"Fleeting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... together along the mossy, winding path. A fleeting shower was falling, and the patter of it ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... were twice as fleeting, Longeth she for one last greeting; If her eyes might only dwell Once on his, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... not, thou man of herbs, a fault, To add a double quantity of salt. And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss A magic soup-spoon of anchovy sauce. Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat! 'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat; Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl! Serenely full, the epicure would say, Fate can not harm me, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... his mind still half full of fleeting thought. Absent-mindedly he knocked out his pipe and pocketed it, swung around to the manual of the televisor. His fingers reached ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... perhaps she could never do with complete success or satisfaction; and like promise of nectar to thirsty lips was the vision of joys she had had to put aside for the performance of dull daily duty. How brief, how fleeting, had been those splendid visions when the universe seemed open for her young strength to battle and triumph in! How soon they had faded into the light of common day! At first, sympathy and grief were so keen she thought ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Change, for the sake of change, agitation for vanity, for applause or mischief, he has contemptuously repudiated. He is not like the Clear Grit, a republican of the first water, but on the contrary looks to the connection with the mother country, not as fable or unreality or fleeting vision, but as alike our interest and our duty, as that which should ever be our beacon, our ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... fell fast asleep, And dreamed she heard them bleating; When she awoke she found it a joke, For they still were all fleeting. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... furiously away, between them and the western sun, what looked like a purple column, reaching from earth to heaven, and bespangled with living gold-dust, whirling round in giddy spirals, and all the time fleeting so fast that it was diminishing every moment, and was gone in a wink ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how vast and how close to us is the problem of existence—this equivocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence of ours—so vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it than it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims; and when one sees how all men, with few and rare exceptions, have no clear consciousness of the problem, nay, seem to be quite ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; 40 "Bear Him, ye Winds! ye Stars benignant! guide." —The calm Philosopher in ether fails, Views broader stars, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Congregational minister, famous for his pulpit denunciations of sin, has risen and gravely waves his hand to ensure a respectful hearing. "All you people," he says, in a voice vibrating with solemn indignation, "are pursuing fleeting shadows. The kingdom of God is within. This false cult of health by self-hypnotism, or health by living like the beasts in the field, gives undue weight to things which, after all, relate to the body. It is the soul of man that is important, not where he lives or ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... put myself invisible on a picture-frame and looked down on that fleeting show I would have done it. But not being able to work that miracle, I just heard what was going round, and it was very interesting, the ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... enjoy our own brief innings better, as men who know that our March is passing where Pepys' May has flown before, and that we shall soon be with him and his wife, and the Scot, and the red- faced parson. So fleeting is life, whose record outlives it for ever; so brief, so swift, so faint the joys and sorrows, and all that we make marvel of in our own fortunes ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Maiden dear. Past compare, Oh, 'twas death from thee to part! Ere I saw thy sweet face On my heart there was no trace Of that love from above, That in sorrow now I prove; but alas, thou art gone, And in grief I mourn alone; Life a shadow doth seem, And my joy a fleeting dream, A fleeting dream. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... what we call the world, with all its supposed infinitudes of space and time, its systems of suns and planets, its seemingly endless forms of inorganic matter and organic life, shrivels up, on a close inspection, into a fleeting, a momentary figment of thought. It is like one of those glass baubles, iridescent with a thousand varied and delicate hues, which a single touch suffices to shatter into dust. The philosopher, like the sorcerer, has but to wave ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... before and seemed not to care if it should be her fate never to repeat the experience, Talbot Potter had a certain desire. If society had established a rule that all men must instantly obey and act upon every fleeting impulse, Talbot Potter would have taken that girl or woman by the shoulders and said to her: "What's ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... off ungraciously the attempts at sympathetic pumping made by the women at Klondyke. They concluded that she did not feel anything since she never cried out. But, looking at Kraill's face for one fleeting instant Marcella knew that he understood how sore ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... his. It was out of her deadly love for Taquisara that all her nature rose against that final bond of the law, and the world, and society. So long as that was not yet welded and made fast upon her, there was the fleeting shadow of a desperate hope that she might still ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of the evening that enclose upon the fleeting sunlight are swiftly turned away; as out of the night time the speeding wheels they sway, before the gloom that's left approaching ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... set out for the missionary's tent, and starlit night before I reached it—so fleeting is the ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... depict with faithful accuracy what people "were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking about"—all this being best done (domestic circumstances, nay, soul-workings and all!) through fleeting glimpses of shifting [82] panoramas of intelligent human beings! What a bright notion! We have here the suggestion of a capacity too superhuman to be accepted on trust, especially when, as in this case, it is by implication self-arrogated. The modesty ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... came erect in a quick scramble, jacking in a fresh round as he did so. The scene took on that strange timeless aspect it often does in moments of emergency, with a man's whole being focused on the fleeting now—you know, in an academic sort of way, that things are moving fast, you are moving fast yourself, but there seems plenty of time to make decisions, to look things over and decide what has to be done, to move precisely, with minimum effort and ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... the Saviour vouchsafed His Grace For our Salvation Army lass teaches true Gospel faith: "Be saved this night, poor sinner, repent, the hour is late! Salvation is in store for thee, brother do not delay As fleeting time and sudden death for no man ever wait!" "Praise God!" the lassie's war-cry is, the keynote of her song. To the tune of "Annie Roonie" and kindred fervid lay With mandolin and banjo, marching in bold array The devil's strongholds storming, battling to victory— With banners flying, the ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... precise hand on the book in the office, had hastened to his supper, carrying a most vivid recollection of the slender figure and flushed and speaking face of the girl on the trail. That moment of meeting, accidental and fleeting, had already become a most beautiful climax of his pilgrimage. "She was born of the sunset; she does not really exist," he said, with unwonted warmth of phrase. "How could this little mining town produce ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... unexpectedly stops them. But he who is wise, turns himself and elevates himself, with the help of the Divine spark in his soul, to that which is stable and eternal, whence he had his own origin: he says farewell to all the fleeting creatures, and clings ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... the names of things. Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived. The odour of fruits wafts me to my Southern home, to my childish frolics in the peach orchard. Other odours, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... standing immediately before and to the left of the Throne, Esmo replied. But before he had spoken half-a-dozen words, a pressure on my arm drew my eyes from him to Eveena. She stood fixed as if turned to stone, in an attitude which for one fleeting instant recalled that of the sculptured figures undergoing sudden petrifaction at the sight of the Gorgon's head. This remembered resemblance, or an instinctive sympathy, at once conveyed to me the consciousness that the absolute stillness ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... by the recent exposures, we should, doubtless to many people, seem to say a very hard thing, and yet this, with the allowances and reservations which have of course to be made for all attempts to describe anything so vague and fleeting as a social state, is what we do mean to say. That Mr. Beecher's preaching, falling on such a mass of disorder, should not have had a more purifying and organizing effect, is due, we think, to the absence from it of anything ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... subtle change: the spans of defeat grew longer, the moments of hope more fleeting. The sheep too at last were infected by uneasiness, bleating piteously skyward and making no attempt to nibble any longer. The goat, like Slafe, was unmoved; she disdained ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... rises to give a stronger and purer light to the dreadful spectacle, a light stronger and purer than that of night itself, which is never completely dark in the tropics. Away, away, and still on, on—outstripping time—running a race with the fleeting moments, till hours and hours of unrelaxing speed are numbered—thus goes the wolf. And now he snuffs the morning air: the fresh breeze from the east raises the foam of the Mediterranean waves, and allays the heat on the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... She caught a fleeting glimpse of him as he dodged into a doorway with the evident intention of hiding till they got tired of the hunt. Also, it was certain he had not seen Betty and had no idea ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... should have an heritage of the virtues, qualities and courage of the house, as well as the domains and the name. Then did Bertha shed many tears, her happiness being gone. For the great heart of this mother it was nothing to have this well-beloved son after others, and during only certain short fleeting hours. Therefore she became sad and melancholy. Noticing her grief, the good man wished to bestow upon her another child and could not, and the poor lady was displeased thereat, because she declared that the making of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... taken to its great wings and flown. The sun shone out clear, and in all the blue abyss not a cloud was to be seen, except far away to leeward, where one was spread like a banner in the lonely air, fleeting away, the ensign of the charging storm—bearing for its device a segment of the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... unbounded with the scene to roll, And now impatient, with retorted eye, Perceives his station in another sky: Waft me, indulgent Angel, waft me o'er, With those blest heroes, to the happy shore; There let me live and die. But all appears A fleeting vision! these are future years. Yet grant the illusion still may nearer spread, And my glad steps may seem their walks to tread; While Europe, wrapt in momentary night, Shall rise no ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... my last. But remember that my thought will follow you wherever you may go. When evening comes I will send a greeting, and the fleeting cloud ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... been conscious of some mystery in the air; there have been fleeting signs of secret communication between earth and sky, as if the hidden powers were in friendly league and some great concerted movement were on foot. There have been soft lights playing upon the tender grass on the lawn, and caressing those delicate ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... practice, lead from a firm starting-point to a certain end, and only the possession of truth in the fundamentals of our religious view of the world gives value and satisfaction to investigation in a world which, without this possession, contains for us only transitory and fleeting, and therefore only unsatisfactory, things, but which stands before us as the work and the theatre of revelation of a God and Father, and therefore gives to investigation inexhaustible joy and satisfaction when we look upon it from ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... his early Land of Dreams, and the pastime that he had been forced to relinquish for action now appealed to him with overwhelming force and fascination. But the dreams were a man's dreams, not the fleeting fancies of a boy. They continued to possess and absorb him until one night, when he was looking above the mountains at one lone star that shone brighter than the rest, he was moved for the first time to give material shape and form ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Thought from the eye closes the understanding, but thought from the understanding opens the eye. Such persons cannot think at all of Esse and Existere in itself, and that it is Eternal, Uncreate, and Infinite; neither can they think at all of life, except as a something fleeting and vanishing into nothingness; nor can they think otherwise of Love and Wisdom, nor at all that from these are all things of nature. Neither can it be seen that from these are all things of nature, unless nature is regarded, not from some of its forms, which are merely objects of sight, ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... wing of the house, and another appeared behind the fan-light in the entrance-hall when the leader of the three highbinders had tramped up the steps and touched the bell-push. Blount had a fleeting glimpse of a black head with a fringe of snowy wool when the door was opened, but he did not hear what was said. After the negro serving-man disappeared there was a little wait. At the end of the interval the door was opened wide, and Blount had a gruff ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... The sands and the sea, and the white gulls fleeting, The mist on the island, the cloud on the hill; The song in my heart, and the old hope beating Its life 'gainst ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of yonder elm There glides and gazes a sadder face; Spectre Queen of a vanished race— 'Tis the full moon shrunk to a fleeting film, And she lingers for ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... ten or eleven," Captain Davenport complained at seven in the morning, when the fleeting promise of the sun had been erased by hazy cloud masses in the eastern sky. And the next moment he was plaintively demanding, "And what are ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... velocipede, With him who rode thereon; And no one, since that dreadful day, Has found out where 'tis gone! Except a floating rumor Which some stray wind doth blow. When the long nights of winter Are white with frost and snow, Of a small fleeting shadow, That seems to run astray Upon a pair of flying ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... tried his skill, To rise in life, he was dependent still: We met in grief, nor can I paint the fears Of these unhappy, troubled, trying years: Our dying hopes and stronger fears between, We felt no season peaceful or serene; Our fleeting joys, like meteors in the night, Shone on our gloom with inauspicious light; And then domestic sorrows, till the mind, Worn with distresses, to despair inclined; Add too the ill that from the passion flows, When its contemptuous frown the world ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... and Mr. Catlin have done more to preserve the fleeting traits of aboriginal character and history than all their predecessors in this field of inquiry, and none can follow them with the same success, as none can have the same range of subjects before them. The scene is changing with each year, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... learning, or her skill in cookery, or her proficiency in Greek. A sensible man will look for a sensible woman; he will not concern his sensible head over such trumperies as a pair of bright eyes, or a red lip or so, or a satisfactory suit of hair. These are fleeting vanities. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... whether it was good or whether it was ill. Then spake Cathba: "The little boy that takes arms [8]this day[8] shall be splendid and renowned [9]for deeds of arms[9] [10]above the youths of Erin [11]and the tales of his high deeds shall be told[11] forever,[10] but he shall be short-lived and fleeting." Cuchulain overheard what he said, though far off at his play-feats south-west of Emain; and he threw away all his play-things and hastened to Conchobar's sleep-room [12]to ask for arms.[12] "All [W.1077.] good attend thee, O king of the Fene!" cried the little lad. "This greeting is the speech ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... stars; And heard the eternal waters. Thus recluse The man lived on in vision still of God Through contemplation known: and as the shades, Each other chase all day o'er steadfast hills, Even so, athwart that Vision unremoved, Forever rushed the tumults of this world, Man's fleeting life, the rise and fall of states, While changeless measured change; the spirit of prayer Fanning that wondrous picture oft to flame Until the glory grew insufferable. Long years thus lived he. As the Apostle Paul, Though raised in raptures to the heaven of heavens, Not therefore loved his ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... have included pacificism in fleeting religious systems of varying degrees of impossibility and absurdity are still more open to suspicion on mental and moral grounds. The Cathari, the Waldenses, the Anabaptists, and the "Family of Love," not only developed monstrous doctrines: ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... heavy and prolonged, in which I sat as if drugged by the night air that hung soft and perfumed about us. It seemed incredible that in that fleeting instant she had spoken ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... now beyond the range of any rifle, and he drew a long breath of relief that was like a deep sigh. Then he took a single downward glance, and caught a fleeting glimpse of the Uhlans galloping away. Doubtless they were making all speed back ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... leader leaped at the fallen boy, and as his body paused a fleeting moment in midair before it began the descent, a rifle cracked, a bullet struck him in the throat, cutting the jugular vein and coming out behind. His body fell lifeless on the snow, and he who had fired the shot came on ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... blinded him then, he wondered? Marie had her charms, to be sure, with those dark, bewitching eyes of hers, so kind and sympathetic, so bright and witty and entertaining. But there was something about Marie that was fleeting, something about Beth that was abiding; Marie's charms bewitched while she was present and were soon forgotten, but Beth's lingered in the memory and deepened with the years. It was well, after all, he thought, that Marie had refused his ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had not known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win, ignorance is acceptable to God as a proof of faith and submission, abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules of life—these were the fixed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... stand in a great hall of a great city, cold and empty, even though wise men came to gaze and throngs of fools gaped, passing with flattering words. Where I go now I know not; but since I go from that humble house where they loved me, I shall be sad and alone. They pass so soon—those fleeting mortal lives! Only we endure—we the things that the human brain creates. We can but bless them a little as they glide by: if we have done that, we have done what our masters wished. So in us our masters, being dead, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... he that to earth's children comes at last, The angel-messenger, white-robed and pale, Upon thy soul his sweet oblivion cast, And bore thee gently through the shadowy vale,— The fleeting years of thy brief exile o'er,— ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... capacity of a magistrate being transitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity it was hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions, not only between the people and the standing authority of the Crown, but between the people and the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself. It was hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and Government, they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest everything that concerned the people, than the other remoter and ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... Jimmy Holden both heard and felt the sharp Bang! as the right front tire went. The steering wheel snapped through his father's hands by half a turn. There was a splintering crash as the car shattered its way through the retaining fence, then came a fleeting moment of breathless silence as if the entire universe had stopped still ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... man produce, Why we should be intemperate in the use Of any worldly good? Do we not see That all these things from us a fleeting be? What can we hold? What can we keep from flying From us? Is not each thing we have a dying? My house, my wife, my child, they all grow old, Nor am I e'er the younger for my gold; Here's none abiding, all things fade away, Poor I at best am but a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... according to the directions, proceeded to administer it to the gasping patient; but, while the glass was at her lips, the last paroxysm of death came on, and with it something more of that consciousness now fleeting for ever. Dashing aside the nostrum with one hand, with the other she drew the shrinking and half-fainting girl to her side, and, pressing her down beside her, appeared to give utterance to that which, from the action, and the few and audible words she made out ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the unhappy effects about him could spring only from a hollow vanity far lower than a woman's wish to be charming. It was not an innate impulse which produced them, but a sham ambition, implanted from without, and artificially stimulated by the false and fleeting mood of the time. They must really hamper the growth of aesthetic knowledge among people who were not destitute of ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... my joyless days, When length of hope is length of misery? Hope is a coz'ner, and beguiles our cares, Cheats us with empty shews of happiness, Swift fleeting joys which mock the faint embrace; We wade thro' ills pursuing of the meteor, Yet are ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... 'Grandfather's Clock.' Hard by lay the pipe, fashioned of the 'foam of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,' the pipe on which, perchance, some swain had discoursed sweet music near the shady heights of High Holborn. The cradle of infancy, the gamp of decrepitude, the tricycle of fleeting youth, the paraffin lamp which had lighted bridal gaiety, the flask which had held the foaming malt,—all were gathered here, and the dust lay deep on all ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... fell fast asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating; But when she awoke, she found it a joke, For still they all were fleeting. ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... of hell and of purgatory and fleeting glimpses of paradise, never put before us the picture of a soul that was lost and found heaven, after a cycle of despair. Nor could Madeleine Lannoy ever explain her feelings at that moment, even to herself. To begin with, she could ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... sister of constancy Obstinacy and heat in argument are the surest proofs of folly Obstinate in growing worse Occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude" Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous Occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal cause Of the fleeting years each steals something from me Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate Oftentimes agitated with divers passions Old age: applaud the past and condemn the present Old men who retain the memory of things past Omit, as incredible, ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... But He knows better than we how empty and fleeting is all happiness other than is found in Him. 'Tis only because the Lord is our Shepherd ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... fleeting smile to play on her lips. She flashed a quick look at him and quickly turned away. He gave a gasp of desire. She raised her shoulders in a little shrug. With a savage bound he sprang upon her and seized her in his arms. Then she laughed. She put her arms, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... kind quite novel to him. Most of it had no meaning for him, but at intervals some fragment detached itself from the mass, and stood out beautiful. It was as if he were gazing at a stage in gloom, but lighted momentarily by fleeting rays that revealed a lovely detail and were bafflingly cut off. Occasionally he thought he noticed a recurrence of the same fragment. Murmurs came from behind the piano. He looked cautiously. Alicia was making faces of alarm and annoyance. She whispered: "Oh dear! ... It's ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... woman's troth abideth longer than the fleeting breath, And a woman's love abideth higher ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... their ignobler forms—nay, in the ignoblest form of a fashion—have, or had but yesterday, the control of the popular pen. Trivial pessimism or trivial optimism, it matters little which prevails. For those who follow the one habit to-day would have followed the other in a past generation. Fleeting as they are, it cannot be within their competence to neglect or reject the philosophy of "In Memoriam." To the dainty stanzas of that poem, it is true, no great struggle of reasoning was to be committed, nor would any such dispute be judiciously entrusted to the rhymes of a ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... the fond garrulity of age over these fairy scenes, endeared to thee by the recollections of thy youth, and the charms of a thousand legendary tales, which beguiled the simple ear of thy childhood—recollect that thou art trifling with those fleeting moments which should be devoted to loftier themes. Is not Time, relentless Time! shaking, with palsied hand, his almost exhausted hour-glass before thee?—hasten then to pursue thy weary task, lest the last sands ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Upon the dreary northern snows, But better loved the soft repose Of splendid carpets richly wrought. I once forgot for your sweet cause The thirst for fame and man's applause, My country and an exile's lot; My joy in youth was fleeting e'en As your light footprints on ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... brow). fuego m. fire, ardor, flame, passion; prender —— set fire. fuente f. spring, fountain, source. fuera adv. outside; —— de prep. out of. fuero m. privilege, statute law. fuerza f. force, strength, might. fugaz adj. fleeting. fugitivo, -a fugitive, fleeting, fleeing, flying. flgido, -a bright, resplendent. fulgor m. gleam. fulguroso, -a shining, flashing. fulgurante adj. shining. fnebre adj. funereal, lugubrious, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... first time in his life, the Earl of Fairholme realized his limitations; he was actually cowed for a few fleeting seconds. But the arrogant training of the county bench, the seignory of a vast estate, the unquestioning deference accorded to his views by thousands of men who tacitly admitted that what he said must be right because he was a lord—these excellent stays of self-conceit ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... cursory and partial, of this ancient speculation, has thus revealed at any rate two results of prime importance in the study of Nature Mysticism. The one is that the air has furnished the primary type of the soul as the principle of life—man's fleeting breath has suggested and fostered the idea of immortality; the wind that bloweth where it listeth, the idea of a realm of changeless spirit! The other result is that certain of nature's most obvious phenomena, when seized by intuition, can supply a key to some of her profoundest secrets. Shall ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... the deck he caught a fleeting glimpse of a big steamship ahead, which was revealed in the glare of the ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... the tender voice calling 'Away,' Whispering between the beatings of the heart, And inaccessible in dewy eyes I dwell, and all unkissed on lovely lips, Lingering between white breasts inviolate, And fleeting ever from the passionate touch, I shine afar, till men may not divine Whether it is the stars or the beloved They follow with wrapt spirit. And I weave My spells at evening, folding with dim caress, Aerial ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... the first fleeting years of university life were over, and many beautiful life-dreams were over also. But one of them still remained: Faith in God and man. Otherwise life would have been circumscribed within one's narrow brain. Instead of that, a nobler ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... again. She thought that if he could smile again through her agency he might return, through gratitude and satisfied love—to her. At that time she thought that Edward was a person of light and fleeting passions. And she could understand Edward's passion for Maisie, since Maisie was one of those women to whom other women will allow magnetism. She was very pretty; she was very young; in spite of her heart she was very gay and light on her feet. And Leonora was really very fond of Maisie, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... THE STATE: Alas, our beardless youths seem satisfied With club in hand to pass at fleeting ball Or chase it, monkey-like, in open field Thus throwing ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... and fleeting apparition, Sublime in age or with clear morning eyes, Ever I seek thee, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of Nagaya was condemned to suffer the same frightful death she had so often mercilessly decreed for others! Closer and closer grew the fearful Python's constricting clasp, . . nearer and nearer swept the dancing battalion of destroying flames! ... For one fleeting breath of time Theos stared aghast at the horrid scene, . . then making a superhuman effort he raised Sah-luma's corpse entirely from the ground and staggered with his burden away, . . away from the burning Shrine, . . the funeral ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... motives which induce men to change the place of their abode, these must unavoidably be fleeting and mutable. If not bound to one spot by conjugal or parental ties, or by the nature of that employment to which we are indebted for subsistence, the inducements to change are far more numerous and powerful, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... noticed the ruts in the cheeks of my grimy vis-a-vis, for Crean had recently clipped his beard and whiskers. My gaze was also riveted on a cut, or rather open crack caused in one of his lips by the combined sun and wind. Thousands of little fleeting thoughts chased one another through our brains, as we afterwards found by comparison, and finally we were so close to Lashly that he could touch the sledge. He reached down, for the bridge was depressed somewhat where it met the slope on which ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... blue coat had worse dreams than ever; he listened more anxiously than ever to every fleeting sound, heard more in it, and added ever greater loads to what lay on his breast. But he did ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... and narratives of other men ready to hand; one person cannot be an eye-and-ear witness of everything. But, merely as an ingredient, they make use only of such aids as the poet does of that heritage of an already-formed language to which he owes so much; historiographers bind together the fleeting elements of story, and treasure them up for immortality in the temple of Mnemosyne. Legends, ballad-stories, and traditions must be excluded from such original history; they are but dim and hazy forms of historical apprehension, and therefore ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... sight, that is to say, all that is worth art's possessing or recording at all; for whatever can be arrested, measured, and systematized, we can contemplate as much as we will in nature herself. But what we want art to do for us is to stay what is fleeting, and to enlighten what is incomprehensible, to incorporate the things that have no measure, and immortalize the things that have no duration. The dimly seen, momentary glance, the flitting shadow of faint emotion, the imperfect lines of fading ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a vision of his, vague and fleeting then, but very real now. He was standing here at Ticonderoga, looking at the battle as it passed before him, and now it was no vision, but the truth. Had Tayoga's Manitou opened the future to him for a moment? Then the memory was gone and the terrific ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that I had lied to her. There was no intention in me of accepting her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give. I meant to snatch her out of darkness and mystery, to set her in the wholesome sunlight where Phillida flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates of which she vaguely spoke never should close between us. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... least her reputation was secure. Only a week previously Lemuel had learnt indirectly that she had left their native district. He determined thenceforward to forget her completely. Mrs. Malpas's prettiness was of the fleeting sort. After Nina's birth she began to get stout and coarse, and the nostalgia of the saloon-bar, the coffee-room, and the sanded portico overtook her. The Tiger at Bursley was for sale, a respectable ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... to the door. His ordinarily stoical features bore signs of a great, though subdued excitement. I had a fleeting glimpse of Britton in the distance,—a sort of passing shadow, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... that night, but lay with his head on his interlocked hands, staring out of his window at the fleeting shadows of the summer night, thinking of Elizabeth, remembering what Elizabeth had said during the day, seeing Elizabeth's face and eyes and the bit of white throat that showed above her collar, hearing Elizabeth's voice, ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Harry," was known vaguely as "him," "Skeesicks," or "that coot." It was remembered long after, with a feeling of superstition, that he had never even met with the dignity of an accident, nor received the fleeting honor of a chance shot meant for somebody else in any of the liberal and broadly comprehensive encounters which distinguished the camp. And the inundation that finally carried him out of it was partly anticipated by his passive incompetency, ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... occasion, circulates among a whole people. The present nickname originated in derision on the expulsion of the majority of the Long Parliament by the usurping minority. It probably slept; for who would have stirred it through the Protectorate? and finally awakened at Richard's restored, but fleeting "Rump," to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... should be false to the lessons I have endeavored to teach you in these last fleeting hours of my ill-spent life, were I not to rejoice in any destiny that would wrap up your future career in the glory of God; but I fear the enthusiasm of your young heart will misguide you. I know, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... trees when we started, but here in the North it is no fleeting glow. It lingers for hours even, fading so imperceptibly that you scarcely know when it has ceased. Thus, when we returned after a long pull, craving the Lenten fare of the monastery, the same soft gold tinted its clustering domes. We were not called upon to visit the refectory, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... slim figure to her ringed fingers lying loosely in her lap, a long, dry-looking blister upon one hand near the thumb; down to her slippers, showing beneath her scorched skirt. And he drew another long breath. He did not know why, but he had a strange, fleeting sense of possession, and ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... the other women followed suit. Lorelei amused and interested them in a casual way, but she was made to understand that they regarded her not as Bob's wife in any real sense, but rather as his latest and most fleeting fancy. His marriage they seemed to look upon as a bizarre adventure, such as might happen to any man in their set who ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... college, he knew very little of life indeed,—and, moreover, he cherished not a few ascetic notions, deeming this world "all a fleeting show," from whose vain illusions it was one's chief duty to shield one's self. He had never read a novel, save "some of Scott's,"—nor ever seen or read a play, not even of Shakspeare's. How I envied him this new world, in whose usages I had been blase long before I was of an age to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and how he longed to be there. The deep masses of green leaves, solid in the distance, waved gently in the wind. Over this great green wilderness bent the brilliant blue sky, golden at the dome from the high sun. It was but a fleeting glance, and his eyes came back to earth, to the Wyandots, ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... therefore, when the vehicle bowled swiftly into a quiet cross street, and he was vouchsafed only fleeting glimpses of broad avenues where fresh multitudes of lamps again ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... ancestral heritage revere All learning, and all thought. The painter's fame Is thine, whate'er thy lot, who honorest grace. And need enough in this low time, when they, Who seek to captivate the fleeting notes Of heaven's sweet beauty, must despair almost, So heavy and obdurate show the hearts Of their companions. Honor kindly then Those who bear up in their so generous arms The beautiful ideas of matchless forms; For were these not portrayed, our human fate,— Which is to be all high, majestical, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... young writer) of carrying a notebook about with him. The most profitable ideas, he felt, do not come from much seeking, but rise unbidden in the mind, and if they are not put down at once on paper, they may be lost for ever. But with a notebook in the pocket you are safe; no thought is too fleeting to escape you. Thus, if an inspiration for a five-thousand word story comes suddenly to you during the dessert, you murmur an apology to your neighbour, whip out your pocket-book, and jot down a few rough notes. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... new-found divine friendship, utter contempt for the maxims of the world, iron determination to love God to the end—these are the sentiments which, by the preaching of missions, are made to dominate entire parishes in a degree simply marvellous. Nor can it be said that these dispositions are fleeting. Allowing for exceptions, especially in large cities, their permanency is often an evidence of the solidity of the motives which inspired them, as well as of the supernatural graces which gave them life. Every missionary ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... was kept. Her image, clothed in all the gorgeous fancies which the love-sick brain conjures up, spoke in silver tones to his heart, and the melody of her voice thrilled his soul. Descending from the dignity of the man, he built childish air-castles, wherein he throned his idol, and in a few fleeting moments squandered years of happiness by her side. The perils of the past, the sternness of the present, the responsibilities of the future, all faded away, and from their ashes rose the bright ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... when AEneas wept and would have spoken, vanished out of his sight. Thrice he would have cast his arms about her neck, and thrice the image mocked him, being thin as air and fleeting as a dream. Then, the night being now spent, he sought his comrades, and found with much joy and wonder that a great company of men and women were gathered together, and were willing, all of them, to follow him whithersoever he went. And now the morning star rose over Mount ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... written in an old log-book to guide me in my account of the events of that period of my career. A few are still vivid in my memory as when they first occurred, but many have escaped me altogether, or appear like the fleeting phantoms of a dream of which it is impossible to describe the details. I must therefore be allowed to pass rapidly over that early portion of my naval life and go on to the time when I had passed my examination ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... mistaken. Possibly all are like the original, but represented her under different circumstances, or at different periods of her life. Previous to her engagement with the king, she was the object of fleeting attentions from the young noblemen about the court. Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!" With every man in this life below— But the things of this world are a fleeting show. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... an hour of intimate excitement, when the burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated, promised; had been ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... you have so industriously filled, and pocket your pencils which you have worn down to stumps, even as I now shut up my dogs-eared old journal, and pocket my empty ink-bottle. One more of the few and fleeting scenes of life is fast closing, soon to leave us nothing but the remembrance that it once existed—a happy remembrance of a holiday walk in dear old England, which will always be welcome and vivid to the last, like other remembrances ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... to mix with men. Here hang on every rose a thorny care, Bathe thy vexed soul in unpolluted air, Fill deep from ancient stream and opening flower, From veteran oak and wild melodious bower, With love, with awe, the bright but fleeting hour. Here bid the breeze that sweeps dull vapours by, Leaving majestic clouds to deck the sky, Fan from thy brow the lines unrest has wrought, But leave the footprint of each nobler thought. Now turn where high from Windsor's hoary ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... teacher's languid eye, Flushed his pale cheek, with bright, tho' fleeting flame; Leap'd forth his voice with energetic cry, And thus, to me express'd, his ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... twilight with her head against the garret window, and her left side all shrivelled and useless. She had a little sense left, and a few fleeting breaths to draw. ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... Riggs was present and that rare Irish musician, Denis O'Sullivan. It was another choice afternoon, with a mystical quality which came of the music made by O'Sullivan on some Hindu reeds-pipes of Pan. But we shall have more of O'Sullivan presently—all too little, for his days were few and fleeting. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... girl who had run for the golden guinea. It was true that when he had put her there where that light was shining, it was with some shadowy idea of giving her gentle breeding, of making a lady of her. But man's purposes are fleeting, and often gone with the morrow. He had forgotten his purpose; and perhaps it was best this way,—perhaps it ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Virgil, not merely with heavy treatises on canon-law and school divinity, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time, nay even with the most admired poetry and the most popular squibs which appeared on the fleeting topics of the day, with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with Erasmus's dialogues, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... elbows stood for me as the last irony of our mortal life. Here was a king whose misfortunes could find no parallel. He had been in his youth the hero of a high adventure, and his middle age had been spent in fleeting among the courts of Europe, and waiting as pensioner on the whims of his foolish but regnant brethren. I had heard tales of a growing sottishness, a decline in spirit, a squalid taste in pleasures. Small ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... definite design while all seven waved the departing vessel good-by. Then for the walk to the house she shared Irby with Anna and gave Flora to Hilary, with Miranda and Constance in front outmanoeuvred by a sleight of hand so fleeting and affable that even you or I would not have ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... workshops on the road; grim Castel Pucci, that once flung its glove at Florence; the green low dark hills of Castagnolo; villa and monastery, watch-tower and bastion, homestead and convent, all flew by him, fleeting and unseen; all he thought of was that the boy would ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... darkness, save where, through broken fragments of fleeting clouds, the moon sometimes threw a feeble light on the gloom ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... screen the enemy's position. Occasionally, after the explosion of a particularly well-placed Belgian shell, Thompson and I, from our hole in the roof and with the aid of our high-power glasses, could catch fleeting glimpses of scurrying grey-clad figures, but that was all. The men below us in the trenches could see nothing except the hedges, gardens, and red-roofed houses of a country town. They knew the enemy was there, however, from the incessant rattle of musketry ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... Mrs. Dillon's cottage. His prospects and reflections had been of a grave and sad character throughout the day, and his threadbare coat and lean purse had been more than usually suggestive of the great truth, that all earthly comforts are fleeting and transitory. ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... handed into the ruthless paw of a clerk at the mont de piete, she had little doubt. Everything that she or her husband had ever possessed worth possessing had so vanished—had been not an absolute property, but a brief fleeting joy, a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a pawnbroker's duplicate. The time would come. She showed the trinket to her husband with a melancholy foreboding, and read his thoughts as he weighed it in his palm, by mere force of habit, speculating what ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... would wake in him an unaccustomed stir, the cause of which he would long and vainly seek to determine.' So he comes to care supremely for Baudelaire, 'who, more than any other, possessed the marvellous power of rendering, with a strange sanity of expression, the most fleeting, the most wavering morbid states of exhausted minds, of desolate souls.' In Flaubert he prefers La Tentation de Saint-Antoine; in Goncourt, La Faustin; in Zola, La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret—the exceptional, the most remote ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Aegeus, bend thee now And clasp thy son. Aye, hold and fear not thou! Not knowingly hast thou slain him; and man's way, When Gods send error, needs must fall astray. And thou, Hippolytus, shrink not from the King, Thy father. Thou wast born to bear this thing. Farewell! I may not watch man's fleeting breath, Nor strain mine eyes with the effluence of death. And sure that Terror now is very near. [The cloud slowly ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... monstrous. But why was it, when Mr. Pole again harped on his cook, in almost similar words, that they were drawn to meet the eyes of the stranger, on whom they printed one of the most fabulously faint fleeting looks imaginable, with a proportionately big meaning for him that might read it? It must have been that this uniform of a tail had laid a basis of equality for the hour, otherwise they never would have done so; nor would he have enjoyed the chance of showing them that he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... crimson, and threw over her shining hair a veil of tissue. Some one outside called that the bride's kuruma was at the gate. Old Kano entered the room, smiling. His steps creaked and rustled with new silk. Ume turned for one fleeting glimpse of her plum tree. It seemed to stir and wave green leaves toward her. With head down-bent, the girl followed her ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... from his breast the hand he had concealed there; it was stained with his blood. He had dug his nails into his flesh, as if in punishment for having nursed so many projects, more vain, insensate, and fleeting than the life of man himself. Fouquet was horror-stricken, and then his heart smote him with pity. He threw open his arms as if to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas |
