"Fleeting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to which it has been decided to give the title of "The Ancestral Footstep," possesses a freshness and spontaneity recalling the peculiar fascination of those chalk or pencil outlines with which great masters in the graphic art have been wont to arrest their fleeting glimpses ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... running with all her speed. She heard them behind her—the pound, pound, pound of feet. She had gained the side of the shed. The light from the arc lamp was shut off from her now, and they would only be able to see her, she knew, as a dim, fleeting shadow. Where was that iron casting? Pray God, it was heavy enough; and pray God, it was not too heavy! Yes, here it was! She pretended to stumble—and caught the thing up in her arms. An exultant cry went up from behind her as she appeared to fall—oaths, a chorus of them, as she ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... them. If you will turn your faces to God, amidst all the flaunting splendours and vain shows and fleeting possessions of this present, His face will dawn on you yonder. We can say but little of what is meant by such a hope as that. But only this we can say, that there will be, as yet unimaginable, new wealths of revelation of the Father, and to match ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so suddenly that Billy had to drop to his knees to escape the observation of those within the cabin. As it was, Theriere, who had started to leave a second before the others, caught a fleeting glimpse of a face that quickly had been withdrawn from the cabin skylight as though its owner were ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which was from fifteen to twenty years of age, at the brilliant but fleeting epoch of which I am speaking, is now between fifty-five and sixty. It will be asked whether this generation has realised the unbounded hopes which the ardent spirit of our great preceptor had conceived. The answer must unquestionably be in the negative, for if these hopes ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... thanks for that you are father to this child, this dispenser of immortalities. You who bear a name that will still live in the mouths of men when all the race of kings has been forgotten, it is not meet that you bare your head before the fleeting fames and dignities of a day—cover yourself!" And truly he looked right fine and princely when he said that. Then he gave order that the Bailly of Rheims be brought; and when he was come, and stood bent low and bare, the King said to him, "These two are guests of France;" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did most of the talking, and as we sat chatting on every subject under the sun, our husbands looked on in indulgent amusement. Dan soon wearied of the fleeting conversation and turned in, and the little lad slipped away to the black folk; but late into the night we talked: late into the night, and all the next day and evening and following morning—shaded from the brilliant ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... no notice here as to when the embrace released. It is quite possible that it continued until late in the afternoon, with hand-holding modifications, when Nellie returned and sang loudly in another room for warning and company. The fleeting hours that the happy pair looked out from one of those magic windows are not to be recorded in detail. A lover's log-book is unknown. The fears and conspiracies that might have harassed them found no leverage of doubt to pry an entrance ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... not much out of the way, that styled Purgatory a transitory kind of hell, because the principal pains of the damned are to be found there; with this only difference, that in hell they are eternal, and in Purgatory they are only transitory and fleeting: for, otherwise, it is probably the very same fire that burns both the Holy Souls and the damned spirits; and the pain of loss is, in both places, the chief torment.... Now, does not your hair stand on end? does not your heart tremble, when you hear that the poor ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... vacancy that seemed to be forming in his countenance. It stole upon the features as if they were being slowly sprinkled with fine dust, blotting their expression into a flat lifelessness. Then the rush of a train passing over the bridge disturbed him. With a fleeting look of pain he sat up, glanced first furtively at me, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... danger of their clashing, as the son had outgrown the presumptions of early youth, and a change had passed over his nature which Ethel had felt, rather than seen, during his fleeting visits at home, more marked by negatives than positives, and untraced by confidences. The bitterness and self-assertion had ceased to tinge his words, the uncomfortable doubt that they were underlaid by satire had ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... modest as my image of perfection. She wore the extremely unconcealing costume of the day, which covered, I suppose, about as much of her as one of the one-piece swimming suits of the middle years of the twentieth century. She gave an impression, not so much of fleeting grace as of litheness and supple strength, an air of independence, frankness, and—I say ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Mr. Lee presented him to the young girl in the chair, and Jeff looked down into a pair of hazel eyes which instantly claimed his sympathy, the shadows of fatigue lay on them so heavily. But Miss Evelyn Lee's smile was bright if fleeting, and she answered Jeff's announcement that he had a carriage waiting with so appreciative a word of gratitude that he found his preconceived antipathy to Doctor Churchill's guests ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... "I do have fleeting memories of some of that day, all a broken- hearted mad rage against fate—of my hair down and whipped wet and stinging about me in the driving rain; of endless tears of weeping contributed to the general deluge, of passionate ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... about it, and when it was well sung its flow went fluttering over the harbour, which re-echoed the joyous tidings until soloist and choristers alike became entranced by the power of their own performances; and the multitudes who on these occasions came to listen did not escape the rapture of the fleeting throbs of harmony which charged the atmosphere, and made you feel that you would like to live under such ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... fair but fleeting; shadows of the clouds at noon; Women, youth, new corn, and riches; ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... stipulations with the willow,—and principally that she should never admit upon her any snake or polecat, cocked his tail, and put down his head, and flung himself from the bough, throwing his weight upon his wings; and these, beating the fleeting air, now here, now there, bearing about inquisitively, while his tail served as a rudder to steer him, he came to a gourd; then with a handsome bow and a few polite words, he obtained the required seeds, and carried them ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... addressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to answer. As Sabatier has well said, "Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion." Wherever men believe in a personal God, as distinct from an "all-inclusive consciousness of being" of which they are fleeting expressions—mere surface ripples on an infinite ocean—that belief will attest itself by the prayerful life. On the other hand, a prayerless religion is a contradiction in terms; it either has no needs to express or {196} it will die from ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... was extremely young, perhaps it was because he was immoral, perhaps because he had never held a tight rein on his fleeting emotions, even the next moment he felt that it was because he was an idiot—but suddenly he found he had let himself go and was kissing the warm velvet of the slim little nape—had ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fresh, the soft and tender bed Of her still mother, gentle night out flew, The fleeting balm on hills and dales she shed, With honey drops of pure and precious dew, And on the verdure of green forests spread The virgin primrose and the violet blue, And sweet-breathed Zephyr on his spreading wings, Sleep, ease, repose, rest, peace ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... occasion, circulates among a whole people. The present nickname originated in derision on the expulsion of the majority of the Long Parliament by the usurping minority. It probably slept; for who would have stirred it through the Protectorate? and finally awakened at Richard's restored, but fleeting "Rump," to witness its own ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... expected from the best of fathers! what more could children, born to the highest fortunes, have enjoyed! nor was their happiness like to be fleeting: Dorilaus was a man steady in his resolutions, had always declared an aversion to marriage, and by rejecting every overture made him on that score, had made his friends cease any farther importunities; he had besides (as has already been observed) ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... man or woman, as something of real worth—divine, heavenly, ay, though we know not how, in a most deep sense Eternal; which makes our reason give the lie to all merely logical and sentimental maunderings of moralists about "the fleeting hues of this our painted clay;" and tell men, as the old Hebrew Scriptures told them, that physical beauty is the deepest of all spiritual symbols; and that though beauty without discretion be the jewel of gold in the swine's ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... of her sooner or later, to be handed into the ruthless paw of a clerk at the mont de piete, she had little doubt. Everything that she or her husband had ever possessed worth possessing had so vanished—had been not an absolute property, but a brief fleeting joy, a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a pawnbroker's duplicate. The time would come. She showed the trinket to her husband with a melancholy foreboding, and read his thoughts as he weighed ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... her eyes meeting his a fleeting instant as she threw open a door giving into an inner room. "On ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... see them Siwashes hollering around. And he come and shook me where I was sittin', and oh, my, he knowed well the lie he was acting. I bet I've got the marks on my neck now. See any red marks?" Leander exhibited the back of his head, but the violence done him had evidently been fleeting. "He'll be awful good to you, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... will educate the women who engage in it to use the one and only means of regulating or prohibiting the traffic in liquor—that of the ballot. As soon as they find this crusade experiment a failure, which they certainly will, because all spasmodic, sensational religious efforts are transient and fleeting, they will realize the enduring strength and usefulness of the franchise. However little that is permanent may come of this movement, it is good in itself because anything is better for women than tame submission to the evils around them; and when they find kind words, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the pipe, fashioned of the 'foam of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,' the pipe on which, perchance, some swain had discoursed sweet music near the shady heights of High Holborn. The cradle of infancy, the gamp of decrepitude, the tricycle of fleeting youth, the paraffin lamp which had lighted bridal gaiety, the flask which had held the foaming malt,—all were gathered here, and the dust lay deep on ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... you would imagine sufficient—but a to-morrow and a to-morrow. A never-ending, still-beginning feast may be bearable, perhaps, when stern Winter frowns, shaking with chilling aspect his hoary locks; but during a summer sweet as fleeting, let me, my kind strangers, escape sometimes into your fir groves, wander on the margin of your beautiful lakes, or climb your rocks to view still others in endless perspective; which, piled by more than giant's hand, scale the heavens to intercept ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... fast asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating; When she awoke, she found it a joke, For still they all were fleeting. ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... as well as the pleasures of childhood are very fleeting, after all, and Eddie Rivers, in spite of his fifteen years, was a very child, so that he recovered himself quickly, and looked round with an expression of shameful defiance; but on Bertie's puzzled and Agnes' sorrowful face he ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... which I ever keep, together with a writing pad, at my bedside, to catch the fleeting poetic inspiration, I indited a sonnet to Baxter (all copies of which I have unfortunately lost or I would give it here) in which I sang his praises as a great man of the same rank as ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... his muscles, grown stiff by his cramped position, and as he did so he caught a glimpse of a figure on the south face of the wall. But it was so fleeting he was not sure. If he had only brought his glasses with him he might have decided, but he was without them, and he concluded finally that it was merely an optical illusion. He and the Indian had the mountain walls to themselves, and the warrior could not have moved ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... self-sustaining nature and towering spirit to wreak their own will. Once let them give their love to man, and it is the passion of their lives. Of gossip and the wagging tongue of scandal, and of that vague, shadowy phantom, reputation, they reck not. These unsubstantial fleeting barriers are dissipated in an instant before the mighty breath of their omnipotent passion. Their love is the great fact of their lives. Why should it yield to less powerful sentiments, to inferior satisfactions. If the laws and sentiments of the commonalty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a.m., gradually grew feebler, until about 1 p.m. our infantry made a second dash across the wall and this time reached the top of the hill. Below them they saw the stream of flying Boers hurrying across the veld. It was the moment for a vigorous outburst of musketry, but 'some one blundered,' and the fleeting moment sped without being taken advantage of. It is true that those men who first arrived on the summit were firing away, and were joined in doing so by every other man who breathlessly arrived. The company officers had just got their men well in hand, and were directing the fire, when ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... destinations, and try and find our fun when we get there. But it wasn't just the vague, generalized appetite for odd characters which made me contemplate that fusty manageress with interest. It was the sudden fleeting reflection that, but for me, but for a chance accident, there was Rosa in years to come, faded, obscure, efficient, querulous and a failure. And in Hank I saw myself in years to come, only not so successful, not ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... interesting to be wonderful, to be young, with pale gilt hair and blue eyes, and a face in which the shadows of fleeting expressions come and go, and a mouth like the mouth of Narcissus. It is so interesting to oneself. Surely one's beauty, one's attractiveness, should be one's own greatest delight. It is only the stupid, and those who still ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... line get together like this. She knows it, and she's sitting on the edge of her chair, waiting to bolt when that door opens, even if she does act like she was hanging on the words of that lady clerk there. The minute it does open a crack she'll jump up and give me a fleeting, grateful smile, and sail in and cop a fat order away from the old man and his skirt buyer. I'm wise. Say, he may be an oyster, but he knows a pretty woman when he sees one. By the time she's through with him he'll have enough ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... determination. His nod toward herself was distinctly brusque; a new quality which gave her a moment's thought. And then when he had hung up his hat and was walking past her to his own private office, he indulged in a faint, fleeting grin. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... color which affects him so strongly; its kind is something new, startling, and altogether lovely. Its surface, so magically framed and tinted, is broken by fleeting silver wind-streaks here and there; otherwise, it has the vast stillness which we associate with the Grand Canyon and the sky at night. The lava walls are pearly, faintly blue afar off, graying and daubed with many colors nearer by. Pinks, purples, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... the ministry, so he was ripe for it. I honestly think that's all pretty much rot, though it seemed to give sentimental comfort to those at home; and may make fathers and mothers appreciate their children. This crisis-inspired religion is rather valueless and fleeting at best. I think four men have discovered Paris to one ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... at home the next morning in order to have Joanna's aid in selecting the coverings for their new chairs, and counting up their cost. He had taken the strips out of his pocket with an air of importance and complaisance; and Katherine, glancing from them to her mother, thought she perceived a fleeting shadow of a feeling very much akin to her own contempt of the man's pronounced self-satisfaction. So when supper was over, and the house duties done, she determined to speak to her. Joris was at a town meeting, and Lysbet did not interfere with the lovers. Katherine found her standing at an open ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... him that he shrunk from looking beyond to-day. What could the future add to his full heart, what might it not take away? The deepest joy has always something of melancholy in it—a presentiment, a fleeting sadness, a feeling without a name. Wentworth was conscious of this subtile shadow that night, when he rose from the lounge and thoughtfully held Julie's hand to his lip for a moment before parting. A careless observer would not have thought him, as he was, ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... after wandering for years where chance might take them, call on the Lord so soon as they awake. At break of day the soul thinks itself well, thinks itself firmer, and at once takes occasion of this fleeting energy to forget God. It is with the soul as with the body when it is sick. When night comes our sensations are stronger, pain which was quieted awakes, the fever which slept blazes up again, filth revives and wounds bleed anew, and then it thinks of the divine Miracle-worker, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... long, And Life, alas! is fleeting. And oft, with zeal my critic-duties meeting, In head and ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... hoped,' said Brass, looking round with a mournful smile, 'to have seen you three gentlemen, one day or another, with your legs under the mahogany in my humble parlour in the Marks. But hopes are fleeting. Dear me!' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... sudden jerk that could mean but one thing. Marjorie cast a fleeting glance at Miss Merton. The teacher was frowning angrily, as though about to deliver a rebuke. Luckily for the two girls, the first recitation bell rang and they stood not upon the order of their going, but went with alacrity. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... her just then? Robin abolished war. While she had him there was always the rainbow, the perfect rainbow, rising from the world to the heavens and falling from the heavens to the world. The showers were fleeting Spring showers, and the clouds were fleecy ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... was too sick within him to answer. He drew out his watch and looked at it in a fleeting glimpse of moonshine. It was almost the time that Mortlake had declared had been agreed upon for the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... compact between them and their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve it without any reason but its will. Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects: it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... She saw deeper things also; as a little child, wrapped up in her bearskin, she watched with awe her father engaged in mystic rites; when around him the airy legions gathered from the populous elements, the spirits he ruled and the spirits he bowed down before: fleeting nebulous things white as foam coming forth from the great deep who fled away at the waving of his hand; and rarer the great sons of fire, bright and transparent as glass, who though near seemed yet far away and were ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... his voice she did not understand, for though long used to his paradoxical phrases and his everlasting pose—as it seemed to her and all the world—there now rang through his words a note she had never heard before. For a fleeting instant she was inclined to catch at some hidden meaning, but her grasp of things was uncertain. She had been thrown off her balance, or poise, as Charley had, for an unwonted second, been thrown off ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... him fast; he is the One under them all and will at last reveal himself. Very necessary, indeed, is it to hold fast, and never let go in the grand play of Appearances; the strength of the man is shown by his ability to hold fast, amid the fleeting shadows of Time. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... mistaken. Possibly all are like the original, but represented her under different circumstances, or at different periods of her life. Previous to her engagement with the king, she was the object of fleeting attentions from the young noblemen about the court. Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... coyote—ran along the edge of the distant bank for a fearful, curious glimpse of the persistent invasion of its venerable privacy. The sun, like a mocking challenge, was painting with flaming hand its tremendous but fleeting colour-picture on the northwest sky, where clouds unseen by day hung ever ready for the evening-hour brush of the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... her Husband, who ran down to 'em in his Night-Gown, and, kneeling by the Bed-side with his Lady, begg'd their departing Father's Blessing on them. The Shriek had (it seems) recall'd the dying Gentleman's fleeting Spirits, who moving his Hand as well as he could, with Eyes lifted up, as it were, whisper'd, Heaven bless you both! Bless me! Bless my—O Miles! Then dy'd. His Death (no Doubt) was attended with the Sighs, Tears, and unfeign'd Lamentations of the Lady and her Husband; for, bating ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... in his own opinion more happy than Joseph Ward in his new wife, but alas! all human happiness is fleeting and uncertain, especially when it depends in any degree upon a woman. The very next morning after their wedding, Madam prevailed on him to slip on an old coat and take a walk by the house which she had shown him for her uncle's. ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... form is so fleeting and so subject to the dictates of fashion as opera. It has always been the plaything of fashion, and suffers from ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... a shape and fleeting apparition, Sublime in age or with clear morning eyes, Ever I seek thee, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... laid up ... through charity and piety, temperance and self-control.... The treasure thus hid is secure, and passes not away. Though he leave the fleeting riches of the world, this a man carries with him—a treasure that no wrong of others, and no ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... innermost, primaeval, chaotic self: the stuff in which soul has not yet dawned. We are made to enjoy what we should otherwise dread; and the dignity of beauty, and beauty's frankness and fearlessness, are lent to things such as we regard, under other circumstances, as too intimate, too fleeting, too obscure, too unconscious, to be treated, in ourselves and our neighbours, otherwise ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... immense advantage of this country, which now had found in South America one of the best of all markets for her trade. There never was a greater loss to England than when Canning died as Prime Minister and was succeeded in office by one of those fleeting figures who, in the language of Disraeli, were but transient and embarrassed phantoms. [Footnote: Lord Goderich, Prime Minister from August 8th, 1827, to January 8th, 1828.] The deeds of Canning in the questions of Greece and South America, his regard at once for liberty and for Britain, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... other. Unconsciously he had leaned backward until he sat upon his heels. Now, with an odd expression of mingled pain and relief, he reached into the hip pocket of his trousers and produced a pair of spectacles. He smiled his slow, fleeting smile. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had an impulse of shame—obscure, instinctive, and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... people found too shrewd. When she laughed she was a child. Her laugh was irresistible, and there was magic in her smile, a baffling, elusive magic too transient to be defined. Very sudden and very fleeting was her smile. Rivington saw it for an instant only ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... dark would have been for Gloria an experience at any time and in any environment. Of her friends in the city there were many who had never in a lifetime known what it was to spend half a dozen consecutive daytime, waking hours in perfect solitude, catching not so much as a fleeting glimpse of a servant, a policeman, a nurse, or a street-car conductor in the echoing street. Solitude rendered rippleless by an absence of any familiar sound; neither the whisk of a maid's broom, the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... sublimated sensations would wake in him an unaccustomed stir, the cause of which he would long and vainly seek to determine.' So he comes to care supremely for Baudelaire, 'who, more than any other, possessed the marvellous power of rendering, with a strange sanity of expression, the most fleeting, the most wavering morbid states of exhausted minds, of desolate souls.' In Flaubert he prefers La Tentation de Saint-Antoine; in Goncourt, La Faustin; in Zola, La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret—the exceptional, the most remote and recherche outcome of each temperament. And of the three ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... only a fleeting glimpse of the king that they got, as he passed from his chair to the temple gate; but this was enough to repay Yung Pak for the rushing and the crowding and the waiting that he had been obliged to endure. Rare indeed were these glimpses ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... swept in a torrent. Fighting madly for the exit hatch into the chamber below, McClure was dashed off his feet by the lurch of the smitten submarine and sprawled against the steel side of the conning tower. With the spray dashing in his face Jack had a fleeting glimpse of his commander, and by a superhuman effort drew himself back into the turret against the mass of water. Hurling himself forward, he groped about for his captain and found him finally on the floor of the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... minutes of relief, I found it very lonesome upstairs. The pictures which crowded upon me of the various groups of excited and wildly gesticulating men and women through which we had passed on our way up, mingled themselves with the solemn horror of the scene in the writing-room, with its fleeting vision of youth and beauty lying pulseless in sudden death. I could not escape the one without feeling the immediate impress of the other, and if by chance they both yielded for an instant to that earlier scene of a desolate Street, with ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had not known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win, ignorance is acceptable to God as a proof of faith and submission, abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules of life—these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic mediaeval ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... came to it in 1791, was no better and no worse than its neighbours; and we can readily imagine how eagerly such a man would be welcomed by its pompously dull and leisured topers. Now might their meetings be lightened with flashes of genius, and the lazy hours of their long nights go fleeting by on the wings of wit and eloquence. Too often in Dumfries was Burns wiled into the howffs and haunts of these seasoned casks. They could stand heavy drinking; the poet could not. He was too highly strung, and if he had consulted his own ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... to make a solitude around her. As the image of the father whom she loved had insensibly become a mere abstraction, so Edith, following the fate of all the rest about whom her affections had entwined themselves, was fleeting, fading, growing paler in the distance, every day. Little by little, she receded from Florence, like the retiring ghost of what she had been; little by little, the chasm between them widened and seemed deeper; little by little, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... he, the celestial angel, Mounts above Mount Hara (Alborz) In advance of the sun immortal Which is drawn by fleeting horses; He it is, in gold adornment First ascends the beauteous summits Thence beneficent he glances Over all ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... lives of their children, as if all memory of its existence had been obliterated out of their being. Perhaps this may be wisely designed, and no doubt it is, but, alas! its truth is a melancholy comment upon the fleeting character of the only passion that charms our early life, and fills the soul with sensations too ethereal to be retained by a heart which grosser associations have brought beneath the standard of purity necessary for their existence ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... that formed the first great swells of the sea of the wilderness were clothed in a thousand sheens and shaded by the purple budding of the oaks and walnuts on the northern slopes. On the yellow sandbars flocks of geese sat pluming in the sun, or rose at our approach to cast fleeting shadows on the water, their HONK-HONKS echoing from the hills. Here and there a hawk swooped down from the azure to break the surface and bear off a wriggling fish that gleamed like silver, and at eventide we would see at the brink an elk or doe, with head poised, watching ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Sol with radiant eyes that fire his face of gold Surveyed white aether and solid soil and waters uncontrol'd, 40 And chased with steeds sonorous-hooved the shades of lingering night, Then sleep from waking Atys fled fleeting with sudden flight, By Nymph Pasithae welcomed to palpitating breast. Thus when his phrenzy raging rash was soothed to gentlest rest, Atys revolved deeds lately done, as thought from breast unfolding, 45 And what he'd ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... and spotless as your own, there is a cloud over my name that will for ever rest upon it. Knowing that, you cannot, you will not wish to unite your noble, brilliant destiny with mine. This hour will be remembered as a dream, a bright, but fleeting dream." ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Aaron Burr, bound for the prodigal South. Swept along by the urgent stream, his boat seemed the plaything of fate, and the unstable element upon which it rode and rocked and trembled, he likened to human life, fleeting, turbulent, treacherous, yet grandly beautiful. Yielding to that mood in which the judgment and the will are suspended, and the passive brain is played upon by every sight and sound, he sat in an easy chair smoking, lost in sensuous languor, like an Asian prince. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... spirit of his brethren broke not into joy at his approach, for the trusting heart of genial humanity throbbed not in his sad breast. He was no Pharisee, but he dined not with the Publican, and the precious ointment of the Magdalen never bathed his weary head. His language was: 'All is fleeting and evil, save Thee, O my Father; in Thee alone can rest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... round, exposing a fraction of his head, with dread but really with little risk. His enemy, as a matter of fact, did not expect to see anything of him so low down as that. General D'Hubert caught a fleeting view of General Feraud shifting trees again with deliberate caution. "He despises my shooting," he thought, with that insight into the mind of his antagonist which is of such great help in winning battles. It confirmed him in his tactics of immobility. "Ah! if I only could watch my rear as well as ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... wagering money," observed Rackliff wisely, "the fellow who bets on sympathy or loyalty is a chump. I always back my judgment and try to use some common sense about it. I hope you don't think for a fleeting moment that I contemplate finishing my preparatory school education in this stagnant hole. Not for little Herbert. I'd get paresis here in less than a year. I'm pretty sure the governor simply chucked me down here for a term, as ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... things visible that was borne in upon him. The real world around—a present humanity not less comely, it might seem, than that of the old heroic days—endowing everything it touched upon, however remotely, down to its little passing tricks of fashion even, with a kind of fleeting beauty, exercised over him just then ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... stone there beneath the bole and made his way back to the great ledge. His share of Obe would last yet a day or two. The thought of food was only fleeting, because the anger was still inside him, larger now, demanding ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... of them all our worldly hankerings after the seen and temporal. Then we shall bear fruit that He will gather into His garner. The cares and the pleasures and the wealth that terminate in, and are occupied with, this poor fleeting present are small and insignificant. Let us try to yield ourselves up wholly to the higher influences of that Divine Spirit, and in true consecration receive the engrafted word. And then He will give ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... drink coffee and tea, morning and night; at least, the majority of us do. They are expensive; their palpable results to the senses are fleeting; they are reported innutritious; nay, far worse, they are decried as positively unwholesome. Yet we still use them, and no one has succeeded in leading a crusade against them at all comparable with the onslaughts on other stimulants, made in these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... back, to try for some sight, even a fleeting glimpse of Beatrice; but the Folk with harsh cries ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... some facial appearance, some telling attitude, some brief and topical scene, by such specimen and shortcuts, so well chosen and detailed that they provide a summary of the innumerable series of analogous cases. In this way, the vague, fleeting object is suddenly arrested, brought to bear, and then gauged and weighed, like some impalpable gas collected and kept in a graduated transparent glass tube.—Accordingly, at the Council of State, while the others, either jurists or administrators, see abstractions, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... you about the place and explain all the different phases of your new home, but I am inclined to believe you will like it better if you can make the tour all by yourselves. Young folks usually glory in unexplored fields. Now to it, for time is fleeting! I shall call for a report of your discoveries at luncheon. A prize for the one who has seen ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... rest, shall be my care; But shall I, then, forsake the unfinished war? How would the Trojans brand great Hector's name! And one base action sully all my fame, Acquired by wounds and battles bravely fought! Oh! how my soul abhors so mean a thought. Long since I learn'd to slight this fleeting breath, And view with cheerful eyes approaching death The inexorable sisters have decreed That Priam's house, and Priam's self shall bleed: The day will come, in which proud Troy shall yield, And spread its smoking ruins o'er the field. Yet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... to the other side of the bridge—caught one glimpse of a dark body fleeting and roaring down the foam-way. The colonel leapt the bridge-rail like a deer, rushed out along the buck-stage, tore off his coat, and sprung headlong into the boiling pool, 'rejoicing in his might,' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... mouth managed a fleeting smile; then she disappeared through a swinging door. Lance sat down in a wrought-iron chair. Finding it not comfortable, he sprang back to his feet and paced the floor. There sure was something wrong about the colonel's house. Something very oddly wrong. ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... management of the Academy of Music was but a fleeting incident, memorable only for the protestations with which it was begun and for its brevity. For the famous Norwegian violinist it was a Utopian dream with a speedy and rude awakening. After he had retired the Lagrange troupe came from downtown and completed the season with the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... lost a valuable art." There was a fleeting glance, and she vanished within, leaving him puzzled and astonished by the unexpected softening of her voice. How long he stood there, with his gaze fixed upon the vacant doorway, he never knew. What did ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... believe this. He had every reason to refuse the belief; and if he had had no other, this woman's character was enough, it appeared to him, to give the lie to the thought. A more intelligent view concerning that fleeting likeness was that the two women were nearly related to one another, the younger in charge of the elder; and that the younger, who had for some purpose or prank played about in the waters near his home, must have lived in some house there, must have means of communication with the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... him, white people and brown people alike, the coming of the steamer was an event of supremest importance. For the islanders it meant a short season of excitement, most agreeable to their natures. For the whites it meant a fleeting but none the less delectable contact with the world outside, with lands beyond, upon which all of them, for this reason or that, had turned their backs, and to which some of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... light was growing stronger. The east was overshot with ripples of crimson and orange, here blending into lines each more gorgeous than a moment before. The wind was chasing in from the bosom of Adria, and driving the fleeting mists up the little valley. The hills were springing out of the gloom, the thrushes were swinging in the boughs overhead, and pouring out their morning song. Out from the camp the bugles were calling ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... splinter about her. She queened it over demesnes of sprite-like revelry; the life they led was sylvan; at their fetes the sun assisted. The summer held to her lips a glass whose rosy effervescence, whose fleeting foam, whose tingling spirit exhaled a subtile madness of joy,—a draught whose lees were despair. So nearly had she been destitute of emotion hitherto that she had scarcely a right to be classed with humanity; now, indeed, she would win that right. Not only her character, but her beauty, became ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... he bring down the rainbow till its hither abutment rested on the centre of the stream in a transparent mist of driving rain, while its keystone was lost in the stooping cloud above? Art is good, as well as long; but time is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to aspiring Young America, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... patient and laborious worker he really was. But his canvases and his studies, hung on all sides, among tapestries, arms and trinkets, bespoke patient labor. It was the history of an energy bent upon the, acquisition of a personality constantly fleeting. Maitland manifested in a supreme degree the trait common to almost all his compatriots, even those who came in early youth to Europe, that intense desire not to lack civilization, which is explained by the fact that the American is a being entirely new, endowed with an activity incomparable, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cleared. The tension induced by the perusal of the letter had momentarily aged it, affording a fleeting glimpse of the man as he might be ten years hence if things should chance to go awry with him—hard and relentless, with more than a suggestion of cruelty. But now, the strain lessened, his face revealed that charm ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... stalks. The charioteer with wond'rous gesture talks To the trees and mountains; and there soon appear Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear, Passing along before a dusky space Made by some mighty oaks: as they would chase Some ever-fleeting music on they sweep. Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep: Some with upholden hand and mouth severe; Some with their faces muffled to the ear Between their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom, Go glad and smilingly, athwart the ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... continually from one piece of work to another, his temporary habitations ranging from modern hotels to dog tents and shacks. In all the world there was no spot that he could call home; and there was no one who cared a button whether he came or went. His glimpses of other men's homes were rare and fleeting, and he was apt to thank Heaven that he was not ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... mother with many a brave, cheery word striving to lift her sons above their trouble, not only to hope of earthly comfort, but to trust in that great Father of the fatherless, beside whom all the love of this world is poor and fleeting. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the man with whom he had idled away so much time and money. That fleeting, satanic impression of yesterday came back, sharper, more alarming. Paredes's clear challenge to the district attorney was the measure of his strength. His mind was subtler than theirs. His reserve and easy daring mastered them all; and always, as now, he laughed at the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... and contempt for the ruined loneliness of the pebbly beach; and as Mrs. Curtis had not health to go often into society, she had been the more careful where she trusted her daughters. They belonged to the county by birth and tradition, and were not to be mixed up with the fleeting residents of the watering-place, on whom they never called, unless by special recommendation from a mutual friend; and the few permanent inhabitants chanced to be such, that a visit to them was in some degree a condescension. Perhaps ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preceding the week when the usual Christmas decorations were to commence he came again before his people, his face very pale and worn, and wearing upon it a look which told of a new baptism, an added amount of faith which had helped to lift him above the fleeting cares of this present life. And yet there was much of earth clinging to him still, and it made itself felt in the rapid beating of his heart when he glanced towards the square pew where Lucy knelt and knew that she was giving ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... the literature which sets them forth is permanently good and true. Hence the universality and immortality of Homer, Shakspere, Cervantes, Moliere. But in proportion as these expressions are the forms of individual, peculiar truths, such as fleeting fashions or idiosyncrasies, the literature is ephemeral. Hence tragedy never grows old, for it arises from elemental experience; but comedy soon ages, for it arises from peculiarities. Nevertheless, even idiosyncrasies are valuable as side ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... drooping and his flanks gored with spur-marks. I looked about, but all consciousness of the past had fled; the concussion of my fall had shaken my intellect, and I was like one but half-awake. One glimpse, short and fleeting, of what was taking place shot through my brain, as old Brackely whispered to me, "By my soul, ye did for the captain there." I turned a vague look upon him, and my eyes fell upon the figure of a man that lay stretched and bleeding upon ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... thus purely objectively, and indeed as extraneous to us, looks as if nature was only concerned that of all her (Platonic) Ideas, i.e., permanent forms, none should be lost. For the individuals are fleeting as the water in the brook; and Ideas, on the contrary, are permanent, like its eddies: but the exhaustion of the water would also do away with the eddies. We would have to stop at this unintelligible ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the baby's waxen face, and the light of recognition and understanding crept day by day into the baby's eyes, there was many a quiet hour for heart-to-heart talks between the two who so anxiously and joyously hailed every rosy tint and fleeting sparkle. And there was so much to tell, so much to hear, so much to talk about! And always, running through everything, was that golden thread of joy, beside which all else paled—that they had Baby and each other. As if ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... late, and one can walk up and down and almost imagine one's self at home. There is seldom more than a few degrees of cold; but the summer fogs are beginning, with occasional hoar-frost. As a rule, however, the sky, with its light, fleeting clouds, is almost like a ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... dark. The lights had not been turned on in the hall. The opportunity seemed rare and sweet. We stood for one brief fleeting moment closely enlaced—and swiftly separated, and ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... was one few people knew. Allee was most familiar with the brown-eyed dream-child, the little family at the parsonage were quite well acquainted with her, and occasionally Gail caught a fleeting glimpse of that hidden spirit, but to the rest of the little world in which she lived she was a bright-eyed, gay-hearted little romp, whose efforts to lend assistance to others were always leading her into mischief, oftentimes ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... sweet earthy scent of fresh furrows lately wet with showers, and the ever-shifting procession of the silent stars unveil themselves of gauzy cloud, and glance sadly down with their abiding eyes upon these fleeting shadows. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... should be false to the lessons I have endeavored to teach you in these last fleeting hours of my ill-spent life, were I not to rejoice in any destiny that would wrap up your future career in the glory of God; but I fear the enthusiasm of your young heart will misguide you. I know, from the serious tone ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames with the lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on, and was soon involved in a labyrinth of ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... family and your nearest friends. This is a busy world; and the human mind flits like a restless bird from one subject to another. The men who win campaigns are forgotten by the general public, in a few hours! There is nothing more fickle or more fleeting than the bubble called "popular applause." Judging by the experiences of great men, I should say that it has no substance, whatever. The most valuable reward of the man who fights in a great cause, and helps to win victories, is the profound satisfaction that comes to every ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... into the street to get out of the way of the cowboys. Others stared and made gestures. Booted men on the porch of the Yellow Mine stamped noisily as they trooped to get inside. Voices of alarm and mirth rang out. Pan took only a fleeting glance into the wide doorway. He saw nothing, thought nothing. His stride quickened as he passed Black's store, where more men crowded to ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... blessings disappear, She's fickle as the wind; And now I find her as severe As once I thought her kind. How soon the fleeting pleasures passed! How long the lingering sorrows last! Unconstant goddess, in thy haste, Do not thy prostrate slave destroy, I'd ne'er complain, but bless my fate, Could I ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... carried back in spirit to the day he left for camp. To the look in her eyes as he moved away on the train. The look had been real then, and not just a fleeting glance helped out by his fevered imagination. There had been true friendliness in her eyes. She had intended to say good-bye to him! She had put him on a level with her own beautiful self. She had knighted him, as it were, and sent him forth! Even the war ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... a very happy girl to-day, and I must write to tell you so before the mood vanishes, for I have learned that good moods are very fleeting.... The cause of my happiness is, of course, that I have at last met Terry and we have had a long, delightful talk together, and I hope our misunderstanding is all cleared up. Only, now I am afraid I shall begin to pine and fret because we cannot be together always, though ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... to his rock promontory; but his humour had in the meantime changed. The sun now shone more fairly on the pool; and over its brown, welling surface, the blue of heaven and the golden green of the spring foliage danced in fleeting arabesque. The eddies laughed and brightened with essential colour. And the beauty of the dell began to rankle in the Prince's mind; it was so near to his own borders, yet without. He had never had much of the joy of possessorship in any of the thousand and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... event in it. Who lives to God lives long, be his years many or few. It is reasonable to expect some relationship between godliness and longevity. But we are nearer the truth when we see how that faith and prayer discover and secure the eternal values of fleeting days. ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... try to live by, 'what would David like?' Be happy, dear. Follow the sunshine. I think it guides us truly, for a pure kind heart can not mistake fleeting gaiety for lasting joys like you and I have had. So wherever your journey of joy may take you, follow it and be assured that I am smiling ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... their retort was a mounting torment. He grasped the decanter and rattled its crystal mouth against the glass in his trembling hand. He flushed the glass, and then stood erect, holding it aloft for an instant. For one fleeting moment he held his head above the drowning waves of his abyss. He nodded easily at Goodwin, raised his brimming glass and murmured a "health" that men had used in his ancient Paradise Lost. And then so suddenly that he spilled ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... uncertain, and for ever running out of the beaten track. Why go to look at the flowers, and take delight in their beauty? When you return home, you will see the vanity of your pleasure. Why purchase fleeting joys of loose women? How long do you retain the delicious taste of the dainties you feast upon? For ever wishing to do this, wishing to see that, wishing to eat rare dishes, wishing to wear fine clothes, you pass a lifetime in ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... self-existent cause, the origin of all things. From this divine Being emanate not only the souls of men, which are immortal, but that of the universe itself, which is supposed to be animated by a divine spirit. The material objects of our sight, and other senses, are mere fleeting emanations of the divine idea; it is only this idea itself that is really existent; the objects of sensuous perception are mere appearances, taking their forms by participation in the idea; hence it follows, that in Plato's philosophy all knowledge is innate, and acquired by ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... on end the balloon, with Dave Tower, Jarvis and the stranger on board, now hundreds of miles from the mines, swept over the barren whiteness of unexplored lands. The sun went down and the moon shone in all its glory. The fleeting panorama below turned to triangles great and small—triangles of pale yellow and midnight blue. Now and again the earth seemed to rise up toward them. By this Dave and Jarvis knew that they were drifting over snow-capped hills. When it receded, they knew they were over the tundra. Sometimes they ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... hath my absence been From Thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... more lovely than the unclouded sky, With golden pinnacles, and snowy mountains, And billows purpler than the ocean's, making In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth, So like,—we almost deem it permanent; So fleeting,—we can scarcely call it aught Beyond a vision, 't is so transiently Scatter'd along the eternal vault: and yet It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul, And blends itself into the soul, until Sunrise and sunset form the haunted epoch Of sorrow ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... thing dependent upon the present, which has no logical existence, but lives only upon the sufferance of times past and future, slipping out of our hands into the domain of one or other of these two claimants the moment we try to apprehend it. And not only is our personality as fleeting as the present moment, but the parts which compose it blend some of them so imperceptibly into, and are so inextricably linked on to, outside things which clearly form no part of our personality, that when we try to bring ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... a rainy, clamorous, benighted place. And to-morrow they must go forth into it again. But for the moment they would snatch a little rapture, finding it the more fearfully beautiful because it was so dearly bought and so fleeting, but chiefly beautiful because they ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... in Pee-wee's nature to run from anything or anybody. So there he stood amid the telltale mementoes of the dreadful game while Detectives Slippett and Spotson strolled into the field. They were just in time to behold a fleeting vision of forms wriggling through fences, gliding around buildings, and scrambling over ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... expression on her face; he did not expect to see any. But in their uneven mind touch he caught a fleeting suggestion of bewilderment on her part, as if she found his mental processes as hard to understand as a ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... our age can take the same tranquil pleasure as our youth—Lady Vargrave devoted much of her monotonous and unchequered time. She seemed to love them almost as living things; and her memory associated them with hours as bright and as fleeting as themselves. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he looked at the notes and bills on the table, and the horror of taking up again the lifeless routine of life—of performing the same automatic gestures another day—displaced his fleeting vision. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... flowers do not set fruit. The flowers that open on a dry sunny day show a greater yield of fruit than those that open on a wet day, as the first mentioned have a better chance of being pollinated by the insects and the wind. The beauty of a coffee estate in flower is of a very fleeting character. One day it is a snowy expanse of fragrant white blossoms for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, and two days later it reminds one of the lines from Villon's Des Dames du ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... you enter your gate and glance upward, you will always see the curtains parted, and between them, like an idol in a shrine, the ugly wooden back of a little oval or oblong looking-glass. It gives one a sense of permanence in a world where all is fleeting." ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... doom? Nay; let me tell you, friends, that the Republic has no use for curs, and calls him a traitor who allows one of her enemies to remain inviolate through his cowardice, his terror of that intangible and fleeting shadow—the wrath of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... during the days of his father and grandfather, for fourscore years into the past. However, if such reminiscences make us reflect upon the mutable character of human affairs, and send grave speculations of the "fleeting show" and "man's illusion" concerning which the poet has told us, I find that the best way is to remember that it is well to make our humble department in the show as entertaining as we can, and our little fragment of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... former splendour: here I could not help lamenting the ravages and devastations of time, of which that once noble structure exhibited such a melancholy proof. I walked round it several times, meditating on the fleeting and transitory nature of all terrestrial things; on the eastern end were the remains of a lofty tower, near forty feet high, overgrown with ivy, the top apparently flat; I surveyed it on every side very minutely, thinking that if I could gain ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... amid all the faults which spring up too luxuriantly in his character. It is impossible that he should not be at present possessed with the keenest shame for his own behaviour. It will be your first part to take advantage of these sentiments, and instead of a fleeting and transitory sensation, to change them into fixed and active principles. Do not at present say much to him upon the subject. Let us both be attentive to the silent workings of his mind, and regulate our ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... into the gloomier shadows of the high, vaulted room, Catherine a little slimmer than most of the others, and with a strange grace of slow movement which must have come to her from some Russian ancestor. Her last words lingered in his mind. He was to talk to her about art! A fleeting vision of the youth in the yellow oilskins mocked him. He remembered his morning's tramp and the broken-down motor-car under the trees. The significance of these things was beginning to take shape in his mind. He resumed his seat, a ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... joyous hopes enter into you with the mild, light air! You drink them in with the breeze, and they awaken in your heart a longing for happiness which increases with the hun ger induced by walking. The fleeting, charming ideas fly and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant |
