"Fleeting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Captain's house. When, at his motion, I opened the door and stepped into the hall, which was somewhat dark after the glare of the street, there came a flurry of lace, and soft arms were around my neck. And—well, what could a man do but return that kiss with interest? But the best things are but fleeting, for, when she glanced at my face, and saw who I was, she gave a little cry, broke from my arms, and vanished in confusion up the stairway, followed by the merry laughter of the real ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... of colours in a pigeon's neck, or the appearance of the broken oar in the water, must be allowed to have weight. But these and the like objections vanish, if we do not maintain the being of absolute external originals, but place the reality of things in ideas, fleeting indeed, and changeable;—however, not changed at random, but according to the fixed order of nature. For, herein consists that constancy and truth of things which secures all the concerns ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... the man who has mastered the apparently capricious, yet logical, reasoning of her heart; who can track her thought through the seemingly contradictory workings of her mind, and read the sensations, shy or bold, written in fleeting red, a bewildering ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... course of human affairs, the frailty and transitoriness of things apparently most durable and strong. In the case of this embroidery, on the contrary, we are struck with the durability and permanence of what would seem to be most frail and fleeting. William's conquest of England took place in 1066. This piece of tapestry, therefore, if Matilda really worked it, is about eight hundred years old. And when we consider how delicate, slender, and frail is the ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... light fleeting spirits, that glide o'er the steep, Oh, would ye but waft me across the wild deep! There fearless I'd mix in the battle's loud roar, I'd die with my Connel, and leave him ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... barrier of philosophic reasoning in their way; they still clung to me, in spite of every effort to the contrary. But the fact is, that I was, for the moment, the slave of a morbid and feverish sentiment, that left me completely at the mercy of the dark and fleeting images that passed over my fancy. I now came to a turn where the road began to slope down into the depths of a valley that ran across it. When I looked forward into the bottom of it, all was darkness impenetrable, for the moon-beams were thrown off by the height of the mountains that rose on ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... the fleeting figure until it vanished in the obscurity of Ludgate Hill and then with a ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... this quaint old region, this fleeting oasis in the Sahara of the building-mad suburban metropolis? I do, well; its market gardens, its circumambient lanes, its old, antiquarian stone ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... circulates among a whole people. The present nickname originated in derision on the expulsion of the majority of the Long Parliament by the usurping minority. It probably slept; for who would have stirred it through the Protectorate? and finally awakened at Richard's restored, but fleeting "Rump," to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... paying a fleeting return visit to the largest of the jewellery stores. After which she told herself that it was little short of going without shoes or stockings through the streets to have been married the length of time she had been married and to possess not a ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... But I don't reckon you'll ever get that fond wish gratified. We're not liable to meet up with each other again pronto. To-day we're here and to-morrow we're at Yuma, Arizona, say, for life is short and darned fleeting ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... struck me. There was no one, of all who spoke, who began to say as many things in favor of Joseph Hooker as I for years have done; and not in fleeting words, but printed chapters. There was plenty of eulogy, in nine-tenths of which I joined with all my heart. But it was of the soldiers'-talk order,—cheering and honest and loyal, appealing to the sentiments rather than the intelligence. What I have said ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... discharged the contents of my rifle rapidly, but without any attempt at aim, and then turning and flinging the now useless weapon into the canoe, I concentrated all my fast fleeting energies into one ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... society; called into being under the stern system of nature, to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that the job was fleeting. In the early summer they would be in Texas, and as the crops were ready they would follow north with the season, ending with the fall in Manitoba. Then they would seek out the big lumber camps, where there was winter work; or failing in this, would drift to the cities, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the meaning of a "perennial plant" in botany? Ans. A plant continuing more than two years.—Give the contrary of "perennial." Ans. Fleeting, short-lived. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... which comes up naturally from the most ordinary situations; there is nothing superfluous, nothing retarding, nothing extraneous. But in addition to these general merits, we are also interested in Turgenev's novel because in it is caught and held a current, fleeting moment of a passing phenomenon, and in which a momentary phase of our life is typically drawn and arrested not only for ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... thy voice, Chloris! I feel my heart decay That powerful voice Calls my fleeting soul away: Oh! suppress that magic sound, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... As a wave of bitter envy swept over him Telemachus saw for a moment the face of his mother Penelope, brows contracted with warning, white hand raised in admonition. For a fleeting second the memory of his quest brushed through the back of his mind. But ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... seen when his gaze had compelled hers, a look which seemed to him full of confession of things unutterable, full almost of appeal as if she realized that she was betraying a feeling that she feared to own even to herself, this look of a moment so fleeting clocks could hardly have measured it, filled him with a wild, unreasoning bliss. He did not again try to challenge her eyes. He sat in a dream of happiness; a vague, intangible, ecstatic sense that all was well, that the universe was in tune, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... press, his successor, Grover Cleveland, in the first year of his second administration, is paying a high price for fleeting fame, with the serious question of what to do with the relative coinage of gold and silver, and the Democrats in Congress, for the first time in the history of the world, are referring each other with hot breath and flashing eye to the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... brought back my fleeting senses, and I made a convulsive clutch with the other hand at the gunwale; while the next thing I remember is feeling myself helped over the side by the boy, who had climbed in, and lying in the bottom with the sun beating down ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... "if the strange offspring of my poor wit about which we have held pleasant counsel to-night hath mayhap had some small interest for ye, let these matters serve to call to mind the lesson that our fleeting life is rounded and beset with enigmas. Whence we came and whither we go be riddles, and albeit such as these we may never bring within our understanding, yet there be many others with which we and they that do come after us will ever strive for the answer. Whether success do ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... the lagoon wears a different aspect each morning when you rise, the sky offers a varied composition of cloud each evening as the sun sets. Words cannot describe Venice, nor brush portray her ever-fleeting, ever-varying charm. Venice is to be felt, not reproduced; to live there is to live a poem, to be daily surfeited with a wealth of beauty enough to ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... newly-awakened interest at Lettice; for the first time he thought of her as other than a school-girl; for the first time he discovered in her the potent, magnetic, disturbing quality of sex. Buckley Simmons had clumsily forced it into consciousness. A fleeting, unformulated regret enveloped him in the shadow of its melancholy, an intangible, formless sorrow at the swift passage of youth, the inevitable lapse of time. A mounting anger at Buckley possessed him ... she had been in his, Gordon Makimmon's, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was even and almost deferential, but the detective's watchful eyes intercepted a fleeting glance cast by the butler over his shoulder in the direction of the still ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... a right character, connected with the former, and very much in our power to form ourselves to." This, then, is the view which we think should be entertained with respect to the natural evils of this life: they are intended by the infinitely wise and good Ruler of the world to detach us from the fleeting things of time and sense, by the gradual formation of a habit of moral goodness, arising from a resistance against the influence of such things and firm adherence to the will of God, and to form our character for a state of fixed eternal blessedness. Such is the beneficent ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... that seemed to be forming in his countenance. It stole upon the features as if they were being slowly sprinkled with fine dust, blotting their expression into a flat lifelessness. Then the rush of a train passing over the bridge disturbed him. With a fleeting look of pain he sat up, glanced first furtively at me, and then ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... on Thornton's knee, Buck was content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the hour, eager, alert, at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression, every movement or change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the man and the occasional movements of his body. And often, such was the communion in which they lived, the strength of Buck's gaze ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... you, furl the battered sail, Fling out the anchor, and with rapture hail The pleasant prospect—storms will come too soon. They are but suicides, at best, who fail To seize when'er they can Joy's fleeting boon— Fools, who exclaim "'tis night," yet always ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... weak? He could look back to that squalid tragedy of his youth, and see that a more violent, a more determined man could have possessed himself of the girl whom he had lost. And now would it not be more manly, if more brutal, to stay here, where a hope, however fleeting, however fitful, of what might have been, had revisited him in the love of this young girl? He felt sure, if anything were sure, that something in him, in spite of their wide disparity of years, had captured ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... in them, if they did not go away, came into the hotel. The Maxwells themselves did this at last, for the sake of the warmth and the human companionship around the blazing hearth-fires in the parlors. They got a room with a stove in it, so that he could write; and there was a pensive, fleeting coziness in it all, with the shrinking numbers in the vast dining-room grouped at two or three tables for dinner, and then gathered in the light of the evening lamps over the evening papers. In these conditions ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of you for a couple of days. I think, at the beginning of the third, I had just three and sixpence left wherewith to buy a razor to cut my throat withal. "Stuff and nonsense!" cried the last of the fleeting friends who had abided with me. "Three and sixpence for a razor, forsooth! why, a yard of good new cord, quite strong enough to bear your weight, can be bought in any shop in Tooley-street for a penny. You have just three and fivepence left, brother, to make yourself merry for the day, and, please ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... an hour of intimate excitement, when the burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated, promised; had been ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... that loseth His life shall find it": so the Scripture runs. But I so hugged the fleeting self in me, So loved the lovely perishable hours, So kissed myself to death upon their lips, That on one pyre we perished in the end— A grimmer bonfire than the Church e'er lit! Yet all was well—or seemed so—till I heard That younger voice, an echo of my own, And, like a wanderer turning to ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... best. I loved her, but HAD loved her; three whole years Of pleasure, and of varied pleasure too, Had worn the soft impression half away. What I once felt, I would recall; the faint Responsive voice grew fainter each reply: Imagination sank amid the scenes It laboured to create; the vivid joy Of fleeting youth I followed, and possessed. 'Tis the first moment of the tenderest hour, 'Tis the first mien on entering new delights, We give our peace, our power, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... to know that whenever you enter your gate and glance upward, you will always see the curtains parted, and between them, like an idol in a shrine, the ugly wooden back of a little oval or oblong looking-glass. It gives one a sense of permanence in a world where all is fleeting." ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... sitting next to Captain Courtenay?" she asked, and she had a fleeting impression that he was anxious for her to speak, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... not been lighted, and as she came downstairs, a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression of the man—and the impression consisted entirely of tallness. He was waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive. As it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant, the glaring ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... is not bright, and its lower part is not obscure. Ceaseless in its action, it yet cannot be named, and then it again returns and becomes nothing. This is called the Form of the Formless, and the Semblance of the Invisible; this is called the Fleeting ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... work to another, his temporary habitations ranging from modern hotels to dog tents and shacks. In all the world there was no spot that he could call home; and there was no one who cared a button whether he came or went. His glimpses of other men's homes were rare and fleeting, and he was apt to thank Heaven that he was ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... feet treading the new road. But yet the total effect of that endless procession is to impress on the observer the transiency of humanity. And that wholesome thought is made more poignant still by the comparison which the writer here draws between the fleeting generations and the abiding earth. Man is the lord of earth, and can mould it to his purpose, but it remains and he passes. He is but a lodger in an old house that has had generations of tenants, each of whom has said for a while, 'It is mine'; and they all have drifted ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer's time; The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow'd ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... these things; continually he had to be playing a part, trying to hide his folly under a pretence of being like other people, sensible and informed and amusing, whereas really he was more like an animal, interested in the foolish and fleeting impressions of the moment. He was not fit ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... the west. This gigantic and solitary apparition on a rock in the ocean was supposed to indicate the existence of a new world, and the direction in which it was to be sought, but it is probable that the shipwrecked Fleeting was quite innocent of any such magnificent visions. The original designation of the Flemish Islands, derived from their first colonization by Netherlanders, was changed to Azores by Portuguese mariners, amazed at the myriads of hawks which they found there. But ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mother mine," said she, turning in elfish mood to brush her lips across the frustrated fingers. "Art is long, if time is fleeting," she sang to the measure of her Non piu mesta, beginning again to shower its diamonds about till all the air seemed bright with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... call, in vain, in vain I call, While she like fleeting, fleeting Air; When press'd by some tempestuous Wind, Flys swifter from the voice of my Despair: Nor cast a pitying, pitying, pitying, pitying look behind, No not one, no not one, not one pitying, pitying look, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... of violence with every suggestion of the sordid, but the poor sobbing fellow who now lay in the chair with his arms and head drooping over the big leather arm seemed to him as immaculately dressed as himself. Remembering the fleeting posture at the door, his eyes went involuntarily to the hanging, graphic hands. In the light of his reading-lamp they gleamed white, and as he watched, his heart sinking with pity at their thinness, two slow red drops rolled from under the cuffs down the palms, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... them. There was nothing to indicate that he was even interested. But Constance knew that that was the method of his shadowing. Never for a moment, she knew, did he permit himself to look into the eyes of his quarry, even for the most fleeting glance. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... when attracted by a face, would follow till he was able to transfer it to paper. Ida Prentice Whitcomb, who has compiled many anecdotes of da Vinci, says that it was also his habit to invite peasants to his house, and there amuse them with funny stories till he caught some fleeting expression of mirth which he was ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... link is the testimony of the man whose name you expect to bear. Miss Gordon"—she stooped closer, and whispered slowly: "Do not upbraid your lover; be tender, cling to him; and afford me the consolation of knowing that the unfortunate woman you befriended, and trusted, cast not even a fleeting shadow between your heart and his. Pray for me, that I may be patient and strong. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... about 1 p.m. our infantry made a second dash across the wall and this time reached the top of the hill. Below them they saw the stream of flying Boers hurrying across the veld. It was the moment for a vigorous outburst of musketry, but 'some one blundered,' and the fleeting moment sped without being taken advantage of. It is true that those men who first arrived on the summit were firing away, and were joined in doing so by every other man who breathlessly arrived. The company officers had just got their men well in hand, and were directing the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... offence, By harmless merriment, or useful sense. Where aught of bright or fair the piece displays, Approve it only;—'tis too late to praise. If want of skill or want of care appear, Forbear to hiss;—the poet cannot hear. By all, like him, must praise and blame be found, At last, a fleeting gleam, or empty sound; Yet then shall calm reflection bless the night, When liberal pity dignified delight; When pleasure fir'd her torch at virtue's flame, And mirth was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and life is fleeting; Artists, when their subjects treating, Should be very, very far ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... insipid and palled upon the sense. Let us eat, drink, and love, for to-morrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow? But, if awed by observing the improvable powers of the mind, we disdain to confine our wishes or thoughts to such a comparatively mean field of action; that only appears grand and important as it is connected with a boundless prospect and sublime hopes; what necessity ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... better days had evidently been used for a barn. The children were as much surprised as Peace, and after one frightened glance at the intruder, they both buried their heads in their patched aprons and cowered still lower among the weeds. But from the fleeting glimpse Peace had caught of the little faces, she knew they had been crying, and her first thought was, "They ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... little, flexed his muscles, grown stiff by his cramped position, and as he did so he caught a glimpse of a figure on the south face of the wall. But it was so fleeting he was not sure. If he had only brought his glasses with him he might have decided, but he was without them, and he concluded finally that it was merely an optical illusion. He and the Indian had the mountain walls to themselves, ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... round it. I think with awe still, of those rapid words, uttered in the shadow of the canopy, as my pallid wife sits by her, her Prayer-book on her knee; as the attendants move to and fro noiselessly; as the clock ticks without, and strikes the fleeting hours; as the sun falls upon the Kneller picture of Beatrix in her beauty, with the blushing cheeks, the smiling lips, the waving auburn tresses, and the eyes which seem to look towards the dim figure moaning ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and several after him at Court, had made a gallantry with——On this he paused for some time, and reflected on his passion for Sylvia; and this fantastic intrigue of the Prince's inspired him with a kind of curiosity to try, whether fleeting love, would carry him back again to this abandoned maid. In these thoughts, and such discourse, they passed away the time during supper; which ended, and a fresh bottle brought to the table, with a new command that none should interrupt them, the impatient Philander obliged Tomaso to give him ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... for forty-eight hours and to them it had no more terrors. Men overworked to the breaking point and women unnerved by hysteria dropped down on the cooling ashes and slept where they lay, for had they not seen the tall steel skyscrapers burn like a torch? Had they not beheld the cataracts of flame fleeting unhindered up the broad avenues, and over the solid ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Twice the Sergeant lifted his Henry, sighting along the brown barrel, lowering the weapon again in doubt of the distance. He was conscious of exultation, of a swifter pulse of the heart, yet his nerves were like steel, his grip steady. Only a dim fleeting memory of the girl, half hidden in the darkness behind, gave him uneasiness—he could not turn and look into her eyes. Roman Nose was advancing now at the centre of that creeping half circle, a hulking figure ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... thoughts, like the labouring spider, That spreads her nets to entrap the silly fly, Or like the restless billows of the seas, That ever alter by the fleeting air, Still hovering past their wonted passions, Makes me amazed in these extremities. The king commands me on his embassage To Osrick's daughter, beauteous Alfrida, The height and pride of all this bounding ill; To post amain, plead love in his behalf, To court for him, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... and ruffled his feathers. He gave his head sundry little sidewise jerks and rapidly shifted his point of vision. Once there was the fleeting little ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... ignoring realities, and which can be shattered into fragments by anything that compels a man to see himself as he is? In such a fool's paradise thousands of us live. 'Use and wont,' the continual occupation with the trifles of our daily lives, the fleeting satisfactions of our animal nature, the shallow wisdom which bids us 'let sleeping dogs lie,' all conspire to mask, to many consciences, their unrest and their sin. We abstain from lifting the curtain behind which the serpent lies coiled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... keenly for a chance to put his helm down. There was a perceptible lull in the wind, but the sea was high as ever. The heavy, racing clouds had broken in the zenith; there were rifts here and there through which shone fleeting gleams from the moon, lighting the furious ocean for a moment, then vanishing as the storm-wrack ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... realized, and forbear to follow it with untired gaze only when another, another, and yet another, come to provoke the same aesthetic fancy,—to win the same unspoken praise! How often does one long for artist's power to fix the fleeting lines, to catch the color, to seize the whole exotic charm of some special type!... One finds a strange charm even in the timbre of these voices,—these half-breed voices, always with a tendency ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... as the dog, even if dumb, which in justice he could scarcely be thought, was thus judged entitled to a consideration never vouchsafed to others, and duly received it, therefore, at all times in this enlightened land. And not only in the fleeting years of his existence, but equally when he lay down under the common hand of death. The dog, in those forgotten days, received embalmment, just as his master and mistress, and was then carried with some solemnity to the burial-ground ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... great Apostle to confer not with flesh and blood, and which took him into Arabia before he went to Jerusalem, was leading this quiet, country maiden to see that to be a follower of Christ means something more than to win a fleeting happiness in this life and a kind of pension in the next. She was beginning to understand that to be really Christ's means also to be a Christ; that to be His, one must seek for the lost sheep for whom He died. And so Rhoda—I call ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... I going?" She felt like one borne upon a wave, seaward, to the wonder, to the danger, perhaps, of a murmuring unknown. The rocks leaned forward; their teeth were fastened in the sky; they enclosed the train, banishing the sun and the world from all the lives within it. She caught a fleeting glimpse of rushing waters far beneath her; of crumbling banks, covered with debris like the banks of a disused quarry; of shattered boulders, grouped in a wild disorder, as if they had been vomited forth from some underworld or cast headlong ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to a movement of friendliness for this working daughter of the people, and joined her on the other side of the stile in token of his approval. She, twisting round to face him, leaned now with her back against the bar, and the sunset fires lent a fleeting glory to her face. Perhaps she guessed how becoming the light was, for she took off her hat and let it touch to gold the ends and fringes of her rough abundant hair. Thus and at this moment she made an agreeable picture, to which stood as background ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... apple-trees.—No, said he, they are too long growing, and I don't want to plant for other people. The young farmer's father was spoken to about it; but he, with better reason, alleged that apple-trees were slow and life was fleeting. At last some one mentioned it to the old grandfather of the young farmer. He had nothing else to do,—so he stuck in some trees. He lived long enough to drink barrels of cider made from the apples ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... whose work dignifies nearly all the great cities in America—who had most to do with the Exhibition buildings of the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. It was odd to see that fair dream city rising out of the lake, so far more beautiful in its fleeting beauty than the Chicago of the stock-yards and the Pit which had provided the money for its beauty. The millionaires did not interfere with the artists at all. They gave their thousands—and stood aside. The result was one of the loveliest things conceivable. Saint-Gaudens ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... place. The isolation for a white man must be terrible; sometimes two months will go by without his seeing another white face but that in his looking-glass, and when he does see another, it is only by a fleeting visit such as we now pay him, and to make the most of this, he stays on board ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... nurse he was more than polite, he was kind, and to Sibyl he was all in all, everything that father could be, everything that love could imagine. He kept himself, his wounded conscience, his fears, his heavy burden of sin in abeyance for the sake of the fast-fleeting little life, because he willed, with all the strength of his nature, to give the child every comfort that lay in his power during her ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... sharp Bang! as the right front tire went. The steering wheel snapped through his father's hands by half a turn. There was a splintering crash as the car shattered its way through the retaining fence, then came a fleeting moment of breathless silence as if the entire universe had ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Ray Vandyck, and Constance, lifting her eyes to his face, caught there a fleeting look that caused ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... wise men came to gaze and throngs of fools gaped, passing with flattering words. Where I go now I know not; but since I go from that humble house where they loved me, I shall be sad and alone. They pass so soon,—those fleeting mortal lives! Only we endure,—we, the things that the human brain creates. We can but bless them a little as they glide by: if we have done that, we have done what our masters wished. So in us our masters, being dead, yet ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... cold and grey above the ridge opposed to the burning brightness of the western horizon, and Grace Ashton pointed out the beautiful but fleeting hues of the landscape around them. Her companion, however, was engrossed by another object. Before them was an eminence marking the horizon to the north-west, though not more than a good bowshot from where they stood. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... mortal bane! Spite of thy charms, thou causest often pain And sore regret, of which we daily find A thousand instances attend mankind: For thou—O may it not displease the fair— A fleeting pleasure art, but lasting care. And always proves, alas! too dear the prize, Which, in the moment ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... when young, they appear as ignorant of the symptoms that mark its stages in the lives of their children, as if all memory of its existence had been obliterated out of their being. Perhaps this may be wisely designed, and no doubt it is, but, alas! its truth is a melancholy comment upon the fleeting character of the only passion that charms our early life, and fills the soul with sensations too ethereal to be retained by a heart which grosser associations have brought beneath the standard of purity necessary for their ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... earliest glimpse of morn, Pleas'd with the lapse of time, return; For now, perchance, I might not fail, To see the long expected sail! Then, as it blankly wore away, Courted the fleeting eye to stay! As they regardless mov'd along, Wooed the slow moments in a song. The time approaches! but the Hours With languid steps advance, And loiter o'er the summer flowers, Or in the sun-beams dance! Oh! haste along! for, lingering, ye Detain ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... retort was a mounting torment. He grasped the decanter and rattled its crystal mouth against the glass in his trembling hand. He flushed the glass, and then stood erect, holding it aloft for an instant. For one fleeting moment he held his head above the drowning waves of his abyss. He nodded easily at Goodwin, raised his brimming glass and murmured a "health" that men had used in his ancient Paradise Lost. And then so suddenly that he spilled the brandy over his ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... not speak at once, yet in those fleeting moments Mary had a strange sense of a question asked and answered. It was as if he were calling upon her for something she was not ready to give—as if he were drawing from her some subconscious admission, swaying her by a ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... been clenching between her fingers, dropped to the floor. With a purely automatic movement, I bent to recover it for her; she leaned down to receive it. Her pale face and lovely dilated eyes were close to me for a fleeting second, and though her lips did not move, I seemed to catch the merest breath, the faintest ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... some time is past over." His own time could neither appreciate nor reward them. Here is an element of greatness worthy of all imitation: he who works for popular applause, may have his reward, but it is fleeting and unsatisfying; he who works for truth alone, has a grand inner consequence while he works, and his name will be honored, if for nothing else, for this loyalty to truth. After what has been said of his servility and dishonesty, it is pleasing to contemplate this unsullied side of his escutcheon, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... listening to the same blessed words. It seems so mad and dreamlike that I have found myself thinking that, despite all our confidence, the world may be but a phantasmagoria, and ourselves, with our flesh that seems so solid, may be no more than fleeting wraiths. There is no one to rush between the scowling nations, as the poor hermit did between the gladiators in wicked Rome; there is no one to say, "Poor, silly peasant from pleasant France, why should you care to stab and torment that other poor flaxen-haired simpleton from Silesia? ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... fleeting hour, a month, a year, Is all that God permits us here, That we may learn to prize more high That heavenly ...
— Silver Links • Various
... the highway there came riding by a stranger, For an instant on her features, he a fleeting glance bestowed, Then he said: "My heart is fickle and the world is full of danger," And he offered her his stirrup and he ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... we may call attention to the fact that the average man is a victim of Arrested Development, and that the fleeting years bring an increase of knowledge only in very exceptional cases. Health and prosperity are not pure blessings—a certain element of discontent is necessary to spur men on to a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... side before the galley should be reached. By my tactics of quick rushes I had doubtless made too fleeting a target to draw their fire, so I dashed at this third door. It was closed but yielded to my shoulder. As I entered, and became instantaneously aware that it contained no foe, my nerves were fired by the sound of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... conscious of an unusual feeling of exaltation as she went along. London, while it can be one of the most depressing cities in the world when one is alone and friendless, quickens the imagination. As they went through Trafalgar Square and caught a fleeting glimpse of the National Gallery, Nora resolved that she would give herself a real treat and renew old acquaintance with that institution as well as see the Wallace collection and the Tate Gallery, both of which ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... Laban my brother, to Haran, and tarry with him for seven years, until thy brother's fury turn away." In the goodness of her heart, Rebekah could not but believe that the anger of Esau was only a fleeting passion, and would disappear in the course of time. But she was mistaken, his hate persisted until the end of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... is no law at all, for it is not a rule of action. Still, we may sometimes be bound, when only our own rights are infringed, to submit to such an imposition, not as a law, for it is none, but on the score of prudence, to escape direr evils. A law is no fleeting, occasional rule of conduct, suited to meet some passing emergency or superficial disturbance. The reason of a law lies deep down, lasting and widespread in the nature of the governed. A law, then, has these two further attributes of permanence in duration and amplitude in area. Every law is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... he resented the veil that was shutting away so much that was fine and fleeting by way of ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... traitor to his doom? Nay; let me tell you, friends, that the Republic has no use for curs, and calls him a traitor who allows one of her enemies to remain inviolate through his cowardice, his terror of that intangible and fleeting shadow—the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... suddenly, and there was a startled sort of look in the wide brown eyes, a fleeting expression of fear; and at the same time her hand went to her breast in ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... fall and selected a plain cigarette. Then as he lit it, his eyes encountered for a fleeting instant the clear gaze of the nurse. Immediately she looked away and, rising, perhaps too hurriedly, left the room. However, that single glance had been sufficient to tell Roger what was in ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... he had adopted an inflexible resolution from which he would not recede for anything. The Greek evidently understood this, as great uneasiness was reflected on his features. The Mahdi observed both children with a fleeting glance, brightened his fat face with his customary smile, after which he first addressed ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... emphasize that none of this had the quality of a dream; it was clear-cut, as vivid as anything I had ever experienced; my mind worked with an unusual precision and clarity, and not even a fleeting doubt came to me of the reality of my observations. "This is some sort of bombing attack," I remember reflecting, "some assault of super-monsters of the skies, perfected by a super science." And I did not have to be told the fact; I knew, as by an all-illuminating inner ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... our liberty. Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun; And, as a vapor or a drop of rain, Once lost, can ne'er be found again: So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade, All love, all liking, all delight Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying, Come, my Corinna, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... here in California had been too hurried for more than fleeting moments of self-study, but on this idle Sunday morning Price Ruyler's perturbed mind wandered to that inner self of his to which he once had longed to give a freer expression. It was odd that the conservative training, the rigid traditions of his ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of the last of the conquistadores, who had found only villages of barbarians and tribes of half-naked savages, and returned empty-handed from his long chase after the Will-o' the-wisp of Quivira and its fleeting treasures. Little did he dream that Quivira would yet become the central region of one of the greatest civilized nations of the world, and rich in productions ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... from her lord to tear, Farewell to all our days are o'er, Lanka and giants are no more. In vain, in vain, an earnest friend, I warn thee, King, and pray. Thou wilt not to my prayers attend, Or heed the words I say So men, when life is fleeting fast And death's sad hour is nigh, Heedless and blinded to the last ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... between his set teeth. Poor innocent boy, it was not his fault if she had loved him so much. Women have done things for great singers that they have not done for martyrs or heroes. It seems so certain that the voice that sings so tenderly is speaking to them individually. Music is such a fleeting, passionate thing that a woman takes it all to herself; how could he sing like that for anyone else? And yet there is always someone for whom he does really pour out his heart, and all the rest are the dolls of life, to be looked ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... fleeting memories steal, Like far-off echoes to my dreaming ear, Away, ungrasped, the cheating visions wheel, As spectres start ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of, the visible. But now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... caught a fleeting glint. Quickly she brought her glass to bear on the spot. Again the purple sage, magnified in color and size and wave, for long moments irritated her with its monotony. Then from out of the sage on the ridge flew up a broad, white object, flashed in the sunlight and vanished. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... one wing of the house, and another appeared behind the fan-light in the entrance-hall when the leader of the three highbinders had tramped up the steps and touched the bell-push. Blount had a fleeting glimpse of a black head with a fringe of snowy wool when the door was opened, but he did not hear what was said. After the negro serving-man disappeared there was a little wait. At the end of the interval the door was opened wide, and Blount had ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... not the fleeting passion of the eye Attracts me to her. My unconquered sense Had set at naught the fiery shafts of love Till I beheld this wondrous maiden, sent By a divine appointment to become The savior of this kingdom, and my wife; And on the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... do her good, but seemed to be hampered by an old man's sluggishness and dislike of change. I think he will not live a great while, for he seems very frail. When he dies the little girl will inherit what property he may leave. A lady, Catharine Fleeting, an Englishwoman, and a friend of Mr. Kirkup, has engaged to take her in charge. She followed us merrily to the door, and so did the Persian kitten, and Mr. Kirkup shook hands with us, over and over again, with vivacious courtesy, his manner having been characterized ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are now rapidly fleeting, and Cockenoe is advancing in years with the settlements. The power of the Montauks is a thing of the past; they exercise no control over the rest of the Long Island Indians, who convey land without the assent of the Montauk Sachem. As most of the younger ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... fleeting glimpse of a farmer at the head of his two plunging horses where the man had hurriedly got them out of the way and up the flank of the mountain. They raced on. And again, surely Packard ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... fleeting breath, Love kept his watch in silent gloom; He saw her meekly yield to Death, And knelt a mourner ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... Any fleeting suspicion she might have had of his complicity in the Chinaman's pursuit vanished. He showed plain bewilderment. For a moment he was more at sea than herself. The next she saw the shadow of a thought so disturbing that it sharpened his ruddy face to harshness. He stepped toward her. ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... things. Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived. The odour of fruits wafts me to my Southern home, to my childish frolics in the peach orchard. Other odours, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening grain fields ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... done, too, according to the teacher's knowledge of the principles of evolution, and not merely out of regard to small and fleeting interests. The teacher must therefore gradually learn his own place in evolution, so that he may become one-pointed as to himself; unless he practises one-pointedness with regard to his own ideal for himself, he will not be able to bring ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... by a call from Dannevig, who seemed again to be in the full bloom of prosperity. And yet, that inexpressible flavor of aristocracy, and that absolute fineness of type which at our first meeting had so fascinated me, had undergone some subtle change which was almost too fleeting for words to express. To put it bluntly, he had not borne transplantation well. Like the finest European grapes, he had thriven in our soil, but turned out a coarser product than nature intended. He talked with oppressive brilliancy about everything ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... scenes of my youth! Oh, all ye gleams of love, ye divine fleeting gleams! How could ye perish so soon for me! I think of you ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Rome. Ay, Marius, father, friends, more blest than thee! They dead, I live; I thralled, they are free. Here in Praeneste am I cooped up, Amongst a troop of hunger-starved men, Set to prevent false Sylla's fierce approach, But now exempted both of life and all. Well, fortune, since thy fleeting change hath cast Poor Marius from his hopes and true desires, My resolution shall exceed thy power. Thy colour'd wings steeped in purple blood, Thy blinding wreath distain'd in purple blood, Thy royal robes wash'd in my purple blood, Shall witness to the world thy thirst of blood; And when ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... fast asleep, And dreamed she heard them bleating; When she awoke she found it a joke, For they still were all fleeting. ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... that imparts a knowledge of manners and customs, and the teaching which pertains to simple deportment on the stage is necessary and most useful; but you cannot possibly be taught any tradition of character, for that has no permanence. Nothing is more fleeting than any traditional method of impersonation. You may learn where a particular personage used to stand on the stage, or down which trap the ghost of Hamlet's father vanished; but the soul of interpretation is lost, and it is this ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... as it should be!" When the father is of the party, he has a calm face and sits beside his son with his arm around the son's shoulders, and always the taxi speeds madly, so that each time one gets only the most fleeting ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... this might be yours,' he said, 'the wide-open gates, the Heavenly City, the seat on the glorious Throne; but you are turning your backs on it all, and you are choosing instead—what? A few of earth's fleeting pleasures, a little of this world's passing enjoyment. Oh, dear friends, think before it is too late, what ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... that was waking up one morning and seeing a peach-tree in bloom through the window beside his bed; and he was always glad that this vision of beauty was his very earliest memory. All his life he has never seen a peach-tree in bloom without a swelling of the heart, without some fleeting sense that ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... problems of our day can be settled peaceably. The entire matter is largely in the hands of the ruling classes. And, while the socialists in all countries are determined not to allow themselves to be provoked into acts of despair by temporary and fleeting methods of repression, conditions may of course arise where no organization, however powerful, could prevent the masses from breaking into an open and bloody conflict. On one memorable occasion (March 31, 1886), August Bebel uttered some ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... This fleeting scene is but a stage, Where various images appear, In different parts of youth and age Alike ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... made me call for a little more attendance than ordinary; and I had reason to think myself slighted, where an indulgent father can least bear to be so, that is, where he most loves; and that by young upstarts, who are growing up to the enjoyment of those pleasures which have run away from me, fleeting rascals as they are! before I was willing to part with them. And I rung and rung, and "Where's Polly?" (for I honour the slut with too much of my notice), "Where's Polly?" was all my cry, to every one who came up to ask what I rung for. And, at last, in burst the pert baggage, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson |
