"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the air is full of song; In those old days when I was young and strong, He used to sing on yonder garden tree, Beside the nursery. Ah, I remember how I loved to wake, And find him singing on the self-same bough (I know it even now) Where, since the flit of bat, In ceaseless voice he sat, Trying the spring night over, like a tune, Beneath the vernal moon; And while I listed long, Day rose, and still he sang, And all his stanchless song, As something falling unaware, Fell out of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Mrs. Horton's kitchen," he tried to say, but the words had an empty and ridiculous sound, as if there was no meaning in them. They flew about him in the air like little butterflies trying to settle. They settled on one meaning, only to flit elsewhere the next minute and settle on another meaning. They could mean anything and everything. They did mean everything. They meant one thing. Finally they settled back into his heart. And their meaning caught him by the throat in a most delicious ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the child's face was one of such concentrated attention that it seemed to me an extraordinary manifestation; up to this time none of the children had ever shown such fixity of interest in an object; and my belief in the characteristic instability of attention in young children, who flit incessantly from one thing to another, made me peculiarly alive to ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... threw their arms about each other, and were so full of their own feelings that they never saw Uncle Fact's tall shadow flit across them, as he stole away over the soft sand. Poor old gentleman! he was in a sad state of mind, and didn't know what to do; for in all his long life he had never been ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... did the wonder flit, Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it. We saw the heavens fling down their rose; On rapturous waves we saw her glide; The pearly sea-shell half enclose; The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; And we, afire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is a great scandal to the Moslemin. I mark their weakness, and I have worked upon it. Thy mere defeat or death will not blot out the stain upon their standard and their faith. The public mind is wild with fantasies since Alroy rose. Men's opinions flit to and fro with that fearful change that bodes no stable settlement of states. None know what to cling to, or where to place their trust. Creeds are doubted, authority disputed. They would gladly account for thy success by other than human means, yet must deny thy mission. There also is the fame ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... on tree-top high, The sentry elf his call has made, A streak is in the eastern sky, Shapes of moonlight! flit and fade! The hill-tops gleam in morning's spring, The sky-lark shakes his dappled wing, The day-glimpse glimmers on the lawn, The cock has ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... appearing for a moment at his wife's side on the balcony above the public square, withdrew quietly to his own apartments. The casement of his closet stood wide, and he leaned against the window-frame, looking out on the silent radiance of the gardens. As he stood there he saw two figures flit across the farther end of one of the long alleys. The moonlight surrendered them for a moment, the shade almost instantly reclaiming them—strayed revellers, doubtless, escaping from the lights and music of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and I nearly had to do this, but were just able to glide across a small salient. I am thus qualified to describe a typical series of incidents preceding the announcement, "one of our machines is missing," and I do so in the hope that this may interest you, madam, as you flit from town to country, country to town, and so ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... remarked the Bishop, gravely, "life is but a mirror which reflects themselves. Other forms and faces may flit by, in the background; dimly seen, scarcely noticed. There is but one face and form occupying the entire foreground. Life is, to such, the mirror which ministers to vanity. Should a husband appear in the picture, he is soon relegated to the background, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Fred Forrester rode on at the rear of his little detachment, longing to get to Newton Abbot and be rid of his painful charge. The evening grew more pleasant and cool, the moths came out, and with them the bats, to dart and flit, and capture the myriad gnats which danced here and there beneath the trees. Then, as they passed beneath some umbrageous oak, which stretched its ponderous and gnarled arms across the road, a night-hawk swooped ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... echo; it is fit The spell should break of this protracted dream. The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit My midnight lamp—and what is writ, is writ - Would it were worthier! but I am not now That which I have been—and my visions flit Less palpably before me—and the glow Which in my spirit dwelt is ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... it was a far cry back to the lost heights, and wrote the story of his broken life in the song of "the bird with the broken pinion, that never flew as high again." Sooner or later each life passes under bondage. For all strength will vanish as the morning dew our joys take wings and flit away; the eye dim, the ear dull, the thought decay, our dearest die. Oft life's waves and billows chill us to the very marrow, while we gasp and shiver midst the surging tide. Then it is a blessed thing to look out through blinding tears upon a friendly face, to ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... are birds with very bright colors. There are birds called sunbirds. Often green, yellow, scarlet, and purple feathers are found on these birds. What a pretty sight it must be to see them flit ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... break away, tear oneself away, slip away, slink away, steel away, make away from, scamper away from, sneak away from, shuffle away from, sheer away from; slip cable, part company, turn one's heel; sneak out of, play truant, give one the go by, give leg bail, take French leave, slope, decamp, flit, bolt, abscond, levant, skedaddle, absquatulate [obs3][U.S.], cut one's stick, walk one's chalks, show a light pair of heels, make oneself scarce; escape &c. 671; go away &c. (depart) 293; abandon &c. 624; reject &c. 610. lead one a dance, lead ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the severity of his requirements of woman, and saw his own image reflected in the polish of his ideal; and now a fear whose presence he would not acknowledge began to gnaw at his heart, a vague suggestion's horrid image, to which he would yield no space, to flit ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... that flit before my eyes when I am between sleeping and waking," said Lady Delacour, "I am willing to believe, are the effects of opium; but, Belinda, it is impossible I should be convinced that my senses have deceived me with respect to what I have beheld when I have been as broad awake, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Virginia was put into great agitation. She began to flit about the room like a moth, wringing her ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... I am makin' all kinds of money and I might as well be a bum!—no automobile or nothin'. I should have had a car long ago; all the big leaguers own their own tourin' cars. There's no class to you any more, if you don't flit from place to place in ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... avenue, beyond the square lawn and pepper-pot summer-houses, and pitied men who made such mistakes in the matter of matrimony as his brother William obviously had. The rose of the sunset faded in the west. Bats began to flit forth, hawking against the still ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... him into the conversation yourself. You think of him much more than I do." Her voice drooped sadly to a hopeless note. "I hardly ever do. He is not the sort of person to merely flit through one's mind and so I have no time. Look. I had eleven letters this morning and there were also five telegrams before midday, which have tangled up ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... a duel between a slim man of near forty who had rarely fired a shot in sport, never in anger, and a stoutly built irascible Irishman, for whom a good shot meant lynching or lasting opprobrium. Visions of Bob Acres and Sir Lucius O'Trigger flit before us. We picture Tierney quoting "fighting Bob Acres" as to the advantage of a sideways posture; and we wonder whether the seconds, if only in regard for their own safety, did not omit to insert bullets. The ludicrous ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... game of billiards, more work, dinner, and, if we are not going to a dance or any frivolity, a quiet talk, a smoke, a few more papers gone through, bed, and the long Indian day is over. All day chuprassis, like attendant angels, flit in and out bearing piles of documents marked Urgent, which they heap on his writing-table. I begin greatly to dislike ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... this unnatural sanity of intellect: it is like the calm in the whirlwind's centre, where the waves run higher though the air is deadly still, and the surly mariner wishes the mad wind back again.—To and fro you flit, goaded on and strengthened by untiring anguish. You are but the body of a man; your thought and emotion are abroad, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Paul said. Because of the bats, Jesus answered, and looking up they saw the vermin hanging among the clefts, a sort of hideous fruit, measuring three feet from wing to wing, Paul muttered, and as large as rats. We shall see them drop from their roosts as the sky darkens and flit away in search of food, Jesus said. Paul asked what food they could find in the desert, and Jesus answered: we are not many miles from Jericho and these winged rats travel a long way. In Brook Kerith they are destructive among our figs; we take many ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... reports, Mr. Sikes, which often flit about, but must not be trusted. Mr. Patch could not have given a better proof that ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... worm. I selected the plumpest and most comely of the lot; I put a new hook on my line; I looped him about it in graceful coils, and cautiously approached the water, as before. Now a worm never attempts to wildly leap across a flowing brook, nor does he flit in thoughtless innocence through the sunny air, and over the bright transparent stream. If he happens to fall into the water, he sinks to the bottom; and if he be of a kind not subject to drowning, he generally endeavors to secrete himself under a stone, or to ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... cause of a young woman, who passed at the moment; she told me, with an artless countenance, that "it was haunted." I smiled, and asked how she knew it. "Ah, Sir," said she, "its nothing to laugh at—every body here-abouts knows it well enough—such strange noises are heard in it, and such lights flit about it at midnight."—Have you seen them? "No, Sir, but I knows those that have, and I'm sure its true." Seeing a labouring man at a distance, I enquired what he knew of the haunted house, when he told me, with a face full of faith, that "he ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... and I can be ready for my plunge into Gotham vanities by—let me see—we will say Saturday night. I am at the Lady Louise. You may call for me there about eight. Good-by. Don't be late, Gentlemen." And with that she does the abrupt flit, leavin' us ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... anything?-Yes, I signed a paper, stating that I would rather stay and fish for him than that I would flit. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Shines on the slaughter-field of rooks: The owlets hoot, from ivy bower, In the grey embattled tower— "Tuwit, tuwit, towhoo!" they say, And echoing through the ruins grey, The sound disturbs the daily sleep Of bats who dwell in dungeon keep, Who 'mong the ruins nightly flit, And ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... you've hit the truth, And I with grief can but admit Hot-blooded haste controls my youth, My idle fancies veer and flit From flower to flower, from tree to tree, And when the moment catches me, Oh, love goes by Away I fly And ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... other, heartily, as he eyed the boy; and perhaps a dim suspicion that he might find the fugitive valuable as a guide began to flit through his mind ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... agents and her spies, Gliding through temples, baths, and theatres; Possess all angles, corners, noonday halts, And darknesses; they flit with casual poison Softly; the city secretly is filled With murmurs, lifted eyebrows, and with sighs. The mischief's in the very blood of Rome Unless the sore that feeds ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... tak' some ither mode o' payin' the debt!" said John. "Stick spaud in yird here, ye sall not! You or I maun flit first!" ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... valley far below, doubtful of its being the broad Hudson, upon whose bosom we had so lately floated in a huge vessel crowded with passengers: for this vessel we searched in vain; but, by the aid of a telescope, made out one of the same kind, which appeared to flit along like some fairy skiff over a pantomimic lake made all ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... So she goes from t'one to t'other, till at last she says, 'There's poor Tommy Johnson, as used to live in the stone row; he's flitted with his wench Betty, and nobody knows where they've gone.' 'That's strange,' says I, 'what made 'em flit that fashion?' 'Oh,' she says, 'they'd a deal of trouble. Thomas wasn't right in his head arter his lad Sammul went off, so he took up with them Brierleys, and turned teetotaller; and then his missus,'—but I canna tell ye what ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... cannot, unfortunately, boast of being merely a spectator, seated in the royal box, applauding now and again. There is a wrench at my heart, a pang in every nerve. When I have put out the light and am in my bed, little touches, little glances, little words flit about and fill the darkness. When I get up in the morning, I thrill with lively anticipations, my blood seems to course through me to the strains ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... the elated son of Vulcan, as he descended the companion ladder, "we're goin' to flit, lad. We're about to rise in the world, so get up your bellows. It's the last time we shall have to be bothered with them in the boat, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... barnacles, perhaps, on the keel of some greater ship of space. He remembered how at home there had been a certain burning twinkle that peeped through the screen of the dogwood tree. As he moved on his porch, it seemed to flit to and fro, appearing and vanishing. He was often uncertain whether it was a firefly a few yards away, or a star the other side of Time. Possibly Truth was ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... said, "so we must even flit hence to the mainland and wait until Harald is tired of seeking us. It is in my mind that he seeks not so much for revenge as for payment of scatt from our islands. Now he has a reason for taking it by force. He will seek to fine us, and then make plans by which I shall hold the ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... there that were as men 15 And men that were as phantoms flit and roam; Marked shapes that were not living to my ken, Caught breathings acrid as with Dead Sea foam: The City rests for man so weird and awful, That his intrusion there might seem unlawful, 20 And phantoms there may have ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... is scarcely seen Through the curtain of vapour that waves between, O'er city and hamlet, o'er hill and plain, O'er forest green, and o'er mountain hoar, They flit like shadows, and pass the shore, And wing their way o'er the ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... boughs are swoln with blooms Like chrysalids impatient for the air, The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run Along the furrows, ants make their ado; Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain—and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... or left. The sun went down, the moon came up, on those Canadian wilds. Ever and anon, as swiftly held they onward, other Indians, singly or in squads, would fall into the file, gliding from out the mingled gloom of forest shade and night, as suddenly and silently as the shapes which flit through troubled dreams. Among these, by and by, appeared a warrior of gigantic stature, who putting himself at the head of the file, stalked on a little in advance, and seemed to ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the sun As if that morn were a jocund one. Lightly and brightly breaks away The Morning from her mantle grey, And the noon will look on a sultry day. Hark to the trump, and the drum, And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn, And the flap of the banners that flit as they're borne, And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum, And the clash, and the shout, 'They come! they come!' The horsetails are plucked from the ground, and the sword From its sheath; and they form, and but ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... lost in splendid vistas: it sees a long perspective of rare palaces where beings of a loftier nature glide. The incense of all prosperities sends up its smoke, the altar of all joy flames, the perfumed air circulates! Beings with divine smiles, robed in white tunics bordered with blue, flit lightly before the eyes and show us visions of supernatural beauty, shapes of an incomparable delicacy. The Loves hover in the air and waft the flames of their torches! We feel ourselves beloved; we are happy as we breathe a joy we understand not, as we bathe in ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... a human heart for a single day in ordinary circumstances. The lights and shadows that flit across it; its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... service in his life's work, and he has stood the test. Many young fellows of his age would have abused their opportunities. He has not done so. My only disappointment has been that he has developed no definite taste, but has been content to flit from one fancy to the next, always carried away by the latest novelty ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... twinge of remorse, any pang of painful recollection, pierce at that moment the incense of glory which she was inhaling? Did any vision flit across her of a sad mourning figure which once had stood where she was standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into the darkening twilight of a life cut short by sorrow? Who can tell? At such a time, that figure would have weighed heavily ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... putting forth these efforts, the ass bad been flying along at an undiminished rate of speed, and the country swept past him on either side. He passed long lines of trees by the roadside, he saw field after field flit by, and the distant hills went slowly along out of the line of his vision. Hitherto he had met with no one at all along the road, nor had he seen any cattle of any kind. His efforts to arrest the ass ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... cigarette and was lighting it when he heard a swift, stealthy step close behind him. He dropped the match as he swung round, pushing back his canvas chair, and found his eyes dazzled by the sudden darkness. Still he thought he saw a shadow flit across the veranda and vanish into the mist. Next moment there were heavier footsteps, and a crash as a man fell over the projecting legs of the chair. The fellow rolled down the shallow stairs, dropping a pistol ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... led the way from the assembly, and the other sceptred kings rose with him in obedience to the word of Agamemnon; but the people pressed forward to hear. They swarmed like bees that sally from some hollow cave and flit in countless throng among the spring flowers, bunched in knots and clusters; even so did the mighty multitude pour from ships and tents to the assembly, and range themselves upon the wide-watered ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... remove or increase your Irish anxiety about my being 'in a wisp[77],' I answer your letter forth-with; premising that, as I am a 'Will of the wisp,' I may chance to flit out of it. But, first, a word on the Memoir;—I have no objection, nay, I would rather that one correct copy was taken and deposited in honourable hands, in case of accidents happening to the original; for you know that I have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... haue layed vs aboord, and there stept vp some of his men in armour, and commanded vs to strike saile: whereupon we sent them some of our stuffe, crossebarres, and chaineshot, and arrowes, so thicke, that it made the vpper worke of their shippe flit about their eares, and then we spoiled him with all his men, and toare his shippe miserably with our great ordinance, and then he began to fall a sterne of vs, and to packe on his sailes, and get away: and we seeing that, gaue him foure or fiue good pieces more for his farewell; and thus ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... vapour wandered round and betwixt them and the sea; and each was well content to wonder whether the time need ever come when he must have to think again. Suddenly a light form flitted over the rocks, as the shadows flit; and though Frida ran away for fear of interrupting them, they knew who it was, and both, of course, began to ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom And flit from room to room. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Does the woodpecker flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... look of having both known and suffered. From many a porch, and many a latticed oriel, a long shadow stretched eastward, like a death flag streaming in a wind unfelt of the body—or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and flit away, and add one more to the mound of blackness gathering on the horizon's edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled by the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and exercising a charm none of them ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the ground, and yielded without further struggle to my evil destiny. What I suffered from thirst, hunger, and heat cannot be described. At last I fell into a sort of trance, during which images of various kinds seemed to flit before my eyes. How long I remained in this state I know not: but I remember that I was brought to my senses by a loud shout, which came from persons belonging to a caravan returning from Mecca. This was a shout of joy for their safe arrival at a certain spring, ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... do not belong to the fields as I do." He pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I—" He made a gesture of despair,—half comic, half serious,—and his dark face ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Dr. Deming made some reference to stories. Once in a while a story does flit across my mental horizon. I want to tell you how the word "nut" may have a very humorous interpretation. Once upon a time in Michigan a man died. After he died the local minister went around to console ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the Niblung slippeth and the shame that anger hath bred, And the heavy wings of the dreamtide flit over Gunnar's head: But he doth by his brother's bidding, and Sigurd's hand he takes, And he looks in the eyes of the Volsung, though scarce in the desert he wakes. There Hogni sits in the saddle aloof from the King's ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... confined himself, and from this point of view he must be studied. We do not forget, in saying this, his angel with the flaming torch, strong and beautiful and of unearthly presence, nor the shadowy, half-portrayed figures which dart and flit across his easel; but as we may understand the power of Titian from his portraits, yet never revel in it fully until we look upon "The Presentation" or "The Assumption"—never comprehend the painter's joy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... a picture to gaze upon and to return to; one of those visages which, after having once beheld, haunt us at all hours and flit across our mind's eye unexpected and unbidden. So great was the effect that it produced upon the present visitors to the gallery, that they stood before it for some minutes in silence; the scrutinising glance of the gentleman was more ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... quietly sit, Unmindful of moments, tho' fast they may flit Towards the hour of midnight, till gently at last Their daughter reminds them ...
— Grandma's Memories • Mary D. Brine
... have taken place in the House itself, and of the ghosts that flit about the benches where twenty years ago they sat in flesh and bone, I shall have ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... year 1860, the sun shone on the great day, and there were exhilarating tokens of spring, singing birds, opening buds, sparkling drops, and a general sense of festivity; as the gray and green began to flit about the streets, and while Mr. Mayor repaired to the Town Hall to administer the oaths to the corps, his unmartial sons and his daughters started for the Grange to assist Flora in the reception ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fisher maiden Is wand'ring up the path to where unseen I lie; She comes with some light spoil from off the shore beladen. And softly singing of the sea goes slowly by. And slowly rise great sun-tipped white cloud masses, Sublimely still their shadows flit and flee: How silently the work of nature passes— The roll of worlds, the growth of flower and tree! Angels of God in heaven! give him to ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the great camp near Springfield, it seemed to John Barclay that all the soldiers in the world were gathered. It is difficult for a boy under a dozen years to remember things consecutively; because boys do not do things consecutively. They flit around like butterflies, and so the picture that they make of events jumps from scene to scene. One film on a roll of John's memory showed a hot August day in the camp of "C" Company; the men are hurrying about the place. The tents are down; ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the felicity of my parents are motives too sacred, not to annihilate every ambiguity and every doubt. Oh, that I could escape at once! Oh, that like the tender bird, that hops before me in my path, I could flit away along the trackless air! Why should the little birds that carol among the trees be the only beings in the domains of Roderic, that know the sweets of liberty? But it will not be. Still, still ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... phosphorescent lights playing in front of the curtain forming the front of the cabinet. These lights will consist of small globules or balls of phosphorescent light that will dance about, like the familiar will-o'-the-wisp seen over swamps and in damp, woody places. These lights will flit here and there, will alternately appear and disappear. Sometimes they will appear as if a multitude of fire-flies were clustered in front of the curtain. When these fire balls appear the circle may know that it is well on the way to ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... reverie of pleasurable expectation, regarding the outcome of his investigations of the moat-house murder, that the stages of his promotion through the grades of detective, sub-superintendent, and superintendent, flashed through his mind as rapidly as telegraph poles flit past a traveller in a railway carriage. The crime which had struck down one human being in the dawn of youth and beauty, turned another into a murderer, and plunged an old English family into horror and misery, afforded Detective Caldew's optimistic temperament such ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... down, if the clouds broke: not that there is much to see in it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole; which you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue. Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you may drive ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... days Dr. Rauparaha had much writing to do, and passed his mornings and afternoons in the quiet library. Sometimes, as he wrote, a shadow would flit across the wide, sunlit veranda, and Helen Torringley would flit by, nodding pleasantly to him through the windows. Only two or three times had he met her alone since he came to Te Ariri, and walked with her through ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... Master's figure running across the snow toward that camp amid the trees, where fighting was still forward and men were shouting and firing. Brian rushed off, with Turlough staggering after him; but with a sob of despairing anger he saw the Dark Master flit into the trees, and heard his voice ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... been so absorbed as to forget himself, suddenly felt a cold tightening of the skin of his face, and a hard swell of his breast. The dance of Snap's eyes, the downward flit of his hand seemed instantaneous with a red flash and loud report. Instinctively Hare dodged, but the light impact of something like a puff of air gave place to a tearing hot agony. Then he slipped down, back to the stone, with a bloody ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... the name of the station; he looks up from his paper or rouses from his doze, looks out at the cheerless prospect, and then settles himself for another thirty miles. Time passes as unobserved as the meadows or bushy pastures that flit by the jarring window at his ear. But with Greenleaf, the reader will believe, the case was far different. He had never noticed before how slowly the locomotives really moved. At each station where wood and water were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... you do, you will perhaps have discovered that a woman may be as changeable as the moon, and yet as true as the sun;—that she may flit from flower to flower, quite unheeding while no passion exists, but that a passion fixes her at once. Do you believe me?" Now she looked into his eyes again, but did not smile and did not ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... nurses,' said Leonora, when they had gone to Washington. Indeed we could not stay where we were, nor flit off to Newport to banish care. I grew sleepless, and a sudden sound would send the blood to my heart. Leonora maintained an undaunted front, but she grew thin in spite of her cheerfulness. At ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... present time, and assure posterity that there never was such a lamb as Catherine II., and that, so far from assassinating her own husband and Czar Ivan,[2] she wept over every chicken that she had for dinner. How crimes, like fashions, flit from clime to clime! Murder reigns under the Pole, while you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised to hear that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... He did not like the looks of himself bedraggled and wet, and dead, on the deck of the "Hatty," with that curious crowd looking at him, Mandy Ann with the rest. Strange that thoughts of Mandy Ann should flit through his mind as he decided against the cold bath in the St. John's and to face it, whatever it was. Occasionally some one spoke to him, and he always answered politely, and once offered his chair to a lady who seemed to be looking for one. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... open, to throw light upon the half-finished sketch and the box of colours, while the rest of the perfumed apartment was steeped in a soft subdued glow. Absorbed in his work he seemed not to have heard the carriage stop, the bell ring twice, and a lady's dress flit along the passage. He had: but it was not his mother's shabby black dress that he expected, it was not for her that he posed at his desk, nor for her that he had provided the delicate bouquets of fine irises and tulips, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... arrear. He got the first brash at Whitsunday put ower wi' fair word and piping; but when Martinmas came, there was a summons from the grund-officer to come wi' the rent on a day preceese, or else Steenie behoved to flit. Sair wark he had to get the siller; but he was weel-freended, and at last he got the haill scraped thegether—a thousand merks—the maist of it was from a neighbour they ca'd Laurie Lapraik—a sly tod. Laurie had walth o' gear—could hunt wi' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of laughter followed. In the midst of his rage and mortification Mr. Clinch fancied he saw a shade of pain and annoyance flit across the face of the maiden. He was puzzled, but pressed her hand, in spite of his late experiences, reassuringly. She made a gesture of silence to him, and then slipped away in ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... life have turned, but so slowly do they run these soft and fragrant days that they seem almost still, as at flood. A blue jay is gathering acorns overhead, letting one drop now and then to roll out of sight and be planted under the mat of leaves. Troops of migrating warblers flit into and through the trees, talking quietly among themselves as they search for food, moving all the while—and to a fixed goal, the far-off South. Bob-white whistles from the fodder-field; the odor of ripened fox grapes is brought with a puff of wind ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... to London, and did pretty well for a bit; Then the business dropped to nothing, and the manager took a flit,— Stepped off one Sunday morning, forgetting the treasury call; But our luck was in, and we managed right ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... She amused herself by gazing out of the car windows at the towns which seemed to flit by. At length, both Ida and her ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... poet at his will Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all, Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still, Self-poised, nor ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... thou hast no canoe to seek me there; farewell!" "I see thine eyes, O Segwun, laugh behind the buds; "The Manitou is love, and gives me love, and love "Gives all of power." His moccasins wide laid Red tracks upon the waves: When Segwun leap'd Gold-red and laughing from the lily-pads, To flit before him like a fire-fly, she found The golden arms of Gheezis round her cast, the buds Burst into flower in her hands, and all the earth Laughing where Gheezis look'd; and Mudjekeewis, Heart friend of Gheezis, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... teapot; it is true that the mournful idea strove hard with the marks on the teapot for the mastery in my mind, and at last the painful idea drove the marks of the teapot out; they, however, would occasionally return and flit across my mind for a moment or two, and their coming was like a momentary relief from intense pain. I thought once or twice that I would have the teapot placed before me, that I might examine the marks at leisure, but I considered that it would be as well ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... wit, the boy heard the appointment settled betwixt them, to take place in the Pleasance, and resolved to add a third to the party, in hope that, either in coming or returning, he might find an opportunity of delivering the letter to Leicester; for strange stories began to flit among the domestics, which alarmed him for the lady's safety. Accident, however, detained Dickon a little behind the Earl, and as he reached the arcade he saw them engaged in combat; in consequence of which he hastened to alarm the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of the morning, or haunted only by those whose business—whether for good or evil—forced them out of doors, he met no one and saw no lights. The man's mind was evidently filled with pleasant thoughts, for ever and anon a smile would flit across his face, as though he dwelt upon the surprised look of his daughter when she would behold him. These agreeable anticipations, which had taken the place for the moment of the sterner purposes which had of late engrossed ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Whitby Saw a couple of Zeppelins flit by; Though she felt a sharp sting, It's a curious thing That she never knew which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... little dark things flit by, like the gibbering ghosts of the suitors in the Odyssey, into the darkness of the cave; and then turned to long talk of things concerning which it is best nowadays not to write; till it was time to feel our way indoors, by ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... a question of wages—" began the young man, who was watching the various expressions flit over Darry's face with ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... than the Parisians have been during the last two days of sunshine. The Jardins des Tuileries are crowded with well-dressed groups; the budding leaves have burst forth with that delicate green peculiar to early spring; and the chirping of innumerable birds, as they flit from tree to tree, announces the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... through whose trees Earth's feathered songsters flit unharmed, Where soft-eyed cattle graze at ease, And every whispering breeze seems charmed, Can it be true that human blood Hath ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... had as happy been! Ay! did he remember her? Did a thought of her, his first and best love, flit across him, as the words fell on his ear? Did a past vision of the time when she had sat there and sung it to him arouse his heart ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... for the hour of sleep is near. All day long I keep at my tasks to try to forget my grief, for the gods have visited me with sore misfortunes. I teach my maids to spin and weave and care for the palace. But when night comes strange dreams flit through my mind, and new sorrows spring ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... said: "Nay, nay, let me grow a few days older yet. Nevertheless there is this new thing, that this morning I have brought thee a gift which I deem I may to flit to thee, and I shall give it to thee with a good will if thou wilt promise that thou wilt ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... fair Careerers with the foam beneath their bows, Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day, Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night, Moor'd as they cast the shadows of their masts In long array, or hither flit and yond Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights, Like spirits on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... to their Lenten diet, jack-of-the-clock[4] told them the hour; Jack priests held rule over them; and gentle exercise at the jack, at bowls, helped them to digest their dinners. We ride upon jack-asses; jacks flourish in our fish-ponds; jack-a-lanterns and jack-snipes flit over our bogs, the one scarcely less difficult to capture than the other; jack-daws multiply in our steeples, and jack-herons still linger about ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... Flit around one and the same tree; One of them tastes the sweet berries, The other without ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... honor in the person of the "no-good husband" bursting in on games of cards with wild charges which only the payment of big money could suppress—suppress you understand, purely for the sake of the lady: outraged honor could accept no atonement. Then the lady would flit for the winter to those beauty doctors of Paris and New York, who operate on wrinkles and lay up muniments for fresh campaigns; and the "colonel" would betake himself to resorts where balm is accorded wounded honour; while loose-mouthed, simple-eyed young fellows went ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... sky The rain-clouds flit away, So from the maiden's eye Vanished the falling spray, Which lingered but awhile Her dimpled cheek upon— Then melted in her smile, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... the second case, however, the body is sustained in the air by a limb in which the bones of the hand are enormously increased in length, and so sustain a great expanse of naked skin, which is the flying membrane of the bat's wing. Certain fishes and certain reptiles can also flit and take very prolonged jumps in the air. The flying-fish, however, takes these by means of a great elongation of the rays of the pectoral fins—parts which cannot be said to be of the same nature as the constituents of the wing of either the bat or the bird. The ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... would go into ecstasies over the splendid varieties that flutter and flit in the air, and the countless multitude of different insects would be well worth special study; amongst the latter are verified the most curious mimetic facts that ever the unprejudiced mind of a man of politics ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... a dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep; and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... peculiar way. Authors are supposed to write when they "feel like it," and at no other time. Visions of Byron with a gin-bottle at his side, and a beautiful woman hanging over his shoulder, dashing off a dozen stanzas of Childe Harold at a sitting, flit through the brains of sentimental youth. We hear of women who are seized suddenly by an idea, as if it were a colic, or a flea, often at midnight, and are obliged to rise and dispose of it in some ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... doors in the black night, they would sometimes see a ghost flit about under the trees at the edge of the woods; and the second schoolmaster, well wrapped up in a sheet, seems to have made as good a ghost as could have been found anywhere. There were many supernatural ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... why so few of the ideas that flit through our minds do, in point of fact, produce their motor consequences. Life would be a curse and a care for us if every fleeting fancy were to do so. Abstractly, the law of ideo-motor action is true; but in the concrete our fields of consciousness are always so complex that the inhibiting margin ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... rising tide swept it toward the shore. May I not understand the poet's figure: "The green of spring overflows the earth like a tide"? I have felt the flame of a candle blow and flutter in the breeze. May I not, then, say: "Myriads of fireflies flit hither and thither in the dew-wet ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... was not so dark; yet I could make out none of the objects I now and then ran against. I passed a mirror (I hardly know how I knew it to be such), and in that mirror I seemed to see the ghost of a ghost flit by and vanish. It was too much. I muttered a suppressed oath and plunged forward, when I struck against a closing door. It flew open again and I rushed in, turning on my light in my extreme desperation, when, instead of hearing the sharp ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... "El Refugio," a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered like burning lava by the political eruptions of their several countries. Hither they come to lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist filibusterers, to smuggle ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... flit-pouch, I was the same. If you'd had your priming-horn, and I my flints, mind ye, we should have been there now? Then, forty-whory, that we are not is the fault o' Government for not supplying new ones ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... love that consecrates you so. No; furtive, awkward, restless, cold, I basely seemed to set at naught That sudden bliss, undreamt, unsought. What must she think, my girl of gold? I dare not ask; and baffled wit Droops—till sweet hopes begin to flit— Like butterflies that brave the cold— Perhaps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... was only thinking that darkness is beautiful as well as light. If you but knew what eyes accustomed to its depth can see! Shades flit by, which one longs to follow; circles mingle and intertwine, and one could gaze on them forever; black hollows, full of indefinite gleams of radiance, lie deep at the bottom of the mine. And then the voice-like sounds! Ah, Harry! one must have lived down there to understand what I feel, ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... Age and withered World! Oh! the dying leaves, Like a drizzling rain, Falling round the roof— Pattering on the pane! Frosty Age and cold, cold World! Ghosts of other days, Trooping past the faded fire, Flit before the gaze. Now the wind goes soughing wild O'er the whistling Earth; And we front a feeble flame, Sitting round the hearth! Sitting by the fire, Watching in its glow, Ghosts of other days Trooping to ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... in agony, when she might pass unnoticed by keeping still. The most marked exception which I have noticed is the Red Thrush, which, in this respect, as in others, has the most high-bred manners among all our birds: both male and female sometimes flit in perfect silence through the bushes, and show solicitude only in a sob which is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... as a coot, swims right away when it is tumbled into water for the first time. So chicks peck without any learning or teaching, very young ducklings catch small moths that flit by, and young plovers lie low when the danger-signal sounds. But birds seem strangely limited as regards many of these instinctive capacities—limited when compared with the "little-brained" ants and bees, which have from the first such a rich repertory ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... flushing, Laden with roses. Happy ones, swarming, Ply their swift pinions, Glide through the charming Airy dominions, Sunward still fleering, Onward, where peering Far o'er the ocean, Islets are dancing With an entrancing, Magical motion; Hear them, in chorus, Singing high o'er us; Over the meadows Flit the bright shadows; Glad eyes are glancing, Tiny feet dancing. Up the high ridges Some of them clamber, Others are skimming Sky-lakes of amber, Others are swimming Over the ocean;— All are in motion, Life-ward all yearning, Longingly turning To the ...
— Faust • Goethe
... only see fine examples of the work of the camera in the hands of artists, but be led thereby to appreciate more fully the value of photography as an aid to interesting composition and a quickening of the eye in realizing the beauty of sunlight and shadows which flit around us much unrecognized at times. Succeeding in gaining the sympathetic co-operation of seventeen museums, in the winter of 1917-18 the Association collected, from many of the most important workers in this country, more than two hundred prints, which ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1920 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... these visions flown? Am I once more sunk to a level with my former self? Once I thought that religion was a substance with me,—not a shadow, to flit, to mock, and to vanish when its succour was most needed; yet now ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... convict Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in all of the man's misdoings, he himself it was who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to dance, and flit about the studio, like an incarnate sprite of jollity, pausing at last on the extremity of one toe, as if that were the only portion of himself whereby his frisky nature could come in contact with the earth. The effect in that shadowy chamber, whence the artist ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said the youth. "He's just about ready to flit. He's bought lots of stuff to-day, and is flush ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... from business, an indolence almost cloistral, which is delightful! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spake of the past; the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... had been before, even though we walked from Aix-les-Bains all the way down to the Riviera shoulder to shoulder. I had the will to be the same, but he was different now; and though we left Gaeta in the flesh at her villa, entertaining guests, Gaeta in the spirit would still flit between us as we went. The Boy would be thinking of her; I should know that he was thinking of her, and—there would be an ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... was her canny realization of the value of tantalism. She was not long left in ignorance of his record for flitting fancy and she felt that he would flit from her as soon as he conquered her. Her duty ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes |
