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Volatile   /vˈɑlətəl/   Listen
Volatile

adjective
1.
Evaporating readily at normal temperatures and pressures.  "Volatile solvents"
2.
Liable to lead to sudden change or violence.  Synonym: explosive.  "A volatile situation with troops and rioters eager for a confrontation"
3.
Marked by erratic changeableness in affections or attachments.  Synonym: fickle.  "A flirt's volatile affections"
4.
Tending to vary often or widely.  "Volatile emotions"



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"Volatile" Quotes from Famous Books



... necessary medically as it was judicially. The removal was made with the utmost caution, and was calculated to produce a great public effect. Pierrette was laid on a mattress and carried on a stretcher by two men; a Gray Sister walked beside her with a bottle of sal volatile in her hand, while the grandmother, Brigaut, Madame Auffray, and her maid followed. People were at their windows and doors to see the procession pass. Certainly the state in which they saw Pierrette, pale ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... the education of both the young men, otherwise as excellent as the best teachers could render it, something of a narrow and restricted character; but though the disposition of the young Earl was lighter and more volatile than that of Julian, both the one and the other had profited, in a considerable degree, by the opportunities afforded them. It was Lady Derby's strict injunction to her son, now returning from the continent, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... left me. She was very erratic, and before she left the room she had quite got over her depression. The sun shone out, and with the gleam of brightness her volatile spirits rose. ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... long since subsided, and much of what was then seething has gone off in vapor or other volatile products. But some very solid matters have also been precipitated, some crystals of poetry translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... surmounting the difficulties of her lessons. But she was very young; and although, as her father declared, it was her natur' to run after the men, there was every reason to hope that a year or two would render her less volatile, and add to those sterling good qualities which she really possessed. In heart and feeling she was a modest girl, although the buoyancy of her spirits often carried her beyond the bounds prescribed by decorum, and ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... appearance of this cavalcade not only attracted the curiosity of Wamba, but excited even that of his less volatile companion. The monk he instantly knew to be the Prior of Jorvaulx Abbey, well known for many miles around as a lover of the chase, of the banquet, and, if fame did him not wrong, of other worldly pleasures still more inconsistent with ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... redder than the wattles of a turkey-cock, exhausted himself in well-chosen expressions. Paul increased the use of these by fixing a day for his departure. The female Beecot retired to bed with the assistance of a maid, burnt feathers and sal volatile, and the male, as a last and clinching argument, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... not seem right. And is it not surprising to find the spring has come again to this world? The almond tree might be an untimely, thoughtless, and happy stranger. What does it want with us? That spiritual and tinted fire with which its life burns touches and kindles no responsive and volatile essence in us. I passed a hedge-bank which looked south and was reviving. There were crumbs and nuggets of chalk in it, and they were as remarkable to me this year as though I had once seen those flecks of white showing through the herbage ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... And death. Watch! The little metal cylinder is plugged still, but in a moment that plug will disappear—simply a volatile solid, you understand. It is going rapidly ... rapidly ... it is almost gone now! Watch ... In an instant ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... such discussions; but when you wish to be amused by the thing itself, it is somewhat disappointing to be presented with metaphysical analysis. It is like instituting an examination of the glass and cork of a champagne bottle, and a chemical testing of the wine. In the very process the volatile and sparkling draught which was to delight the palate has become like ditch water, vapid and dead. What I mean is, that, call it wit or humour, or what you please, there is a school of Scottish pleasantry, amusing and characteristic beyond all other. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... of fidelity. To see him leave her, was the first trial she knew. The pang was severe; but his devotion was such, that she doubted not his faith, and most indignantly would she have repudiated the idea that his love for her could lessen; but his disposition was naturally volatile, and once away from her, and within the blandishments of other beauty, he could not resist its power. He became enslaved by the fascinations of another, and poor Helen was almost forgotten. Painfully ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French

... country, refused to glorify warfare or chant new hymns of hate. Like Sassoon, Graves also reacts against the storm of fury and blood-lust (see his poem "To a Dead Boche"), but, fortified by a lighter and more whimsical spirit, where Sassoon is violent, Graves is volatile; where Sassoon is bitter, Graves ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... he was at once an actor and spectator in the scene. If anything, he is too various and flexible; too full of transitions, of glancing lights, of salient points. If Chaucer followed up his subject too doggedly, perhaps Shakespeare was too volatile and heedless. The Muse's wing too often lifted him off his feet. He made infinite excursions to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... much virtue in horsehair. Few who attended the informal opening of the Third Parliament of KING GEORGE THE FIFTH would have guessed that under the full-bottomed wig and gorgeous black-and-gold robes of the dignified figure on the Woolsack lay the volatile personality of "F. E." He played his new part nobly. A trifling error in the setting of his three-cornered hat, whose rakish cock was for the moment reminiscent of the "Galloper," was quickly corrected on the advice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various

... biography from thirty years of "Moniteurs," the author of Waverley, like Lord Chesterfield's diamond pencil, produced one miracle of dulness; it might well be feared that Kinglake's volatile pen, when linked with forceful feeling and bound to rigid task-work, might lose the charm of casual epigram, easy luxuriance, playful egotism, vagrant allusion, which established "Eothen" as a classic. On the other hand, he had been for twenty years conversant with ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... viviga. Vixen vulpino. Viz nome, tio estas, t.e. Vizier veziro. Vocabulary vortareto. Vocal vocxa. Vocalist kantisto. Vocation profesio, inklino, emo. Voice vocxo. Voice (vote) vocxdono. Void (empty) malplena. Void (null) nuliga. Void (emptiness) malplenajxo. Volatile (fickle) flirtema. Volatilise vaporigi. Vol-au-vent pastecxo. Volcano vulkano. Volcanic vulkana. Volley (gun firing) pafilado. Voluble babilema, fluantparola. Volume (book) volumo. Volume (size) dikeco. Voluminous ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... than anything," exclaimed Rachel in an agony, springing to her feet, and flying after sal volatile, but feeling frightfully helpless without Grace, the manager of all Mrs. Curtis's ailments and troubles. Grace would have let her quietly cry it out. Rachel's remedies and incoherent protestations of all being her own fault only made things worse, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... illustration of "parlour comedy," his "Love in '76" is a satisfactory example of sprightliness and fresh inventiveness. For this reason, the small comedietta is included in the present collection. It challenges comparison with Royall Tyler's "The Contrast" for manner, and its volatile spirit involved in the acting the good services of such estimable players as Laura Keene, Stoddart, and Ringgold. In the cast also was J.G. Burnett, author of "Blanche of Brandywine," a dramatization of a novel by George Lippard, also ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... three shelves, and two small drawers. Ranged on the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. They contained colorless volatile essences, of the nature of which I shall only say that they were not poisons—phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... For, sooner than expected, the volatile fluid— or whatever it may be—passes out of their veins, and their nervous strength returns; even Ludwig saying he is himself again, though he is not quite ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... giving utterance to various expressions of pity and condolence, as if she were one of the most suffering mortals on earth. Being conveyed into the front parlour, she was there deposited on a sofa; and the lady from the first floor running up to the first floor, returned with a bottle of sal-volatile, which, holding Mrs. Raddle tight round the neck, she applied in all womanly kindness and pity to her nose, until that lady with many plunges and struggles was fain to declare ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Abdurrahman, named Hisham Al-Mutadd; whom the inhabitants, after expelling the troops of the Beni-Hammud in 1027, invited to ascend the throne of his ancestors. "He was a mild and enlightened prince and possessed many brilliant qualities; but notwithstanding this, the volatile and degenerate citizens of Cordova grew discontented with him, and he was deposed by the army in 422, (A.D. 1031.) He left the capital and retired to Lerida, where he died in 428, (A.D. 1036.) He was the last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... had no difficulty in looking day in the face. The world was miraculously renewed. It rose, and received the newborn of Aurora in its arms. There were clouds of pearl above hills of chrysoprase. The sea ran in volatile flames. The shadows on the bright deck shot to and fro as we rolled. The breakfast bell rang not too soon. This ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... suitable substance for dissolving in nitro- glycerine, in order to lower the freezing point of the latter, must have a relatively low molecular weight, must not appreciably diminish the explosive power and stability of the explosive, and must not be easily volatile at relatively high atmospheric temperatures; it should, if possible, be a solvent of nitro-cellulose, and in every case must not have a prejudicial influence on ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... hair, was upturned from below in an expression of tragic fretfulness. It was the uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself unwatched. Hilda moved silently to descend, and then demanded in a low tone whose harsh self-possession was a reproof to that volatile creature, her mother: ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... 0.25 gram each. Dissolve these in hot dilute sulphuric acid (5 cc. of concentrated acid and 100 cc. of water), using a covered flask to avoid loss by spattering. Boil the solution for two or three minutes after the iron has dissolved to remove any volatile hydrocarbons. Meanwhile prepare the reductor for use as follows: Connect the vacuum bottle with the suction pump and pour into the funnel at the top warm, dilute sulphuric acid, prepared by adding 5 cc. of concentrated ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... which I stand largely in my own debt, I have constituted myself Petronius-Priest and Maecenas-Messiah volatile volatiliser of words, and that, jeweled judge, I love by my cameos and filigrees of speech to represent the Taste of which ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... Psmith had confided to Mike, meeting him at the station in the family motor on the Monday, 'is a man of vast but volatile brain. He has not that calm, dispassionate outlook on life which marks your true philosopher, such ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had still further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content to arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an upper social ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... kosmos concentre in the real body, and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts are shower'd over with light—the daylight is lit with more volatile light—the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty—the multiplication table its—old age its —the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... mingled with a free volatile acid, are also found in the perspiration. It is the acid which imparts to this secretion its peculiar odor, and acid reaction. The process of its secretion is continuous, but, like all bodily functions, it is subject to influences which ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... agreeable to expatiate in a general field of controversy,—than to remain tethered to distinct points. It was particularly in these confused conferences, where neither party was entirely sincere, that the volatile word was thought preferable to the permanent letter. Already so many watery lines had been traced, in the course of these fluctuating negotiations, that a few additional records would be if necessary, as rapidly effaced as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... at once volatile and of a languid frame, which could not long repel the enticements of wine and passionate excess, liable to petty rages, incapable of concentration, with no power of remembering anything but a benefit, lavish fawners, but not hearty haters, easily persuaded, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... moiety of a fortune by marrying the young, gay Miranda, but cannot rest without securing to himself the portion of the elder sister as well. Althea's thoughtful and less volatile nature has hitherto resisted the assaults of love, but her insidious brother-in-law undermines her virtue by giving her wanton books and tempting her with soft speeches until she yields to his wishes. When he attempts to make her sign a deed of gift instead of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... criminal gratification. A daughter whose sole delight is in her rapid transitions from one scene of expensive brilliancy to another, who dissipates every care and fills every hour among the frivolities and fascinations of her volatile society,—she leads a life than which nothing can be imagined more opposite to a life of preparation for the coming judgment or the coming eternity. Yet she reaps rather than sows. It lies with another to gather the money which purchaseth all things, and with her ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody

... friend, it is de fortune of war. Why you so sad?" exclaimed the volatile Frenchman. "Another day we take two English ship, and then make all right. Have you never been in England? Fine country, but not equal to 'la belle France;' too ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... rather than curse. Of course Caroline had done her harm, she had, perhaps ruined Martin's life as well as her own, but the mistake had been originally Maggie's in trusting Caroline with more confidence than her volatile nature would allow her to hold. And now, as she looked at Caroline and saw that pretty pink and white face, the slim beautiful body, the grace and gaiety, and childish amiability, her whole soul responded. Here was a friend, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... of Plautus attained a permanent position in ihe theatrical repertoire of Rome is of course well known; but he wrote primarily for his own age, and in a difficult environment. Not only did he have to please a highly volatile and inflammable public, but he must have been forced to exercise tact to avoid offending the patrician powers, as the imprisonment of Naevius indicates. Mommsen has an apt summary:[55] "Under such circumstances, where art worked for daily wages and the artist instead of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... appreciable diminution of size or weight of the radio-active substance. "A gram of such substance," says Sir Oliver Lodge, "might lose a few thousand of atoms a second, and yet we could not detect the loss if we continued to weigh it for a century." The volatile essences of organic bodies which we detect in odors and flavors, are not potent like the radium emanations. We can confine them and control them, but we cannot control the rays of radio-active matter any more than we can confine a spirit. We can separate the three different kinds ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... next day, as we sat together over a late breakfast. "It would have been a miracle if she had not; but if I had known the interview was to be followed by such unpleasant consequences I shouldn't have asked her down. I was wandering about for hours looking for an imaginary bottle of sal-volatile Jane described as being in her sitting-room: and Jane herself was up till late—or rather early—this morning, trying to soothe Mrs. Molyneux, who does not appear to have found the ghost quite such pleasant company as she expected. Oh yes, Jane is down; she breakfasted ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... on the nerves of the nose. This is an invariable rule; and, when we perceive an odor, we may be sure that parts of the material, from which it emanates, are escaping. If we perceive the odor of an apple, it is because parts of the volatile oils of the apple enter the nose. The same is true when we ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... of page and secretary I followed Joan to the council. She entered that presence with the bearing of a grieved goddess. What was become of the volatile child that so lately was enchanted with a ribbon and suffocated with laughter over the distress of a foolish peasant who had stormed a funeral on the back of a bee-stung bull? One may not guess. Simply it was gone, and had left no sign. She moved straight to the council-table, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... doubt that the oil, which was specially volatile, tended to vaporize and escape through the stoppers, and that this process was accelerated by the perishing, and I suggest also the hardening and shrinking, of the leather washers. Another expedition will have to be very ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... in his Treatise on the ulcerous sore Throat, p. 54, &c. condemns the Use of the volatile alcaline Salts, in Fevers of the putrid, pestilential, or petechial kind, as being apt to heat too much, and to hasten the Dissolution and consequent Putrefaction of the Blood. However, I cannot help thinking ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling, which I gave an account of in my first setting out into the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, the volatile part be fully evacuated, or at least condensed, and I might at sixty-one years of age have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing life ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... that problem embraces the total mystery of volatile power in substance; and of the visible states consequent on sudden—and presumably, therefore, imperfect—vaporization; as the smoke of frankincense, or the sacred fume of modern devotion which now fills the inhabited world, as that of the rose and violet its deserts. What,—it would ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... dear for the honour of being republicans, that we have no farther inclination for it. A federal government may suit a country with a scanty population, like Switzerland; or a new nation, like America; but it would be a calamity to our old France: we are too volatile, too impassioned; we want a ruler, a master who knows how to make himself obeyed. Hark you, M. Werner, I must continue to speak to you frankly: the only chief, that suits us, is Napoleon: no longer Napoleon the ambitious ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... of his being that all the evening had sought release. The vehicle of his yearnings, passionately summoned, leaped to the ancient call of the Earth's eternally young life. This vital essence of his personality, volatile as air and fierce as lightning, flashed outwards from its hidden prison where it lay choked and smothered by the weights and measures of modern life. For the beauty and splendor of that far voice wrung his very heart and set it free. He knew a quasi-physical wrench of detachment. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius and true nobility of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands that know better how to treat them. The matter is foreign to the man, and is not of him; the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... the latest fashion just as his exquisite necktie indicated the proper colour.[1624] He was equally particular about his conduct. Whatever his environment he observed the details of court etiquette. His stately elegance of manner easily unbent without loss of dignity, and although his volatile spirits and manner of living gave him the appearance of a bon vivant, lively and jocose, with less devotion to work than to society, it was noticeable that he attracted men of severer mould as easily as those vivacious ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... are a pungent odour, very much resembling that of bitter-almonds, with a hot but sweetish taste, and extremely volatile. It contains azote, with which no other vegetable acid is combined; it is largely used in the manufacture of Prussian blue. It is the most violent of all poisons, and destroys animals by being applied to the skin only. It is stated by an able chemist, that a single drop ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when Aziza had led him out of the underground walls—the very bit of pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile creature had effected ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... coal and flux.—By coal is here meant charcoal; when any other species of fuel is alluded to, it will be specified. In the upper half of the fire-room the materials are subjected to a comparatively low temperature, and they lose only the moisture, volatile matter, hydrogen, and carbonic acid, that they may contain; this change taking place principally in the lower part of the upper half ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... why I am no colourist. That is why I worship the inexorable rigour of form. We of the South, Mr. Heard, are drenched in volatile beauty. . . . And yet one never wearies of these things! It is what you call a glamour, an interlude of witchcraft. Nature is a-tremble with the miraculous. She beckons us to explore her strange places. She says: Tread here, my friend—and here; tread where ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... things on the table which I had not previously noticed, and one of these was a circular object covered with a cloth. He removed this covering, and showed me a crystal globe which appeared to be full of some strange volatile fluid, clear in itself, but intersected with endless floating ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... which a savage dreamer or seer would feel after a dream or vision in which he visited remote places, would satisfy him that his soul, at least, was volatile. But some experience of what he would take to be visits from the spirits of others, would be needed before he recognised that other men, as well as he, had the faculty of sending ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... a soothing way, still busying myself with the arrangement of my button-hole, and secretly wondering what new emotion was at work in the volatile mind of my victim. "No doubt it was distressing to witness—but you could not have been very sorry—he was an old man, and, though it is a platitude not worth repeating—we ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... is now changed by the fermentation; it contains no longer the same principles, but has acquired those which it had not, which are volatile, and evaporate easily. They must therefore be managed carefully, in order not to lose the fruits of an already tedious labor. The spirit already created in the fermented liquor, must be collected ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie

... plentiful than in Mars and Venus, as Man and Wife, their bodies therefore are destroyed, and the tinging Spirit taken out of them, which makes Gold sanguin, being first opened and prepared, and by their food and drink it becomes volatile, wherefore this volatile Gold being satisfied with its food and drink, assumes its own bloud to it self, dries it up by its own internal heat, by the help and assistance of the vaporous fire, and there is a Conquest again, which is quite fix'd, makes the highest Constancy, that the Gold becomes ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus

... removed from the hands by rubbing with the outside of fresh, orange or lemon peel and drying immediately. The volatile oils dissolve the tar so that it ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... the encroachment of a too practical age on the old romance. "Fainting" was the regular thing in the Pickwickian days, in any agitation; "burnt feathers" and the "sal volatile" being the remedy. The beautiful, tender and engaging creatures we see in the annuals, all fainted regularly—and knew how to faint—were perhaps taught it. Thus when Mr. Pickwick was assumed to have "proposed" to his landlady, she in business-like fashion actually "fainted;" ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... the dreadful weight of his recent work on America, fortunately espied the youngest son of the enraged and disappointed vendor of volumes actually flying a kite formed of a portion of the first volume. "Heavy," retorted Silk, "nonsense, sir. Look there! so volatile and exciting is that masterly production, that it has even made that youthful scion of an obdurate line, spite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... good, sound sense and a warm heart. She was a frequent guest at their house. Mrs. Gray liked her, though deploring her occasional indulgence in slang. Mr. Gray enjoyed her racy conversation, and Hubert professed a dislike of her volatile qualities. This last fact grieved Winifred, who liked her friend ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... the charcoal support where we wish to reduce metallic oxides, to prevent oxidation, or to test the fusibility of a substance. There is another point to which we would direct the student. Those metals which are volatile in the reduction flame, appear as oxides in the oxidation flame. These oxides make sublimates upon the charcoal close in the vicinity of the substance, or where it rested, and by their peculiar color indicate pretty correctly the species ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... is the "milky mangrove," or river poison tree, alias "blind-your-eyes" (EXCAECARIA AGALLOCHA). In India the sap of this tree is called tiger's milk. It issues from the slightest incision of the bark, and is so volatile that no one, however careful, can obtain even a small quantity without being affected by it. There is an acrid, burning sensation in the throat, inflamed eyes and headache, while a single drop falling into the eyes will, it is believed, cause ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... only afraid, that when we are married, and begin to settle into a calm, my volatile disposition will carry me back to coquetry: my passion for admiration is naturally strong, and has been increased by indulgence; for without vanity I have been extremely the taste of ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... President of the United States at New York on April 30, 1789. No Englishman or American, who is reasonably familiar with the history of either of these periods, will hastily attribute the phenomena of modern French politics to something essentially volatile and unstable in the character of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... alluvial earth, and sowed the whole broadcast in February and March, and harrowed it in, on the top of the wheat I sowed at the rate of 200 lbs. of guano to the acre; the value of which, no doubt, was doubled by the mixture with the absorbents of the ammonia, which is so exceedingly volatile even when left for a few hours, is easily dissipated by the March winds. On this land, I had sown in October previous, clover, timothy, Kentucky blue grass, and Italian ray grass. My harvest has now been over, three weeks, and I have never had a finer stand of all these, even ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of phial; so that at every glance you find a smaller and less volatile residuum." ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... First, we, or others for us, have examined various objects which yielded under the given circumstances a dark spot with the given property, and found that they possessed the properties connoted by the word arsenic; they were metallic, volatile, their vapor had a smell of garlic, and so forth. Next, we, or others for us, have examined various specimens which possessed this metallic and volatile character, whose vapor had this smell, etc., and have invariably found that they were poisonous. The first observation we judge that we may ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... been any smelling salts or sal volatile in this subdivision of the Ethiopian region, I should have forthwith fainted on reading this, but I well knew there was not, so I blushed until the steam from my soaking clothes (for I truly was "in a deuce of a mess") went up in a cloud and then, just as I was, I went "across" and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... obtained from combining the fuel pump and injection valve is the ability of an engine so equipped to burn a wide variety of fuels. The elimination of the above-mentioned type of high-pressure tubing reduces the possibility of a vapor lock occurring, thereby permitting more volatile fuels to be burned. This increases the range of hydrocarbon fuels the engine can utilize. It could run on any type of hydrocarbon from gasoline to ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer

... of conscience in his mental operations, than a new-born sorrow or sympathy, wrung out of a heart naturally obdurate, by the anguish of a personal experience of the pain he himself had produced in another, who had the strongest claims on his protection and love. His mind, though volatile and wandering, and not far from verging on delirium, was not yet deranged; and I was about to put a question to him concerning his wife, whom he had not directly mentioned to me, when the door opened, and the still pale and emaciated figure of Mrs. P——, dressed in a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands signed, but not ratified: Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... impression which the favourable exterior of this young man had at first inspired. She accuses herself with finding him so handsome, and seems to fortify her heart against the fascination of his looks. "Barbaroux is volatile," she said; "the adoration he receives from worthless women destroys the seriousness of his feelings. When I see such fine young men too conceited at the impression they make, like Barbaroux and Herault de Sechelles, I cannot help thinking that they adore themselves too ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... been consulting me—the women in tears. He will marry his grandchildren's German governess, and there is nothing to be done. In such cases nothing is ever to be done. You can easily distract an aged man's volatile affections, and attach them to a new charmer. But she is just as ineligible as the first; marry he will, always a young woman. Now if a respectable virgin or widow of, say, fifty, could hand him a love philtre, and gain his heart, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... can practice. However, I am willing to admit that the dear old man would be more edifying if he would study his lesson a little. Wasn't it funny to think of calling that 'teaching?'" And then this volatile young lady laughed. But her moralizing had done ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... no more of this," said Dr. May, seeing that the discussion was injuring Margaret more and more. "Go away to my study, sir, and wait till I come to you. All of you out of the room. Flora, fetch the sal volatile." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June, kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their thumbs, quarrelling over half-farthings, irresponsible, volatile, free and happy; and, no sooner do they catch sight of you than they recollect that they have an industry, and that they must earn their living, and they offer to sell you an old woollen stocking filled with cockchafers, or a bunch of lilacs. These encounters ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... and instructive phenomena of nature; the resolutions and combinations that are formed during the process of the vinous and acetous stages of fermentation, are interesting, beyond comparison, to the brewer, malt and molasses distillers, vintager, cider and vinegar maker, &c. The elastic fluids and volatile principles that are extricated and escape, formerly so little attended to, are now better understood. The method of commodiously saving, and advantageously applying them, and other volatile products, to the improvement of the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... New France. In the midst stood the stately Marquis, gorgeous in vice-regal robes and attended by a suite of nobles and gallants from the court of Fontainebleau. The mysteries and wonders of the West had stirred the romantic minds of the volatile courtiers, and the mission to convert New France to the Catholic faith gave to De Tracy's expedition the complexion ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... volatile, capricious, but generous as the day. Be open with her; tell her why you leave Oakhurst and how impossible it ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... down out of the reach of vegetation the soluble fertilizing matters, especially the nitrates, for which the soil has no retentive power; and in the second place, from the porosity of the soil, the air has too great access, so that the vegetable and animal matters of manures decay too rapidly, their volatile portions, ammonia and carbonic acid, escape into the atmosphere, and are in measure lost to the crops. From these combined causes we find that a heavy dressing of well-rotted stable manure, almost if not entirely, ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... excess to another, till an indulgent parent was reduced by his means to very great embarrassments. Young Boyse was of all men the farthest removed from a gentleman; he had no graces of person, and fewer still of conversation. To this cause it was perhaps owing, that his wife, naturally of a very volatile sprightly temper, either grew tired of him, or became enamour'd of variety. It was however abundantly certain, that she pursued intrigues with other men; and what is still more surprising, not without the knowledge of her husband, who had either too ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... allowed her for preparation Kitty continued charmed with Hayden's idea of a butterfly dinner. It suited her volatile fancy. Her enthusiasm remained at high pitch, and she exerted herself to the utmost in behalf of her favorite cousin. As a consequence, although she made a pretense of consulting Hayden about the various arrangements, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... published his Theory of Moral Sentiments, written with sufficient power of style to obscure its inner poverty of thought. The book brought him immediately a distinguished reputation from a public which exalted elegance of diction beyond all literary virtues. The volatile Charles Townshend made him tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch, through whom Smith not only secured comparative affluence for the rest of his days, but also a French tour in which he met at its best the most brilliant society in Europe. The germ of his Wealth of Nations already ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... alone, and of which she could not willingly have admitted any one to partake but the lovely child who was presented to her for this purpose. Her beautiful form prejudiced everyone in her favour; but the distress and sorrow which were impressed on her countenance, at an age generally too volatile and thoughtless to be deeply affected, could not fail of exciting a tender sensibility in the heart of a person of Miss ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... eating half a dozen of them, they were secured against drunkenness, however deeply they might imbibe. Almonds, however, are considered as very indigestible. The bitter contain, too, principles which produce two violent poisons,—prussic acid and a kind of volatile oil. It is consequently dangerous to eat them in large quantities. Almonds pounded together with a little sugar and water, however, produce a milk similar to that which is yielded by animals. Their oil is used for making fine soap, and their cake as ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... of ground beetles (Carabidae) almost all possess a disagreeable and some a very pungent smell, and a few, called bombardier beetles, have the peculiar faculty of emitting a jet of very volatile liquid, which appears like a puff of smoke, and is accompanied by a distinct crepitating explosion. It is probably because these insects are mostly nocturnal and predacious that they do not present more vivid hues. They are chiefly remarkable for brilliant metallic tints or dull red patches ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... manner this volatile young savage entertained me all through the dinner, utterly superficial herself, yet possessed of a singular sharpness and wit, mostly at my expense; yet she was so charming I forgave her. There is no denying ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... macrocosm, returned to his chamber, put on kid gloves, and from the odds and ends of his dishevelled wits wrote at a gallop, without ever looking back, his "Mysteres de Paris." The latter lived in an attic year after year, contemplated with cheerful anxiety the volatile world of France and the perplexed life of man, and elaborated word by word, with innumerable revisions, his short songs, which are gems of poetry, charming at once the ear and the heart. Novels are perhaps too easily written to be of lasting value. An unpremeditated word, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... affable, without Meanness; generous, without View; and hospitable, without Reserve: In their Converse, easy; in their Dealings just; placable in their Resentments, in their Friendship steady:—They have neither the volatile Airyness of the Frenchman, the stated Gravity of the Spaniard; the supicious Jealousy of the Italian; the forbidding Haughtiness of the German; the saturnine Gloominess of the Flandrican, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... did not last very long with the volatile youth; for, truth to say, the sudden dereliction of mortality on the part of his quarrelsome old father, did not come altogether amiss to him. What hindered him now from wedding the girl of his heart, and leading as jolly a life as any? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... volatile friend, becoming suddenly grave, "leave Blue-eyes behind me! leave the mitigator of my woes, the doubler of my joys, the light of my life behind me! No, Mrs Naranovitsch, Blue-eyes is necessary to my existence; she inspires my pen and corrects my spelling; she lifts my soul, when required, above ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... trained for a race of troops may go along into the field. Only the man versed in statecraft should be allowed to participate in the talk about the results of war. Not he who has out yonder proved an unworthy diplomat, nor the dilettante loafer sprayed with the perfume of volatile emotions. Manhood liability to military service requires manhood suffrage? That question may rest for the time being; likewise the desire for equality of that right shall not be argued today. But common sense should warn against the assumption of an office without the slightest special preliminary ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Stevens, "in the natural world, a little, spotted, contemptible animal, which is armed by nature with a fetid, volatile, penetrating virus, which so pollutes whoever attacks it as to make him offensive to himself and all around him for a long time. Indeed, he is almost incapable of purification. Nothing, sir, no insult, shall ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... remarked at some length," said Constance, "upon the importance of young ladies having some attendance when they are out late in the evening, and that you in particular were one of those persons—he didn't say, but he intimated, of a slightly volatile disposition,—whom their friends ought ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... a word, the preceding events had a powerful effect upon her nervous system, and she was ordered much quiet and sal-volatile by her ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... she. "Is it because I chid you, child? Nay, you need not take that to heart; it is just my way: I can bear anything but my hair pulled." With this she rose and poured some drops of sal-volatile into water, and put it to her secret rival's lips: it was kindly done, but with that sort of half contemptuous and thoroughly cold pity women are apt to show to women, and especially when one of them is Mistress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... upright position, pulling himself up by holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less volatile. He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... desire for this gratification, we may degrade its tendency, and corrupt its effects. We may substitute stimulants to the senses for elevation to the principle, or softening of the heart. By abandoning its direction to the most volatile and licentious of the community, we may render it an instrument of evil instead of good, and pervert the powers of genius, the magic of art, the fascinations of beauty, to the destruction instead of the elevation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... load. Two hundred convicts were engaged in shovelling down the guano, and a number of stout negroes are employed in the hold to distribute it as it comes down through a canvas shoot. They have to wear iron masks, as the fresh guano is stronger than volatile salts, and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... manner of growth to the preceding, is another importation from Europe now thoroughly at home here in wet soil. The volatile oil obtained by distilling its leaves has long been an important item of trade in Wayne County, New York. One has only to crush the leaves in one's hand to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... lucky discovery for travellers who are confined constantly to animal food. Lucien examined the small white flowers, which have obtained for all its family the name of Cruciferae; these vegetables contain an acrid and volatile oil, which gives them strong anti-scorbutic qualities. The cabbage (Brassica oleracea), turnip (B. napus), radish (Raphanus sativus), and mustard (Sinapis alba), are of the crucifera order. To this list we must also add the ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... Didots, and an honoured guest at the houses of the citoyens Saint-Pierre and Florian. Not that, as an obedient daughter should, she held her father's consent to be an indispensable preliminary to her settlement in life. The latter, early left a widower, and a man of a self-indulgent, volatile temper, as enterprising with women as he was in business, had never paid much heed to her and had left her to develop at her own sweet will, untrammelled whether by parental advice or parental affection, more careful to ignore than to safeguard ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... be useful to subjoin the able development of her character which appeared in the Quarterly Review for May, 1811, in its critique on her Letters to Walpole:—"This lady seems to have united the lightness of the French character with the solidity of the English. She was easy and volatile, yet judicious and acute; sometimes profound and sometimes superficial. She had a wit playful, abundant, and well-toned; an admirable conception of the ridiculous, and great skill in exposing it; a turn for satire, which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... [Footnote: Spectator 109.] and 'very frequently' [Footnote: Spectator 125.] repeats his old stories—Sir Andrew, with his joke about the sea and the British common, [Footnote: Spectator 2.] and his tenderness for his old friend and opponent [Footnote: Spectator 517.]—the volatile Will Honeycomb, whose gallantry and care of his person [Footnote: Spectator 2, 359.] remind us of his successor, Major Pendennis—these are all in their degree intimate friends or acquaintances, as living in our ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... that Mrs. Ralston gravely arose and rebuked her. She never suffered any nervous qualms when dealing with this volatile friend of hers. "It is more than foolish," she said with decision; "it is wicked, to talk like that. I will not sit and listen to you. You have a very mischievous brain, Netta. You ought to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... proud of this sister, and perhaps just a little afraid of her; but of course that latter fact was not obvious to strangers; she was only a shade less volatile than usual in Geraldine's presence. Geraldine was the beauty of the Challoner family, and her career had been a failure hitherto; so that there was much rejoicing, in a quiet way, now that Lady Geraldine's destiny was apparently decided, and in an ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... you must remember I had arranged with myself to marry this girl, but I could not work my feelings into a state of indignation against the heir to Rutland. The truth is, my hope of winning Dorothy had evaporated upon the first sight of her, like the volatile essence it really was. I cannot tell you why, but I at once seemed to realize that all the thought and labor which I had devoted to the arduous task of arranging with myself this marriage was labor lost. So I frankly told her my kindly feelings for Sir John, and gave ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... used, and it was of course as repeatedly washed; yet every time, for a space of one year and seven months, when first unfolded, I distinctly perceived the odour. This appears an astonishing instance of the permanence of some matter, which nevertheless in its nature must be most subtile and volatile. Frequently, when passing at the distance of half a mile to leeward of a herd, I have perceived the whole air tainted with the effluvium. I believe the smell from the buck is most powerful at the period when its horns are perfect, or free from the hairy ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Spare, in which he angrily includes French conspirators, vile French women, organ grinders (the artist's peculiar abomination), and other foreign refuse of an objectionable character. Further on, he follows up the subject in A Discussion Forum (!) as Imagined by our Volatile Friends, which represents a party of English conspirators from a French point of view. They wear the peaked hats, long cravats, long hair, boots, and inexpressibles peculiar to the Reign of Terror, and carry knives, revolvers, axes, and other weapons of destruction; ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... nimble wits of a fox, and the blood which raced in his veins was volatile as quicksilver. The same glance which showed him the gray automobile stealing softly across the network of car-lines of one of the city's main thoroughfares revealed a roundsman crossing ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... supposed that in these lower regions there were heavens, earth and sea, fruits and flowers, planting, fishing and cooking, marrying and giving in marriage—all very much as in the world from which they had gone. Their new bodies, however, were singularly volatile, could ascend at night, become luminous sparks or vapour, revisit their former homes and retire again at early dawn to the bush or to the Pulotu hades. These visits were dreaded, as they were supposed to be errands of destruction to the living, especially ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... other, "do you know anything about chemistry—volatile essences, noxious drugs, subtle poisons? I do." (Here Tom Ryfe observed his ally turn pale.) "Permit me to remark, sir, that if you don't, you are like a school-boy carrying a pocketful of squibs and crackers ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... himself, had ceased to preserve his unrelaxing watchfulness; after all, it had been the highwaymen rather than the red men whom he had most feared—and after two years it did not seem likely that such volatile men would pre ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... the "Spider" was desperately in love with Heathcote. As long as that volatile youth had owned his allegiance and proved amenable to his influence, so long had Pledge liked the boy and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... the horizon; a deeper feeling, I say, not perhaps more acute, but having more of spiritual hope and longing, less of animal and present life, more manifest, invariably, in those of more serious and determined mind, (I use the word serious, not as being opposed to cheerful, but to trivial and volatile;) but, I think, marked and unfailing even in those of the least thoughtful dispositions. I am willing to let it rest on the determination of every reader, whether the pleasure which he has received from these effects of calm and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... volatile damsel. "Not a doubt of it. That's my style, you know. But I have some sense; I know who's who. Now, Jones, junior, make your man handle the ribbons. I've always had a grudge against that ordinance about fast driving, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... previously, for the length of time given. Greens and vegetables of delicate flavor are blanched most successfully by steaming either in a colander placed over boiling water or in a steamer. (Steaming greens prevents the escape of volatile oils and other materials.) Pack the vegetables in jars to within 1/2 inch of the top. It is well not to pack spinach and other greens too solidly in jars. Since lima beans, corn, and peas swell during ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... consuming animal unchanged, and are then thrown out by secreting glands on the skin. This is the case with the odorous substance of onions. People do not smell of onions after they have eaten them in consequence of particles of onion remaining in the mouth. The volatile odoriferous matter of the onion is absorbed into the blood. It passes out first through the lungs and later through the small fat-forming glands in the skin. It is difficult to ascertain how far animals derive their odours in this way in a complete ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... yellow fluid it contained for a moment, she took out the glass stopper, and, smelling at it, perceived it to be a very subtle and volatile spirit. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... amongst the rest, Marguerite, Duchess de Rohan, Madame de Guemene, Madame de Chaulnes, Madame de St. Geran, Madame de Sable, the Countess de St. Maure, and many others, under the influence of whose bright eyes those volatile and valiant French gentlemen delighted to cross swords. And there many a noble form had been struck down never to rise again, and many a noble heart had throbbed its last. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the duel ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... act as a foreign substance and a mechanical irritant to the human bowels. Next come two inert, indigestible, and very similar gummy bodies, mucilagin and bassorine. Sugar, a powerfully active volatile principle, and a fixed oil (probably allied to turpentine) are the only other invariable constituents of opium belonging to the great organic group of ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... damp and mould that had seeped into the atmosphere as moisture will seep through cellar walls. One would have said that the door of some hideous vault had been opened into my bedchamber. This stench struggled, as it were, with the volatile perfume that clung about the braid; so that my senses were thrust back and forth between disgust and delight in the strangest ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... had been impregnated, though it had been heavy enough to adhere to the fabric for hours, had also been volatile enough to have disappeared completely, leaving a residue which was identified as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... find your heart obtaining the mastery over your vivid and volatile imagination. Well have you said, the maiden being really pretty, any one but Amadeo might think her so. On the banks of the Sorga there are beautiful maids; the woods and the rocks have a thousand times repeated it. I heard but one echo; I heard ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... with quicker step around the periphery of his central circle—incessant is the smacking of his whip—not this time directed against Mr Merriman, who at his ease is enjoying a swim upon the sawdust—and lo! the grooms rush in, six bars are elevated in a trice, and over them all bounds the volatile Signora like a panther, nor pauses until with airy somersets she has passed twice through the purgatory of the blazing hoop, and then, drooping and exhausted, sinks like a Sabine into the arms of the Herculean master, who—a second ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... little hands extended, to catch the butterfly that tempted her on from flower to flower. My brother Henry was two years younger than myself, and was at the time I speak of a remarkably handsome, active boy, of ten years of age—full of fun and mischief, unsteady and volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used to say to me—'How I should like to be an officer, a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... and all our economic and social policies must recognize this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little. One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various



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