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Lapse   Listen
verb
Lapse  v. i.  (past & past part. lapsed; pres. part. lapsing)  
1.
To pass slowly and smoothly downward, backward, or away; to slip downward, backward, or away; to glide; mostly restricted to figurative uses. "A tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended." "Homer, in his characters of Vulcan and Thersites, has lapsed into the burlesque character."
2.
To slide or slip in moral conduct; to fail in duty; to fall from virtue; to deviate from rectitude; to commit a fault by inadvertence or mistake. "To lapse in fullness Is sorer than to lie for need."
3.
(Law)
(a)
To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, or from the original destination, by the omission, negligence, or failure of some one, as a patron, a legatee, etc.
(b)
To become ineffectual or void; to fall. "If the archbishop shall not fill it up within six months ensuing, it lapses to the king."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lapse" Quotes from Famous Books



... their noble actions with minute exactitude, regarding them as illustrative of true character, whilst, whenever either a man's personal feelings or political exigencies may have led him to commit mistakes and crimes, we must regard his conduct more as a temporary lapse from virtue than as disclosing any innate wickedness of disposition, and we must not dwell with needless emphasis on his failings, if only to save our common human nature from the reproach of being unable to produce a man ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... human beings but as cases—objects to experiment on, and verify hypotheses regarding pathology and disease, all which betray a nature not attuned to the highest and noblest pitch, and that cannot be expected to stand in the hour of trial. His first direct lapse is when, against his secret conviction, he supports Tyke as hospital chaplain in opposition to Farebrother; but mainly in mere defiance and resentment of the general style of his reception at the Board meeting, and the opposition he encounters there. Anon comes his marriage to Rosamond Vincy,—a ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... "In the lapse of time the twice-born were divided into three classes, the Brahmins being the priestly class, the Kshatriyas the ruling military, and the Vaisyas the agricultural classes. These were of the upper grade; and ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... After a lapse of twenty-four hours, he replied to Mrs. Toplady. Yes, if the weather were not too discouraging, he hoped to be at Lady Honeybourne's. He added that the fact of Lashmar's engagement had come as news ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... he heard; but his heart was still full of conjectures. He was about to inquire who and what they were, when he heard the Taoist remark,—"You and I cannot speed together; let us now part company, and each of us will be then able to go after his own business. After the lapse of three ages, I shall be at the Pei Mang mount, waiting for you; and we can, after our reunion, betake ourselves to the Visionary Confines of the Great Void, there to cancel the name of the stone ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... induced by her uncle Ethelwold, then king of East Anglia, to give her hand to Egfrid, son of Oswy, king of Northumberland, and she afterwards became queen by the accession of her husband to his father's kingdom. After the lapse of twelve years she gained the permission of her husband to withdraw from his court, and retired to the Abbey of Coldingham, where she took the veil; thence withdrew to Ely, and repaired the old church founded by Ethelbert, at a place called Cratendune, about a mile from the present city, ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... forgot the lapse of time while contemplating the glorious panorama spread beneath. Just around us the ground was rocky and volcanic, and covered with mosses of various colors; rather lower down the ground was hidden by the fallen leaves of giant trees; beyond was a succession of smaller crests, frequently ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... to mind with so much ease and distinctness, as the years which we spent together in theological studies. The events of that short season, and the sentiments we then indulged, are clothed with a freshness and interest which the lapse of time ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... as the upper province. The dialect they speak has a strong affinity with the Polish; but is, like that of their brethren in Upper Lusatia, corrupted by German interpolations, and even in a still greater degree. It is obviously on the decline; and we can only expect, that after the lapse of a hundred years or less, no other vestige of it will be left than written or ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... guess I do, Jasper, and how you saved Phronsie from being carried off by the big organ man," and she shivered even now at this lapse of years. "And all the splendid times at Badgertown ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... By his side, the white man stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit, until his horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation, sent the rowels of his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank, with a curse held the frightened beast down to a walk. That was all, a secondary lapse, a burst of flowing, irresponsible passion like a puff of burning gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was enough. In that second was told the tale of a human life. In that and in the surreptitious sidelong glance following, that searched ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... contemplation of mankind. Such are, the distinctions of mountains and valleys, of lakes and rivers, of dry barren deserts and rich watered plains, of rocks which stand apparently unimpaired by the lapse of time, and sands which fluctuate with the winds and tides. All these are the effects of steady causes; each of these has its proper purpose in the system of the earth; and in that system is contained another, which ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... appointed time. Miss Groves, afterwards my beloved wife, was there; for Mrs. Hake had been a great invalid for a long time, and Miss Groves helped Mr. Hake in his great affliction, by superintending his household matters. My first visit led to my going again to preach at Poltimore, after the lapse of a month, and I stayed again at Mr. Hake's house; and this second visit led to my preaching once a week in a chapel at Exeter; and thus I went, week after week, from Teignmouth to Exeter, each time staying in the house of Mr. Hake. All this time my purpose had been, not to marry ...
— Answers to Prayer - From George Mueller's Narratives • George Mueller

... disappeared; and as his body was not found after the conflict was over, it was believed that the Gods had taken him up to heaven. His son Ascanius peacefully succeeded him, and removed the capital of his kingdom to Alba Longa, which city again, after the lapse of centuries, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... to that part of the sky in which any bright star is situated when such star is due south (or, as it is technically called, "on the meridian"), and note by a good clock the hour, minute, and second at which it crosses a wire stretched vertically across the tube, then after a lapse of 23 h. 56 m. 4.09 s., will that star be again threaded on the wire. If the earth were stationary—or, rather, if she had no motion but that round her axis—this would be the length of our day. But, as is well known, she is revolving ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... considered as a body; and, with his usual indiscretion, he frequently suffered his opinion to escape him. They hated him in return with a hatred which has descended to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half, does not appear ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... circumstances. This regulated the rights of the master from the time the act took effect. But the decision of the Missouri court, reversing a former decision, affects all previous decisions, technically, made on the same principles, unless such decisions are protected by the lapse of time or the statute of limitations. Dred Scott and his family, beyond all controversy, were free under the decisions made for twenty-eight years, before the case of Scott v. Emerson. This was the undoubted law of Missouri ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... unfriendly critics with the Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian movement at Oxford. William Sharp, in speaking of "that splendid outburst of Romanticism in which Coleridge was the first and most potent participant," and of the lapse or ebb that followed the death of Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, resumes: "At last a time came when a thrill of expectation, of new desire, of hope, passed through the higher lives of the nation; and what ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... that the subscription list of the former increased, while that of the latter never had over ninety subscribers. People on every hand inquired, "Who is Busy Body?" And, finally, the public learned that it was "that young Franklin, the printer." Keimer learned who his critic was; and, after the lapse of six or eight months from the time the first number was issued, who should appear before Benjamin at his ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... announcement was short and to the point, for he was not in the mood to lapse into sentiment. By return of post came the Runkle's reply, short also, and non-committal—nothing more, in fact, than the announcement that he preferred to discuss the matter in person, and would the following ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... sanctioned and consecrated the savage instinct which leads us to hate whatever is strange or unintelligible, to distrust those who live on the further side of a river, to suppose that those whom we hear talking together in a foreign tongue must be plotting some mischief against ourselves. The lapse of time and the fusion of races doubtless diminished this antipathy considerably, but at the utmost it could but be transformed into an icy indifference, for no cause was in operation to convert it into kindness. On the other ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... that held by Mr. Pinkney. He was now constantly occupied by most important and lucrative engagements, but in 1820 he was called upon to take a leading part in a great public work which demanded the exertion of all his talents as statesman, lawyer, and debater. The lapse of time and the setting off of the Maine district as a State had made a convention necessary, in order to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts. This involved the direct resort to the people, the source of all power, which is only required to effect ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... children to grow up without instruction. He had not permitted them to lapse into the character of mere "Bush-boys." He had taught them many things from the book of nature,— many arts that can be acquired as well on the karoo as in the college. He had taught them to love God, and to love one another. He had planted in their minds the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... come (which I look upon as extremely uncertain, but I think if it comes at all it will be before the lapse of many years) when I am called upon to use any of those opportunities [the writer had just spoken of 'the great opportunities, the gigantic opportunities of good or evil to the Church which the course of events seems (humanly speaking) ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... use of to direct parties to the ships during winter, if they should happen to have lost their way in a snowstorm. Captain Parry adopted the same precautions around his winter quarters at Melville Island; and it is not improbable some of the posts may be found, after a lapse of thirty years. Our ideas were, that the ships had wintered in a deep bay between Beechey Island and Cape Riley, which we ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... little inferior to the aqueducts and Cloa'cae in utility and costliness; the chief was the Appian road from Rome to Brundu'sium; it extended three hundred and fifty miles, and was paved with huge squares through its entire length. After the lapse of nineteen centuries many parts of it are still as perfect as ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... a sin reaches! Solomon's idolatry bears fruit in the breaking up of the nation and the lapse of half of it into heathenism. What a disappointment to God, who had done and borne ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... Howe's book, we should be obliged to accept the fact of another manuscript" (than the one which President Fairchild secured); but he thinks there is some doubt about the effect on the memory of these witnesses of the lapse of years and the reading of the new Bible before they recalled the original story. It must be remembered, however, that this resemblance was recalled as soon as they heard the story of the new Bible, and there seems no ground on which to trace a theory that it was the Bible which originated in their ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... condition of the muscles of the eyes is that of convergence; and Professor Donders remarks, as bearing on their divergence during a period of complete abstraction, that when one eye becomes blind, it almost always, after a short lapse of time, deviates outwards; for its muscles are no longer used in moving the eyeball inwards for the sake ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... and sinking down abruptly below them, the very 'congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis' of Virgil's description, which he even then called 'antique walls,' because they had been the strongholds of the primaeval inhabitants of the country, and which are still inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries, nothing of the stir and movement of other parts of Europe having penetrated into these lonely valleys, and tempted the people to quit their mountain fastnesses for a more accessible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... Brothers, I continued nearly a twelvemonth; and here I got acquainted with nautical terms, and contracted a love for the sea, which a lapse of thirty ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... consequences may ensue. As most of the popular remedies are rubbed in, they are of course worse than nothing. Be careful not to suck the wound as so many persons do; this produces irritation in the same way with rubbing. Who does not know that a musquito bite, even after the lapse of several days, may be brought to life again, by violent rubbing or sucking? The moment that the blood is put into a violent and unnatural circulation, the poison is quickly diffused over a considerable part of the system. If the mouth is applied to the wound, other unpleasant consequences ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... autumn, after a lapse of about two years, that the following conversation took place between a wealthy grazier from the neighboring parish, and one of our hero's most intimate, acquaintances. It is valuable only as it throws light upon Denis's ultimate situation in life, which, after ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... and Louisa did not leave their country empty handed. Her Parents, 'tis supposed, gave Louisa money, but what sum, after this long lapse of time, is uncertain. Nor does tradition say for how much Marion sold his little farm. But it is well known that on their arrival in Carolina, they went up into the country, and bought a plantation on Goose Creek, near Charleston, where their dust now sleeps, after a long life endeared by mutual ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... with the dead I deal not; this man lives, And that which carried him through good and ill, Stern against fate while his voice echoed still From rock to rock, now he lies silent, strives With wasting time, and through its long lapse gives Another friend to me, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... was continuing, "to allow to lapse any contact with the one intelligent alien race we have discovered who can furnish us with full-time partnership to our mutual benefit. And there mustn't be ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... "Nothing is ever gotten out of nothing." "A thing never returns to nothing, but all things after disruption go back to the first bodies of matter." If there were not imperishable seeds of things, atoms, "first-beginnings of solid singleness," then, Lucretius urges, "infinite time gone by and lapse of days must have eaten up all things that are of ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... the fact that the tablet was placed there by his sister. This closed my visit to the interesting scenes associated with Byron's strange eventful history—scenes that ever acquire a growing charm as the lapse of years softens the errors of the man, and confirms the genius ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... wishes me to say a few words about the genesis of the work, a revised and enlarged edition of which he is herewith laying before the public. I therefore place on record as much as I can remember on this head after a lapse ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... exiles saw little of the other inmates of the hotel, excepting at the table d'hote dinner. M. Zola then brought his faculties of observation into play, and after a lapse of a few days he informed me that he was astonished at the ease and frequency with which some English girls raised their wine-glasses to their lips. It upset all his idea of propriety to see young ladies of eighteen tossing off their Moselle and ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... I repacked my respirator, with due care, and entered the smoke in company with Captain Shaw. I could hear him breathe long slow inhalations; his labour was certainly greater than mine, and after the lapse of seven minutes I heard him cough. In seven and a half minutes he had to quit the place, thus proving that his lungs were able to endure the irritation seven times as long as mine could bear it. I continued in the smoke, with hardly any discomfort, for sixteen minutes, and certainly ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... tutor,[E] page after page, till I finally went through in that way the greater part of the eleven recitations of the week. The celebrated passage on the Memory happened to be included. A portion of it, after the lapse of forty-seven years, remains in my recollection as distinctly as it did the day after I learned it. I refer to the passage beginning, 'Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us; and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... earnestly called him to account, he would not mend his ways, she had, for this reason, had recourse to tender language to exhort him, in the hope that, in a short while, he would come round again to his better self. But against all her expectations Pao-yue had, after the lapse of a whole day and night, not changed the least in his manner, and as she really was in her heart quite at a loss what to do, she failed to find throughout the whole night any proper sleep. But when on this day, she unexpectedly perceived ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... he complained that its sects were "too aristocratic." When his own sect of Buddhism, Shinshu, was started, he said, it was something "quite democratic for the common people." But with the lapse of time this democratic sect had also "become aristocratic." "Though the founder of Shinshu wore flaxen clothing, Shinshu priests now have glittering costumes. And everyone has heard of the magnificence of the Kyoto Hongwanji" (the great temple ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... lingered to regret The careless given boon. Not so with thee. Such immortality is thine as clings To "happy men that have the power to die." The Singer lives on whilst the Song he sings Charms the world's heart. Such immortality Is better than unending lapse of years. For that the great god-gift, Eternal Youth, Accompanies it; the failures, the chill fears Tithonus knew thou may'st be spared in truth, Seeing that thine Aurora's quickening breath Lives in thee whilst thou livest, so that thou Needst ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... She opened her eyes very wide as she smiled at him in a friendly, childlike way; and Basil and Somerled forgot that there was a Mrs. West in the room. It was a momentary lapse of memory, but Aline felt it electrically. She was enraged at Basil, and disgusted with Barrie, though ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... forget ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... descendants likewise. Their ideas in a measure approximate to those of caste among the Hindoos. It is a crime to move out of the original groove; if a man be lowly he must remain lowly, or never be forgiven. The lapse of time makes not the least difference. If it takes the man thirty years to get into a fair position he is none the less guilty. A period equal to the existence of a generation is not sufficient excuse for him. He is not one whit better than if he had ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... with exaggeration. Nevertheless, the studied avoidance of exaggeration has not had the happiest effect as a precedent in the art of Punch. Without du Maurier's sensitive response to the whole comedy of drawing-room life the tendency has been to lapse ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... million pesos of silver; all of this wealth passes into the possession of the Chinese, and is not brought to Espana, to the consequent loss of the royal duties, and injury to the inhabitants of the Filipinas; and the greatest loss, with the lapse of time, will be that rebounding upon the Yndias themselves. All the projects and prohibitions that have been devised to remedy this loss serve but to inflict still greater injury, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... obvious constituents of the mixtures in ordinary fields must be constant and pure as long as they do not intercross. Natural crossing is in most cereals a phenomenon of rare occurrence, common enough to admit of the production of all possible hybrid combinations, but requiring the lapse of a long series of years ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... have never theologized for any other reason than to improve my morals." (C. R. 1, 722.) Such, then, being his frame of mind, it was no wonder that he should finally desert Luther in most important points, lapse into synergism and other errors, and, in particular value indifferentistically doctrinal convictions, notably on the real presence in the Lord's Supper and the person of Christ. "Over against Luther," says Schaff, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... year, his rooms in the Quai d'Orsay (with coals and gas) and, besides, that wonderful treasure of historic documents, which had supplied the sap of his books, all this had been carried away from him by this unlucky 'flood,' all by his own flood! The poor man could not get over it. Even after the lapse of two years, regret for the ease and the honours of his office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on 'Teyssedre's Wednesdays.' Teyssedre was the man who polished ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... things, but here, I do not know why, we were speaking of the taking up of old friendships, and the comfort and delight of those serene and undisturbed relations which one sometimes establishes with a congenial person, which no lapse of time or lack of communication seems to interrupt—the best kind of friendship. There is here no blaming of conditions that may keep the two lives apart; no feverish attempt to keep up the relation, no resentment if mutual intercourse dies away. And then, perhaps, in the shifting of conditions, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... displayed a kindly disposition, an easy-going character, and an even temper. But never yet had she revealed in her home so happy a spirit and such gracious thoughtfulness. Kind to others, and to herself, always preserving, in the lapse of changeful hours, the smile that disclosed her beautiful teeth and brought the dimples into her plump cheeks, grateful to life for what it was giving her, blooming, expanding, overflowing, she was the joy and the youth ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... an exact image of the wood it had eaten away. Molecule by molecule, in a mystery too small for human eye to detect, even had a watchful human eye been lying in wait to observe, the marvellous process went on; until, after the lapse of nobody knows how many centuries, the wood was gone, and in its place lay its exact image in stone,—rings of growth, individual peculiarities of structure, knots, broken slivers and chips; color, shape, all perfect. Men call it agatized wood, by a feeble effort to translate the mystery ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... pious woman, and she said to her husband: "We shall enjoy seven good years. Let us use this time to practice as much charity as possible; perhaps God will lengthen out our period of prosperity." After the lapse of seven years, during which man and wife used every opportunity of doing good, Elijah appeared again, and announced to the man that the time had come to take away what he had given him. The man responded: "When I accepted thy gift, it was after ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... where no sound penetrates from without, and where only one's own footstep breaks the silence. Holiness, purification, abstraction, devotion, but in such light and freedom as no church possesses. The lapse of time, the past were forgotten; it was as though he had never been away, as though no other place ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... wound implicating the skull, an extra-dural abscess may develop within a few days of the injury, or not till after the lapse of several weeks, and it may spread over a wide area and come to encroach on the cranial cavity sufficiently to raise the intra-cranial tension and cause symptoms of compression, or even to press upon cortical centres and produce localised paralyses. As discharge can escape from the wound in ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... thing about the rhythmical experience is that the period, or group, is felt as a unit. "Of the number and relation of individual beats constituting a rhythmical sequence there is no awareness whatever on the part of the aesthetic subject....Even the quality of the organic units may lapse from distinct consciousness, and only a feeling of the form of the whole sequence remains." Yet the slightest deviation from its form is remarked. Secondly, every variation creates not only a change in its own unit, but a wave of disturbance all along the line. Also, every variation ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... Her eyes were studying his face attentively, seeking for themselves the answer to the more personal inquiries that would have seemed necessary to a less original woman meeting a much-loved nephew after a lapse of years. Craven smiled at the characteristically peculiar greeting and the well remembered formula. He settled his long limbs comfortably into ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... used the wrong word here. She whom the "good stars that met in her horoscope" had made of "spirit, fire, and dew," must, whether it be her desire to do so or not, eternally keep part of herself from the taking of any man. . . . This is a curious lapse in Browning, to whom women are, in the highest sense of the word, individuals—not individualists, a less lovable and far more capturable thing. His heroines are indeed instinct with devotion, but it is devotion that chooses, not devotion that submits. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... she, "that we have in this house flour and grain and fruits and pomegranates and sugar and meat and sheep and fowls and so forth, enough to serve us for many years; and henceforth, the door will not be opened till after the lapse of a whole year, nor shalt thou find thyself without till then." Quoth I, "There is no power and no virtue but in God!" "And what can this irk thee," rejoined she, "seeing thou knowest the cock's craft, of which I told ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... late, whisper'd grief, Be wrought at length? Perhaps to yield the city. Thus where the Alps their airy ridge extend, Gently at first the melting snows descend; From the broad slopes, with murm'ring lapse they glide In soft meanders, down the mountain's side; But lower fall'n streams, with each other crost, From rock to rock impetuously are tost, 'Till in the Rhone's capacious bed they're lost. United there, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... After the lapse of twelve years, it was ascertained that private steamers and sailing vessels were resorting to the Niger, and that an active trade was springing up in palm-oil, the trees producing which fringe the banks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... case is finally called and the defendant takes his seat at the bar after a lapse of anywhere from six months to a year or more after his arrest, the first question for the district attorney to investigate is whether or no the person presenting himself for trial be in point of fact the individual mentioned in the indictment. This is often a difficult matter to determine. "Ringers"—particularly ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... had confined him in the madhouse. Now all this was of the cunning contrivance of his wife, that she might make manifest to him concerning womankind how none of mankind can prevail over them. But after the lapse of three days which the Judge passed in the Bedlam, his wife went in to him bringing a somewhat of food and set meat before him and asked him saying, "What was it thou foundest on the platter?" Answered he, "Two sparrows," ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... amelioration of suffering and the righting of social wrongs; and when she had finished, and he met the earnest appeal of her dark eye, there would often be a pause, during which each, with a half unconscious lapse from the impersonal, would feel more keenly the joy of this new and delicious mental companionship. And when at length he answered, sometimes gently refuting and sometimes assenting to her proposition, it was always ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... all the varieties of heretical opinion on the subject—were manifested both within the established Church and without. As regards the latter phase, the evidence is clear that, whatever the doctrinal 'subscription' was worth which Dissenting preachers had to make, there was a decided lapse from the orthodox standard on the part of a considerable number. This lapse, however, was for the most part left obscure while the pulpits resounded with 'plain, moral discourses.' Now and again, one bolder than the rest ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant

... other lovely feature in the constitution but this one, it would diffuse a beauty over its whole countenance. Yet the lapse of a few years! and congress will have power to exterminate ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... alley, braced himself in the angle of a brick pier and waited. He neither stamped his feet nor flailed his arms about to drive off the cold. He just stood still with the patience of his immemorial ancestor, waiting. Unconscious of the lapse of time, unconscious of the figures that presently began straggling out of the narrow door, that were ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... years I had had no lapse of memory and my health was sound. At the school I took delight in athletic sports, and gained a reputation among the Charleston boys for being an expert especially in climbing. My studies, while not neglected, were, nevertheless, considered by me as secondary matters; I suppose ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... time after the lapse of thirty-three years from the date of this foundation it shall appear to the judgment of three fourths of the members of this corporation that, by reason of a change in social conditions, or by reason of adequate and equitable public provision for education, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... life by the things we should accomplish in it, by the character it should attain to, by the purposes that should be bearing fruit in it, and not by mere lapse of time, we soon come to feel how very short it is, and the sense of present duty grows imperative. It is thus that the thoughtful man looks at his life; and he feels that there is no such thing as length of days which he can without blame live carelessly, because in these careless days critical ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... the stone tubs—all was unchanged. Only the flimsy wooden houses of the Americans scattered among the adobes of the town and the aging faces of the women who had been young in her brief girlhood marked the lapse of years. There was a smile on her lips. Her monotonous life must have given her insanity or infinite peace, and peace had been her portion. In a few minutes she said good-by to the women and went home. She never went ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... Roman aristocracy, was founded 600 B.C. and destroyed by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. It was covered with ashes from the volcano, and part of the population perished. The site of the city was lost, but was found after the lapse of centuries and the Italian Government began the excavations in 1860. Some of the old stone-paved streets, showing the ruts made by chariot wheels that ceased to roll centuries ago, have been laid bare. Portions of the houses are still standing, and the ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... consideration. All the local records that might possibly throw some light on the existence and career of Tell have now been thoroughly searched by many impartial and competent scholars, as well as by enthusiastic partisans, with the invariable result that, till a considerable lapse of years after the presumed date of their deaths, not one particle of evidence has been discovered tending to prove the identity of either William Tell or of the tyrant Gessler. On the other hand, many local authorities, as early as the beginning of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... dreaded the first shock, not so much from fear of death; but lest his courage fail. When it came at Chancellorsville it was all over before he knew it. Although under fire for eight hours, he was not conscious of the lapse of time or aught else, except that he obeyed orders and loaded and fired with the rest; forgetting that he might fall, or whether he was brute or human. That night he wrote to Liddy: "We have had our first battle, and for many hours ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... now overrun the land; and if the London County Council ever succeeds at last in making the congeries of villages into—I do not say a city, for that is almost past praying for, but something analogous to a second-rate Continental town, it will only be after long lapse of time and violent struggles with the vestryman ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... applied in writing for an official certificate of acquittal, and for an order on the accountant of Salamanca University instructing that officer to pay him arrears of salary from the date of his arrest till his chair was vacated owing to the lapse of his four years' tenure.[187] Both applications were granted. But the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, and it was not till August 13, 1577, that the petitioner ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... describing. The author has known cases where animals with feet of this description have almost invariably returned from the forge, or rather been found the next day, with a suspicion of tenderness. After the lapse of a day or two this has quite often disappeared, and nothing in the meantime been done with the foot. Seeing, therefore, that removal and refitting of the shoe is in this case attended with risk of breaking away portions of the brittle horn, and so rendering ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... kindness more and more! And where is this example of your splendid benevolence? Have you pocketed it, regretting your lapse into the unaccustomed paths of generosity? Or is it ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... adored. Indeed she became a divinity among the Spaniards, and to their affection for her, Philip V. was more than once indebted for his crown. Lords, ladies, soldiers, and the people still remember her with tears in their eyes; and even after the lapse of so many years, are not yet consoled ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... sorrow of those around him, a grief flowing less from affection than fear. Aged men will show his tombstone; mothers haste with their infants by it; children shrink from the name upon it, until in time his history shall lapse and be forgotten by all except ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... him sleepily from the depths of his chair. Then his eyes wandered to the clock, and he sat up with an effort. "Splendid, dear old top," he remarked. "And since it is now one minute past twelve, let's have a spot to celebrate your lapse from virtue." ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... ravaged England came eager for blood and plunder, and hating the sight of a Christian church as an insult to their gods, Thor and Odin; but the lapse of a hundred years had in some degree changed the temper of the North; and though almost every young man thought it due to his fame to have sailed forth as a sea rover, yet the attacks of these marauders might be bought off, and provided they had treasure to show for their voyage, they ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... longings for boys, but it was the exception and not the rule. I continued to masturbate, but not to excess, and used to make ineffectual efforts to stop it, but never succeeded for very long. When I was confirmed, at the age of 15, I became intensely religious, and was so remorseful at my first lapse from virtue that I burnt my leg with a red-hot poker, and I bear the scar still. On leaving school I went to Germany and there had my first coitus with a woman, a fat old German who gave me very little satisfaction. My next, a Jewess, gave me more than I asked for, in the shape of a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... venerable European nation, intrenched within its own regal institutions, in shaking off the past to begin a future of popular sovereignty. Much was gained by sweeping away the worst abuses of the past, but reaction came, succeeded, after a long lapse of time, by a second attempt to establish a republic, again to fail, until the collapse of the power of the adventurer whose election to the presidency was the beginning of the end of the republic of 1848, led to the third experiment, the permanent ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... bankrupt and of the liquidated debts proved in the bankruptcy exceeding L200 in amount; that no prosecution of a debtor for failure or omission to keep books of account should take place before the lapse of two years from the passing of the law; that a debtor should not be punished if he could show that his failure or omission to keep proper books was honest and excusable and did not contribute to his insolvency, and that no prosecution should be instituted for the offence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... drinking himself into temperance? On the other hand, it is at least conceivable that in the wildest savage there is some little seed of a moral sense—weak, compared with the lowest springs of action, just because it is the highest and therefore only struggling into being; and that in the slow lapse of time events may here and there prove that honesty is the best policy; and that honesty once tasted may be found not only useful for other things, but agreeable for itself, and may be cherished and strengthened ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... stern and black-browed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins that after so long a lapse of years the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim that I have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success of mine, if my life, beyond its domestic scope, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... lapse of a few moments the door was opened by a woman with a candle in her hand—a stout countrywoman of forty, with a curved nose, prominent teeth, and hair screwed up in a tight knob at the back of her head. Her small ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... and divided the island into five provinces, over each of which he appointed a provincial king, under his obedience. The famous Meadhbh, or Mab, was his daughter; and though unquestionably a lady of rather strong physical and mental capabilities, the lapse of ages has thrown an obscuring halo of romance round her belligerent qualifications, and metamorphosed her into the gentle "Faery Queen" of the poet Spenser. One of Meav's exploits is recorded in the famous Tain bo Chuailgne, which is to Celtic history what the Argonautic ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... said Katherine apologetically, then with a lapse into her negro dialect, "Ah reahly couldn't help it. Ah got such protuberant spirits, Ah has! ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... a palinode; and this takes the direction, partly of mere submission to, partly of a refining upon, the authorised religious tradition: he calmly sophisticates this or that element of it which had seemed grotesque; and has, like any modern writer, a theory how myths were made, and how in lapse of time their first signification gets to be obscured among mortals; and what he submits to, that he will also adorn fondly, by his ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... and a soft dusk stole up over the wide spaces. A light breeze cooled her hot face, and after the lapse of a few minutes she began to chide herself for her foolishness. Probably the man had not meant to be offensive. She was certain Burke would never permit her to be insulted in his presence. She heard the sound of hoof-beats retreating ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... disturbing the confidence in the traditional superstitions. The strange combination of primitive and advanced religious beliefs is characteristic, as we shall have occasion to see, of various divisions of the Babylonian religious literature. The lapse from the ethical strain to the incantation refrain is as sudden as it is common. The priest having exhausted the category of possible sins or mishaps that have caused the suffering of the petitioner, proceeds to invoke the gods, goddesses, and ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... commonplaces, until chance, a word, the tremor of a certain glance, the communication of a spark, should have brought them to the happy transition which leads to that flowery way in which one does not walk, but where one sways and at the same time does not lapse. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... and the less diversified are its productions—in proportion as it declines in all these modes, in that degree does it tend to disintegration, to separation and isolation of all its parts, and toward the establishment of many petty and independent communities; in other words, it tends to lapse into barbarism. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... she said: "He told me that he wanted me for himself and forever, nor was he the Court Steward, for he wore a great oblong stone upon his hand." I hope she comes back with my intended, and tells to your Majesty the story of Charles's little lapse into the romantic. O, listening to her one must believe her, for she has all that obvious lack of fancy only to be found among rarely good people. Her face is quite open and classic, unbroken by the slightest hint of imagination. A lie couldn't possibly ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange

... gathering. "Persuade him to desert his work to come and hear some fiddlers!" said Miss Effingham. "Indeed I shall not, aunt. Who can tell but what the colonies might suffer from it through centuries, and that such a lapse of duty might drive a province or two into the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... first time made public, which attended the discovery of this, the least known, yet one of the most dangerous of the many plots which were directed against the life of my master. The course which I adopted may be blamed by some, but it is enough for me that, after the lapse of years, it is approved by my conscience and by the course of events. For it was ever the misfortune of that great king to treat those with leniency whom no indulgence could win; and I bear with me to this ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... suddenly start off at a gallop in the opposite direction to the station, and pay absolutely no attention to the most distracted whistling and calling. Nothing for it but to start in pursuit, to run yourself into a fever, and after lapse of time to return with the fugitive to find your train missed and your friend as savage ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... become our bitterest enemies, not merely after receiving benefits from us, but because they have received them. I cannot deny that some do this out of sheer badness of nature; but more do so because lapse of time destroys their remembrance, for time gradually effaces what they felt vividly at the moment. I remember having had an argument with you about this class of persons, whom you wished to call forgetful ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... shrinking from him with the reserve begotten of the doubt and misery which had been her portion for so long past, the warm clasp of his arms, the tender, passionate words he uttered, and the loving caresses of his hands as he drew her face closer and closer to his swept away all memories of his lapse, and of the world and its ways. He had held her to his throbbing breast—he, the man to whom her heart had first expanded two years before—and she knew no more, thought no more of anything but the supreme joy that he loved ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... prepared, in order that the waggons might run more easily, and thus the difficulty of passing be diminished. Beasts of burden and men were next collected, and the work was actively commenced. After the lapse of a few days, the fleet, equipped and ready for action, sailed round the citadel, and cast anchor just before the mouth of the harbour. Such was the state of things at Tarentum, when Hannibal left it and returned to his winter quarters. Authors, however, are divided ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... Lawson, Carolina, 34, and other early writers.) On the other hand, chastity in women was recognized as a virtue by many tribes. This was peculiarly the case among the Algonquins of Gasp, where a lapse in this regard was counted a disgrace. (See Le Clerc, Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspsie, 417, where a contrast is drawn between the modesty of the girls of this region and the open prostitution practised among ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... instance where a native Indian has recorded the story of his people and given a grammar of their language; thus producing a work whose immense value, as an account of a race and a language already passing into oblivion, will become even more inestimable with the lapse of time. ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... and remains down a minute to indicate a lapse of three hours. When it rises again night has come, the lamps are lighted and the window curtains drawn. ASHER and AUGUSTA are discovered standing together. ASHER has a black, leather covered book in his hand, with one ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... One man bought a husband, another a wife. The child was taken to one place, the mother to another. Thus they were scattered abroad over the colonies. Fresh loads arrived continually, and thus their numbers increased. Others were born on the soil, until now, after the lapse of some two centuries, there are nearly four millions of negro slaves in the country, besides large numbers of colored people who in various ways have been ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various



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