"Flytting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he not have a clever father, a stealthy, cunning, merciless father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop! Or no—Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... novels, and all our poetry, and hear all our music in a segment of our year. Then there is the mixing up of all sorts of pictures—sacred and profane, gay and sombre, etc.—all huddled together, and the eye flitting from one to the other.[61] Hence the temptation to paint down to the gaudiest pictures, instead of up or into the pure intensity of nature. Why should there not be some large public hall to which artists may send their pictures at any time when they are perfected; but better still, let purchasers ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... small, with white or gayly-painted lateen sails gleaming in the evening glow, large galleys, light skiffs, and restless, skimming pleasure-boats, were flitting to and fro; and among them, like loaded wagons among chariots and horsemen, the low corn-barges scarcely seemed to move, piled as they were with pyramids of straw and grain as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... should be of raid? Am I not numbered with them? I didn't dare descend and, besides, I shouldn't have found a boat to cross in. The nights aren't so very long now, anyway, so I turned over on the other side, said "good night" to the stars and was soon fast asleep. Now and then I was awakened by flitting breezes, and then I thought of thee. As often as I awoke I called thee to me and always said in my heart: "Goethe be with me, that I may not be afraid." Then I dreamed that I was floating along the reedy banks of the Rhine, and where it is deepest between black rocky cliffs the ring ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the marsh, and in them I could see lights flitting. A month or two ago I should have feared them, thinking of Beowulf, son of Hygelac, and what befell him and his comrades from the marsh fiends, Grendel and his dam. Now I watched them, and half longed for ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... seemliness, This model of a child is never known To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er As generous as a fountain; selfishness May not come near him, nor the little throng Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path; The wandering beggars propagate his name. Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun, And natural or supernatural fear, Unless it leap upon him in a dream, Touches him not. To enhance the wonder, see How arch his notices, how nice his sense Of the ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... solitude and a fierce desire to kill something. He got his abandoned gun and went hunting to wear out his wrath. He wore himself out, at least. He shot savagely at all sorts of life. He followed one flitting, sarcastic blue-jay with a voice like a village cut-up, all the way home without getting near enough ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... went downstairs. She wanted to go into the yard, but whilst flitting through the passage she heard her husband and Rosa talking together in ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... the version just quoted. It says that the father forbade the child following his bent, and banished all the musical instruments in the house to the attic, where, however, the little musician discovered them, and, under cover of night, resumed his beloved pursuit. The sounds thus produced, and the flitting of the little white-clad figure over the stairs, started the story that the house was haunted, which was believed until the truth was revealed, as shown ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... still evidently wasting away—like a candle burnt down to the socket, flitting and flaring alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe— I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old man, now on the brink ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... figures flitting through those tranquil early dramas are so sharply drawn, so brightly colored still! I meet Melissa Crane sometimes nowadays, a prosperous matron with space enough on her broad back for the very largest plaid ever woven; but her present identity is hazy and unreal. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... and forget-me-nots were growing there, and meadow-sweet; and a very little way off was a hedge of whitethorn, and elder bushes grew there, too, and bindweed with white flowers. Gay colors were to be seen here, and a butterfly, too, was flitting by. The Toad thought it was a flower which had broken loose that it might look about better in the world, which was quite a natural thing ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... first terrace sloped another wider one densely overgrown with aspens, and the center of the valley was a level circle of oaks and alders, with the glittering green line of willows and cottonwood dividing it in half. Venters saw a number and variety of birds flitting among the trees. To his left, facing the stone bridge, an enormous cavern opened in the wall; and low down, just above the tree-tops, he made out a long shelf of cliff-dwellings, with little black, staring windows or doors. Like eyes they were, and seemed to watch him. The ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... under the cross of St. George, that there had been a violation of the government order against the importing of Protestant Bibles and pocket-pistols,—two things taboo in the country at that time. This, however, may have been the Yankee captain's joke. As the night deepened torches were seen flitting hither and thither, the crowds thickened, the whispers and hushed talk increased by degrees to a widespread, menacing growl, then arose to a roar. Now drums were heard in the barracks, and the light, quick tread of marching feet could be ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... reached the high bank outside the town, he jumped like a flitting bird up the bank into the town and went straight to the spirit house of Gawigawen. He noticed that the roofs of both the dwelling and the spirit houses were of hair, and that around the town were many heads, [40] ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... woods were very still. With his cabin almost within sight, the trapper had begun to breathe more freely when suddenly the howl was repeated, this time so close that he stopped in dismay. A moment later he saw them coming, flitting silently along his trail or from tree to tree, like gray shadows ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... mingles rosy blossoms with bushes of living gold like tall growths of double buttercups, and at length the cooler regions show the familiar ferns, violets, and primroses of the temperate zone. The weird silence of the jungle is emphasised by an occasional cry of a wild bird, flitting among the tall tree tops, or the crash of a bough, dragged down by the weight of some climbing rattan. A walk up a boulder-strewn slope reaches the old crater, or Solfatara, almost surrounded by ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... is off, like a streak, in a whirring diagonal for the high crests. He dwindles, higher and higher, farther and farther, smaller and smaller, till finally he is among the tip-top pinnacles, a mere white palpitation, a snow-flake in the whirl of a capricious wind, a little glistening moth flitting from glacier to glacier as ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... clover on which the light fell in sheets of radiance; with other spots so dim that for ages no shoot had sprung from the deep black mould; blown to and fro across this wagon-road, odours of ivy, pennyroyal and mint, mingled with the fragrance of the wild grape; flitting to and fro across it, as low as the violet-beds, as high as the sycamores, unnumbered kinds of birds, some of which like the paroquet are long ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Carrie had grown by the time the leaves turned brown! Often Dosson saw her hovering about the cabin of old Forty-nine, flitting through the woods with her brother, or walking leisurely with Logan on the hill down ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest grace; For well she knew I could not choose But gaze ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... her cold domestic life, used to go to the Church of St. Jehan, on the Place de Greve, where, as everyone knows, the fashionable world was accustomed to meet; and while saying her paternosters to God she feasted her eyes upon all these gallants, curled, adorned, and starched, young, comely, and flitting about like true butterflies, and finished by picking out from among the lot a good gentleman, lover of the queen-mother, and a handsome Italian, with whom she was smitten because he was in the May of his age, nobly dressed, a graceful mover, brave in mien, and was all that ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... apparently motionless, tilted imperceptibly against the western breeze; the only other movement was the faint pulsation of the huge throbbing screw in the rear. To the left stretched the limitless country, flitting beneath, in glimpses seen between the motionless wings, with here and there the streak of a village, flattened out of recognition, or the flash of water, and bounded far away by the low masses of the Umbrian hills; while in ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... o'clock, in a certain handsome drawing-room in Portland Place, Reine was flitting about restlessly with flushed cheeks, now re-arranging the roses in some jar, now picking up her embroidery and putting a few stitches in it, then going to the window and looking out. The afternoon tea equipage was on a little table beside her, but she did not help herself to a cup. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... It was the blackest night I was ever out in, dark with the very darkness of death. The rain fell thickly and heavily. I overtook Josie, caught her hand, and stumbled along in her wake, for she went with the speed and recklessness of a distraught woman. We moved in the little flitting circle of light shed by the lantern. All around us and above us was a horrible, voiceless darkness, held, as it were, at bay by the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Gyp and Jerry thought of nothing but the Everett party. Isobel, flitting here and there like a pretty butterfly, divided her enthusiasm. She indulged in a patronizing attitude—she would go, of course, to the Everetts', though it was a kids' party and she'd ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... painful interest their companions struggling in the swarthy arms of the stalwart, bare-chested shearers, saddles, broad sombreros, whips, and weapons grouped in so many pendent escutcheons of the great Mexican vagabond family, the flitting coleritos, the scarfed shearers themselves, all are so many veritable "bits." But it is not only that the details are good: they compose admirably about the long aisle, with here and there a dagger of sharp light thrust into the shade, and without, the luminous clouds of dust. The shearer puts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... only be seen flitting among the trees, its flaming glare giving a wild, unearthly appearance to the face and breast of the Savage as he sped swiftly in and out among the trunks and vegetation, like an avenger bent on destroying ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... through all the old rooms, good-wife; I wandered on and on; I followed the steps of a flitting ghost, The ghost of a love that is gone. And he led me out to the arbor, wife, Where with myrtles I twined your hair; And he seated me down on the old stone step, And ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... glance with as much of scorn as it was possible for her to show. Anna tried to ask forgiveness for that feeling in the prayers which followed; but, when the services were over, and she saw a little figure in blue and white flitting up the aisle to where Arthur, still in his robes, stood waiting for her, an expression upon his face which she could not define, she felt that she had prayed in vain; and, with a bitterness she had never before experienced, she ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... as the nightjars and bats begin to fly you will have finished the last tree of your round, and rapidly retracing your steps to the first you will perhaps see a small moth, with wings raised, rapidly flitting up and down your patch of sugar. This is most probably the "Buff Arches," usually first to come; in fact, during the summer months, it is perhaps as well to get the sugar on at eight o'clock, as I have known this species, the "Peach Blossom" and the "Crimson Underwings" (Catocala ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... been such robbers of their fellow-subjects, stopped above two thousand of them, and took from them their congregations of goods and wares, wearing apparel, pots, pans, and gridirons, and other furniture, wherewith they had burdened themselves like bearers at a flitting. My house was stript to a wastage, and every thing was taken away; what was too heavy to be easily transported was, after being carried some distance, left on the road. The very shoes were taken off my wife's feet, and "ye'll no be a refuse to gi'e me that," said a red-haired ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... a distant torrent came to them. The hoarse croaking of frogs and the chirping of crickets were mingled with the hooting of owls and the nearer hum of mosquitoes. Bats and moths were flitting on silent wings among the trees, and there was a rustle of dry leaves, as unseen animals of the night moved in ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... machinery. It is a moment of intense suspense. Gradually a glimmer of light—an inch—a flood! The shield passes from the opening; the gun runs out. A flash, a roar—a mad reeling of the senses, and crimson clouds flitting before your eyes—a horrible pain in your ears, a sense of oppression on your chest, and the knowledge that you are not on your feet—a whispering of voices blending with the concert in your ears—a darkness ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... green, All singing in the sun,—as deep and brown As Taka's eyes,—the pool disclosed itself. Across the clear light of the morning, showers Of fiery jewels shone against the trees,— Rubies, bright sapphires, purple amethyst, Topaz, fierce opal, grass-green emeralds Flitting and darting;—were they only birds! Flower made bird or bird made flower, they seemed To eyes newborn upon a world of love. The air was heavy with strange scents, the old Familiar perfumes seemed so rarely sweet, The jasmine was the very breath of love. And when they rested on ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... the cares and employments of her loved plants she would find solace and consolation. It was at this window Kate now sat with Nina, looking over the vast plain, on which a rich moonlight was streaming, the shadows of fast-flitting clouds throwing strange and fanciful effects over a space almost wide ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... before him; the hall door was open; figures were standing and flitting in the light that streamed on the terrace; and with a pang he awoke to the responsibilities of his position, to the remembrance of his interview with Luce. There she stood on the top of the steps, a shawl thrown round her head, her face eager ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... two and a half miles. I perceived a number of horses (between twelve and fifteen in number) loose in an open near the corner of a bush, about three-quarters of a mile in front of the left side of the road. These having attracted my attention, I also perceived a number of men flitting among the trees, near to the horses. I cried out. "I see the Fenians—there are the Fenians!" My discovery was made known to Col. Booker, who, perhaps, from hearing my cry, came up to me. I was the left hand ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... There, flitting round the door, or occasionally peering through the windows of the tap-room, with pipes in their mouths and perchance a tankard in their hands, were seen the elders of the village, boatmen, and habitans, making use, or good excuse, of a rainy day for a social gathering in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... heretofore unappreciated loveliness. His very muscles seemed to relax, and new strength arose to meet the demands of his uplifted spirit. He had not finished his day's work with such ease and pleasure in years; and he could see the influence of his rejuvenation in Maria. She was flitting around her house with broken snatches of song, even sweeter to Abram's ears than the notes of the birds; and in recent days he had noticed that she dressed particularly for her afternoon's sewing, putting on her Sunday lace collar and a white apron. He immediately went to town and bought ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the fragment of the palace in which John of Gaunt was born, when an English queen-consort, Philippa, resided there five hundred years before. She visited the old Beguinage, with the shadowlike figures of the nuns in black and white flitting to and fro. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the gorge was steep, but not precipitous, and was covered with shrubs and trees—some of which leaned out over the little canyon, completely screening it, and among whose branches birds could now and then be seen flitting about. In that direction no mountains were visible, indicating that upon their side of the river there was an upland plateau or bench. To their right the river, the gorge, and the strip of meadow extended for a mile or more, then curved away ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... don't see each other often," the old fairy woman had said. "You flit in like, and flit away again as if you was a butterfly, I think sometimes when I'm sitting here alone. When you come to stay you're mostly flitting about the wood and I only see you bit by bit. But I couldn't tell you, Miss, my dear, what it's like to me. You do love the wood, don't you? It's a fairy place too—same as ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Primolicentiated f. Predicamental and categoric f. Train-bearing f. Predicable and enunciatory f. Supererogating f. Decumane and superlative f. Collateral f. Dutiful and officious f. Haunch and side f. Optical and perspective f. Nestling, ninny, and youngling f. Algoristic f. Flitting, giddy, and unsteady f. Algebraical f. Brancher, novice, and cockney f. Cabalistical and Massoretical f. Haggard, cross, and froward f. Talmudical f. Gentle, mild, and tractable f. Algamalized f. Mail-coated f. Compendious f. Pilfering and purloining f. Abbreviated f. Tail-grown f. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... voice drove some distance up the hillside against the wind. She saw the flitting figure again, and with a desire to make sure of its identity, ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... Margaret had a "den," a very neat and pretty den with good colour-prints of Botticellis and Carpaccios, and there was a third apartment for sectarial purposes should the necessity for them arise, with a severe-looking desk equipped with patent files. And Margaret would come flitting into the room to me, or appear noiselessly standing, a tall gracefully drooping form, in the wide open doorway. "Is everything right, dear?" she ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... lovely scene, and all the lovelier for the light of a fair summer morning upon it. There was a broad, sunny lawn, with a margin of shade, and just one mass of flitting shadows beneath the locust-tree near the gate. Beyond, there were glimpses of winding walks and of brilliant garden-flowers, and farther on, the waving boughs of trees, and more flitting shadows; the cedar ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... went flitting across the kitchen, drawing to herself the looks of both its inmates, she heard what seemed to be a fragment ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hastning to his fall Remaines of all. O world's inconstancie! That which is firme doth flit and fall away, And that is flitting doth ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... fairly boarded the brig they were in chase of us. We could see lights flitting along the lagoon bank and hear the hallooing of native runners—the Governor's, we knew. And for every voice we heard and every light we saw, we knew that hidden back of the trees were a dozen or a score whom we could not hear or see. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... livelier. "Ah, to be sure—you're not over the honeymoon yet. How's the bride? Stunning as ever? My regards to her, please. I suppose she's too deep in dress-making to be called on? Don't you forget to look up Clare!" He hurried on in pursuit of a flitting petticoat and ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... all the influences of the revealing night, fairly disembodied, in her detached and flitting presence, the scene woke dim, coiled memories of an infancy that stirred and pained her even as it left her forever, and frightened longing for the motherhood that life was holding for her. No longer an infant, not yet a woman, this creature that was both felt ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... sunshine, a most beautiful butterfly fluttered in the air, in the very middle of the open window. When we first saw it, it was flitting gaily and happily amongst the plants and flowers that were blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more and more slow on the wing, and at last poised itself unusually steadily for an insect of its class. Below it, on the window sill, near the wall, with head erect, and its little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... was after no good," said Glyn to himself; and, before making for the door, he peered in at the window in expectation of seeing a robin flitting about—a favourite habit these birds had of frequenting the long room and flying ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... bamboos, and the clash of the palm leaves subsided for an instant, allowing more distant sounds to reach his ears, he intermittently caught what seemed to be the sounds of picks and shovels at work at no very great distance; moreover, there were lights flitting about the distant camp, and much movement there, though what it portended Jack was quite unable to discover, even with the help of his night glasses. At length, however, the period of darkness came to an end, for sheet lightning began to flicker and quiver among the densely packed ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... one around here has heard it. Some of the negroes and even some of the more ignorant crackers declare they have heard screams from the swamp on dark nights and that white figures have been seen flitting—" ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... of conveying ideas or impressions. But in this case they were particularly appropriate. No other words could so precisely describe my feelings. Me, a rational intelligence, succumbing to such low-level emotional stimuli! If this keeps on, the next thing I know I will be seeing little green men flitting through the trees.... Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... with eyes that seemed half inquiry, half surprise, her colour flitting back and forth in its vivid way. Then she rose suddenly to her feet, and setting her back against the tree and dropping her folded hands, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... frontier moors and rocks From eve to morn may roam: Nor shriek, nor shout, nor reddened sky, Shall warn the startled hind to fly From his beloved home. Nor to the pier shall burghers crowd With straining necks and faces pale, And think that in each flitting cloud They see a hostile sail. The peasant without fear shall guide Down smooth canal or river wide His painted bark of cane, Fraught, for some proud bazaar's arcades, With chestnuts from his native shades, And wine, and milk, and grain. Search round the peopled ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that was crowned by a large monastery and sat down on the slope by a group of sallows. They were in full bloom. A swarm of bees and flies were buzzing round. Peacock and Tortoiseshell butterflies were flitting to and fro. The sunlight filtered down through the bluish haze. I rested and let an hour or two slip by. Then I got up and crossed a little brook and strolled along a narrow path that wound its way through a copse. The ground was starred with wood-anemones, oxlips, violets, cuckoo-flowers, and ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... with a flitting blush, 25 With downcast eyes and modest grace; For well she knew, I could not choose ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... would be thrown on the ship, that we might better see her go down. Stage effects, with a vengeance! But they were not carried out—it was a too dangerous proceeding, as the enemy regretfully realized. We waited up till past eleven and saw lights flitting about the doomed ship, as the Germans sailors were removing some things, making fast others, and placing the bombs to blow her up. But none waited up for the end, which we heard took place after midnight. The ship first canted over, her sails ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... he washed his face and brushed his hair; then they went downstairs and found Mr. Richmond. He stretched out his hand to David, which the boy took with a flitting change of colour that told of some difficulty of self-command. However in a moment his ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... brainless creature would generally be found the nucleus of a crowd, while Clio in spectacles languished in a corner. Winifred Glamorys, however, was reputed to have a tongue that matched her eye; paralleling with whimsies and epigrams its freakish fires and witcheries, and, assuredly, flitting in her white gown through the dark balmy garden, she seemed the very spirit of moonlight, the subtle ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist's flitting genius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kiss upon that noble forehead now bedewed with the cold sweat of death—for the last time! But the trembling hands were unable to write down more than the notes ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... information he was rewarded by the strange and stirring adventures of wilderness life they related during the quickly flitting evening hours. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... democrats; I'll be under the dominion o' the King o' kings and His throned Powers and Principalities; and after a' this weary voting, and confiscations, and guillotining, it will be Peace—Peace—Peace:'—and with that word on his lips, the 'flitting' as he ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... time rumours had been flitting about that certain Battalions were going to be disbanded in accordance with a programme of reorganised military establishments. Every New Army unit in the B.E.F. had about this time qualms of fear that if rumours ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... all means. I shall be writing; and you will be lonely if you stay. But I must see my girls; for I caught glimpses of certain surprising phantoms flitting by the door." ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... position. He saw himself a plaything in the hands of envy, treachery, and greed. What was he in this world of contending ambitions? A child sacrificing everything to the pursuit of pleasure and the gratification of vanity; a poet whose thoughts never went beyond the moment, a moth flitting from one bright gleaming object to another. He had no definite aim; he was the slave of circumstance—meaning well, doing ill. Conscience tortured him remorselessly. And to crown it all, he was penniless and exhausted ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... grounded at a point some distance from the summit of the mountain, on a small flat plateau. The warmth was perceptible, and some few stunted bushes and trees clung to the sides of the flaming mountain. The professor was delighted to find, flitting among the vegetation, a small fly with pink and blue wings, which he promptly christened the Sanburritis Antarcticitis Americanus. He netted it without difficulty and popped it into a camphor bottle and turned, with the boys, to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... first nights and knew what he was talking about, ever dreams of making the young girl the centre of his theme? Rather he seeks inspiration from the tried and tired woman of the world, in all her intricate maturity, whilst, by way of comic relief, he sends the young girl flitting in and out with a tennis-racket, the poor eidolon amauron of her former self. The season of the unsophisticated is gone by, and the young girl's final extinction beneath the rising tides of cosmetics will leave no gap in life and will rob ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... invited to meet her, every one accepted. And the large rooms, cooled by electric fans, and decorated with lovely flowers and softly shaded lights, looked somehow more attractive, now that Patty Fairfield's graceful figure was flitting through them. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... ever were my dearest offspring, when They were more numerous, nor can be less so 110 Now you are last; but did the State demand The exile of the disinterred ashes Of your three goodly brothers, now in earth,[73] And their desponding shades came flitting round To impede the act, I must no less obey A duty, paramount ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... walls of the vats, till the whole range would be one uniform surface of frothing liquid, and on applying a light, the report has been as loud as that of a small cannon, and the flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting will-o'-the-wisp on the surface of some ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... place flows round and near my room—for here no one, man or woman, scruples to come through one's room at any moment, if it happens to be a shortcut. By day nothing much happens in the yard—except when a horse tried to eat a hen, the other afternoon. But by night, after ten, it is filled with flitting figures of girls, with wreaths of white flowers, keeping assignations.... It is all—all Papeete—like a Renaissance Italy with the venom taken out, No, simpler, light-come and light-go, passionate and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... pleased, a little guilty, but full of life. Two waiters, serious, silent, accustomed to seeing and forgetting everything, to entering the room only when it was necessary and to leaving it when they felt they were intruding, were silently flitting hither and thither. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... west; fourteen hundred leagues she sailed along a leafy wilderness of tangled trees and ropy mosses, beauty and decay, the froth of the beach combers aripple on the very roots of the {160} trees; dolphins coursing round the hull like greyhounds; flying fish with mica for wings flitting over the decks; forests of seaweed warning out to deeper water. Then, a sudden cold fell, cold and fogs that chilled the mariners of tropic seas to the bone. The veering coast pushed them out farther westward, far north of what the Spanish ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... which was floating, floating westward bearing some great message to a far country, and that all was well for him and his darling. The troubled vision cleared from his brain, and his sleep grew calmer; he breathed more easily, and flitting glimpses of fair scenes passed before his dreaming eyes,—scenes in some peaceful and beautiful world, where never a shadow of sorrow or trouble darkened the quiet contentment of happy and innocent lives. He smiled ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... others further still leant over the lotus-covered stream, their giant leaves trailing in the slow-moving current. Tangled masses of bracken rioted in wild abundance over a velvety green sod, overshadowed by waving magnolias. Through the trees bright-plumaged birds were flitting from branch to branch in songless flight, flashing their brilliant colours through the sunny leaves. In places the water splashed over moss-grown rocks into deep pools. Every drifting spray of cloud threw over the dell a new light, deepening the shadows ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... nigher this although we dashed Your cities into shards with catapults, She would not love;—or brought her chained, a slave, The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, Not ever would she love; but brooding turn The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance Were caught within the record of her wrongs, And crushed to death: and rather, Sire, than this I would the old God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... already betraying itself in cat-calls and stampings from the sixpenny places, and Mrs. Carteret, flitting like a sheep dog round her flock, arranged them in couples and drove them before her on to the stage, singing in chorus, with a fair assumption of hilarity, "As we ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... from the water, the prospect was almost appalling, though it was blurred and momentarily changing. Nasmyth's eyes could hardly grasp salient details—he had only a confused impression of flying spray, rushing green water that piled itself here and there in frothy ridges, flitting rocks, and trees that came furiously speeding up toward him. He had an idea that Lisle once or twice shouted sharp instructions and that he clumsily obeyed, but he could not have told exactly what he did. He only knew that now and then he paddled desperately, but more often he knelt ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... quickly, and flitting down the table, put her arm round her friend's shoulder and whispered in ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Jimmy that the shadowy and inchoate vision of a combat, a fight, a brawl of some kind persisted in flitting about in the recesses of his mind, always just far enough away to elude capture. The absurdity of the thing annoyed him. A man has either indulged in a fight overnight or he has not indulged in a fight overnight. There can be no middle course. That he should be uncertain ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... parson, and the butcher, and the leg, over and over, and over again. There were the same squalor, the same turmoil and noise, the same general characteristics, in every corner; in the best and the worst alike. The whole place seemed restless and troubled; and the people were crowding and flitting to and fro, like the shadows in an ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Government has no intention that petticoats, even hobbled ones, should be flitting around while the habits and the methods of the busy insect were being examined through a microscope or a telescope. The choice of instrument depending, of course, upon ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... him; or that any long restraint was too oppressive while Caroline's sparkling eyes responded to his own, the Gentleman in Black entered on a conversation with his young companion, as aimless as the swaying of the branches in the wind, as devious as the flitting of the butterflies in the azure air, as illogical as the melodious murmur of the fields, and, like it, full of mysterious love. At that season is not the rural country as tremulous as a bride that has donned her marriage robe; does it not invite the coldest soul to be happy? What heart ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... saw Johnny Upright, and his good wife and fair daughters, and frowzy slavey, like so many ghosts flitting eastward through the gloom, the monster ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... window, and stood looking out thoughtfully into the darkness. Her brain was busy with the numerous schemes that were flitting ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... pounding as it had not pounded for six years and more—(not since the days when he had gone up other stairs, in another land, to see an Evelyn)—Hugh followed the flitting ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... blossoms. More often the lilac flowers of the begonia-vine made large patches of color. Innumerable epiphytes covered the limbs, and even grew on the roughened trunks. We saw little bird life—a darter now and then, and kingfishers flitting from perch to perch. At long intervals we passed a ranch. At one the large, red-tiled, whitewashed house stood on a grassy slope behind mango- trees. The wooden shutters were thrown back from the unglazed windows, and the big rooms were utterly bare—not a book, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... passes in us of which our consciousness takes no grasp,—or but with such a flitting touch as scarcely to hand it over to the memory—that I feel encouraged to doubt whether ever there was a man absolutely without hope. That there have been, alas, are many, who are aware of no ground ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... moved the heart of Tisbina at these words. "This indeed," replied she, "I feel to be noble; and truly could I also now die to save you. But life is flitting; and how may ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Perhaps she has already begun to be a seeker who will perhaps find, lose, and seek again. Her temper is modified; there is a slight stagnation of soul; a craving for work or travel; a love of children with flitting thoughts of adopting one, or else aversion to them; an analysis of psychic processes until they are weakened and insight becomes too clear; sense of responsibility without an object; a slight general malaise and a sense that society is a false "margarine" affair; revolt against those ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... enough, but before you start another I want you to write a summary of just how successful you were in controlling the flitting impulses of the mind and will. You will find this an excellent practice. There is nothing more beneficial to the mind than to pay close attention to its own ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... in retrospective mood, Alone with Nature's solitude In some secluded sylvan dell, Her myriad voices float and swell And flitting shadows softly tell Of dear ones lost—yet loved so well! Then to the sunny home where dwelt— (Ere yet the envious tyrant dealt The blow that blighted hopes have felt)— Fond fancy wanders, and can see Once happy scenes that ne'er can be Lost ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... discordant trade, and the Nevile, crossing himself devoutly, muttered, "Jesu defend us! Those she Will-o'-the-wisps are eno' to scare all the blood out of one's body. What—a murrain on them!—do they portend, flitting round and round, and skirting off, as if the devil's broomstick was behind them! By the Mass! they have frighted away the damozel, and I am not sorry for it. They have left me small heart for the part of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is excellent: "When the big-thumbed sheriff-officer and the blind man of the twenty-four fingers shall be together in Barra, Macneill may be making ready for the flitting." It is said that the same seer prophesied thus of the Strathpeffer wells: "The day will come when this disagreeable spring, with thick-crusted surface and unpleasant smell, shall be put under lock and ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... branches hung so low as partly to conceal the figures that went before from those who followed. Priscilla had leaped up more lightly than the rest of us, and ran along in advance, with as much airy activity of spirit as was typified in the motion of a bird, which chanced to be flitting from tree to tree, in the same direction as herself. Never did she seem so happy as that afternoon. She skipt, and could not help it, from very ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... butcher was flitting, and all his beds were taken down. Or else he didn't like our look. As a parting shot, we had "These gentlemen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
