"Lapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if I would accompany him. The temptation of seeing one from whom there had been an eight years separation made my cousin's entreaties irresistible, and I yielded, receiving from him all the devoted attendance his kind nature could dictate. So, after the lapse of so many eventful years, I turned my face westward. I spent the winter at the home of my brother, and shall never forget his kindness and that of his family, as well as other residents of Pecatonica, who did so much to lighten the leaden-winged hours, which, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... wife, (according to his own account, of course,) had finally the luck, I mean the misfortune, to lose her. He had lived long enough in Italy, however, to say "Pazienza" and buried his sorrows and his wife in the same grave. But, after the lapse of some time, his wife appeared to him in a dream, and confessed her sins towards him during her life, and prayed his forgiveness, and added, that in token of reconciliation he must accept three numbers to play in the lottery, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... is monotonous as one of the enormous American inland seas to a lover of the ocean, to whom the salt brine is as the breath of delight. The fatal facility of the heroic couplet to lapse into diffuseness, has, coupled with a warped anxiety for irreducible concision, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... and ear was jotted down and is now revised after a lapse of time, without indulging much in meditation or reflection; these are rather suggested by the occurrences, that they may be followed out by the reader. Inasmuch, however, as the incidents relate to out-of-the-way places, and various seasons of the year, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... an image; and an image in the true sense of a thing mastering the imagination and not the reason. The power of these talismanic pictures is almost hypnotic to modern humanity. We can never forget that we have seen a portrait of the Missing Link; though we should instantly detect the lapse of logic into superstition, if we were told that the old Greek agnostics had made a statue of the Unknown God. But there is a still stranger fashion in which we fall victims to the same trick of fancy. We accept ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... coffers that stood against the wall behind it, and threw up the lid of one of them, and found therein a smock or two of her own, yellowed by the lapse of time, and her old grey coat, ragged as it was when last she wore it, and now somewhat moth-eaten withal; and she drew forth both smocks and coat and laid them on the settle. Then she opened another coffer, and therein were gay and gaudy gowns ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... plantations of mandarins, white houses, a small mosque with projecting minaret, and, lower, walls surrounding gardens, all these appeared with such distinctness and at distance so close that one might assume that after the lapse of half an hour the caravan would be amid ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... her drunken bouts, he had turned her out, and married Flash Kate, the ragpicker's daughter. Sloppy Mary had accepted her lot with resignation, and went out charring for a living; but whenever she had a drop too much she made for the barber's, forgetting by a curious lapse of memory that it was no longer her home. And as usual the barber's new wife had pushed her into the street, staggering, and now stood on guard at the door, her coarse, handsome features alive ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... my library, stand side by side four volumes whose contents I once knew by heart, and which, after the lapse of twenty years, are yet tolerably distinct in my memory. These are stoutly bound in purple muslin, with a stamp, of Persian design apparently, on the centre of each cover. They are stained and worn, and the backs have faded to a brownish hue, from exposure to the light, and a leaf in one ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which was the Tower of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two cubits, but he did not finish its head. During the lapse of time, it had become ruined; they had not taken care of the exit of the waters, so that rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing of burned brick had swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 'although the pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are pagans themselves, the 'pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory as through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x squaredpx ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... that we can do any good by sitting around here," remarked Uncle Dan to the boys, after the lapse of some minutes. "We may as well put out the lights and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... Lapse of Time between Cretaceous and Eocene Periods. Table of successive Cretaceous Formations. Maestricht Beds. Pisolitic Limestone of France. Chalk of Faxoe. Geographical Extent and Origin of the White Chalk. Chalky ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... lapse into silence, and seeing that he did not appear anxious to continue the talk along lines that concerned his personal matters, the scoutmaster ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... certificate the Cardinal did not add, because he was not called upon to do it, that Galileo was enjoined not to teach in any manner the doctrine thus denounced; and Galileo ingeniously avails himself of this supposed omission, to account for his having, in the lapse of fourteen or sixteen years, forgotten the injunction. He assigned the same excuse for his having omitted to mention this injunction to Riccardi, and to the Inquisitor-General at Florence, when he obtained the licence to print his Dialogues. The court ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... the danger in that overcrowded boat, and the manifestly compromising fact that I had now become one of a gang who boasted of the murder they had done that night, I did some speculation that seems ridiculous now, at this distance, after a lapse of time. It occurred to me that Grim might be disguised as a member of Anazeh's party. As far as possible in the dark I thoroughly scrutinized each individual. It is easy to laugh about it now, but I actually made my way to Anazeh's side and tried to ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... his attention to bring about first a liquidation and then a resumption. It was a favorite maxim with him, that "the agonies of resumption are far harder to endure than those of suspension," as it is easier to refrain from lapse of virtue than to restore moral integrity once impaired. But in resumption the suffering falls where it belongs, on the careless, the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... sail-boat, and never was any human being more serenely unconscious of his unfitness. David's frame of mind was one of calm, beatific enjoyment. He was quite unconscious of the increase of the distance between his boat and the shore, which grew greater every moment, and equally unobservant of the lapse of time. In times of great enjoyment the hours fly quickly by, and in David's high exaltation of feeling the time ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... her lapse, Ellen hardly knew how to best explain it, but Addison came to her rescue. "There are two of those vireos," he remarked in a perfectly natural, matter-of-fact tone. "One of them, the warbling vireo, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... adored. Indeed she became a divinity among the Spaniards, and to their affection for her, Philip V. was more than once indebted for his crown. Lords, ladies, soldiers, and the people still remember her with tears in their eyes; and even after the lapse of so many years, are not yet consoled for ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... from the room in which he was standing a broken-hearted man. Hope could not buoy him up as she may do other ex-members in similarly disagreeable circumstances. He could not afford to look forward to what further favours parliamentary future might have in store for him after a lapse of five or six years. Five or six years! Why, his life was not worth four years' purchase; of that he was perfectly aware: he could not now live without the stimulus of brandy; and yet, while he took it, he knew he was killing himself. Death he did not fear; ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... revivalists, and some fine morning these revival towns will arise, rub their sleepy eyes, and Chapman will be but a bad taste in the mouth, and Sunday, Chaeffer, Torrey, Biederwolf and Company, a troubled dream. To preach hagiology to civilized people is a lapse that Nemesis will not overlook. America stands for the Twentieth Century, and if in a moment of weakness she slips back to the exuberant folly of the frenzied piety of the Sixteenth, she must pay the ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... and other more or less interesting doings were accurately remembered by a visitation of this kind. The local almanac chronicled the occasion as minutely as it did the death of Nelson or the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne. So that if any lapse of memory occurred a reference to this touchstone of local history put matters right. Archie Macvie had longed for the time to come when someone would offer him command of a large vessel. His reputation as a clever, pushing, steady-going ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... uncommon beauty of his face. The impression his whole appearance made upon my mind, was such that it has ever remained most deeply engraven on it; and although fifteen years have since gone by, the lapse of time has not in the least impaired the freshness of the recollection." Then, speaking of his manner, he goes on to say: "There was so irresistible an attraction in his manner, that only those who have been so fortunate ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... neither of them had any right to be acquainted with paint, or skirts, or gold. But anachronisms like these are, after all, only a part of the great anachronism, or postulate rather, whereby Adam and Eve are made to speak the English tongue. In the Twelfth Book Michael is guilty of a graver lapse where he mentions baptism without explanation or apology. On the other hand, Raphael, who had a pleasanter occasion and more time for his retrospective summary, explains the military manoeuvring of angels ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... and corrected editions of works already known and esteemed; critical editions, for instance, of such well-known writers as Fox, Fuller, Burnet, and Strype: and the completion, by way of "posting up," of such as have become defective through lapse of time, like Le Neve's Fasti, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... why his friends should Commiserate him because of the endless handshaking. That was a small matter compared with the interest he took in the ever various stream of human types. Sometimes, indeed, he would lapse into a brown study in the midst of a reception. Then he "would shake hands with thousands of people, seemingly unconscious of what he was doing, murmuring monotonous salutations as they went by, his eye dim, his thoughts far withdrawn. . . . Suddenly, he would see some familiar ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... faithfully as scenes flashed by the sun on the plates of photography! True, the pictures were perhaps now slightly fading into the similitude of pale negatives, . . but still, would not everything that happened in the ACTUAL world merge into that same undecided dimness with the lapse of time? ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... this banter and sarcasm, these passages express a real dread which, at the time when Household Suffrage was claimed and conceded, really possessed Arnold's mind. He came with the lapse of years to see that it was illusory, and that the working-classes of England are as steady, as law-abiding, as inaccessible to ideas, as little in danger of being hurried into revolutionary courses, as unwilling to jeopardize their national interests and their stake in the country, as the Aristocracy ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... a literary artist. Sometimes a slight change may improve greatly an old tale. In Grimm's Briar Rose[1] the episode of the Prince and the old Man contains irrelevant material. The two paragraphs following, "after the lapse of many years there came a king's son into the country," easily may be re-written to preserve the same unity and simplicity which mark the rest of the tale. This individual retelling of an old tale demands a careful distinction between what is essential and internal ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... iii. p. 718. In his official report, however, Burnside says the dispatch of 13th was received "on the night of the 16th" (Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. ii. p. 550), and I have followed this statement, although his report was not written till November, 1865, when lapse of time might easily give rise to an error in so trifling a detail. The matter is of no real consequence in the view I have taken of the situation.] Still, no information was given of the movement of Longstreet to join Bragg, and indeed it was only on the 15th that Halleck gave the news to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... little nettled at this; and indeed, if it may not be called a lapse of the tongue, it was a small deviation from politeness in Jones, and into which he scarce would have fallen, had not the delight he felt in praising Sophia hurried him out of all reflection; for this commendation of one cousin was more than a tacit ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... was certainly unfit to be Prime Minister. But even Quintus Slide, as he wrote his article, felt that he was hoping against hope. The charge might be referred to hereafter as one that had never been satisfactorily cleared up. That game is always open to the opponents of a minister. After the lapse of a few months an old accusation can be serviceably used, whether at the time it was proved or disproved. Mr. Slide published his article, but he felt that for the present the Silverbridge election papers had better ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... little church of St. Martin, and look on the view which is there spread before his eyes. Immediately below are the towers of the great abbey of St. Augustine, where Christian learning and civilization first struck root in the Anglo-Saxon race; and within which, now, after a lapse of many centuries, a new institution has arisen, intended to carry far and wide to countries of which Gregory and Augustine never heard, the blessings which they gave to us. Carry your view on—and there rises high ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... lapse to what I was Ere we met; (Such can not be, but because Some forget Let me feign it)—none would notice That where she I know by rote is Spread a strange and withering change, Like a drying of ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... venerable pictures, of a famous lawyer, who never opens his mouth without carrying off a large portion of his client's fortune. People who waited in these two studios spacious as the nave of a church, with the silent majesty which comes with the lapse of years, were brought to the necessary frame of mind to make them submit to the enormous ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... first place, the trouble is seldom serious or very well developed in early childhood, and the reason for this, I take it, is that an occasional lapse in a child of perhaps two or three years of age is usually treated lightly and in the proper spirit of tolerance. It is only with children a little older that nurses and parents become distressed and begin unwittingly by urging the child to present the suggestion ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... after the long lapse of time, he chuckled gleefully at the recollection—he had detected a shadow above him that came to instant rest as he turned his gaze upward. He could make out nothing, but, deciding to chance it, had fired at it a heavy charge of number five ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... A term borrowed from Slavic grammar. It indicates the lapse of action, its nature from the standpoint of continuity. Our "cry" is indefinite as to aspect, "be crying" is durative, "cry put" is momentaneous, "burst into tears" is inceptive, "keep crying" is continuative, "start in ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... anti-christian principle of revenge and retaliation, is here pursued with such bitter and obstinate animosity, that I have known instances of men relinquishing their vocation, to go into a far country to revenge the blood of a relation after a lapse of twenty years, and pursue the object of his revenge, for some murder committed in his family, perhaps ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... if it was indeed true that he had stumbled upon a stranded ancient hulk, that very fact may have so excited his disordered brain as to cause him to imagine the treasure. Looking back at the episode now, after the lapse of years, that, it appears to me, was very much my mental attitude with regard to it; yet, my doubts notwithstanding, I was determined to leave no stone unturned to test Barber's story to the uttermost; consequently when, late in the afternoon of the following day, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the spirit of earth's great ones, just as the cellar of the king holds wines growing more precious with the lapse of years. From time to time God sends to earth some man with a supreme gift called genius. Passing through our life and world, he sees wondrous sights not beholden of our eyes, hears melodies too ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in, beaten down, and the whole mould violently jolted by machinery to shake down the mixture and to get rid of air holes. While it is still wet the casting is taken out of the mould, its edges are cleaned, and after the lapse of one day it is placed in a bath, of silicate of soda. Should the casting be allowed to get dry before it is placed in this bath, no good results would be obtained; it is left in the bath for seven days. When delicate stone carvings have to be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... book has its defects—among which we observe an occasional lapse into Latinity—but with all its defects it is a very poetical book. Mr. Winter reminds us, more than any recent American poet, of the English poets of the reigns of Charles the First and Second. He has, at his best, all their graces of style, and he has, at all times, ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... you here while I accompany Rathunor. As you gradually lapse into the sweet silence of this Holy place, observe the meaning of some of the stupendous mysteries of Nature revealed here openly to the one having eyes to see and possessing ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court, like the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by one routine rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma—either that it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order, and thus, that a lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created, disposing of incomes which, in the aggregate, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Now, after the lapse of nearly three quarters of a century, the verdict has been given in favor of Morse, his name alone is accepted as that of the Inventor of the Telegraph, and in this work it is my aim to prove that the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... The lapse of time has mitigated the hostility of the actual combatants, but has only intensified the contempt, and deepened the distrust which the people of ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... executive shook his head. "Perhaps it's not best. Perhaps he did have a lapse into his boyhood habits. Not that it makes any difference ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... His mutineers. Its base was white with bones Picked by the gulls, and crumbling o'er the sand A dread sea-salt, dry from the tides of time. There, on that lonely shore, Death's finger-post Stood like some old forgotten truth made strange By the long lapse of many memories, All starting up in resurrection now As at the trump of doom, heroic ghosts Out of the cells and graves of his deep brain Reproaching him. "Were this man not thy friend, Ere now he should have died the traitor's death. What wilt ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... by his passion, he divulged all these crimes which, as emperor, he ought to have kept secret with as much care as he punished them, because the shame of some deeds asperses even him who avenges them. Afterwards, when by lapse of time shame took the place of anger in his mind, he lamented that he had not kept silence about matters which he had not learned until it was disgraceful to speak of them, and often used to exclaim, "None of these things ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... friendship is the danger of just letting it lapse. As life spreads out before the eager feet, new interests crop up, new relations are formed, and the old tie gets worn away, from want of adding fresh strands to it. We may believe the advice about not forsaking an old friend because the new is not comparable to him, but we can neglect it by merely ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... ought to contain. So now, in regard to arbitration, as well as the other measures finally adopted, his feelings must be considered. Still, his views have been an excellent tonic; they have effectively prevented any lapse into sentimentality. When he speaks the millennium fades and this stern, severe, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... mine. A few days afterwards he informed me of the arrival of the Prince de Mont-Beliard, of Wurtemberg, who was anxious to pay his respects to me, as though to the King's daughter. In effect, this royal prince came and paid me a visit; I thought him greatly changed for such a short lapse ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... with lovers, and they had been nearly an hour in conversation, when Juanita put them in mind of its lapse, and urged the danger of Isabella's staying away from her uncle's house any longer. They separated with a thousand promises to ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... nearly all on the lender at interest, {139} who, as he cannot bring back things to their former value, seeks enjoyment in another country, and obtains, by change of place, what he lost by lapse ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... ordinary run of things in the Paris studios, nor from any familiarity with the private lives of the painters of the Italian Renaissance, which show, if anything does, that one may possess a fine and rigorous conscience as an artist, yet lapse into any irregularity or descend to any depravity as a man. But Dr. Gowdy ignored all this. Art—the contemplation of it, the practice of it—worked toward the building up of character, and promoted all that was noblest ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... remained at Mosita, the only book I had to read was "Trilby," which I perused many times, and the lament of the heroine in the line quoted above seemed to re-echo my sentiments. For days and days we were absolutely without news. It is impossible after a lapse of time to realize exactly what that short sentence really means. I must ask my readers to remember that we talked and thought of one topic only; we looked incessantly in the one direction by which messengers might come. Our nerves were so strained ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... mould of widespread civilisation for the Church's growth, was at length broken up in the western half of it, by Teuton invaders occupying its provinces. These were all, at the time of their settlement, either pagan or Arian. There followed, in a certain lapse of time, the creation of a body of States whose centre of union and belief was the See of Peter. That is the creation of Christendom proper. The wonder seen is that the northern tribes, impinging on the empire, and settling on its various provinces like vultures, became the matter into which ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... have thought such pretensions possible in the case of any other country,—as preposterous as it would be to suppose England capable of thinking of the restoration of her power over the United States,—yet it was perfectly reasonable to believe that Spain would revive claims that were barred by the lapse of one hundred and fifty years. No statute of limitations is known to her, and what she has held once she thinks herself entitled to reclaim on any day through all time. Weakness may prevent her from enforcing her title, but that title ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... all, not at all," he said, eagerly. "Her fault is not one of those which can never be forgiven. M. d'Imblevalle will forget that lapse. Already, when we left, he was looking ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... her own griefs to repay this worthy creature's kindness, by attending to her little babe, and assisting her in her homely cookery or household work. She knew that a selfish indulgence in sorrow would do her no good, and after the lapse of some days she so well disciplined her own heart as to check her tears, at least in the presence of the Indian women, and to assume an air of comparative cheerfulness. Once she found Indian words enough to ask the Indian widow ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... married woman, and that woman her closest friend, would be to throw her utterly upon her own resources at a time when she most needed the support and guidance of a helping hand. Moreover, the episode was over; so at least both he and Daisy resolutely persuaded themselves. There had been a lapse—a vain and futile lapse—into the long-cherished idyll of their romance. It must never recur. It never should recur. It must be covered over and forgotten as speedily as might be. They had come ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Scandinavian colony in Greenland, seemed to have occasioned its perfect decadence, or, otherwise, as traditions tell us, a sudden hostile inroad of the Esquimaux swept off the isolated Europeans: from either cause there remained, after the lapse of two centuries, but the moss-covered ruins of a few churches, some Runic inscriptions, and the legends of the Esquimaux, who talked of a tall, fair-haired race, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... I now made a start at erecting the tide-gauge, and after the lapse of five days got the instrument into position. We could work on it only at low tide, for much rock had to be chipped away and numerous wire stays fixed. The work was therefore of a disagreeable character. Its appearance when finished did not ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... presented itself, and did not stop until they had reached the verge of the wood. There, breathless, leaning against each other, feeling their hearts throb wildly, they endeavored to collect their senses, but could only succeed in doing so after the lapse of some minutes. Perceiving at last the lights from the windows of the chateau, they decided to walk towards them. La Valliere was exhausted with fatigue, and Aure and Athenais were obliged ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... refining upon, the authorised religious tradition: he calmly sophisticates this or that element of it which had seemed grotesque; and has, like any modern writer, a theory how myths were made, and how in lapse of time their first signification gets to be obscured among mortals; and what he submits to, that he will also adorn fondly, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... time of their happening, are a kind of riddles, and as every riddle is to be followed by its answer, so those kind of circumstances will be followed by their events, and those events are always the true solution. A considerable space of time may lapse between, and unless we continue our observations from the one to the other, the harmony of them will pass away unnoticed: but the misfortune is, that partly from the pressing necessity of some instant things, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and remains down a minute to indicate a lapse of three hours. When it rises again night has come, the lamps are lighted and the window curtains drawn. ASHER and AUGUSTA are discovered standing together. ASHER has a black, leather covered book in his hand, with one finger in the place where he has ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cold and rain, the monotonous food, which before port was reached had occasioned many cases of scurvy and reduced the strength of all, was excuse enough for the occasional lapse into overindulgence which occurred, but the long penance was nearly ended. On the 8th of June Mount Mansell, now Mt. Desert, was passed, an enchanting sight for the sea-sad eyes of the travellers. A "handsome gale" drove them swiftly on, and we may know with ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... conceptions of Christ, and unable to rest content without a definite opinion regarding Him, and so was led to trace His biography from point to point, with a view of accepting those conclusions about Him which the facts themselves, weighed critically, appeared to warrant. And now, after the lapse of well-nigh two decades, the author of "Ecce Homo" comes forward to consider the religious outlook of the world. Surely a task for which he is in many respects peculiarly well-fitted. Wide knowledge of the modern mind, broad sympathies, keen and delicate perceptions, freedom from party ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... agitation of the abolitionists and declaimers on slavery; but these have been in every instance promptly suppressed. We fear not to compare the riots, disorder, revolt and bloodshed, which have been committed in our own, with those of any other civilized communities, during the same lapse of time. And let it be observed under what extraordinary circumstances our peace has been preserved. For the last half century, one half of our population has been admonished in terms the most calculated to madden and excite, that they are the victims of the most grinding ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Mrs. Taine's God was not declared by the mountains. She sat by the window, indeed, but her eyes were upon the open pages of a book—a popular novel that by some strange legal lapse of the governmental conscience ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... sun hung listless, Hollister turned his glasses on the cabin of the settler near his camp. He was on the edge of the cliff, so close that when he dislodged a fragment of rock it rolled over the brink, bounded once from the cliff's face, and after a lapse that grew to seconds struck with a distant thud among the timber at the foot of the precipice. Looking down through the binoculars it was as if he sat on the topmost bough of a tall tree in the immediate neighborhood of the cabin, although ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... because we can get a general view only from a distance? or because the school of experience makes our judgment ripe? Perhaps all of these together: but it is certain that we often view in the right light the actions of others, and occasionally even our own, only after the lapse of years. And as it is in one's own life, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... remembered, however, that those statesmen—even the wisest or the best-informed of them—could not take so correct a view of France and its politics as it is possible for us, after the lapse of three centuries, to do. The interior leagues, subterranean schemes, conflicting factions, could only be guessed at; nor could the immediate future be predicted, even by such far-seeing politicians as William of Orange; at a distance, or Henry ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 1600 it became manifest that lapse of years and ecclesiastical intolerance had rendered Italy nearly destitute of great men. Her famous sons were all either dead, murdered or exiled; reduced to silence by the scythe of time or by the Roman 'arguments of sword and halter.' Bruno burned, Vanini burned, Carnesecchi burned, Paleario ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... receive the remains of the father was opened again for the son. Not long after, his family removed to Cumberland Island and ceased to look upon Savannah as their burial-place; and when, for the first time, after the lapse of more than thirty years, and at the approach of Lafayette on his last memorable visit to the United States, a people awoke from their lethargy and asked where the bones of the hero of the South had been laid, there was no one to point out their resting-place. Happy, if what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neighborhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed as a small village of thatched houses, clustered round a priory; and it would still have been precisely such a rural village, but for a certain Dr. Jephson, who lived within the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in a long letter to the New York "Tribune" of the date of April 28, 1883, made a reply to my objections to the tariff amendment, but it did not change my opinion, and now, after the lapse of many years, I am still of the same opinion. The tariff act of 1883 laid the foundation for all the tariff complications ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... followed. I have sent Menoikeus' son, Creon, my own wife's brother, forth alone To Apollo's House in Delphi, there to ask What word, what deed of mine, what bitter task, May save my city. And the lapse of days Reckoned, I can but marvel what delays His journey. 'Tis beyond all thought that thus He comes not, beyond need. But when he does, Then call me false and traitor, if I flee Back from ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... the facts are related upon the best intelligence, and the best vouchers that could be gleaned, after a great lapse of time. Probability was to be inferred from such materials, as could be procured, and no man better understood the nature of historical evidence than Dr. Johnson; no man was more religiously an observer of truth. If ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... expanse of the Southern ocean which lay stretched before them in boundless prospect. They adored—even those hardened and sanguinary adventurers adored—the gracious providence of Heaven, which, after lapse of so many centuries had opened to mankind so wonderful a field of untried and unimagined enterprize." The very same point of land where, in 1515, the Spaniards first beheld the Pacific, is the spot formed by nature for the realization of those advantages which their cautious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... which under the Church Building Acts the faculty was issued in consequence of money paid down for the building of the Church with the understanding that the faculty would be granted in consequence: or if this be not done that in the lapse of time some holder of the faculty may regard the matter from an unselfish standpoint and ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... themselves, us, of this goodly land, to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours to transmit these—the former unprofaned by the foot of an intruder, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation—to the generation that fate shall ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... affright them, since the Indians roving in detached parties, would be the first to flee; nay, they would probably court their union, there having been instances of negroes finding an asylum among them, but after a lapse of time, unworthy to enjoy freedom, the fugitives have returned to their plantation, like a dog, who, having escaped from his kennel, returns to it by an instinct of submission. To multiply comparisons, as the ox resigns himself to his yoke, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... their jailers; but the escape of Grotius is the most remarkable of all, both from his own celebrity as one of the first writers of his age in the most varied walks of literature, and from its peculiar circumstances, which only found a parallel in European history after a lapse of two centuries. We allude to the escape of Lavalette from the prison of the Conciergerie in Paris in 1815, which so painfully excited the interest of all Europe for the intended victim's wife, whose reason was the forfeit ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... you take of the origin of sight, hearing, voice, the wonder to a thoughtful mind is just the same; how, under the storm of circumstances, and through the lapse of ages, those faculties have not been lost again and again, by countless individuals, nay, by the whole species. For we must confess that those faculties are gradually developed in each individual; that every animal and every human being which is born ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... in order to reach a definite point or to accomplish a certain distance before rising to the surface. It often happens that swimmers, in order to achieve a certain distance, remain under water after pains in the back of the neck give warning of oncoming unconsciousness, in which case they may lapse into a state of insensibility, and there ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... to 10 cents a bag. The various parties to the agreement posted $500 checks each as forfeits, not to violate the price as fixed. After one year, a check was cashed; but the principal claimed his lapse was clerical and not in violation of the agreement. However, as a result of the argument that followed, the organization ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... all opinions and in all places he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose strange delusions and predilections were not to be combated, but to be indulged. Thus he wandered through the Christian world; regardless alike of lapse of time and change of climate; living within himself; mourning, as a luxury, over the fall of his worship; patient of wrongs, insults, and disappointments; watching for the opportunity that he still persisted in ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... asked point-blank if he meant "my Lord Digby," the Colonel, with a lofty air, answered—"The elder branch, sir." No one at Screwstown had ever seen these Digbies: they lay amidst the Far—the Recondite—even to the wife of Colonel Pompley's bosom. Now and then, when the Colonel referred to the lapse of years, and the uncertainty of human affections, he would say—"When young Digby and I were boys together," and then add with a sigh, "but we shall never meet again in this world. His family interest secured him a valuable appointment in a distant part of the British dominions." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a ravine, and devised every means that the Thessalians might not make invasion of their land. Now the ancient wall had been built long before, and the greater part of it was by that time in ruins from lapse of time; the Hellenes however resolved to set it up again, and at this spot to repel the Barbarian from Hellas: and very near the road there is a village called Alpenoi, from which the Hellenes counted ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... this great and pious man from his tedious imprisonment, has been hitherto involved in a cloud of mystery, which it will be our happiness to disperse, while we record that event in a clear, indisputable narrative of facts. His earlier biographer, Mr. Doe, not having access to archives which the lapse of time has now rendered available, attributed his release to the influence of Bishop Barlow, by the interference of Dr. Owen. It is narrated in the life of Dr. Owen, published in 1721:—'The doctor had some friends also among the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to the possible reader, to do with any of the characters of this history? Do we wish to apologize for Pen because he has got a white hat, and because his mourning for his mother is fainter? All the lapse of years, all the career of fortune, all the events of life, however strongly they may move or eagerly excite him, never can remove that sainted image from his heart, or banish that blessed love from its sanctuary. If he yields to wrong, the dear ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... neighbours, so that the tone rose and sank, and there was no one soul erect in that Hall save Shagpat, he on his throne of cushions smiling behind the lathers, inanimate, serene as they that sin not. After an hour's lapse there came a pause, and the people hearkened for the voice of the King; but in the intervals a louder moan would strike their ears, and they whispered among themselves, "Tis that of the fakir, El Zoop!' and the moaning and howling prevailed again. And again they heard another moan, a deep one, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time being, seems to have forgotten its real function and now claims to accommodate things to itself instead of accommodating itself to things. And so the play upon words always betrays a momentary LAPSE OF ATTENTION in language, and it is precisely on that ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... Aunt Helen," said Whitman, starting for the door. The "Aunt" was a heritage of an earlier and more innocent day and not an indication of blood relationship. "Uncle Julian" had, however, been allowed to lapse, upon Henry's accession to ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... forces. Each organic aggregate, whether considered individually or as a continuously existing species, is modified afresh by each fresh distribution of external forces. To its pre-existing differentiations new differentiations are added; and thus that lapse to a more heterogeneous state, which would have a fixed limit were the circumstances fixed, has its limits perpetually removed by the perpetual change of the circumstances. These modifications upon modifications, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... Trinity had fought shy of the notion, and it was dropped at once. That, indeed, was the beginning of Lettice's isolation—the beginning of a kind of mental estrangement from her brother, which the lapse of time was ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Chilian Leverett was having a hard fight with himself. He was really ashamed of having been conquered by what he called a boy's romantic passion. He could excuse himself for the early lapse; he was a boy then. His honor and what he called good sense were mightily at war with this desire that well-nigh overmastered him. True, men older than he had married young wives. But this child had been entrusted ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... circle; historians and poets have found in them a theme suited to their energies, and sung the song of their exploits to everlasting remembrance. It may be said that few subjects of yore can boast so bewitching an interest as the present: for even now, after the lapse of six or seven hundred years, the names of Robin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... had, up to this period, been in special favor with his Excellency; and her Grace, the president's lady, had evinced so much kindness to me, that I was regarded the first among all her favorites. She was distinguished for her virtue; but, when in the lapse of time, I perceived one after another ambiguity in her expressions, I began to feel a kind of mistrust, especially ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... a singular sensation that Herrick prepared for the first time to address a crew. He thanked his stars indeed that they were natives. But even natives, he reflected, might be critics too quick for such a novice as himself; they might perceive some lapse from that precise and cut-and-dry English which prevails on board a ship; it was even possible they understood no other; and he racked his brain, and overhauled his reminiscences of sea romance, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passing himself off as Sir Galahad to the man who was Sir Galahad's father would have been quite another. He had learned from the pages of his near-namesake's "Arthur" that Sir Launcelot had visited Carbonek before Sir Galahad had, but the pages had not revealed whether the time-lapse had involved minutes, hours, or years, and for that matter, Mallory wasn't altogether certain whether the second visit they described had been the real Sir Galahad's, which meant failure, or a romanticized version of his own, which meant success. His near-namesake ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... paid for out of a common fund specially raised by all the members of the Casino. It was, therefore, not astonishing that the Herr Colonel was, after the lapse of one brief ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... the lapse of some time, he purchased a domain in Buckinghamshire, called "Gregories;" there, whenever his public duties gave him leisure, he enjoyed the repose so necessary to an overtaxed brain; and from Gregories some of his most interesting letters are dated.[3] Those addressed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Council of the Vatican—the oecumenical of the nineteenth century—it strikes us as being, in ecclesiastical annals, the event of the age. It also marks, in a remarkable manner, the character and progress of the time. The Council of Trent was highly important in its day; and still, after a lapse of three hundred years, its teachings govern the Church. Whilst, as regards the wisdom of its decisions, it cannot be excelled, it was surpassed in many things by the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... her lips with suppressed mirth. The underplay of meaning was not the only subtleness of the speech, for the tone in which it had been uttered was rich in interrogation, as though its author, while realizing the pony's dimness of perception, half believed the animal had noticed Miss Radford's lapse of hospitality. ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... painful or agreeable, according to certain physical conditions. On this subject, the following observations occur in Dr Winslow's Psychological Journal:—'We have in dreams no true perception of the lapse of time—a strange property of mind! for if such be also its property when entered into the eternal disembodied state, time will appear to us eternity. The relations of space, as well as of time, are also annihilated; so that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... be confused—but still an expression of what, for better or for worse we are, not of what in some remote past time we were. We cannot explain war or excuse ourselves for waging wars by saying that we lapse for a time into barbarism, but on the other hand the heroism we suddenly find in ourselves as nations or as individuals, is not so different from that of ordinary life as we may have supposed. We have perhaps no right to say that all war ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... higher than the top of Mount Washington. The views from this stand-point compensate for all past troubles. The wild chaos of mountains on every side, broken by profound ravines, the heaps of ruins piled up during the lapse of geologic ages, the intense azure of the sky, and the kingly condor majestically wheeling around the still higher pinnacles, make up a picture rarely to be seen. Westward, the mountains tumble down into hills and spread out into plains, which, in the far distant horizon, dip into the great ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... length, yet would lie altogether within the country of the Plain Crees. They inhabit the prairies which extend from the Qu'Appelle to the South Saskatchewan, a portion of territory which was formerly the land of the Assineboine, but which became the country of the Crees through lapse of time and chance of war. From the elbow of the South Branch of the Saskatchewan the Cree nation extends in a west and north-west direction to the vicinity of the Peace Hills, some fifty miles south of Edmonton. Along the entire line there exists a state of perpetual warfare during ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... them armed and on horseback. Afterwards in June, 1429, and January, 1430, she had merely passed through the town. True it was she had been offered wine and the magistrates had sat at table with her;[2661] but that was nine years ago. And the lapse of nine years works many a change in a woman's face. They had seen her last as a young girl, now they found her a woman and the mother of two children. Moreover they were guided by the opinion of her kinsfolk. Their attitude provokes some astonishment, however, when one thinks of the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... is not confined to the existing world. Whatever their minor differences, geologists are agreed as to the vast thickness of the accumulated strata which compose the visible part of our earth, and the inconceivable immensity of the time of whose lapse they are the imperfect, but the only accessible witnesses. Now, throughout the greater part of this long series of stratified rocks are scattered, sometimes very abundantly, multitudes of organic remains, the fossilized exuviae of animals and plants which lived and died while ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... After the lapse of two days order was restored, and Barras declared to the triumphant National Convention that the victory over the insurgents was chiefly due to the comprehensive and gallant conduct ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... in his sternest way, "I would give anything to keep you with us, but I feel as if it has been a lapse of duty towards you to let you run ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... that at least a part of it may soon be realized. The truth of the matter is this: Not long ago I was standing by the window—how long I do not know, for along with the other rules of reason and morality, I completely forgot about the lapse of time. Well, I was standing by the window and looking out into the open; the morning certainly deserves to be called beautiful, the air is still and quite warm, and the verdure here before me is fresh. And even as the wide land undulates in hills and dales, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth—would be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;" and again:—".... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a diminution of his store ...."—after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... If, on the other hand, it is independent of another manifestation (and hence eternal), it follows that the effect also is eternally perceived. And if, as a third alternative, the manifestation is said to originate, we lapse into the asatkryavda (according to which the effect does not exist before its origination). Moreover, if the activity of the agent serves to manifest the effect, it follows that the activity devoted to a jar will manifest also waterpots ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of the great deeds of the war, honestly and ingenuously. On such occasions it often happens that a great deal comes to light which would otherwise have been most stead-fastly concealed, and one of them may even be heard to blurt out the most precious secrets of the whole brotherhood. Indeed, a lapse of this sort occurred but a short while ago, to a well-known aesthete of the Hegelian school of reasoning. It must, however, be admitted that the provocation thereto was of an unusual character. A company of Philistines were feasting together, in celebration of the memory of a genuine ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... raised, and the farmer much relieved; If it should be thought proper to reward a people so deserving, and so loyal by their principles. Every bishop, upon the vacancy of a church-living, can sequester the profits for the use of the next incumbent. Upon a lapse of half a year, the donation falls to the archbishop, and after a full year to the Crown, during pleasure; therefore it would be no hardship for any clergyman alive, if, in those parts of Ireland, where the number of sectaries much exceed that of the conformists, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... that she imagines herself sent by God to make the happiness of humanity by the religion of art. Thus she remains cold and chaste in private life, never permitting her heart to become inflamed by the ardent passions wherewith she glows upon the stage. She told me that she could never comprehend the lapse from virtue of Mademoiselle R——, a woman of such lofty talent: 'To fail thus in what was due to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... mummies as were in a fitting state of preservation, with the corresponding parts of the representatives of the same species now living in Egypt. He arrived at the conviction that no appreciable change had taken place in these animals in the course of this considerable lapse of time, and the justice of his ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... too late) the advice given me by a certain Dean. He shewed the mistake I was in of trusting to the general good-will of the people, "that I had succeeded hitherto better than could be expected, but that some unfortunate circumstantial lapse would probably bring me within the reach of power. That my good intentions would be no security against those who watched every motion of my pen, in the bitterness of my soul." He produced an instance of "a writer as innocent, as disinterested, and as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... himself of this armistice to make active preparations for a renewal of the war. He obtained large reinforcements of Persian troops, and began to organize a fleet in Phoenicia and Cilicia. This was intrusted to the Athenian admiral Conon, of whom we now first hear again after a lapse of seven years since his defeat at AEgospotami. After that disastrous battle Conon fled with nine triremes to Cyprus, where he was now living under the protection of Evagoras, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... of the two races) that to no well-thinking West Indian White, whose ancestors may have, innocently or culpably, participated in the gains as well as the guilt of slavery, would the remembrance of its palmy days be otherwise than one of regret. We Negroes, on the other hand, after a lapse of time extending over nearly two generations, could be indebted only to precarious tradition or scarcely accessible documents for any knowledge we might chance upon of the sufferings endured in these Islands of the West by those of our race who have gone before us. Death, with undiscriminating ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... objects which beautify the face of nature for the contemplation of mankind. Such are, the distinctions of mountains and valleys, of lakes and rivers, of dry barren deserts and rich watered plains, of rocks which stand apparently unimpaired by the lapse of time, and sands which fluctuate with the winds and tides. All these are the effects of steady causes; each of these has its proper purpose in the system of the earth; and in that system is contained another, which is that of living growing ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... flesh and blood many are scattered and lost. North of the River, and South of the River— In both lands are the friends of all my life; Life-friends whom I never see at all,— Whose deaths I hear of only after the lapse of years. Sad at morning, I lie on my bed till dusk; Weeping at night, I sit and wait for dawn. The fire of sorrow has burnt my heart's core; The frost of trouble has seized my hair's roots. In such anguish has my whole life ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... Edhart did more to call Monte's attention to the fact that in his own life a decade had also passed than anything else could possibly have done. Between birthdays there is only the lapse each time of a year; but between the coming and going of the maitre d'hotel there was a period of ten years, which with his disappearance seemed to vanish. Monte was twenty-two when he first came to Nice, and now he was thirty-two. He became thirty-two the moment he was forced to point ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... abridged; in fact, to say the truth, as the result of a certain incoherence, accounted for no doubt by the circumstance that the work had been carried on, altered or extended by successive artists during a lapse of two ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... likely to be the greatest source of grief on the part of the parent is the apparent lapse of the growing boy or girl from standards of honesty and truthfulness with which she has so solicitously tried to imbue him or her. But this lapse during the critical growing period is so widespread, so common among boys and girls who afterward ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... their rear. Early the next morning the King with Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke rode out and took up their positions on the hill of Dub, whence they could view what was to be the decisive battle in the history of Germany. Here, after the lapse of more than a hundred years, they were completing the work which Frederick the Great had begun. The battle was long and doubtful. The army of Prince Frederick Charles attacked the Austrian division under the eyes of the King, but could ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... The way was clear behind him. He could cross the island to the St. Gervais bank, and if he were nimble he might give his pursuer the slip in the maze of small streets beside the water. It was odd if the lapse of a few hours did not cool young Mercier's wrath, and restore him to a frame of mind in which he might be ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... to do so, and all his descendants likewise. Their ideas in a measure approximate to those of caste among the Hindoos. It is a crime to move out of the original groove; if a man be lowly he must remain lowly, or never be forgiven. The lapse of time makes not the least difference. If it takes the man thirty years to get into a fair position he is none the less guilty. A period equal to the existence of a generation is not sufficient excuse for him. He is not one whit better than if he had made his money by a lucky ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... child kindles the fire which is to consume tree and garlands together. While the blaze lasts the people sing and dance; and the burnt tree is then replaced by another which will suffer the same fate after the lapse of a year.[485] In some districts of the French Pyrenees it is deemed necessary to leap nine times over the midsummer fire if you would be assured of prosperity.[486] A traveller in Southern France at the beginning of the nineteenth ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... was heard above them. "There they are at last," cried Hawkstone, and he sent a loud halloo up the cliff, which was immediately responded to by those at the top, though the sound seemed faint and far off. After the lapse of about five minutes, a basket attached to two ropes descended slowly and bumped ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... that inspire us with such horror, even now, after the lapse of nearly a century, the darkest was that which witnessed the execution of the Princesse de Lamballe, who perished for no other crime than that of love for the queen. Beheaded, and thrown at first upon a pile of corpses, her body was afterwards despoiled of its clothing ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... Harcourt Room in House of Commons, a spacious dining-hall cunningly contrived with lack of acoustical properties that make it difficult to hear what a conversational neighbour is saying. In time of political stress this useful, as preventing lapse into controversy at the table. Homeward bound from his last Antarctic trip, ERNEST SHACKLETON discovered three towering peaks of snow and ice. One he named Mount Asquith; another Mount Henry Lucy; a third ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... dries up, or fuel is consumed. Again, the law that bodies combine chemically in definite proportions is undeniably true; but few besides Dr. Whewell have reached the point which he seems personally to have arrived at (though he only dares prophesy similar success to the multitude after the lapse of generations), that of being unable to conceive a world in which the elements are ready to combine with one another "indifferently in any quantity;" nor is it likely that we shall ever rise to this sublime height of inability, so long as all the mechanical mixtures ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... feat of art even in these last chapters neither to lose the light comical touch, nor to lapse into undisguised profanation. It was only feasible by veritable dancing on the tight-rope of sophistry. In the Moria Erasmus is all the time hovering on the brink of profound truths. But what a boon it was—still granted to those times—to be able to treat of all this ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Church of Ireland have been claimed repeatedly by prominent representatives of the Church of Rome. It is stated that the Church sites and buildings belong to the Roman Communion in Ireland because, on Roman Catholic principles, that communion truly represents the ancient Irish Church, and no lapse of time can invalidate the Church's title; and that the endowments belong to the same communion because they "represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days, which were, in their turn, the alienated possessions of the Roman Church" (see Bishop of Ossory's Synod Address, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... lasting impression upon him. It depicted with relentless pathos the drunkard's progress; beginning with his conversion to beer in the company of loose travelling men; pursuing him through an inexplicable lapse into evening clothes and the society of some remarkably painful ladies, next, exhibiting the effects of alcohol on the victim's domestic disposition, the unfortunate man was seen in the act of striking his wife and, subsequently, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... then, contain constructive and progressive elements, but, as has been stated above, any thinking which implies a lapse of contact with the environment is, in so far as that lapse is concerned, regressive, and in consequence rebirth fancies, as dramatized by the stupor patients, are regressive, just as are the delusions of ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... did!" Jackson answered. "This fine-haired duck with the circus parade clothes wasn't going to sleep in no cavern. He was going to have a nice, soft, cool bed under a tent while he was waiting for the Lyman concession to lapse. He ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... dared not say, especially to his wife, entertaining as he did a painful misgiving that she had hardly done her duty by it; while on the mother's heart there rested an abiding burden, made doubly heavy by a dreadful consciousness of neglect on her part—a burden which no lapse of time could ever wholly remove. Thus a stationary shadow brooded over that home where all might have ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... flattered herself that what she had said might be excused as a mistake, the lapse of memory, or some other trifling fault, when he should know the truth. The truth was earlier divulged than she expected—for just as dinner was removed, her footman delivered a message to her from her milliner concerning a new dress for the evening—the present ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... ashamed of you, grandpa; but I'm glad he didn't shoot you. Where would I have been?" Well, it does seem like rather a shady transaction for me to have been mixed up in. The side of it that impresses me, however, is the lapse of time as measured in conditions and institutions. That was barbarism; and it was Iowa! And it was in my lifetime. It was in a region now as completely developed as England, and it goes back to things as raw and primitive as King Arthur's time. I wonder if his knights were not in the main, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... leviathan dimensions, which are employed in running to and from Detroit, in Michigan, and the intermediate ports, as well as in the Upper Lake trade. Being quite a depot, Buffalo bids fair, ere the lapse of many years, to be the grand emporium of the West. The public buildings do not deserve much notice; the Eagle Theatre, a joint-stock concern, being the only building of much interest. There are, however, several spacious ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... last fifty years. It is enough to remark here that he thought the affection was of a rhythmic or regularly recurrent character, a notion which its previous history went far to justify; and he consequently looked with interest to see whether the lapse of another seven years would bring about another change. To have discovered the orbit, so to speak, of a malady, is not, indeed, to have explained it; but it is always something. It would be more interesting ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... upshot of which was that Eugenius Roche, the editor—who was also proprietor of another flourishing journal, The National Register—one of the most able, honorable, and gentlemanly men ever connected with the press, of whom it has been truly said that 'during the lapse of more than twenty years that he was connected with the journals of London, he never gained an enemy or lost a friend,' was most unjustly condemned to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... woman since the winter she had spent in the sanatorium; the anxiety and fatigue had seriously tried her health, which, till then, had been sturdy. Her soul was affected by it. In spite of an occasional lapse into her old caprices, she had become mysteriously more serious, more reflective, and was more constantly desirous of being kind, of learning and not hurting any one. Every day saw her more softened by Christophe's affection, his disinterestedness, and the purity of his heart: and she ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... these years is clearly evident, the method of habit formation may be briefly stated. First, secure the desired action; second, secure its successive repetition without a lapse, ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... controlling interest over him; but all sounds, from the soft breathings of the flute to the harsh grating of the corn-sheller, appeared to afford him exquisite enjoyment. His power of judging of the lapse of time was as remarkable as his power of remembering and imitating sounds. Those who are familiar with clocks that strike the hours, have observed, that, a few minutes before the clock strikes, there is a sharp sound different ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... messengers to summon Dr. Grey during the night, and she was not surprised when, some moments later, she heard his voice in the hall. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, his firm, well-known step approached and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Gravener asked. "That's precisely the question. She can't! As she has never yet caught her hare, never spied out her lucky impostor—how should she, with the life she has led?—her husband's intention has come very near lapsing. His idea, to do him justice, was that it SHOULD lapse if exactly the right person, the perfect mixture of genius and chill penury, should fail to turn up. Ah the poor dear woman's very particular—she says ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... its likeness. Rank abundance breeds In gross and pamper'd cities sloth and lust, And wantonness and gluttonous excess. In cities, vice is hidden with more ease, Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there Beyond th' achievement of successful flight. I do confess them nurs'ries of the arts, In which they flourish most; where, in the beams Of warm encouragement, and in the eye Of public note, they reach ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... proselyte who had found his God for himself. He believed as he drew his breath and as his heart beat, involuntarily and without any lapse. Never could a son of Israel have surrendered himself more eagerly to the law. Its good and its purposes were ever before his eyes, and his footsteps led in the paths that it lighted. Though he saw not the Lord in a burning bush nor talked with Him on Sinai, he found Him on the lonely uplands ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... accordance with an awful necessity, so that it is never in a sinner's power to promise himself 'It is only this one time that I will do the wrong thing. Let me have one lapse and I will abjure the evil for ever after.' We have to reckon with the tremendous power of habit, and to bethink ourselves that a man may never commit a given sin, but that if he has committed it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to pick and shovel, he worked as hard as ever in his life. He had a thousand irons in the fire, and they kept him busy. Representation work was expensive, and he was compelled to travel often over the various creeks in order to decide which claims should lapse and which should be retained. A quartz miner himself in his early youth, before coming to Alaska, he dreamed of finding the mother-lode. A placer camp he knew was ephemeral, while a quartz camp abided, and he ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... "old-fashioned" and "precocious" by people who had one set of words for their own use, and another for children. My parents considered, and I think rightly, that the best and most correct forms of speech should be taught to mere infants, that it is as easy to train a child to be grammatical as to let it lapse into all sorts of slovenly inaccuracies that must be unlearned at school, and in society. So, when they talked of "circumstantial evidence" I had a fair inkling of what the phrase conveyed. Preciosa was upon trial for misdemeanor, and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Spain. They had for seven centuries defied the power of different Christian sovereigns, who by unremitted efforts slowly and progressively regained those territories which had been suddenly wrested from their ancestors. Indeed, it required the lapse of ages and a series of successes, wrought by the exertions of many a distinguished warrior, to recover those possessions which had been thus lost by the weakness of a king, and the treason ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... that so long a period as a century and a half should have been allowed to lapse between Tasman's very remarkable voyage and Flinders' completion of the outline of Australia, and that three-quarters of a century should have separated the explorations of Dampier and Cook. Here, crooned over by her great gum forests, baring her broad breast of plains to the ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... much as I did before. I think he is nervous, he says he is not ill; but he is nervous and whimsical, and as men always are when they happen to be out of sorts, very positive; and of course the only thing that can quite undeceive him is the lapse of the time he has fixed for his prediction, as it is sure to pass without any tragic result of any sort. We shall then all see alike ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... he had heard still was heavy on him. It was true that in a manner inconceivable to any but a priest it lay apart altogether from his common consciousness: he had talked freely enough to Mr. Charnoc and the rest; he could not, even by a momentary lapse, allow what he knew to colour even the thoughts by which he dealt with men in ordinary life; for though it was true that no confession had been made, yet it was in virtue of his priesthood that he had been told so much. Yet there were moments when he walked alone, ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... thus left empty to deposit itself in an exact image of the wood it had eaten away. Molecule by molecule, in a mystery too small for human eye to detect, even had a watchful human eye been lying in wait to observe, the marvellous process went on; until, after the lapse of nobody knows how many centuries, the wood was gone, and in its place lay its exact image in stone,—rings of growth, individual peculiarities of structure, knots, broken slivers and chips; color, shape, all perfect. Men ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson |
