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Transitory   Listen
adjective
Transitory  adj.  Continuing only for a short time; not enduring; fleeting; evanescent. "Comfort and succor all those who, in this transitory life, are in trouble." "It was not the transitory light of a comet, which shines and glows for a wile, and then... vanishes into nothing."
Transitory action (Law), an action which may be brought in any county, as actions for debt, and the like; opposed to local action.
Synonyms: transient; short-lived; brief. See Transient.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Transitory" Quotes from Famous Books



... smelling at everybody's heels and touching little Annie's hand with his cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have patted him.—Success to your search, Fidelity!—And there sits a great yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat, gazing at this transitory world with owl's eyes, and making pithy comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.—Oh, sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will be a pair ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a thing; to your parish and priest such and such a thing; and to us you must render and deliver the tithe of the number of times that you have carnal connection with your husband. We will take no other tithe from you, for, as you know, we carry no money—for the temporal and transitory things of this world are nothing to us. We ask and demand only spiritual goods. The tithes which we ask and which you owe us are not temporal goods; as the Holy Sacrament, which you receive, is a divine and holy thing, so no one may receive the ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... man considers it a great sacrifice on his part to continue living in this transitory, unsatisfactory, and particularly unpleasant world. This is so much a matter of course, that I was surprised to see the divinity-student change color. He took a look at a small and uncertain-minded glass which ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... now all-wise, he was sad and oppressed, for he had gained an insight into futurity, and had become aware of the transitory nature of all things, and even of the fate of the gods, who were doomed to pass away. This knowledge so affected his spirits that he ever after wore ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... Protestantism, 163 Nonconformists at home:— Strong feeling in favour of a national unity in Church matters, 164 Feeling at one time in favour of comprehension, both among Churchmen and Nonconformists, 166 General view of the Comprehension Bills, 169 The opportunity transitory, 174 Church comprehension in the early part of the eighteenth century confessedly hopeless, 175 Partial revival of the idea in the middle of the century, 177 Comprehension of Methodists, 180 Occasional conformity:— ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... iridescent film you may have seen spreading over the water about our wharves,—very splendid, though its origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept for two or three generations transforms a race,—I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... so,' murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic words. 'Yes, I think I see it now,' he said after some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... as one may say, an olfactory perspective of an endless vista of departed breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. It is similar, if not identical, in all temperate climates; a kind of neutral tint, which forms the perpetual background upon which the banquet of today strikes out its keener but more transitory aroma. I don't think it necessary to go into any further particulars, because this atmospheric character has the effect of making the dining-rooms of all boarding-houses seem very much alike; and the accident of a hair-cloth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments, as you would crack an eggshell?—No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding indifference,—that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside. All changes around me; I change not. I look not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in momentary glimpses: I look on the white face of my dead mistress, whom I follow as the bridegroom follows the bier of her who has changed her nuptial raiment ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... temporal object, and a transitory possession; but so are other things in themselves which we make much of and pursue. The moralist will tell us that man, in all his functions, is but a flower which blossoms and fades, except so far as a higher principle breathes upon him, and makes him and what he is immortal. Body and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... verses "to all those who wish to cherish female genius, and whose best feelings are enlisted in the cause of the poor oppressed sons of Africa." He was evidently impressed, but the impression belonged to the ordinary, transitory sort. His next recorded utterance on the subject was also in the Free Press. It was made in relation with some just and admirable strictures on the regulation Fourth of July oration, with its "ceaseless ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... the villainy of McQuade was of this order. The newspapers were evidently subsidized, for their clamor was half-hearted and hypocritical. Once or twice Warrington felt a sudden longing to take off his coat and get into the fight; but the impulse was transitory. He realized that he loved ease and comfort ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... zealous partisan of those changes with which the country was at present threatened. The principles of the noble earl were principles by which any man might safely abide; the principles of Mr. Canning fluctuate daily, and depend upon transitory reasons of temporary expediency. These are the conscientious reasons of my resignation." As for the absurd calumny, that he had threatened the king with his resignation unless he was made prime minister, the duke said it hardly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... in other respects, Austria was especially discontented at her failure to obtain Sicily, and did not cease negotiating afterward, until she had secured that island. A circumstance more important to Germany and to all Europe than this transitory acquisition of distant and alien countries by Austria was the rise of Prussia, which dates from this war as a Protestant and military kingdom destined to weigh in the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... this creed, experimental love was a logical sequence, and great constancy was already to be unprogressive stubbornness. 'All love exhausts itself,' said Sand in 'Lelia'; 'disgust and sadness follow; the union of the woman with the man should therefore be transitory.'" ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... she had somehow been wronged,—that she suffered, ... and that he, as well as Sah-luma, was in some mysterious way to blame for this, though he could by no means account for his own share in the dimly suggested reproach. This peculiar, remorseful emotion was transitory, like all the vaguely incomplete ideas that travelled mistily through his perplexed brain, and he soon forgot it in the increasing animation and interest of the scene ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... down upon her beloved garden, she could not seem to see anything but brown stalks and dead blossoms. All that lavish colour looked fictitious and transitory; she had ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... experiences, when outside influences prevail over the inner impulses of the individual, in which the individual is unsettled and there is a tendency toward pessimism and melancholia. Lamprecht thinks of this state as something transitory, and already as he writes (in 1905) nearing an end. This state of continuous excitement, with its shallow pathos of the individual and its constant and superficial happiness, its worship of the novel and the extraordinary, the suggestibility and the receptivity of the masses, automatic ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... foundation to her body. Her back was broad. She was certainly over forty. Forty, thought Maurice, the dangerous age—the desperate age. From forty to fifty, the flower in full bloom, the period of engulfing passions, of urgent transitory satisfactions. For how many women must it not be a ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... speak of the elusiveness of soap, the knottiness of strings, the transitory nature of buttons, the inclination of suspenders to twist, and of hooks to forsake their lawful eyes, and cleave only unto the hairs of their hapless owner's head. (It occurs to me as barely possible, that, in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... and agreed with the Cyrenaics that pleasure constituted the greatest happiness; still this theory in his hands acquired a far loftier character; for pleasure, in his idea, was not a mere momentary and transitory sensation, but something lasting and imperishable, consisting in pure mental enjoyments, and in the freedom from pain and any other influence which could disturb man's peace of mind. And the summum bonum, according to him, consisted in this peace of mind; which was based upon correct ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... finger rings among these transitory exiles. For lack of proper exploitation a stock of title goods large enough to supply the trade of upper Fifth Avenue is here condemned to a mere pushcart traffic. The new-world landlords who entertain these offshoots of nobility are ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... what it parts with. Nor is it well for ever so civilized a people to be selling its Specie and mortgaging its Lands and Houses for Silks, Liquors, Laces, Wines, Spices, &c.—trading off the essential and imperishable for the factitious and transitory—and so eating itself out of house and home. The farmer who drinks up his farm at the cross-roads tavern may have obtained "more for his exports" (of produce from his farm), than they were worth in the market—at least, it would ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... of pantheistic ideas which have always more or less prevailed in India. Does the avatar produce a permanent and definitive result in the world? By no means. It is renewed at every catastrophe either of nature or man, and its effects are only transitory.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} To sum up then, the Indian avatar is effected externally to the true God of India, to Brahma; it has only a cosmogonical or historical mission which is neither lasting nor decisive; it is accomplished by means of strange prodigies ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... pride and exultation which the command over so many destinies was calculated to inspire. But a sad and sudden thought came over him in the midst of his triumphs, and he burst into tears. "I reflect," said he to Artabanus, "on the transitory limit of human life. I compassionate this vast multitude—a hundred years hence, which of them will still be a living man?" Artabanus replied like a philosopher, "that the shortness of life was not its greatest evil; that misfortune and disease imbittered ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that there is no true nor constant beauty, and for this reason it cannot evoke true nor constant love. That beauty, which is seen in bodies is accidental and transitory, and is like those which are absorbed, changed, and spoiled by the changing of the subject, which very often, from being beautiful, becomes ugly, without any change taking place in the soul. The reason then comprehends ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... internal polity of France; but he was compelled to say, that he saw nothing in the circumstances under which the new government had been set up, or the principles it professed to act upon, which could tend to make foreign powers regard it as either more stable or more trustworthy than the transitory forms ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... honest, almost riotous happiness; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming doubt being perceptible. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth is fully awakened; the worst tricks of the intermeddling spirits are mischievous merely, and of only transitory influence, and "the summer still doth tend upon their state," brightening this fairyland with its sunshine and flowers. Man has absolutely no power to govern these supernatural powers, and they have but unimportant ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... who demanded righteousness of his people. Beside this wonderful revelation to the human mind details of serpents, and of apples, of names of men and of women, of gardens and of swords are absolutely but the transitory clothing. This brought them to the minds of the times. The value of the form is evidenced by the fact that it brought the conception. But we must not lose the glory of the conception in an over regard for the clothing in which the ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... gladsome wing! For when thou leadest all thy soothing strains More smooth along, the silent passions meet In one suspended transport, sad and sweet; And nought but sorrow's softest touch remains; That, when the transitory charm is o'er, Just wakes a tear, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... her women to modify law, custom and social life, the help of those women whose pioneer mothers stood shoulder to shoulder with the men in building up a great commonwealth out of a wilderness. Owing to the transitory character of many of the industries, such as the construction of irrigation works, railway construction and mining, there are nearly three times as many unattached men living outside of home influences as there are married women ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... Toltecs were credited with great imitative powers. The other section, comprising the Hottentots and Australian black fellows, were allowed but 75 cubic inches of brain, or not more than 10 above the highest anthropoid apes, and in neither did the statical or dynamical intellect pass beyond a transitory stage of the lowest degree. The typical facial angle of the yellow or Turanian races—the bulk being Chinese, Mongols, Finns, Turks, with Malay, Gangetic, Lohitic, Tamulic, and American tribes—was given as 87 degrees. In cubic inches, the brain ranged between 82 and 95. In the chart ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... examination of her ancient certitudes, and has proved their fragility. To-day she sees her ancient principles vanishing one by one. Mechanics is losing its axioms, and matter, formerly the eternal substratum of the worlds, becomes a simple aggregate of ephemeral forces in transitory condensation. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... alone reads history aright who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... good before, and, as time passed, nature's sweet, true face began to smile upon him from his canvas. Marian grew almost as absorbed as himself, learning by actual vision how quick, light strokes can reproduce and preserve on a few square inches the transitory beauty of the hour and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... once more, tramped out into the shivering mists and the black night. The damp fallen leaves deadened the sound of departing hoofs; the obscurities closed about him, and he vanished from the scene, leaving not a trace of his transitory presence. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... superinduced by an ephemeral agitation of the nebular strata, whereby air, (hot or cold), impelled into transitory activity, generates a prolonged passage through space, owing to certain occult ethereal stimuli, and results in zephyrs, breezes, blows, blow-outs, blizzards, gales, simoons, hurricanes, tornadoes or typhoons. Barred from Kansas Cyclone-cellars but frequently blended with Chicago tongue—canned ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz

... ascribe his rebuffs to a passing whim on the part of his beloved, to a momentary lapse in her customary humour, to her food, to a desire on her part to test him, to transitory evil influences from outside, to the thermometer, the barometer, the moon!—in fact to anything, except to the possibility that she could actually have cooled towards him; and the more overpowering his arrogance happens ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... looks that piercing sweetness shed; That port, which so majestic was and strong, Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along; All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan, How much another thing, no more that man! O, human glory vain! O, Death! O, wings! O, worthless world! O, transitory things! Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed, That still though dead, greater than Death he laid, And in his altered face you something feign That threatens Death, he ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... pisantry in the world," whose appearance was not much in his favour. He started on seeing Smyth, who fancied that he discovered something deeper in the glance of his eye than his bogtrotting bearing first betokened. But it was only transitory; the fellow had a straight-forward story to tell, and of course Colonel —— would send a trustworthy messenger. Dart was soon ready at the door, and away they marched on their journey to ——. Five ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... effects of pauperism and drunkenness; crime into degeneration; the faults of children and scholars arise from the darkness of prejudice. But as these causes are not absolute and immutable, but are related to transitory states which may be altered, the ancient philosophic conception of evil resolves itself partially into so many social questions and actions. To give work and combat the drink habit—this it is which contributes largely to morality by removing so many causes of evil. To undertake the regeneration ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... youth in excuse of the naiveness to be found in these pages, he would be likely to say "Bosh!" in a column and a half of fierce print. Yet a writer is no older than his first published book, and, not withstanding the vain appearances of decay which attend us in this transitory life, I stand here with the wreath of only fifteen short summers on ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... of an evening without thinking of God. It is in my garden that all things become clearer to me, even that miracle whereby one who has offended may still see God; and this I think a wonderful thing. In my garden I understand dimly why evil is in the world, and in my garden learn how transitory ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... gorgeous plan of universal dominion were aware that they had a better chance of establishing it than brute ignorance or brute force could supply, and that soldiers and their paymasters were subject to other and powerfuller fears than the transitory ones of war and invasion. What they found in heaven they seized; what they wanted ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... general than the fugitive pleasure of the passing event. He seeks this thing which we may call modernness, for no better word to express the idea presents itself. His object is to detach from fashion whatever it may contain of the poetry in history, to draw the eternal from the transitory. If we glance at the exhibitions of modern pictures, we are struck with the general tendency of the artists to dress all their subjects in ancient costumes. That is obviously the sign of great laziness, for it is much easier to declare that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... ship in the harbor, Indians, Spanish sailors, rough matrons, clergy; this will serve, for such was Hawthorne's fine economy, knowing that this story was one in which every materialistic element must be used at its lowest tone. Though the scene lay in this world, it was but transitory scaffolding; the drama was ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... increased redness of the mucous membrane occurs from pain, excitement, or severe exertion, and in such instances is always transitory. In certain pathological conditions, such as fevers and inflammation, this condition of the mucous membrane will also be found. The increased redness of the mucous membrane lasts during the duration of the fever ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... solemnly upwards, "that even in the case which you suppose, I would not sorrow so much for myself, as I would for the poor-spirited thoughts of the lover who could leave me because those transitory charms (which must in any case erelong take their departure) had fled ere yet the bridal day. It is, however, concealed by the decrees of Providence, in what manner, or to what extent, other persons, with whose disposition we are not fully acquainted, may be affected by such changes. I ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... as before, I think the distinction has arisen entirely from confusing a transitory imperfection with an essential character. So long as our information concerning them is imperfect, we class all objects together according to resemblances which we feel, but cannot define; we group them round types, in short. Thus if you ask an ordinary person what ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... for him who was, however, only the pretext of that exemption. She trembled to-day, not only at not loving him any more, but at hating him, and above all she felt herself a prey to that repugnance for the useless cares of the world, to that lassitude of transitory hopes, to that nostalgia of repose in God, undeniable ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... there was always Nova Scotia and St. John's, and a hundred other places that a Galway young lady knew nothing about, except that people never came back from them. Now, what good, what use was there in falling in love with them? Mere transitory and passing pleasure that was. But as for us: there we were; if not in Kilkenny we were in Cork. Safe out and come again; no getting away under pretence of foreign service; no excuse for not marrying by any cruel pictures of the colonies, where they make spatch-cocks ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... concealed their indulgence in pleasure, now grew bolder. For, seeing the sudden change,—how the rich died in a moment, and those who had nothing, immediately inherited their property,—they reflected that life and riches were alike transitory, and they resolved to enjoy themselves while they could, and to think only of pleasure. Who would be willing to sacrifice himself to the law of honor when he knew not whether he would ever live to be held in honor? The pleasure of the moment, and any sort of thing which ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... do seeks to fulfill the historic traditions of the American people. Other nations may sacrifice democracy for the transitory stimulation of old and discredited autocracies. We are restoring confidence and well-being under the rule of the people themselves. We remain, as John Marshall said a century ago, "emphatically and truly, a government ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... certain degree of intimacy and sociability for the time, so to whatever heights it may have been carried, it is not understood to imply any duration beyond the length of the season. No intimacy can be supposed more close for the time, and more transitory in its endurance, than that which is attached to a watering-place acquaintance. The novelist, therefore, who fixes upon such a scene for his tale, endeavours to display a species of society, where the strongest contrast of humorous characters and manners may be brought to bear on and illustrate ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... symptoms Lanyard had remarked had been a transitory humour. Mr. Blensop was now in what seemed the most equable and blithe of tempers. His very posture at the telephone eloquently betokened as much: he had thrown himself into the chair with picturesque nonchalance, sitting with body half turned ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... scholar (1700-1766) who, as professor in the university, author of text-books, editor of journals, and reformer of the local stage, won a great though transitory prestige. He was a stedfast champion of clarity, regularity, and good taste, laid great stress on probability and reasonableness, and held that a strict observance of the three unities was essential in tragedy. His advocacy of French forms and taste led to a sharp controversy with the Swiss ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... renounce the honours and comforts of this transitory life in order to gain eternal glory in the next, by denying themselves, and taking up the cross? Was it fanatical to preach salvation to innumerable wild hordes of Americans? to clothe the naked? to ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... no means so nice "here" however. He did not care to hear of her difficulties; his head was full of fancies and nothing else. He looked upon his illness as something transitory, a trifling ailment, and did not think about it at all; he though of nothing but how they would go and sell "these books." He asked her to read ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... now, as to the resemblance between the human person and the Divine Person, notwithstanding all the differences which of course exist, and which only a presumptuous form of religion has ventured to treat as transitory or insignificant. Let me use a technical word, and say that it is no pantheistic absorption in an impersonal Light, no Nirvana of union with a vague whole, which the Apostle holds out here, but it is the closest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... final judgment of Heaven. There are successes which are transitory while the national life is reckoned by centuries. The ultimate verdict can only be obtained by the survey of ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... vail to the grooms, or because they felt a natural kindness for one who had brought their wives through confinement and ushered their children into the world; and anyway there was sense in standing well with a man who might at any time in this transitory world have to decide the important question of your living or dying—managed to get old Dapple harnessed in the gig, and the lamps lit, and to jog off with the earliest. The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and along ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... without injury to Art or history, employ the painters who make the prettiest pictures of them; it doesn't matter to the future, if Mr. Jenkins, or even the Hon. Mr. Twaddle, has employed the promising Mr. Mahlstock to perpetuate him with a hundred transitory and borrowed graces,—if the talented young litterateur, Mr. Simeah, has been found by his limner to resemble Lord Byron amazingly, and has in consequence consented to sit for a half-length, to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the grandest generalization of science that was ever conceived. It is the fundamental law of the relations of the two worlds, the psychic and the physical. The spiritual and material worlds unite in man, in whom the eternal spirit is combined with a transitory material body, and the law of their interaction is ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... affection in Cecilia's countenance; and, herself of such a different nature, could not comprehend the possibility of such contradiction in any character: she could not imagine the existence of such variable, transitory feelings—she could not believe any human being capable of sacrificing her friend to save herself, while she still so loved her victim, could still feel such generous sympathy for her. She determined at least to suspend her judgment; ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... transient, transient boarder, transient guest [U.S.]. V. be transient &c adj.; flit, pass away, fly, gallop, vanish, fade, evaporate; pass away like a cloud, pass away like a summer cloud, pass away like a shadow, pass away like a dream. Adj. transient, transitory, transitive; passing, evanescent, fleeting, cursory, short-lived, ephemeral; flying &c v.; fugacious, fugitive; shifting, slippery; spasmodic; instantaneous, momentaneous^. temporal, temporary; provisional, provisory; deciduous; perishable, mortal, precarious, unstable, insecure; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... may be due to the existence of a resisting medium. If the changes already suspected should be confirmed by repeated observations with the same instruments, it will be worth while to investigate more carefully whether Saturn's rings are permanent or transitory elements of the solar system, and whether in that part of the heavens we see celestial immutability or terrestrial corruption and generation, and the old order giving place to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... human voice can find response in their souls, except the great cry of Humanity. These only may be certain of success. But they can be met only far and wide, and they pass through the narrow gates of Occultism because they carry no personal luggage of human transitory sentiments along with them. They have got rid of the feeling of the lower personality, paralysed thereby the "astral" animal, and the golden, but narrow gate is thrown open before them. Not so with those who have to carry yet for several incarnations ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky

... Dear listening soul, this transitory scene Of murmuring stillness, busily serene,— This solemn pause, the breathing-space of man, The halt of toil's exhausted caravan,— Comes sweet with music to thy wearied ear; Rise with its anthems to ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... going on eastward of Temple Bar—he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred privileges of "The House" more astounded by ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... society with a feudal lord, so the steam mill creates a society with an industrial capitalist?" But it was a little harder to give an affirmative reply to the proposition that the social relation thus established proceeds to create principles, ideas and categories as merely historical and transitory products. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... wage-earning women, and the other that the average age of wage-earning women is so much younger than that of men employed in similar work that the need for help from without in any effective effort for relief from bad conditions is more apparent. The transitory character of much of women's work makes the permanent personnel of any Trade Union League of women a smaller minority of its membership than in the case of men. It is said that in any trade where both the men and the women are well organized the membership of ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... VER. This world is transitory; it was made of nothing, and it must to nothing: wherefore, if we will do the will of our high Creator, whose will it is that it pass to nothing, we must help to consume it to nothing. Gold is more vile than men: men die in thousands and ten thousands, yea, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... that they determined to defend their liberty by a desperate resistance. The Turkish vessel now approached them in awful silence, but in an instant the dreadful noise of the artillery was heard, and the heavens were obscured with smoke intermixed with transitory flashes of fire. Three times did the Turks leap with horrid shouts upon the deck of the Venetian vessel, and three times were they driven back by the desperate resistance of the crew, headed by young Francisco. At ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... the old order was gone,—had slipped away during my absence. The church I had known in boyhood had been torn down to make room for a business building on Boyne Street; the edifice in which I sat was expensive, gave forth no distinctive note; seemingly transitory with its hybrid interior, its shiny oak and blue and red organ-pipes, betokening a compromised and weakened faith. Nondescript, likewise, seemed the new minister, Mr. Randlett, as he prayed unctuously in front of the flowers massed on the platform. I vaguely ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... ease, or luxury, or happiness? How many thousands saintly souls have flung aside all that the world could offer sweet and beautiful to embrace this hard, this cruel Cross! And meet they no reward? Hard Cross and cruel to eyes not comprehending, because separate from transitory joys, but yielding balm and incense sweeter and more as most closely pressed to the heart. And woman, first at the sepulchre, first in every good word and work, is it not her glory to suffer for the Cross of Christ? How much has she of His spirit, who cannot ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... to the constitutional form. Under the sway of habit, the form assumes an acquired tone which is called emission. The emissive form corresponds to the habitual tone. Under the sway of emotion the voice is modulated and assumes forms which we will call passional or transitory. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... in the depth of your subterraneous dungeon, one comfort still is mine, and never will forsake me: tis the consciousness that my sufferings are transitory, but that my reward will be eternal; tis the consciousness of an hereafter! tis this which supports me during all my daily sorrows; tis this which irradiates all my nightly dreams. Then this poor wretched globe with all its crimes and all its follies rolls away from before me: then ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... slavery seems, then, to be a demonstration of the unchangeability of human nature and of the ultimate hopelessness of idealist causes. In every reform accomplished the practical application is local, transitory, dependent on racial and geographical conditions. There is obviously a great change in our penal methods. We do not mutilate our criminals or scalp them for the preservation of their souls, and we have lost confidence in the rack and the thumb-screw. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... God, chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. It is God's ordinary way of drawing sinners to himself, either to dry up or imbitter the streams of worldly comfort, that he may shut them up to seek that comfort that depends not on any transitory source. ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... conduct, one single and singular moment excepted, when, as he gave to her his letter for Mr Belfield, he seemed struck as she was herself by the extraordinary co-incidence of their ideas and proceedings: that emotion, however, she now regarded as casual and transitory, and seeing him so much happier than herself, she felt ashamed of her delusion, and angry at her ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... determined to send for Donald, show him the frightful danger in which he stood, and then tear the note before his eyes, and leave its payment to his honor. He even realized the peace which would flow from such a deed. Nor were these feelings transitory, his better nature pleaded so hard with him that he walked his room hour after hour under their influence, and their power over him was such as delayed all action in the matter for nearly ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... included in the projected ministry, being desirous of feeling the pulse of popular opinion through secondary men, who could be disavowed or sacrificed at need, and keeping in reserve himself and the leaders of the Girondists, either to support or overthrow this weak and transitory ministry, if the nation should resolve upon more decisive measures. Brissot, and those who acted with him, were thus ready at all points, as well to direct as to replace power—they were masters without any responsibility. The doctrines of Machiavel ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... the gifts of Providence, are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts,—wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... great one; but in the long sweep of God's providence, and among the phenomena of absolute being, what a brief link, a subordinate climax, it was! The huge ribs of the earth, and the coral islands of the sea were longer in building; and even these are transitory manifestations of God's purposes, which stream around us through constant change and succession. And what, then, are these nations-these epochs of humanity-but waves rising and breaking on the great sea of eternity? Mysterious Egypt, haughty Assyria, glorious Greece, kingly Rome;—how spectral ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... of true charm, of true grace, of true melodic, Redon was certainly the master. I think no one has coveted the vision so much as, certainly no more than, has this artist, possessed of the love of all that is dream-like and fleeting in the more transitory aspect of earthly things. No one has ever felt more that fleeting treasure abiding in the moment, no one has been more jealous of the bounty contained in the single glancing of the eye upward to infinity or downward among the minuter fragments ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... which few dared to have done at that time, albeit countenanced to the utmost like me by the smiles of the brave and the fair. But, well-a-day! sir, youth, its fashions, its follies, its frolics, and all its pomp and pride, are as idle and transitory as the crackling of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... infant head. The scene is one which recurred again and again in the history of his race, yet nothing can take from it its touching features. At six years old even the intimation of a father's death, especially when taking place at a distance, would make but a transitory impression upon the mind; yet we may well imagine the child taken from his toys, wrapped from head to foot in some royal mantle, with a man's crown held over his baby head, receiving with large eyes of wonder and fright easily translated ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... human countenance without a feeling of awe at the thought that ere long their day too must come when the beating of the busy heart shall cease, and the now quick blood shall stay its course,—when the hand shall lose its cunning and the brain its power. Such impressions are too often transitory, passing away with the object that awoke them, because persons do not stop to consider why it is that solemnity and awe pervade the presence of death. If they did, they would feel that this solemnity ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... it deeply: I am one only of those men, without a distinctive character, of a transitory and fading epoch, whose sighs have found an echo—only because the echo was more poetical than the poet. I belong to another age by my desires: I feel in myself another man: the immense and boundless horizon of philosophy, at once profound, religious, and poetical, has opened to my view, but the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange; A transitory shame of long ago; It dies into the sand from which it sprang; But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change. God's self laid stable earth's foundations so, When all the morning-stars ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Kingsley, was often, he thought, disgusting and offensive. It gives a false view of life. 'Enjoyment forms a small and unimportant element in the life of most men.' Life, he thinks, is 'satisfactory' but 'enjoyment casual and transitory.' 'Geniality,' therefore, should be only an occasional element; habitually indulged and artificially introduced, it becomes as nauseous as sweetmeats mixed with bread and cheese. To the more serious person, much of the popular literature of the day suggests Solomon's ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... is equally true that they are the creation of the servility and superstition of the mass of men. The eighteenth century chose to forget that man is a gregarious animal. Oppression and priestcraft are the transitory forms in which the flock has sought to cement its union. But the modern world is steeped in the lore of anthropology; there is little need to bring its heavy guns to bear upon the slender fabric of Shelley's dream. Queen Mab was a boy's precocious ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... duteous Train the banquet bring, In whose bright cups the liquid ruby flows, As Life's warm season, on expanded wing, Presents her too, too transitory rose; ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... for both in the Old and New Testament, everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign, that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises Although the law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet, notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... the decaying body; his heart and his thoughts are set on things which soon fly away. But the earnest believer in God pierces through all these superficial and transitory objects and pursuits, and fastens his affections to imperishable verities: he feels, far down in his soul, the living well of faith and fruition, the cool fresh fountain of spiritual hope and joy, whose stream of life flows unto eternity. The vain sensualist and hollow worldling has no true life ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Duchess of Kingston.' Her Grace bore the narration with a front worthy of her exalted rank. Then was produced the first capital witness, the ancient damsel who was present at her first marriage. To this witness her Grace was benign, but had a transitory swoon at the mention of her dear Duke's name; and at intervals has been blooded enough to have supplied her execution if necessary. Two babes were likewise proved to have blessed her first nuptials, one of whom, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... wisdom which unfortunately children do not find written large in their copybooks is that sorrow is as transitory as happiness. Although my childhood was strewn with the memorial wreaths of dead miseries, I always had a morbid sense that my present discomforts were immortal. So I had quite made up my mind that I would continue ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... heated brain with all the force of actual conviction. "What was he to do?" "Was it to be football first, and Mary afterwards?" Something whispered "yes; Mary could afford to wait, but the 'Cup' was a transitory article, and the splendid chance his club had of winning it might pass away like a dream." "Why, there was Joe Laidlay, he was in something like the same dilemma so far as his 'lass' was concerned, ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... pass,—and again thou art a pinch of dust, a woman, a child.... But what is that to thee!—At this moment thou hast become loftier than all transitory, temporal things, thou hast stepped out of their sphere.—This ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... memories behind—he did not care. Moreland would suffer the bitter penalty of his crime, and then nothing more would ever be heard of the matter. It would be better for the whole story to be told, and transitory pain endured, than to go on striving to hide the infamy and shame which might be discovered at any moment. Already the news was all over Melbourne that the murderer of Oliver Whyte had been captured, and that ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... For the gift had been drawn in every case from a young life, and been neutralized by its contact with the old. As a lover, the Rabbi declares, he has dreamed young dreams, and his older self has seen through them. He has known beforehand that the special charms of his chosen one would prove transitory, and that the general attraction of her womanhood belonged to her sex and not to her. As a warrior, he has experienced the same process of disenchantment. For the young believe that the surest way to the Right and Good, is that, always, which is cut by the sword: and that ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... this case continues: "This, however, was but a transitory stage. It was soon recognized that a considerable time and a good deal of preparation were necessary to induce the patients to sleep, and medical men had recourse to a more rapid and certain method; that is, chloroform. ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... How transitory is earthly happiness! How certain its uncertainty! A little week had passed, and the "Heir of Applebite" gave notice of his intention to come into his property during an early minority, for his once ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... strengthened by the necessity of withstanding rapacious, or negligent, or tyrannous landladies, sweetened by kindnesses and courtesies which cost the giver little, but mean much to the receiver! Did sickness of a transitory sort (for grievous illness is little known in lodgings) fall on the ground-floor tenant, then did not the first-floor come down to comfort him in the evenings? First-floor might be tired after a long day's work, and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... royal birth, riches, or a large family, are of no avail: That all are transitory; virtue alone resisting the funeral pile. That this lady was first married to a duke, then to Stoke, a gentleman; And lastly, by the ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... from the sea-coast in July and August, rut in October on the verge of the barren grounds and shelter themselves in the woods during the winter. They are often induced by a few fine days in winter to pay a transitory visit to their favourite pastures in the barren country, but their principal movement to the northward commences generally in the end of April when the snow first begins to melt on the sides of the hills and early in May, when large patches of the ground ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... men that they may become Buddhas in reciting the Holy Name, and so therefore is it that all other faiths and moralities are but transitory doorways unto the Truth. Man comprehendeth not that Pure Land of Peace unless he holdeth fast the true Doctrine, casting aside ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... in general is self-existing, self-sustaining and self-governing, so man in particular, who is but one among the transitory, cosmic phenomena, has all of the potentialities of his own life within himself, so that every man can say of himself what the makers of Jesus had him say: I and ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... these families play the fundamental role and constitute the nucleus of society. In the anthropoid ape we already find the family, but not the clan. This must also have been the case with the pithecanthropoids and other extinct transitory forms. In fact, the lowest savages still live as isolated families like the carnivorous mammals, rather than in clans or tribes. This is the case, for example, with the Weddas of Ceylon, the indigenes of Terra del Fuego, the aboriginal Australians, the Esquimaux and certain ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... that I, and one other holding a torch, should one day, by common consent, find our happiness in exploring these mysterious caverns of the brain; and should lay the foundations of order where only misrule had been before: and out of all those unreal, waste, and transitory realms of illusion, evolve a real, stable, and habitable world, which all ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... a lot of different emotional states, these can get intense and do change quite rapidly. The physical body, too, will manifest transitory conditions. Some can be quite uncomfortable. But, I don't want to leave the reader with the impression that fasting is inevitably painful. So I will now recount my own longest ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... standing on the top of a pyramid; and by this combination it was meant to signify the power of life triumphing over death. And hence the obelisk is the most suitable of all forms to indicate in our cemeteries the glorious truth of the resurrection, life rising victorious out of the transitory condition of death. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that harmonized With the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for books, but at first it did ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... consequences of a certain course of conduct, combined with certain external circumstances, which are, more or less, in the power of every individual. To arrange these circumstances prudently, and to pursue a proper course of conduct steadily, something more is necessary than the transitory impulse ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... on the point of urging her afresh to go with them to church; but something in her eyes brought a thought across his mind, as transitory as a breath passes over a looking-glass, and he desisted from his entreaty, and put away his thought as a piece of vain coxcombry, insulting to Hester. He passed rapidly on to all the careful directions rendered necessary ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame. A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... interest, that more books have been written upon Cabool, and through a more enduring tract of time, than upon Moscow. Great was the convulsion in either case; but that caused by Cabool has proved the less transitory. The vast anabasis to Moscow had emanated from a people not conspicuously careful of public morality. But that later anabasis, which ascended to the shining pinnacles of Candahar, and which stained with blood of men the untrodden snows of the Hindoo Koosh, was the work of a nation—no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... these verses were written in the author's early youth, and were published in a volume called 'Preludes,' now out of print. Other poems, representing the same transitory and early thoughts, which appeared in that volume, are now omitted as cruder than the rest; and their place is taken by the few verses ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell

... his niece Clementina. This letter is unhappily lost; but the answer to it is preserved, in which Petrarch tells the monarch that his epitaph rendered his niece an object rather of envy than of lamentation. "O happy Clementina!" says the poet, "after passing through a transitory life, you have attained a double immortality, one in heaven, and another on earth." He then compares the posthumous good fortune of the princess to that of Achilles, who had been immortalized by Homer. It is possible that King Robert's letter to Petrarch was so ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... absence. He made all the apologies in the world for being called away suddenly, and consequently, unable to render that attention to his business which his feelings had prompted. Like all secessionists, George was very fiery and transitory in his feelings. He expressed unmeasurable surprise when the Captain told him the condition of his man in the old jail. "You don't say that men are restricted like that in Charleston? Well, now, I never was in that jail, but it's unsuited ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... said, it is the business of criticism to separate what is accidental in form, transitory in manner, and merely local in suggestion, from the general ideas which live under a casual and particular literary robe. And so we have to distinguish the external conditions under which a book like the New Heloisa ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... my lord, as other empresses, That, when this frail and [86] transitory flesh Hath suck'd the measure of that vital air That feeds the body with his dated health, Wane with enforc'd ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... mind was differently constituted in different individuals. In some, impressions are vivid and transitory; in others, more deep and lasting: indeed, there are some philosophers who pretend to trace a connection between the physical and mental powers of the animal; but, for my part, madam, I believe that the one is much influenced by habit and association, and the other ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... to the two episodes. "Rene" seems to me very superior to "Atala.'" Both the stories show a talent of the first rank, but of the two the beauty of "Atala" is of the more transitory kind. The attempt to render in the style of Versailles the loves of a Natchez and a Seminole, and to describe the manners of the adorers of the Manitous in the tone of Catholic sentiment, was an attempt too violent to succeed. But the work ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of a man is transitory.— What do you know of his past? the years He gave to another his manhood's glory?— The love of a man is transitory. Listen to me ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... horizon, nothing above him but a blank sky, and for a little shelter a sand dune, which the wind created yesterday and will uncreate to-morrow he would come to understand all that he need know regarding his transitory and unimportant life. Does Nature care whether we live or die? We have heard often that she cares not a jot for the individual.... But does she care for the race—for mankind more than for beastkind? His intelligence she smiles at, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... some degree ambiguous. This, this only, whether we argue from Reason or from Scripture, is a sure infallible criterion. From the daily incidents of conjugal and domestic life, we learn that a heat of affection occasionally vehement, but superficial and transitory, may consist too well with a course of conduct, exhibiting incontestable proofs of neglect and unkindness. But the passion, which alone the Holy Scriptures dignify with the name of Love, is a deep, not a superficial ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... all sojourners and passengers; and if I have any regret in the matter, it is that I did not more diligently study them when I could. The opportunity once lost, seldom recurs; they are all but as transitory as the Object of Interest itself, I remember that years ago when I first visited Cambridge, there was an old man appeared to me in the character of Genius of the College Grounds, who showed me all the notable things in our city,—its ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... freezing and boiling points, recalescence, etc. A course of advanced electrical measurements should have a parallel lecture course in which the theoretical aspects of electromagnetism, the classical theories, and the equations that represent transitory and equilibrium conditions in complex circuits are discussed. In optics, likewise, there is ample material of great importance: physical, geometrical optics, spectroscopy, photography, X-ray crystallography, etc. The advanced student in these ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... because it still left the sensible unaccounted for. Not only did it fail to tell us whence came these sensations which, however transitory and unreal, constantly saluted our consciousness and largely constituted our Experience; it failed also to show us how they could be brought into relation ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory; though the same man, probably, with a different prospect before him, might content himself with the regular perquisites of his situation, and might even be unwilling to risk the consequences of an abuse of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... no real foothold for her in her present milieu. She only entered Mrs. Forrester's orbit, that was evident, as a tiny satellite in attendance on the streaming comet. In the wake of the comet she touched, it was true, larger orbits than the artistic; but it was in this accidental and transitory fashion, and his accurate knowledge of the world saw in the nameless and penniless girl the probable bride of some second-rate artist, some wandering, dishevelled musician, or ill-educated, ill-regulated poet. Girls like that, who had the aristocrat's assurance ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... is transitory—a step, a blow. . . . Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And has the nature of infinity. Yet through that darkness (infinite though it seem And irremoveable) gracious openings lie. . . . Even to the fountain-head of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... below were staring at him, one or two were running, and his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quite near now, and the "Jolly Cricketers" was noisily barring its doors. Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel—the drainage works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police station. In another moment he had passed the door of the "Jolly Cricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street, with human ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... of this man's life was his steadfast and brave opposition to the witchcraft mania of 1692. This deplorable madness was in New England a mere transitory panic, from which the people quickly recovered; but while it lasted it almost silenced opposition, and it required genuine heroism to lift a voice against it. No country of Europe was free from the delusion during ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... will always see Boris otherwise than I see him. Our points of vision are simply too different. We cannot even hold the same opinion about what you are feeling. You consider it something lasting, even something eternal, h'm? And I—something transitory. Now I could appeal to my experience and say that I have seen more things pass away than you have. But you will object that what you are living through has never been experienced before, is unique. We cannot meet anywhere. So there is nothing left for it but the old and tried rule, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... of both are transitory, perhaps," said Ellerey, who sat beside him. He spoke only to Grigosie, but Stefan ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... that of the martyr Babylas, whose ruined chapel you see just beyond us. I have had something to do with most of them in my time. They are transitory. They give employment to care-takers for a while. But the thing that lasts, and the thing that interests me, is the human life that plays around them. The game has been going on for centuries. It still disports itself very pleasantly on summer evenings through these shady walks. Believe ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... Florence was for a few short years enjoying the fallacious and fatal honor of being the capital of Italy. There were some who from the first were fully convinced that that honor would be a transitory one. The greater number thought that the will of France and of her emperor, and the difficulties attending the simultaneous residence of the king of Italy and the pope within the walls of the same city, would avail to make Florence the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... and correct my beliefs one of these days when I have thought a little further.' She suddenly breathed a sigh and added, 'How transitory our best emotions are! In talking of myself I am heartlessly forgetting Charlotte, and becoming happy again. I won't be happy ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... his divan, his whole spirit absorbed in rumination on the transitory nature of human glory, when his kinsman and brother-in-law, the prince Cid Hiaya, was announced. That illustrious convert to the true faith and the interests of the conquerors of his country had hastened to Guadix with all the fervor of a new proselyte, eager to prove his ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... German poets had gazed with their eyes wide open into that infinite reality which underlies our short existence on earth. To Wolfram, and to many a poet of his time, the human tragedy of this world presented the same unreal, transitory, and transparent aspect which we find again in Dante's "Divine Comedy." Everything points to another world. Beauty, love, virtue, happiness,—everything, in fact, that moves the heart of the poet,—has a hidden reference to something higher than ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... whose weary night's work would enable them to live upon the travellers' bounty for the next week or so. These few hours of gaiety and excitement were to provide the Cruces people with food and clothing for as many days; and while their transitory sun shone, I will do them the justice to say they gathered in their hay busily. In the exciting race for gold, we need not be surprised at the strange groups which line the race-course. All that ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... all avenues, fast enough. (Montgaillard, i. 369. Besenval, &c.) New features these. Indeed, as good M. de Malesherbes pertinently remarks, "it is a quite new kind of contest this with the Parlement:" no transitory sputter, as from collision of hard bodies; but more like "the first sparks of what, if not quenched, may become a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle



Words linked to "Transitory" :   temporary, transient, impermanent, ephemeral, short-lived, passing, fugacious, transitoriness



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