"Swiftness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If a wireless telegraph instrument, sending its call into space, may be answered with lightning-like swiftness by another a thousand miles away, why should not a thought, without the clumsy medium of speech, instantly respond to another thought from a ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... coast lay some Indian towns, from which the inhabitants repaired to the ship, on floats made of sealskins, blown full of wind, two of which they fasten together, and, sitting between them, row with great swiftness, and carry considerable burdens. They very readily traded for glass and such trifles, with which the old and the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... increasing swiftness he felt his remaining mind growing numb and his will weaken. His body slumped against the ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... dissolved in a single thaw, so that the entire precipitation of months is in a few hours hurried down the flanks of the mountains, and through the ravines that furrow them; the natural inclination of the surface promotes the swiftness of the gathering currents of diluvial rain and of melting snow, which soon acquire an almost irresistible force and power of removal and transportation; the soil itself is less compact and tenacious ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... martyr, wished to know how a teeny little light like that could possibly hurt anything, and seemed incapable of understanding that if one flash of sunlight could make a picture, it could also destroy it with equal swiftness. Oswald was forced to comfort himself with the reflection that there were still three plates uninjured; and, when all was ready, the six operators squeezed themselves in the dark room, to watch the process of development, indulging the while in the ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... who leaped at me and stunned me with a blow on the temple. I am telling you this without any details, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, for the simple reason that I remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon one another with extraordinary swiftness." ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... "Not with equal swiftness," said I. "I do assure you, friend, to be able to move at a good swinging pace over level ground is something not to be sneezed at. Not," said I, lifting up my voice, "that I would for a moment compare walking on the level ground ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... out of his childish simplicity, was for jumping down: No, (saies the other) let us rather swarm down, there being a bell rope then hanging down through that place to the clockhouse below. Now, this last they did, and a gentleman walking there beneath at that time, sees two children come with that swiftness down the rope, like arrows from a bow, who were both taken up for dead, on the place. This hapned on a Sunday ith' afternoon, in sermon time. The news coming into the parish church, that two children falling off from ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... For we have now no thought in us but France, Save those to God, that run before our business. Therefore, let our proportions for these wars Be soon collected, and all things thought upon That may with reasonable swiftness add More feathers to our wings; for, God before, We'll chide this Dauphin at his father's door. Therefore let every man now task his thought, That this fair action may on ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... than once seen the temperature fall to thirty and forty degrees below zero, and the Angara has still carried down drifting ice without entirely freezing. This is no doubt owing to the swiftness of its current. If therefore the Tartars have no other means of crossing the river, I can assure your Highness that they will not enter Irkutsk in ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... look, it constantly comes back in my dreams. I went farther down the valley. The full-rushing stream went with me like a dog. It made no murmur, only a low gurgle as it shot along. It seemed to draw me with it to its last leap. As I looked at its swiftness, I thought how hard it would be to get out of. The swiftness of it comes to me yet in ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... and Jackanapes sighed and went home again. That very afternoon he and Tony rode the two donkeys, and Tony managed to get thrown, and even Jackanapes' donkey kicked. But it was jolting, clumsy work after the elastic swiftness and the dainty mischief of the ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Virginia with the unexpectedness and appalling swiftness of a bolt from the blue. From a tranquil state of contentment and comparative happiness she suddenly awoke to the fact that she had made a terrible mistake, and when she realized the full significance of her misfortune, she sank ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... moon, stars, comets, meteors, &c., have been introduced to denote glory, grandeur, power, &c.; lions, leopards, tigers, serpents, stags, have been employed to signify courage, strength, prudence, swiftness, &c. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... detail, are more general characteristics, though in greatly varying degrees. As some critic has well said, the Anglo-Saxon poet seems to presuppose a knowledge of his subject-matter by those he addresses. Such a style is capable of great swiftness of movement, and is well suited to rapid description and narrative; but at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... numbers could have gained the day Victory was ours, for the Hellenic fleet Counted in all but thrice a hundred sail, Of which were ten for swiftness set apart. But with a thousand galleys Xerxes came— His muster-roll I know—whereof the ships For swiftness picked two hundred were and seven. Think you herein ours was the weaker side? Some deity against us turned the scale, And ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... upon his errand, and sailed for Tintagel in 'The Swan,' and the journey did not take him long, for the ship flew through the waters like a real bird, as though she knew she was bound on her master's errand, and that his life depended on her swiftness. ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... running across the intervening distance with swiftness incredible in one of his bulk at this gravity. His blizzer was out. It was one of the very latest models of blizzers. Very destructive. Mr. Wordsley had always been ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... uttered these words, with incredible energy and swiftness she flew upon Lothario with the naked dagger, so manifestly bent on burying it in his breast that he was almost uncertain whether these demonstrations were real or feigned, for he was obliged to have recourse to all his skill and strength to prevent her from striking him; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... doors of England with the hammers of earthquake, and a white smoke went up into the black heavens. There one could thoroughly realise what an awful thing a wave really is. I talk like other people about the rushing swiftness of a wave. But the horrible thing about a wave is its hideous slowness. It lifts its load of water laboriously: in that style at once slow and slippery in which a Titan might lift a load of rock and ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... will often get away; they run with amazing swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost impossible to make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good retriever, will sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go along the edge of the jungle in the early morn, as I have described. The peachicks, about seven or ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... dark glen a spark of light suddenly shot—almost like a rocket in swiftness. Jack saw ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... take two steps per second, and be caught at once." Would not Nature have done better for the mouse had she suppressed the cat? Is it not a fact that small animals often owe their escape to their want of swiftness, which enables them to change their direction readily? A man can easily overtake a mouse in a straight run, but the ready ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did not so much as see me. A second child, however—a little girl, who had turned her back upon them in sullen discontent—threw me a glance, and the expression in her eyes ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... be careful whom I admitted, but I had scarcely withdrawn the latch when the door was pushed open, and a slim, thickly-cloaked figure glided past me into the room. I knew her by the supple swiftness of her movements. Ray sat still, and smoked with ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the ancients, especially contrived for swiftness; propelled both by sails and oars; of the latter ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... not easily discouraged by the swiftness of their prey; they count on their own resistance in order to tire the game; some of them also manage their pursuit in the most intelligent way, so as to preserve their own strength while the tracked animal's strength goes on diminishing until exhaustion and fatigue place ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... the free spirit of mankind at length Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's untamed strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race? Far, like the comet's way through infinite space, Stretches the long untravelled path of light Into the depth of ages; we may trace, Distant the brightening glory of his flight, Till the receding beams are ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... the blackest coffee in the world. Now and then on the hillside, in some little clearing, the fodder stood in loose, bulging shocks bound with green withes, while some old man or half-grown lad plied his husking-peg in the corn spread out before him, working with the swiftness and the dexterity of a machine, ripping the husk with one stroke of the wooden peg bound to his middle finger, and snapping the ear at its socket, and tossing it into the air, where it gleamed like a piece ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... safety find, A pack of dogfish had him in the wind. He scours away; and, to avoid the foe, Descends for shelter to the shades below: There Cerberus lay watching in his den, (He had not seen a hare the lord knows when.) Out bounced the mastiff of the triple head; Away the hare with double swiftness fled; Hunted from earth, and sea, and hell, he flies (Fear lent him wings) for safety to the skies. How was the fearful animal distrest! Behold a foe more fierce than all the rest: Sirius, the swiftest of the heavenly ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... at first, for now one passed under our stern and raked us, now the other performed the same manoeuvre; while we, with our braces shot away, our masts and yards injured, and our sails shot through and torn, were unable to move with sufficient swiftness to avoid them. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... him, that we want. Expende Hannibalem. Very good, but not in a scale capacious only of a single quality at a time, for it is their union, and not their addition, that assures the value of each separately. It was not this or that which gave him his weight in council, his swiftness of decision in battle that outran the forethought of other men,—it was Hannibal. But this prosaic element in Dryden will force itself upon me. As I read him, I cannot help thinking of an ostrich, to be classed with flying ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... she had played her ace of trumps and by some miracle lost the trick. If this grisly operation did not daunt the man, nothing, not even the transferring of honey, would. She watched him as he raised the frame and jerked it down with a strong swiftness which her less powerful wrists had never been able to achieve. The bees tumbled off in a dense shower, asking questions to the last; then, sighting the familiar entrance to the hive, they bustled in without waiting to investigate the cause of ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... was resumed. A lightning artist appeared, drawing caricatures and portraits with incredible swiftness. He even went so far as to ask for subjects from the audience, and the names of prominent men were shouted to him from the gallery. He drew portraits of the President, of Grant, of Washington, of Napoleon Bonaparte, of Bismarck, of Garibaldi, of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... never in these books to be found wanting in swiftness and vigilance; when he cheers his comrades it is no longer in a half-hearted way, but as at the beginning of the eleventh book, with the utmost vigour and confidence, "Arma parate, animis et spe ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle, there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter was such as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie's side against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but the chief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one of these. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship in the Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himself in this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did not come ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... a sad disadvantage, and were surrounded evidently by superior numbers. The red-shirted chief was on the point of being clubbed by one tall savage, while desperately engaged with another. Ralph, seeing this, leveled his gun with a swiftness that came of long practice amid the ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... of the great difficulties which would attend the siege of a great city, well stored with provisions and naturally defended by surrounding deserts; these deserts were infested by clouds of Arabs, who, appearing and disappearing with the swiftness and suddenness of a whirlwind, continually harassed her enemies. Thus defended without, and supported by a strong garrison within, Zenobia braved her antagonist from the towers of Palmyra as boldly as she had defied him in the field of battle. The expectation of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the arts of peace, Whose restless motions less than wars do cease: Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise; And war more force, but not more pains employs. Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind, That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind, While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere, That rapid motion does but rest appear. For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng Of flying orbs while ours ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... and confused by the suddenness of her action, and the swiftness of her departure, the King stood for a moment inert, gazing up the rocky height with the air of one who has seen a vision of heaven withdrawn again into its native element. Some darkening doubt troubled his mind, and it was with an altogether changed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... committed the task of making man and all other animals, and of endowing them with all needful faculties. This Epimetheus did, and his brother overlooked the work. Epimetheus then gave to the different animals their several gifts of courage, strength, swiftness and sagacity. He gave wings to one, claws to another, a shelly covering to the third. Man, superior to all other animals, came last. But for man Epimetheus had nothing,— he had bestowed all his gifts elsewhere. He came to his brother for help, and Prometheus, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... choice in them. The measure on one side had been taken, and it was in all men's hearts, but the abysses on the other no man had sounded. 'The danger of stirring things,'—the dangers, too, of that unscanned swiftness that too late ties leaden pounds to his heels were the dangers that were always threatening the Elizabethan movement, and defining and curbing it. The wisest men of that time leaned towards the monarchy, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... whole forest was enveloped in flame. Afar up the wood-crowned hill, the overtopping trees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... other. Paup-Puk-Keewiss agreed, and they ran before all the warriors. He was victor, and came in first; but, not to terminate the race too soon, he gave the bear-chief some specimens of his skill and swiftness by forming eddies and whirlwinds with the sand, as he leaped and turned about him. As the bear-chief came up, he drove an arrow through him, and a great chief fell. Having done this, he told his young men to take all those blackfish (meaning the bears), and ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... allowed to walk on the wide beach that stretched in front of the gay houses facing the sea. Cormorants dived under the long rollers that came crashing in from the Pacific; gulls wheeled and screamed in the soft wind; alert little birds darted here and there with incredible swiftness, leaving tiny footprints across the ribs and furrows of the wet sand. Far to the southward a dark barrier of mountains rose out of the sea. Sometimes I sat with my back against the dunes watching the drag of the outgoing water rolling the pebbles after it, making a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mind that hereafter one might expect almost anything from Linda. She would no longer follow a suggestion unless the suggestion accorded with her sense of right and justice. It was barely possible that it might be required to please her inclinations. Eileen's mind worked with unbelievable swiftness. She tore at her subject like a vulture tearing at a feast, and like a vulture she reached the vitals swiftly. She prefaced her question with a dry laugh. Then she leaned forward and asked softly: "Linda, dear, why haven't you ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... were standing up. The nearer swifter platform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: "The Sleeper! The Sleeper!" ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... only perpetrated at night. The quarry was selected during the day, and arrangements made for a descent. After the victim was asleep the band dashed down upon him, and sheared him of his goods with incredible swiftness. Those near would raise the cry of "Raiders!" and attack the robbers. If the latter had secured their booty they retreated with all possible speed, and were soon lost in the crowd. If not, they would offer battle, and signal for assistance from the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... everywhere in chains, everywhere cast down, wiped away her tears at the sight of thy earliest labours, and seemed to find a solace for all her woes in the hope of finding in thee her avenger. On the dread theatre of war thy swiftness, skill, and order amazed all nations. Thou wast regarded as the model of warrior-kings. There exists a still more glorious name: the name of citizen-king.... Once more open thy heart to the noble and virtuous sentiments that ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... had a training-chair in my hand, on which Timour had just been sitting, and I had time to thrust it into his face. Thrice with incredible swiftness he struck the iron-chair, right, left, and right, as a cat strikes, then seized it in his teeth. At the same moment I brought my loaded whip heavily ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... tablet commemorating the fact. For the place is infected with the patriotic disease of monumentomania. The drawback is that with every change of administration the streets are re-baptized and the statues shifted to make room for new favourites; so the civic landmarks come and go, with the swiftness of a cinematograph. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Down the road, running with silent, awful swiftness, he saw the long, low body of the leading wolf flashing through the bars of moonlight across the road, and ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... endears This silent spot to my advancing years, Here dwells eternal peace, eternal rest, In shades like these to live is to be bless'd. While happiness evades the busy crowd, In rural coverts loves the maid to shroud. And thou too, Inspiration, whose wild flame Shoots with electric swiftness through the frame, Thou here dost love to sit with upturn'd eye, And listen to the stream that murmurs by, The woods that wave, the gray owl's silken flight, The mellow music of the listening night. Congenial calms more welcome to my breast Than maddening ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... any suspicion of the state of things, but he had had too much sorrowful experience to be able to keep his unwilling eyes closed to this new consternation. The cold shower seemed to flood his soul; the bright drops descending with such swiftness of beauty, instinct with sun-life, turned into points of icy steel that pierced his heart. But he must not heed himself! he must speak to her! He must say something through the terrible ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... says Mrs. Ponto; and indeed it WAS a finger, as knotted as a turkey's drumstick, and splaying all over the piano. When she had banged out the tune slowly, she began a different manner of 'Gettin' up Stairs,' and did so with a fury and swiftness quite incredible. She spun up stairs; she whirled up stairs: she galloped up stairs; she rattled up stairs; and then having got the tune to the top landing, as it were, she hurled it down again shrieking to ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... melancholy, at this evidence of her long absence. The objects which we see habitually do not remind us of the rapidity of life; they decline insensibly with ourselves; but those which we behold again, after having for some years lost sight of them, impress us powerfully with the idea of that swiftness with which the tide of our days flows on. Paul was no less overwhelmed and affected at the sight of this great papaw tree, loaded with fruit, than is the traveller, when, after a long absence from his own country, he finds not his contemporaries, but their children, whom he left at the breast, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... a singularly intelligent child, and so must often have wondered what has become of all the interesting things that you read about in the old fairy-tales—the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and the cloak that made its wearer invisible, and things like that. Well, the fact is all these things are still in the world, hidden about somewhere, only people are so busy with new inventions, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... himself the seer. It was thus proved to him that he could not foresee all things. (19) However, Samuel's error was pardonable. God's first choice had rested upon Eliab. Only on account of his violent nature, his swiftness to anger against David, the position destined for him was transferred to his youngest brother. (20) Eliab was in a sense compensated by seeing his daughter become the wife of Rehoboam. Thus he, too, enjoys the distinction of being among the ancestors of the Judaic kings, and Samuel's ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... my heart and swiftness in my feet, I climbed over the first hill, and soon the second one. The moonlight upon the white country showed me a clear path to the white man's cattle. With my hand upon the knife in my belt, I leaned heavily against the fence while counting ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... the frontier pushed westward with magic swiftness. The Grass River Valley, once a wide reach of emptiness and solitude, where only one homestead stood a lone bulwark against the forces of the wilderness, now, after a decade and a half, beheld its prairie dotted with freeholds, where the foundations ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Twice he refused obedience, and the matter being pressed, resorted to the simple expedient of retiring from the scene. Keith dropped everything and pursued. Gringo crawled under things, but was followed even to the dustiest and cob-webbiest farthest corner under the porch; he tried swiftness and dodging, but was trailed in all his doublings and twistings at top speed; he tried running straight away over the sand hills, and at first left his horrible master behind, but the horrible master possessed a horrible persistence. Finally he shut his eyes and squatted, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... object must have been, for instance, the palace of Sennacherib, on the edge of its battlemented platform (mound of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,—named in the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current—into the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... twelve—say, "Gimme a ride;" some boys and a few girls—over twelve—say, "You look lonesome, mister." What the hoodlums of the cities say will hardly bear repetition. In spite of its swiftness the automobile offers opportunities for studying human nature appreciated ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... kept in check by a vigorous hand, went quietly as far as the middle of the faubourg. There they began to trot. Little by little, whether they warmed over it, or whether they were urged, they gained in swiftness, and once past Bercy, the carriage seemed to fly, so great was the ardor of the coursers. These horses ran thus as far as Villeneuve St. George's, where relays were waiting. Then four instead of two ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... with farr less compass move, Serv'd by more noble then her self, attaines Her end without least motion, and receaves, As Tribute such a sumless journey brought Of incorporeal speed, her warmth and light; Speed, to describe whose swiftness Number failes. So spake our Sire, and by his count'nance seemd Entring on studious thoughts abstruse, which Eve 40 Perceaving where she sat retir'd in sight, With lowliness Majestic from her seat, And Grace that ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... though, if this explanation was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one. Having launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and she wished to mix up the cards. Newman had told her, in due season, that her friend was "satisfactory." The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram ...
— The American • Henry James
... them forty yards wide, and near the higher parts of the ledge which then rise about twenty feet, and terminate abruptly within eighty or ninety yards of the southern side. Between them and the perpendicular cliff on the south, the whole body of water runs with great swiftness. A few small cedars grow near this ridge of rocks which serves as a barrier to defend a small plain of about three acres shaded with cottonwood, at the lower extremity of which is a grove of the same tree, where are several Indian cabins of sticks; below the point of them the river ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... by main strength to keep her from falling from the sofa, and thanked Providence for the power vouchsafed to her. She reached the bell and rang it violently, and hearing it, Mrs. Cupp came upstairs with heavy swiftness. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on her, and showed him that her square and rugged face was pale and grave and, he thought, empty-looking, as if something had deprived it of its former possession, the ardent vitality, the generous enthusiasm, the look of swiftness he had loved. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... nimble Composure than the fore-mentioned, and fitter for Chase. Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland, and the North parts, breed the Light, Nimble, swift slender Dog. And our open Champaigns train up excellent Grey-Hounds, hugely admired for his Swiftness, Strength, and Sagacity. And lastly, the little Beagle bred in all Countries, is of exceeding Cunning, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... whispered Helen, beginning suddenly with desperate swiftness; "why should you fail? Why can you not listen to me, pity me, wait until you are strong? You have won, you will not forget—and is there no peace, can you not rest in this faith, and fear no more?" The man ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... threw their radiance forward in overlapping cones; the four cantering horses swarmed and steamed; the body of the coach followed like a great shadow; and this lit picture slid with a sort of ineffectual swiftness over the black field of night, and was eclipsed by the buildings ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was so sudden and unexpected in Hugo that all were vague about details. They saw him in a catapultic lunge, mesmeric in its swiftness, and they saw Pilzer go down, his leg twisted under him and his head banging the floor. Hugo stood, half ashamed, half frightened, yet ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Mexican woman, Maria. As Buck recognized her he rose quietly and moved swiftly toward the door. But if he had hoped to catch her unawares, he was disappointed. He had scarcely taken a step when, through the telltale mirror, he saw her straighten like a flash and move back with catlike swiftness toward the passage leading to the kitchen. When he reached the living-room she stood there calm and casual, with quite the air of one entering for ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... be soiled with what George said at the sound. With the swiftness and the scorching of flame his dreadful commination leapt from the tortured Rose, terrified in her basket, to the red- headed Pinner boy wrestling in prayer upon the haystack—from the roughness of the lane that laboured his passage to ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... that graceful, almost phantom-like swiftness of movement that was so much a part of his manner, Sah-luma escorted his visitor to the further end of the great hall. There,—throwing aside a curtain of rich azure silk which partially draped two large folding-doors,—he ushered him into a magnificent apartment ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... rebels. Others rebel with him, among them some who are too wise to be profitable on a council of war. War does not call for wisdom, but for swiftness in striking. Percy, who is framed for swiftness in striking, loses half of his slender chance because his friends are too wise to advise desperate measures. Nevertheless, his troops shake the King's troops. ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... moonlight without the lodge and very quiet. The night was far gone; already we could smell the morning, and it would come apace. Knowing the swiftness of that approach and what the early light would bring, I strove for a courage which should be the steadfastness of the Christian and not the vainglorious pride of ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Soon, however, it became apparent that the prowess of the little Union craft had been entirely underestimated, and in the combat which ensued the very smallness of the "Monitor" gave her a great advantage, in the swiftness of her movements, over her gigantic opponent, not unlike an undersized but agile and skilful athlete in encounter with a large and lumbering, though more powerful, antagonist. Lieutenant Worden was the hero of the occasion in the rapidity of his manoeuvring, while Lieutenant ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... her with bleak fingers; and one of Edith's chief functions was to comfort and reassure her for as long a while each time as was required to reach the stage of being able to shake them off. Here was one, however, too icily convincing to be shaken off. It fell upon her with the swiftness of a revelation. Something unpleasant was going to happen to her; something perhaps worse ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... closed carriage with her silvery voice in his ear instead of the keen silence of the winter air, would have been torture. Von Rosen wondered at himself for disliking Mrs. Edes in particular, whereas he disliked most women in general. There was something about her feline motions instinct with swiftness, and concealed claws, and the half keen, half sleepy glances of her green-blue eyes, which irritated him beyond measure, and he was ashamed of being irritated. It implied a power over him, and yet ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that dinner was over that night with unusual swiftness, and that they had scarcely sat down when they rose again for the women to leave the room. Yet, short though it seemed, it had been a momentous hour, for in that hour all the perplexity and the anger that had made his very blood so bitter ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... reeds tied together on a strip of leather, which they stick in the backs of their girdle or hang over their backs. The magic rattling keeps them from falling asleep while running, so they say; besides, the deer-hoofs lend them the swiftness of the stag. Some runners adorn themselves with feathers from various birds, preferably the macaw and the peacock, tying them to short sticks. The few Tarahumares who have ever seen a peacock think a good deal of this bird, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... surprising swiftness, not only in Palace Yard, but throughout Bridge Street and St. Margaret's Street, and the railings looking thence into the yard became gradually banked with rows of earnest faces. Little groups formed on the pavement about the corners of Parliament Street. Faces appeared at the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... every species of animal body. But that which crowns our wonder in contemplating it is, that it rises from the utmost depths of the sea to the highest tops of the mountains, and flowing from the opened veins returns to the low seas; then once more, and with extreme swiftness, it mounts again and returns by the same descent, thus rising from the inside to the outside, and going round from the lowest to the highest, from whence it rushes down in a natural course. Thus by these two movements combined in a constant ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the racers? All assembled together near the white columns. It is a beautiful sight. Forty boys and girls in picturesque attire darting with electric swiftness in and out among each other, or sailing in pairs and triplets, beckoning, chatting, whispering in the fullness of ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... will get across a pool and grab a bait before any other denizen of the place can possibly get to it. Their agility is the more surprising when one remembers that the grown hornpout is but a sluggish chap and that they are not built on lines that presage swiftness. You may catch the big horn pouts at any season, but these little chaps are peculiar to the dog days. I have an idea they hibernate in the mud at bottom until warm weather calls them forth, and that by next spring, so voracious is their ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... room to a small closet. Even in the strain of the moment he observed the extraordinary grace and swiftness of her movements. She was very slender, very lithe, and she moved like ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... at noon time, and they reached Sodom at the approach of evening. As a rule, angels proclaim their errand with the swiftness of lightning, but these were angels of mercy, and they hesitated to execute their work of destruction, ever hoping that the evil would be turned aside from Sodom.[169] With nightfall, the fate of Sodom was sealed irrevocably, and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... instinctively to one of a number of books of reference which stood on his desk: they turned with practised swiftness to a page over which his eye ran just as swiftly. He ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... effusion of gratitude her most coaxing caresses, lavished fond names on him, saying again and again in the midst of her honeyed words, "Let me have it!" in a thousand different tones of voice; she wrapped him in tenderness, covered him with her looks with a swiftness that found him defenceless; at last she charmed away ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... fellows by his readiness and the extent of his information. In the life of another man, these boyish performances might be set down merely as signs of promise; but Douglas was so soon immersed in real politics, and rose to distinction with such astounding swiftness, that his performances as a schoolboy may well be accounted the actual beginning, and not merely a premonition, of his career. He was only twenty, when, in June, 1833, he set forth to ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... distance! Or he would hear that there was to be a hunt somewhere, that a rich landowner had arranged a meet in some outlying part of his land: he would be off there at once, and would canter in the distance, on the horizon, astounding all spectators by the swiftness and beauty of his horse, and not letting any one come close to him. Once some hunting landowner even gave chase to him with all his suite; he saw Tchertop-hanov was getting away, and he began shouting after him with all his might, as he galloped at full speed: 'Hey, you! Here! Take ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... longer necessary or even possible to steer the Astronef. She was directed solely by the repulsive force which would carry her with ever-increasing swiftness, as the attraction of the earth diminished, towards that neutral point at which the attraction of the earth is exactly balanced by the moon. Her momentum would carry her past this point, and then the "R. Force" would be gradually brought into play in order to avert the unpleasant consequences ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... find a better example of hell-beautiful than when he tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of the corral—and a bear-hound is a pretty agile animal. We had to tie Jim, or he'd made an end of Geronimo. He left the ranch right after that. ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... eighteen minutes past the hour. Fourteen minutes later, following brief tests of heart and pulse, the two attending physicians agreed that the half-breed was quite satisfactorily defunct. They likewise coincided in the opinion that the hanging had been conducted with neatness, and with swiftness, and with the least possible amount of physical suffering for the deceased. One of the doctors went so far as to congratulate Mr. Dramm upon the tidiness of his handicraft. He told him that in all his experience he had never seen a hanging pass off more smoothly, and that for an ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the delicate ebb and flow of the rose tint in her cheeks, the bright flecks of gold in the otherwise brown hair, and the light poise of her dainty rounded figure as she stepped along beside him with an almost aerial grace and swiftness. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... known, a hundred and fifty years after Glueck, how to make it speak, through music, to more modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous and heroic, with a swiftness and a passion which ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... short, to all that he had learned, as a mercenary, under Robert the Frison, and among the highly civilized warriors of Flanders and Normandy, must be attributed the fact, that he and his little army defied, for years, the utmost efforts of the Normans, appearing and disappearing with such strange swiftness, and conquering against such strange odds, as enshrouded the guerilla captain in an atmosphere of myth and wonder, only to be accounted for, in the mind of Normans as well as English, by the supernatural counsels of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to cast some glances into the confused REICHS-History of the time;—timid glances, for the element is of dangerous, extensive sort, mostly jungle and shaking bog;—and we must travel through this corner of it, as on shoes of swiftness, treading lightly. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... a question that neither Harry nor Philip could answer; but they told what they knew, and could only suppose that he had walked out of his depth, when the swiftness of the current, and his own timidity, had prevented him from regaining his footing. So that the full explanation had to remain until Fred was in a condition to give ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... she squealed and added something in muffled French that strangely reminded him of what Hobbs had said in English. Then she deposited an armful of rugs and magazines at Robin's feet, and clutched wildly at a post actually some ten feet away but which appeared to be coming toward her with obliging swiftness, so nicely was the deck rotating for her. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... stirring of the blood. Her recollections of the range were all of the heroic. She recalled the few times when she was permitted to go on the round-up, and to witness the breaking of new horses, and the swiftness, grace, and reckless bravery of the riders, the moan and surge of herds, the sweep of horsemen, came back and filled her mind with large and free and splendid pictures. And now it was ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... wolf is, to set a bloodhound on him, bred expressly for this particular sport; large greyhounds being placed in ambush, at proper distances, and slipped, when the wolf makes his appearance in crossing from one wood to another. These dogs, by their superior swiftness, are soon at his haunches, and worry and impede his flight, until their heavy friend the hound comes up; for the strongest greyhound could never manage a wolf, unless he was assisted in his meritorious ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... two hundred miles lay through a country infested with Utah and Apache Indians. Three or four days of swift riding would carry them through this dangerous region to a place of security on the Arkansas River. If they should meet a hostile band, it was agreed that they would trust for safety in the swiftness of their steeds, which had already proved themselves capable ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and an aversion to others, even when they were absent. In the mean while he consider'd all the several sorts of Animals, and saw that they were all clothed either with Hair, Wool, or several sorts of Feathers: he consider'd their great Swiftness and Strength, and that they were all arm'd with Weapons defensive, as Horns, Teeth, Hoofs, Spurs, Nails, and the like. But that he himself was Naked and Defenceless, Slow and Weak, in respect of them. For whenever there happened any Controversy about gathering of such ripe Fruits as fell from ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... With exemplary swiftness Bob Gliddery departed, and returned. Lizzie, following him, arrived as one of the two female domestics of the Fellowship Porters arranged on the snug little table by the bar fire, Miss Potterson's supper of hot sausages ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... better than he deserved; for, after much waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying, gold curtaining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French battle at a place called Guinegate: where they took such an unaccountable panic, and fled with such swiftness, that it was ever afterwards called by the English the Battle of Spurs. Instead of following up his advantage, the King, finding that he had had enough of real fighting, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching a pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At the little Casino, he had bought, from the professional ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs (rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... than boldness, for to be killed here was useless and foreign to his purpose, fame resting in the fort, and there the heads to be taken. Thus, when they sprang up at the call, he was unfatigued, with cartridges still in his gun, and wind in his body, and up the hill he raced with swiftness, so that scarcely two of his companions matched pace with him, and those who had cried: "Coward, coward!" panted in his rear, and perceived it was a hero ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... other side the Mississippi. It shone for a minute with an intense brightness, and then, to their amazement, began revolving in a circle of a foot or more in diameter. It sped round and round with such swiftness that it resembled a wheel of fire without the slightest break in ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... indistinguishable from the whirlwind of dust. Out of this they would emerge to stand panting in front of each other with tongues pendant and red eyes rolling. Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... "The swiftness, the strength, and the scent of the dog have enabled him to conquer other animals; and, without the dog, man perhaps could not have formed a society. The dog is the only animal which has followed man into every part ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... morning of July 6th we reached the Seal Islands expansion. Around these islands the river flows with such force and swiftness that the water can be seen to pile up in ridges in the channel. Here we found Donald Blake's tilt. Donald is Gilbert's brother, and in winter they trap together up the Nascaupee valley as far as Seal Lake, which lies 100 miles from Northwest River post. Often in imagination ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... deprived of all danger. As they made, as it were a part of the programme of the fete, they had feared being compelled to fulfil their agreements, and had fled at the moment of ascension. Their courage had been in inverse ratio to the square of their swiftness ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... Burgoyne had pointed out the possibility of an invasion, and the defenceless state of the coasts and of the country generally. The coup d'etat in France had also created considerable public uneasiness. The secrecy, sternness of purpose, swiftness of action, boldness, and indifference to bloodshed shown by the president of the French republic, caused most men to reflect upon the possibility of some terrible coup de main being attempted against England; the president, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Captain Swope from his surprise and terror. He had suddenly moved with catlike swiftness; when I lowered my eyes from the rigging, I saw he had left his refuge behind the mizzenmast and was standing in the open deck. Aye, there he stood in that light, which had reached its maximum, revealed to all eyes—and stamped upon his face was an expression of insane fury so terrible and deadly ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... view the huts. Full of indignation that none exerted himself to fall upon them, I took upon me with my men to go round and take the enemy in rear. They took to their heels, and I pursued; but we had need of the swiftness of deer to be able to come up with them. I came so near, however, that they threw away their cloaths, to run with the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... next to the Pasiegos, are the best cudgel-players in Spain, and in the world. Francisco held in his hand part of a broomstick, which he had broken in the stable, whence he had just ascended. With the swiftness of lightning he foiled the stroke of Chaleco, and, in another moment, with a dexterous blow, struck the sword out of his hand, sending ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... descending into a little, ferny hollow, with a brook creeping along the bottom, along which a narrow footpath ran, when the crackle of a broken branch, and the quick tread of a foot, made her pause and look at the opposite bank, down which a young man was coming, with more swiftness than he seemed to desire, for he only saved himself from a plunge in the brook by leaping over it, with a bound that brought him to Clara's side. It was ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... listened long before he saw the apparition of a milk- white steed, with a young man on the back of it, advancing upon full stretch after the souls of about a hundred beagles, that were hunting down the ghost of a hare, which ran away before them with an unspeakable swiftness. As the man on the milk-white steed came by him, he looked upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young prince Nicharagua, who died about half a year before, and, by reason of his great virtues, was at that time lamented over all the western ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... we have a clue to the labouring-man's temper. The courage, the carelessness of discomfort, the swiftness to see what should be done, and to do it, are not inspired by any tradition of chivalry, any consciously elaborated cult. It is habitual with these men to be ready, and those fine actions which win our admiration ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... come with a swiftness that has outdone the hopes of the most sanguine optimists. In the first eleven days of November we have seen history in the making on a larger scale and with larger possibilities than at any time since the age of Napoleon, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... the huntsman. "Have up the dogs. If that buck is the fiend himself, I'll have him before the day is out!" The twain were quickly in their saddles, and they had not been long in the wood before the one-horned buck was seen ahead, trotting with easy pace, yet with marvellous swiftness. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... night to come, and to him the sun seemed fixed in the heavens. At Belle Plain Tom Ware was watching it with a shuddering sense of the swiftness of its flight. But at last the tops of the tall trees obscured it; it sank quickly then and blazed a ball of fire beyond the Arkansas coast, while its dying glory spread aslant the heavens, turning the flanks of the gray clouds to violet and purple ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... bedlam of shots: the planes of the 91st Squadron were diving from the heights. They came on a steep slant that seemed marking them for crashing death against the huge cylinder flashing past. And their stabbing needles of machine-gun fire made a drumming tattoo, till the planes, with the swiftness of hawks, swept aside, formed to groups, tore on down toward the ground and then curved in great circles of speed to climb back ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... bareheaded, and notwithstanding the swiftness with which he passed as has been described, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance observed and noted all these trifles, and though he made the attempt, he was unable to follow him, for it was not granted to the feebleness of Rocinante to make way over such rough ground, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The swiftness of transition, the laughing tenderness of her eyes so moved him—and so potent in her was the magical essence of womanhood—that he, Sir Nevil Sinclair, Baronet, of Bramleigh Beeches, came near to taking the dust of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... command, he reconnoitred the position. Its strength is as great as that of the vale of Tempe, although it wants the lovely meadows and groves of trees for which the latter is celebrated. The river Apsus runs in a deep ravine between vast and lofty mountains, like the Peneus in appearance and swiftness, and beside it, at the foot of the mountains, runs one narrow and rocky path, along which it is difficult for an army to proceed even if unmolested, and utterly impossible if it be ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... was believed to be valuable in exorcising the devil. That of a dog preserved the owner from "dropsy or pestilence;" a versatile ring indeed! An old French book speaks of an engraved stone with the image of Pegasus being particularly healthful for warriors; it was said to give them "boldness and swiftness in flight." These two virtues sound a ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... to the pleasure of the reader; and the greater the soul of him who reads, his transports are the greater. Horace is always on the amble, Juvenal on the gallop, but his way is perpetually on carpet-ground. He goes with more impetuosity than Horace, but as securely; and the swiftness adds a more lively agitation to the spirits. The low style of Horace is according to his subject—that is, generally grovelling. I question not but he could have raised it, for the first epistle of the second book, which he writes to Augustus ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... gunner up on the hill used the match, and an awful thing happened. With the loud roar the whole hillside of rock and gravel and sand split down, not ten feet in front of the gun, moved with horrible swiftness upon the river, filled its bed, turned it from its course, and, sweeping on, swallowed the Manor House of Beaugard. There had been a crack in the hill, the water of the river had sapped its foundations, and it needed only this shock to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... breaks, nor cuts the fingers. It renders the bearer invincible in battle against any one under eighteen. Half a crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful—shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility." ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... would say, "Labour is not all; we do not object to the cessation of labour—a mere provision for bodily ends; but we fear the lightness and vanity of what you call recreation." Do these people take heed of the swiftness of thought—of the impatience of thought? What will the great mass of men be thinking of, if they are taught to shun amusements and the thoughts of amusement? If any sensuality is left open to them, they will think of that. If not sensuality, then avarice, or ferocity for ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... cutting off his retreat they closed on him and captured him. They learned how the Trojan host was quartered; at the extremity of it was Rhesus, the newly arrived Thracian King, whose white horses were a marvel of beauty and swiftness. In return for his information Dolon begged them to spare his life, but Diomedes deemed it safer to slay him. The two Greeks penetrated the Thracian encampment, where they slew many warriors and escaped with the horses back to the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... can move with swiftness and precision, when requested by friendly and responsible governments, to help curb threatened aggression. The stabilizing influence of this capacity has been dramatically demonstrated more than once ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... creature, when full-grown, measures about 17 feet long from the extremity of the snout to the insertion of the tail, above 16 feet in circumference round the body, and stands above 7 feet high. It runs with astonishing swiftness for its great bulk, at the bottom of lakes and rivers, but not with as much ease on land. When excited, it puts forth its full strength, which is prodigious. "I have seen," says a mariner, as we find it in Dampier, "one of these animals open its jaws, and seizing a boat between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... hasty-pudding into a leathern bag, and then ripping it up, to induce the giant to do the same with his own stomach, which he does, and so kills himself; or how he frightens the giant with three heads, and so gets the coat of darkness, the cap of knowledge, the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and uses these to escape from other and more terrible masters, and to kill them; and gets the duke's daughter for his wife, and lives honoured and ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... shooting along with vigorous strokes, while the English trembled as they saw the frail bark spinning and leaping amid the muzzles of the alligators, and the huge dog-toothed trout: but with the swiftness of an arrow she reached the northern bank, drove her canoe among the bushes, and leaping from it, darted through some narrow opening in the bush, and vanished ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... giant organ, a note so low in pitch that it seemed a full octave below the lowest bass note ever struck. Whatever it was, the thundering vibration of infra-bass was coming nearer with startling swiftness. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells |
