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More "Swiftness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Guido had taken this picture from Ovid's description, and that he had, with great art, represented, by the very circumstance to which I objected, the swiftness of the motion with which the chariot was driven forward. The current of the morning wind blowing from the east was represented by the direction of the hair of Lucifer, and of the flame of his torch; while the rapidity of the motion of the chariot was such, that, notwithstanding ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... as he waddled with horrible swiftness after the miller's wife, as she withdrew into the mill; "which do you mean to have? I gets nothing on 'em, whichever you takes, so please yourself. Take 'Joseph and his Bretheren.' The frame's worth twice the money. Take the other, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... hoodwinked by it, was stratagem wasted. But no sooner did his foot touch the great oaken sill than with a sheep-like jump he had cleared his skirts of the gate, and now across the open clearing, in the center of which stood the fort, he was clipping away with a swiftness perfectly marvelous in one of his age. Splendidly done, my fine rogue! How the mother of a well-ordered family of precise boys and prim girls would like to have the mending of your morals—i.e., the switching of your skedaddling young ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. These men suffered the bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as that history is with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... they were going faster, faster even than their efforts with the poles would account for. With the narrowing of the bed of the stream, the current was taking on a new swiftness. Shann said as ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... magnanimity to help him to free himself from these disgraceful plots by means of an amicable arrangement; but the days passed, and the good offices of the exemplary lady had produced no result whatever. The claims multiplied with the dangerous swiftness of a violent disease. Pepe Rey passed hour after hour at court, making declarations and answering the same questions over and over again, and when he returned home tired and angry, there appeared before him the sharp features and grotesque face of the notary, who had brought ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... the street far below there came a fusillade of shots and a babel of shouts and counter-shouts. The roof of the house next door, which had been emptying itself slowly and reluctantly, filled again with a magical swiftness, and the low wall facing into the street became black with the backs of those ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and herds. Constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms, physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, make every nomad a soldier. Cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness and vigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of sudden attack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extreme mobility. The ancient Scythians of the lower Danubian steppes were all horse ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... and ran overhead upon steel pulleys, with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds. In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously wreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced with a decisive swiftness. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Cry of a Pack of Dogs. He had not listned long before he saw the Apparition of a milk-white Steed, with a young Man on the Back of it, advancing upon full Stretch after the Souls of about an hundred Beagles that were hunting down the Ghost of an Hare, which ran away before them with an unspeakable Swiftness. As the Man on the milk-white Steed came by him, he looked upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young Prince Nicharagua, who died about Half a Year before, and, by reason of his great Vertues, was at that time lamented over all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... which good fortune was attributed to his prowess and skill. Romulus became after a while somewhat arrogant. He dressed in scarlet, received his people lying on a couch of state, and surrounded himself with a body of young soldiers called Celeres, from the swiftness with which they executed his orders. It was a suspicious fact that all at once, at a time when the people had become dissatisfied with his actions, Romulus disappeared (717 B.C.). Like Evander, he went, no one knew where, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... of the paquet had boasted much, before we sailed, of the swiftness of his ship; unfortunately, when we came to sea, she proved the dullest of ninety-six sail, to his no small mortification. After many conjectures respecting the cause, when we were near another ship almost as dull as ours, which, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... hundred men, with whom were about a thousand raw Irish peasants, most of whom had never had a musket in their hands until within the few days that preceded the battle,—races, we mean. A panic seized the British army, and it fled from the field with the swiftness of the wind, but not with the wind's power of destruction. The French had one small gun,—the British, fourteen guns. Humbert afterward kept the whole British force at bay for more than a fortnight, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... to throw open the door. PHEDRO swiftly forestalls him with widespread arms and a grim expression; GWYMPLANE turns away bowed from his ferocity of pain and bewilderment, while PHEDRO, with an incredible, greased swiftness, lets himself out the door, and returns almost upon the instant with DEA ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... among the trees or chasing the wild deer. All the world had heard about her, however; and the young heroes in the lands nearest to Arcadia did nothing else but talk about her beauty and her grace and her swiftness of foot and her courage. Of course every one of these young fellows wanted her to become his wife; and she might have been a queen any day if she had only said the word, for the richest king in Greece would have been glad to marry her. But she cared nothing for any of the young men, and ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... his feet upon the treadle of a small wheel, which revolved like a circular table in front of him, and on this he deftly touched something which appeared to be an earthenware vessel. His thin fingers moved with spider swiftness, and shaped it with a kind of magic. He was a mad looking person, with an air of being tremendously driven by inner force. He wore mustaches the like of which I had never seen, carried back over his ears; and these hairy devices seemed to split his ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... raised. The next full-sized scene showed the woman just about to step upon the snake concealed in the grass. In the second close-up which followed, showing only the snake and the woman's moccasined feet, the reptile struck with startling swiftness and savageness. The whole effect was thrilling in the extreme—and we do not doubt that more than one young writer was tempted to write a story with a similar scene. But how often would a producer be able to obtain such an effect? It seems obvious ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... dipped with dimming luster behind a ridge of jungle giants whose upper branches were waking into life. Monkeys and parrots with higher, keener vision than that of the boatmen heralded the gray light breaking low down in the east, and with the swiftness of the moon's coming, dawn turned the black of the river to ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... execute his commission, and reached a small elevation, whence he had a commanding view of the whole camp. However, he had not remained long in his place of observation before he was discovered by some Moslems, who pursued him; but the Christian fled before them, and escaped through the swiftness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... instantaneously to distances which were limited, with regard to the former, by restrictions imposed by the globe. To the speaker had been assigned the task of introducing to their notice electric energy in a different aspect. Although still giving evidence of swiftness and precision, the effects he should dwell upon were no longer such as could be perceived only through the most delicate instruments human ingenuity could contrive, but were capable of rivaling the steam engine, compressed air, and the hydraulic accumulator ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... are the arts of peace, Whose restless motions less than wars do cease: Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise; And war more force, but not more pains employs. Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind, That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind, While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere, That rapid motion does but rest appear. For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng Of flying orbs while ours is borne along, All seems at rest to the deluded eye, Mov'd by the soul ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... eyes opened and she stared up into the face of the man who had come to her first at Lac Bain, and who had fought for her there. For a breath or two the wonder of this thing that was happening held her speechless and still lifeless, though her senses were adjusting themselves with lightning swiftness. At first Philip had not seen her open eyes, and he believed that she did not hear the words of love he whispered in her hair. When he raised her face a little from his breast she was looking at him with all the sweet ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... abdomina, and their heads, too heavy for their necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected that these shiftless beings in a little more than a fortnight would be able to dash through the air almost with the inconceivable swiftness of a meteor, and perhaps in their emigration must traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the equator. So soon does Nature advance small birds to their [Greek text], or state of perfection, while ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... not have to go far to look at the professor. He was flying about her front garden at that very moment in an apparently distracted state, crouching, springing, hiding back of bushes and reappearing with the startling swiftness of magic. The Bartletts were quite used to these antics on the part of their well-paying summer boarder. He was chasing butterflies—a manifestly insane proceeding, of course, but if a man could afford to pay ten dollars ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... fighter of all the fighting ages, a woman roused. And no longer fear, but a glory swept over him. She was Conniston's sister, AND SHE WAS CONNISTON. Even as he saw his plans falling about him, he opened his arms and held them out to her, and with the swiftness of love she ran into them, putting her hands to his face while he held her ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... has its limits in the matter of time and speed. The very swiftness with which they had advanced had in itself an element of danger because it had brought them too far ahead of their supporting guns. These had to be brought up from the rear, and the captured positions had to be reorganized. The troops, too, had to be given a breathing ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... still. Now again it moved and its feet had quickened, it glided with ever-increasing swiftness, it came close to the steel bars, it showed more of its ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... tells us how he himself had to lodge almost in outhouses, in that royal village of hope, His emotions at Reinsberg, and everybody's, while Friedrich Wilhelm lay dying, and all stood like greyhounds on the slip; and with what arrow-swiftness they shot away when the great news came: all this he has already described at wearisome length, in his fantastic semi-fabulous way. [Bielfeld, i. 68-77; ib. 81.]' Friedrich himself seemed moderately glad to see Bielfeld; received his high-flown congratulations with a benevolent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bureaucrats and experienced police organizers to set up a puppet government on Kandar, there was not the faintest hint of anything that happened outside the individual ship. But, what might be termed the position of the fleet, changed with remarkable swiftness. It traveled light-hours between breaths. Light-days ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the roving Fancy flies, Till some lov'd object strikes her wand'ring eyes, Whose silken fetters all the senses bind, And soft captivity involves the mind. Imagination! who can sing thy force? Or who describe the swiftness of thy course? Soaring through air to find the bright abode, Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God, We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind: From star to star the mental ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... marked with his initial, he drew out one and took flying aim at a bird on a twig, pleasing himself with the foolish fancy that 'twas Ignatius Loyola. But though a sure marksman, he had not the heart to hurt any living thing, and changing with the swiftness of a flash he shot at the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... February and when at last the warm March winds began to blow, lakes developed with magical swiftness in the fields, and streams filled every swale, transforming the landscape into something unexpected and enchanting. At night these waters froze, bringing fields of ice almost to our door. We forgot all our other interests in the joy of the games which we played ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the centre of that sea of blackness, like the plummet of an engineer, like the lead of a storm-tossed sailor, shot a drop of rain. Down it came with unerring swiftness, right through one of the spectacled gentleman's improvised "sky-lights" in the roof, and splashed in the Cuban's face. Half-dreaming still, he sleepily rolled over out of range; he had been awakened before in that way, and was used ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... sniff was heard, followed instantly by the sound of hoofs, as the unknown animal charged upon Herbert Watrous, who was whirling his half-expired torch around his head with such swiftness that it made a ring of fire, similar to those which all boys delight to look upon during the pyrotechnic displays on ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... a wolf, and having its propensities), which some years ago spread devastation amongst the flocks of sheep in this neighbourhood: a reward was offered for its destruction, and, though hunted by men and dogs, its caution and swiftness eluded their pursuit, till it was found asleep under a hedge, and in that position shot.—Corresp. Mag. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... Baghdad, is renowned for this kind of smoking. The most popular coffee-shop is near the citadel, on the banks and over the surface of the Pharpar. It is a rough wooden building, with a roof of straw mats, but the sight and sound of the rushing waters, as they shoot away with arrowy swiftness under your feet, the shade of the trees that line the banks, and the cool breeze that always visits the spot, beguile you into a second pipe ere you are aware. "El ma, wa el khodra, wa el widj el hassan—water, verdure and a beautiful face," says ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... snare, and your own pit hath yawned for you. Turn, then, aside from the task that is too heavy for you; destroy not your teeth by gnawing a file; waste not your strength by spurning against a castle wall; nor spend your breath in contending in swiftness with a fleet steed; and let those weigh the Tales of my Landlord, who shall bring with them the scales of candour cleansed from the rust of prejudice by the hands of intelligent modesty. For these alone they were compiled, as will appear from a brief ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... stunned me with a blow on the temple. I am telling you this without any details, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, for the simple reason that I remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon one another with extraordinary swiftness." ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... never had it in my head that any man should stand before me as a shield, but still as things are thou must have thy way; but for all that, with my gift of wit and my swiftness I may be of some use to thee, and not harmless to ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... morning the battle was renewed. With only four thousand men, the Cid routed Yusef with fifty thousand. So many of the Moors did Rodrigo slay that they could not be counted. Three strokes the Cid gave King Yusef, who only escaped by the swiftness of his horse. His wonderful sword, Tizona, fell into the hands of the Cid. Gold and silver and precious stuff in great quantities ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... Younkins said," he took steady aim and fired. A young buffalo bull tumbled headlong down the ravine. In their mad haste, a number of the animals fell over him, pell-mell, but, recovering themselves with incredible swiftness, they skipped to their feet, and were speedily on their way down the hill. Sandy watched, with a beating heart, the young bull as he fell heels over head two or three times before he could rally; the poor creature got upon his feet, fell again, and while the tender-hearted boy hesitated whether ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... of his companions, who were eager to test the swiftness of their boat, Fred at once turned on more power and the ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... swiftness, not only in Palace Yard, but throughout Bridge Street and St. Margaret's Street, and the railings looking thence into the yard became gradually banked with rows of earnest faces. Little groups formed on the pavement about the corners of Parliament Street. Faces appeared at the windows of the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... turning with a yell of terror rushed back the way they had come. Mary sought forcibly to restrain them, but, frantic with fright, they eluded her grasp, and ran shrieking towards the last town they had passed to wreak vengeance on the sorcerers. She ran with them, praying for swiftness and strength: she passed them one by one, and breathlessly threw herself into the middle of the path, and dared them to advance. She felt she was almost as mad as they were, but she relied on a Power Who had never failed her, and He did not fail her now. Her audacity awed them: they stopped, protested, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... his embrace, sprang to her feet, and ran with remarkable swiftness a distance that was twice as long as the one he had staked off; she did not fall; she did not want to fall; she ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... locks time hath to silver turned; O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing! His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned, But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing: Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen. Duty, faith, love, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... knocked over one of the spoons by wagging his tail, and then the Captain of the Spoons told the little dog to be more careful, or he would be punished. So Toto was careful, and the Spoon Brigade moved along with astonishing swiftness, while Dorothy really had to walk fast to keep up ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... appropriating his mother's guineas obstructed by such a day-mare as this? But the moment must come when Jacob would move his right hand to draw off the lid of the tin box, and then David would sweep the guineas into the hole with the utmost address and swiftness, and immediately seat himself upon them. Ah, no! It's of no use to have foresight when you are dealing with an idiot: he is not to be calculated upon. Jacob's right hand was given to vague clutching and throwing; it suddenly clutched the guineas as ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... it in your clothes and inoculate a person of weak mental constitution, who is of a build to take anything, until, in a fortnight, he or she will be a hopeless slave to the tell-all-about-everything habit. There is nothing like the pleasing swiftness of some of our modern diseases about it—such as heart failure, which nips you off painlessly. It is rather like the old-fashioned New England consumption, which gives you a hectic flush and an irritating hack, ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... again, before he proceeds to his venery, first rises straight from the nest in a perpendicular line upwards, and generally speaking at the third time he swoops from above with greater impetus and swiftness than if he were flying in a direct line, so that at the time when he is gaining the greatest velocity of flight, he is able also to speculate upon his success with the prey, and after three inspections he knows whether he ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Mary saw that face which had been laughing into hers, which had been so close to hers in its persistent smile of persuasion, struck white and rigid and a glint like that of the blade itself in the eyes. In a breath Jack had become another being of incarnate, unthinking physical power and swiftness. One hand seized Pedro's wrist, the other his upper arm, and Mary heard the metallic click of the knife as it struck the earth and the sickening sound of the bone of Pedro's forearm cracking. She saw Pedro's eyes bursting from their sockets in pain and fear; she saw Jack's still profile of unyielding ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Fancy Ball. Where there is loveliness of dress, there is no dressing up. And so, were our national attire delightful in colour, and in construction simple and sincere; were dress the expression of the loveliness that it shields and of the swiftness and motion that it does not impede; did its lines break from the shoulder instead of bulging from the waist; did the inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were these things brought about, as brought about they will be, then would painting be no longer an artificial reaction ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... chair and sat down. There was a strange sort of swiftness and precision in the man's smallest acts. Now he brought from his hip pocket a handful of loose coins and set the heap on the table before him. For the most part the coins were gold; he stood ready to put into ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... was soon restricted to the picking out of any stray enemy, their long, delicate, and cumbersome blow-guns preventing them from taking an active part in the melee. Now the conflict was at its height and it was a most remarkable one, on account of its swiftness and fierceness. The bow-and-arrow men charging with their sting-ray arrows poisoned with the wourahli took the place of the cautiously retreating blow-gun men. At the same instant the spear-men rushed down, dashing through ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... the bottom, along which a narrow footpath ran, when the crackle of a broken branch, and the quick tread of a foot, made her pause and look at the opposite bank, down which a young man was coming, with more swiftness than he seemed to desire, for he only saved himself from a plunge in the brook by leaping over it, with a bound that brought him to Clara's side. ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... prey seized, before they could rush to the spot. The boldness and skill of the enemy soon proclaimed him, to the experienced watchers, to be Will o' the Wisp; and so great was their dread of this fellow's strength and courage, and so complete their despair of being a match for his swiftness and cunning, that after the seventh night the watchers refused to go out any longer; and poor Bolt himself was confined to his bed by an attack of what a doctor would have called rheumatism, and a moralist, rage. My indignation and sympathy were greatly ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of dismay, and turned and fled; and as he turned, long, thin, white hands flashed out of his pockets, pressed against his ears, and intertwined their fingers at the back of his neck. With a marvellous swiftness he shot down the steep descent towards ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... The Anxiety of Absence, the Gloominess of the Roads, and his Resolution of frequenting only those, since those only can carry him to the Object of his Desires; the Dissatisfaction he expresses even at the greatest Swiftness with which he is carried, and his joyful Surprize at an unexpected Sight of his Mistress as she is bathing, seems ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... peculiar livery, intimating their profession. They were all trained to the employment, and selected for their speed and fidelity. As the distance each courier had to perform was small, and as he had ample time to refresh himself at the stations, they ran over the ground with great swiftness, and messages were carried through the whole extent of the long routes, at the rate of a hundred and fifty miles a day. The office of the chasquis was not limited to carrying despatches. They frequently brought various articles ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... smiling effusion, and they both glanced with furtive embarrassed swiftness at Leonora. 'Mamma, this is Mr. Twemlow. Mr. Twemlow my mother.' The dashing modish air of the child was adorable. Having concluded her scene she retired from the centre of ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... was not ill-formed; nor did it present that hideous aspect characteristic of the more predatory creatures that inhabit the ocean. For all that, there was a certain shyness combined with great swiftness in its motion,—a skulking in its attitudes: as Snowball's speech had already declared,—a truculent, trap-like expression in its quick watchful eyes, that told of an animal whose whole existence was passed ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... the spiral organism is still present and active, but a new and oval form, not a bacterium, but a monad, has appeared. And now the intensity of action and beauty of movement throughout the field utterly defy description, gyrating, darting, spinning, wheeling, rebounding, with the swiftness of the grayling and the beauty of the bird. Finally, at the end of another eight to sixteen hours, a final "dip" was taken from the fluid, and under the same lens it presented as a field what is seen in Fig. 1, D, where the largest of the putrefactive organisms has appeared and has even more intense ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... the great north countries that the season changes from the lion into the lamb, with a swiftness that is perfectly bewildering. The sick man was getting well. Over a week since, Dr. Starr had declared that all danger had passed. And as the days went by the cold that had shackled the land disappeared so that the frosted limbs by the great falls wept off their coating ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... had indeed insisted should be the basis of government before they would fight the rebellious South in 1911. There is reason to believe that provided he had been made de facto Regent, Yuan Shih- kai would have supported to the end a Manchu Monarchy. But the surprising swiftness of the Revolutionary Party's action in proclaiming the Republic at Nanking on the 1st January, 1912, and the support which foreign opinion gave that venture confused him. He had already consented ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Kofirans seeing her appear Abroad to join in the publick Festivity, would relinquish the Suspicions they had harbour'd against her. But they were too inveterate, and the Event was quite different, for had it not been for the Dexterity of her Coachman, and the Swiftness of her Horses, she had infallibly fallen a Victim to the Fury of the Populace. This hazardous Experience of their Malice, brought her to lead a Life at Kofir very different to her Inclinations, being ashamed to shew herself in ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... was caught up,—snatched out of that black profundity with inconceivable swiftness,—and when the ascending movement ceased, I found myself floating lightly like a wind-blown leaf through twining arches of amber mist, colored here and there with rays of living flame ... I heard whispers, and fragments of song and speech, all sweeter ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... have this peculiarity, that when they are walking leisurely or running down-hill, they walk upright like a human being; but when hard pressed on level ground, or up hill, they use their long arms as fore-legs, and then run with inconceivable swiftness. When flying with their own young, the greater part of them will run nearly twice as fast as an ordinary man, for the cubs cling to them with both feet and hands, but as my poor William shrunk from the monster's touch, he was obliged to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... as though the words were a blow. That one word "hayseed" with all that it meant to him—to be thrown at him now, tauntingly, before the whole class! His face grew white beneath the remaining coat of tan, and he stepped up to the big senior with a swiftness of which no one would have suspected ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... called it, which dared to take up the gage of battle with their formidable "Merrimac." Soon, however, it became apparent that the prowess of the little Union craft had been entirely underestimated, and in the combat which ensued the very smallness of the "Monitor" gave her a great advantage, in the swiftness of her movements, over her gigantic opponent, not unlike an undersized but agile and skilful athlete in encounter with a large and lumbering, though more powerful, antagonist. Lieutenant Worden was the hero of the ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... another reason for this dramatic and striking swiftness of contrast between the godless man and the revealed God. The true test of a life is its power to bear the light of God being suddenly let in upon it. How would yours look, my friend! if all at once a window in heaven was opened, and God glared in upon you? Set your lives side ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the motion which carries round the larger and the lesser circle at the same time is proportionally distributed to greater and smaller, and is greater and smaller in a certain proportion. Here is a wonder which might be thought an impossibility, that the same motion should impart swiftness and slowness in due proportion to larger and lesser circles. 'Very true.' And when you speak of bodies moving in many places, you seem to me to mean those which move from one place to another, and sometimes ...
— Laws • Plato
... Greek hero, son of Oileus, king of Locris, called the "lesser'' or Locrian Ajax, to distinguish him from Ajax, son of Telamon. In spite of his small stature, he held his own amongst the other heroes before Troy; he was brave, next to Achilles in swiftness of foot and famous for throwing the spear. But he was boastful, arrogant and quarrelsome; like the Telamonian Ajax, he was the enemy of Odysseus, and in the end the victim of the vengeance of Athene, who wrecked his ship on his homeward ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... but no bodies were visible, and Edmund supposed that, after the Danes had retired, the survivors must have returned and buried their dead. They had not proceeded far when the Dane pointed out to Edmund a half-naked lad who was running with the swiftness of a deer over a ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... been worse, far worse, this extraordinary scene, had it not been for the swiftness and tact of the young man to whom so much was entrusted. Meriwether Lewis hastened here and there, weeding out those who could not convince him that they were invited to dine. He separated as best he might the socially elect from those not yet socially arrived, ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... someone else were doing the surgery, directing his hands step by step in the critical work that had to be done. Dal placed the connections to the heart-lung machine perfectly, and moved with new swiftness and confidence as the great blood vessels were clamped off and the damaged heart removed. A quick check of vital signs, chemistries, oxygenation, a sharp instruction to Jack, a caution to Tiger, and the new prosthetic heart was in place. He worked now with painstaking care, ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... of time. In other words, the clouds over Jupiter's equator flow past those in the middle latitudes with a relative velocity of 270 miles per hour. But there are no sharp lines of separation between the different velocities; on the contrary, the swiftness of rotation gradually diminishes from the equator toward the poles, as it manifestly could not do if the visible surface ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... comes to him, and Brereton never knew how it was that suddenly, in the flash of an eye, in the swiftness of thought, he knew that he had found what he wanted. Suggestion might have had something to do with it. Kitely had written the word Scrap-book on the first blank page. Afterwards, at the tops of pages, he had filled in dates ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... fancied he heard the neighing of a horse, and a sort of ringing of iron, like sabers being drawn from their sheaths, but either taking it for the wind among the leaves, or for some other noise for which he need not stop, he continued with the same swiftness, the same silence, and in the midst of the same darkness. But, having arrived at the cross-roads, D'Harmental noticed a singular circumstance, a sort of wall seemed to close all the roads; something was happening. D'Harmental stopped the carriage, and wished to return ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... burst in upon us in one of her frantic rages. Her tempers were famous both for their ferocity and the swiftness of their passing. In the course of them she was like some impassioned bird of brilliant plumages, tossing her feathers, fluttering behind the bars of her cage at some impertinent, teasing passer-by. She stood there now in the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the chaplains always were supplied with tents; and then a hasty meal was snatched before the sun was fairly above the horizon, and the day's work commenced. The endurance exhibited by the rebels, their personal strength, swiftness and agility; their tenacity of life, and the ease with which their worst wounds were healed, excited the astonishment of the surgeons and officers of the regular army. The truth is, that the virtuous lives led by that peaceful peasantry before the outbreak, enabled ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... them; and Barthicus declares, that he wrote his comment upon Claudian without consulting the text. But not to have such degrees of memory is no more to be lamented, than not to have the strength of Hercules, or the swiftness of Achilles. He that, in the distribution of good, has an equal share with common men, may justly be contented. Where there is no striking disparity, it is difficult to know of two which remembers most, and still more difficult to discover which reads with greater attention, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which could be explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that they could not explain. What did it all mean? If they were all harmless officers, what ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Aunt Anne herself demanded. Was the young animal of the present day really unchanged from the first man who protected his own by a fettering seclusion, simply because it was his own? Was Dick's general revolt only the yeasty turmoil sure to take one form or another, being simply the swiftness of young blood? Was his general bravado only skin deep? Raven hardly knew how to take him. He wouldn't be angry, outwardly at least. The things Dick had said, the things he was prepared to say, he would be expected to resent, but he must deny himself. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... was still sitting on the table, abruptly put a hand out for the weapon that lay beside him. But the next movement was the most unexpected of all, for the prince standing in the doorway passed suddenly from the dignity of a statue to the swiftness of an acrobat and rent the revolver out of the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... feel their courage rise. It put life into them just to see Frank in the box. Stolen bases on the part of the Hartfords stopped. The swiftness with which Merriwell struck out three ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... periods of their history, depended too much on their nets; and it was not until later times that they pursued their prey with dogs, and then not with dogs that ran by sight, or succeeded by their swiftness of foot, but by beagles very little superior to those of modern days [12]. Of the stronger and more ferocious dogs there is, however, occasional mention. The bull-dog of modern date does not excel the one (possibly of nearly the same race) that was presented ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... spiral of smoke had become an enveloping cloud, spreading rapidly in both directions from its original starting-point, and already he could distinguish the red glare of angry flames leaping beneath, fanned by the wind into great sheets of fire, and sweeping forward with incredible swiftness. These might not succeed in reaching the imprisoned men, but the stifling vapor, the suffocating smoke held captive by that overhanging rock, would prove a ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... worked with the utmost swiftness, expecting every moment to see the captain and Chris appear, but, luckily, those two, wearied by their hard work, had paused to rest before returning with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... brought inspiration, for next instant he grabbed his master by the arm and dragged him back behind the shelter of a big boulder which they had just passed. Then with really marvellous swiftness he cut the straps of the tin box that Alan wore upon his back, and since there was no time to find the key and unlock it, seized the little padlock with which it was fastened between his finger and thumb, and putting out his great strength, with a ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... country infested with Utah and Apache Indians. Three or four days of swift riding would carry them through this dangerous region to a place of security on the Arkansas River. If they should meet a hostile band, it was agreed that they would trust for safety in the swiftness of their steeds, which had already proved themselves capable of both speed ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... began to sift downward. The mountain peaks to the northward became obscured as by thin smoke, the afternoon shortened with alarming swiftness. Night, up here with a blizzard brewing, was unthinkable, so after a while ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... heard and came running across the intervening distance with swiftness incredible in one of his bulk at this gravity. His blizzer was out. It was one of the very latest models of blizzers. Very destructive. Mr. Wordsley had always been afraid to ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... from Liverpool to Cheltenham, and troops of others, each faster than the foregoing, each trumpeting its own fame on its own improved bugle, and beating time (all to nothing) with sixteen hoofs of invisible swiftness. How they would have stared if a parliamentary train had passed them, especially if they could have heard its inmates grumbling over their slow progress, and declaring that it would be almost quicker to get out ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... long range—stalked it delicately with skillful avoidance of surprise or bungling. The game must be brought down; on that she was determined; but there should be no bludgeon blows, no awkward carnage. The death-stab should be given clean, with scientific skill and swiftness, and the blow once given, she would retire to her own room and let her victim find what solace she could in solitude. Norma was not wantonly cruel; she could impale a foe, but she had no desire to witness his contortions. After a death-scene she shrank from the grewsomeness of burial; she preferred ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... into Lincolnshire, and the king lay at Belvoir Castle, and from Belvoir Castle to Stamford. The swiftness of our march was a terrible surprise to the enemy; for our van being at a village on the great road called Stilton, the country people fled into the Isle of Ely, and every way, as if all was lost. Indeed our dragoons treated the country ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... preserve at home. Among the other game birds, first in size and splendour comes the Nicobar pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica). As its appearance exhibits a near approach to the gallinaceous birds, so do its habits. It lives chiefly on the ground, runs with great swiftness, and flies up into a tree when disturbed. A nest found here was of the rude platform construction usually found among the pigeon family; it was built in a tree about ten feet from the ground, and contained a single white egg. The most common of the family, however, is one of the nutmeg ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... town-lot—all are the richer, as well as the prouder, if Newville grows. It is imperative to praise Edmonton in Edmonton. But it is sudden death to praise it in Calgary. The partisans of each city proclaim its superiority to all the others in swiftness of growth, future population, size of buildings, price of land—by all recognised standards of excellence. I travelled from Edmonton to Calgary in the company of a citizen of Edmonton and a citizen of Calgary. Hour ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... gathered, and poured along like avalanches. Still, there was no hope for us but in passing the line of these angry sentinels. Accordingly, I watched the swell, and pulling firmly, bow on, into the first of the breakers, we spun with such arrowy swiftness across the intervening space, that I recollect nothing until we were clasped in the arms of the brawny Belgians on ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... give furtherance to our expedition; For we have now no thought in us but France, Save those to God, that run before our business. Therefore, let our proportions for these wars Be soon collected, and all things thought upon That may with reasonable swiftness add More feathers to our wings; for, God before, We'll chide this Dauphin at his father's door. Therefore let every man now task his thought, That this fair action may ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... of human poetry, inspired or uninspired, only approached by the companion-Psalm, the 144th. From whence comes that cumulative energy, by which it rushes on, even in our translation, with a force and swiftness which are indeed divine; thought following thought, image image, verse verse, before the breath of the Spirit of God, as wave leaps after wave before the gale? What is the element in that ode, which even now makes it stir the heart like a trumpet? Surely that which it itself declares in the very ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... boat was well out in the lake, however, the same terrible wind that so often blew upon its waters arose with the swiftness of a thunderclap and threatened to overwhelm them all. Tell lay bound in the boat, calmly watching what he could see of the storm, when one of the Governor's servants told him that Tell himself was the most skilful boatman in that part of the country and the only one who could save them ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... fitter for Chase. Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland, and the North parts, breed the Light, Nimble, swift slender Dog. And our open Champaigns train up excellent Grey-Hounds, hugely admired for his Swiftness, Strength, and Sagacity. And lastly, the little Beagle bred in all Countries, is of exceeding Cunning, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... about forty-three, but doesn't look it. Her dress is simple and in perfect taste. Her movements are vivacious, and at times almost youthful in their swiftness. Her hair is deeply blonde in color and very heavy. Her eyes are merry, good-humored most of the time, and easily filled with tears. She comes in with a smile and nods in a friendly manner to Sala. To Julian, who has gone to meet her, she holds out her hand with ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... attendants that they might travel slowly back to the Court of King Peridor, and that the beautiful bird had really been found. This matter being comfortably arranged, she started off her chariot. But in spite of the swiftness with which they flew through the air, the time passed even quicker for Saphir and Serpentine, who had so much to ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... and was inclined to think her morning's effort wasted, if not worse. Like most amateur gardeners, Peggy was fond of immediate results. She liked to see shoots starting when the seed had hardly touched the soil, leaf and blossom following with miraculous swiftness. Nature's slow processes were trying to the patience. Peggy watched Jerry out of sight, and then, her face unusually thoughtful, made her way to the front porch which presented an unusually populous appearance that morning. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... to the last objection (viz. that the lower half of the figure is longer than just proportion allows) it must be remembered that Apollo is here in the exertion of one of his peculiar powers, which is swiftness; he has therefore that proportion which is best adapted to that character. This is no more incorrectness than when there is given to a Hercules an extraordinary ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... situation of Quebec!—the city founded on the rock that proudly holds the height of the hill. The queen sitting enthroned above the waters, that curb their swiftness and their strength to kiss and fawn around ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... with the swiftness of nightmare. By the time the Americans had picked themselves up from the bottom of the car the Filipino's frantic burst had brought him within twenty feet of the black-clad fanatic. His flying feet lagged to a halt, he stood stock still in sheer horror till the Moro bounded toward him, then ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... respect man stands, I conceive, distinguished from, and superior to, all other earthly creatures; it is this privilege which, while he is inferior in strength to some, in swiftness to others; without horns or claws or tusks to attack them, or even to defend himself against them, hath made him master of them all. Indeed, in other views, however vain men may be of their abilities, they are greatly inferior to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... town some miles further up the Brenta, we determined to go there, and it was a fortunate thought, for there we found a nobleman in charge of the cave who told us exactly how to reach the Sette Communi. You pass a bridge to get out of Bassano—a bridge which spans the crystal swiftness of the Brenta, rushing down to the Adriatic from the feet of the Alps on the north, and full of voluble mills at Bassano. All along the road to Oliero was the finest mountain scenery, Brenta-washed, and picturesque ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... "The swiftness, the strength, and the scent of the dog have enabled him to conquer other animals; and, without the dog, man perhaps could not have formed a society. The dog is the only animal which has followed man into every ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... amazing swiftness, and Paul, light-footed, kept beside him. But the alert Shawnee warriors, ever quick to answer an alarm, were already in fleet pursuit, and only the darkness kept their bullets from striking true. Paul looked back once—even in the moment of haste and danger he could not help ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Gutta Percha Balls with the intent swiftness of trained Bird Dogs, and each talked feverishly of Brassy Lies, and getting past the Bunker, and Lofting to the Green, and Slicing into the Bramble—each telling his own Game to the Ambient Air, and ignoring what the other Fellow had ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... we think over the great changes introduced into various animals by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in carrying burthens or in running races; or in dogs, which have been cultivated for strength and courage, as the bull-dog; or for acuteness of his sense or smell, as the hound and spaniel; or for the swiftness of his foot, as the greyhound; or for his swimming ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the first time in his life if Helen Douglas was a coquette. If she knew Van Shaw as well as he and Walter knew him would she smile so sweetly at him, and on such brief acquaintance? To Felix Bauer the whole thing was incomprehensible. Even allowing something for the swiftness with which acquaintances can be made in the desert during a camping experience, especially under circumstances favoured by such an accident as had occurred, it still was not seemly that a girl like Helen Douglas should even in the slightest degree encourage ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... example of hell-beautiful than when he tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of the corral—and a bear-hound is a pretty agile animal. We had to tie Jim, or he'd made an end of Geronimo. He left the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... reality by virtue of their relation to an invisible and infinite Beyond, the modern arts in their infancy were thrust. There was nothing finite here or tangible, no gladness in the beauty of girlish foreheads or the swiftness of a young man's limbs, no simple idealisation of natural delightfulness. The human body, which the figurative arts must needs use as the vehicle of their expression, had ceased to have a value in and for itself, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... giants peering over the world's rim, then in a huddled confusion they would gather together, then start their flight, separating, joining, merging, dwindling and expanding, swallowing up the blue, threatening to encompass the pale saffron of the lower sky, then vanishing with incredible swiftness, leaving warmth and ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... as they worked up their speed to more than a hundred miles an hour. The four American hunters were high above the seven German machines. Then the time came to drop downward. Parker first, and the other three in turn, dipped the noses of their planes. The added assistance of gravity lent swiftness to their flight until they were swooping down on the enemy at little less than one hundred and fifty miles an hour. The Boches at first seemed so intent upon their quarry, the two triplanes, that they were like to be taken completely by surprise by the four wasps from the upper ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... the prince's head with the swiftness of a whirlwind while he was sitting on the stone bench under the chestnut-tree in Sarah's garden, and looking at the landscape ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... fame resting in the fort, and there the heads to be taken. Thus, when they sprang up at the call, he was unfatigued, with cartridges still in his gun, and wind in his body, and up the hill he raced with swiftness, so that scarcely two of his companions matched pace with him, and those who had cried: "Coward, coward!" panted in his rear, and perceived it was a hero they ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... Beresford-Hope. He seemed, for the moment, to dominate the House of Commons, to pervade it with his presence, and to guide it where he would. At every turn he displayed his reckless audacity, his swiftness in transition, his readiness to throw overboard a stupid colleague, his alacrity to take a hint from an opponent and make it appear his own. The Bill underwent all sorts of changes in Committee; but still it seemed to ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of her work-basket. The other articles she placed, in the order in which she had begun them, above it, and then sat resolutely down to her patchwork quilt. As her bright little needle began to fly with the swiftness of a weaver's shuttle, ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... street far below there came a fusillade of shots and a babel of shouts and counter-shouts. The roof of the house next door, which had been emptying itself slowly and reluctantly, filled again with a magical swiftness, and the low wall facing into the street became black with the backs ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... them at the tips of our fingers. We knew them as well as our catechism, in fact. But this new art of simultaneously navigating ships for whom the laws of wind did not exist, and which could move in any direction, and with great swiftness, according to the will and fancy of their captains, without allowing them to collide, was ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... from the beginning, and this result hangs on the clearness and intensity of the teller's initiatory mood. An act of memory and of will is the requisite. The story-teller must call up—it comes with the swiftness of thought—the essential emotion of the story as he felt it first. A single volition puts him in touch with the characters and the movement of the tale. This is scarcely more than a brief and condensed reminiscence; it is the stepping back into a ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... telling you this without any details, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, for the simple reason that I remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon one another with extraordinary swiftness." ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... that stood Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise, Which ran from bole to bole a year before, And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed, The roar of mighty winds with wintering streams That foam about the limits of the land And mix their swiftness with the flying seas. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... thereof, there appear'd to us such another delicious, rapid Stream, as that of Sapona, having large Stones, about the bigness of an ordinary House, lying up and down the River. As the Wind blew very cold at N.W. and we were very weary, and hungry, the Swiftness of the Current gave us some cause to fear; but, at last, we concluded to venture over that Night. Accordingly, we stripp'd, and with great Difficulty, (by God's Assistance) got safe to the North-side of the famous Hau-River, by some called Reatkin; the ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... tactical formations can move with swiftness and precision, when requested by friendly and responsible governments, to help curb threatened aggression. The stabilizing influence of this capacity has been dramatically demonstrated more than once ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was not to have that minute; Wolf was behind; he had flown with the swiftness of the wild hart, and when within leaping distance of the old woman, he sprang upon her, and caused his fangs to meet in her leg. She uttered a cry, and tried to shake him off, but he only let go in one place ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... seemed suddenly to strike him. Burrowing into his bunk and disrupting it in his eagerness, he secured a writing-pad and pencil, and sitting down at the table, began to write with swiftness and certitude. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... his foe was not to be closed with; he did not shift or dodge about, but warded off the blows of his opponent with the greatest sang-froid, always using the guard which I have already described, and putting in, in return, short chopping blows with the swiftness of lightning. In a very few minutes the countenance of the coachman was literally cut to pieces, and several of his teeth were dislodged; at length he gave in; stung with mortification, however, he repented, and asked for another round; it was ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... were spread or lowered; and sometimes conceiving them to be only phantoms, which played to and fro in the ocean. Such is the account given by the historian, perhaps, with too much prejudice against a negro's understanding, who, though he might well wonder at the bulk and swiftness of the first ship, would scarcely conceive it to be either a bird or a fish, but having seen many bodies floating in the water, would think it, what it really is, a large boat; and, if he had no knowledge of any ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... contents of all the books in his uncle's library that were worth reading. The process of absorbing ideas by means of reading had become in him a very strange phenomenon. His eye took in six or seven lines at once, and his mind grasped the sense with a swiftness as remarkable as that of his eye; sometimes even one word in a sentence was enough to enable him to seize the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... were still some way behind. Marice half-way between them, and Druro was apparently trying to disentangle her flickering, fluttering chiffons from a fresh engagement with the bushes when the terrible thing happened. The lithe, speckled body of a leopard came sailing, with a grace and swiftness indescribable, through the air and, leaping upon the fluttering figure, bore her to the ground. A scream of terror and anguish rent the night, and Gay and Tryon, galvanized by horror, powerless though they were to contend with the savage brute, rushed forward ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... there, O King, Whose fleet limbs darted arrow-like but now From Thebes away, and come to tell thee how They work strange deeds and passing marvel. Yet I first would learn thy pleasure. Shall I set My whole tale forth, or veil the stranger part? Yea Lord, I fear the swiftness of thy heart, Thine edged wrath ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... but as soon as he comes upon a topic that really interests him, be it music or Buddhism, metaphysics or the iniquities of the Jews, his brain gets on fire, and his pen courses over the paper with the swiftness and recklessness of a race-horse, regardless of the obstacles of style and construction, and sometimes of grammar. His meaning is always deep, but to arrive at that meaning in such terrible letters, for example, as those ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Kentucky, and St. Louis were engaged in making the iron plates, and employed for this purpose no less than four thousand men. Night and day, Sundays included, the work went on with an almost superhuman swiftness. Mr. Eads paid the workmen on the hulls large sums from his own pocket, in addition to their wages, to induce them to continue ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... there a star between soft wafts of cloud, and the newness and beauty of the time smote upon him as he hurried on, and made him young again. He walked faster than usual, a tall, lightly moving figure, his head under his soft felt hat thrown forward and his loose hair blown back by the swiftness of his going. Time seemed to have fallen away from him at the call of some new anticipation. He was not a man nearing fifty as the morning's sun had found him, but a youth with the mountain-top splendidly near and the rising sun to light ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Captain Barnaby's boat, to shoot rabbits upon Stromboli; and when we had done we called all our men together by us, and about half an hour and fourteen minutes after three in the afternoon, to our great surprise, we all of us saw two men come running towards us with such swiftness that no living man could run half so fast as they did run, when all of us heard Captain Barnaby say, 'Lord bless me, the foremost is old Booty, my next-door neighbour;' but he said he did not know the other that run behind: he ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... to man's care. Soon there would arise distinct breeds, owing to the varying uses to which the animals and plants were put. Dogs would be wanted chiefly to hunt one kind of game in one part of the country and another kind elsewhere; for one purpose scent would be more important, for another swiftness, for another strength and courage, for yet another watchfulness and intelligence, and this would soon lead to the formation of very distinct races. In the case of vegetables and fruits, different varieties would be found to succeed best in certain soils and climates; some might be preferred on account ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... raw Irish peasants, most of whom had never had a musket in their hands until within the few days that preceded the battle,—races, we mean. A panic seized the British army, and it fled from the field with the swiftness of the wind, but not with the wind's power of destruction. The French had one small gun,—the British, fourteen guns. Humbert afterward kept the whole British force at bay for more than a fortnight, and did not surrender until his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the hills, however, the Australian Bushmen with great dash carrying the central kopje, and the guns driving the invaders to the westward. Leaving all his wagons and his reserve ammunition behind him, the guerilla chief struck north-west, moving with great swiftness, but never succeeding in shaking off Plumer's pursuit. The weather continued, however, to be atrocious, rain and hail falling with such violence that the horses could hardly be induced to face it. For a week the two sodden, sleepless, mud-splashed ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bunks below and four above on either side. At night the place is lit with two lanterns, one to each table. As the steamer beat on her way among the rough billows, the light passed through violent phases of change, and was thrown to and fro and up and down with startling swiftness. You were tempted to wonder, as you looked, how so thin a glimmer could control and disperse such solid blackness. When Jones and I entered we found a little company of our acquaintances seated together at the triangular foremost table. A more forlorn party, in more ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the army came up; it was composed of five divisions, and had not yet been in action with its singular enemies. To swiftness and the charge of horse, and to sabre-cuts, it would be necessary to oppose the immobility of the foot-soldier, his long bayonet, and masses presenting a front on every side. Bonaparte formed his five divisions into five squares, in the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... to watch the apparently intelligent machines which divide the chocolate into half-pound lumps, the process being accomplished with incredible swiftness. Huge masses of chocolate in this stage awaiting the final preparation are seen here and there, all destined at last to be put half a pound at a time into a little baking tin, and to be baked like a hot cross bun, the name ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... great, radiant day; no longer like a day declining toward the calm, melancholy hours of dusk. It seemed to her like an open, wide-awake space of time, with hot pulses throbbing every second, with joyous light, with energy and swiftness and an infinity without and within. And she was thrilled with the fullness of life, and longed for it with the feverish eagerness with which a traveler sets ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... for the Turks. Another battery, or even a whole brigade of artillery, after those three exhausting days of fighting, was not worth waiting for. So they rose from their trenches and began to flee, and the Arabs, changing their minds with incredible swiftness, fell on them in the rear and cut and slashed them about considerably. In the meanwhile the strange column galloped up. But there were no guns. In place of guns stood a strangely assorted collection of wagons, spring carts, tongas—anything on wheels—that ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... with the utmost swiftness, expecting every moment to see the captain and Chris appear, but, luckily, those two, wearied by their hard work, had paused to rest before returning ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the lips of laughter that are now Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, Nor for the limbs that, fallen low And seeming faint and slow, Shall alter and renew Their shape and hue Like birches white before the moon Or a young apple-tree In spring or the round sea And shall pursue More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips Among ... and find more winds than ever blew The straining ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... necessitated by the orders of the Chief of the Army. They were more severe, more crushing, than any that have ever been adopted even by a punitive expedition under British colours. They were successful. For that they were intended. Swiftness and thoroughness were of the essence ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... at a writing table covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little hands with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on one side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew over the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have been expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... not bring forward the supreme proof of it. She was too proud—in her brooding and her mystery—to do so. The supreme proof was that at this time she herself was secretly engaged to be married to Edward Coe, who had conquered her heart with unimaginable swiftness a few weeks before she was about to sit for a musical examination at Manchester. "Let us say nothing till after my exam," she had suggested to her betrothed. "There will be an enormous fuss, and it will put me off, and I shall fail, and I don't want ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... had appeared arid at first, for the translation from recent agony into freedom from pain had been so numbing in its swiftness that it was some time before he could fully appreciate the pleasant dog-country through which he was passing. There were woods with leaves upon the ground through which to scurry, long grassy slopes for extended runs, and lakes into which he might plunge for sticks and bring them ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... frame as he advanced briskly towards his visitors. His face was not the least remarkable part of him. It was ridiculously small and narrow for so big a frame, with a great curved beak of a nose, and small bright eyes set close together. Those eyes were at the present moment glancing with bird-like swiftness from one to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... seem to us slow; that the Arabs trail along on labouring camels while the Europeans flash by on motors or mono-planes. But there is another and stranger sense in which we do seem to them slow, and they do seem to themselves to have a secret of swiftness. There is a sense in which we here touch the limits of a land of lightning; across which, as in a dream, the motor-car can be seen crawling ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... smiled. At sight of that smile some demon-artist in faces blocked in with lightning swiftness parallel lines of wrath at right angles to the corners of the Pierce mouth. Through the lips shone a ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... august consort shall learn that thou hast been the means of depriving her of her robe, she will undoubtedly request that thou mayest be flayed, and thou knowest that I can deny her nothing. I therefore counsel thee to depart with all possible swiftness. Repair to the regions where the purple is produced, and if thou returnest with an adequate supply, I undertake that my royal sceptre shall be graciously ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... bazaar was now about to close; lamps were here and there extinguished, every body was preparing to depart. Returning into the street, the old man looked anxiously around him for an instant, and then with incredible swiftness, threaded a number of narrow and intricate lanes which led him out in front of one of the principal theatres. The amusements were just concluded, and the audience was streaming from the doors. The old man was seen to gasp as he threw himself into the crowd, and then the intense agony of his countenance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... all is that these Protean creatures, which seem fitted only for an aquatic existence, should be so much at home on land, so ably using their queer wings as substitutes for legs that they can run up or down high and precipitous slopes with the swiftness of a hare. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... will!" cried Miss Silverton, energetically, recovering with amazing swiftness from her collapse. "Yes, you will, I by no means suppose! You think, just because I'm no champion with a pistol, I'm helpless. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... We gaze almost with awe at the lovely vision of a dainty Nautilus, sailing his fairy boat down a blue channel fringed with purple and salmon-coloured anemones, beneath a hedge of rosy coral. The shimmering sail and carven hull of iridescent pearl skim the water with incredible swiftness, and tack skilfully at every bend of the devious course, not even slackening speed to avoid collision with a lumbering star-fish encountered on the way. These submarine Gardens contain the greatest natural collection of anemones, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... become alarmed. Peters, whose arms when he hung them reached to within four inches of his feet, stooped just enough to bring his hands to the ground. Then, as a lame man using crutches might swing himself along, but with lightning-like swiftness, Peters took two rapid jumps toward the edge of the chasm, the second jump landing him directly on its edge. Then he shot up and out into the air over that awful abyss, and landed on the opposite side as gently as a cat lands from a six-foot leap; and ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... reminded him of what Hobbs had said in English. Then she deposited an armful of rugs and magazines at Robin's feet, and clutched wildly at a post actually some ten feet away but which appeared to be coming toward her with obliging swiftness, so nicely was the deck rotating for her. "Mon dieu! ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... times. With William Blake it was a flame that wrapped him round. Today no one knows how Brunelleschi was able to construct his great dome without centering, nor how Michaelangelo could limn his terrible figures on the wet plaster of the Sistine vault with such extraordinary swiftness and skill; but we have their testimony that they invoked and received divine aid. Shakespeare, the master-magician, is silent on this point of supernatural assistance—as on all points—except as his plays speak for him; but how ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and animal life—Look at this one: it is a lakelet of exquisite beauty. Bordered with the olive-colored Rock-Weed, fronds of purple and green Laver rise from its limpid depths. Amphipods of varied hue emerge from the clustering weeds, cleave the clear water with easy swiftness, and hide beneath the opposite bank. Here a graceful Annelid describes Hogarth's line of beauty upon the sandy bottom. There another glides over the surface with sinuous course, rowed by more oars than a Venetian galley, more brilliant in its iridescence than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Lindfield that dinner was over that night with unusual swiftness, and that they had scarcely sat down when they rose again for the women to leave the room. Yet, short though it seemed, it had been a momentous hour, for in that hour all the perplexity and the anger that had made ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... thought of what Sidonie had done for her, the little cripple applied herself with even more feverish energy to her work. Her electrified fingers moved with redoubled swiftness. You would have said that they were running after some fleeing, elusive thing, like happiness, for example, or the love of some one who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... general meaning of which may be guessed, but in many places cannot yet be determined with certainty. Vaga occurs very frequently, both in the singular and the plural, and some of its meanings are clear enough. The Petersburg Dictionary gives the following list of them—swiftness, race, prize of race, gain, treasure, race-horse, etc. Here we perceive at once the difficulty of tracing all these meanings back to a common source, though it might be possible to begin with the meanings of strength, strife, contest, race, whether friendly or warlike, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... was instantly stretched upon the green sward. Erling's axe fell on the helm of the berserk almost at the same time. Even in that moment of victory a feeling of respect for the courage and boldness of this man touched the heart of Erling, who, with the swiftness of thought, put in force his favourite practice—he turned the edge of the axe, and the broad side of it fell on the steel headpiece with tremendous force, causing the berserk of Hadeland to stretch himself on the green sward beside Glumm the Gruff; thus ending ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... found that I was forging ahead of my companions. The superior swiftness of Moro gave me the advantage. El Sol was still before me. I saw him circling his lasso; I saw him launch it, and suddenly jerk up; I saw the loop sliding over the hips of the flying mustang. He had missed ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... they had gone very far Toto knocked over one of the spoons by wagging his tail, and then the Captain of the Spoons told the little dog to be more careful, or he would be punished. So Toto was careful, and the Spoon Brigade moved along with astonishing swiftness, while Dorothy really had to walk fast to keep ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... climax, as it always comes in a lion hunt, unerringly, unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three men were nearing the bottom of the second hollow, well spread out, lassos taut, facing one another. Jones stumbled and the lioness leaped his way. The weight of both brought Jim over, sliding and slipping, with his rope slackening. The leap of the lioness carried ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... altar steps. There was an old cure among them and a young carpenter whom the cure was directing. Everyone of the nuns had her black skirts tucked up; their stout shoes must be free to fly over the ground with the swiftness of hounds. How pretty the faces were, under the great caps, in that moment of unwonted excitement! The cheeks, even of the older nuns, were pink; it was a pink that made their habitual pallor have a dazzling beauty. The eyes were lighted into a fresh flame of life, and the lips were temptingly ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... home, can imagine the comfort and joy her presence and cheering words brought to the "boys" undergoing the privations and discomforts of their station at the "Front," in those days of peril and siege. As she approached, her name would be heard passing from man to man, with electric swiftness, and often the shouts that accompanied it, would receive from the enemy a warlike response in the strange music of the whistling shot, or ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... rippling torch upon the breeze Of his own glorious swiftness: in the grass He bruised no feathery stalk, and through the trees I saw ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... the two vessels of that class which were approaching him. Some of his guns were so mounted that their muzzles could be greatly depressed, and aimed at an object in the water not far from the ship. But these were not discharged, and, indeed, the crabs, which were new ones of unusual swiftness, were alongside the Adamant in an incredibly short time, and out of the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... I was caught up,—snatched out of that black profundity with inconceivable swiftness,—and when the ascending movement ceased, I found myself floating lightly like a wind-blown leaf through twining arches of amber mist, colored here and there with rays of living flame ... I heard whispers, and fragments of song and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... one. In it were not only braves, but also squaws and pappooses, and a few negroes. They trooped along with the unhurried swiftness and easy disarray of men and women who have journeyed for many days and have many days of travel still ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... only trod with the softness and swiftness of a panther, but he had eyes like that animal, and if there were any light at all, those eyes could make good use of it. As he neared the two men, he saw that one was scolding the other. Then he saw the other man drop down on his knees. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... 'It is interesting to point to places in which Lucretius or his predecessors had really anticipated modern scientific research. Thus Lucretius recognises that in a vacuum every body, no matter what its weight, falls with equal swiftness; the circulation of the sap in the vegetable world is known to him, and he describes falling stars, aerolites, etc., as the unused material of the universe.' The great truth that matter is not destroyed but only changes its form is very clearly stated ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... us could think, the desperate fellow had seized the handle of the stiletto with both hands in a determined effort to withdraw it and die. I had had no time to order my faculties to the movement of a muscle, when Entrefort, with incredible alertness and swiftness, had Arnold's wrists. Slowly ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... rest now, in two words. In Moscow their fortunes changed with the swiftness of lightning and the unexpectedness of an Arabian fairy-tale. That general's widow, their nearest relation, suddenly lost the two nieces who were her heiresses and next-of-kin—both died in the same week of small-pox. The old lady, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... their meals were ready for them to the minute, when they chose to be there to eat them; the carriage came round like one of the puppets on the Strasburg clock; the house was quiet as a hospital; the bells were answered—all except the door-bell outside of calling hours—with swiftness; you could not soil your fingers anywhere—not even if the sweep had been that same morning; the manners of the servants—when serving—were unexceptionable; but the house was scarcely more of a home than one of the huge hotels characteristic ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city's crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the crazy stairs with a beating heart. I was all on fire with excitement at the thought of offering her a gift; my blood seemed to be turned to quicksilver, and to race through its channels with a feverish swiftness. ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... together in a very strange manner. They go naked, except a short cloak of skins, and sandals tied to their feet, painting their faces with various colours, and are a strong active people, who run with amazing swiftness. They are subject to the King of Monomotapa,[34] who is reported to be a mighty sovereign. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... the ladies' inclosure was a rustle of many-colored scarves waving in the air. At the striking of the shields the contending steeds rushed from the post with the swiftness of a swallow's flight. But before the white steed of the plains had gone halfway round, Fergus and the wild horse of the mountains had passed the winning post, greeted by such cheers as had never before been heard on ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... seer. It was thus proved to him that he could not foresee all things. (19) However, Samuel's error was pardonable. God's first choice had rested upon Eliab. Only on account of his violent nature, his swiftness to anger against David, the position destined for him was transferred to his youngest brother. (20) Eliab was in a sense compensated by seeing his daughter become the wife of Rehoboam. Thus he, too, enjoys the distinction of being among the ancestors of the Judaic kings, and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Scarcely fifty feet below him, and on the edge of the bluff, several yards in height, a light flashed into view. A second glance showed him that it was a flaming torch held in the hand of an Indian, who began whirling it around his head with a swiftness that made it seem like a revolving wheel of fire. The rapid motion of the torch, as the reader may infer, caused an equally rapid increase of the flame upon it, so that it revealed the Indian himself; and the hunter, as he looked toward ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... fickle. She had a loyalty in her that was Sicilian in its fervor, a sense of gratitude such as the contadini have, although by many it is denied to them; a quick and lively temper, but a disposition that responded to joy, to brightness, to gayety, to sunlight, with a swiftness, almost a fierceness, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... great harm at his hands. He soon returned, saying that he could not find him, but had shot a buzzard instead. Being required to produce the bird in proof of his assertion, he said he believed that he was not quite dead, but he must be hurt, from the swiftness ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... which he was eminently suited. The qualities which most impressed all who came into close communication with him were the strength, swiftness, and soundness of his judgement, and his unfailing tact and discretion in dealing with delicate questions. He was eminently a man of the world, and had quite as much knowledge of men as of books. Probably few men of his time have been ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... gripping both my arms like a vise and the coils of a rope were about me with the swiftness of a lasso. My first impulse was to struggle against the outrage; but I was beginning to learn the service of open ears and a closed mouth was often more valuable than a fighter's blows. Already I had ascertained from their own lips that the Hudson's ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... terror, since go he never so far, he beholds the same sky, the same horizon, the same grass, and his cheek is fanned by the same breeze! To jump upon his faithful steed, to prick her sides with the spur, to be off in the twinkling of an eye with the swiftness of the wind, at the least discontent, is therefore as natural to the Russian of the South as it is for the Russian of the North to endure patiently in his place of birth whatever Fortune hath in store for him. The ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part—to drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great book—'C'est de l'esprit sur les lois'—is an almost ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... that they saw waves moving along the surface of the ground. At Charleston, according to an observer who was facing a street-lamp at the time, "the progress of the waves as they passed the house, going towards the south-east, was plainly observed, although they travelled with incomparable swiftness. The shadow of each moving ridge cast from the gas-light was distinctly seen. The waves were not in long rollers, but had rather the appearance of 'ground-swells' in deep water," the height of which from crest to trough ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the deep, tremulous sound of Niagara tells of its vicinity, there is no unusual appearance till within about a mile, when the waters begin to ripple and hasten on; a little further it dashes down a magnificent rapid, then again becomes tranquil and glassy, but glides past with astonishing swiftness. There are numberless points whence the fall of this great river may be well seen: the best is Table Rock, at the top of the cataract; the most wonderful is the recess between the falling flood and the cliff over ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... his injunction. The moment the word was uttered he felt the silvery ground sliding from under him; and with the swiftness of thought he found himself on the flat of his back, under the very niche of the old church wall whence he had started, dizzy and confused with a measureless tumble. The emancipated ghosts floated in all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... began faintly to wonder whether the Young Turks in their deposition of Abdul Hamid had not slain an asp and hatched a cockatrice. Given that their aims originally were sincere, we can but marvel at the swiftness of the corruption which in little more than a year had begun to lead them not into paths of reform and Liberal policy, but along the road towards which the butcher they had deposed had pointed the way. It must ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... even when they were absent. In the mean while he consider'd all the several sorts of Animals, and saw that they were all clothed either with Hair, Wool, or several sorts of Feathers: he consider'd their great Swiftness and Strength, and that they were all arm'd with Weapons defensive, as Horns, Teeth, Hoofs, Spurs, Nails, and the like. But that he himself was Naked and Defenceless, Slow and Weak, in respect of them. For whenever there happened any Controversy about gathering of ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... to escape with your wagon; but must ride your horses, which will be much more efficacious both for swiftness and for their ability to go through places where you could not take a wagon," said Munson, as they walked ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Ratisbon, a journey perfectly agreeable, down the Danube, in one of those little vessels, that they, very properly, call wooden houses, having in them all the conveniences of a palace, stoves in the chambers, kitchens, &c. They are rowed by twelve men each, and move with such incredible swiftness, that in the same day you have the pleasure of a vast variety of prospects; and, within the space of a few hours, you have the pleasure of seeing a populous city adorned with magnificent palaces, and the most ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... suggested a sustained note struck from a giant organ, a note so low in pitch that it seemed a full octave below the lowest bass note ever struck. Whatever it was, the thundering vibration of infra-bass was coming nearer with startling swiftness. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... attacking the barracks, out of the windows of which the people, who had taken forcible possession of it some hours before, were firing on their assailants. I retraced my steps as hastily as possible, fear lending swiftness to my feet, and returned to the Rue de Matignon by the Faubourg du Roule and the Rue St.-Honore. Our trusty porter, having heard the shots, and knowing they proceeded from the quartier through which my route lay, was much alarmed for my safety, and evinced great pleasure ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... horde following with incredible swiftness, Stoddard wheeled and fired time and again—and now his shots were answered by the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... said the Gypsy father; and Jackanapes sighed and went home again. That very afternoon he and Tony rode the two donkeys; and Tony managed to get thrown, and even Jackanapes's donkey kicked. But it was jolting, clumsy work after the elastic swiftness and the dainty mischief of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... was pale. Her face was pale and little and round. Her hair was pale, too, the color of ashes, and braided in two smooth little braids hanging half way down her back. She moved with almost as much swiftness as the ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... spectre, monstrous, terrifying. She could not realise her own share in the catastrophe she felt was impending. She could not believe that Colin could change so much in less than ten days. Everything had come about with such incredible swiftness. His face looked haggard, ravaged. The cheeks seemed to have fallen in. The features were rigid as if cut out of metal. The whites of his eyes between the reddened lids were very blood-shot and the eyes ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... moved, their swiftness as of shadows, the way they tossed their heads and flung their arms about—all this made the children think it was a dance. Monkey felt her own legs twitch to join them, but her little brother's will ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Canadians fell on their faces, and began praying and crying, fearing they should be killed; he himself threw away his gun and knife, that they might not attract the flashes, for they were within two feet from the earth, flitting along with incredible swiftness, and moving parallel to its surface. They continued for upwards of five minutes, as near as he could judge, and made a loud rustling noise, like the waving of a flag in a strong breeze. After they had ceased, the sky became clear, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
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