"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... air of the silent open country, we would come perhaps in the gathering darkness to a great river lapping and murmuring through the blackened rocks above the ford, and shining like a glorious path in the light of the rising moon. Silently, high above the banks, there would flit through the still air bands of flying foxes awakened for their nightly raid upon the plantain groves; and in the shadows of the further bank there would gleam a sudden light, or the echoes of a hailing voice would rise and then ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Seraphine," remarked the Bishop, gravely, "life is but a mirror which reflects themselves. Other forms and faces may flit by, in the background; dimly seen, scarcely noticed. There is but one face and form occupying the entire foreground. Life is, to such, the mirror which ministers to vanity. Should a husband appear in the picture, he is soon relegated to the background, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... returned the guard, indifferently. "I expect if the truth were known it ought to be by rights. He sure enough thinks it is, though. Why, Uncle Pete, there can't a butterfly flit over these grounds that Adam ain't a yellin' how there's an aeroplane a sailin' around lookin' fer a chance to drop a monkey wrench ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... uncertainty, I perceived a ray flit across the gloom and disappear. Another succeeded, which was stronger, and remained for a passing moment. It glittered on the shrubs that were scattered at the entrance, and gleam continued to succeed gleam for a few seconds, till they finally gave ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... daughter to despise every thing pertaining to the old brown house, once her childhood home, and where even now the kind-hearted grandmother was busy in preparing for the reception of the invalid. From morning until night did the little active form of Grandma Howland flit from room to room, washing windows which needed no washing, dusting tables on which no dust was lying, and doing a thousand things which she thought would add to the comfort of Rose. On one room in particular did the good old lady bestow more than usual care. 'Twas the "spare chamber," at whose ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... exposed for sale; embroidery, pickles, preserves, confectionery, and articles rejected by the Society of Decorative Art. I hope it will be a success, and help many worthy women, all over the land, to help themselves.... I find it hard to consent to your having, at your age, to flit about from home to home, but a loving Father has a mansion for you beyond all the changes and chances of this strange complicated life. If He gives you His presence, that will be a home. I wish you could ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... fellowship of voluntary grief— He read the tear-stained book of poor men's souls, As we must learn to read it. Lady! lady! Wear but one robe the less—forego one meal— And thou shalt taste the core of many tales, Which now flit past thee, like a minstrel's songs, The sweeter for ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... degrees difficulties were smoothed down. A squatter on one of the forfeited farms, about eight miles off, who with his family lived solely on flesh and milk, was engaged to lend a hand with his waggon and oxen to "flit" the families to their various locations. He also sold the settlers a few sheep. In time, more sheep and oxen were purchased from the Dutch farmers on the Tarka, a river on the other side of the mountains. ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... day. Stories are told in Sutherlandshire about a 'witch' who milked deer; a 'ghost' once became acquainted with a forester, and at his suggestion packed all her plenishing on a herd of deer, when forced to flit by another and a bigger 'ghost;' the green mounds in which 'fairies' are supposed to dwell closely resemble the outside of Lapp huts. The fairies themselves are not represented as airy creatures in gauze wings and spangles, but they appear in tradition as small ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes) Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain New stratagems the radiant lock to gain. Ah, cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late, Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate! Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, She dearly pays for Nisus' ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the earth that is scarcely seen Through the curtain of vapour that waves between, O'er city and hamlet, o'er hill and plain, O'er forest green, and o'er mountain hoar, They flit like shadows, and pass the shore, And wing their ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... and in this pale light all details of ornaments and lines of windows and balconies seemed lost; they stood out more clearly in the buildings that were wrapped in a light veil of unbroken shadow. The gondolas, with their little red lamps, seemed to flit past more noiselessly and swiftly than ever; their steel beaks flashed mysteriously, mysteriously their oars rose and fell over the ripples stirred by little silvery fish; here and there was heard the brief, subdued call of a gondolier (they never sing now); scarcely another sound ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... the body of De-deed disappears for the last time. We search for an hour or more with grappling irons, but he is never seen again. A strange silence settles down above and below deck, and all night long two faces flit before us—the grave face of the mother calling down blessings on her boy, the rallying smile of De-deed bidding her good-by and telling her all is well. It is a brave and happy spirit which, in the "Little Lake" of the Mackenzie, goes ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the dust and heat of the Piazza one comes into a cool cloister that surrounds a quadrangle open to the sky, in which a cypress still lives. The sun fills the garden with a golden beauty, in which the butterflies flit from flower to flower over the dead. I do not know a place more silent or more beautiful. One lingers in the cool shadow of the cloisters before many an old marble,—a vase carved with Bacchanalian women, the head of Achilles, or the bust of Isotta of Rimini. But it is before the fresco of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the chamber, moody and alone. The taper was nigh extinguished; the wasted billet grew pale, a few sparks starting up the chimney, as the wind roared in short and hasty gusts round the dwelling. The old family portraits seemed to flit from their dark panels, wavering with the tremulous motion of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... years thegither; We'll toyte about wi' ane anither; Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tether, To some hain'd rig, Whare ye may nobly rax ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of time, tract of time, current of time, tide of time, march of time, step of time, flight of time; duration &c 106. [Indefinite time] aorist^. V. elapse, lapse, flow, run, proceed, advance, pass; roll on, wear on, press on; flit, fly, slip, slide, glide; run its course. run out, expire; go by, pass by; be past &c 122. Adj. elapsing &c v.; aoristic^; progressive. Adv. in due time, in due season; in in due course, in due process, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the Poet at his will Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all, Higher through secret splendours mounting still ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... short the word he was saying, and Martin saw his body stiffen and his eyes dilate. Even Ichi betrayed agitation, and Martin saw a violent but quickly mastered emotion flit across ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... term, yet how irksome, cold, uninteresting, uninviting, does it at best appear to you! how severe its voice! how forbidding its aspect! With what animation, on the contrary, do you enter into the mere pursuits of time and the world! What bright anticipations of joy and happiness flit before your eyes! How you are struck and dazzled at the view of the prizes of this life, as they are called! How you admire the elegancies of art, the brilliance of wealth, or the force of intellect! According to your opportunities you mix in the world, you meet and ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... out, for I remember no excitement or interest about the journey, which ought to have had so much for me. In a passive state of mind I followed Miss Pinshon from steamer to station; from one train of cars to another; and saw the familiar landscape flit before me as the cars whirled us on. At Baytown we had been joined by a gentleman who went with us all the rest of the way; and I began by degrees to comprehend that my governess had changed her vocation, and instead of taking care, as heretofore, was ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... we'll jist let it pass by this time, ef you plase, sur!' Martin remained in his station. When the successor of Mr. Van Buren came in, the door-keeper presented himself soon after to the new President, with the civil inquiry: 'I suppose I'll hev to flit, too, with the other Martin?' He was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the law, even to drumming her out of the town; but forbearance was my best policy, so I only persuaded my colleagues to order the players to decamp, and to give the Tappit-hen notice, that it would be expedient for the future sale of her pies and porter, at untimeous hours, and that she should flit her howff from our town. Indeed, what pleasure would it have been to me to have dealt unmercifully, either towards the one or the other? for surely the gentle way of keeping up a proper respect for magistrates, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... flown? Am I once more sunk to a level with my former self? Once I thought that religion was a substance with me,—not a shadow, to flit, to mock, and to vanish when its succour was most needed; yet now does ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... their foliage with that of the trees to form one huge canopy of leaves, in which birds of bright plumage and beautiful song live out their happy lives. Monkeys also make their home there, and strange insects and butterflies of rare beauty flit among the flowers, or hover in the few stray sunbeams which ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... true, as the lovers of whom M. Anatole France has written (La Messe des Morts). Above the witches' lake come shadows of the women who suffered under Knox and the Bastard of Scotland, poor creatures burned to ashes with none to help or pity. The shades of Dominicans flit by the Black Friars wall—verily the place is haunted, and among Murray's pleasures was this of pacing alone, by night, in that airy press and throng of those who lived and loved and suffered so ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... the other, heartily, as he eyed the boy; and perhaps a dim suspicion that he might find the fugitive valuable as a guide began to flit through his ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... bestow Rest on the fever'd bed, All slumb'rous sounds and low Are mingled here and wed, And bring no drowsihed. Shy dreams flit to and fro With shadowy hair dispread; With wistful eyes that glow And silent robes that sweep. Thou wilt not hear me; no? Wilt thou ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... and fixed a lunch, I go over into the Park. There are only birds and squirrels and a few tramps about then, and it is glorious. Sometimes I am so happy that I do not want to read; later come the squalling children and the hot sun; but I flit about from place to place. I wonder what ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... and are impassable for heavy lorries. So incredible weights and bundles are moved on hand-barrows; and bales of goods and stacks of produce are punted down the dark waterways which give to parts of Tokyo a Venetian picturesqueness. Passengers, too proud to walk, flit past noiselessly in rubber-tyred rickshaws—which are not, as many believe, an ancient and typical Oriental conveyance, but the modern invention of an English missionary called Robinson. The hum of the city is ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... terror and confusion whispers the night, While blue and green flames flit over the deep; But calm reigns again with the morning's light, And soon the bold fisherman comes into sight, As his bark rushes on and the waves ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... And took with her your trifle of money; Bless your heart, they don't mind - they're exceedingly kind - They don't blame you - as long as you're funny! It's a comfort to feel If your partner should flit, Though YOU suffer a deal, THEY don't mind it a bit - They don't blame you - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... house! do you, too, miss the light step of your mistress? No longer shall her little silken figure flit up and down your quiet staircases, no more deck out your silent rooms with flowers, humming the ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... The western end of the island ran out into a long low point covered with briars, rushes and saw-grass. As Alfred directed his gaze along the water line of this point he distinctly saw a dark form flit from one bush to another. He was positive he had not been mistaken. He got up slowly and unconcernedly, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... don't know as I want any o' Mester Maldon's friends here," said the landlady loudly. "Mester Maldon's done a flit from here, Mester Maldon has; and," coming out on to the pavement and pointing upward to a broken pane in the first-floor window, "that's a bit o' his fancy ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... to his fall Remaines of all. O world's inconstancie! That which is firme doth flit and fall away, And that is flitting doth abide ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up, "come like shadows—so depart." The "tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me "blushes" almost in vain "with blood of queens and kings." I know how I should have felt at one time in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... no time or opportunity in getting beyond the domain of General Yozarro and would never again willingly enter it. She had had more than enough of Zalapata as well as Atlamalco, and yearned for the return of Jack's yacht, when they could flit from a country which she had come to detest unutterably. She dearly loved Manuela and could not reconcile herself to the thought of losing her companionship forever; but from this time forward, the American must voyage to the country which had been her home for years, and where ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... I lay awake a while, watching the sparks fly, and the shadows flit, feeling the cold wind on my face, listening to the crackle of the fire and the roar ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... of aesthetics, will do well to examine by what means these various effects are produced. In the second nocturne, F sharp major, the brightness and warmth of the world without have penetrated into the world within. The fioriture flit about as lightly as gossamer threads. The sweetly-sad longing of the first section becomes more disquieting in the doppio movimento, but the beneficial influence of the sun never quite loses its power, and after a little ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the men separated, repairing to their tents. Their songs had charmed me, and made the long hours flit by like birds. Where are you, brave singers, in this year '68? I know not—you are all scattered. Your guns have ceased their thunder, your voices sound no more. But I think you sometimes remember, as you muse, in these ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the Hel-ya Water, Sobbing by its eyot drear, Screaming with the tempest-furies, Over hillock, over mere; On the wings of silent snow-flakes, On the bulwands[10] from the rill, By the haunted Hel-ya Water Flit those heralds of ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... that there is much to see in it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole; which you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue. Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... borne by him, the step of the ex-Ranger is no longer that of a man either despairing or fatigued. On the contrary, it is light and elastic; while his countenance shows bright and joyous as the beams of the ascending sun. His very shadow seems to flit over the frosted foliage of the artemisias as lightly as the figure of a gossamer-robed belle gliding across the waxed floor of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... are not very welcome, though one puts the best face on it, and a dinner of importance is the first thing imperative to be set in progress. A flurried Court, that of Gotha, and much swashing of French plumes through it, all this morning, since Seidlitz had to flit. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... here or inside, whichever they please; but look after them sharp, mind you. A captive free is a regular wild bird: once given a chance to flit, that is enough—you can never get ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... at home, and Theobald was a little snappish at reflecting how many miles he had to post before he could be at his own fireside again. However there was nothing for it, so the pair sat quietly and watched the roadside objects flit by them, and get greyer and grimmer as the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... echo and re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and the breadth of your borders? What is the burden of that song? Why does it wail and sob and catch at my heart? What say the notes which thus painfully caress and embrace my soul, and flit, uttering their lamentations, around me? What is it you seek of me, O Russia? What is the hidden bond which subsists between us? Why do you regard me as you do? Why does everything within you turn upon me eyes full of yearning? Even at this moment, as I stand dumbly, fixedly, perplexedly ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... from a quarry that supplies no other place. But we are not one family. In the old days, those of us who were of the Tenements seldom wandered to the Croft head, and if we did go there we saw men to whom we could not always give a name. To flit from the Tanage brae to Haggart's road was to change one's friends. A kirk- wynd weaver might kill his swine and Tillyloss not know of it until boys ran westward hitting each other with the bladders. Only the voice of the dulsemen could be heard all ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the giant-mother, 'which thou beholdest to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep on, equally unknown and dim, is ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... less difficult with respect to transverse sections. Under ordinary circumstances, external impressions persist so that they can be transfixed by a deliberate act of attention, and objects rarely flit over the external scene so rapidly as to allow us no time for a careful recognition of the impression. Not so in the case of the internal region of mind. The composite states of consciousness just described never remain perfectly uniform for the shortest conceivable duration. They change ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... or the Flitting figure, or the Remoue.] Now as arte and good pollicy in perswasion bids vs to abide & not to stirre from the point of our most aduantage, but the same to enforce and tarry vpon with all possible argument, so doth discretion will vs sometimes to flit from one matter to another, as a thing meete to be forsaken, and another entred vpon, I call him therefore the flitting figure, or figure of remoue, like as the other before was called the figure ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... our friends Unfamiliar traits she lends— Quaint, white witch, who looketh down With a glamour all her own. Hushed are laughter, jest, and speech, Mute and heedless each of each, In the glory wan we sit, Visions vague before us flit; Side by side, yet worlds apart, Heart becometh ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... understand! You do not belong to the fields as I do." He pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I—" He made a gesture of despair,—half comic, half serious,—and his dark ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... relieved; a rude folding-door opened opposite, and showed a low dim sitting-room beyond, from which there rose a few steps to the entrance of my chamber. On these appeared, not, alas! the fancied visitant who was to flit about my bedside, and mix her bright presence with my dreams, but stately and severe, with a pale cheek and ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... manner of cool distinction and her polished, impersonal phrases, another feminine figure dared to flit between him and this lady of manifold merit. No sooner would he indignantly banish her image than she would come dancing back, a gay little figure, with too much color in her checks and too much ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... and it was really a matter of absolute indifference to her whether he loved her or not, so long as he was at hand to take her about. And she didn't intend to encourage him, either. Love meant ties and responsibility—Alice proved that clearly enough. There was plenty of time for love. Let her flit first. Let her remain young as long as she could, careless and care-free. The fact that she was married was just an accident, an item in her adventure. It didn't make her less young to be married, and she didn't see why it should. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... had been derived, like that of most Americans, from books and chance observation of the handful of Kwangtung men who are earning their living among us by washing our clothes. Silent, inscrutable, they flit through the American scene, alien to the last. What lies behind the riddle of their impassive faces? Perhaps I could find an answer. Then, too, it was clear, even to the most unintelligent, that a change was coming over the East, though few realized how speedily. I longed to see the old China before ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... own! Why is it that at moments there creeps over us an awe, a terror, overpowering, but undefined? Why is it that we shudder without a cause, and feel the warm life-blood stand still in its courses? Are the dead too near? Do unearthly wings touch us as they flit around? Has our soul any intercourse which the body shares not, though it feels, with the supernatural world—mysterious revealings—unimaginable communion—a language of dread and power, shaking to its centre the fleshly barrier that divides ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mentioned by W. T. M. is "Flits by the sea-blue bird of March," instead of "blue sea-bird." This reading appears to be a better one. I would suggest that the bird meant by Tennyson was the Tom-tit, who, from his restlessness, may be said to flit among ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... nay, let me grow a few days older yet. Nevertheless there is this new thing, that this morning I have brought thee a gift which I deem I may to flit to thee, and I shall give it to thee with a good will if thou wilt promise that thou wilt ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were hovering in the air and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only when the brakeman with measured tone shouts the name of the station; he looks up from his paper or rouses from his doze, looks out at the cheerless prospect, and then settles himself for another thirty miles. Time passes as unobserved as the meadows or bushy pastures that flit by the jarring window at his ear. But with Greenleaf, the reader will believe, the case was far different. He had never noticed before how slowly the locomotives really moved. At each station where wood and water were to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... system, or to appear punctually at the systematic roll-call therein instituted. They are the true free-wanderers of the Infinite, passing from shore to shore of immensity, and presenting themselves, for short and uncertain intervals, to star after star. When they flit through our skies, they shew themselves in all possible positions, and move along all possible directions. They sometimes, however, yield too much to temptation, and have to suffer the penalty of a short imprisonment in consequence. Lexell's Comet, for instance, rushed in its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... its own vitality, this hall in which no common voice could make itself heard produced nevertheless an effect of magical stillness, silence, and solitude. We were alone in it, save that now and then in the far-distant spaces a figure might flit and disappear between the huge glinting columns of metal. It was a hall enchanted and inexplicable. I understood nothing of it. But I understood that half the electricity of New York was being generated by its engines of a hundred and fifty ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... shines out Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock, And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill, And the dim lengthening shadows flit like ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... sake of the river, a rustic cot is taken for a few weeks by a party of boating-people. Then the quaint, old-fashioned gardens blossom with a sudden luxuriance of striped tents and flaming umbrellas, while bright women in many-hued boating-costumes flit among cabbages and onions like curious tropical birds and butterflies. As a rule, however, the Dean is abandoned to its usual rustic population and to artists, numbers of the latter remaining all winter in the haunts whence the majority of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... second a spasm shot over her face; then a ray of light seemed to flit across it, and then it ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... it just so much worse when she and Aunty does the summer flit. Course, I saw it comin' 'way back early in June, and then the first thing I know they're gone. I gets a bulletin now and then,—Lenox, the Pier, Newport, and so on,—sometimes from Vee, sometimes by readin' the society notes. Must be great to have the papers ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... her. She looked around her at the dark night. Dim forms flitted by. She seemed to recognize some of them, as they floated through the regions of death towards the dark curtain, where they vanished. Would her husband and her daughters flit past? No; their sighs and lamentations still sounded from above; and she had nearly forgotten them, for the sake of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the Advocate had so highly complimented him, was not strong enough to carry him much beyond a vigorous phraseology. He had not awoke from the delusive dream of the Spanish marriage which had dexterously been made to flit before him, and he was not inclined, for the sake of the Republic which he hated the more because obliged to be one of its sponsors, to risk the animosity of a great power which entertained the most profound contempt for him. He was destined to find himself involved more closely ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... flashing waves, he heard their ceaseless roar; Or carolled in his light canoe content, As, bound from creek to creek, it grazed the shore; Gods of the storm the dreary space might sweep, And shapes of death, and gliding spectres gaunt, Might flit, he thought, o'er the remoter deep; And whilst strange voices cried, Avaunt, avaunt! Uncertain lights, seen through the midnight gloom, Might lure him sadly on ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... precept, "Upward, not Northward", haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx. It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of the Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; when the Land of Three Dimensions seems almost as visionary as the Land of One or None; nay, when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom, these very ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... trumpet and drum, but in silence, they came— Their paths were illumed by their torches' mild flame, Whose soft lambent streams by love's glory were lit; And where fairy knights and bright elves used to flit Across the wan world when the lights quivered dim, These watched at the grave, and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... bright! can it be right, This window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 20 Laughingly through the lattice drop; The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully, so fearfully, 25 Above the closed and fringed lid 'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, That, o'er the floor and down the wall, Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall. Oh lady dear, hast thou ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... enemy's big guns; sometimes diving to avoid a shell; sometimes staggering as though wounded, but always righting himself. There would be the Mad Major each day, over the rearguard troops, seeming to shelter them. He would harry the German line; he would drop a bomb, flit back, and with a brave "We've got them, boys," cheer the sinking spirits of ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... at a distance, who thus obtain the first intimation of his decease. Having conveyed the sad intelligence to them, the long soul departs by way of Maligep, on the west coast of New Britain, to a village on the north coast, the inhabitants of which recognise the Tami ghosts as they flit past.[470] ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... were taking holiday. But old Oliver saw and heard nothing of the crowd. He walked on by Tony's side; with feeble and tottering steps, deaf and blind, but whispering all the while, with trembling lips, to One whom no one else could see or hear. Once or twice Tony saw a solemn smile flit across his face, and he nodded his head and raised his hand, as one who gives his assent to what is said to him. So they passed on through the noisy streets till they reached quieter ones, were there were neither shops nor many passers-by, and there they found the home where they were ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... are clad in green, An' scatter'd cowslips sweetly spring; By Girvan's fairy-haunted stream, The birdies flit on wanton wing; By Cassillis' banks, when e'ening fa's, There let my Mary meet wi' me, There catch her ilka glance o' love, The bonnie ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and brightened every now and then as a form that I loved glided amongst them, but even that form dragged after it a chain of painful, fettering considerations, and the gleams of light that it threw round it were only like those weak, pallid flashes of sun that flit through the clouds of thunder and ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... fish with a net. When the sun sets he takes a towel and soap and saunters to the bathing-shed, where he undresses at his leisure, slowly rubs his bare chest with his hands, and goes into the water. And in the water, near the opaque soapy circles, little fish flit to and fro and green water-weeds nod their heads. After bathing there is tea with cream and milk rolls.... In the evening a walk or vint with ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... woods, the enemy meantime advancing with a yell to the timber we had abandoned. Then it was learned that Kilpatrick had given no such order, but the "staff officer" had disappeared and, when we came to think about it, nobody could describe him very closely. He had seemed to flit along the line, giving the order but stopping nowhere, and leaving no very clear idea as to how he looked. There is but little doubt that he was an audacious confederate, probably one of Stuart's scouts clothed in federal uniform, who made ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... of the senses. The eye, for example, like the mind, must not only see the object, but it must look upon it—examine it—before the child can either become acquainted with it at the time, or remember it afterwards. But if unknown objects are made rapidly to flit past the eye of the child, so that this cannot be done before there is time to fix the attention upon any of them, the labour of the exhibitor is not only lost, but the sight of the child is impaired;—the eye itself is injured, and is less able, for some time afterwards, to look steadily ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... typical of the country and its inhabitants. Some "seem to take us into the dense forest among mocking echoes from, the life outside; others show us the trolls tobogganing down the highest peaks of Norway; in some we feel human souls hovering over reefs; in others, memories of the old sun-lit land flit before us; but in none do we meet with sentimentalism, despondency, or disconsolateness." But with their weird and minor strains, and their odd jumps from low tones to high, on first acquaintance they strike the hearer as strange ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... phantoms there that were as men 15 And men that were as phantoms flit and roam; Marked shapes that were not living to my ken, Caught breathings acrid as with Dead Sea foam: The City rests for man so weird and awful, That his intrusion there might seem unlawful, 20 And phantoms there may have their ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... not walk, though the lads in both watches insisted they saw and heard things that were not right or natural. The night following in the midwatch—our midwatch—half the watch swore they saw him flit across the main deck and ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... spiritually unfit for translating the Bible. They say that all the time that Luther spent at the Wartburg he was haunted by the devil. He would hear strange noises and see weird shadows flit before him. He felt that he had come under the sway of the powers of darkness. This, we are assured, was because he had risen in rebellion against the divine power of the papacy. The Holy Father whom he had attacked was being avenged upon Luther by an accusing conscience. Luther was ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... through the after-math of fat wheat-fields, where float like myriad little nets of silver gauze the webs of the crafty weavers, and where a whole world of winged small folk flit from tree-top to tree-top of the low weeds. They are all mine—these Kentucky wheat-fields. After the owner has taken from them his last sheaf I come in and gather my harvest also—one that he did not see, and ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... the robin sings, And swarms of bright and happy things Flit all about with sunlit wings, But I am cheerless, Rosaline! The violets in the hillock toss, The gravestone is o'ergrown with moss; For nature feels not any loss, But I am ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... failure to do so as cause of civil war between States; and as if the Constitution were silent and dead and the power of the Union utterly inadequate to keep the peace between them, unconstitutional commissioners flit from State to State, or assemble at the national capital to counsel peace or instigate war. Sir, these are the causes which lie at the bottom of the present dangers. These causes which have rendered them possible and made them serious, must be removed ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... would burst in on silence, each his heart beating, and play there. And perhaps it was Hopeful who would steal away from us, and the others play on; or perhaps you into the sunlight that maddened the sheltered bird to flit and sing in the orchard where the little child we loved played—not yet sad, but how much beloved; not yet weary of passing shadows, and simple creatures, and boy's rough gifts and cold hands. But I—with me it was ever evening, when the blackbird bursts ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... many different sources. Then, like an impetuous torrent, he seemed to unite these streams into a foaming waterfall; over the tossing waves the rainbow presently stretches its peaceful arch, while on the banks butterflies flit to and fro, and the nightingale warbles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And tune his merry note Unto the sweek bird's throat, Come hither.' You see, Jakey, mine, we were eddicated when we was young." Benjamin had jumped into his clothes as he talked. "A sup and a snack, and we flit by ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening, or are they, as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the sun as it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian glory? Are they but the little evanishing clouds that flit between the people and the great objects for which the Constitution was established? I hopefully look toward the reaction which will establish the fact that our sun is still in the ascendant—that that cloud which ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... of poesy!" rejoined Sah-luma complacently.. "It makes the hours flit like moments, and long days seemed but short hours! ... Nevertheless 'tis time we were within doors and at supper,—for if we start not soon for the Temple, 'twill be difficult to gain an entrance, and I, at any rate, must be early in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and Mr. Rogers are but passing shadows in the play, and even nice Laura is only to flit across its few pages for a moment on her way to happier things. We scarcely notice them in the presence of Mrs. Don, the gracious, the beautiful, the sympathetic, whose magnetic force and charm ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... professional relations, but who seem now as absolutely to belong to a bygone order of things, as if they had wrangled before the Dikasts of Athens, or pleaded before the Praetor at Rome. Mr. Phillips seems to feel this, and, as the gay days of his sanguine youth flit by his memory, the retrospect brings, as it will ever bring, melancholy, and even sadness, with it. Yielding himself up to the dominion of feeling, in place of keeping his reason predominant, he mourns over the past, as if, in comparison with the present, it were greatly more worthy. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... intercourse makes us sensible of all its traits and habits. September—the morrow of August and eve of October, most affecting of months—is already sprinkling the fine days with subtle warnings. Already one knows the meaning of the dead leaves that flit about the flat stones ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... that has been left him of the common relations of life,—to the hour of business and the hour of repose, to the hall of audience and the garden-walk, and giving equally its deceptive coloring to the thoughts that stir him when borne on the shoulders of men through a prostrate crowd, and those that flit dimly through his brain as he lays a weary head upon a solitary pillow. And hence, too, he becomes for himself, as well as for others, an object of constant contemplation,—valuing things as they contribute to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... star we were headed for—too fast to stop. I'm giving it a wide berth and picking out another one. There's a big planet a few million miles off in line with the main door, and another one almost dead ahead—that is, straight down. We sure are traveling. Look at that sun flit by!" ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby |
