"Duration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the illustration of that subject which has been called "the greatest of our social evils," and which, in its present aspect, is certainly one of the saddest that the statesman or the moralist is called upon to contemplate, and yet one the duration of which seems to be inevitably coexistent with every form of civilized society yet known to the world. The author has sought his end by means of a fictitious autobiography. This was of course. No unusual faculty in the selection of methods was necessary to the choice; for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... bloom for us, and over our pathway floated its perfume, while before our sight, its loveliness remained undiminished until that fatal delusion, Hope, intoxicated the senses and made us oblivions to reality. A brief spell—a charm of short duration, and the hallucination is dispelled, only to leave us seared and blasted, almost hating mankind, and wearing the mask of the hypocrite, leading a double life, to hide the sears left by unsuccessful ambition, or disappointed aspiration. ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... during those eight days, the empire was nothing to me," she writes. But she confesses to a certain feeling of vanity at her own spirit of self-sacrifice, and the sensibility which made her weep at the thought of leaving those she loved. This access of piety was of short duration, however, as her father quickly put to flight all her exalted visions of a cloister. Her dreams of an emperor for whom she lost a ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... render for ever celebrated in the annals of the world), we re-embarked at an early hour: and the wind rising, spread sail, a thing we had not done before, since we quitted the river Columbia. In the afternoon the clouds gathered thick and black, and we had a gust, accompanied with hail, but of short duration; the weather cleared up again, and about sundown we arrived at Le Fort de la Montee, so called, on account of its being a depot, where the traders going south, leave their canoes and take pack-horses to reach their several posts. We found here, as at Fort Vermilion, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... after the health of Mrs. Mirvan, and the rest of the Howard Grove family. The flattering conjecture which I have just acknowledged, had so wonderfully restored my spirits, that I believe I never answered him so readily, and with so little constraint. Very short, however, was the duration of this conversation; for we were soon most ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Clover, White, Think of me Cloves, Dignity Cobaea, Gossip Columbine, Folly Columbine, Red, Fearful Convolvulus, Bonds Convolvulus, Blue, Repose Convolvulus, Pink, Hopeless Coreopsis, Always Cheerful Coriander, Hidden worth Corn, Riches Corn Bottle, Delicacy Corn Cockle, Gentility Cornel Tree, Duration Coronella, Success to you Cosmelia, Charm of a blush Cowslip, Winning grace Crab (Blossom), Ill-nature Cranberry, Cure headache Cress, Stability Crocus, Cheerfulness Crocus, Saffron, Mirth Crown Imperial, Power Crowsbill, Envy Crowfoot, Ingratitude Cuckoo Plant, Ardour Cudweed, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... work it has done in the past is, for the most part, swept away, but fragments remain; and, if there were no other evidence, suffice to prove the general constancy of the operations of Nature in this world, through periods of almost inconceivable duration. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... matters when, on the 23d of June, orders came for the whole corps d'armee to hold itself in readiness for a forward movement. Rations for two days were distributed, and ammunition given out, as if for an attack of some duration. Meanwhile, to obviate any suspicion of our intentions, the gates of Strasbourg, on the eastern side, were closed—all egress in that direction forbidden—and couriers and estafettes sent off toward the north, as if to provide for the march of our force in that direction. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... early period of the colony, the grief of the widow was of short duration, for a suitor usually stood at her doorstep almost as the funeral procession ended. The most generally known, of such incidents, was the pursuit of Cicely Jordan, upon the death of her husband Samuel. Within two days Reverend Greville ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... persuading his master that any discomfort or lassitude was to be removed by some form of narcotic. This would have the further advantage of stupefying Mr. Egremont, and making him more ready to lapse under the old influence; while the duration and strength of the new one was ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... everything. Whoever wishes, may take the country and my riches. I have no use for them. Moreover, I intend some day or other, to quit everything, retire to the woods and mountains, and not show my face to any one. In this manner I will pass this life of [at best but] a few days' duration. If some spot pleases me, I shall sit down on it; and by devoting my time in prayers to God, perhaps my future state will be happy; this world I have seen well, and have found no felicity in it." After pronouncing these words, the king heaved a deep ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... hope of his return was general. "But what is grievous, Sire, is that, while believing in the re-establishment of the monarchy, there is no confidence in its duration." "Why is this?" I continued; "when the great artisan of revolution is no longer there, monarchy will become permanent; it is clear that, if Bonaparte returns to Elba, it will only be to break ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was also a ranchman, living about forty miles north and west on the Frio River, but was in the habit of bringing his family down to the Nueces about twice a year for a visit of from ten days to two weeks' duration. But this time, though we had been expecting the family for some little time, he came alone, remained over night, and at breakfast ordered his horse, as if expecting to return at once. The two ranchmen were holding a conference in the sitting-room when a Mexican boy came to me at the corrals ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... Florentine freethinker, the haughty Farinata, rises "with breast and brow erect, as holding Hell in great contempt," and tells Dante that the souls of the lost have no knowledge concerning things that are actually passing on earth, though they know the past and see the future. He foretells the duration of the poet's exile and boasts that he himself saved Florence from being razed to ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... the most favourable state for his peace and for his recovery, and it was of long duration, lasting even till he had made so much progress that he could leave his bed, and even speak a few words, though his weakness was much prolonged by the great difficulty with which he could take nourishment. About two ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... give the description of nature from the writings of a philosopher who has particularly studied this subject. It is true that M. de Luc, who furnishes the description, draws, from this process of nature, an argument for the perpetual duration or stability of mountains; and this is the very opposite of that view which I have taken of the subject; but as, in this operation of nature producing plants on stones, he allows the surface of the solid stone ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... finger, like a bullet or a marble? And time, too; how long was it from the serious sunrise to the joyous "sun-down" of an old-fashioned, puritanical, judaical first day of the week, which a pious fraud christened "the Sabbath"? Was it a fortnight, as we now reckon duration, or only a week? Curious entities, or non-entities, space and tithe? When you see a metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of these accidents, so as to lay his dry, clean palm on the absolute, does it not remind you of the hopeless task of changing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... unable either to hold their ground against the better arms and the thrusts of the Romans, or against their individual superior tenacity, increased nearly tenfold by the possible relay of eight ranks of the maniple. The maniples were self-renewing. Whereas with the Gauls the duration of the combat was limited to the strength of a single man, on account of the difficulties of close or tumultuous ranks, and the impossibility of replacing losses when they were fighting at ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... spongy dry leather, or touchwood all upon his bones. His head turned aside. A great man in his time, and Lord Chancellor. And now exposed to be handled and derided by some, though admired for its duration by others. Many flocking ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... thunderstorms, flooding, landslides, drought, and famine depending on the timing, intensity, and duration of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... thought of the means of disposing of the body and of hindering suspicion. The panorama of coming circumstances had presented itself to his mind with the rapidity of a flash of lightning, but in that infinitesimal duration of time Paolo had turned round, and the opportunity was gone. His mind had worked quickly, but it had not gone to the end of its reasoning. Now in the solitude of his studio he had found leisure to follow out the results to the last link of the chain. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... were touched on—the possible duration of the war, the new problems of what is virtually a new warfare, the possibility of a pestilence when warm weather came, owing to inadequately buried bodies. The Canadian troops had not arrived ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... recalling what many of us believed at the beginning of the war, is this about the future of English letters: "What we must really face is the fact that this harvest of volumes [the autumn publishings of 1914] will mark the end of what is called 'current literature' for the remaining duration of the war. There can be no aftermath, we can aspire to no revival. The book which does not deal directly and crudely with the complexities of warfare and the various branches of strategy will, from Christmas onwards, not be published at all." As they stand, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... the abbot, who held the court of the manor and received the profits of the borough according to the charter of Henry I. granting sac and soc and other privileges and right in the town. Later charters were given by Henry II., by John in 1204 (who also granted an annual fair of three days' duration, 29th of October, at the feast of St Modwen, and a weekly market on Thursday), by Henry III. in 1227, by Henry VII. in 1488 (Henry VII. granted a fair at the feast of St Luke, 18th of October), and by Henry VIII. in 1509. At the dissolution Henry VIII. founded on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... creature recurred to my remembrance, and every favourable circumstance of my own qualifications appeared in all the aggravation of self-conceit, to heighten my expectation! Neither was this transport of long duration. The dread of her being already disposed of intervened, and overcast my enchanting reverie! My presaging apprehension represented her encircled in the arms of some happy rival, and in consequence for ever lost to me. I was stung with this suggestion, and, believing the person who conducted her ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... some few minutes duration. Flora had dropped into a deep slumber. That silence was first broken by ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... more dignified and endurable, being the proper exercise of the soul when it is not moved by the affections of social virtue, or the offices of rational piety. The sympathetic pleasures are very extensive, very intense, and may be of very long duration; they are superior to all the foregoing, if there is a hearty affection, and are at their height along with the feeling of universal good will. Moral Enjoyments, from the consciousness of good affections ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... German prisoners aboard, wounded, and we swapped stories with them. It was really a lot of fun comparing notes, and they were pretty good chaps on the whole. They were as glad as we were to see land. Their troubles were over for the duration of the war. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... believe that almost any preacher, on reviewing a ministry of any considerable duration, would confess that his great mistake had been the neglect of individuals. If I may be permitted a personal reference: when, not long ago, I had the opportunity, as I was passing from one charge to another, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... between Crete and the great civilization of the Nile Valley. In this case there is, if not abundance, at all events a sufficiency of evidence as to an intercourse which extended through practically the whole duration of the Minoan Empire. For the Early Dynastic period of Egyptian history the evidence is somewhat slight, and the interpretation of it not always certain. When we come to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt—a period contemporaneous with Middle Minoan ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... pack up your traps"— "Collige sarcinas"—"Squire, you're wanted:" these dreadful citations were inevitable; come they must; but surely, as everybody thought, not in the eighteenth, or, perhaps, even the nineteenth century. Diis aliter visum. My grandfather, built for an Aeonian duration, did not come within hail of myself; whilst his gentle partner, my grandmother, who made no show of extra longevity, lived down into my period, and had the benefit of my acquaintance through half a dozen years. If she turned this piece of good fortune to no great ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ever was, or is, or will be free," she said, quite as forcibly as he could speak. "You probably knew when you came here that you would find a land tax-ridden from a great civil war of years' duration, and from newness of vast territory to be opened up and improved. You certainly studied ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... services were read by Mr. Campbell, and the evening passed in serious conversation. Mr. Campbell, although usually in good spirits, was certainly not so on that evening: whether it was that the severity of the winter which had set in and the known long duration of it which they had to encounter had an effect upon his spirits, he was melancholy as well as serious. He more than once referred to the former residence when in England, which was a very unusual thing for him to do, and by degrees the conversation ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... castes, and the import of all the Puranas; an account of asceticism and of the duties of a religious student; the dimensions of the sun and moon, the planets, constellations, and stars, together with the duration of the four ages; the Rik, Sama and Yajur Vedas; also the Adhyatma; the sciences called Nyaya, Orthoephy and Treatment of diseases; charity and Pasupatadharma; birth celestial and human, for particular purposes; also a description of places ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and though our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of the Indian Corps was destined to be of but short duration. During the night of the 20th the enemy regained all the trenches they had taken except some sap-heads near Givenchy. The Germans attacked at daybreak all along the line between Givenchy-les-La Bassee and la Quinque Rue. The Sirhind Brigade were driven back on ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... equal one-half the number of worlds which occupy but one division of heaven. All these worlds are full of creatures, gods, men, beasts, demons, who are born and who die. The universe itself is annihilated and another takes its place. The duration of each universe is called kalpa; and this is the way we obtain an impression of a kalpa: if there were a rock twelve miles in height, breadth, and length, and if once in a century it were only touched with a piece of the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... pipe-bowls used with these stems are mostly a combination of two substances—the red clay of Nish and the white earth of Rustchuk; they are graceful in form and sometimes decorated with gilding. It is characteristic of some of the Turks that they estimate the duration of a journey, and with it the distance traveled, by the number of pipes smoked, a particular size of pipe-bowl being understood. Dodwell, in his "Tour through Greece," says that "a Turk is generally very clean in his smoking apparatus, having a small ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... investigation, as adequate to the purpose for which they are preferred; and as the situation infers a certain degree of intimacy and sociability for the time, so to whatever heights it may have been carried, it is not understood to imply any duration beyond the length of the season. No intimacy can be supposed more close for the time, and more transitory in its endurance, than that which is attached to a watering-place acquaintance. The novelist, therefore, who fixes upon such a scene for his tale, endeavours to display ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... judge by this sort of discourse that it is the dead of night when all is quiet and at rest, and one of those intervals wherein men think of what they really are and what they really should be, how much is expected and how little performed. Our short duration here and the doubts of the hereafter should awe the most flagitious, if they reflected on them. The little taken in for meditation is the best employed in all their lives for if the uncertainty of our state and being is then brought before us who is ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... however, the phase was a passing one, and his emotion, though sincere and poignant, of brief duration. For young blood—happily for the human story, which otherwise would read altogether too sad—defies forebodings, gaily embraces risks; and, true soldier of fortune, marches out to meet whatever fate the battlefield of manhood may hold for it, a song in its mouth and a rose behind ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... planes. After rushing earthwards for two or three thousand feet, the whole aeroplane crumbles up and you see the main portion falling like a stone. And you (who have shed the skin of sentiment and calm restraint and become for the duration of the fight a bold bad pilot with the lust of battle in your blood) are ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... combine the time that they contain. Now, twenty-four hours fill up the space of one day—we mean of a day and of a night; and if, at the time of the solstices, they have not both an equal length, the time marked by Scripture does not the less circumscribe their duration. It is as tho it said: Twenty-four hours measure the space of a day, or a day is in reality the time that the heavens, starting from one point, take to return thither. Thus, every time that, in the revolution of the sun, evening and morning occupy the world, their periodical ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... in that place. tear, water from the eye. throw, to cast; to hurl. tier, a row or rank. throe, agony. threw (thru), did throw. tide, rising of the sea. through, from end to end. tied, bound; fastened. time, duration. toad, a harmless reptile. thyme, a pungent herb. towed, drawn by ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... of all human creatures for the familiar earth and limited sky. The feeling for landscape is often described as a modern one; still more so is that for antiquity, the sentiment of ruins. Du Bellay has this sentiment. The duration of the hard, sharp outlines of things is a grief to him, and passing his wearisome days among the ruins of ancient Rome, he is consoled by the thought that all must one day end, by the sentiment of the grandeur of nothingness—la grandeur du rien. With a strange ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... as to territory but brief as to duration. He dried himself with a gunny-sack and slipped shivering into his new raiment. "That there September Morn ain't got nothin' on me except looks," he spluttered. "And she is welcome to the looks. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... question, the importance of which, both in the present and for the future, can hardly be over-estimated. It does not depend on the vicissitudes, the duration, or even the termination of the war: rather it will become more gravely complicated as prospects of peace ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... existence, and that, far before that time is reached, his beauty and his power have fallen among weeds and forgetfulness. But there is a frailty, by comparison with which this ordinary flux of the human race seems to have a vast duration. Cases there are, and those not rare, in which a single week, a day, an hour sweeps away all vestiges and landmarks of a memorable felicity; in which the ruin travels faster than the flying showers upon the mountain-side, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... little time the wound swells, becomes acutely painful, and if it be over a bone or any other resisting part, the sensation is so intolerable as to produce fever. The agony subsides after a few hours' duration. In some cases the bite is unattended by any particular degree of annoyance, and in these instances it is to be supposed that the contents of the poison gland had become exhausted by previous efforts, since, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and prosperity of long duration have enervated the spirit, rusted the armor, and blunted the swords of our men. Dulled to ease, when shall they be aroused? Is not the present the most auspicious moment to quicken ...
— Japan • David Murray
... cost, hydrogen is but little used for commercial purposes. It is sometimes used as a material for the inflation of balloons, but usually the much cheaper coal gas is substituted for it. Even hot air is often used when the duration of ascension is very short. It has been used also as a source of heat and light in the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. Where the electric current is available, however, this form of apparatus has been displaced almost entirely by the electric ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... after I had been fairly settled in my new house, I thought very little more about the matter, and was beginning to enjoy the calm, quiet life which I so much loved, as nobody had meddled with me for upwards of three weeks. But, alas! this felicity was to be but of short duration. The election of a member of Parliament came on, and I had a vote—but I had determined to make no use of it; for, being but little of a politician, and, above all things, desiring to be on good terms with everybody, whatever might be their ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... with wonder and admiration. She doubtless read her triumph in my looks, and seemed for an instant to enjoy it. Decidedly, then, she had not lost all the feminine instincts, though the time of their duration was short on any ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... eleven points of the law. The baron was therefore convinced that the earl's outlawry was infallible, and that Matilda must either renounce her lover, or become with him an outlaw and a fugitive. In proportion, therefore, to the baron's knowledge of the strength and duration of her attachment, was his fear of the difficulty of its ever being overcome: her love of the forest and the chase, which he had never before discouraged, now presented itself to him as matter of serious alarm; and if her cheerfulness gave him hope on ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... engage in this design; whether we shall, for the defence of the Pragmatick sanction, begin another war on the continent, of which the duration cannot be determined, the expense estimated, or the event foreseen; whether we shall contend at once with all the princes of the house of Bourbon, and entangle ourselves in a labyrinth of different schemes; whether we shall provoke France to interrupt our commerce, and invade our colonies, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... experience in a life like his, so lonely amid its cold, abstract aspirations, to have this warm, maidenly spring-breath invading those chambers of his soul, hitherto occupied by shivering calculations regarding the duration and remoteness of the ice age. The warmer strata of feeling which had long lain slumbering beneath this vast superstructure of glacial learning began to break their way to the light, and startled him very much as ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... indivisible atom. It is as incomprehensible as the mysteries of creation, or the duration ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... breathing; the bird appears stupid and sleepy and docs not care to move about; appetite poor, wings drooping, plumage ruffled, a thick mucus, colored with blood, escapes from the mouth, comb and wattles show a dark-red color from lack of oxygen in the blood. This disease is of very short duration, the bird dying within a few hours. It is very common among young chicks and turkeys that are permitted to run out in the ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... the many campaigns waged in the valleys of the Meuse and Marne; and Metz, held by a garrison of suitable size, might have defied the efforts of a large besieging army for fully six months. These conjectures are not fanciful. The duration of the food supply of a garrison cut off from the outside world varies inversely with the size of that garrison. The experiences of armies invading and defending the East of France also show with general accuracy what might have been expected if the rules of sound strategy had ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... that moment in Griselda's place.—How intoxicating to human vanity, to be possessed of such powers of enchantment!—How difficult to refrain from their exercise!—How impossible to believe in their finite duration! ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... that if we take a really comfortable trip of a couple of months' duration, and Bart's chief is willing to allow him a three months' absence, as it will be his first real vacation since we were married six years ago, it will devour the entire sum that we have saved for ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot be compared with the preternatural darkness ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... than at the beginning of the winter; and both his health and power seem to promise a longer duration than people expected. Indeed, I think the latter is so established, that poor Lord Bute would find it more difficult to remove him, than he did his predecessors, and may even feel the effects of the weight he has made over to him; for it is already obvious that Lord Bute's lev'ee is not the present ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and direct end, the alleviation of the sufferings of mankind,—have they been able to confine their vision more absolutely to the strictly useful? I fear they are the worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set before us the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of the duration of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers have demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and the practical eternity of matter and of force; and if both have alike proclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order and succession ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized school stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse circumstances. Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at last, and panted for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment's duration sealed his fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix closed upon the breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone hammer point blank upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... short duration, for in a few hours the wind sank again. "I don't think it is done yet," Godfrey said when they were beyond the shelter of the bay. "I fancy it will blow up again presently; still we may as well push on. I think it is rather more from the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... are other societies, yet this civilisation, together with the society which is its creation and its home, is so distinctive and luminous in its character, so imperial in its extent, so imposing in its duration, and so utterly without rival on the face of the earth, that the association may fitly assume to itself the title of 'Human Society,' and its ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Treatment.—The duration of erysipelas is usually from a few days to about two weeks, according to its extent. It tends to run a definite course and to recovery in most cases without treatment. The patient must be isolated in a room with good ventilation ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... not faint." What shall I say besides, that hath not already been said? Thou shalt have good and easy lodging, good and wholesome diet, the bosom of Christ to lie in, the joys of heaven to feed on. Shall I speak of the satisfaction and of the duration of all these? Verily to describe them to the height is a work too hard ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... then. His thoughts were vast as the sky. In a direct revelation to Vergil he said of his chosen people: "I have set no limits to their conquest or its duration. The empire I have given them shall be without end."[41] Hebrew prophets had spoken similarly. Vergil must have been more truly inspired. The Roman empire, nominally holy, figuratively still exists. Yet fulfilment of the prophecy ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... and duration of Wordsworth's grief in such bereavements as fell to his lot, was such as to make his friends thankful that his life had on the whole been guided through ways of so ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... duration, though it was succeeded only by cries expressing their great surprise, among which might have been distinguished their usual invocations to Allah and the Prophet. It was evident that a superstitious feeling had arisen in their minds, not ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... highly ornate pattern. Naturally, like a man in any other business, he had his ups and downs, and there were times when the good clothes disappeared and he was temporarily forced to return to the occupation of rubbing down horses; but these periods of depression were of short duration, and at the next turn of fortune's wheel he would ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... sunless morning. The dream, with its dream-ages of duration, had not crossed the shallows of the dawn. Quickly he gathered his few things into his knapsack—fortunately their number had nowise increased—took his great-uncle's bamboo, saw that his money was safe, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... which seems blocked by a finely shaped mountain, almost as conical as Kangwe. The name of this mountain is Njoko, and the name of the clear small river, that apparently monopolises the valley floor, is the Ovata. Our peace was not of long duration, and we were soon again in the midst of a bristling forest of rock; still the current running was not dangerously strong, for the river-bed comes up in a ridge, too high for much water to come over at this season of the year; but in the wet season ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... make such an excuse in order to avoid seeing him. Should the lady not be willing to utter an untruth, nor feel independent enough to send word that she is engaged, an hour's waste of time, at least, must be her penalty; for Mr. Bebee's morning calls are never of shorter duration. He knows, as well as any one, that visits of politeness should be brief; but he is on such familiar terms with all his friends, that he can waive all ceremony—and he generally does so, making himself "at home," as ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... difference is, that then they sought freedom merely as a good; now they also claim it as a right. * * * Ignorant and illiterate as they yet are, they have maintained a correspondence, which, whether we consider its extent or duration, is ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... president and secretary. These elections are always supposed to be indicative of the political tendency of each bureau; those which have a majority of liberals, choosing officers of their own opinions, and vice versa. These bureaux are remodelled, periodically, by drawing anew; the term of duration being a month or six weeks. I believe the chamber retains the power to refer questions, or not, to these bureaux; their institution being no more than a matter of internal regulation, and not of constitutional law. It is, however, usual to send ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was of short duration, lasting only from the 27th of September to the 3rd of October. He had had a severe fall on the ship coming over, from which he continued to suffer, and now a hard blow on the chest injured him mortally. Some of his companions found it hard to understand why he should be taken, ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... of Europe; and, in habit and duration, is distinct from all others. The leaves are about ten inches long, of a glaucous or sea green color, thick and fleshy, deeply cut or divided on the margin, and spread regularly from the centre of the plant in the form of a rosette. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... sailing at the rate of sixty-two leagues a day. The sea was so fine, and our journey so rapid, that I began to think it nearly as agreeable to travel by sea as by land; but my illusion was not of long duration. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... her against alluding to the arrangement into which they had entered touching the matrimonial affairs already discussed. It is not our intention to give the conversation between the two ladies, which was, indeed, not one of long duration. Mrs. Lindsay simply stated that she had been deputed by her son, Woodward, to have the honor of making a proposal in his name to her uncle, in which proposal she, Miss Riddle, was deeply concerned, but that her ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by authentic information, that Sir James Thornhill formed an academy in his own house, in the Piazza, Covent Garden. But this was not of long duration, for it commenced in 1724 and died in 1734; which reduced the artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were so little acquainted with the use of such schools, that they were even suspected of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... it were, on the boundary-line between the dome and the garden beyond, raised her rounded arms in a snowy arch above her head, and so for one brief instant, looked like an exquisite angel ready to soar upward to her native realm. Her pause was a mere breathing space in duration, ... dropping her arms again with a swift decision that set all the little bells on them clashing stormily, she straightway hurled herself, so to speak, into the giddy paces of a dance that was more like an enigma than an exercise. Round and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... throughout the duration of Greek thought too narrowly conceived. It was frequently thought and spoken of as the life of a spectator or bystander or onlooker, as a life withdrawn or isolated, cut off from what we should call ordinary human business and concerns, a life into which we, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... altogether so peculiar to the Middle Ages, and which, happily for mankind, has yielded to an improved state of civilization and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... than that of a man; nor to giddiness than the world; seeing the earth, whether it be itself or the heavens that are in rotation, is so far from being giddy, that it could not subsist without motion. But why should not this government be much rather capable of duration and steadiness by motion? Than which God has ordained no other to the universal commonwealth of mankind: seeing one generation comes and another goes, but the earth remains firm forever, that is, in her proper situation or place, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... weeks' duration had cost him severe losses, among them being Generals Caffarelli and Bon: but worst of all was the loss of that reputation for invincibility which he had hitherto enjoyed. His defeat at Caldiero, near Verona, in 1796 had been officially converted ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... captive in Paraguay. Even the English charge d'affaires, and a Commission sent thither by the Institute of France, failed to get him free! Had he been a lordling, or some little viscomte, his forced residence in Paraguay would have been of shorter duration. An army would have been despatched to "extradite" him. But Aime Bonpland was only a student of Nature—one of those unpretending men who give the world all the knowledge it has, worth having—and so was he left to languish in captivity. True, his imprisonment was ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... her way up Channel through a snowstorm of three days' duration, and the brunt of it had fallen by right of seniority on the captain and his second officer. Luke FitzHenry was indefatigable, and, better still, he was without enthusiasm. Here was the steady, unflinching combativeness which alone can master the elements. Here was the true ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... beget an impatience of, that makes pleasure destructive of itself, by hurrying on the final period, and closing that scene of bliss, in which the actors are generally too well pleased with their parts, not to wish them an eternity of duration. ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... them, and of all their customers, have a much more pernicious effect on production and trade than national outpourings in war of indignation and anger—which, if terrible in their effects, are of short duration. These are in the order of nature, except as they are slowly corrected and improved by knowledge; while the restrictions—the offspring of ignorance and misplaced ambition—are at all times ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... restored eighty exiles who had been expelled by Nicocles, and no less than five hundred who had been driven out by former tyrants and had endured a long banishment, pretty nearly, by this time, of fifty years' duration. These returning, most of them very poor, were impatient to enter upon their former possessions, and, proceeding to their several farms and houses, gave great perplexity to Aratus, who considered that the city without was envied for its liberty and aimed at by Antigonus, and within was full ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to inform you that your friend Mr. Saltram expired at eleven o'clock last night (Wednesday, May 2nd), after an illness of a fortnight's duration, throughout which I gave him my best attention as his medical adviser. He will be buried in the Cypress-hill Cemetery, on Long Island, at his own request; and he has left sufficient funds for the necessary expenses, and the payment of his hotel bill, as well as my own small ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... floating Hell with joy, but alas, our joy was of short duration. Cold and famine were now our destiny. Not a pane of glass, nor even a board to a single window in the house, and no fire but once in three days to cook our small allowance of provision. There was a scene that truly tried body ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... who doubted their stability. The fact of his wife having, as it were, died once already, and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the possibility of her actual death from his conjecture. He went to the landing, leant over the balusters, and after a reverie, of whose duration he had but the faintest notion, turned to the window and stretched his gaze to the cottage further down the road, which was visible from his landing, and from which Lucy still walked to the solicitor's ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... down to us from a date which the memory of man runs not to the contrary; indeed, some so old that the musty volumes of the long ago reveal not their origin. But simply the need of man for man would not entirely account for the duration of society in its ancient form. There must be still other underlying principles. There must be love and the acknowledgment of the brotherhood of man all along the way of life, or the family would go to ruin, society ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... social and religious ostracism. Except in a few districts in the border States, these measures were successful. Public profession of abolitionism was suppressed. The violence of the mob was of much longer duration in the North and reached its height in the years 1834 and 1835. But Northern mobs only quickened the zeal of the abolitionists and made converts to their cause. The attempt to substitute repressive state legislation ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... which experience had lately shown lay in the Parliament itself were met with far less skill. Under Charles the Second England had seen a Parliament, which had been returned in a moment of reaction, maintained without fresh election for eighteen years. A Triennial Bill which limited the duration of a Parliament to three was passed with little opposition, but fell before the dislike and veto of William. To counteract the influence which a king might obtain by crowding the Commons with officials proved a yet harder task. A Place Bill, which excluded all persons in ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... one of the State's duties, friends, to regulate the time, The duration and the nature of your work,—a task sublime; And you'll find we'll do it better, if you only won't resist, Than that most obnoxious personage, the shouting Socialist. Then won't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... It was on a dead branch, so that foliage could not trouble her, while leafy twigs grew near enough for protection. No large limb afforded rest for a human foe, and it was at the neck-breaking height of twenty feet from the ground. Neck-breaking indeed I found it, after a trial of twenty minutes' duration, which, judging from my sensations, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... of the states of Italy was undertaken by the King of Naples, who placed General Mack at the head of his forces. Mack succeeded in making himself master of Rome; while 5000 troops, conveyed by British ships, took possession of Leghorn. But this success was of short duration. In the month of December the Neapolitan troops suffered a signal defeat at Civita Castellana; and this disaster was followed by the evacuation of Rome. Nor did the French successes stop here. Following up their victory, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hours, days or weeks)—one never tires; pleasurable and exhilarating sensations are all the time felt; ennui is never experienced. Doubtless there are moments when excessive heat, a want of fresh water, and other privations remind one that life is a toil; but these drawbacks are of short duration. There are no concealed dangers—no difficulties of road; a far-spreading verdure, relieved by a profusion of variously colored flowers, the azure of the sky above, or the tempest that can be seen from its beginning to its end, the beautiful ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... was unfaithfulness, of however long duration, conclusively fatal against a wife; for we meet Helen, after a twenty years' elopement, again the quiet, hospitable mistress in the Spartan palace, entertaining her husband's guests with an easy matronly dignity, and not afraid even in Menelaus's presence to allude to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... phases memory alters with the state of the brain. In childhood impressibility is high, but until the age or four or five the duration of impression is low, and likewise the power of voluntary recall. In youth (eighteen-twenty) all these capacities are perhaps at their highest. As time goes on impressibility seems first of all to be lost, so that it becomes harder ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... men and women prisoned on a speck of earth. How likely was it that, in the lapse of no long time, the whole world should have been "corrupt before God, and filled with wickedness." How probable, that taking into account the great duration of pristine human life, the wicked family of man should speedily have festered up into an intolerable guiltiness. And was this dread result of the primal curse and disobedience to be regarded as the Adversary's triumph? Had this Accuser—the Saxon word is Devil—had ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... inclusion in the cabinet of personalities that might have disturbed the charmed serenity of that circle. Sir Wilfrid preferred to have things as they were, perhaps because his sense of reality warned him that, so far as the duration of time during which he would hold office was concerned, there probably would not be any great difference between a government wholly agreeable to him and one reconstituted to meet the demand of the younger and more vigorous elements in the party. In 1909, in a letter to a supporter who had ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... of feeling was of but short duration. Her tears were dried, and her quivering face assumed ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... on July 4, 1840. For a number of years later this line enjoyed a practical monopoly of the steam carrying trade between England and the United States. Then other companies came into the field, chief among them being the Collins Line, started in 1849, and of short duration, and the ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... and made endurance possible. Especially it helped the weary nights to pass away. At this time an entirely new series of phenomena presented themselves. The alleviation caused by brandy was of short continuance. After a few days' use, sleep for any duration, with or without stimulants, was an impossibility. The sense of exhausting pain was unremitted day and night. The irritability both of mind and body was frightful. A perpetual stretching of the joints followed, as though the body had been upon the rack, while acute pains shot through the limbs, only ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... vessels in their hands, one of which was serviceable, while the other, badly damaged and partly sunk, it is true, had still her armament intact and was possibly not beyond repair. Their possession of the Indianola, however, was of short duration. The second day after the capture, a detail of 100 men with a lieutenant was sent to try and save her, by the army officer commanding near by, while the Queen of the West went up to Warrenton, to act as picket for the fleet, and with despatches ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... with grand sculpture of the 18th dynasty, which contains in magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers imbedded in porphyry), out of which it is hewn, material for the thought of years; and record of the earth-sorrow of ages in comparison with the duration of which, the Egyptian letters tell us but the history of the evening and morning of ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... whether the individual exists or no, the difference is so absolutely imperceptible in the whole of things that every complaint and every desire is ridiculous. Humanity in its entirety is but a flash in the duration of the planet, and the planet may return to the gaseous state without the sun's feeling it even for a second. The individual is the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when the conviction of his baseness was forced upon her, for worlds; it was not a look of anger nor of sorrow, but it seemed as if the blow had literally crushed her heart within her—-as if the brightness of her young spirit had fled for ever, and that to live would only be to prolong the duration of her misery. No; I would rather have faced death in its most horrible form, than have met that look, knowing that my own treachery ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... weeks were over, and there was nothing to show that our inspirations in regard to the duration of the siege might yet prove to be substantially true. No immediate prospect of relief was observable, and our thoughts mechanically took a gloomy turn. How sanguine we had been, to be sure. Hardened sinners ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Carthaginian; but they were all rendered possible by the fact that five-sixths, perhaps even seven-eighths, of the population consisted of slaves. In the year 1840, even in the United States, there were three million slaves to a population of sixteen millions. Then, again, the duration of the republics of antiquity, compared with that of monarchies, was very short. Republics are very easy to found, and very difficult to maintain, while with monarchies it is exactly the reverse. If it is Utopian schemes that are wanted, I say this: the only solution of the problem ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... persevered in after the period of its necessity has passed. When parents find that, by sending three or four children out to the mills or into the mines, they can get eighteen or twenty shillings a-week without doing any thing themselves, they soon come to abridge the duration and cost of education, in order to accelerate the arrival of the happy period when they may live on their offspring, not their offspring on them. Thus the purest and best affections of the heart are obliterated on the very threshold of life. That ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... themselves once more in their element." To their great joy, they succeeded in obtaining permission for one of the religious of this monastery to accompany them to Canada, but their satisfaction was of short duration, for the Archbishop soon recalled the permission, and could not be ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... was of short duration. They were simply cleared out as if by an irresistible whirlwind. We have always been able to hold our own in Liverpool, when it came to physical encounters against all comers. We have generally had some organisation ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... entered. I had never seen so great a change in any person in so short a time. His countenance was pale and haggard, his eyes sunk, and his whole look would have made me suppose that he had undergone a year of the most severe mental suffering, or some painful illness of still longer duration. I was going to congratulate him on having come off the victor, but I could not bring out the words I had intended to use. I merely murmured out, "I am so very glad you are alive. I have brought back the package for Bertha. ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... existence of this kind is conceived as an eternal verity, and, therefore, cannot be explained by duration, even though the duration be ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... with a fearful intensity of passion which increases day by day. In the earliest stage of their acquaintance but few interviews were granted; but after the first week the separations were of shorter duration, and now there is scarce a day on which the prince is not with her. Whole evenings pass without our even seeing him, and when he is not with her she appears to form the sole object of his thoughts. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... attack of six hours' duration the Indians, weary with their night's activity, gradually withdrew to their camps, having suffered no loss, but at the same ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... raised from the dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;—'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx—and may be it is a good thing for them that ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... against the periodical rotation of the little wheel, as I shall certainly be obliged to return home soon, having consumed all my means. Indeed, the expense of maintaining a tail, of which our people have no notion, is so very great, that I think none of our missions should exceed a week in duration. ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the best habits human creatures can have, either for their own sake or the sake of those with whom they live. And to kings and courtiers more particularly, because it gives the idea of stability—of duration; and to the aged, because it gives a sort of belief that life will last for ever. The general had often thought this, but said he had never heard it so well expressed; he afterwards acknowledged to Cecilia that he found Mr. Harley was quite a different person from what he ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth |
