"Volatile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sermon; Till making love to a young woman who rebuffs him; Till making a fool of the pedants; Till tried and hung. Strauss's liking to present, by musical pictures, sometimes a character, sometimes a dialogue, or a situation, or a landscape, or an idea—that is to say, the most volatile and varied impressions of his capricious spirit—is very marked here. It is true that he falls back on several popular subjects, whose meaning would be very easily grasped in Germany; and that he develops them, not quite in the strict form of a rondeau, as he pretends, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the Romans believed that by eating half a dozen of them, they were secured against drunkenness, however deeply they might imbibe. Almonds, however, are considered as very indigestible. The bitter contain, too, principles which produce two violent poisons,—prussic acid and a kind of volatile oil. It is consequently dangerous to eat them in large quantities. Almonds pounded together with a little sugar and water, however, produce a milk similar to that which is yielded by animals. Their oil is used for making fine soap, and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... a self-wounded spirit. These are moments which claim the encouragements of a friendship animated by a high esteem for the intellectual excellence of the man of genius; not the general intercourse of society; not the insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of the volatile. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... persons had suspected that a quantity of the oil of vitriol was rendered volatile by this process, I examined it, by all the chemical methods that are in use; but could not find that water thus impregnated contained the least perceivable quantity ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... ma'amselle greatly delighted to carry Patty off to her stateroom, there to talk to her or listen to her read aloud. Except for her maid, ma'amselle was alone, and Patty felt sorry for her and was glad to cheer her up. Not that she needed cheering exactly, for she was of a merry and volatile disposition, except when she gave way to exhibitions of temper, which ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... strange disposition, as they had already found out. With all her volatile gaiety, when she chose to say, "I will!" she was as firm as a rock. No persuasions—no commands—could move her. In this case none were tried. Her fortunes seemed to arrange themselves; for Mrs. Fludyer, coming in one day to make the final arrangements for the Rothesays' arrival ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... war. Veblen maintains also that emulation is always involved in the patriotic spirit, that patriotism always contains the idea of the defeat of an opponent, and is based upon collective malevolence. The range of these occasions of crisis is so great, and the feelings of hatred so persistent and volatile, that the mechanism for the production of war is always present. These causes range all the way from violation of property to offense to the most abstract ideas of national etiquette. Violation of international law, of moral principles, we see now, may have very ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... the volatile damsel. "Not a doubt of it. That's my style, you know. But I have some sense; I know who's who. Now, Jones, junior, make your man handle the ribbons. I've always had a grudge against that ordinance about fast ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... diffusion of electricity. He considered the effect as due to the removal of the obstacle which the air presented to the expansion of the substances from which the electricity passed[A]. But platina balls show the phenomena in vacuo as well as volatile metals and other substances; besides which, when the rarefaction is very considerable, the electricity passes with scarcely any resistance, and the production of no sensible heat; so that I think Fusinieri's view of the matter is likely to ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... every Number it has been our endeavour to cater for his "amusement and instruction," so as to combine interest and novelty—or, in a homely phrase, to make each sheet like "the punch of conversation." Thus, we have spirit, volatile and fiery in our leading articles; lemon in our pungent Notes; sugar in our "Gatherer;" and water quant. suff.—mixed in a form, which, like old bowls or drinking-glasses, is variegated with figures and scenes of the current ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... and had tiffin with them in the hanging garden. Deppingham was surly and preoccupied. Drusilla Browne was unusually vivacious. At best, she was not volatile; her greatest accomplishment lay in the ability to appreciate what others had to say. This in itself is a treat so unusual that one feels like commending the woman who carries ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... power of abstraction to a degree that appears marvellous to volatile spirits, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... theatrical representations. But though we cannot eradicate the desire for this gratification, we may degrade its tendency, and corrupt its effects. We may substitute stimulants to the senses for elevation to the principle, or softening of the heart. By abandoning its direction to the most volatile and licentious of the community, we may render it an instrument of evil instead of good, and pervert the powers of genius, the magic of art, the fascinations of beauty, to the destruction instead of the elevation of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... natural horseshoe, Willock believed she ran little danger from Indians. He, himself, had ceased to preserve his unrelaxing watchfulness; after all, it had been the highwaymen rather than the red men whom he had most feared—and after two years it did not seem likely that such volatile men would pre serve the feeling ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... greatest illuminating effect from a given bulk of gas is obtained by mixing it with the requisite proportion of oxygen, and holding in the flame of the burning mixture a piece of some solid infusible and non-volatile substance, such as lime. This becomes heated to whiteness, and emits an intense light know as the Drummond light, used already for special purposes of illumination. By supplying oxygen in pipes laid by the side ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of the highway, opposite to the field through which she was flying. They were her countrymen, and she knew that her sex would be respected by the Eastern militia, who composed this body; but in the volatile and reckless character of the Southern horse she had less confidence. Outrages of any description were seldom committed by the really American soldiery; but she recoiled, with exquisite delicacy, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a drizzling, foggy morning when they drove down to the boat. There are seldom bright sailing days in the forepart of March. But the atmospheric effects made no impression on the volatile Merrihew. It was all very interesting to him. And he had an eye for all things, from the baskets of fruit and flowers, messengers with late orders from the stores, repeated farewells, to the squalling babies in the steerage. Even in the impudent shrieking tugboats he found ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... sympathetic, but she had never admired the wife as much as she did the husband. She was too volatile in the early days, and held her head ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... hand. He would wait, he said, for an answer, and the maid bade him step inside while she ran up-stairs. Mrs. Sumter answered her knock at the door of Miss Kate's room, into which the damsels were now doubled. To the disappointment of that somewhat volatile domestic, Mrs. Sumter closed the portal before proceeding to open the missive, but her announcement, "From Mr. Lanier," caused Miriam ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... unventilated; when you open the door it will be dead. Shut it up, as so many of our average Christian professors and members of our congregations and churches do, and when you come to take it out, it will be like some volatile perfume that has been put into a vial and locked away in a drawer and forgotten; there will be nothing left but an empty bottle, and a rotten cork. Speak your faith if you would have your faith strengthened. Muzzle it, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the lower orders was almost frantic, but even among the industrious poor there were not wanting many who regretted this precipitate return to the old order of things—to conscription, war, and bloodshed, while in the superior classes of society there was a pretty general consternation. The vain, volatile soldiery, however, thought of nothing but their Emperor, saw nothing before them but the restoration of all their laurels, the humiliation of England, and the utter defeat of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl, and knew the language of flattery, was welcome everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura Hawkins thought it worth while to use her fascinations upon him, and to endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... further her own personal interests; but not the will to endure sacrifice for the sake of another. Her sister was larger and possessed a reserve that might have been mistaken for deepness. He felt that she was hardly in sympathy with the motives of the younger, more volatile woman. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... from flower to flower. My brother Henry was two years younger than myself, and was at the time I speak of a remarkably handsome, active boy, of ten years of age—full of fun and mischief, unsteady and volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used to say to me—'How I should ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... dark he could see that a diaphanous gauze of dust overhung it and the air was heavy with the most volatile particles. The sandy earth had been ground and worked to the depth of over a foot. How difficult had it been for the rearmost ranks to cover this ploughed soil! The track was a mile in width, and by the nature of the marks upon it, Kenkenes knew that husbandmen, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... answer for a minute. He stopped and lighted his pipe. To Raymond, Sabina appeared unmeasurably distant at this midnight hour. His volatile mind was quick to take colour from the last experience, and in the aura of the smoking concert, woman looked a slight and inferior thing; marriage, a folly; domestic ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Thespian glare are one or two streets where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little tropical warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is "El Refugio," a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... being his most sincere friend, she could not bring herself to contest his affections and his pastimes. But this sublime philosophy is at an end; the excellent heart of this Queen is at Val-de-Grace; it will beat no more, neither for her volatile husband, nor ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Having gone through the grammar-school, he was placed with a relative of the name of Seymour, to study the profession of the law; but this dry kind of study was soon found to have no attractions for one of his volatile turn of mind. Something, however, was to be done to rescue from sheer idleness a youth of nineteen, with very narrow means, few friends, and no definite prospects; and, by the kindness of Dr. Wheelock, the pious founder of Dartmouth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... contradictions to those who do not understand her—now in the clouds, now in the depths. Bad weather depresses her; so does a sad story, the death of a kitten, solemn music. She is correspondingly volatile in the opposite direction and often laughs at real calamities with wonderful courage. She has a fund of romance in her nature which has led her to the pass she now is in. She is clever, too, at introspection and analysis—of herself chiefly. She studies her own ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. They contained colourless volatile essences, of what nature I shall say no more than that they were not poisons—phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... say, he found it cool, restful, and, in spite of the dust, absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope, entirely inodorous. The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious emanations and decay—the very dust itself in its fine impalpability was volatile with a spicelike piquancy, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... of land-plaster in stables helps to prevent loss of the nitrogen-content through fermentation. Its value does not lie chiefly in physical action as an absorbent, but the beneficial results come through chemical action. The volatile part of the manure is changed into a more stable form. In recent years this preservative has fallen somewhat into disuse, as acid phosphate contains like material and also supplies phosphoric acid to the manure. The phosphoric acid content of stable ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... perfection, and thence proceeds this or that metal or mineral, according as one of the three principles acquires dominion, and they have much or little of sulphur and salt, or an unequal mixture of these; whence some metals are fixed—that is, constant or stable; and some are volatile and easily changeable, as is seen in gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... map and its meanderings through the desert, was selected to perform the duties of judge advocate. The court was authorized to sit without regard to hours, and to sift the official career of the protege of the house committee of military affairs without regard to consequence, when that volatile and accused person took matters into his own hands, and between the setting and rising of the sun, disappeared from the brush, canvas and adobe shelters of old Camp Cooke and left for parts unknown, taking with him the best horse in the commanding ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... meant the exposure of a substance to such a degree of heat, that it glows or emits light, or becomes red-hot. Its greatest value is in the separation of a volatile substance from one less volatile, or one which is entirely fixed at the temperature of the flame. In this case we only take cognizance of the latter or fixed substance, although in many instances we make use of ignition for the purpose ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... at him vacantly where he stood. There was something in his attitude, in his look, which swept over them, seeing none of them, in the eager lifting of his head, in the excited fire in his eyes, that arrested all—from the dullest muleteer, plodding on with his string of patient beasts, to the most volatile French girl laughing on her way with a group of fantassins. He did not note them, hear them, think of them; the whole of the Algerine scene had faded out as if it had no place before him; he had forgot that he was a cavalry soldier of the Empire; he saw nothing ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... uncommonly volatile all of a sudden," Mr. Jones remarked in a bored voice. "What's come ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... disagreeable odor. This is caused by a large jet-black ant named "Leshonya". It is nearly an inch in length, and emits a pungent smell when alarmed, in the same manner as the skunk. The scent must be as volatile as ether, for, on irritating the insect with a stick six feet long, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... rightly surmises that the evil influences, which seem in some way to emanate from a small empty room, really proceed from a living being. His interpretation is skilful and subtle enough not to detract from the simple horror of the tale. A miniature, certain volatile essences, a compass, a lodestone and other properties are found in a room below that which appeared to be the source of the horrors. It proves that the man, whose face is portrayed on the miniature has been able through the exertion of will-power ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... subsided and much of what was then seething has gone off in vapor or other volatile products. But some very solid matters also have been precipitated, some crystals of poetry translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a record ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... called in Rezin to help him. The latter was already on the way when Jotham was laid with his fathers (736 B.C.), and it was Ahaz, the son of Jotham, who had to bear the brant of the assault. He was barely twenty years old, a volatile, presumptuous, and daring youth, who was not much dismayed by his position.** Jotham had repaired the fortifications of Jerusalem, which had been left in a lamentable state ever since the damage done to them in the reign of Amaziah;*** his successor ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... safe were three shelves, and two small drawers. Ranged on the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. They contained colourless volatile essences, of the nature of which I shall only say that they were not poisons— phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of rock-crystal, and another of amber—also ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... this Declaration were banded about the Hague, signs of dissension began to appear among the English. Wildman, indefatigable in mischief, prevailed on some of his countrymen, and, among others, on the headstrong and volatile Mordaunt, to declare that they would not take up arms on such grounds. The paper had been drawn up merely to please the Cavaliers and the parsons. The injuries of the Church and the trial of the Bishops had been put too prominently forward; and nothing had been said of the tyrannical manner in which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Mrs. Chapin's. Two of them, however, took very little part in the life of the house and left college at the end of the year. Katherine Kittredge, "of Kankakee," was the fly- away of the group, Rachel Morrison its steadiest, strongest member. Shy, sensitive Roberta Lewis found her complement in a volatile little sophomore, the only one in the house, named Mary Brooks. Mary had a talent for practical jokes and original methods of entertainment, and supplied much of the fun and frolic at the Chapin house. It was she who put Betty's picture into ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... made it one of the most easily obtainable gases, the processes which were most largely adopted for its preparation in laboratories were:-first, the decomposition of ethylene bromide by dropping it slowly into a boiling solution of alcoholic potash, and purifying the evolved gas from the volatile bromethylene by washing it through a second flask containing a boiling solution of alcoholic potash, or by passing it over moderately heated soda lime; and, second, the more ordinarily adopted process of passing the products of incomplete combustion from a Bunsen burner, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in itself they had been able to find no fundamental axiom: it was too spiritual and too volatile. Painting, an art which one could hold fast with one's eyes, and follow step by step with the external senses, seemed more favorable for such an end: the English and French had already theorized about ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... extravagantly any more forever? In view of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in front, our outlines dim and misty on that side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... pig is clothed upon with lard, a fatty, opaque, snow-white substance, that boils and grows limpid clear and flames with heat; and while not so volatile and spirit-like as butter, nevertheless it is one of earth's pure essences, perfected, sublimated, not after the soul with suffering, but after the flesh with corn and solid comfort—the most abundant of one's possessions, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Saratogy—that I'd go, and I went. It was odd enough, to be sure," said Uncle Joe, taking a pinch of rappee from his tortoise-shell box—"very odd, in fact, but somehow or other, Mrs. Padlock, being in poor health, and her sister, a rather volatile and inexperienced young ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... follies of fashion. Its influence predominates universally; and the votarists of bon ton, are equally assiduous in the pursuit of their object, whether with the satellites in the gay and volatile regions of the court, or amongst those of 'sober fame' in the mercantile bustle of the city. In the purlieus of the great, bon ton is characterized by inconvenience; four or Ave hundred people, for example, invited to crowd a suite of rooms not ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... ever-present consciousness of each other which are characteristic of our lovers, and I have never beheld the faintest evidence of interest in any engaged or newly married couple. They manage to preserve an absolutely wooden appearance at a time when one would expect a race so volatile ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... the only true kindness, and left her, after all attempts at bathing her forehead, or giving her sal volatile, proved only to molest her. She lay on her bed, not able to think, and feeling nothing but the pain of her headache and a ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she wore a crinoline with an incense-burner beneath it, which would be a far more simple way of performing the operation. She now begins to perspire freely in the hot-air bath, and the pores of the skin being thus opened and moist, the volatile oil from the smoke of the burning ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the theatre; they occupied the same dressing-room, and the volatile Lemoine talked incessantly. Although there were but few people in the stalls, the gallery was well filled, as was usually the case. When going on for the last act in the final scene, Dupre whispered a word to the man who controlled the falling ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... misericord where this learningknight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that he should go in to that castle for to make merry with them that were there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for he was a man of cautels ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... most suffering mortals on earth. Being conveyed into the front parlour, she was there deposited on a sofa; and the lady from the first floor running up to the first floor, returned with a bottle of sal-volatile, which, holding Mrs. Raddle tight round the neck, she applied in all womanly kindness and pity to her nose, until that lady with many plunges and struggles was fain to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... harder hearted; For thoughtless of all sufferings unseen, Of all save those which touch upon the round Of the day's palpable doings, the vain man, And oftener still the volatile woman vain, Is busiest at heart with restless cares, Poor pains and paltry joys, that make within Petty yet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... their council, and the boy who would not answer was quickly forgotten. Long they debated the morrow. Several have left accounts of what occurred. Johnston, although he had laid the remarkable ambush, and was expecting victory, was grave, even gloomy. But Beauregard, volatile and sanguine, rejoiced. For him the triumph was won already. After their great achievement in placing their army, unseen and unknown, within cannon shot of the Union force, failure ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and from the odds and ends of his dishevelled wits wrote at a gallop, without ever looking back, his "Mysteres de Paris." The latter lived in an attic year after year, contemplated with cheerful anxiety the volatile world of France and the perplexed life of man, and elaborated word by word, with innumerable revisions, his short songs, which are gems of poetry, charming at once the ear and the heart. Novels are perhaps too easily written to be of lasting value. An unpremeditated word, in which the thoughts ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... me. She was very erratic, and before she left the room she had quite got over her depression. The sun shone out, and with the gleam of brightness her volatile spirits rose. ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... rather say that it is 'of such a nature'; nor let us speak of water as 'this'; but always as 'such'; nor must we imply that there is any stability in any of those things which we indicate by the use of the words 'this' and 'that,' supposing ourselves to signify something thereby; for they are too volatile to be detained in any such expressions as 'this,' or 'that,' or 'relative to this,' or any other mode of speaking which represents them as permanent. We ought not to apply 'this' to any of them, but rather the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... will is abolished and consciousness fades gradually away, as the blood is pressed out by the contraction of the arteries. So, also, the consciousness and the directing will may be abolished by altering the quality of the blood passing through the convolutions of the brain. We may introduce a volatile substance, such as chloroform, and its first effect will be to abolish consciousness and induce profound slumber and a blessed insensibility to pain. The like effects will follow more slowly upon the absorption of a drug, such as opium; ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... rejoiced in the disgrace that humbled the hated Ione. If Glaucus could not be her slave, neither could he be the adorer of her rival. This was sufficient consolation for any regret at his fate. Volatile and fickle, she began again to be moved by the sudden and earnest suit of Clodius, and was not willing to hazard the loss of an alliance with that base but high-born noble by any public exposure of her past weakness and immodest ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... curious, in the light of future events, to note that young Morse's parents were fearful lest his volatile nature and lack of steadfastness of purpose should mar his future career. His dominating characteristic in later life was a bulldog tenacity, which led him to stick to one idea through discouragements and disappointments which would have ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... is a gallant man; he is indeed volatile, but always with great good-nature. There were two balls during his stay, and some of the old ladies were mortified that H. R. H. would not dance with them; but he says he is determined to enjoy the privilege of all other men, that of asking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... treat was deferred until their return, which was on Monday morning, when we made them into a dish very like gooseberry-fool; they had a very pleasant acid taste, and were very refreshing. They are of a light yellow colour, nearly round, and about half an inch in diameter; the volatile oil of the rind ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... phenomena of nature; the resolutions and combinations that are formed during the process of the vinous and acetous stages of fermentation, are interesting, beyond comparison, to the brewer, malt and molasses distillers, vintager, cider and vinegar maker, &c. The elastic fluids and volatile principles that are extricated and escape, formerly so little attended to, are now better understood. The method of commodiously saving, and advantageously applying them, and other volatile products, to the improvement of the fermenting and other fluids, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... unusable bricks: the four oxen, Tug, Lug, Haul and Crawl, who were to be the instruments of another economy and proved to be, at least in Sydneian language, equal to nothing but the consumption of "buckets of sal volatile:" the entry of the distracted mother of the household on her new domains with a baby clutched in her arms and one shoe left in the circumambient mud: the great folks of the neighbourhood (Lord and Lady Carlisle) coming to ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... supreme authority. All valued him as their present preserver, and all hated him as their future impediment. Such were the conflicting sentiments entertained towards Mirabeau, during the last incidents of his eccentric and volatile career. And in the midst of so many antagonistic interests, he alone remained unshaken and unappalled, his oratory rendering him still the mouth-piece of the Revolution, his duplicity its diplomatist, and his intellectual contrivance its statesman. Nor was he satisfied with these successes; he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... a prefix, the fixed or fatty oils are always understood. The volatile or essential oils are a distinct class. Occasionally, the fixed oils are called hydrocarbons, but hydrocarbon oils are quite different and consist of carbon and hydrogen alone. Of these, petroleum is incapable of digestion, whilst others ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulfur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... show ourselves volatile and ill-balanced; in the other we are cowardly. If you ask me which of the two is the more to be avoided I should say the second, and this because it seems to me to indicate a low tone of mind, human ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... did everything in haste, had in his seventeenth year eloped with Martha, daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes, and married her in the Fleet on March 2, 1715. As was only to be expected from a person so volatile he from the beginning neglected his wife; but, as is put quaintly in that unreliable work, Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia, which was concocted by Mrs. Eliza Haywood, "after some years of continu'd extravagance, the Duke, either through the natural Inconsistency ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... by the same race, is prodigious. Who could suppose that the Dutchman, methodical, calculating, persevering, was next neighbour to the fiery, war-like, and impetuous Frenchman? Or that the southern and western Irish, vehement, impassioned, and volatile, came from the same stock which pervades the whole west of Britain? England, for centuries the abode of industry, effort, and opulence, is subject to the same government, and situated in the same latitude as Ireland, where indolence is almost universal, wealth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... risen to a shriek. She would be in hysterics in another moment. Mary, who was on the point of nausea, went hastily into her dressing-room and poured out a dose of sal-volatile. "Here!" she said peremptorily. "Drink this. I'll not listen to another word. And I don't wish to be obliged to call ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... right, miss.' I am perfectly certain Jacob would die for me if I asked him. He is drinking hot grog at this moment, to prevent him from catching cold, by my express orders. He had the pony-chaise out in two minutes; and off we went. Lady Lundie, my dear, prostrate in her own room—too much sal volatile. I hate her. The rain got worse. I didn't mind it. Jacob didn't mind it. The pony didn't mind it. They had both caught my impulse—especially the pony. It didn't come on to thunder till some time afterward; and ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... of travels became more personal, less purely topographical, more volatile and merry, more subjective.[24] Goethe in a passage in the "Campagne in Frankreich," to which reference is made later, acknowledges this impulse as derived from Yorick. Its presence was felt even when there was no outward effort at sentimental journeying. The suggestion that the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... were found at his table,—Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Varius were among his friends and constant associates. He was a fair specimen of the man of pleasure and society,—liberal, kind- hearted, clever, refined, but luxurious, self-indulgent, indolent, and volatile, with good ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of page and secretary I followed Joan to the council. She entered that presence with the bearing of a grieved goddess. What was become of the volatile child that so lately was enchanted with a ribbon and suffocated with laughter over the distress of a foolish peasant who had stormed a funeral on the back of a bee-stung bull? One may not guess. Simply it was gone, and had left no sign. She moved straight to the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... voyage somewhat chastened in spirit. But her volatile nature soon survived the shocks it had received. By the time the Kansas put her ashore at Tilbury, to be clasped in the arms of a timid and tearful aunt, she was ready as ever for the campaign of glory she had mapped ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Majesties had too much tenderness for their volatile offspring to subject her to either of the schemes of the equally unscrupulous philosophers. Indeed the most complete knowledge of the laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was impossible to classify her. She was a fifth ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... supplementary element, a whole field is often trenched by the spade as clean as one could be furrowed by the plough. By this process the substratum of clay is thrown up, to a considerable thickness, upon the light, black, almost volatile soil, and mixed with it when dry; thus giving it a new character and ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... is now changed by the fermentation; it contains no longer the same principles, but has acquired those which it had not, which are volatile, and evaporate easily. They must therefore be managed carefully, in order not to lose the fruits of an already tedious labor. The spirit already created in the fermented liquor, must be collected by the distillation; but in transporting it to the still, the action of the external ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... Miami he had received a twenty page letter from the Bluegrass region of Kentucky which threw him into a state of such volatile ineptitude that I was well satisfied to let him give what orders he would, sending us to the world's end for all I cared. In a very large measure Tommy's happiness was my own, as I knew that mine would always be dear ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... arrangements, sided of course with these impoverished and haughty lords; and, in a word, the first tumult of the restoration being over, the troops of the Allies withdrawn, and the memory of recent sufferings and disasters beginning to wax dim amidst the vainest and most volatile of nations, there were abundant elements of discontent afloat among all those classes who had originally approved of, or profited by, the revolution ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... stolen ones, and my letters passed through the medium of a confidant. A gate leading from Mr Chaworth's grounds to those of my mother, was the place of our interviews, but the ardour was all on my side; I was serious, she was volatile. She liked me as a younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy; she, however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses upon. Had I married Miss Chaworth, perhaps the whole tenor of my life would have been different; she jilted ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... for the manufacture of gas is usually estimated by the amount of volatile matter it yields ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... a Frenchman, affable, volatile, affectionate. "Ah cher ami, do not leave me with the abruptness. You desolate mon coeur. Alors—return ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... old coiffeur came out from town today. He is French and by far the most volatile person about the news of the moment that I have seen. It is like a play to hear him declaim on the situation, but, poor man, having endured the Siege of Paris for six months in 1870, he doubtless has recollections. ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... administration was not the first to wrestle with the problem of applying a single racial policy to both the regulars and the guard. It was aware that too much tampering with the politically influential and volatile guard could produce an explosion. At the same time any appearance of timidity ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... as a dressing for the meal of rice. Butter, though counted as a pure fat, is in reality made up of at least six fatty principles, there being sixty-eight per cent of margarine and thirty per cent of oleine, the remainder being volatile compounds of fatty acids. In the best specimens of butter there is a slight amount of caseine, not over five per cent at most, though in poor there is much more. It is the only fat which may be constantly eaten without harm to the stomach, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... Hippocratic treatises the central nervous system is in the background; much attention, however, is given to the special senses. The brain resounds during audition. The olfactory nerves are hollow, lead to the brain, and, convey volatile substances to it which cause it to secrete mucus. The eyes also have been examined, and their coats and humours roughly described; an allusion, the first in literature, is perhaps made to the crystalline lens, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... breakfast. "It would have been a miracle if she had not; but if I had known the interview was to be followed by such unpleasant consequences I shouldn't have asked her down. I was wandering about for hours looking for an imaginary bottle of sal-volatile Jane described as being in her sitting-room: and Jane herself was up till late—or rather early—this morning, trying to soothe Mrs. Molyneux, who does not appear to have found the ghost quite such pleasant company as she expected. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... the fact that different liquids assume a spheroidal form at widely different temperatures, one may obtain some startling results. For example, liquid sulphurous acid is so volatile as to have a temperature of only 13 degrees F. when in that state, or 19 degrees below the freezing point of water, so that if a little water be dropped into the acid, it will immediately freeze and the pellet ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... but they may be used in any compound that requires lightness without richness. Even our grandmothers made snow pancakes; but, in the present age, to be distinguished is to be venturesome, and in this experiment one need not stop short of veritable loaf-cake. The volatile element in snow makes two table-spoons of it equal to one egg; therefore to a small loaf I should allow ten table-spoons. Cooks always put in as many eggs as they can afford, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... off again. Now, all the time they are away from the sun they are invisible. It is only as they get near him that they begin to expand and throw off tails and other appendages. The sun's heat is evidently evaporating them, and driving away a cloud of mist and volatile matter. This is when they can be seen. The comet is most gorgeous when it is near the sun, and as soon as it gets a reasonable distance away from him ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... in manner of growth to the preceding, is another importation from Europe now thoroughly at home here in wet soil. The volatile oil obtained by distilling its leaves has long been an important item of trade in Wayne County, New York. One has only to crush the leaves in one's hand to name ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... leisure to analyse, but, not understanding it, never got very far, except that, superficially, it had been more or less physical. From the moment he saw her he was conscious that she was different; insensibly the exquisitely volatile charm of her enveloped him, and he betrayed it, awaking her, first, to uneasy self-consciousness; then uneasy consciousness of him; then, imperceptibly, through distrust, alarm, and a thousand inexplicable psychological emotions, to a wistful interest that faintly responded ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to me, "this is the boot-room, where you will have to put on and take off your boots whenever you go out or come in. This boy is going out, and will take you into the playground with him," and away she went, leaving me in the hands of the volatile Flanagan. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... is sitting in the porch of the King Archon, when Euthyphro comes up and enters into conversation with the philosopher. After some talk, Euthyphro says, 'You will think me mad when I tell you whom I am prosecuting and pursuing!' 'Why, has the fugitive wings?' asks Socrates. 'Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life!' 'Who is he?' 'My father.' 'Good heavens! you don't mean that. What is he accused of?' 'Murder, Socrates.' Then Euthyphro explains the case, which quaintly illustrates Greek civilisation. Euthyphro's father had an agricultural labourer at Naxos. ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... remarked at some length," said Constance, "upon the importance of young ladies having some attendance when they are out late in the evening, and that you in particular were one of those persons—he didn't say, but he intimated, of a slightly volatile disposition,—whom their friends ought not to ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... represent them. The Swiss representative restrained himself admirably until after the initial lines had been drawn. It looked then as if there might be several codes, but before recessing several hours later some concessions had been made, and discussion on the more volatile points had been deferred. The differences of opinion were well founded and held with good reason. Some reflected an unawareness of situations in an unrelated horticultural field, e.g., a nurseryman did not know the problems encountered by the Danes in developing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... shoulders. Sigurd's death had shocked him considerably by its suddenness, but he was too much of a volatile Frenchman to be morbidly ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... meant, Take this short lesson from the god of bays, And let my friend apply it as he please: Beat not the dirty paths where vulgar feet have trod, But give the vigorous fancy room. For when, like stupid alchymists, you try To fix this nimble god, This volatile mercury, The subtile spirit all flies up in fume; Nor shall the bubbled virtuoso find More than fade insipid mixture left behind.[6] While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come, And on my verse pronounce their ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... addressed herself to the maid. "Go to my room, and bring me another bonnet and a veil. Stop!" She tried to rise, and sank back. "I must have something to strengthen me. Get the sal volatile." ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... by caricature merely, as volatile, fickle, deceitful, full of artifice, should sit in judgment upon them. He has the least heart of all who thinks that there is not some heart everywhere! The charity which tarrieth long and suffereth much wrong, has been that of the Parisians of the Latin Quarter, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... perceive, they love the country. Moreover, Maud has a passion for knowing all the village people, and takes the children with her, so that they really know the village-folk all round; they are certainly tremendously happy and interested in everything. Of course they are volatile in their tastes, but I rather encourage that. I know that in the little old moral books the idea was that nothing should be taken up by children, unless it was done thoroughly and perseveringly; but I had rather that they had a wide experience; the time to select and settle down upon ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... accuracy of a people who, though now in their decadence, have played an immense and still play a not wholly insignificant part in the complex drama of Asiatic politics. It is the picture of a people, light-hearted, nimble-witted, and volatile, but subtle, hypocritical, and insincere; metaphysicians and casuists, courtiers and rogues, gentlemen and liars, hommes d'esprit and yet incurable cowards. To explain the history and to elucidate the character of this ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the structure of coal can be accurately determined. Were we artificially to prepare a mass of vegetable substance, and covering it up entirely, subject it to great pressure, so that but little of the volatile gases which would be formed could escape, we might in the course of time produce something approaching coal, but whether we obtained lignite, jet, common bituminous coal, or anthracite, would depend upon the possibilities of escape for the gases ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... Camerons, to sitting indoors noticing what the poet did and said. I was mighty proud when I learned how to prepare his daily pipe for him. It was a long churchwarden, and he liked the stem to be steeped in a solution of sal volatile, or something of that kind, so that it did not stick to his lips. But he and all the others seemed to me very old. There were my young knights waiting for me; and jumping gates, climbing trees, and running paper-chases are pleasant ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... infant twice a-day a whole page or paragraph without stopping of Caesar or Cicero in Latin, and demand that on hearing it he shall learn it, we could at once judge of the difficulty, and the feelings of a volatile mind chained to the constant and daily repetition of such a task; and if this exercise were termed its "education," we can easily conceive the amount of affection that the child would learn to cherish towards it. Now this is really no exaggerated illustration ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... one evening remained in the master's studio considerably longer than his more volatile companions, who had gladly availed themselves of the excuse which the dusk of evening afforded, to withdraw from their several tasks, in order to finish a day of labour in the jollity and conviviality of ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot on the fender, apparently too preoccupied to notice him; so he strolled into the gun-room, which was blue with tobacco smoke and aromatic with the volatile odours ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... soluble in glycerin and fixed oils, and to a greater or less extent in volatile oils. Benzoic aldehyde dissolves ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... followed, to borrow the hackneyed phrase, beggars description. The house was turned upside down; to my mental vision arose sal volatile and burnt feathers, swoons and hysterics. Mahomet's dove alone can tell how all might have ended had not the Frenchman suggested a bolus. Captain No. 1 and I were commissioned to inquire into the mystery ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the best. A distant friend, upon one of these occasions, wrote a letter as brief as brief might be, but of its kind altogether perfect. It ran thus: "I have heard of your great grief, and I send you a simple pressure of the hand." Coming from a gay and volatile person, it had for the mourner great consolation; pious quotations, and even the commonplaces of condolence, would have seemed forced. Undoubtedly those persons do us great good, or they wish to, who ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... my love to you, dear. Let me congratulate you upon the fortitude and courage with which you ignored those lying reports of my death. I had fears that I might find you alone in a darkened room, with tear-stained eyes and sal volatile by your side. This is infinitely better. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... illustrated by Fig. III., which is a perspective view of a furnace adapted for the reduction of ores and salts of non-volatile metals and similar chemical compounds. Figs. IV. and V. are longitudinal and transverse sections, respectively, through the same, illustrating the manner of packing and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... than anything," exclaimed Rachel in an agony, springing to her feet, and flying after sal volatile, but feeling frightfully helpless without Grace, the manager of all Mrs. Curtis's ailments and troubles. Grace would have let her quietly cry it out. Rachel's remedies and incoherent protestations of all being her own ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Champagne," said Curran, "simply gives a runaway rap at a man's head." Dr. Druitt, equally distinguished by his studies upon wine and his standing as a physician, pronounces good champagne to be "a true stimulant to body and mind alike, rapid, volatile, transitory, and harmless. Amongst the maladies which are benefited by it," remarks he, "is the true neuralgia, intermitting fits of excruciating pain running along certain nerves, without inflammation of the affected ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... said Mr. Stevens, "in the natural world, a little, spotted, contemptible animal, which is armed by nature with a fetid, volatile, penetrating virus, which so pollutes whoever attacks it as to make him offensive to himself and all around him for a long time. Indeed, he is almost incapable of purification. Nothing, sir, no insult, shall provoke me to crush so filthy a beast." As these words were being uttered, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... wide); And unto Saint Denis he came anon. Who was so welcome as my lord Dan John, Our deare cousin, full of courtesy? With him he brought a jub* of malvesie, *jug And eke another full of fine vernage, And volatile,* as aye was his usage: *wild-fowl And thus I let them eat, and drink, and play, This merchant and this monk, a day or tway. The thirde day the merchant up ariseth, And on his needeis sadly him adviseth; And up into his countour-house* went he, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and presently reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade, meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm goin' to pack up and light out for home!" he declared, over ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... intercourse which had for him nothing but distress, and his volatile acquaintances were perhaps the first to set him the example. Often in his solitary walks he stopped afar off to gaze upon the sports which none ever solicited him to share; and as the shout of laughter and of happy hearts came, peal after peal, upon his ear, he ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my uncle grew more and more frivolous, volatile, and careless. Pobyedimsky was completely disillusioned in ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a true and strong regard. Remember it is the only mother she has ever known. To turn at once would show a volatile disposition. I have been afraid of that in Zaidee, who is easily taken with new friends, though I will admit that she does not discard the old ones. But I wish sometimes other people were not ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... varied characteristics of her peculiar, changing population. The blue-eyed Arcadian of her western plateaus, yet dreaming upon his more northern freedom; the royalist planter of the Mississippi bottoms, proud of those broad acres granted him by letters-patent of the King; the gay, volatile, passionate Creole of the town, one day a thoughtless lover of pleasure, the next a truculent wielder of the sword; the daring smugglers of Barataria, already rapidly drifting into open defiance of all legal restraint; together with the quiet market gardeners of the Cote-des-Allemands, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... to her cave," he thought to himself. "Shall AEneas pursue?" He made for a moment as if to advance and force his company upon the seeming reluctant damsel. Then his volatile thoughts flickered back to the girl who had entered the Inn. "Methinks," he reflected, "I would as soon play Paris to yonder Helen. But I must not keep his Majesty waiting. No wonder he seeks the Inn of the Three Graces." For it ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... external world and find itself there. As Emerson well puts it—"Nature is the incarnation of thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is for ever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... It is dreadful! It is terrible! It is horrible! It is awful! But they are bringing him in!" gasped Sister Francoise, snuffing vigorously at the sal volatile, and still beside herself ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Cheney had in mind another species when he composed the following metrical description, but it aptly characterized the volatile broad-tail as well: ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... with his eyes fixed on vacancy. He was talking incessantly and without sequence. I should fail signally were I to attempt to transfer his words to paper. I feel my weakness and the strength of others who in my day have shown a singular power of fixing on paper the volatile particles of frenzy; however, in a word, the poor thief was talking as our poetasters write, and amid his gunpowder, daffodils, bosh and other constellations there mingled gleams of sense and feeling that would have made ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... following morning, Saturday, September 12th, accompanied by her maid Wilson, Miss Barrett, after a sleepless night, left her father's house with feet that trembled; she procured a fly, fortified her shaken nerves with a dose of sal volatile at a chemist's shop, and drove to Marylebone Church, where the marriage service was celebrated in the presence of two witnesses. As she stood and knelt her central feeling was one of measureless trust, a deep rest upon assured foundations; other ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... elements in the same relative proportions, and yet exhibiting physical and chemical properties perfectly distinct one from another. To such substances the term Isomeric (from 1/ao1/ equal and aei1/o1/ part) is applied. A great class of bodies, known as the volatile oils, oil of turpentine, essence of lemons, oil of balsam of copaiba, oil of rosemary, oil of juniper, and many others, differing widely from each other in their odour, in their medicinal effects, ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... Of what was she thinking? In those calm unwavering eyes of hers he saw a question, and he feared in his soul she might voice it. He could evade the questions of the volatile Winnie, but there was no getting by Kathlyn with evasions. Frowning, he replaced the order in the box, which he put away in a drawer. It was all arrant nonsense, anyhow; nothing could possibly happen; if there did, he would feel certain that he no longer dwelt in a real workaday world. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... the volatile and happy Gaston. "We both seem to have an eye for them. But, believe me, Padre, I could never stay here planting olives. I should go back and see the original ones—and then I'd hasten on ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... the American settlements, likewise, there were evidences of the weaker, the over-excitable side of the romantic temper. There were volatile men like Morton of Merrymount; there were queer women like Anne Hutchinson, admirable woman as she was; among the wives of the colonists there were plenty of Emily Dickinsons in the germ. Among the men, there were schemes that came to nothing. There were prototypes of Colonel ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... spoke a reaction suddenly took place; my words had even more effect than I expected on the volatile crowd. One of them rushed forward and removed the rope from ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... long time, during which Cora and Celine administered sal volatile and other restoratives, Mr. Arthur douched her with oaths and ice water, and the servants whispered in a group, the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... vanity is human, native alike to men and women; only in the male it is of denser texture, less volatile, so that it less immediately informs you of its presence, but is more massive and capable of knocking you down if you come into collision with it; while in women vanity lays by its small revenges as in a needle-case always at hand. The difference is in muscle and finger-tips, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... of the gauzy kerchief veiling her neck, but it is far less wonderful than the delicate interpretation of her expression. The fine sensitiveness of her nature, her lively fancy and sense of humor, her playfulness, her coquetry, her impulsiveness, her volatile temperament—all this we read in the shining eyes and the smiling mouth, though no one can say how they were made to tell so much. The signs of her birth and breeding are in every line, yet she is something of a Bohemian too. There is ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... to session, the volatile heart of San Francisco throbs responsive to the sliding values of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... half-brother, Fadrique, had played the role of Sir Tristram as he brought the lady back, and that she had been a somewhat willing Isolde. There were others who said that Blanche, knowing the king's volatile disposition and of his relations with the notorious Maria, had endeavored upon the eve of her marriage to seek aid from the arts of magic in her effort to win the love of her husband, and had obtained from a Jewish sorcerer a belt which she was told would make Pedro faithful, kind, and true. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... volatile was doomed to suffer a loss of dignity. He had neglected to bring an emergency cap, which an airman on a cross-country flight should never forget. Bareheaded he accompanied us to a hatter's. Here the R.F.C. caps of the "stream-lined" variety ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... from thirty years of "Moniteurs," the author of Waverley, like Lord Chesterfield's diamond pencil, produced one miracle of dulness; it might well be feared that Kinglake's volatile pen, when linked with forceful feeling and bound to rigid task-work, might lose the charm of casual epigram, easy luxuriance, playful egotism, vagrant allusion, which established "Eothen" as a classic. On the other hand, he had been for twenty years conversant with Eastern ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... volatile self to a very natural and quite innocent feminine instinct, Gloria had fully determined to parade Mark King before her envious friends as very much her own property. It was merely a bit of the game, the old, old game at which she, being richly favoured ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... brass pan, with the bottom bright and clean, as if a treasure had lain there, and all the rest of it cankered with rust. Whether this sciencer was some obscure Roger Bacon, and had discovered the use of a volatile anaesthetic centuries ago, or whether he was enjoying a solitary practical joke at the expense of two simpletons, is impossible to say. "It is at your choice to believe either or neither," as Westcote says of the two foregoing stories. "I have offered them to the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Whatever the other Lani might be, Copper was different. Quick, volatile, intelligent, she was a constant delight, a flashing kaleidoscope of unexpected facets. Perhaps the others were the same if he knew them better. But he didn't know them—and avoided learning. In that ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... preserves, condemned extracts of vanilla and lemon, decayed chocolate, ex-essence of beef, mixed dental preparations, aromatic spirits of ammonia, spirits of nitre, alcohol, arnica, quinine, ipecac, sal volatile, nux vomica and licorice water— with traces of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... most valuable method of determining the molecular weights of non-volatile as well as volatile substances has just been brought into prominence by Prof. Victor Meyer (Berichte, 1888, No. 3). The method itself was discovered by M. Raoult, and finally perfected by him in 1886, but up to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... rendered them an extremely feeble succour. Charette had even consented to treat with the republic, and a sort of pacification had been concluded between him and the convention at Jusnay. The marquis de Puisaye, an enterprising man, but volatile and more capable of intrigue than of vigorous party conceptions, intended to replace the almost expiring insurrection of La Vendee by that of Brittany. Since the enterprise of Wimpfen, in which Puisaye had a command, there already existed, in Calvados and Morbihan, bands of Chouans, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... now sinking into an obscure grave, neglected by a nation proud of his genius, and by a court which he had served too well. His Grace consented to see poor Butler; and an appointment was made. But unhappily two pretty women passed by; the volatile Duke ran after them; the opportunity was lost, and could never ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... taught me that this was the best way to get concessions from Elizabeth. Little could be gained by polemic argument. Besides, it was dangerous. She would resign, and a good deal more than half the joy would go out of that precious employment if I was left to finish it alone. Women are so volatile. It is their ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... inspired found her cold and unresponsive. Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her studies and teased her about her unwillingness for society, which they attributed to a lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on making herself coquettish, gay, volatile,—a woman, in short. But she expected in return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in harmony with the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its knowledge. Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the commonplaces of conversation, the silliness of gallantry; ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... exists in the flavor of vegetables, which they derive from their volatile oils; that is, the oils that evaporate rapidly on exposure to the air. In some cases, the flavor is disagreeably strong and must be dissipated, or driven away, in order to make the vegetables agreeable to the taste and to prevent them ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... away since that thirteenth of January which had made Constance a widow. Her versatile, volatile nature soon recovered the shock of her husband's violent death. The white garments of widowhood which draped her found little response either in the gravity of her demeanour or in the expression of her face. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Korean National Council of Churches; large, potentially volatile student population concentrated in Seoul; Federation of Korean Trade Unions; Korean Veterans' Association; Federation of Korean Industries; ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... suit and close-fitting black hat, sat by her elder daughter's side, trying vainly to calm the tumult. In the background the maid, her face streaming with sympathetic tears, was hovering distractedly with a jar of volatile salts. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not. But she probably did know that ammonia is good for just that sort of faintness which she must have experienced after taking the powder. Perhaps she thought of sal volatile, I don't know. But most people know that ammonia in some form is good for faintness of this sort, even if they don't ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... wish to be amused by the thing itself, it is somewhat disappointing to be presented with metaphysical analysis. It is like instituting an examination of the glass and cork of a champagne bottle, and a chemical testing of the wine. In the very process the volatile and sparkling draught which was to delight the palate has become like ditch water, vapid and dead. What I mean is, that, call it wit or humour, or what you please, there is a school of Scottish pleasantry, amusing and characteristic beyond all other. Don't think ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the restorers of the art of criticism, cast a damp upon original invention, the character of Dante has been thrown under a deeper shade. That agreeable and volatile nation found in themselves an insuperable aversion to the gloomy and romantic bard, whose genius, ardent, melancholy, and sublime, was ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... disgusted at the appearance, language, and manner of Mary Almira, and he was borne out in his impression of her character by the admission of one brother that she was "a giddy, inconsistent, unprincipled girl," and by that of another that "she was a volatile coquette, who did not know her own mind from ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... brother, Arthur More; of this place his mother procured the reversion from his late Majesty during his father's lifetime. Being a man of a gay disposition, he insinuated himself into the favour of his grace the duke of Wharton, and being, like him, destitute of prudence, he joined with that volatile great man in writing a paper called the Inquisitor, which breathed so much the spirit of Jacobitism, that the publisher thought proper to sacrifice his profit to his safety, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber |
