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Float   /floʊt/   Listen
Float

verb
(past & past part. floated; pres. part. floating)
1.
Be in motion due to some air or water current.  Synonyms: be adrift, blow, drift.  "The boat drifted on the lake" , "The sailboat was adrift on the open sea" , "The shipwrecked boat drifted away from the shore"
2.
Be afloat either on or below a liquid surface and not sink to the bottom.  Synonym: swim.
3.
Set afloat.  "The boy floated his toy boat on the pond"
4.
Circulate or discuss tentatively; test the waters with.
5.
Move lightly, as if suspended.
6.
Put into the water.
7.
Make the surface of level or smooth.
8.
Allow (currencies) to fluctuate.
9.
Convert from a fixed point notation to a floating point notation.



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"Float" Quotes from Famous Books



... was dressed in light-coloured clothes that moved jest a little in the breeze, and the clothes was so near the colour of the moonlight they seemed to kind of silver into it. You would of said it had jest floated there, and was waiting fur to float away agin when the breeze blowed a little stronger, or the moon ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... was rather difficult, for she kept continually bobbing up and down, like a boy's cork-float in ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... fortune favoured the brave, and the boat slid into the deep shadow of the old landing-stage, and Chippy was still undiscovered. No sooner did they enter the friendly dusk than Chippy released the painter, and let himself float without movement. The boat pulled on a dozen yards to the stairs, and the scout swam gently to the shelter of a great pile. Chippy now heard the rower fling down the oars and spring out of the boat, and rush ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... be told what the object was in launching the gig. Fortunately there had been a spare pair of oars in the craft when she came ashore, the big blades being fastened so they could not float away. With these the captain and Tim began to propel the boat toward the sinking craft in which were Mr. Carr and Ned Scudd. The two latter were bailing so fast that they had no chance to row. Bob also went in the gig, but Mr. Tarbill remained on shore, nervously running ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... awe-inspiring Bromo, always faced by the longer side of the windowless communal houses, built to contain the several generations of the families which in patriarchal fashion inhabit these spacious dwellings. Huge clouds of smoke from the majestic volcano curl perpetually above the surrounding peaks, and float slowly westward, the thunderous roar of the colossal crater echoing in eternal menace through the rarefied air, and regarded as the voice of the god who inhabits the fiery Inferno. These lonely hills, ravaged by tempest and haunted by beasts of prey, are the hiding-places of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... boys go out in gondolas with their nurses, for an airing. We see staid families, with prayer-book and beads, enter the gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at midnight we see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious youth and beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and behold the struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black multitude of boats go skimming down the moonlit avenues; we see them ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... leisure hours—something outside of their every-day business of life. What better words could have been said; I would that the young men of the present day should often hear those words and accept them as a rule of their life. I float away from thoughts of my insanity to the days when I was at home going to church with my children. I must return ...
— Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum • Mary Huestis Pengilly

... spiritual insight, and we have so little. Our airships may some day float over the hills of Arcturus, but how will that help us if we cannot find the soul of the world? Is that soul alive and loving? or cruel? or callous? ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... said excitedly. "I knew it would be a success; but really the dresses are wonderful. Then the mystery is so delightful. I can't recognise any one now under the masks. Look, who is that?" She glanced towards a lady dressed as Undine, who seemed to float by them, so light were her movements, on ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... repose, and on Monday, instead of waiting for Master Hugh to seek employment for me, I was up by break of day, and off to the ship yard of Mr. Butler, on the City Block, near the draw-bridge. I was a favorite{257} with Mr. B., and, young as I was, I had served as his foreman on the float stage, at calking. Of course, I easily obtained work, and, at the end of the week—which by the way was exceedingly fine I brought Master Hugh nearly nine dollars. The effect of this mark of returning good sense, on my part, was excellent. He was very much pleased; he took the money, commended ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... travel. To-day, I need not tell you how it is: you stay at home and send your eyes and ears abroad to see and hear for you. Wherever the electric connection is carried—and there need be no human habitation however remote from social centers, be it the mid-air balloon or mid-ocean float of the weather watchman, or the ice-crusted hut of the polar observer, where it may not reach—it is possible in slippers and dressing gown for the dweller to take his choice of the public entertainments given that day in every city of the earth. And remember, too, although you ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... together, as the sheep to the Pen: There is nothing better in all your Anglings, for feed, then Bloud and Grains; I hold it better then Paste: then plumming your ground, Angling with fine Tackles, as single haire for halfe the Line next the hook, round and small plumed, according to your float: For the Bait, there is a small red worm, with a yellow tip on his taile, is very good; Brandlins, Gentles, Paste, or Cadice, which we call Cod-bait, they lye in a gravelly husk under stones in the River: these be the speciall Baits for ...
— The Art of Angling • Thomas Barker

... near that, reaching ground with my oar, I could thrust her directly in. But here I had like to have dipped all my cargo into the sea again; for that shore lying pretty steep - that is to say sloping - there was no place to land, but where one end of my float, if it ran on shore, would lie so high, and the other sink lower, as before, that it would endanger my cargo again. All that I could do was to wait till the tide was at the highest, keeping the raft with my oar like an anchor, to hold the side of it fast ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... having hit on a new idea, "don't you remember, when we were in the upper fourth, and old Momus caught me construing off the leaf of a crib which I'd torn out and put in my book, and which would float out on to the floor, he sent me up ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... around so that he could cock an eye up at Nolan. He grinned mechanically. "Naw. Picked up a rich-lookin' piece uh float. Thought I'd just see if it didn't ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... be but little doubt that our best policy would be to discontinue the building of ships of the first and second class, and look rather to the possession of ample materials, prepared for the emergencies of war, than to the number of vessels which we can float in a season of peace, as the index of our naval power. Judicious deposits in navy yards of timber and other materials, fashioned under the hands of skillful work-men and fitted for prompt application to their ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... Bill, joining in the laugh against himself, "if they did, your jokes would be so light and triflin' that I do believe they'd float her again. But what have you ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... actually readable. Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be. But before this comes to pass we must cultivate the ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... barty — Vhere ish dot barty now? Vhere ish de lofely golden cloud Dot float on de moundain's prow? Vhere ish de himmelstrahlende stern — De shtar of de shpirit's light? All goned afay mit de lager beer — Afay ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... formed, which are difficultly miscible with atmospheric air, and are continually separating from it. If these gasses be specifically lighter than the general atmospheric mass, they must, of course, gather in the higher regions, and form strata that float upon the common air. The phenomena which accompany igneous meteors induce me to believe, that there exists in the upper parts of our atmosphere a stratum of inflammable fluid in contact with those strata of air which produce ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... back against the spruce and watched a hawk float in easy circles round the blue emptiness above. He felt physically indolent; at one with the silences. Shoop's voice came to him clearly, but as though from a distance, and as Shoop talked Lorry visualized the theme, forgetting ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... speaking very slowly, "those people have a boat, for you can see it on yon sands. Let them find the courage to float it, and it is even possible that Dolly Venn and I can do the rest. We should be thirteen men then, and glad of the number. I won't hide it from you that we are a pitiful handful to face such a horde as lingers yonder. Why, think of it. Your husband ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... upon her breast as a little child about to say her prayers. The bright light of the lamp fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changes fleeting over her face as the changes of the hills when the summer clouds float across the sun. And then she lay all white and still, and the doctor turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite unconscious. Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sank back. Clarke ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... jarring distance from the over-gorgeous splendour of the modern transept. In Holy Week, towards evening at the Tenebrae, the divine tenor voice of Padre Giovanni, monk and singer, soft as a summer night, clear as a silver bell, touching as sadness itself, used to float through the dim air with a ring of Heaven in it, full of that strange fatefulness that followed his short life, till he died, nearly twenty years ago, foully poisoned by a layman singer in envy of a gift not matched in ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... easily done," replied the Scarecrow. "The Tin Woodman must build us a raft, so we can float ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... not against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so great a man. His barbarisms were those of his age. His genius was his own. He had no objection to float down with the stream of common taste and opinion: he rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which he could not keep under, in spite of himself or others, and "his delights did shew ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... gone, the many precious birds' nests that were laid waste, the old ones rendered homeless, the little ones rendered homeless; and all for the sake of a great lumbering thing, a gigantic vessel, that never was to float ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... load of sugar canes. By the time the boat was loaded by the natives the ebb of the tide had left her aground, and Aymes asked leave of the coxswain to take a stroll, engaging to be back for the flood. Leave was granted him, but during his absence, the tide haying come in sufficiently to float the boat, James Thorn, the coxswain, did not wait for the young sailor, who was thus left behind. The captain immediately missed the man, and, on being informed that he had strolled away from the boat ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... declare That eye so bright, that face so fair, That cheek which shames the rose; But how thy mantle waves behind, How float thy tresses on the wind, Another ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... had really frightened him. He was convinced that Smallbones had a charmed life. Did he not float to the Nab buoy and back again?—did not a pistol ball pass through him without injury? Vanslyperken shuddered; he took a fresh glass, and then handed the bottle to the corporal, who helped himself, saluted, and the liquor again disappeared ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... you fish, the great dark woods stand close about you, silent, listening. The air is full of scents and odors that steal abroad only by night, while the air is dew-laden. Strange cries, calls, squeaks, rustlings run along the hillside, or float in from the water, or drop down from the air overhead, to make you guess and wonder what wood folk are abroad at such unseemly hours, and what they are about. So that it is good to fish by night, as well as by day, and go home with heart ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... bright,—whether tempest fills the air, or sunshine illumines the sky,—whether we are followed with fair blessing from friends, or pursued with the hate, envy and slander of injurious foes,—whether we drown by choice in tempestuous waters of passion, or float securely to the shores of peace,—whether our ships are bound for Death or for Life, we are safe in the hands of Love! And in the midst of what the world deems storm and wreckage, we can gaze into the deeper depths of God's meaning with trustful eyes, and sail on our voyage fearlessly,—on, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... her name with beautiful reverence, letting the sound of it float over the Christmas Tree and die away on the garlanded walls of the room: it was his last tribute ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... Greenback State convention of 1881, Mrs. Mary E. Nash was nominated as the candidate of that party for State superintendent of schools. Mrs. Nash declined the honor intended, and said that her political flag, if it were to float at all, would be found in another camp. She would not desert her colors for office. In 1884 Mrs. H. J. Bellangee and Mrs. A. M. Swain were regularly accredited delegates to the National Greenback convention, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... a prospector by the name of Lewis who wandered into those foot-hills during that year, found some high-grade float, and traced it to a larger outcropping than the one down by the dry wash. But he had hardly made the marvelous discovery when he caught sight of a turbaned head above a rocky ridge about fifty ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold upon the world ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon; But through the clouds I'll never float Until I have a little Boat, Shaped like ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... appear of some ethereal substance so light that vessels containing it would remain suspended in the air. Roger Bacon (1214-1294) conceived of a large hollow globe made of very thin metal and filled with ethereal air or liquid fire, which would float on the atmosphere like a ship on water. Albert of Saxony, who was bishop of Halberstadt from 1366 to 1390, had a similar notion, and considered that a small portion of the principle of fire enclosed in a light sphere would raise it and keep it ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... blue air, I could plough the high hills, O, I could kneel all night in prayer, To heal your many ills! And one beamy smile from you Would float like light between My toils and me, my own, my true, My Dark Rosaleen! My fond Rosaleen! Would give me life and soul anew, A second life, a ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... thick, amber light, like a transparent reflection from some intense golden medium, seemed to float in the warm air. The sky became an azure blue. In the still noontides, when the bees hummed drowsily and the flies buzzed, vast creamy-white columnar clouds rolled up from the horizon, like colossal ships with bulging sails. And summer with its rush of growing ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... a lay figure the imperial purple or the star-spangled robe of a Holy Virgin, so we have always whole stores of glittering mantles and robes of pure white linen which we cast over the shoulders of dull, sulky, or spiteful creatures, and when they have thus assumed the garb in which our ideal loves float before us in our waking dreams, we let ourselves be taken in by this disguise, we incarnate our dream in the first corner, and address her in our language, which she does not understand. However, let this creature at whose feet we live prostrate, tear away ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... it looked as if pony and youth could not escape, Dave heard a whistle float across the prairie. Looking in the direction, he made out the form of Sid Todd, riding like the wind toward him. Behind him came Roger and Phil, but the two boys were soon stopped and told to ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... to me the dreams of bliss That float the dying eyes before, For one short hour shed happiness, And fly ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... convex of that fluted note Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float— As if God turned a rose into a throat— "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... itself in angry breakers that filled the aperture with swirling water and high-flung spume. To have attempted to drive the ship into such a place would have been the height of madness under ordinary circumstances. No man knew what lay beyond, nor whether the opening carried sufficient water to float the Halfmoon, though the long, powerful sweep of the sea as it entered the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... highly honoured when its turn came to float the blooming offering to the shrine of the Great Spirit, and still more honoured was the maid who was ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... under the continuous and concentrated fire of three points; on her port quarters were the batteries of Newport News, on her port bow the field batteries and sharpshooters on the beach, and on her starboard bow the Minnesota. It soon became evident that no wooden vessel could long float under such a fire; several shots struck the hull, and a piece of the walking-beam was shot away. As the sponge of the after pivot gun was being inserted in the muzzle of the piece, the handle was cut in two by a shot from the enemy; half in prayer and half in ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle

... term for a sort of float sunk to a required depth by letting water into it, when it is hauled under the ship's bottom, receives her steadily, and on pumping out the water floats her. These were long used in Holland, afterwards at ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... carpenters, and what was necessary for the maintenance of the workmen. The Sidonians also were very willing and ready to bring the cedar trees from Libanus, to bind them together, and to make a united float of them, and to bring them to the port of Joppa, for that was what Cyrus had commanded at first, and what was now done at the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... a rule, those who are out of their places. A man out of his place is but half a man; his very nature is perverted. He is working against his nature, rowing against the current. When his strength is exhausted he will float down the stream. A man can not succeed when his whole nature is entering its perpetual protest against his occupation. To succeed, his vocation must have the consent of all his faculties; they must be in harmony with ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... sat down at the side of the brook as a couple of children would have done to cast in sticks and leaves and watch them float by. Sometimes these would get caught in the numberless little eddies that such a stream possesses and be whirled round and round until it was necessary to dislodge them and send them on their way after the others. One fine yellow leaf ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... House. It is reported that near unto the Abby of St. Maurice in Burgundy[30] there is a Fishpond in which are Fishes put according to the number of the Monks of that place; if any one of them happened to be sick, there is a Fish seen to Float and Swim above Water half dead, and if the Monk shall die, the Fish a few days before dieth. In some parts in Wales Death-lights or Corps Candles (as they call them) are seen in the night time going from the House where ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... appurtenances thereunto appertaining and belonging, is inexpressively grand and inspiring; and I gaze, and gaze, while my soul is filled with holy delight, and my heart expands to receive thy spirit-presence, as aforesaid. Above me is the glory of the sun; around him float the messenger clouds, ready alike to bless the earth with gentle rain, or visit it with lightning, and thunder, and destruction; far below the said sun and the messenger clouds aforesaid, lying prone upon the earth in the verge of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... way—a wonderfully strange way—did Thomas Jefferson Brown. He stood almost erect in the water, his head and shoulders clear; and now and then he stopped to rest, and it seemed no test for him at all to float with the weight of the woman he loved, his face turned up to her in those moments, her glorious blue eyes devouring him, her sweet ...
— Thomas Jefferson Brown • James Oliver Curwood

... wherein she chose to move. Not that her conversation was brilliant or deep, but she said the most frivolous things in a way that made them appear witty; and the grand art, to charm by appearing charmed, was hers in perfection. She seemed to float altogether upon and among the pleasantnesses of life; pain, either endured or inflicted, was to ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... Sometimes they float about and sparkle and she wears little crowns on her head—or flowers. She laughs," Robin described eagerly. "A great many people come to see her. They all laugh. Sometimes they sing. I lie ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of the space-ship slid past them only ten feet away. The ground diminished. They seemed less to be lifted than to float skyward. And in this sling, in this completely unreal ascent, Cochrane roused suddenly. He felt the acute unease which comes of height. He had looked down upon Earth from a height of four thousand miles with no feeling of dizziness. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... Armenia, as if just issuing from one common source. So also those who placed the terrestrial paradise in islands, supposed that the rivers which issued from it, and formed those heretofore named, either traversed the surface of the sea, as fresh water, by its greater lightness, may float above the salt; or that they flowed through deep veins and channels of the earth, as the fountain of Arethusa was said to sink into the ground in Greece, and rise in the island of Sicily, while the river Alpheus pursuing it, but with less ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... the coffin was lowered to the royal vaults to repose in peace, the incenses had ceased to float dreamily beneath the lofty roof,[xi] the various lights which had borne part in the ceremony were extinguished, the choral anthem had ceased, for Edred ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... sweeping stark and striking strong * None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain? How many trees earth nourisheth of the dry and of the green * Yet none but those which bear the fruits for cast of stone complain. See'st not how corpses rise and float on the surface of the tide * While pearls o'price lie hidden in the deepest of the main! In Heaven are unnumbered the many of the stars * Yet ne'er a star but Sun and Moon by eclipse is overta'en. Well judgedst thou the days that saw thy faring ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... experimented with, but I know that the shore trend of the loop runs across a long spur of the submerged volcanic mountain, and that anything heavier than a porpoise would scrape the bottom and be carried so slowly that at least twelve hours must elapse before the carcass could float again into deep water. There are chances of its stranding indefinitely, too, but I don't care to take those chances. That is why I have stationed you ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... whether Lycia's coast And snowy mountains thy bright presence boast: 830 Whether to sweet Castalia thou repair, And bathe in silver dews thy yellow hair; Or pleased to find fair Delos float no more, Delight in Cynthus and the shady shore; Or choose thy seat in Ilion's proud abodes, The shining structures raised by labouring gods: By thee the bow and mortal shafts are borne; Eternal charms thy blooming youth adorn: ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... the story of "The Great Ship," explain what "an ark" was, properly a chest or box; in this story, a great ship, built not to sail fast, but to float on the water, and to hold a great amount. Perhaps it was made so large, not only to carry many animals and their food, but also very many people, if the people had been willing ...
— Hurlbut's Bible Lessons - For Boys and Girls • Rev. Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

... themselves low to avoid the danger of falling Leave society when we can no longer add anything to it Little less trouble in governing a private family than a kingdom Love we bear to our wives is very lawful Man (must) know that he is his own Marriage Men should furnish themselves with such things as would float Methinks I am no more than half of myself Must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves Never represent things to you simply as they are No effect of virtue, to have stronger arms and legs Not in a condition ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger

... seems to me that it would be ridiculous to think of a good-sized turtle hanging, for three or four months, upheld only by the air, over the town of Vicksburg. When it comes to the horse and the barn—I think that they'll be classics some day, but I can never accept that a horse and a barn could float several months in ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... struck a submerged coral reef, and all sails were immediately taken in, and the boats lowered. We had struck just before dark, and at daylight I observed land some eight miles distant. High tide was expected at about eleven o'clock, when it was hoped the vessel would float off, though we feared she would ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... it much to his credit that his first ascertainable emotion after the buffet of assault was one of wildest exultation at the prospect. It shows that he had never for a moment distrusted the meek little partner of his fortunes. Whisps of such doubt did afterwards float across his pretty morning picture, but he put them away at once. Next came worldly wisdom. True Tuscan that he was, his instinct was to decline perilous rapture if waiting might bring it on easy terms. For a long ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... times, pray, read and study by a method, and so get the most out of the moments as they swiftly pass, never to return. Allow yourself so much time for sleep, so much for private devotion, so much for recreation. Above all, my son, act on principle, and do not live like the rest of mankind, who float through the world like straws upon ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... the leaf of the white lily there are as many as 60,000 of these openings in every square inch of surface and in the apple leaf not fewer than 24,000. These breathing pores, called stomates, are mostly on the under side of the leaf, except in the case of leaves which float upon the water. There is a beautiful contrivance also in connection with these pores, by which they are closed when the air around is dry and the evaporation of the water from the leaves would be so rapid as to be harmful to the tree, ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston

... herbs, and barks which enter into the prescription have been thus gathered the doctor ties them up into a convenient package, which he takes to a running stream and casts into the water with appropriate prayers. Should the package float, as it generally does, he accepts the fact as an omen that his treatment will be successful. On the other hand, should it sink, he concludes that some part of the preceding ceremony has been improperly carried out and at once sets about procuring ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... cloak coax coal coast coarse float foam goat gloam groan hoarse load loan loaf oak oar oats roast road roam shoal ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... bud; and, floating round each, a generation of women: those famed in the past; the loved and loving of the present; the "beauties yet unborn." He casts his passion at the feet of the dead; but they float past him unmoved. He enfolds in it the glowing forms of the living; but these also elude him. He pours it into the budding life, which may thus respond to his own; but the procession of maidens drifts past him too. They all circle unceasingly round ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric, that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a deep ditch; this nest is lined with fine grasses, and feathers which are often collected as they float ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... "Let us float down quietly with the stream a while, Paul, whilst we don our dry garments, if indeed they are dry. It will be better here than on shore, where we might chance to be seen and suspected. I am glowing hot now, freezing night ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... cried. "I pray to Saint Leonard to bear us up this day! Twenty of my shipmen are bailing with buckets, but the water rises on them fast. The vessel may not float another hour." ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sigh for a quiet bright spot In the churchyard by the stream, Whereon the morning sunbeams float, And the stars at midnight dream; Where only Nature's sounds may wake The sacred and silent air, And only her beautiful things may break Through the long ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... way, And, gushing from their source, augment the sea. Then with his mace their monarch struck the ground: With inward trembling Earth received the wound, And rising stream a ready passage found. The expanded waters gather on the plain, They float the fields and overtop the grain; Then, rushing onward, with a sweepy sway, Bear flocks and folds and laboring hinds away. Nor safe their dwellings were; for, sapped by floods, Their houses fell upon their household gods. The solid hills, too strongly built to fall, High o'er their ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... rules must be abandoned without a sigh, and give way to others more adapted to the necessity of the time. Above all things the House of Lords must be flouted, humiliated, and defied. It is on the spring-tide of popular democratic and anti-aristocratic passion we shall have to float the next ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... Float a bit of magnetic ore in a pail of water, or suspend a bit of magnetized steel by a thread, and these currents make the ore or needle point north and south. Now let waves buffet either side, typhoons roar, and maelstroms whirl; we have, out of the invisible, insensible sea of magnetic ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... Meltonians, and try to shame old Father Thames himself with muddy Whissendine's foul stream? Away! thou vampire, Indolence, that suckest the marrow of imagination, and fattenest on the cream of idea ere yet it float on the milk of reflection. Hence! slug-begotten hag, thy power is gone—the murky veil thou'st drawn o'er memory's ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... that best can tell, Why in that dangerous gulf profound, Where hundreds and where thousands fell, Fools chiefly float, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... which is there, as in reveling amid the familiar rococo splendors of the temple. Every swaggering statue of a saint, every rope-dancing angel, every cherub of those that on the carven and gilded clouds above the high altar float...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... where Aiwohikupua and his men floated. Said the woman, "This is strange! What is all this that the canoe is kept afloat? Joyous was I at the sight of you, believing you were coming to land. Not so! Now, tell me, shall you float there ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... make a new one, Hilda,' she said. 'And Wastei must pick out a tall, straight sapling from the forest—for Sigmundskron has a lord again, and the old flag must float on the wind when he ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... rascally acts, but they are always fortunate in having any amount of panegyric graven on marble slabs, shafts and pillars, o'er their dust, and eulogistic and profound histories written in memories of the deeds of renown and glory they have executed. An American 74-gun ship would hardly float the mountains of tomes written upon Bonaparte and his brilliant career, as a soldier and a conqueror; but how precious few, insignificant pages do we ever see of the misdeeds, tyrannies and acts of petty and contemptuous ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... ark fashioned of bulrushes, daubed it with pitch on the outside, and lined it with clay within. The reason she used bulrushes was because they float on the surface of the water, and she put pitch only on the outside, to protect the child as much as possible against the annoyance of a disagreeable odor. Over the child as it lay in the ark she spread a tiny canopy, to shade the babe, with the words, "Perhaps I shall not live ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... cold water (rejecting those which float) and soak them over night. In the morning drain the water off and cover them again with 1 qt. of the boiling water. Boil until tender, about 1-1/2 hour. Now add the stock and 1 pt. of the boiling water. Press ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless

... above, That Troy, and Troy's whole race thou wouldst confound, And yon fair structures level with the ground! Haste, leave the skies, fulfil thy stern desire, Burst all her gates, and wrap her walls in fire! Let Priam bleed! if yet you thirst for more, Bleed all his sons, and Ilion float with gore: To boundless vengeance the wide realm be given, Till vast destruction glut the queen of heaven! So let it be, and Jove his peace enjoy,(126) When heaven no longer hears the name of Troy. But should this arm prepare to wreak our hate On thy loved realms, whose ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... generally understand that our defeat would mean the laying open of the shores of the Mediterranean, from Turkey to Gibraltar, to the invasion of the Moslems. However, comrades, this is all in the future. Our share is but in the present, and I trust the flag of the Order will float over Rhodes as long, at least, as the lifetime of the youngest of us, and that we may bequeath the duty of upholding the Cross untarnished to those who come after us; and we can then leave ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... enterprises the President referred. It has for many years been a well-settled principle among railroad incorporators that no larger assessments should be made upon the stockholders than is necessary to float the company's bonds. A company, for instance, is organized with a capital stock of, say, $1,000,000. Five per cent. of this sum, or $50,000, is paid into defray preliminary expenses. The road is then bonded for perhaps ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... came over her that Bigot could not be utterly base. He could not thus forsake one who had lost all—name, fame, home, and kindred—for his sake! She clung to the few pitying words spoken by him as a shipwrecked sailor to the plank which chance has thrown in his way. It might float her for a few ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... become islands in the sky, sky-foam and spray seen along their bases. Hills shoot out from their summits airy capes and headlands, or assume upon their crowns a wide, smooth table, as if for the service of genii. Ships sail, bergs float, in the heavens. Here a vast obelisk of ice shoots aloft, half mountain high; you gaze at it amazed, ecstatic,—calculating the time it will take to come up with it,—whistling, if you are still capable of that levity, for a wind. But now it begins to waver, to dance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... 1670.] portions of various animals be found all together if they had not been thrown on the sea shore. And the deluge cannot have carried them there, because things that are heavier than water do not float on the water. But these things could not be at so great a height if they had not been carried there by the water, such a thing being impossible from their weight. In places where the valleys have not been filled with salt sea water shells are never ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... was the force of habit, combined with the feebleness of his moral resistance and the nature of his environment, that instead of being an athlete, armed for a glorious strife, he had learned to drift where he should have steered, to float with the current instead of nobly breasting the tide. He conducted his plantation with as much lenity as it was possible to infuse into a system darkened with the shadow ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... the Inchcape float, Quoth he, 'My men, put out the boat, And row me to the Inchcape Rock, And I'll plague ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... towers are four tall flagstaves—two on either side of the gate—and from them float gaily-coloured pennons. The walls of the towers are covered with pictures of the wars of the King. Here you see him charging in his chariot upon his fleeing enemies; here, again, he is seizing a group of captives by the hair, and raising his mace or his sword to kill them; but whatever ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie

... a moss-grown boulder sitting, Watching the graceful swallows flitting, Hearing the cuckoo's note. Sheep on the hills around me feeding, While in their piteous accents pleading, The lambkins' bleatings float. —Oh, dear! a ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... think my nature must have resembled yours, for many of your ideas and views of duty in this life remind me in a mournfully vague, tender way of my own early youth; and from that far distant time taunting reminiscences float down to me, whispers from my old self long, long dead. When I was seventeen, I went one June to spend some weeks with my Grandmother Neville, who was an invalid, and resided on the Hudson, near a very picturesque spot, which artists were in ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... will understand me to maintain that population should never be thinned by foreign emigration; but only that such an emigration is unnatural. The great mass of a neighborhood or country must necessarily be stable: only fractions are cast off and float away on the tide of adventure. Individual enterprise or estrangement is one thing: the translation of an entire people to an unknown clime, another. The former may be moved by a single impulse—by a love of novelty, or ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... a game at floating down a stream which rushed over a cataract, of which strangers were ignorant until they were on the edge of the fall and tumbling over. The visitors were to float first, and Fulufuluitolo, or "Sugar-cane-down," took the lead. He planted his feet firmly on a rock near the fall, and as his party came floating down he seized them one by one and jerked them out ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... embellished the faint horizon. Her dreaming eyes would grow bright and wistful; her rich brown curling hair, set free by the yellow sun-bonnet that slipped off her head and upon her shoulders, would airily float backward in the wind; there was a lithe grace in the slender figure, albeit clad in a yellow homespun of a deep dye, and the faded purplish neckerchief was caught about a throat fairer even than the fair ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves, and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... her burning desire, and that far faster than by any documents with solemn signatures and official seals. Her heart was so light, she felt as if her feet no longer touched the ground and that she must float away into the blue ether like the ecstatic saints in the church pictures of her own country. She talked incessantly of the coming being, and thought of nothing else waking or sleeping. She had not the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... the vice-admiral, Sir William Woodhouse, was directed to go instantly to sea, pressing everything that would float, and promising indemnity to the owners in the queen's name. Thirty thousand men were rapidly on their way to the coast; the weather had all along been clear and frosty, with calms and light east winds, and the sea off Dover was swiftly ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... cloud," said Gypsy, suddenly, after a long silence. "A little white cloud, with a silver fringe, and not have anything to do but float round all day in the sunshine,—no lessons nor torn dresses nor hateful ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... Either he'll have to let go or the bank will, one or t'other. United we sink, divided one of us may float, that's the way I look at it. Lute'll stay till we can locate somebody else to take his job, and ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... still the song did float and fade, As failing sunshine soft, in woodland glade. And Lilith, listening, heard—so wild, so shrill, Yet dream-like, far, again that tinkling rill In Paradise. And o'er her spirit swept A sadness bitter-sweet, as 'neath the green palms crept ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... you be going to sluice yourself all the same. Whatever you can see in cold water, to run after it so, I can't think. If I was to flood myself like you, it would soon float me ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... North, South, by its side our flag, twice scored with the White Cross, will float wide in the face of all nations the Englishman's faith, reverence for womanhood, self-giving manhood, and the pure heart that ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... blaze, On Ochil mountains fell the rays, And as each heathy top they kissed, It gleamed a purple amethyst. Yonder the shores of Fife you saw; Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law: And, broad between them rolled, The gallant Frith the eye might note, Whose islands on its bosom float, Like emeralds chased in gold. Fitz Eustace' heart felt closely pent; As if to give his rapture vent, The spur he to his charger lent, And raised his bridle hand, And making demivolte in air, Cried, "Where's ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... "in an Irish national school who does not pore over the maps of the States which hang on the walls, gaze on them with admiration and hope, and count the years till he too shall set his foot in those famous cities which float before his imagination like the gardens of Aladdin." Nevertheless he asked his hearers and readers to take it from him that Ireland had no longer any good ground of complaint against the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Independence she could not have, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... from above. I could plainly discern the harbor and great tableland in the scene before me, although apparently shrunk in size, but the city itself resembled a little toy village, while the largest ships in the harbor reminded me of the tiny boats I used to construct when a child and float about in the bath-tub. But where, oh where, was the greatest of all exalted things—that for which the entire universe and all that it contains therein was constructed—mighty man? He could not be seen. In fact he was as ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... nictitating membrane. At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits; for morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a modified swim-bladder, which once served as a float. The clefts on the neck in the embryo of man shew where the branchiae once existed. In the lunar or weekly recurrent periods of some of our functions we apparently still retain traces of our primordial birthplace, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... were soon made. Anything that would spoil by getting wet, or that would float out of the coach, was lifted up and packed on the roof. The passengers stood up on the seats. Then Pat Donohoe put the whip on his leaders, and calling to his two wheelers, old-seasoned veterans, he ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... think that I knew what it was when the great sea pig leaped, for his shape was plain to me. The shoal went its way, and after it the harmless porpoises. But the sea was fairly alight now; all round me it shone with its soft glow, and my body was wondrous with it, and I seemed to float in ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... good-night; but it made the red come, so that I had to hurry out before she saw. It seemed to me that her cheeks then looked pinker than ever, and the two colors, pink and blue, seemed to mingle and float before my eyes all the way home. "Pink and blue," "pink and blue." How those two little words kept running in my head, and, I began to fear, in my heart too!—for no sooner would I close my eyes at night than those delicate pink cheeks and blue eyes would appear before me. They haunted my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... paused suddenly, and sprang into life again; and its sound was so sweet, so wonderfully alluring! Down there in the water, where a stubborn pebble kept chafing a precipitous little side current, clear tiny pearl-drops would leap up from the stream, and float half-wonderingly downward from rapid to rapid, until they lost themselves in the whirl of some stronger current. Thus sat Aasa and gazed and gazed, and in one moment she seemed to see what in the next moment she saw not. Then a sudden great ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... falsehood speak their words Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords, Listening with quickened heart and ear intent To each sharp clause of that stern argument, I still can hear at times a softer note Of the old pastoral music round me float, While through the hot gleam of our civil strife Looms the green mirage of a simpler life. As, at his alien post, the sentinel Drops the old bucket in the homestead well, And hears old voices in the winds that toss Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss, So, in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... subsidies, and privatized several enterprises. The budget deficit rose to an estimated 8% of GDP in 2004 compared to 6.1% of GDP the previous year, in part as a result of these reforms. Monetary pressures on an overvalued Egyptian pound led the government to float the currency in January 2003, leading to a sharp drop in its value and consequent inflationary pressure. In 2004, the Central Bank implemented measures to improve currency liquidity. Egypt reached record tourism levels, despite the Taba and Nuweiba bombings ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... a good bookkeeper. Besides, however many leeches he harboured about him, his intimate knowledge of Tweed's doings kept him in power. Perhaps Barnard, more in the public eye than any other, had less legal learning than wit, yet in spite of his foppish dress he never lacked sufficient dignity to float the appearance of a learned judge. He was a handsome man, tall and well proportioned, with peculiarly brilliant eyes, a jet black moustache, light olive complexion, and a graceful carriage. Whenever in trouble Tweed could safely turn to him without disappointment. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... probability; that is, that a flood was coming to cover the whole earth, and destroy the race. And he was asked further to put his belief into the shape of an immense house-boat probably built where it wouldn't float except such a flood did come. That huge boat was his confession of faith. He acted his faith. It would be a costly thing, perhaps taking all Noah's wealth, and taking some years to build. That belief was about the unlikeliest thing imaginable from every ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... Louvois (who did not like me) had lavished his incense upon me, in order that some fumes of it might float up to the prince. He saw me beloved and, as it were, almost omnipotent; he sought my alliance with ardour. The family of Le Tellier is good enough for a judicial and legal family; but what bonds ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the infernal spirit, bound in avenging fire by adamantine chains, lying vanquished nine times the space that measures night and day to mortal men; of the darkness visible of the eternal prisons and the burning ocean where the fallen angels float. Then, his voice, now powerful, began the address of the fallen angel. "Art thou," he said, "he who in the happy realms of light, clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine myriads? From what height fallen? What though the field be lost, all is ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... in the unexpected strokes of a hazardous policy. We are a prey to two opposing currents,—one deep and regular, which carries towards the definite goal of our social state; the other superficial and disturbed, which throws us here and there in search of new adventures and unknown lands. Thus we float and alternate between these two opposing directions,—called towards the one by our sound sense and moral conviction, and enticed towards the other by our habits of routine and freaks of imagination." (Memoirs of a Minister of State, from the year ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... creature's forefeet upon the crown or arching centre of the road. The larger half of the little equipage had then cleared our over-towering shadow: that was evident even to my own agitated sight. But it mattered little that one wreck should float off in safety if upon the wreck that perished were embarked the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage—was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin? What power could answer the question? Glance of eye, thought ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... Macareo or bore, comes in, any ship or vessel riding in the fair way or mid-channel would surely be overthrown and destroyed. And even with this precaution of anchoring so far above the channel, so that the bore has lost much of its force before rising so high as to float them, yet they always moor with their bows to the stream, which still is often so powerful as to put them in great fear; for if the anchor did not hold good, they would be in the utmost danger of being lost. When ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... taken by Congress to furnish the sinews of war. By April 14 a bond and certificate issue of $7,000,000,000 had been unanimously voted by both houses, and preparations were made to float a popular subscription for the bonds. Three billions of the amount was intended for loans to the Allies, and the remainder for active prosecution of the war by the United States. The debates in Congress indicated that the country stood solidly behind the President in ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... thus prepared remains uncontaminated indefinitely, in spite of its susceptibility to change when exposed to the air under conditions which allow it to gather the dusty particles which float in the atmosphere. It is the same in the case of urine, beef-tea, and grape-must, and generally with all those putrefactable and fermentable liquids which have the property when heated to boiling-point of destroying the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... never been so clear. His brain is in continual activity. "It is strange," he acknowledges, "what a different man I am becoming mentally from what I was formerly. I can see it as I watch myself thinking, discovering, and developing stories, weighing and analyzing the imaginary beings that float through my imagination. I take the same enjoyment in certain dreams, certain exaltations of mind, as I formerly took in rowing like ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... horror came over Schwartz, he knew not why; but the thirst for gold prevailed over his fear, and he rushed on. And the bank of black cloud rose to the zenith, and out of it came bursts of spiry lightning, and waves of darkness seemed to heave and float, between their flashes, over the whole heavens. And the sky where the sun was setting was all level and like a lake of blood; and a strong wind came out of that sky, tearing its crimson clouds into fragments and scattering them far ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.

... dissolve the snawy hoord, [thaws, hoard] An' float the jinglin' icy boord, Then water-kelpies haunt the foord, [-spirits] By your direction, An' 'nighted travelers are allur'd ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... external sensory, is remembrance: if it be sought after by the mind, and with pain and endeavour found, and brought again in view, it is recollection: if it be held there long under consideration, it is contemplation; when ideas float in our mind without any reflexion or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie;[87] our language has scarce a name for it. When the ideas that offer themselves (for as I have observed in another place, while we are awake, there will always be a train of ideas ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... end of the journey across the Isthmus and were shortly to embark for San Francisco. I fear we children regretted the fact. Our life for three days had been like a veritable "Jungle Book." It almost out-Kiplinged Kipling. We might never again float through Monkey Land, with clouds of parrots hovering over us and a whole menagerie of extraordinary creatures making side-shows of themselves ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... they began to come in!—and when the bathing dresses were hung on the fence to dry!—and when mermaid visions appeared at the windows!—who shall describe the scene then? Over all, a blue smoke now began to curl and float, rising from the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... intellectual man. That we moderns have fallen behind here is unquestionable, and we in this country more than the Old World peoples. All the works of Whitman, prose and verse, are embosomed in a sea of emotional humanity, and they float deeper than they show; there is far more in what they necessitate and imply than in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... begun. Such then was the end of youthful ambition: for food a mouthful of ashes instead of the very marrow of joy; for home not the free ocean, but a stagnant pool ringed with weeping willows, a log's fit floating-place. Here to float, marking the weed creep onward until all from bank to bank was overfilmed, and there remained no clear water of space for reflection of a single star: to float, and feel the sodden fibres of life loosening in slow decay—this was to be the last state of the seedling which had sprung ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... Flying School at that place. The same year Commander O. Swann purchased from Messrs. A. V. Roe a 35 horse-power biplane and began to carry out experiments with different types of floats, as a result of which a twin-float seaplane was produced—the first to rise off the water ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... had the matter in hand; but unfortunately, just as he was about to complete it, French and Russian banks offered to lend the sum at a cheaper rate of interest, and so it was given to them. They also agreed to float a second loan for L16,000,000. But at the last moment, either because of some hitch in the minor arrangements, or because the Chinese suddenly thought it might be unwise to put all their eggs in one basket, they turned again to ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... from this unhappy privation was, that the moment the nurse began to float the baby up and down, she flew from her arms towards the ceiling. Happily, the resistance of the air brought her ascending career to a close within a foot of it. There she remained, horizontal as when she left her nurse's arms, kicking and laughing amazingly. The nurse in terror flew to ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald

... he locked up his daughter. No man ever saw her, and she never saw even the fields and the sea, but only the sky and the sun, for there was a wide open window in the roof of the house of brass. So the Princess would sit looking up at the sky, and watching the clouds float across, and wondering whether she should ever get out of her prison. Now one day it seemed to her that the sky opened above her, and a great shower of shining gold fell through the window in the roof, and lay glittering in her room. Not very long after, the Princess had a baby, ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... fretted, and was disobedient, and from Maurice she met with nothing but rebuffs; he was silent and sullen, and spent most of the day in the workshop, slowly planing scraps of deal board, and watching with a careless eye the curled shavings float to the ground. ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... heaven Told the saints this mortal's lot, As the Angelus at even Rose to day that dieth not; And from out the nightly wonder Of the darkened world would float, Mingling with the near sea's thunder, Yonder belfry's ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... behold the glories of one out of the thousands of similar firmaments: "The mottled region forming the lighter part of the mass (the nebula in Orion) is a very blaze of stars. But that stellar creation, now that we are freed from all dubiety concerning the significance of those hazes that float numberless in space, how glorious, how endless! Behold, amid that limitless ocean, every speck, however remote or dim, a noble galaxy. Lustrous they are, too; in manifold instances beyond all neighboring ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... principle done exactly the contrary to what her husband wanted her to do. In the end she fell into a river and was drowned. Her husband tried to recover the body, but was found fault with for going up the stream, since she must, necessarily, float down with the current. 'And do you really imagine,' he exclaimed, 'that even her dead body could do anything else but contradict me?' We are, most of us, very like that woman," said the Saint. "Yet it is written: Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... in a spirit of levity, but I do wish Polk Hayes and Jane Mathers were out on the front steps in the moonlight, after a good supper that has made him comfortable, Jane to be attired in something soft that would float against his arm, whether she wanted it to or not! I believe it would be good for Jane, and make things easier for me. Be frank with Polk as to how much he asphyxiates me? I know better than to blow out the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... place before him." The Bayeiye live much on fish, which is quite an abomination to the Bechuanas of the south; and they catch them in large numbers by means of nets made of the fine, strong fibres of the hibiscus, which grows abundantly in all moist places. Their float-ropes are made of the ife, or, as it is now called, the 'Sanseviere Angolensis', a flag-looking plant, having a very strong fibre, that abounds from Kolobeng to Angola; and the floats themselves are pieces of a water-plant containing valves at ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... attracted the attention of the whole world. Nansen had devoted profound study to the question of the northern drift of the polar waters. It had often been observed that drift-wood and wreckage seemed, in many places, to float towards the Pole. Trees that fall in the Siberian forests and float down the great rivers to the northern sea are frequently found washed up on the shores of Greenland, having apparently passed over the Pole itself. A strong current flows northward through ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... acids and washing. Soda or potash is not nearly so good for this first boiling as lime—for what reason is somewhat uncertain, but probably because they form with the grease in the cloths soluble soaps, which might float about the kier and accumulate in places where they are not required and thus lead to stains, whereas the insoluble lime soap remains where it was formed. The lime also seems to attack the natural colouring matter of the cotton, and although the colour of the limed cloth is darker than before ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... desperately in the remorseless grip which held him. The two huge eyes of the cuttlefish surveyed his death throes minutely; watched his agonized struggles gradually weaken; watched his legs and arms relax, his head sink lower.... And then the tentacle let a lifeless body float to the floor. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... brandied with purpose. There is no end, Jasper, to what I am prepared to do for you; but, my dear fellow, neither of us can have this. She wept. My young gentlemen were pierced with sympathetic curiosity. You must realize, Jasper, that you are not a sparrow, to float unnoticed from ledge ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... all through, and got out into the sunlight, we breathed free, and when clad got his second wind he broke up the English officers by taking out a pencil and piece of paper, and asked them what they would take for the rock and its contents, and move out, and let the American flag float over it. Well, say, they were hot, and they told dad to go plum to 'ell, but dad wouldn't do it. He said America didn't want the old stone quarry, anyway, and if it did it could come and take it. I guess they would have had dad arrested for treason, only when we got out into the town there was the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... Indian and the white, which spoils both. It was a lovely morning; not a breath of air stirred the wide expanse of the Huron, as far as the eye could scan; and the canoe, as it floated along side of the landing-place, appeared as if it were poised in the air, so light did it float, and so clear and transparent are these northern waters. We started, and in two hours arrived at Goose Island, unpoetical in its name, but in itself full of beauty. As you stand on the beach, you can look down through the water on ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... clapboards. "Friend," says one man, "how is the tide now?"—this being important to the onward progress. They make fast to a tree, in order to wait for the tide to rise a little higher. It would be pleasant enough to float down the Kennebec on one of these rafts, letting the river conduct you onward at its own pace, leisurely displaying to you all the wild or ordered beauties along its banks, and perhaps running you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... they rise from the spray brushed by your arm as you pass, they settle down in front of you—a rain of insects, a coloured shower. Legion is a little word for the butterflies; the dry pastures among the woods are brown with meadow-brown; blues and coppers float in endless succession; all the nations of Xerxes' army were but a handful to these. In their millions they have perished; but somewhere, coiled up, as it were, and sealed under the snow, there must have been the mothers ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies



Words linked to "Float" :   smoothen, bobber, blow, chip, interval, transport, examine, move, cork, launch, smooth, waft, flotation, travel, raft, presentation, sac, prove, bob, test, try, locomote, drink, time interval, convert, hand tool, root beer float, preserver, ride, sink, stock, flotation device, life preserver, tide, essay, go, masonry, stream, artefact, buoy, pontoon, try out, artifact, value, change over, display



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