"Evanescent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the water-line and are protected by deflective deck armor and frequently by coal as well; the turret has become a permanent and accepted part of the practice of the age, while the monitor type in its essential feature seems to be evanescent. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... another a nation, a race, a philosophy, a political system came to the front and was pushed back again into limbo: Germans and Kelts and Latins, French civilization of the day of Abelard, Provencal civilization of the days of the Raymonds, brilliant and evanescent Hohenstauffen supremacy, papacy at Canossa and at Avignon, Templars triumphant and Templars persecuted; scholasticism, mysticism, feudalism, democracy, communism: influences all these perpetually rising up and being trodden down, till they all rotted away in the great ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... noticed and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards worked out. Nature is the great suggester. It is the artist's business to catch the suggestion and make it his own. For nature seldom works out her own suggestions. The effect as nature gives it is either not complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. But the habit of constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an infinite mine of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... the general practitioner in answer to some interpolation of the outsider's. "I assure you, Manson, one sees all sorts of evanescent forms ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... should be chemically prepared with one or other of the four elements, and for one month exposed to the beams of the sun. These preliminary steps being taken, the initiated immediately had a sight of innumerable beings of a luminous substance, but of thin and evanescent structure, that people the elements on all sides of us. Those who inhabited the air were called Sylphs; and those who dwelt in the earth bore the name of Gnomes; such as peopled the fire were Salamanders; and those who made their home in the waters were Undines. Each class ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... a shallow character; her impressions were keen, but evanescent. The pleasures of sovereignty outweighed the griefs. She felt that the crown was heavy at times, but it adorned her and kept her young; and in spite of the jealousy it gave rise to, the court satisfied her vanity and brought her sufficient consolation. To the satisfaction ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... many characters appear to fill up the interstices of the more important story, so our pages will be interspersed with trifles that have no other object than the moment's approbation—an end which will never be sought for at the expense of others, beyond the evanescent smile of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... young man sat before it facing the wall, while beside him there stood a woman intently tuning a violin which she held tucked under her chin. Approaching middle age, she was rather stout, with a sallow, discontented face, which yet held some traces of its former evanescent prettiness. Both lashes and brows of her faded light eyes were heavily blackened, and the rouge which lay thickly on her cheeks only served to accentuate their haggard lines. The hair, dark at the roots, was blondined to a canary color where it rolled back ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... cartilaginous tip, which usually disappears with age and leaves the older tubercles blunt or retuse), 18 to 25 mm. long and about as wide at base, the upper surface almost plane and smooth, except that it is more or less pulverulent and usually bears a small tomentose pulvillus (often evanescent later) just behind the claw-like tip: flowers rose-color: fruit elongated- oval and reddish. (Ill. Lem. Cact. t. ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... may dispose of in a section by themselves. Those of them that are mythical are too evanescent to become full-grown myths; and those which are religious are too volatile to remain in the solution or salt of any bottled creed. Like the wandering lights of the Russians, answering to our will-o'-the-wisp, they are the souls of still-born children. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... admired by Von Buelow, he revealed the influence of the Hungarian. Profound psychologist he was not; an innovator, like Moussorgsky he never would have been; the tragic eloquence vouchsafed Tschaikovsky was denied him. But he wielded a brush of incomparable richness, he spun the most evanescent and iridescent web, previous to the arrival of Debussy: he is the Berlioz of Russia, as Moussorgsky is its greatest nationalist ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... policeman was gone, the little boys were gone, the ragged girl, sweep, postman, and servant maid—all were gone, "like the baseless fabric of a vision," leaving only new faces and strangers behind to wonder what accident and thin old lady the excited youth was asking about—so evanescent are the incidents that occur; and so busily pre-occupied are the human torrents that rush ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... It was his life purpose to show mankind that there is nothing in this lie to cause fear, and that it can be overcome by overcoming the false thought which produces it. By overcoming that thought he showed men the evanescent nature of sickness and death. And sin he showed to be a missing of the mark through lack of understanding of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... through which he ranged "with unconfined wings." How wide and varied was the region he traversed a glance at the titles of the papers which make up his collected—or more properly, selected—works (for there was much matter of evanescent interest not reprinted) sufficiently shows. Some things in his own line he has done perfectly; he has written many pages of magnificently mixed argument, irony, humour and eloquence, which, for sustained brilliancy, richness, subtle force and purity of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... restored the Stuarts. The theory of democracy—vox populi vox dei—is a pure superstition, a belief in a divine or natural sanction which does not exist. And superstition is usually obstructive. 'We erect the temporary watchwords of evanescent politics into eternal truths; and having accepted as platitudes the paradoxes of our fathers, we perpetuate them as obstacles to the progress ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... reining up to a walking pace. "How delicious while it lasts, and yet how evanescent! Does it not resemble my life ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... field for seditious agitation in New Orleans, a city of mixed population, where the numerically predominant race felt a puzzled distrust for the nation of which it suddenly found itself an integral part, and from past experience firmly believed in the evanescent nature of any political connection it might have, whether with Spain, France, or the United States. The Creoles murmured because they were not given the same privileges as American citizens in the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... epithets, ostracism is brought to bear. This may vary from the "cold shoulder" to the complete "boycott." Losing the friendship and approval of comrades, being cut off from social sympathy, is a familiar form of group pressure. Ridicule and derision are a kind of evanescent ostracism, a temporary exclusion from the comradeship. There are many degrees in the lowering of the social temperature: coolness, formality of intercourse, averted looks, "cutting dead," "sending to Coventry," form a progressive series. Economic pressure is more ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the "Menuet Italien," No. 2 of the same opus as the preceding. This is remarkably well worked out, however. The third piece in the same opus is a waltz, "Dance of the Flowers," bright, sparkling, evanescent; clever for the piano, ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... of battle give a better proof of their patriotism and a higher glory to their country by promoting fraternity and justice. A party success that is achieved by unfair methods or by practices that partake of revolution is hurtful and evanescent even from a party standpoint. We should hold our differing opinions in mutual respect, and, having submitted them to the arbitrament of the ballot, should accept an adverse judgment with the same respect that ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... this ancient casement, tell me, is it well to yearn For the evanescent visions, vanished never to return? Is it well that I should with to leave this dreary world behind, Seeking for your fair Utopia, which perchance I may not find? Passing through a gloomy forest, scaling ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... wistful interest that faintly responded to his. Ah! that response!—strange, childish, ignorant, restless—but still a response; and from obscure shallows unsuspected, uncomprehended—shallows that had never before warned her with the echo of an evanescent ripple. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... in such a system to be necessarily wanting. Where individual action is resolved into the modified activity of the Universal Being, all absorbing and all evolving, the individuality of the personal man would at best appear but an evanescent and unreal shadow. Such individuality, however, as we now possess, whatever it be, might continue to exist in a future state as really as it exists in the present, and those to whom it belongs might be anxious ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the new Symphony and the Mass for a first hearing in Berlin. At this time, and for some years previously, Rossini's music had captured the Vienna public so completely that no other was desired. That this light evanescent work should be preferred to his own, was resented by the master. He decided to offer the new works to Count Bruehl, the Italian craze not having yet penetrated Berlin. As soon as this became known however, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... as to colors. The very delicate blonde who has reveled in palest, daintiest shades must beware of presuming too long on that evanescent bloom, lest she find herself basing the color of her dress on a flower that faded years ago. Or else, maybe, on one that has unfolded into a richer bloom, and by not adapting her color scale to the changes of time, she loses all the beauty of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... of the moon is obscured by masses of clouds; the trees no sooner blossom than their flowers are scattered by the wind. All beauty is evanescent. ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... to the dispute: and I am not inclined reverently to regard the innumerable theories that have been built on so uncertain a foundation. An Egyptian may have migrated to Attica, but Egyptian influence in Attica was faint and evanescent;—arrived at the first dawn of historical fact, it is with difficulty that we discover the most dubious and shadowy vestiges of its existence. Neither Cecrops nor any other Egyptian in those ages is recorded to have founded a dynasty in Attica—it is clear that none established a different ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shall converse. Unrelated men give little joy to each other; will never suspect the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individuals. Conversation is an evanescent relation,—no more. A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... coincidence or opposition of these ocular spectra, (or colours which remain in the eye after having for some time contemplated a luminous object) are more easily and more accurately ascertained, now their laws have been investigated by Dr. Darwin, than the relicts of evanescent sounds upon the ear; it is to be wished that some ingenious musician would further cultivate this curious field of science: for if visible music can be agreeably produced, it would be more easy to add sentiment to it by the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... fuel, employed for the external and not the internal feeding of the animal machine, and quite as evanescent as candy, claims a factory to itself. This is a French invention called the Loiseau Compressed Fuel. To bring it to Philadelphia, the mart of the anthracite region, would seem to be carrying coals ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... theatrical history, the repetition of a song was demanded. The now familiar term of "Encore!" was heard and obeyed. The queen herself was affected to tears by the enthusiastic affection displayed toward her, nor at such a moment did she suffer her feeling of the evanescent character of popularity among so light-minded a people to dwell in her mind, or to mar the pleasure which such a reception was ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... bustle. Batouch, resigned to the inevitable, had put the cook upon his mettle. Ouardi was already to be seen with a bottle of Pommery in each hand, and was only prevented from instantly uncorking them by the representations of his mistress and an elaborate exposition of the peculiar and evanescent virtues of champagne. Ali was humming a mysterious song about a lovesick camel-man, with which he intended to make glad the hearts of the assembly when the halting time was over. And the dining-table was already ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... most assured basis of friendship. Devilsdust was dark and melancholy; ambitious and discontented; full of thought, and with powers of patience and perseverance that alone amounted to genius. Mick was as brilliant as his complexion; gay, irritable, evanescent, and unstable. Mick enjoyed life; his friend only endured it; yet Mick was always complaining of the lowness of his wages and the greatness of his toil; while Devilsdust never murmured, but read and pondered on the rights of labour, and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... sweetly lounged in statu quo, More beautiful than words can ever tell, In fact a tiny sprig of mistletoe I should have deemed quite indispensable, So greatly did their excellence excel All evanescent beauty in man's eyes, The loveliest primrose in the greenest dell, The lithest form man e'er did idolize: Fairer than fleece-like cloudlets ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... saw the change in her, but was too gross in his nature, too blind in his passion, and too vain in his imagined power, to comprehend it. She was a woman, and had her whims, he thought. Whims were evanescent, and this particular whim would pass away. He was vexed by seeing the boy so constantly with her. He met them walking together in the street, or straying in the park, hand in hand, or caught the lad looking at him from her window. He could not doubt ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... across the sky of history. But this is not true of men like Jefferson and others of his class. They grow into great characters, and they build monuments to their memories which the tooth of time cannot destroy. There is nothing ephemeral or evanescent in the makeup of their records. They build not for a day nor a year, but for the centuries. Indeed, it may be said that they build for eternity, and thus many of them have builded wiser than they knew. The following is a summary of ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... talk about, even if they did not talk about themselves and their friends, for every day brought great events, fresh insurrections, new constitutions, changes of dynasties, assassinations of ministers, states of siege, evanescent ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... do you quite believe in them, would you know them if you met them in the Paradise of Fiction? Noun one might recognise, but there is a haziness about La Petite Fadette. Consuelo, let it be admitted, is not evanescent, oblivion scatters no poppy over her; but Madame Sand's later ladies, still more her men, are easily lost in the forests of fancy. Even their names with difficulty return to us, and if we read the roll-call, would Horace and Jacques cry Adsum like the good Colonel? There are living critics who ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... in darkling trees for us, Yet where we walked the city's street that night Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring, And in our path we left a trail of light Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea When night submerges in the vessel's wake A heaven of unborn evanescent stars. ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... even shadow of the forest where the moon was not, a band of velvet against which the girl and the light-touched twigs and bushes and grass blades were etched like frost against a black window pane. There was something, too, of the frost-work's evanescent spiritual quality in the scene,—as though at any moment, with a puff of the balmy summer wind, the radiant glade, the hovering figure, the filagreed silver of the entire setting would melt into the accustomed stern and menacing forest of the northland, with its wolves, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... too late, before the record is gone for ever. We are like an heir whose title-deeds must be scrutinised before he can take possession of the inheritance, but who finds the handwriting of the deeds so fading and evanescent that it threatens to disappear entirely before he can read the document to the end. With what keen attention, what eager haste, would he not scan the fast-vanishing characters? With the like attention and the like haste civilised men are now applying themselves ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... and written of the weariness of the world-worn heart, and the frailty of earthly things. But, O! when our hearts have actually become worn, and tried; when we begin to learn that the things of this life are evanescent,—are dropping away from us, and we slipping from them,—what inspiration of reality comes to us in the oft-heard invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest!" What a depth of meaning flowing from the ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... sale. The glancing light of the burning wood Played over a group of jars which stood On a distant shelf, it seemed the sky Had lent the half-tones of his blazonry To paint these porcelains with unknown hues Of reds dyed purple and greens turned blues, Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen Their colours are felt, but never seen. Strange winged dragons writhe about These vases, poisoned venoms spout, Impregnate with old Chinese charms; Sealed urns containing mortal harms, They fill the mind with thoughts ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Among the evanescent controversies of that period the most conspicuous was the question of regulation by Congress of the social condition of the future States to be rounded in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... women who for so long a time, maintained such friendly and intimate relations, and yet kept up such an interminable fire of small fun and joke, puns and bon-mots, inoffensively shooting them off right and left at all times and places. Being of an evanescent nature they have mostly vanished from my mind, but the spirit of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... abundance. Madness and folly seem to have ruled the half-hearted conspirators of California. An ALABAMA or two on the Pacific would have been most destructive scourges of the sea. The last days of opportunity glide by. The prosaic records of the Federal Court in California tell of the evanescent fame of Harpending, Greathouse, Rubery, Mason, Kent, and the other would-be buccaneers. The "Golden Circle" ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... your tender daughter and are laughed at as inane; Vain you face the snow, oh mirror! for it will evanescent wane, When the festival of lanterns is gone by, guard 'gainst your doom, 'Tis what time the flames will kindle, and the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... are so fluctuating and evanescent that they go for comparatively little in questions of Etymology. Tan is equivalent to T—n; the place of the dash being filled by any vowel. T is readily replaced by th or d, and n by ng; as is known ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... endue, enervate, enfilade, enigmatic, ennui, enunciate, environ, epicure, epigram, episode, epistolary, epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, exemplary, exhalation, exhilarate, exigency, exodus, exonerate, exorbitant, exotic, expectorate, expeditious, explicable, explicit, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the carol was evanescent and all too easily destroyed I always knew; but never realised its extreme fugacity until, some five years ago, it fell to me to prepare an anthology, which, under the title of The Oxford Book of English Verse, has since achieved some ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fire. How marvellous then are those laws by which even the humblest types of organic existence are preserved though born amidst the sources of their destruction, and by which a species of immortality is given to generations floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles, on a stream raised from the deepest caverns of the earth, and instantly losing what may be called its spirit in the atmosphere." These last observations of the stranger recalled to my recollection some phenomena which I had observed ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... Skin are among the most constant manifestations. An evanescent macular rash, not unlike that of measles—roseola—is the first to appear, usually in from six to eight weeks from the date of infection; it is widely diffused over the trunk, and the original dull rose-colour soon fades, leaving brownish stains, which in time disappear. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... give it as he presents it: "The greater the abundance of natural objects assembled together, the more do we discover proofs that everything passes by insensible shades into something else; that even the more remarkable differences are evanescent, and that nature has for the most part left us nothing at our disposal for establishing distinctions, save trifling, and in some respects puerile particularities. We find that many genera among plants and animals are of such an extent, in consequence of the number of species referred to them, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all its works, as if exulting in its beauty—beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of my whole life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless shadow of it could never be fairly reflected ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... elicited by a sobering sense of responsibility. In his letters and despatches may be found many wild guesses, inconsistent from week to week, colored by changing moods and humors,—the mere passing comments of a mind off guard,—the records of evanescent impressions as numerous, fickle, and unfounded as those of the most ordinary mortal. It is when urgency presses and danger threatens, when the need for action comes, that his mental energies are aroused, and he begins to speak, as it were, ex cathedra. Then the unsubstantial ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond's for a day or two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her at the time, but it had been so evanescent that in the ordinary onward roll of affairs he would scarce ever have recalled it again. To find her here, however, in these somewhat romantic circumstances, magnified that by-gone and transitory ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... I would give him an ox; but, as we were traveling, and could not afford the time required for the experiment, so as not to be cheated (as I had too often been by my medical friends), I deferred the investigation till I returned. It is probably but an evanescent remedy, and capable of rendering the cattle safe during one night only. Moyara is now quite a dependent of the Makololo, and my new party, not being thoroughly drilled, forced him to carry a tusk for them. When I relieved ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Kegworthy the heavens had opened and flooded his senses, till he nearly fainted, with the perfume of celestial lands. The intoxicating sweetness of it bewildered his young brain. It was nothing delicate, evanescent, like the smell of a flower. It as thick, pungent, cloying, compelling. Mouth agape and nostril wide, he followed the exquisite source of the emanation like one in a dream, half across the yard. A curate laughingly and unsuspectingly brought him back to earth ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... bending over the smoking skillet, with the lamp-light falling across her pale face. As she boiled the coffee and fried the eggs I studied her profile sketched against the blue, smoky background, and tried in vain to grasp the secret of its fleeting, evanescent beauty. For beautiful Henrietta was—beautiful with a beauty quite her own and all the more potent because of its very indefinableness. I watched her as one horribly fascinated,—that high, wide white forehead, that weak chin, those ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... evanescent, and aware of our deceit, From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet. You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes, — Though arrears due thereafter may be ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... survey of one of the great literatures of the nineteenth century, contained much that was true enough, but revealed very plainly the beginner's lack of ability to estimate the importance of phenomena, an inclination to over- estimate purely evanescent apparitions, and a tendency to include that which was merely externally similar, under one heading. The insignificant School of Common Sense could not by any means be regarded as marking an epoch. Neither, with any justice, could men like Augier and Dumas be placed in different groups. The ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; in none of these roles do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to float in the air. It was a comrade. House and tree transcended any similes of sex. Margaret thought of them now, and was to think of them through many a windy night and London day, but to compare either to man, to woman, always ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... "by its inferior size, total absence of crest on its head, neck, and shoulders, by its longer tail, by the white collar of the neck being evanescent; and lastly by the inferior size and smaller quantity of the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... stupid and contemptible local antipathies are inherited by civilized men from that far-off time when the clan system prevailed over the face of the earth, and the hand of every clan was raised against its neighbours. They are pale and evanescent survivals from the universal primitive warfare, and the sooner they die out from human society the better for every one. They should be stigmatized and frowned down upon every fit occasion, just as we frown upon swearing as a symbol of anger and ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... the party was too desultory, too evanescent to follow, but at last they came to the subject of the tramp nuisance, one that had of late vexed the plantations for many miles around. The planter seized the occasion to direct his good-natured fire of raillery at the mistress, accusing her of encouraging ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the old masters; also at the pictures generally, old and new. I particularly remember a spring landscape, by John Linnell the younger. It is wonderfully good; so tender and fresh that the artist seems really to have caught the evanescent April and made her permanent. Here, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Fancy, or judgment?—no! his splendid strain, In prose, or rhyme, confutes that plea.—The pain Which writh'd o'er Garrick's fortunes, shows us clear Whence all his spleen to GENIUS.—Ill to bear A Friend's renown, that to his own must reign, Compar'd, a Meteor's evanescent train, To Jupiter's fix'd orb, proves that each sneer, Subtle and fatal to poetic Sense, Did from insidious ENVY meanly flow, Illumed with dazzling hues of eloquence, And Sophist-Wit, that labor to o'er-throw Th' awards of AGES, and new laws dispense ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the inmost intentions of the man of twenty-five, who already stood on a pinnacle where hard heads and mature might well have been dizzy. Evidently he knew him self, and even in his brief experience with the world he understood how uncertain and evanescent are the winds of Fame. If he had ever suffered from a "swelled head," he was now cured. He felt the emptiness of life's prizes when the dearest who should have shared ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Ernest's mind, and he thought, with a little shudder, of the physical travail of the actual writing. He felt that the transcript from brain to paper would demand all his powers. For, of late, his thoughts seemed strangely evanescent; they seemed to run away from him whenever ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... a thought crossed him—one of the memorable little evanescent thoughts which sway us by our chance weakness; "Does she think ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wind, the rapt, dark face, the flashing eyes, the deep, eager breaths like sighs of rapture. A rhapsody: the rush and growl and frown of the world (said he)—the sombre colors, the veil of mist, the everlasting hills, rising in serenity above the turmoil and evanescent rage. To this I listened in wonder. I had not for myself discovered these beauties; but thereafter, because of this teaching, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... own houses; and though the travellers often prayed him to show them the apartments containing the works of Mantegna, they really got to see nothing of this painter's in the Ducal Palace, except, here and there, some evanescent frescoes, which the Custode would not go beyond a si crede in attributing to him. Indeed, it is known that the works of Mantegna suffered grievously in the wars of the last century, and his memory has faded so dim in this palace where he wrought, that the guide ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... or only in obscure chaos—all, notwithstanding, should be only one, for one band surrounds them all and they can be totally separated only by a violent and arbitrary force; every specific combination is nothing but an integral part of the whole; its peculiar characteristics are almost evanescent, and are gradually lost in outlines that become more and more indistinct; and at least those who feel themselves thus united will always be the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... we dismiss the topic as not worthy of another thought. For all ordinary purposes, this mode of speaking is correct enough; but let us ask, Why is imagination so weak?—why are its suggestions so evanescent? Simply because it is under the control of reason. But if the action of reason could be suspended, we should then see how great, and even formidable, is the imaginative power. It is the most untiring of all our mental faculties, refusing to be put to rest even during ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... angered Thor that he raised his hammer and would have slain the giantess had he not been restrained by his companions. Easily appeased, as usual—for Thor's temper, although quickly roused, was evanescent—he now boarded the vessel once more to consecrate the funeral pyre with his sacred hammer. As he was performing this ceremony, the dwarf Lit provokingly stumbled into his way, whereupon Thor, who had not entirely recovered his equanimity, kicked him into the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... de course, as the French call it, this commerce-destroying, to use our own phrase, must, if in itself successful, greatly embarrass the foreign government and distress its people. Such a war, however, cannot stand alone; it must be supported, to use the military phrase; unsubstantial and evanescent in itself, it cannot reach far from its base. That base must be either home ports, or else some solid outpost of the national power, on the shore or the sea; a distant dependency or a powerful fleet. Failing ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... there nothing farther, one surely ought to go? Such was the probability, a visit to Blenheim field in passing. And surely, somewhere in those heart-rending masses of Historical Rubbish, I did at last find express evanescent mention of the fact,—but cannot now say where;—the exact record, or conceivable image of which, would have been a perceptible pleasure to us. Alas, in those dim dreary Books, all whirling dismal round one's soul, like vortices ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... vision began to disappear. AEneas endeavored to clasp the beloved image in his arms to retain it, but it was intangible and evanescent, and, before he could speak to it, it was gone, and he was left standing in the desolate and gloomy street alone. He turned at length slowly away; and solitary, thoughtful and sad, he went back to the gate of the city, and thence out to the valley where he had concealed ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... in their essence and their appearance. For what is more like a great Foam-Bubble than the Moon? and what is more like the delusion of love than a bubble of the foam, so beautiful in its play of colour, while it endures: so evanescent, so hollow, leaving behind it when it bursts and disappears nothing but a memory, and a bitter taste of brine? And as love is but a bubble, so are all its victims merely bubbles of a bubble: for this ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... thus past; the long labours of the loom have ceased. Cloth-work, crape-work, chenille-work, ribbon-work, wafer-work, with a long train of etceteras, have all passed away in our own memory; yet these conferred much evanescent fame, and a proportional quantity of vain emulation. A taste for drawing, or music, cannot be classed with any of these trifling performances; but there are many faded drawings of the present generations, which cannot stand in competition with the glowing and faithful colours of the silk and ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... before him. Rallywood saw a slight woman, tall and exquisitely fair, who carried her small head with its gleaming coronet royally. Her skin and her soft flushed cheeks had the pure, evanescent quality of a child's complexion. Moreover, her chief charm was perhaps her air of child-like innocence. Isolde of Sagan had seldom looked more lovely; she was honestly touched by self-pity, and was posing as the ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... unholy arena. This emancipation will take place when the semblance is seen through as semblance, and when the soul has gained an insight right into the foundation of things. Then the world loses its power over man; the whole kingdom of deception with its evanescent values goes to the bottom, all the excited affections caused by the world are extinguished, and life becomes a still and holy calm; it reaches the depth of a dreamless sleep, enters, through its immersion into an eternal essence, beyond the shadows; it passes, according to Buddhism ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... twenty-five years' distance his star has set. How many of these precocious classics are there who do not endure, and who are so only for a while! We turn round one morning and are surprised not to find them standing behind us. Madame de Sevigne would wittily say they possessed but an evanescent colour. With regard to classics, the least expected prove the best and greatest: seek them rather in the vigorous genius born immortal and flourishing for ever. Apparently the least classical of the four great poets of the age of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... finished at Crest Hill and an army of folkmen gathered to do his bidding, blue marble came from Canada, and timber from New Zealand; and beneath it all, you know, there was nothing but fictitious values as evanescent ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Bishopric of Winchester during this period confirms the view of those who have protested against assigning to the Black Death the revolutionary importance which is given it by many historians. On these estates the Black Death "produced severe evanescent effects and temporary changes, with a rapid return to the status quo of 1348."[12] The great changes which are usually attributed to the plague of 1348-1350 were under way before 1348, and were not greatly accelerated until ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... of the poem cast its spell over them both as they followed the fate of the unhappy lovers through the heart-ache of their evanescent dream. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... upon the face like Highland snow in a gale. With that wind and that fine, powdery frost went no apparent clouds. The sky was still clear above me. Such rare stars as can conquer the full moon shone palely; but round the moon herself bent an evanescent halo, like those one sees over the Channel upon clear nights before a stormy morning. The spindrift of fine ice had, I ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Gherardi, who could not explain the term but by describing it as "Un Tour; JEU ITALIEN!" It was so peculiar to them, that he could only call it by their own name. It is difficult to describe that of which the whole magic consists in being seen; and what is more evanescent than the humour which consists ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... which contribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch—must have vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of Iridion had been associated with that of a flower of unusual loveliness—a stately, candid lily, endowed with a charmed life, like its possessor. The seasons came and went without leaving a trace upon it; innocence and beauty seemed as enduring with it, as evanescent with the children of men. In equal though dissimilar loveliness its frolicsome young mistress nourished by its side. One thing alone, the oracle had declared, could prejudice either, and this was an accident to the flower. From such disaster it had long been shielded by the most delicate care; ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... broad folds with a formation that resembles the finest hemstitching may be seen all around you, while Pluto's chasm, a wide rift in the walls, contains a spectre clothed in shadowy draperies. One wonders how long this grim, ghastly person has stood here. Long ages came and went in that shadowy and evanescent time with no record save these stony ghosts, and over all a black pall of mystery ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Ephemerides, certain longitudinal veins between the 8th (anal) and 9th (1st maxillary) and not branches of either: in Diptera, the anterior intercalary (Loew) the discoidal, and the posterior intercalary the cubitus 1 of Comstock: applied to an evanescent sclerite in the embryo between antenna and mandible; ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... sculpture, lack all the reposeful charm of Boro-Boedoer, still a sermon in stone which he who runs may read. The degenerate creed memorialised by Chandi Sewon, has failed to impress itself on the colossal pile which bears melancholy witness to the evanescent character of the heretical offshoot from the parent stem. Jungle and palm-forest in Central Java contain innumerable vestiges of pyramidal temples, palaces, and shrines; vaults hidden beneath the shrouding trees have yielded a rich store of gold, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... joy had subsided, this was made the subject of their declamation, and a stimulus to popular excitement. Public writers were employed to prevent a return of harmony between Great Britain and her colonies, and though addresses of thanks were voted by the assemblies to the king, this was but an evanescent show of gratitude. The same temper was found especially to prevail in the assembly of Massachusets against the Declaratory Act, as had been displayed against the Stamp Act, and the spirit of resistance soon spread to the other colonies. The right of legislative authority assumed by Great Britain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... something that may correctly be described as an elemental—it at once ceases to belong to the category we are discussing, and becomes a member of the artificial class. Even then its separate existence is usually of the most evanescent character, and as soon as its impulse has worked itself out it sinks back into the undifferentiated mass of that particular subdivision of elemental essence from which it came. It would be tedious to attempt to catalogue these subdivisions, and indeed even if a list of them ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... title, un indifferent in matters of human fortune. His earlier poems, of course, are much concerned with the matter of most early poems—with Lydia and Cynthia and their light loves. The verses of his second period often deal with the most evanescent subjects, and they now retain but a slight petulance and sparkle, as of champagne that has been too long drawn. In a prefatory plea for M. De Banville's poetry one may add that he "has loved our people," ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... derived the largest number of cases, illustrating boldly this absorption of the universal into the concrete—of the pure intellect into the human nature of the author. But nowhere could illustrations be found more interesting—shy, delicate, evanescent—shy as lightning, delicate and evanescent as the colored pencilings on a frosty night from the Northern Lights, than in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... what is "really real" in the physical world, and that the immediate objects of sense are mere phantasms, we must regard matter as a logical construction, of which the constituents will be just such evanescent particulars as may, when an observer happens to be present, become data of sense to that observer. What physics regards as the sun of eight minutes ago will be a whole assemblage of particulars, existing at different ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... which a great branch had been broken or lopped off, stood out suddenly in very nineteenth-century naturalness, awaking the ghost of a picture which I recognised at once as Corot. Behind the tree a tender, evanescent sky, pure and transparent as the very heart of a flower, rose up, filling the park with romance, and as the sunset drooped upon the water, my soul said, "The Lake!" Ah, the pensive shadow that falls from the hills on either side of "The Lake," leaving the middle of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... for two young people like Mrs. Adams and myself, who have just begun to keep house, to inherit a famine, and such a robust famine, too. It is true that I should not have set my heart upon such a transitory and evanescent terrestrial object like a pumpkin pie so near to T. Tooterson, imported pie soloist, doughnut mastro and feminine virtuoso, but I did, and so I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... other and unattainable sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said to music, "Away! away! thou speakest ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... from that remote and brutish past which has left its traces in human bones mingled with the bones of hyaenas and cave bears beneath the stalagmites of Wookey Hole near Wells. In those nearly forgotten days the mind of man and woman had been no more than an evanescent succession of monstrous and infantile imaginations. That brief journey in the west country had lit up phase after phase in the long teaching and discipline of man as he had developed depth of memory and ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... was there, larger, less puzzling and negative than hitherto,—an awakening force. The man lost his anchor of convention and traditional reasoning. He felt with her an excitement, a thirst for this evanescent treasure of joy. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of time. The actors in its bygone scenes have passed away in their shadowy grandeur, leaving but dim footprints here and there to tell us they have been, and cause us to wonder at the mystery which veils their record, and to muse upon the evanescent glory of man's ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... say she would be engaged and marry him; and Billy Louise was not ready to say that or be that. Her woman-soul hung back from that decisive point. She would not shut the door upon her freedom and her girlish dreams and her ideals and all those evanescent bubbles which we try to carry with us into maturity. Billy Louise did not put it that way, of course. She only reiterated again and again: "I like you, but I don't want to marry anybody. I don't want to ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... am in the canyon country," he continued. "Withers tells me it is a country of rainbows, both in the evanescent air and in the changeless stone. Always as a boy there had been for me some haunting promise, some treasure at the foot of the rainbow. I shall expect the curve of a rainbow to lead me down into Surprise Valley. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... by the decay and destruction of all material things and by the evanescent nature of beauty, he has no doubt whatever of the immortality of the verses he is writing. He vaunts as boldly as ever Horace did—indeed, in words that suggest the Exegi monumentum ode—that his verses will outlast the proudest ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... What soul-like changes, evanescent moods, Upon the face of the still passive earth, Its hills, and fields, and woods, Thou with thy seasons and thy hours art ever calling forth! Even like a lord of music bent Over his instrument, Giving to carol, now to tempest birth! When, clear as holiness, the morning ray Casts ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... hydrodynamical theorems, seeks for the properties of molecules in the ring vortices of a uniform, frictionless, incompressible fluid. Such whirling rings may be seen when an experienced smoker sends out a dexterous puff of smoke into the still air, but a more evanescent phenomenon it is difficult to conceive. This evanescence is owing to the viscosity of the air; but Helmholtz has shewn that in a perfect fluid such a whirling ring, if once generated, would go on whirling for ever, would always ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... seated himself after the manner of the carter. It was only when the dusty baker came along and repeated this procedure, preserving the same silence, that Carmichael's curiosity was enlivened. This curiosity, however, was only of the evanescent order. Undoubtedly they were socialists and this was a little conclave, and the peculiar manner of their meeting, the silence and mystery, were purely fictional. Socialism at that time revolved round ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... relief as she went upstairs. She was glad to escape the further questions concerning Mary which her mother seemed disposed to ask. Her gaiety had been evanescent and she now experienced a feeling of positive gloom as she entered her pretty room and prepared to bathe and dress for the evening. She could not resist a thrill of pleasure at the sheer beauty of ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... swelling on the tall trees, shrubs without end were covered with blossoms—white, blue, yellow, and red—while, among the smooth, shining leaves of the orange and lemon trees, gleamed the swelling fruit. On a round tank close at hand some black swans were noiselessly tracing evanescent circles and uttering their strange lament. The song of birds mingled with the plash of fountains, and even the marble statues, for all that they were dumb, seemed to be enjoying the sweet morning air and the stir and voice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the Marvelous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he disregard ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... near the centre, was Russian—was Cossack—strange and primeval, intense, dark, as superbly alive as one of those exuberant tropical flowers that seem to cry out the mad joy of life. Only, those flowers suggest the evanescent, the flame burning so fiercely that it must soon burn out, while this Russian girl declared that life was eternal. You could not think of her as sick, as old, as anything but young and vigorous and vivid, as full of energy as a healthy baby that kicks its dresses ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... ear, they may be called auricular murmurs; but when the remaining motions, or ideas, of the sense of touch continue, as in this vertigo of a blindfolded person, they have acquired no name, but may be termed evanescent ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... flowers there remained but a few torn and faded petals. Seeing this, the king said, 'The flowers pass away and die; so is it with mankind: we are born, we grow old, we sicken and die; we are as fleeting as the lightning's flash, as evanescent as the morning dew.' I know not whether any of you here present ever fix your thoughts upon death; yet it is a rare thing for a man to live for a hundred years. How piteous a thing it is that in this short and transient life men should consume themselves in a fire of lust! and if we think to escape ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... grown into an inveterate habit. Is this, then, a part of your better nature? Is there no depth beneath this evanescent surface—froth and foam? I believe there is. But in order that it may be discovered to the light and made fit for cultivation, this trivial surface-crust must be turned under, kept down, lest light and heat ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... answers, 'Ha-a-a-a-ay!' Authority melts from you, apparently.—Leaves nothing but a few rudimentary theories, of no use to anyone except the owner, inasmuch as no one else can develop them properly; just a few evanescent footprints on the sands of Time, which would require only a certain combination of age and facilities for cohesion to mature into Mammoth-tracks on the sandstone of Progress. All on the debit side of Civilisation's ledger, you observe. Consequently, he doesn't long to leave ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... connected with these sudden impressions. First, that the condition which seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often very trivial,—one that might have presented itself a hundred times. Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary effort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... shine hath birth The rainbow's evanescent glory; Heaven's light that breaks on mist of earth! Frail symbol of our human story, It flowers through showers where, looming hoary, The rain-clouds flash with April mirth, Like ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... willingly yields it, are in reality so few and so ephemeral. Mere human froth are they, worked up by the churning of the world-sea—rainbow-tinted froth, lovely thinned water, weaker than the unstable itself out of which it is blown. Great as their ordinance seems, it is evanescent as arbitrary: the arbitrary is but the slavish puffed up—and is gone with the hour. The life of the people is below; it ferments, and the scum is for ever being skimmed off, and cast—God knows where. All is scum where ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... I had struck the first blow in the barring out—Saint Albans had openly commended me for my bravery—I could no longer despise myself, and the natural consequence was that others dared not. I formed friendships, evanescent certainly, but very sweet and very sincere. Several of the young gentlemen promised to prevail upon their parents to invite me to their homes during the approaching holidays; but either their memories were weak, or their ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a serious person with locks of gray And a figure like a crescent; His gravity, clearly, had come to stay, But his smile was evanescent. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... vine-clad cot; and although she was not as "neighborly" as she might have been, and never communicative as to her previous history, still might the feeling of pique with which they at first received such a rebuff to their curiosity, have been a very evanescent one in the minds of the villagers, had it not chanced that Aberdeen was blessed (?) with two prim sister-spinsters, (was it they or Aunt Nora, who formed the exception to the general rule? I leave it for thee, dear reader, to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... dress, literature, music, amusement, will almost inevitably slide down into a bog of muggy moral indolence. She will lose her spirit, and when the spirit is gone out of a woman, there not much left of her. When she cheapens herself, she diminishes her value. Especially when the evanescent charms of mere youth are gone, when the responsibilities of life have left their mark upon her, is it indispensable that she attend to all the fitnesses of externals, and strengthen and polish all her mental ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... leopard." "Pantheress!—beautiful forest-born!—wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her chain. I see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her wild woods, and pinings after virgin freedom." "How evanescent, fugitive, fitful she looked—slim and swift as a Northern streamer!" "... With her long hair flowing full and wavy; with her noiseless step, her pale cheek, her eye full of night and lightning, she looked, I thought, spirit-like—a thing made of an ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... much instruction or delight, and why most accounts of particular persons are barren and useless. If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are transmitted[107] by tradition. We know how few can pourtray a living acquaintance, except by his most prominent and observable particularities, and the grosser ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... began, with a calm and untroubled assurance. While he was speaking the hands on the face of the clock behind the great man's back—a heavy, glistening affair of massive scrolls in the same dark marble as the mantelpiece, and with a ghostly, evanescent tick—had moved through the space of seven minutes. He spoke with a studious fidelity to a parenthetical manner, into which every little fact—that is, every detail—fitted with delightful ease. Not a murmur nor even a movement hinted at interruption. The great Personage might have been the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... that the task of tracing the evanescent manners of his own country had employed the pen of the only man in Scotland who could have done it justice,—of him so eminently distinguished in elegant literature,—and whose sketches of Colonel Caustic and Umphraville are perfectly blended with the finer traits of national character. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the beginning of July till the end of September, he devoted himself to his engagements; he was a martyr to them. In the autumn he went back to London for a holiday. Crome had been a little incident, an evanescent bubble on the stream of his life; it belonged already to the past. By tea-time he would be at Gobley, and there would be Zenobia's welcoming smile. And on Thursday morning—but that was a long, long way ahead. He would think of Thursday morning when Thursday morning ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... by lasting over the interval that elapsed between his twenty-third and twenty-sixth year, at which period his marriage took place, was traversed by many clouds, more or less evanescent, and he still had hours and days of melancholy. Assuredly, Lord Byron could not avoid those oscillations of heart and mind that belong to the very essence of the human heart. But, at least, it is easy ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli |
