"Transient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dumb. He had massacred La Chouette, not in a fit of madness, but in a fit of fever, such as he had been attacked with at Bouqueval on the night of his horrible vision. After his arrest in the tavern of the Champs Elysees, recovering from his transient delirium, the Schoolmaster had awoke in a cell of the Conciergerie, where the insane are temporarily confined. Hearing every one say around him, "He is a furious madman," he resolved to continue to play his part, and pretended ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... with a searching anxiety into her mother's face; and it might have been perceived that the morning twilight of hope beamed faintly but beautifully upon her pale features. The expression that passed over them was indeed so light and transient that one could scarcely say she smiled; yet that a more perceptible serenity diffused its gentle irradiation over her languid countenance was observed even by ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... begin at all; for I recollect that HE also was a "man," who was infinitely more; who has penetrated even this cloudy shrine of clay with the effulgence of His glory and so let me resolve that our common humanity shall be held sacred for His sake, and pitied for its own. Thus ends my little, transient fit of spleen, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... believe, gentlemen," he proceeded, and his confidence and courage was infectious, "that I could at this moment, by a sudden dash, sweep everything before me between Fort Niagara and Buffalo, but our success would be transient. Disaffection and desertion is rife in the American camp. Only the other day we saw six poor fellows perish in mid-stream. To-day more deserters swam the river safely. Our own force, estimating even 200 Indians ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite, transient ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... the Pipe's sweet Charity, Havana for Cigars to solace me, And Turkey for the transient Cigarette - Was all I ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... grateful task, your former orators, on this anniversary, have anticipated all that the most ardent industry could collect, and gratified all that the most inquisitive curiosity could desire. To you, my friends, every occurrence of that momentous period is already familiar. A transient allusion to a few characteristic instances, which mark the peculiar history of the Plymouth settlers, may properly supply the place of a narrative, which, to this ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... for gossip in the community; the old tavern on the Edgewood side of the bridge and the brick store in Riverboro. The company at the Edgewood Tavern would be a trifle different in character, more picturesque, imposing, and eclectic because of the transient guests that gave it change and variety. Here might be found a judge or lawyer on his way to court; a sheriff with a handcuffed prisoner; a farmer or two, stopping on the road to market with a cartful of produce; and an occasional teamster, peddler, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... parts where the strata forming the canopy are interrupted, but these are unattainable by our instruments. The aspect of fiery meteors had led the ancients likewise to the idea of clefts or openings ('chasmata') in the vault of heaven. These openings were, however, only regarded as transient, while the reason of their being luminous and fiery, instead of obscure, was supposed to be owing to the p 153 translucent illuminated ether ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of Jeremiah's other original contributions to theology, on the Freedom and the Patience of the Providence of God, and his hope that God would be to Israel what the prophet had bravely tried to be—no transient guest but a dweller in their midst.(790) The titles for God which we may assume to have first come from himself are few, perhaps only three: The Fountain of Living Waters, the Hope of Israel and the Saviour thereof in time of trouble, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... conspicuous place, beamed with a bright intentness upon its motley spectacle, careless of where her smiles might fall. For her the immodest theatrical poster drooped in the windows of saloons, or caught a transient hold upon the hoardings of uncompleted buildings; brazen blare and gaudy placards (disgusting rather than indecent) invited the passer-by into cheap museums and music-halls; all the unclassifiable riff-raff that is spawned by a great city leered from corners, or slouched along the edge ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... meppo.—Transient are all. They, being born, must die. And being born, are dead. And being dead, are glad ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... shade the sky doth sweep, And transient glooms creep in to sleep Amid the orchard; Fantastic breezes pull the trees Hither and yon, ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... conversation, and to adapt it precisely to the capacity of children? This would indeed be unreasonable; all we can do, is to keep our pupils out of the way of those who can do them no good, and who may do them a great deal of harm. We must prefer the permanent advantage of our pupils, to the transient vanity of exhibiting for the amusement of company, their early wit, or "lively nonsense." Children should never be introduced for the amusement of the circle; nor yet should they be condemned to sit stock still, holding up their ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... glittering as if it was molten gold. The rocks and promontories stand out dear and ghost-like. There is not a breath to rustle the leaves or to stir the painted wash upon the shore. Men and men's doings, and their speeches and idle excitement, seem all poor, transient, and contemptible. Sea and rocks and moonlight looked just as they look to-night before Adam sinned in Paradise. They remain—we come and go, hardly more enduring than the moth that flutters in through the window, and we are hardly ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... something restful and soothing to the average male adult in the feel of a sharp razor being guided over a bristly jowl by a deft and skillful hand, to the accompaniment of a gentle grating sound and followed by a sensation of transient silken smoothness. Nor do I refer to the barber's habit of conversation. After all, a barber is human—he has to talk to somebody, and it might as well be you. If he didn't have you to talk to he'd have to talk to another barber, and that would ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... the world as a whole; he mastered its beliefs; he listened to its complaining; he was doubtful of affection, and yet more of self-sacrifice; but this great and stern judge pitied them, or admired them, not with transient enthusiasm, but with silence, concentration, and the communion of a deeply-touched soul. He was a sort of catholic Manfred, and unstained by crime, carrying his choiceness into his faith, melting the snows by the fires of a sealed volcano, ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... nothing to another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body at times,—if it does not really get freed or half freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of catalepsy? You know what I mean,—transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talking with him and listening to him one day when the boarders moved from the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... population is over 50 per cent. transient; the population of women is only 20 per cent. transient, as they have permanent occupations on the farms and in the schools. The argument of the anti-suffragists that "the women do not want it" ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... with silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked wistfully into the cornchest. I, who thought there was something worth seeing, looked in also, and finding it empty, expressed my disappointment, not thinking, however, about the corn. A faint and transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering fringe and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... and to make it move, at the proper moment, from the F to the E, at the commencement of the second bar; because otherwise, as this part is executed by several instrumentalists playing in unison, some of them would hold the F longer than the rest, and a transient ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... monarchical power. The monarch is limited in different degrees: even the despotic prince is only that monarch whose subjects claim the fewest privileges, or who is himself best prepared to subdue them by force. All these varieties are but steps in the history of mankind, and, mark the fleeting and transient situations through which they have passed; while supported by virtue, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. And when this peculiarity sends us to history, it seems as if the poem ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... amid the bustle of the world. We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, "Drink and away;" but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... members of the Opposition, which at that time was not represented in the Cabinet. But even with this indication before us, we cannot believe that even now this premature solution of a secular problem on lines suggested by transient episodes of a military campaign, has struck the responsible statesmen in proportion to its specific weight, the depth of its importance, and the nature of its consequences. To take but one of these, we find that towards the end of the second year of the campaign, Turkey is one of the two key-positions ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... know, was not the case before this (individualism). Secondly, the old distinction of original and copy is now interpreted to mean that the copy is the inferior and more imperfect, that in the present aeon of the transient it cannot be equivalent to the original, and that we must therefore look forward to the time when the original itself will make its appearance, (contrast of the material and finite and ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... years later, the oppressions of Napoleon had given to a great part of the German race at least the transient nobleness of a real patriotism, the story of Palm's death was one of those that kindled the bitterest sense of wrong: at the time, it exercised no influence upon the course of political events. Southern Germany remained ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of the grandeur of his oratory long prevailed among the Greeks, from which we may form a clear conception of his style. The sole object of the oratory of Pericles was to produce conviction; he did not aim to excite any sudden or transient burst of passion by working on the emotions of the heart; nor did he use any of those means employed by the orators of a later age to set in motion the unruly impulses of the multitude. His manner was tranquil, with hardly any change of feature; his garments were undisturbed by any oratorical gesticulations, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... further survey of the dismal place, "Eighteen shillings," he said. "Thank you ... I'll let you know." The woman smiled with the corners of her mouth down, and without a word moved wearily towards the door. Lewisham felt a transient wonder at her hopeless position, but he did ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... fierce, reckless, cadaverous faces that tell of hardships and strife and sin in the eager pursuit of riches. Ballarat was at first only a mining-camp of immense size, and its environs are still occupied by tents, where transient visitors find very passable accommodations. But the city proper, now some sixteen years old, with a population already of thirty thousand, is an exact transcript of Melbourne, with beautiful dwellings, and broad streets thronged with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... few hours to an indefinite number of months, and which enable the stranger to make as fine a display of equipages and liveries as the wealthiest resident of the city. The first two classes, the cabs properly so called, are, however, the most interesting to the transient visitor to Paris or to the permanent resident with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... the use of searching every hole and corner of the barracks at regular intervals for socialistic literature? They could confiscate red rosettes and pamphlets; but how could they control transient, intangible thoughts? ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... a transient revelation of a perpetual truth, and has shed light on many a dark dungeon where God's servants have lain rotting. It breathed heroic constancy into the Twelve. How striking and noble was their prompt obedience ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... as interest themselves in clearly comprehending those contemporary facts of which the import is not merely local, but universal. As in all theatres of war, and in all campaigns, there exist in South Africa particular conditions, permanent or transient, to utilise or to overcome which introduces into the character of the forces employed, and into their operations, specific variations, distinguishing them from methods elsewhere preferable. Such differences, however, being accidental in character, involve questions strictly ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... life caused the light of her influence to grow dim. She is still an abiding presence with us, nor can we conceive of any influence that could possibly obliterate her. She may have been idealized by degrees, but when she came fully into our lives she came to stay. She came not as a transient guest, but as a lifelong friend and comrade. She crept into our lives as gently as the dawn comes over the hills, and since her arrival there has been no sunset. Nor was there ever by pupil or teacher any profession or protestation, but we simply accepted each ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... destruction of birds that were subsequently proved to belong to the feathered friends of the farmer, it is high time to make our pupils acquainted with the habits and ways of the feathered tribes. Some birds remain with us the whole year, others are summer sojourners, still others are only transient visitors. How much of the beauty of our environment is lost by those who never listen to the music of the birds and never see the richness ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... theme; Biron is not among Shakespeare's successful portraits of himself. As might be expected in a first essay, the drawing is now over-minute, now too loose. When Biron talks of study, he reveals, as we have seen, personal feelings that are merely transient; on the other hand, when he talks about Boyet he talks merely to hear "the music of his own vain tongue." He is, however, always nimble-witted and impulsive; "quick Biron" as the Princess calls him, a gentleman of charming manners, of incomparable fluent, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... me thy face— One transient gleam Of loveliness divine And I shall never think or dream Of other love save thine. All lesser light will darken quite, All lower glories wane; The beautiful of earth will scarce ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... monument remain to represent Clive. After him, two or three occupants removed, came Leopold of Belgium, with his bride, the Princess Charlotte, pet and hope of the British nation. Their stay was more transient still—a year only, when death dissipated their dream and cleared the way to the throne for Victoria. Leopold continued to hold the property, and it became a generation later the asylum of Louis Philippe. To an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... roses of thy dimpled cheek, might be read the tokens of a concealed grief, that, like "a worm i' the bud," had already begun to mar thy sparkling beauty. Heed it not, pretty Lucy—sorrow such as thine is light and transient, and succour, albeit in a disguise thou canst not penetrate, is even now at hand. As the young lady in question entered the luncheon-room, returning Lawless's salutation with a most becoming blush, the thought ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... merely expose the inherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence—and it is a monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that is true in their nature, because it is he who represents the eternal aspirations of their race, which lie far deeper than their apparent transient virtues—let there be no suggestion of error, of intelligent people having been tricked and misled. No nation can be deceived that does not wish to be deceived. It is not intelligence that Germany lacks. In the sphere of intellect such ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Colonial Affairs is naturally, to some extent, discouraged by the knowledge that the subject is an unattractive one to a large proportion of the reading public. It is difficult to get up anything beyond a transient interest in the affairs of our Colonial dependencies; indeed, I believe that the mind of the British public was more profoundly moved by the exodus of Jumbo, than it would be were one of them to become the scene of some startling catastrophe. This is the more curious, inasmuch as, putting ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... On this view, the States would be confined in the enforcement of their criminal codes by those views for safeguarding the rights of the individual which were deemed necessary in the eighteenth century. Some of these safeguards have perduring validity. Some grew out of transient experience or formulated remedies which time might well improve. The Fourteenth Amendment did not mean to imprison the States into the limited experience of the eighteenth century. It did mean to withdraw from the States the right to act in ways that are offensive to a decent respect for the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... is the victim of artificial needs. When once the yoke of habit is imposed, the shoulder soon accustoms itself to the bondage, and the aches and bruises of initiation are forgotten. There are spasms of disgust, moments of wise suspicion; but they are transient, and men soon come to regard a city as the prison from whence there is no escape. But is no escape possible? That was the question which pressed more and more upon me as the years went on. I saw that the crux of the ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... most of it, Mr. Eld," the old man said, with a transient smile. "I might think poorlier of you than I've a right to if I did. When a rose is held lower in the scale of natur' than a turnip, or the mastership in music is gi'en in again the fiddle in favor o' the hurdy-gurdy, I'll begin to think as you and me is better specimens ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... are furnished to all comers. This table of one hundred and fifty has often, and indeed usually, to be spread three times; so that the Commission feeds daily at this place alone some four hundred soldiers, and lodges ninety to a hundred more. The home which I have now described is simply for transient calls. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... by, the new house began to soften and mellow under Mother's gentle touches. The living-room assumed an air of comfort; my books now had a real corner of their own; the guest-chamber—or, rather, the little spare-room—already had entertained its transient tenants; and as our friends came and went the walls caught something from them all, to remind us ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... sent Mohammed unto men. A just successor of Islam assigned. His ruth and his justice all mankind embrace. To daunt the bad and stablish well-designed. Verily now, I look to present good, for man hath ever transient weal in mind.' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all strife and contention ceases; and how each hastens to give to the other of the fulness of his thought and feeling! Such moments in our life are as if Heaven had come down to us, and fleeting and transient as the moment may be, its memory lives with us as a heavenly light, fed from above; and when we realize a continued existence of the harmony of thought and feeling of an ever-flowing communication ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... a juncture in his affairs where he could not, without injustice to others, make a place for Claude which he could advise Claude to accept, and they had parted with the mutual hope that the separation would be transient. But the surveyor could not but say to himself that such incidents, happening while we are still young, are apt to be turning-points in our lives, if our lives are going to have direction and movement of ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and evils every day and death we have known; They pass over our world like clouds mocking us with their transient lightning laughter. Suddenly they have stopped, become a prodigy, And men must stand before them saying: "We do not fear you, O Monster! for we have lived every day by conquering you, "And we die with the faith ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... crowd stopped short at the sight of the picture. Some dormant emotions of human vanity were now awakened—played for a moment about the heart of Sister Frances—and may be forgiven. Her vanity was innocent and transient, her benevolence permanent and useful. Repressing the vain- glory of an artist, as she fixed her eyes upon the Madonna, her thoughts rose to higher objects, and she seized this happy moment to impress upon ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... Transient as the glance was, it shook him greatly. He heated a bar of iron white hot at one end, and sallied out into the night. But there was not ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... pleasure, that the toil, the sweat, and blood of slaves can procure. Alas for the tyrant slave-holder when God shall make his award to his poor, oppressed, and despised children, and to those who seek a transient and yet delusive means of present happiness by trampling his fellow and brother in the dust, and appropriating the soul and body of his own crushed victim to the gratification of his depraved appetites and passions. I would rather enter the gloomy ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... famine occurred in Ireland, followed in the ensuing years by short crops in Europe. The prosperity which came to the American agriculturist was therefore from causes beyond the sea and not at home,—causes which were transient, indeed almost accidental. Moreover an exceptional condition of affairs existed in the United States in consequence of our large acquisition of territory from Mexico at the close of the war and the subsequent and almost immediate discovery of gold in California. A new and extended field of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... round the ring. Think what an equipage thou hast in air, And view with scorn two pages and a chair. As now your own, our beings were of old, And once enclosed in woman's beauteous mould; Thence, by a soft transition, we repair From earthly vehicles to these of air. Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled, That all her vanities at once are dead; Succeeding vanities she still regards, And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards. Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, And love of ombre, after death ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... he wrote a kind of play, which was acted by his schoolfellows, consisting of speeches from Ogilby's "Iliad," tacked together with verses of his own. He became acquainted with Dryden's works, and went to Wills's coffee-house to see him. He says, "Virgilium tantum vidi." Such transient meetings of literary orbs are among the most interesting passages in biography. Thus met Galileo with Milton, Milton with Dryden, Dryden with Pope, and Burns with Scott. Carruthers strikingly remarks, "Considering the perils and uncertainties of a literary ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... and Miranda left Grantley next morning, after a very early breakfast; and, when the regular boarders came to theirs, they might have guessed at once that the "transient guests" had gone. They even guessed it out loud at dinner and ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... wandering from the stream they go; In pain, in terror, in distress, 175 They see, all round, a wilderness. Sometimes a momentary gleam They catch of the mysterious stream; Sometimes, a second's space, their ear The murmur of its waves doth hear. 180 That transient glimpse in song they say, But not of painter can pourtray— That transient sound in song they tell, But not, as the musician, well. And when at last their snatches cease, 185 And they are silent and at ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to a deep misgiving dispersed amongst men, must be tainted with corruption. There might seem consolation; but a man who reflects is not quite so sure of that. As a commonplace resounding in schools, it may be justly current amongst us, that what is evil by nature or by origin must be transient. But that may be because evil in all human things is partial, is heterogeneous; evil mixed with good; and the two natures, by their mutual enmity, must enter into a collision, which may possibly guarantee the final destruction of the whole compound. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... and the lesser manifestations is one of degree.[*] Now, these slighter impulsive tendencies to which we have here referred are very frequent in all children and by no means infrequent in grown-ups. They are habitual movements, which may be of transient duration only or may, by repeated performance, develop into more or less fixed habits. If, then, these habits are of sexual significance, it must follow that all other habits, especially if associated with a certain degree of consciousness or ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... household motions light and free, And steps of virgin-liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... have crimes to expiate. Leave superstition to those silly and ignorant females whose narrow minds are incapable of reasoning or reflection. Abandon the futile and trivial ceremonies of an objectionable devotion to those idle and peevish women, for whom, as soon as the transient reign of their personal charms is finished, there remains no rational relaxation to fill the void of their days, and who seek by slander and treachery to console themselves for the loss of pleasures which they can no longer enjoy. ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... I was charged to send you. Reflect that all the French here, in the service of the King, have strongly at heart to maintain the Republic in sentiments favorable to the allies of his Majesty. It is in conformity with these views, and for the good of the common cause, and only for this transient object, that the commission, for the origin of which you imagine a thousand ill-natured motives, and which, finally, you refuse to accept, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the State into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the faint starlight. The night was sultry, and door and casement stood wide, making pits of darkness. Few lights were visible, but a continuous hum of voices issued from the human hives, and now and then a transient red glow at an upper window showed that some one was smoking a pipe. This was ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... after his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get out of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could be permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as Perrault and Francois and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in the night, in his dreams, he was haunted ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... determined by the freemen thereof. "This," he said, "is justice. This is constitutional equity." Mr. Toombs contended that the compromise measures of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 were made to conform to this policy. "I trust—I believe," he continued, "that when the transient passions of the day shall have subsided, and reason shall have resumed her dominion, it will be approved, even applauded, by the collective body of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... man not physical, or apparently explained and limited by the transient conditions and necessities of his present state, anything which gives an inkling of immortality? Our utilitarian morality is the offspring and adjunct of our condition here. But is there not an aspiration ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... are taken aright, and his children become the good and happy men he wishes them to be, they will say, as they visit his sepulchre, and recall with sorrow the once unappreciated love which animated him,—and perhaps with a sorrow, deeper still, remember the transient resentments caused by a solitary severity: 'He was indeed a friend; he corrected us not for his pleasure, but for our profit; and what we once thought was caprice or passion, we now ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the interior. The second attempt at empire building began in the southeast, but the same Bantu hordes, pressing now slowly, now fiercely, from the congested center of the continent, gradually overthrew this state and erected on its ruins a series of smaller and more transient kingdoms. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... which he has been prompt and diligent to seize. All through the summer every one of the six largest Quaker homesteads is filled with guests. The fact cited above that in the summer there comes to the Hill a greater transient population than dwells there through the year, a population of guests, illustrates this lively ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... visible universe, and death only the other or invisible side of the same, so the utile, so truth, so health are the continuous-immutable laws of the moral universe, and vice and disease, with all their perturbations, are but transient, even if ever ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... are transient, but the sky is permanent. The petals of a flowering plant are transient, the leaves and fruit are less so, and the roots the least transient of all. The dew on the grass is transient, as is the frost of an autumn morning. The snows ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... opportune courage, or the like. But, if we investigate the positive amount of what the individual has effected in the way of bettering or advancing the general interests of mankind, by personal exertion on the public stage, I regret to say I can find hardly an instance of more than a transient, though beneficial, flash of excitement produced on the public mind. I do not here speak of men invested with great power—princes, prime ministers, popes, generals and the like. Of course they produce lasting traces of their power, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... be said to be known to the vast majority of his countrymen. They have heard the distant echo of his fame as they have that of the exploits of Timour, of Bajazet, and of Genghis Khan; the names of Blenheim and Ramillies, of Malplaquet and Oudenarde, awaken a transient feeling of exultation in their bosoms; but as to the particulars of these events, the difficulties with which their general had to struggle, the objects for which he contended, even the places where they occurred, they are, for the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... my duty, Mrs. Mangenborn," said Miss Husted severely, "nor do I require to be put in the path of my duty by anybody, be it he, or be it she, be it transient, or be ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... transcribe some selected passages; unable to quit either the author or the window, before she had a glimpse of the countenance she daily longed to see; and, when seen, it conveyed no distinct idea to her mind where she had seen it before. He must have been a transient acquaintance; but to discover an acquaintance was fortunate, could she contrive to attract his attention, and excite ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is clad with emerald moss. From the edge of the moss dangles a silver fringe. Each gleaming, twisted cord of it hangs separate and distinct, save when a breath of wind plaits two or three into a transient tassel. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... between Philadelphia and Savannah, two between Boston and Baltimore, four between New-Orleans and Texas, and two between New-Orleans and Key West. All of these are coast steamers of the best quality; and some few of them have a nominal mail pay. We have also several transient steamers which have no routes or mail contracts, and which are consequently employed in irregular and accidental service, or laid up. They are the Ericsson, the Washington and the Hermann, the Star of the West, the Prometheus, the Northern Light, the Daniel Webster, the Southerner, ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... mere plea of being a pastor is not a sufficient excuse; and it is losing too, continually, more and more of its force. It is a wonder that it should be relied upon so much as a quietus, since, in the present age, the residence of a pastor is very transient ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... been explicit in assuring her of his affection. He felt now that he would go and hunt on the morrow without any desire to break his neck over the baron's fences. Surely the thing was done now for ever and ever! Then he thought how it would have been with him at this moment had he in any transient weakness told her that he would marry her. But he had been firm, and could now walk ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... prime as he sees the passing colors and active-stepping regiment which he followed in the bright sunshine and flush of his youth. Aside from these sentiments, which might possibly have inspired David and the Dutch burgomaster with an infusion of a new and transient good feeling, it is unquestionable but that some heated brickbats or stove-lids, curocoa jugs or old stone Burton ale-bottles filled with hot-water, would have been more effectual in imparting warmth than either Sunamite or ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Caroline, the wife, "by the rose-light of a beautiful evening. We were one heart, one soul." Herder was equally ecstatic in his language. "I have a wife," he wrote to Jacobi, "that is the tree, the consolation, and the happiness of my life. Even in flying transient thoughts [20which often surprise ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of course, have found words in which to make the reasons for her knowledge clear, but they had for herself no obscurity. The fair being who, at rare intervals, fluttered on the threshold of her world had a way of looking at her with a shade of aloof distaste in her always transient gaze. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... once handsome and still striking countenance was deeply marked with lines of sorrow and care, and his dark luxuriant locks were thinned and grizzled, while his features, which had long been schooled to betray no sign of emotion of a transient or superficial nature, were now, as his eyes met those of Mrs. Beauchamp's, convulsed as by the working of a strong passion. A slight blush tinged Emily's usually pale cheek; she drew a rapid breath, and her voice faltered ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... might be very advantageous for able persons whose superfluous fund of expression needed a paying investment, but the effect on Merman himself was unhappily not so transient as the busy writing and speaking of which he had become the occasion. His certainty that he was right naturally got stronger in proportion as the spirit of resistance was stimulated. The scorn and unfairness with which he felt ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... he has made them part of his being; in him (though he probably does not know it) they will be representative of the best and most characteristic life of his time. That does not mean that the epic poet's image of life's significance is of merely contemporary or transient importance. No stage through which the general consciousness of men has gone can ever be outgrown by men; whatever happens afterwards does not displace it, but includes it. We could not do without Paradise Lost nowadays; ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Transient, however, seem to have been all the felicities of his lordship's most eventful life. The happiness which he enjoyed, in seeing the companions of his cares and successes thus rewarded with truly royal munificence; while he felt himself remunerated, beyond his proudest ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... dry place on the pebbles, removed her hat and sat down, her hands clasped around her knees, her eyes turned seaward. She had come out here to think, but it was odd how fugitive and transient her thoughts became. Her husband was always there in the background, but in those moments it was Lessingham who was the predominant figure. She remembered his earnestness, his tender solicitude for ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for certain children. It is, moreover, the most natural form of retribution, for Nature herself employs it; she uses pain to impress a lasting memory of her precepts. If to the shame of the preceding evening, unhappily too transient, the steward had joined some personal chastisement, perhaps the lesson might have been complete. The discernment with which such punishment needs to be administered is the greatest argument against it. Nature is never mistaken; but ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... literary allusion in the magazines, attaining, at last, a dim knowledge of what was going on in the great outside world of letters and discovery. Of course there were elections and tariff reforms and other comparatively unimportant matters taking place in the state but they made only the most transient ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... gaze on the splendid landscape, and bow in reverence to the God of nature, but a Christian's thoughts should fly to his God at all times; the light and beauty of the scenes of nature should be within himself. When a person's whole religion consists in these transient emotions, he ought ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward: his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease then to view all democratic nations under the mask of the American people, and let us attempt to survey them at length with ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Kit's eye flashed with transient anger, but as he had no idea of acceding to his uncle's order, he did not allow himself to become unduly excited. Indeed he had a plan, which made temporary submission a ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... pendulum swung as far to the other extreme. My hypocrisy made me sick of living in my own body with myself. I threw off the transient cloak of assumed belief. Once more I attacked the stupidity of belief in a six-day God, inventor of an impossible paradise, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... is being so plainly converted from a psychic abstraction into a municipal asset. There's a sort of communal Christian Science in this place which ordains that thought shall not dwell on such transient evils as drought or black rust or early frost or hail-storms or money stringencies. And there's a sort of youthful greediness in people's longing to live all there is of life to live and to know all there is of life to know. For there is ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Webber's advice, he and Alves found it hard to mix with the other "guests." After they had been in the house several months, he fancied that the people avoided them. The harmless trio left their table, and in place of them came a succession of transient boarders. For a time he thought he was oversensitive, inclined to suspect his neighbors of avoiding him. But one evening Alves came into their room, where he was working at the anatomy plates, her face flushed ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... The old women and their shadows! (thus the King Roared) make yourself a man to fight with men. Go: Cyril told us all.' As boys that slink From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye, Away we stole, and transient in a trice From what was left of faded woman-slough To sheathing splendours and the golden scale Of harness, issued in the sun, that now Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us. A little shy at first, but by and by We twain, with ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the attraction of gravitation—was attacked by Leibnitz "as subversive of natural, and inferentially, of revealed, religion." Darwin was confident that, if any such impressions were made by his theory, they would prove but transient, and that ultimately men would come to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms as to believe that it required the fresh act of creation to supply ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... perfection. As she lay back in the big chair but one thing disturbed her serenity—and that one thing was within. She had everything that she wanted, and for the hour, at least, she was tired of it all. The mood was transient, she knew. It would pass because it was alien to the clear bracing air of her mind; but while it lasted she told herself that the present had palled on her because she had looked beneath the vivid surface of illusion to the bare structure of life. Men had ceased to interest her ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... renounced any hope of taking more money, in this ward, gloomy, neglected and remote from the mode, no display of goods was made after dark. But the man, finding novel effects in the obscurity, continued to gaze on the rickety houses and bestowed only a transient portion of his curiosity on the few wayfarers who stolidly trudged past him to cross a bridge of no importance a little ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... did Erwin go that the transient aid afforded by casting over the still living observer was soon more than neutralized. The boy ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... Washington, Fayette Co., Ohio, there was a transient sort of a personage, a kind of floating farmer, named Hinkle,—Jacob Hinkle,—commonly called Old Jake Hinkle. Jake was, originally, a Dutchman, a Pennsylvania, Lancaster County Dutchman; and that was about as Dutch as Holland and Sour Krout could well make a human "critter." ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... these verses intimate less decidedly, the transient idea of Miss Cecilia Stubbs passed from Captain Waverley's heart amid the turmoil which his new destinies excited. She appeared, indeed, in full splendour in her father's pew upon the Sunday when he attended service for the last time at the old parish church, upon which ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... great consequence what it was in the composition which set her off into this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a state that almost any slight agitation would have brought on the attack, and it was the accident of her transient excitability, very probably, which made a trifling cause the seeming occasion of so much disturbance. The theme was signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand, E. Venner, and was, of course, written by that wild-looking girl who had excited the master's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... held a secret converse soon appeared, and evidently congratulated her, in the most tender manner, on her escape. But before she dived to unknown depths, she cast a parting glance at the wretched Shetlander, whose despairing looks excited in her breast a few transient feelings ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... random stoppages having been made, and the last transient memory of the slumberer vanished, and he himself, not unlikely, waked up and landed ere now—the crowd, as is usual, began in all parts to break up from a concourse into various clusters or squads, which in some cases disintegrated again ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... have been few and transient. The product of mistake or enthusiasm, they were remedied by explanation and kindliness. There are dangers threatened now, and against them we shall try the same prompt and frank policy which never failed us yet. Already ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Association is not a transient one. A New England pastor at the beginning of our work for the freedmen, gave me a hearty welcome to present our cause in his pulpit, telling me frankly he did so the more cheerfully because he thought our work would soon be over—say in twenty or twenty-five years. Now ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... sense in which an officer, or a man, may be accurately called a type; a sense no less significant, but of more limited and transient application. The tendency of a period,—especially when one of marked transition,—its activities and its results, not infrequently find expression in one or more historical characters. Such types may perhaps more accurately be called personifications; the man or men embodying, and ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... if there were not one other Swedish War coming, which vies with it in these particulars, of which we shall be obliged to speak, more or less, at a future stage. Of this present Russian-Swedish war, having happily almost nothing to do with it, we can, except in the way of transient chronology, refrain altogether from ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... gathered together the sand into a mound capable of burying Miss Vivi's little body. Across it he laid the opened book. At its head he placed the box of chocolates as a headstone. Then below he wrote in the sand (symbol indeed of transient loves): ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... fit of transient enthusiasm, but from a sober conviction of the need of such a step. "There are hardly any residents in the East rich enough to give much money, or with enough leisure to give much time," he says. "This is the evil. Even the best disposed in the West don't like coming so far off, and, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... just then, Zuleika was looking very amiable indeed. The look was transient. Nothing, she reflected, could undo what the Duke had done. That hateful, impudent girl would take good care that every one should know. "He put them in with his own hands." HER ear-rings! "He kissed me in the public street. He loved me"... Well, he had called out "Zuleika!" and every one ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... transient dream, When death's cold, sullen stream Shall o'er me roll; Blest Saviour, then, in love, Fear and distrust remove; Oh, bear me safe ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... friend writes from Detroit: "Lord Selkirk, from Scotland, is on his route to Lake Superior, and, as he passes through Mackinack, I write to introduce him to you, as a gentleman with whom you would be pleased to have more than a transient association. The name of his father is connected with many north-western events of much interest and notoriety, and a most agreeable recollection of his mother, Lady Selkirk, has recommended him strongly to our kindness. I feel assured you will befriend him, in the way of information, as to the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... suppose that, after a month's absence, house-martins can return from southern regions to appear for one morning in November, or that house-swallows should leave the districts of Africa to enjoy, in March, the transient summer of a couple ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... intelligent "patriots" which was repugnant to Franklin's opinions. So soon as he saw the ground upon which they had placed themselves, he made haste to come into position with them. It was fortunate indeed that the transient separation was closed again before it could lead to the calamity of his removal from his office. For no man or even combination of men, whom it was possible to send from the provinces, could have done them the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... service if the Bible is neglected. In much that is now written on power; also in much that is said in conventions, this fact is overlooked. The work of the Holy Spirit is magnified; but the instrument through which the Holy Spirit works is largely forgotten. The result is transient enthusiasm and activity, but no steady continuance and increase in power and usefulness. We can not obtain power, and we can not maintain power, in our own lives and in our work for others, unless there is deep and frequent meditation upon the Word of God.... ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... under various pretences, Lady Clonbrony had delayed till Lord Colambre was at liberty, began immediately after Miss Broadhurst's departure; and the chalked mosaic pavement of the Alhambra was, in a few minutes, effaced by the dancers' feet. How transient are all human joys, especially those of vanity! Even on this long meditated, this long desired, this gala night, Lady Clonbrony found her triumph incomplete—inadequate to her expectations. For the first hour all had been ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Mrs. Terriberry in the serene confidence that its fair margins would never be defiled through use. Beside the Bible, lay the plush album with its Lombroso-like villainous gallery of countenances upon which transient vandals had pencilled mustaches regardless of sex. She looked at the fly-roost of pampas grass in the sky-blue vase on the shelf from which hung an old-gold lambriquin that represented the highest art of the Kensington cult—water lilies on plush—and at the crowning ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... a small table in a corner of the Middle Caste Category Military Club in Greater Washington. His current fame, transient though it might be, would have made him welcome as a guest in the Upper Caste Club, located in the swank Baltimore section of town. Old pros in the Category Military had comparatively small sufferance for caste lines ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a voice that trembled, though she spoke lightly. "But can you suppose that a woman who, in spite of her absurdities, has some intelligence, will have reserved the best treasures of her heart for a man who will regard her merely as a transient pleasure?—I am not surprised to hear from your lips the words which so many men ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... broke out into that furious war, which was terminated only by the ruin of Jerusalem. During a long period, from the death of Christ to that memorable rebellion, we cannot discover any traces of Roman intolerance, unless they are to be found in the sudden, the transient, but the cruel persecution, which was exercised by Nero against the Christians of the capital, thirty-five years after the former, and only two years before the latter, of those great events. The character of the philosophic historian, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... day, temporarily banished from her thoughts by the unexpected character of the interview, rushed back with renewed force and bitterness, the transient colour died out of her face, leaving it strangely wan and worn in aspect; and Mr. Palma saw now that purple shadows lay beneath the deep eyes, rendering them more than ever prophetic ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... had none. His nearest relation was Warner, and it may readily be supposed that with the pensive and contemplative artist he had very little in common. He had never married, nor had ever seemed to wander from his stern and sterile path, in the most transient pursuit of the pleasures of sense. Inflexibly honest, rigidly austere,—in his moral character his bitterest enemies could detect no flaw,—poor, even to indigence, he had invariably refused all overtures ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prove the deep impression which the event made than these verses. But it was not a transient regret, nor was it the "sorrow of the world." He was in his eighteenth year when his brother died; and if this was not the year of his new birth, at least it was the year when the first streaks of dawn appeared ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... misleads you!" said Ak, sternly. "You are a transient race, passing from life into nothingness. We, who live forever, pity but despise you. On earth you are scorned by all, and in Heaven you have no place! Even the mortals, after their earth life, enter another existence ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... sprang up rapidly, but as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The "gardens" of Adonis became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... Imlac, "will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined, what pleasures are harmless. The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image, is not in the act itself, but in its consequences. Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that, of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... rare common-sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,—that was what distinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. I noticed that he did not overstate anything, but spoke within bounds. I remember, particularly, how, in his speech here, he referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau |
