"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Island of Calypso. After some mention of the fate of the other Greeks, Jupiter decrees that Ulysses shall return to Ithaca, where many suitors are besieging his wife Penelope. In obedience with this decree, Pallas (Minerva) dons golden sandals—which permit her to flit with equal ease over land and sea—and visits Ithaca, where Ulysses' son, Telemachus, mournfully views the squandering of his father's wealth. Here she is hospitably received, and, after some conversation, urges Telemachus to visit the courts of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... this closer 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
... all patient sit The stars above the night. In shade and gleam the waters flit: The heavens are ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... the pet and darling of the entire community. In the long summer afternoons when the nuns carried their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river, Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her snatches of song and merry laughter made sylvan echoes ring and brought smiles to the faces of the simple women who watched her with loving ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... said Mrs. Mallowe. 'He clears you completely and ahem I should think by this, that he has cleared completely too. My experience of men is that when they begin to quote poetry they are going to flit. Like swans singing ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... rooks goes by; and from time to time the cooing of wild doves falls upon the ear, not sweet and rich and near at hand as in England, but a sort of voice of the woods, thin and far away, as fits these solemn places. Or you hear suddenly the hollow, eager, violent barking of dogs; scared deer flit past you through the fringes of the wood; then a man or two running, in green blouse, with gun and game-bag on a bandoleer; and then, out of the thick of the trees, comes the jar of rifle-shots. Or perhaps the hounds are out, and ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest; The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... the lily blooms," he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, "to the cliffs round which the eagles flit,—what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... propelling themselves a fraction of an inch. They do not move—they have to be carried. More than this, like all other disease-germs, while incredibly tiny and infinitesimal, they have a definite weight of their own, and are subject to the law of gravity. They do not flit about hither and thither in the atmosphere, thistledown fashion, but rapidly fall to the floor of whatever room or receptacle they may be thrown in. And the problem of their transference is not that of direct carrying from one victim to the next, but the intermediate ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in all of the man's misdoings, he himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and done with! Swift from shine to shade The roaring generations flit and fade. To this one, fading, flitting, like the rest, We come to proffer—be it worst or best— A sketch, a shadow, of one brave old time; A hint of what it might have held sublime; A dream, an idyll, call it what you will, Of man still Man, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a covert glance from the corner of her sparkling eyes. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she decided calmly. "I always have. When fresh drummers begin to talk private dining-room and cold bottles, I spread my little wings and flit." ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... appearance and manifested a feeling of nostalgia. Mother Carey's chickens, little birds resembling swallows, began to flit around us, skimming closely along the waves. There is a fiction among the sailors that nobody ever saw one of these birds alight or found its nest. Whoever harms one is certain to bring misfortune upon himself and possibly ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the second and the third time? why had Chance brought him to her across ten thousand miles of sea? why had it brought him here? Why at the beginning could he not have forgotten her as one forgets those who flit into one's life and out again? He did not believe ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke all up. I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did not let Us swallow when it gaped; As from a snare a bird doth flit So is our soul escaped. The snare's in two, and we are through: The name of God it standeth true, The God of ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... emerged from the gloom. Another followed it, but they made no sound that could be heard through the rustle of the leaves, and George felt his heart beat and his nerves tingle as he watched them flit, half seen, through the grass. Then one of the shadowy objects stooped, lifting something, and they went back as noiselessly as they had come. In a few more moments they had vanished, and the branches about them clashed in a rush of wind. It died away, and there was no sound or sign of ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... the luxury of the Renaissance, traveling was at that time very disagreeable; everywhere in Europe it was as difficult then as it is now in the Orient. Great lords and ladies, who to-day flit across the country in comfortable railway carriages, traveled in the sixteenth century, even in the most civilized states of Europe, mounted on horses or mules, or slowly in sedan-chairs, exposed to all the inclemencies of wind and weather, and unpaved roads. The cavalcade was thirteen days on ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... unfortunately, boast of being merely a spectator, seated in the royal box, applauding now and again. There is a wrench at my heart, a pang in every nerve. When I have put out the light and am in my bed, little touches, little glances, little words flit about and fill the darkness. When I get up in the morning, I thrill with lively anticipations, my blood seems to course through me to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... the night, when he lay sleepless, sick for his mother's presence, her voice, her kisses, her soothing touch, the boy would rise to sit at the window—there to watch shadowy figures flit through the street-lamp's circle of light. Once he fancied that his mother came thus out of the night, that for a moment she paused with upturned glance, then disappeared in woe and haste: returning, halted again; ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... unnatural sanity of intellect: it is like the calm in the whirlwind's centre, where the waves run higher though the air is deadly still, and the surly mariner wishes the mad wind back again.—To and fro you flit, goaded on and strengthened by untiring anguish. You are but the body of a man; your thought and emotion are abroad, haunting the unconscious, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... "invite" the Stable. The Stable having been duly invited, its eight occupants come in, and each finds a place on a palliasse. It is a warm, still night. The great doors of the Coach-house stand wide open. The stars are out thick by this time. Little black bats flit and swoop about in the darkness. If you keep very still you can just hear the gentle "hshshsh, hshshsh" of the sea. The candle flickers as the night gives a little sigh. A few Cubs are rolling about on their straw beds. "Shut up, all!" commands an imperious ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... than comfortably settled myself, and let thoughts of a cigar and a nap flit through my mind, when a row up the street showed that the jail-breaking had been discovered. Then followed shouts and confusion for a few moments, while a search was being organized. I heard some horsemen ride over the tracks, and also down the street, followed by ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... an impression, rather than the traces, of an empty cage. About two minutes of cautious questioning of neighbors satisfied her where the missionaries were; nothing short of death seemed able to deprive her of ability to flit like a black bat through the shadows, and the distance to Howrah's palace was accomplished, by her usual bat's entry route, in less time than a pony would have taken by the devious street. Before Alwa had thundered on Jaimihr's gate Joanna had mingled in the crowd outside the palace ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of this silent mansion, Pierre continued seeking somebody, a porter, a servant; and, fancying that he saw a shadow flit by, he decided to pass through another arch which led to a little garden fringing the Tiber. On this side the facade of the building was quite plain, displaying nothing beyond its three rows of symmetrically disposed windows. However, the abandonment ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... rather pitied me. He agreed to lend me his horse, and I borrowed a van from Mr Joseph Wright, cabinet maker, determined to give my would-be captors the "leg bail." Early next morning I was, so to speak, doing a moonlight "flit"—the van, containing my furniture, in charge of two men, was on the road to Bradford. Mrs Wright I left with friends at Keighley, and myself, accomplished the journey by rail. I spent some time at the top of Manchester road, Bradford, looking for a suitable house, and ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... thick-speckled—mere barnacles, perhaps, on the keel of some greater ship of space. He remembered how at home there had been a certain burning twinkle that peeped through the screen of the dogwood tree. As he moved on his porch, it seemed to flit to and fro, appearing and vanishing. He was often uncertain whether it was a firefly a few yards away, or a star the other side of Time. Possibly Truth was ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... to the direction in which the strangers had gone, thus covering the spare man to whom she was talking from their backward glances. Bates, who was looking up at her face with his heart-hunger in his eyes, saw a look of contempt for the passing remark flit across her face, and because of the fond craving of his own heart, his sympathy, strangely enough, went out to the young man who had spoken, rather than to her sentiment of contempt. The angel of human loves alone ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... there's dwarfish Hildebrand; 100 He had a fever late, and in the fit He cursed thee and thine, both house and land: Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit More tame for his gray hairs—Alas me! flit! Flit like a ghost away."—"Ah, Gossip dear, We're safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit, And tell me how"—"Good Saints! not here, not here; Follow me, child, or else these ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... and pounce eagerly on chairs and telephones; the usual Fussy Family waste precious minutes in trying to get seats together, and get separated in the end. Undecided persons flit from one side to another. Gradually they all settle down, and stop their ears with the telephone-tubes, the prevailing expression being one of anxiety, combined with conscious and apologetic imbecility. Nervous people catch the eye of complete ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... herself in the objects of her choosing; they revealed her life before he could grasp her personality and ideas. About an hour later the Duchess came noiselessly out of her chamber. Montriveau turned, saw her flit like a shadow across the room, and trembled. She came up to him, not with a bourgeoise's enquiry, "How do I look?" She was sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, "I am ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... an impression of the country and the people. My idea of the Chinese 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 ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... necessaries, many were no longer to be had. Mothers had to ransack old rag-bags to find material with which to clothe their children. Ladies accustomed to a life of abundance and fashion had not only to work their old gowns over and to wear their bonnets of long ago, but also to flit with their children from one plantation to another in order to find something palatable to eat in the houses of more fortunate friends who had in time provided for themselves. And when at last the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... my window, All in the Midsummer weather, Three little girls with fluttering curls Flit to and fro together:— There's Bell with her bonnet of satin sheen, And Maud with her mantle of silver-green, And Kate with ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... of most other countries. He visits her marts, her harbours, and her ports—men of all nations are met together there—fleets of rich argosies are ever arriving and departing—and myriads of steamers flit to and fro, happily now engaged in promoting the arts of peace, but ready at a moment's notice to become the defenders of his country's shores, and, as recent events have shown the world, able also to carry war and devastation along the coasts of her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... mingled a sprinkling of elder men, and these latter were always the saddest and most silent of this little whispering army of the down-at-heel. Roughly speaking, we were divided into two groups: the newcomers, cheery, confident. These would flit from newspaper to newspaper with buzz of pleasant anticipation, select their advertisement as one choosing some dainty out of a rich and varied menu card, and replying to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... and sodden street, To and fro, Flit the fever-stricken feet Of the freshers as they meet, Come and go, Ever buying, buying, buying Where the shopmen stand supplying, Vying, vying All they know, While the Autumn lies a-dying Sad and low As the price of summer suitings ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... because we had thought that nothing could be as beautiful as our ways of yesterday. The ways of to-day were the most beautiful of all. We were going to Bretton Woods, and on the way we learned a great secret—this: that when the Fairies made their flit—the well-known Dymchurch Flit—they decided to emigrate to the White Mountains. Somebody had told them—probably it was the Moon—that the scenery there was marvellously suited to their tastes, and would give them a chance to ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... 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 ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... the numerous birds that flit through the trees as visitors, or else stay with us and nest in secluded places, how comparatively few do we really depend upon for the aerial colour and the song that opens a glimpse of Eden to our eager eyes and ears each year, for our eternal solace and encouragement? ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... 'doorkeepers in the house of the Lord.' He knew what he was saying when he preferred his humble office to all honours among the godless. He was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the Temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. No doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. No doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... indolence almost cloistral—which is delightful! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spoke of the past:—the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their enshrining ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... yellowhammer, but I believe not belonging to the same genus, hop about the grass, enlivening the place with a few musical notes. The Carashue (Mimus) also then resumes its mellow, blackbird-like song; and two or three species of hummingbird, none of which, however, are peculiar to the district, flit about from tree to tree. On the other hand, the little blue and yellow-striped lizards, which abound amongst the herbage during the scorching heats of midday, retreat towards this hour to their hiding-places, together with the day-flying insects and the numerous ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... com-unit. Because of the interference in the Burn he had left it behind—but with one he might be able now to locate some settlement. All that remained was to find the seashore and, with it as a guide, flit south towards the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... ither mode o' payin' the debt!" said John. "Stick spaud in yird here, ye sall not! You or I maun flit first!" ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... confess the sweeping river. And, need I say, that hope referred alone To her who in his heart had fixed her throne, And reigned within it still, the sovereign queen. Yet darkest visions oft would flit between His fondest fancies, as the thought returned That she for whom his soul still restless burned, Would be another's now, while haply he, Lost to her heart, would to her memory be As the remembrance of a pleasing dream, Vague and forgotten half, but which we deem Worthy ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... Yosemite Falls is sixteen hundred feet—sixteen hundred feet of a compact mass of snowy rockets shooting downward and bursting into spray around which rainbows flit and hover. The next leap is four hundred feet, and the last six hundred. We tried to get near the foot and inspect the hidden recess in which this airy spirit again took on a more tangible form of still, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... rearranging, and so comes to understand how it is that women spend forenoons of delight in box rooms or store closets, and are happiest when everything is turned upside down. It is a slow business, rearrangement, for one cannot flit a book bound after the taste of Grolier, with graceful interlacement and wealth of small ornaments, without going to the window and lingering for a moment over the glorious art, and one cannot handle a Compleat Angler ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... inscribed in the convulsions of death, and will be registered by the destroying angel! May a form like this draw thy curtain when thou sleepest, and grasp thee with its clay-cold hand! May a form like this flit before thy soul when thou diest, and drive away thy expiring prayer for mercy! May a form like this stand by thy grave at the resurrection, and before the throne of God when he pronounces thy doom! (He faints, the servants receive him in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of those forms which flit by us, when we Are young, and fix our eyes on every face: And, oh! the Loveliness at times we see In momentary gliding, the soft grace, The Youth, the Bloom, the Beauty which agree, In many a nameless being we retrace Whose course and home we knew not nor shall ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... fable of his fairy princeliness in the curiosity of those humbler admirers who could not hope to be his hosts or his fellow-guests at dinner or luncheon. Pretty presences in the tie- backs of the period were seen to flit before the home of virtuous poverty, hungering for any chance sight of him which his outgoings or incomings might give. The chances were better with the outgoings than with the incomings, for these were apt to be so hurried, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... groaned. Then I got up and went out. I had forgotten "Little Frank" and hoped that she had. If she was to flit about Europe seeing "Little Frank" on every corner I foresaw trouble. "Little Frank" was likely to be the bane ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dome of the night Had dropped all its stars in the valley, it glittered so over with light: There were voices and clashings of weapons, and drum beat and bugle and tramp, Quick flittings athwart the broad watchfires that spotted the grays of the camp: Dark columns would glimmer and vanish, a rider flit by like a ghost; There was movement all over the valley, the movement and din ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Now and then a dignitary in gaiters would pass him, "Portly capon," or a drift of white-robed choir boys cross a distant arcade and vanish in a doorway, or the pink and cream of some girlish dress flit like a butterfly across the cool still spaces of the place. Particularly he responded to the ruined arches of the Benedictine's Infirmary and the view of Bell Harry tower from the school buildings. He was stirred to read the Canterbury Tales, but he could not get on with Chaucer's old-fashioned ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... children creep timidly through the streets; the carriages go cautious and hearse-like along; daylight is dim and obscure; the town is not filled, nor the brisk mirth of Christmas commenced; the unsocial shadows flit amidst the mist, like men on the eve of a fatal conspiracy. Each other month in London has its charms for the experienced. Even from August to October, when The Season lies dormant, and Fashion forbids her sons to be seen within hearing of Bow, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it fly; Presager of death! I hailed its wing, She scorned the omen but felt the sting Of bitter grief, when another day Bore her angel Mother from earth away. I warned her, when on the coming blast I saw the phantom-like shades flit past; She smiled on my words as idle play, But wept when her sire, in the midnight fray, Felled to the dust by the Tory's blade, Died in the home where his bones are laid; When the cold drops stood on the forehead fair, And the curdling blood on the thin, gray hair. But the dead in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... conversation in Vienna or St. Petersburg than in Paris. Equals do not need to employ delicacy or shrewdness in speech; they blurt out things as they are. Consequently the dandies of Paris did not discover the great seigneur in the rather heedless young fellow who, in their talks, would flit from one subject to another, all the more intent upon amusement because he had just escaped from a great peril, and, finding himself in a city where his family was unknown, felt at liberty to lead a loose life without the risk ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... and all such as can pay, For the Summer-green country are up and away; But what of the poor pale-faced waifs of the slums? Oh, the butterfly flits, and the honey-bee hums O'er the holt and the heather, the hill and the plain, But they flit and they hum for Town's children in vain; Unless—ah! unless—there is hope in that word!— Mrs. JEUNE'S kindly plea by the Public is heard. Heard? Everyone feels 'tis a duty to listen. The eyes of the children will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... radiations, with every combination of shade which these colours could produce. Another night we saw a bright crescent, and from it feathery-edged rays, of a pale orange colour, branched off in every direction, while across it a succession of the prismatic colours appeared rapidly to flit. Indeed, it is difficult to describe the various forms which ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Shaped and polished by ice and rain and sun; Some flattened, grooved, and chiseled By the inscrutable sculpture of the weather; Some with clefts and rough edges harsh to the touch. Gracious Time has glorified the wall And covered the historian stones with a mantle of green. Sunbeams flit and waver in the rifts, Vanish and reappear, linger and sleep, Conquer with radiance the obdurate angles, Filter between the naked rents ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... of time, flow of time, flux of time, stream 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 the fullness of time; in time. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... would. The quiet and cool ones would glance over the top of my head, past my side, over my shoulder, but never meet my eye. The gentle-modest would turn their faces south if I were coming east, flit down a passage if I were about to halve the pavement with them. There was the spruce young bookseller would play the same tricks; the butcher's daughters; the upholsterer's young men. Hand in glove when doing business out of sight with you; but caring nothing for a' old woman when playing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the wild bee roams, Then buried within the cowslip's cup, He murmurs his low and music tones, Till she folds the wanton intruder up; The spring bird, wakening, soars on high, Gushing aloft its melting lay; Whilst painted clouds flit o'er the sky, All ushering in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... our boat, we glide beneath the Abbey Manor, with its wooded slopes, and presently we reach Chadbury Lock and Mill. On a fair and warm day we may rest here in perfect content, listening to the rush of the weir, watching the swallows flit and skim over the calm water and break the glassy surface into circling ripples; or gazing with silent pleasure down the stream as it continues its peaceful ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... doan' like him?' says Liza. 'He come a sto'min' round hyah like he gwine to pull de whole place up by de roots an' transport hit ovah Lexington way. Fust he's boun' fo' to take dat hoss what's done win all dem good dollahs. Den his min' flit f'om dat to Miss Sally, an' he's aimin' to cyar her off like she was a 'lasses bar'l or a yahd ob calico. Who is dem Dillons, anyway? De Goodloes owned big lan' right hyar in Franklin County when de Dillons ain' nothin' but Yankee trash back in Maine or some other ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... pass rapidly thus. The nights bring merriment, not sleep. The general goes with his staff to the hospitable mansion, and soon the great drawing-room is full of music and laughter. The song, the dance, the rattling banjo follow. The long hours flit by like a flock of summer birds, and Sweeney, our old friend Sweeney, is the king of ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... blooms Like chrysalids impatient for the air, The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run Along the furrows, ants make their ado; Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain—and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Or lastly, the natural subordination of pleasure to work may be set aside, defeated, and rendered impossible by the whole tenour of an individual's life, if he be one of those giddy butterflies who flit from pleasure to pleasure and do no work at all. Till late in the morning he sleeps, then breakfasts, then he shoots, lunches, rides, bathes, dines, listens to music, smokes, and reads fiction till late at night, then sleeps again; and this, or the like of this is his day, some three ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... meanings; veils raised by words, as petticoats are lifted by the wind; tricks of language, cleverly disguised audacities; sentences which reveal nude images in covered phrases, which cause the vision of all that may not be said to flit rapidly before the eyes of the mind, and allow well-bred people the enjoyment of a kind of subtle and mysterious love, a species of impure mental contact, due to the simultaneous evocations of secret, shameful ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Amleth that to his trick he owed his salvation, observed that latterly he had been singly devoted to Amleth. The young man's reply was apt. Not to seem forgetful of his informant's service, he said that he had seen a certain thing bearing a straw flit by suddenly, wearing a stalk of chaff fixed in its hinder parts. The cleverness of this speech, which made the rest split with laughter, rejoiced the heart ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... all but equal moment, the Natural World becomes slowly Spiritual. Nature is not a mere image or emblem of the Spiritual. It is a working model of the Spiritual. In the Spiritual World the same wheels revolve—but without the iron. The same figures flit across the stage, the same processes of growth go on, the same functions are discharged, the same biological laws prevail—only with a different quality of {bios}. Plato's prisoner, if not out of the Cave, has at least his face to ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... this Cormac went to Thorveig and said he would have her no longer live there at the firth. "Thou shalt flit and go thy way at such a time," said he, "and I will give ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... day in June. Out of the town the air is soft and pure. Bird and bee flit from tree to tree, from blue-bell to rose, till at sun-set they hie away to nest ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... question of wages—" began the young man, who was watching the various expressions flit over Darry's face with an ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... deeper purpose in this than might have been supposed. There were few things he did not think over as he sat looking into the fire. What if this young man should unwittingly steal away his darling's heart and then flit away to some other flower, and leave this, his own treasure, with all the soul gone out of her life. He believed Mr. Monteith to be an honourable man, but then he would hedge this blossom of his about and guard it carefully. There should ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... wildly as she struggled against such thoughts, there would come to Olive's fancy dreams of what her life might have been. The holiness of lovers' love, of wedded love, of mother-love, would at times flit before her imagination; and her heart, still warm, still young, trembled to picture the lonely old age, the hearth blank and silent, the utter isolation from all those natural ties whose place not even the dearest bonds of adopted affection can. ever entirely fill. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... town he took his meals at his club, and to that address all letters and papers for him were sent. But of late even the purlieus of his club had become dangerous ground. Round the palatial portal duns seemed to hover and flit mysteriously, so that the task of reaching the secure haven of the smoking-room was one of danger and difficulty; while the return voyage to the shabby little bed-room in the shabby little street could be accomplished in safety only by frequent tacking and much skilful pilotage, to avoid running ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... cruelly than ever. With a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery.... His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... head. "Look at these clouds which flit across the heavens; at these swallows which cut the air. D'Artagnan moves more quickly than the clouds or the birds; D'Artagnan is ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Now they chase each other for very joyfulness, uttering their sharp twittering notes; then they hover with expanded wings like miniature Kestrels, or dart downwards with the velocity of the sparrowhawk; anon they flit rapidly over the neighboring pool, occasionally dipping themselves in its calm and placid waters, and leaving a long train of rings marking their varied course. How easily they turn, or glide over the surrounding hedges, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... quaint and amusing! Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day, 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
... motion, with wreaths uplifted until they reach the stage, where sit the guests of honor. There they bow low, then lay the garlands at their feet, and retire, forming ingeniously pretty groups and figures, while bees and butterflies flit in and out. See the bees pursuing the little pink rosebuds until at last they join hands and dance gaily away, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... off 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 his yellow features. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... people on top of the hill were beginning to make their preparations to flit to the seashore or mountains. Lydia Sessions left for two weeks, promising to return in June, and the Uplift work drooped, neglected. There seems to be an understanding that people do not need uplifting so much during hot weather. Gray Stoddard was faithful ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... market to Louise, while Claire, whom the smell of the skate and the herrings affected in the lungs, installed herself among the fresh water fish. And from that time the old mother, although she pretended to have retired from business altogether, would flit from one stall to the other, still interfering in the selling of the fish, and causing her daughters continual annoyance by the foul insolence with which she would ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... suddenly, his lassitude left him, his senses became preternaturally acute, and a sense of well-being and complete satisfaction pervaded his whole being. The mist into which he was gazing became faintly luminous, and strange shapes began to flit across it; shapes the like of which he had never seen in his life before. Then something approached him and rested its head upon his knee. He looked down and saw that the "something" was a huge jaguar or South American tiger; and it ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... easy chair Softly humming some old-time air; And as she sings, her needles keep pace With the smiles that flit o'er her wrinkled face; While the fire-light flickers, and fades away, And comes again like the ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... made for Piccadilly. He sprang into the first cab that came along, and he reached Waterloo just in time to catch a Shepperton train. He longed to be at his destination, and alternate hopes and fears beset him, as he watched the landscape flit by. He drew a deep breath when he found himself on the platform of the rustic little station. It was a beautiful spring-like day, warm and sunny, with birds making merry song and the air sweet and fragrant. ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white—then melt forever; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm.— Nae man can tether time or tide; The hour approaches Tam maun ride; That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane, That dreary hour he mounts his beast in, And sic a night he ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... 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. ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the even-song at St. Joseph's, Stepton saw flit across the face of the curate, whom he was meeting, a flicker of something like fear. The two men passed each other, and immediately, like one irresistibly compelled, the professor looked back. As he did so, Chichester also turned round to ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... vanished dead, all clothed in life, and girded round with a panoply of power, and light, and strength; with vivid memory of the secret wrongs deemed buried in their graves. Our cities are thronged with an unseen people who flit about us, their piercing eyes invisible to us, are scanning all our ways. The universe is teeming with them,—"THERE ARE NO DEAD,"—the air, the earth, and the sky above, are filled with a viewless host of spirit—witnesses whose ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... all? Was thy existence then too fanciful For our life's common light, who are so dull? Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire Warms feet and hands—nor does to more aspire; By whose compact utilitarian heap The present may sit down and go to sleep, Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Troop, straight across the parade in search of him. The major so allowed his sentry on No. 5 to be relieved at night. Mullins thanked the saints with pious fervor that no more ladies would be like to flit across his vision, that night at least, when, dimly through the dusk, against the spangled northern sky, he sighted another figure crouching across the upper end of his post and making straight for the lighted ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... 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
... enough, about a mile down the mountain, a rider on a white horse was seen to flit rapidly across a heathy open and vanish among the trees on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... really, to discharge a duty in the face of his own scepticism that he had spoken thus, and he did not expect to see another shade of sadness flit across Alba's ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dreaming, unconscious of time, forgetful of the companions of her days, intoxicated by the moonlight until her blood raced madly through her veins and she was filled with an intense desire to go out and dance in the garden and flit in and out among the trees like a ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... fall asleep And the pension agents awake to weep, And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail As the souls flit by on the evening gale. O Father of Battles, pray give us release From the horrors of peace, the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... lawyer (a Stewart, nae doubt—they all hing together like bats in a steeple) and had the proceedings stayed. And then Colin Campbell cam' in again, and had the upper-hand before the Barons of Exchequer. And now they tell me the first of the tenants are to flit to-morrow. It's to begin at Duror under James's very windows, which doesnae seem wise by ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but did not speak with them, being tired, and wishing to rest till I was wanted. So cast myself down on the turf, but had not lain there long when I saw someone coming to me through the brambles, and Master Ratsey said, 'Well, Jack, so thou and Elzevir are leaving Moonfleet, and I fain would flit myself, but then who would be left to lead the old folk to their last homes, for dead do not bury their dead in ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... flight of birds, the gulls and rooks and little brown wavering things which flit out and along the edge of the chalk-pits, is once more refreshment to me, utterly untempered. A merle is singing in a bramble thicket; the dew has not yet dried off the bramble leaves. A feather of a moon floats across the sky; the distance ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just dropped, and do not scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday thirst with fiery drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold brook, drink to its musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a working-day world, but flit upon the pleasant places of one made ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... quite a common thing to see 10,000 or 15,000 spectators. I have heard of such people as those who actually hate cricket and football, and make it a constant aim to prevent those over whom they have some influence from engaging in the manly sport. They occasionally flit across one's path like an evil spirit, and disappear as rapidly, but leave behind a chilling effect on the imagination, far more intense than the terrible nightmare after a disastrous defeat. They cannot see the fun of spending valuable ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... of a river was it? Was it like an Irish stream, winding through the brown bogs, where the wild ducks squatter up from among the white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and fro, crying "Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep"; and Dennis tells you strange stories of the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat pools, among the old pine-stems, and puts ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... makes the black hulls cast A firefly radiance down the deep; The inlet gleams, the long clouds sweep, The sails flit up, the sails ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... at the work they loved. They took no pattern from the houses of men, but each man wrought what his inner eye had seen and carved in marble the visions of his dream. All over the roof of one of the palace chambers winged lions flit like bats, the size of every one is the size of the lions of God, and the wings are larger than any wing created; they are one above the other more than a man can number, they are all carven out of one block ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... Within the Scottish castle we meet a heroine with an "expression of pensive melancholy" and a "smile softly clouded with sorrow," a noble lord deprived of his rights by a villain "whose life is marked with vice and whose death with the bitterness of remorse." But these grey and ghostly shadows, who flit faintly through our imagination, are less prophetic of coming events than the properties with which the castle is endowed, a secret but accidently discovered panel, a trap-door, subterranean vaults, an unburied corpse, a suddenly extinguished lamp and a soft-toned lute—a goodly ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Monadnock, the cities of Worcester and Fitchburg—all these and many other beautiful objects are spread out before the spectator. But it cannot be described—it must be seen to be appreciated; and the throngs of visitors that flit through the town every summer afford abundant evidence that the love of the beautiful and grand in nature still lives in the hearts ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... contradictory spirit in persons whose conduct intimated no purpose of plunder, and who, in all other points, appeared to consult his welfare and his wishes, it occurred to our hero, that, during the worst crisis of his illness, a female figure, younger than his old Highland nurse, had appeared to flit around his couch. Of this, indeed, he had but a very indistinct recollection, but his suspicions were confirmed when, attentively listening, he often heard, in the course of the day, the voice of another female conversing ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott |
