not hold too lightly. They are weights Of priceless value, which oppressed mankind Tied to the volatile will of their oppressors. For always formidable was the league 65 And partnership of free power with free will. The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds, Is yet no devious way. Straight forward goes The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his arrival in London, a noisy, empty interchange of chaff and laughter that he had been at a loss to account for. The Londoner is not well adapted for the irresponsible noisiness of jesting tongue that bubbles up naturally in a Southern race, and the effort to be volatile was the more noticeable because it so obviously was an effort. Turning over the pages of a book that told the story of Bulgarian social life in the days of Turkish rule, Yeovil had that morning come across ...
— When William Came • Saki
... were, and think it necessary to stimulate them by these shows, or whether the shows themselves, by too frequent repetition, have rendered the people indifferent about the objects of them.—Perhaps both these suppositions are true. The French are volatile and material; they are not very capable of attachment to principles. External objects are requisite for them, even in a slight degree; and the momentary enthusiasm that is obtained by affecting their senses subsides with ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady |
