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Volatile   Listen
adjective
Volatile  adj.  
1.
Passing through the air on wings, or by the buoyant force of the atmosphere; flying; having the power to fly. (Obs.)
2.
Capable of wasting away, or of easily passing into the aeriform state; subject to evaporation. Note: Substances which affect the smell with pungent or fragrant odors, as musk, hartshorn, and essential oils, are called volatile substances, because they waste away on exposure to the atmosphere. Alcohol and ether are called volatile liquids for a similar reason, and because they easily pass into the state of vapor on the application of heat. On the contrary, gold is a fixed substance, because it does not suffer waste, even when exposed to the heat of a furnace; and oils are called fixed when they do not evaporate on simple exposure to the atmosphere.
3.
Fig.: Light-hearted; easily affected by circumstances; airy; lively; hence, changeable; fickle; as, a volatile temper. "You are as giddy and volatile as ever."
Volatile alkali. (Old Chem.) See under Alkali.
Volatile liniment, a liniment composed of sweet oil and ammonia, so called from the readiness with which the latter evaporates.
Volatile oils. (Chem.) See Essential oils, under Essential.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Volatile" Quotes from Famous Books



... the all-importance and the austere role of circumstance weighted with interest, and fused to an all-volatile point sufficient to write to you concerning, and always entering, freed from schism, the moot point, I beg leave to advance the suggestion that (with correct apposition of sentiment, already said) the moment has arrived for an improvement to be effected in the Hymnal, in the public offices of ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater

... and achieved some brilliant things. Would that we always had men of his dauntless spirit, of his restless energy, of his burning sympathy, of his keen imagination! He reminds us somewhat of his own Bishop Synesius, as described in Hypatia (chap. xxi.), who "was one of those many-sided, volatile, restless men, who taste joy and sorrow, if not deeply or permanently, yet abundantly and passionately"—"He lived . . . in a whirlwind of good deeds, meddling and toiling for the mere pleasure of action; and as soon as there ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... Christian life that he has the respect and confidence of everybody. What if he can't preach? He can practice. However, I am willing to admit that the dear old man would be more edifying if he would study his lesson a little. Wasn't it funny to think of calling that 'teaching?'" And then this volatile young lady laughed. But her moralizing ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... aromatic spirits of ammonia. If I'd known that was Reddy Burns, I'd have got down in the gutter and crawled past him instead of handing him one like I did. Why, if I'd ever been in a ring and seen him climbing over the ropes, I'd have been all to the sal-volatile. ...
— Options • O. Henry

... first impulse was to go and join him. Then, however, he hesitated, unwilling to disturb his meditations, for he was doubtless praying for his daughter, whom he fondly loved, in spite of the constant absent-mindedness of his volatile brain. Accordingly, the young priest passed on, and took his way under the trees. Nine o'clock was now striking, he had a couple ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several of the prescriptions have been preserved. One of them is signed by fourteen Doctors. The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to his head. A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth. He recovered his senses; but he was evidently in a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... return of memory, after nature has for a while suspended the consciousness of pain. I turned with a feeling that was almost like aversion from my aunt and from Alice, who were bathing my head and hands with eau de Cologne, and offering me sal volatile and water to drink. There seemed a want of sympathy in their very kindness. I almost felt to dislike them for their ignorance of what I was enduring, and for talking of past fatigue and present rest, while I ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... ART: Though Holland produced a somewhat different quality of art from Flanders and Belgium, yet in many respects the people at the north were not very different from those at the south of the Netherlands. They were perhaps less versatile, less volatile, less like the French and more like the Germans. Fond of homely joys and the quiet peace of town and domestic life, the Dutch were matter-of-fact in all things, sturdy, honest, coarse at times, sufficient unto themselves, and caring little for what other people did. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... attendance. This is so well understood that the police are always in evidence where there are large congregations of people at church or theatre, where a prominent man is to be seen or a procession is to pass. But the popular mass is a volatile thing, and in proportion to its size it expends little useful energy. It is never to be reckoned as equal in importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has a definite purpose guiding its regular action, and that persists in its purpose ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... equilibrium to result, for none of the four substances in the equation are insoluble or volatile when water is present to hold them in solution. But the quantity of the H{2}SO{3} is constantly diminishing, owing to the fact that it decomposes, ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... orders was almost frantic, but even among the industrious poor there were not wanting many who regretted this precipitate return to the old order of things—to conscription, war, and bloodshed, while in the superior classes of society there was a pretty general consternation. The vain, volatile soldiery, however, thought of nothing but their Emperor, saw nothing before them but the restoration of all their laurels, the humiliation of England, and the utter defeat of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... hearts of his people, uncertain even of the continued favor of the volatile monster who was lounging then in his Caprian retreat, it was with the idea of pleasing the one, of flattering the other, that he had instituted the games. For here in his brand-new Tiberias, a city which he had built in a minute, whose colonnades and porticoes he had bought ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... of cheap oxygen which might be realized in the near future. The greatest illuminating effect from a given bulk of gas is obtained by mixing it with the requisite proportion of oxygen, and holding in the flame of the burning mixture a piece of some solid infusible and non-volatile substance, such as lime. This becomes heated to whiteness, and emits an intense light know as the Drummond light, used already for special purposes of illumination. By supplying oxygen in pipes laid by the side of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... even though the carcass is kept in an ice box or refrigerater, the whole mass is permeated with putrefactive bacteria. Refrigeration even to a point close to freezing delays but does not prevent the growth of putrefactive organisms although at lower temperatures the usual volatile products which give notice of the presence of putrefaction by an odor of decay are not produced. Persons whose stomachs manufacture a liberal amount of hydrochloric acid, an essential constituent of healthy gastric juice, are able to disinfect even highly putrescent meat, so that they ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... saltpetre, while the earth and the animal remains supply the other. Evaporation of pure water from the surface of the earth causes the moisture which rises from below to bring to the surface the salt dissolved in it; and as this salt is not volatile, the escape of the moisture leaves it at or near the surface. Hence, under buildings, especially habitations of men and animals, the salt accumulates, and in times of scarcity it may be collected. In ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... Do you want to kill me at once? I only want rest and a chance to get my breath again. Tea? Wine? Faugh! I hope I know better than that after the agonies I have had to go through. Sal- volatile! Do you take me for an hysterical old woman? Feet up? Ay, young sir, I expect I shall have a longer dose of that position than I care for after this adventure! As if I had not had enough of it already—five weeks ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... it cool, restful, and, in spite of the dust, absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope, entirely inodorous. The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious emanations and decay—the very dust itself in its fine impalpability was volatile with a spicelike piquancy, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... arise from various viscous superfluities in the kidneys and bladder, which occasion difficulty in micturition. Stone is produced by the action of heat upon viscous moisture, sublimating the volatile elements and condensing the denser portions. Putrefication of stone in the bladder is the result of three causes, viz., consuming heat, viscous matter and stricture of the meatus. For consuming heat acting on viscous material retained by reason of stricture ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... might be easier to rig up a coiled bi-metallic strip. You're trying to boil off your various fractions, and unless you keep an even and controlled temperature you are going to have a mixed brew. The thing you want for your engines are the most volatile fractions, the liquids that boil off first like gasoline and benzene. After that you raise the temperature and collect kerosene for your lamps and so forth right on down the line until you have a nice mass of tar left to pave your roads with. How ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... Dalby had introduced his "Carminative" for "all those fatal Disorders in the Bowels of Infants." The committee decided that a grain of opium to the ounce, together with magnesia and three volatile oils, were essential "for this mild carminative and laxative ... ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen

... Uncle Bob, who was, we considered, a pretty good chemist. "It is the evaporation of the spirit; it is so volatile that it turns of itself into vapour or gas and it makes itself evident to our nostrils as it is borne ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... prostrating to the Supreame power the authoritie you would entrust me with, for which I give you my humble thanks; for this wisdome of yours hath animated my caution of assumeing this burden, which is so volatile, slippery and heavy, that I may justly feare it will breake my Limbs." It might be thought by some, he said, that the emergency would excuse his accepting this authority, but the King would judge him, and ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... Lefevre, "this Nervous Force, or Nervous Ether, is clearly a very volatile, and at the same time a very searching fluid. It can easily pass through the skin from a nerve in one person to a nerve in another. There is no difficulty about that; the difficulty is to set up a rapid enough vibration to whirl the current through!" He said that in meditative fashion: he was ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... raisins. I can get a good many if Cephas gives me wholesale price, with family discount subtracted from that. Cephas would treat me to candy in a minute, but if I let him we'd have to ask him to the picnic! Good-bye!" And the volatile creature darted down the hill singing, "There'll be something in heaven for children to do," at the top of her healthy ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Let me congratulate you upon the fortitude and courage with which you ignored those lying reports of my death. I had fears that I might find you alone in a darkened room, with tear-stained eyes and sal volatile by your side. This is infinitely better. Gentlemen, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and Elsie, acutely aware that his legs were too long for the occasion, almost forgot the torment of the past week in looking and listening, and wondering how he had ever attained even a passing hold upon a spirit so lightly poised, so compact of volatile essences, that he shrank, almost with awe, from the bare thought of subjecting her uncaptured loveliness to the pains and penalties of marriage. He sat for the most part in silence; content to let the ripple of her voice and laughter play over him like water over parched ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... guardian, the change being as necessary medically as it was judicially. The removal was made with the utmost caution, and was calculated to produce a great public effect. Pierrette was laid on a mattress and carried on a stretcher by two men; a Gray Sister walked beside her with a bottle of sal volatile in her hand, while the grandmother, Brigaut, Madame Auffray, and her maid followed. People were at their windows and doors to see the procession pass. Certainly the state in which they saw Pierrette, pale as death, gave ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... those of a man wholly given up to love and poetry. In his youth he was volatile, and at no time without what is called some "affair of the heart." Every woman attracted him who had modesty and agreeableness; and as, at the same time, he was very jealous, one might imagine that ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... hurt from bleeding." He leaned almost on the neck of the mare, which, as I knew, must close the wound; and the light of his eyes was quite different, and the pain of his forehead unstrung itself, as if he felt the undulous readiness of her volatile paces under him. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... worship she inspired found her cold and unresponsive. Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her studies and teased her about her unwillingness for society, which they attributed to a lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on making herself coquettish, gay, volatile,—a woman, in short. But she expected in return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in harmony with the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its knowledge. Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the commonplaces of conversation, the silliness of gallantry; ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... the following substances in the bark of the Champana: a volatile oil with a pine-like odor; a fixed oil, insoluble in alcohol, melting at 15 and forming soap with soda; a resin extremely bitter, acrid, brown in color; tannin; sugar; a bitter principle, albuminoids, ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... hospitality to a great extent. Having overseers on most of their plantations, the labor being performed by slaves, they have much leisure, and are averse to much personal attention to business. They dislike care, profound thinking and deep impressions. The young men are volatile, gay, dashing and reckless spirits, fond of excitement and high life. There is a fatal propensity amongst the southern planters to decide quarrels, and even trivial disputes by duels. But there are also many amiable and noble traits of character amongst this class; and if the principles ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... sal volatile in my room—stuff to take for a cold. I only want to get off my wet things and go to bed—I can sleep now. Don't be frightened ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... she probably did know that ammonia is good for just that sort of faintness which she must have experienced after taking the powder. Perhaps she thought of sal volatile, I don't know. But most people know that ammonia in some form is good for faintness of this sort, even if they don't know anything about cyanides and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... brothers were of widely different temperament. Henry, even as a little boy, was sturdy, industrious, and dependable. Sam was volatile and elusive; his industry of an erratic kind. Once his father set him to work with a hatchet to remove some plaster. He hacked at it for a time well enough, then lay down on the floor of the room and threw his hatchet ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... without a prefix, the fixed or fatty oils are always understood. The volatile or essential oils are a distinct class. Occasionally, the fixed oils are called hydrocarbons, but hydrocarbon oils are quite different and consist of carbon and hydrogen alone. Of these, petroleum is incapable of digestion, whilst ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... health to these fortunate lovers Who, on this thrice blessed day, Have singed with the torch of chaste Hymen, The wings with which Cupid doth stray. And now, little volatile boy-god, You must keep yourself quiet at home— Enchained there by this happy marriage Where Genius and ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... just worn out with keeping everything to herself, and trying to spare us pain,' Mrs. Ross said to her husband, as she recounted this little scene to him. 'I never knew Audrey hysterical before; I was obliged to give her some sal volatile. I think she ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... And whereas the Tincture of Gold is found in none more plentiful than in Mars and Venus, as Man and Wife, their bodies therefore are destroyed, and the tinging Spirit taken out of them, which makes Gold sanguin, being first opened and prepared, and by their food and drink it becomes volatile, wherefore this volatile Gold being satisfied with its food and drink, assumes its own bloud to it self, dries it up by its own internal heat, by the help and assistance of the vaporous fire, and ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus

... induced last summer to do rather a foolish thing for a middle-aged spinster—I undertook to chaperon a volatile young niece upon a continental tour. We travelled the usual course up the Rhine into Switzerland, which we enjoyed rapturously. Then passing the Alps, we spent a few days at Milan, and next proceeded to Verona. In all this ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... chrysolite, Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shone In Aaron's breastplate, and a stone besides, Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seen; That stone, or like to that, which here below Philosophers in vain so long have sought, In vain, though by their powerful art they bind Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, Drained through a limbec to his native form. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run Potable gold, when, with one virtuous touch, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... every occasional impression, I find gradually dispelling the pleasing pensiveness which the melancholy event, the subject of my last, had diffused over my mind. Naturally cheerful, volatile, and unreflecting, the opposite disposition I have found to contain sources of enjoyment which I ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... Juarez's face, but he said nothing. All the stolid Indian in his nature came to the surface. He merely grunted contemptuously at the Mexican's remark and this made the volatile Manuel uneasy in his turn, for he wanted to realize that his malice had struck home, but Juarez did not give him that satisfaction. There was a sort of hidden duel between these two, the subtle Mexican and the crafty Indian ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... placed along the margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with their perfume, and refreshing him by their shade, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics. In the midst of sandy wastes, which occasionally intervened, where the light and volatile soil was incapable of sustaining a road, huge piles were driven into the ground to indicate the route ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... leisure to analyse, but, not understanding it, never got very far, except that, superficially, it had been more or less physical. From the moment he saw her he was conscious that she was different; insensibly the exquisitely volatile charm of her enveloped him, and he betrayed it, awaking her, first, to uneasy self-consciousness; then uneasy consciousness of him; then, imperceptibly, through distrust, alarm, and a thousand inexplicable psychological ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... trucks transiting Austria between northern and southern Europe natural hazards: NA international agreements: party to - Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Wetlands; signed, but not ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... could, there was no standard of ideal beauty in her father's mind beyond that of her own. She had been beautiful; but her beauty was pensive: a fair yet melancholy child; for the charm that ever encompassed her was one of sorrow and tenderness. Had she been volatile and mirthful, as children usually are, he would not have carried so far into his future life the love of her which he cherished. Another reason why he still loved her strongly, was a consciousness ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... of ground beetles (Carabidae) almost all possess a disagreeable and some a very pungent smell, and a few, called bombardier beetles, have the peculiar faculty of emitting a jet of very volatile liquid, which appears like a puff of smoke, and is accompanied by a distinct crepitating explosion. It is probably because these insects are mostly nocturnal and predacious that they do not present more vivid hues. They are chiefly remarkable for brilliant ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... remained in the master's studio considerably longer than his more volatile companions, who had gladly availed themselves of the excuse which the dusk of evening afforded, to withdraw from their several tasks, in order to finish a day of labour in the jollity and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... carrying it about. The literary essence, which is uncommonly subtle, has various modes of acting on us; and this particular manner of absorbing a book's spirit stands to the material operation called reading, much in the same way that smell, the act of breathing invisible volatile particles, stands to the more obvious wholesale process ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... her divinity. The unchangeable rocks that face the unstable waters typify to us our struggle and our victory. Day by day the conflict goes on. Day by day the fixed battlements recede and decay before their volatile opponent. Imperceptibly weakness becomes strength, and persistence channels its way. God's work is accomplished slowly, but it is accomplished. Time is not to Him who commands eternity; and man, earth-born, earth-bound, is bosomed ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... country. Moreover, Maud has a passion for knowing all the village people, and takes the children with her, so that they really know the village-folk all round; they are certainly tremendously happy and interested in everything. Of course they are volatile in their tastes, but I rather encourage that. I know that in the little old moral books the idea was that nothing should be taken up by children, unless it was done thoroughly and perseveringly; but I had rather that ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... extended, to catch the butterfly that tempted her on from flower to flower. My brother Henry was two years younger than myself, and was at the time I speak of a remarkably handsome, active boy, of ten years of age—full of fun and mischief, unsteady and volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... volatile Professor had already soared to other points of view, and was not to be ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... surmounting the difficulties of her lessons. But she was very young; and although, as her father declared, it was her natur' to run after the men, there was every reason to hope that a year or two would render her less volatile, and add to those sterling good qualities which she really possessed. In heart and feeling she was a modest girl, although the buoyancy of her spirits often carried her beyond the bounds prescribed by decorum, and often called forth a blush upon her own animated countenance, when her good sense, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... wench," said the surly money-lender. "I have saved this prelatist and malignant from his adversaries, and now"——He considered a while, muttering his thoughts and arguments to himself with a most confused and volatile impetuosity of ratiocination. In a short time he seemed to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion through all this obscurity, and drew out a handful of coin, of some low denomination, apparently by the sound, and placed it in the hands of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... through the grammar-school, he was placed with a relative of the name of Seymour, to study the profession of the law; but this dry kind of study was soon found to have no attractions for one of his volatile turn of mind. Something, however, was to be done to rescue from sheer idleness a youth of nineteen, with very narrow means, few friends, and no definite prospects; and, by the kindness of Dr. Wheelock, the pious founder of Dartmouth College, who had been the intimate friend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... better known as the beautiful Princess Pauline Borghese, a lady with an infinity of admirers, was far more subtle in her methods. Her presents to Lady Nugent took the irresistible form of dresses of the latest Parisian fashion, and were eagerly accepted by that volatile little lady. Indeed, for ten months she seems to have been entirely dressed by Madame Le Clerc, who even provided little George Nugent's christening robe of white muslin, heavily embroidered in gold. Ladies may be interested ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... pleasure ran through the form on the first Sunday when his name was read out in this honourable position, and it gave Walter nearly as much satisfaction to hear Henderson's name read out sixth on the same day; for before Walter came, Henderson was too volatile ever to care where he stood in form, and usually spent his time in school in drawing caricatures of the masters, and writing parodies of the lesson or epigrams on other boys; up till this time Daubeny had always been first in the form, and he deserved the place if any boy did. He was not a clever ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... piiterita), similar in manner of growth to the preceding, is another importation from Europe now thoroughly at home here in wet soil. The volatile oil obtained by distilling its leaves has long been an important item of trade in Wayne County, New York. One has only to crush the leaves in one's hand to name ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... haughty lords; and, in a word, the first tumult of the restoration being over, the troops of the Allies withdrawn, and the memory of recent sufferings and disasters beginning to wax dim amidst the vainest and most volatile of nations, there were abundant elements of discontent afloat among all those classes who had originally approved of, or profited ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... our younger men of letters actively concerned with the present condition of literary criticism. This is a novel preoccupation for them and one which is, we believe, symptomatic of a general hesitancy and expectation. In the world of letters everything is a little up in the air, volatile and uncrystallised. It is a world of rejections and velleities; in spite of outward similarities, a strangely different world from that of half a dozen years ago. Then one had a tolerable certainty that the new star, if the new star was to appear, would burst upon our vision in the shape ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... observation, that of the four organic elements, carbon only is fixed, and the other three are gases; and likewise, when any two of them unite, their compound is either a gaseous or a volatile substance. The charring of organic substances, which is one of their most characteristic properties, and constantly made use of by chemists as a distinctive reaction, is due to this peculiarity; for when they are heated, a simpler arrangement of their particles takes place, the ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... quick and pointed. The Tea Act of 1773 raised two highly volatile issues: the right to tax and the granting of a trade monopoly on tea. In both instances the principle was most bothersome. The tea tax was small, but as Bland had said of the Pistole Fee, "the question then ought not to be the smallness ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... the strongest against the weakest, ready to swing round at once on the wind changing, but all joined together and working to one common end through physical instinct, the only one that lasts in the immoral, adroit and volatile being who circulates nimbly about, with no other aim than self-preservation, and to amuse himself.[3276]—In his dressing-gown, early in the morning, he receives a crowd of solicitors, and, with the ways of a "dandified ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... discontinuity, no spent ball. The divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated. That power which ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... and most valuable method of determining the molecular weights of non-volatile as well as volatile substances has just been brought into prominence by Prof. Victor Meyer (Berichte, 1888, No. 3). The method itself was discovered by M. Raoult, and finally perfected by him in 1886, but up to the present has been but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... partnership with his brother, Mr. Peter Garrick; they hired vaults in Durham Yard, for the purpose of carrying on the business. The union between the brothers was of no long date. Peter was calm, sedate, and methodical; David was gay, volatile, impetuous, and perhaps not so confined to regularity as his partner could have wished. To prevent the continuance of fruitless and daily altercation, by the interposition of friends the partnership was amicably dissolved. And now Garrick prepared himself ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys: and in this he does well; for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... been consulting me—the women in tears. He will marry his grandchildren's German governess, and there is nothing to be done. In such cases nothing is ever to be done. You can easily distract an aged man's volatile affections, and attach them to a new charmer. But she is just as ineligible as the first; marry he will, always a young woman. Now if a respectable virgin or widow of, say, fifty, could hand him ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. The French language has visibly changed under the inspection of the Academy; the style of Amelot's translation of Father ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... spectacled; diminutive, warm-blooded, he is about the most animated priest we know of. He has English and Italian blood in his veins, and that vascular mixture works him up beautifully. No man could stand such an amalgam without being determined, volatile, practical, and at times dreamy; and you have all these qualities developed in Father Papall. He is 40 years of age, and has seen more foreign life than many priests. He has been in Italy, where he resided for ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... such profanation, but it really moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile figures of your romance to the level of an everyday novel. It is exactly the romantic atmosphere of the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... few among them were so far touched by the pathos they found in this as to shed a tear or so—most of them were volatile young Frenchmen who counted their sensibilities among ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... that by eating half a dozen of them, they were secured against drunkenness, however deeply they might imbibe. Almonds, however, are considered as very indigestible. The bitter contain, too, principles which produce two violent poisons,—prussic acid and a kind of volatile oil. It is consequently dangerous to eat them in large quantities. Almonds pounded together with a little sugar and water, however, produce a milk similar to that which is yielded by animals. Their oil is used for making fine soap, and their cake ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... break-time, and presided over noontime feasts, served in several sittings, in the tent. Before the workers left in the evening, Aaron would give each a drink out back, scharifer cider, feeling that they'd steamed hard enough to earn a sip of something volatile. There are matters, he mused, in which common sense can blink at a bishop; as in secretly trimming one's beard a bit, for example, to keep it out of one's soup; or plucking a guitar ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang

... are in all Governments advanc'd to Posts of Trust and great Employments in the State, while meer Wits are regarded as Men of the lowest Merit, and accordingly are promoted to the meaner and less profitable Places, being look'd on, by reason of their Inapplication and volatile Temper, as ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore

... expelling the troops of the Beni-Hammud in 1027, invited to ascend the throne of his ancestors. "He was a mild and enlightened prince and possessed many brilliant qualities; but notwithstanding this, the volatile and degenerate citizens of Cordova grew discontented with him, and he was deposed by the army in 422, (A.D. 1031.) He left the capital and retired to Lerida, where he died in 428, (A.D. 1036.) He was the last member of that illustrious dynasty which had ruled over ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... sometimes vouchsafed to them. In some instances, they have passed years in the midst of idolatry and bloody rites, the mere recital of which causes one to shudder, while their lives have hung on the caprice of a volatile chief; at other times God has so signally blessed their efforts that a whole tribe has adopted Christianity in the course of a few weeks. Misunderstand us not, reader. We do not say that they all became true Christians; nevertheless it is a glorious fact that ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... difficulty in fighting its way through; but if every one of the mob could be changed suddenly into a ghost, there would be little to retard it. And as each interior entity is more rare, active, and volatile than the outer and as each has relation with different elements, spaces, and properties of the Kosmos which are treated of in other articles on Occultism, the mind of the reader may conceive—though the pen of the writer could ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... cauterized the wound, although it seemed too late to be any use; he was getting cold and faint. However, by dint of being walked up and down between two men, and having two whole bottles of brandy administered to him, a glass at a time, besides sal volatile, chloroform, and every stimulant we had, he got through the night. The Bishop sat up with him all night, and I could hear him, when at last I went to bed, calling out at intervals, "Oh, Allah! Oh, Lord Bishop!"—so terrible was the pain he suffered in his arm. His wife, who was my baby's ayah, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... system, by which, removed to the fields, they should be helping to create the means of life, instead of death. We never can look upon a great factory chimney pouring forth its thick column of smoke, without a twin grief—for the disgust it creates, and the good that is lost by it. Properly, that volatile fuel should be doing duty in the furnace, and effecting a saving to the manufacturer, instead of rendering him and his concerns a nuisance to all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... up to Saratogy—that I'd go, and I went. It was odd enough, to be sure," said Uncle Joe, taking a pinch of rappee from his tortoise-shell box—"very odd, in fact, but somehow or other, Mrs. Padlock, being in poor health, and her sister, a rather volatile and inexperienced young woman, you ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... imposing seriousness of aspect." The bishop represents him as vain and irritable, but distinguished by good feeling and principle. Another officer was Ponson, described as five feet six inches high, lively and animated in excess, volatile, noisy, and chattering a l'outrance. "He was hardy," says the bishop, "and patient to admiration of labor and want of rest." And of this last quality the following wonderful illustration is given: "A continued watching of five ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... international agreements: party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... of the solution was 100 c.c.; 20 c.c. of iodine were taken, and 5 c.c. of starch solution were added towards the end as indicator. These conditions are also those of the other experiments, except where otherwise stated. Iodine being volatile, it is to be expected that with hot solutions ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... her teeth hard. A strange light gleamed in the blue of her eyes. She moved across to the washing-stand and poured out a stiff dose of sal volatile. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... nothing harder hearted; For thoughtless of all sufferings unseen, Of all save those which touch upon the round Of the day's palpable doings, the vain man, And oftener still the volatile woman vain, Is busiest at heart with restless cares, Poor pains and paltry joys, that make within Petty yet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various

... would show too much confidence in you, or too high an estimation of my own merits, were I to attribute the sentiment to you, "That people are not together only when present, but that the absent and the dead also live with us." Who could ascribe such a thought to the volatile Therese, who takes the world so lightly? Among your various occupations, do not forget the piano, or rather, music in general, for which you have so fine a talent: why not then seriously cultivate it? You, who have so much feeling for the good and the beautiful, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... the nitrates, for which the soil has no retentive power; and in the second place, from the porosity of the soil, the air has too great access, so that the vegetable and animal matters of manures decay too rapidly, their volatile portions, ammonia and carbonic acid, escape into the atmosphere, and are in measure lost to the crops. From these combined causes we find that a heavy dressing of well-rotted stable manure, almost if not entirely, disappears from such soils in one season, ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... Masonic revelations in Paris had become too numerous for one more or less to fix the volatile quality of public interest unless a new horror were attached to it. Passwords and signs and catechisms, all the purposes and the better half of the secrets—everyone outside the Fraternity who concerned themselves with Masonry and cared for ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... being elected for Oxford; which, I conceive, is wholly changed; and entirely devoted to new principles; so it appeared to me the two last times I was there. I find by the whole cast of your letter, that you are as giddy and as volatile as ever: just the reverse of Mr. Pope, who has always loved a domestic life from his youth. I was going to wish you had some little place that you could call your own, but, I profess I do not know you well enough to contrive any one system of life that would please ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... chamber, put on kid gloves, and from the odds and ends of his dishevelled wits wrote at a gallop, without ever looking back, his "Mysteres de Paris." The latter lived in an attic year after year, contemplated with cheerful anxiety the volatile world of France and the perplexed life of man, and elaborated word by word, with innumerable revisions, his short songs, which are gems of poetry, charming at once the ear and the heart. Novels are perhaps too easily written to be of lasting value. An unpremeditated word, in which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... ten or fifteen minutes has taken a deep orange colour resembling gold. It is then placed in a small heap of wood-ashes and after a few minutes taken out again and carefully wrapped in cotton-wool. The peculiar orange colour results from the sulphur and resin in the bark being rendered volatile. They then proceed to dispose of the gold, sometimes going to a fair and buying cattle. On concluding a bargain they suddenly find they have no money, and after some hesitation reluctantly produce the gold, and say they are willing to part with it at a disadvantage, thereby usually ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... savour the whittle's sharp edge, and I thank my Lord for my escape and for the loosing of my prosperity from the trap of trouble." Now when the Birder heard these words of the Birdie he repented and regretted his folly, and he cried, "O my sorrow for what failed me of the slaughter of this volatile," and as he sank on ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... accounts of particular persons are barren and useless. If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are transmitted[107] by tradition. We know how few can pourtray a living acquaintance, except by his most prominent and observable particularities, and the grosser features of his mind; and it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... occupy. In the eagerness of his hopes, Buckingham had once dropped, as I learn, that "before Midsummer he should be more honoured and beloved by the commons than ever was the Earl of Essex:" and thus he rocked his own and his master's imagination in cradling fancies. This volatile hero, who had felt the capriciousness of popularity, thought that it was as easily regained as it was easily lost; and that a chivalric adventure would return to him that favour which at this moment might have been denied ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... "Arch, volatile, a sportive bird, By social glee inspired; Ambitious to be seen or heard, And pleased to ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... according to its strength, but usually about one part to fifty of water. It may be made by boiling one pound of good tobacco stems in two gallons of water for one-half-hour. Objections to it are that it evaporates very quickly, although it is supposed to be non-volatile, and that it is expensive, but it is very convenient to use, can be readily mixed with other summer sprays, and is very effective against plant lice ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... a 10-minim capsule of Terebine after meals, or charcoal, either as French Rusks ("Biscols Fraudin") or a teaspoonful of powdered charcoal between meals. One drop of creosote on a lump of sugar, peppermint water, and sal volatile may also be used. Sufferers should toast ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... attentive auditors was a young man whose face, irregular in outline but marvellously intelligent, reflected every thought and image of the speaker, almost as rivers reflect the landscape that unrolls itself along their banks. When I add that the volatile waves incessantly efface what they have just before reflected, the comparison will appear only the more exact." To an impartial inquirer it might appear singularly inexact; but having picked up the shaft, we shall not at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... not pay sufficient tribute to Washington's magnanimity and generosity, he had by now seen him in too many tempers, had been ground too fine in his greedy machine, to think on him always with unqualified enthusiasm. Lafayette, brilliant, volatile, accomplished, bubbling with enthusiasm for the cause of Liberty, and his own age within a few months, he liked sincerely and always. There was no end to the favours he did him, and Lafayette loved no one better in his long and various ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... a little sorrowfully. Now that they were nearing the end of the voyage, many cares pressed upon him, which to the volatile nature of Arthur seemed only theme for adventure. Whither to bend their steps in the first instance, was a matter for grave deliberation. They had letters of introduction to a gentleman near Carillon ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... vain. For, sooner than expected, the volatile fluid— or whatever it may be—passes out of their veins, and their nervous strength returns; even Ludwig saying he is himself again, though he is ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... judgment, impressed with a certain bitterness, was like a repentance for the secret impression which the favourable exterior of this young man had at first inspired. She accuses herself with finding him so handsome, and seems to fortify her heart against the fascination of his looks. "Barbaroux is volatile," she said; "the adoration he receives from worthless women destroys the seriousness of his feelings. When I see such fine young men too conceited at the impression they make, like Barbaroux and Herault de Sechelles, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... violent demonstrations of surprise and joy over, Mrs Gaff dragged her husband into a small closet, which was regarded by the household in the light of a spare room, and there compelled him to change his garments. While this change was being made the volatile Bu'ster, indignant at being bolted out, kicked the door with his heel until he became convinced that no good or evil could result from the process. Then his active mind reverted to the forbidden loaf, and he forthwith ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... can be made only in trivial quantities, at enormous expense and with exceeding labour; it is so volatile that you cannot keep it for three days. I have sometimes thought that with a little ingenuity I might make it more stable, I might so modify it that, like radium, it lost no strength as it burned; and then ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... France was during the thirteenth century, amidst a civilization still so imperfect and without the fortifying institutions of a free government, no accidental good fortune could make up for a king's want of personal merit; and Louis VIII. was a man of downright mediocrity, without foresight, volatile in his resolves and weak and fickle in the execution of them. He, as well as Philip Augustus, had to make war on the King of England, and negotiate with the pope on the subject of the Albigensians; but at one time he followed, without well understanding it, his father's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... wanderin' about, and playin' 'here we go round the mulberry bush' until one of 'em tumbles down a ravine. And then there's a great to do! and 'dear popa' was up and down the road yellin' 'Me cheyld! me cheyld!' And then there was camphor and sal volatile and eau de cologne to be got, and the coach goes off, and 'popa dear' gets left, and then has to hurry off in a buggy to catch it. So WE get left too, just because that God-forsaken fool, Neworth, brings ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... On his first succession to his father's now almost independent fief he was young, and content with the unbounded indulgence of those bodily faculties with which he was largely endowed. He is described as extremely handsome, and above the average stature; with an acute mind, somewhat too volatile; and more prone by nature to the exercises of the field than to the deliberations of the cabinet. But neither was the son of Safdar Jang likely to be brought up wholly without lessons in that base and tortuous selfishness which, in the East even more than elsewhere, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene

... Naples they had agreed to take the Sicilian trip together, then up Italy, through France, to England. The scholar and the merchant at play were like two boys out of school; the dry whimsical humor of the Scotsman and the volatile sparkle of the Irishman ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... field. Only the man versed in statecraft should be allowed to participate in the talk about the results of war. Not he who has out yonder proved an unworthy diplomat, nor the dilettante loafer sprayed with the perfume of volatile emotions. Manhood liability to military service requires manhood suffrage? That question may rest for the time being; likewise the desire for equality of that right shall not be argued today. But common sense should warn against the assumption of an office without the slightest special ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... herself to the maid. "Go to my room, and bring me another bonnet and a veil. Stop!" She tried to rise, and sank back. "I must have something to strengthen me. Get the sal volatile." ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... makes his pile in the fish business, but it is not monumental; it will not live after him in memorial grandeur, and the business itself is far from imposing—the phosphate of ammonia and its volatile allies passing even from the recollection of reminiscent contemporaries. The people with rare collections to sell work among that class of trade represented by Tescheron, a man with money seeking to benefit mankind in some way that will insure ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... 'Dama' in whose box I was, went off in the same way, I really believe more from fright than any other sympathy—at least with the players: but she has been ill, and I have been ill, and we are all languid and pathetic this morning, with great expenditure of sal volatile.[42] But, to return to your letter of the 23d ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore



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