"Swifter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unseen track towards an unseen goal. Social development may be conscious or unconscious. It has been mostly unconscious in the past, and therefore slow, wasteful, and dangerous. If we desire it to be swifter, safer, and more effective in the future, it must become the conscious expression of the trained and organized will of a people not despising theory as unpractical, but using it ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... me. We then rejoined the rest of the party, and the engine having received its supply of water, the carriage was placed behind it, for it cannot turn, and was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five miles an hour, swifter than a bird flies (for they tried the experiment with a snipe). You cannot conceive what that sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible, too. I could either have read or written; and as it was, I stood up, and with my bonnet off 'drank the air ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... return he went out with his followers, but nothing could be seen or heard of the girl. The buffaloes sallied out into the plains, and had not gone far by the light of the moon, when they were attacked by a party of hunters. Many of them fell, but the buffalo-king, being stronger and swifter than the others, escaped, and, flying to the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... horse! to horse! my coal-black steed Paws the ground and snuffs the air! There's not a foal of Arab's breed 550 More knows whom he must bear; On the hill he will not tire, Swifter as it waxes higher; In the marsh he will not slacken, On the plain be overtaken; In the wave he will not sink, Nor pause at the brook's side to drink; In the race he will not pant, In the combat he'll not faint; On the stones he will not stumble, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of vibrating like an elastic body, making a definite number of such vibrations per second, the degree of elasticity depending upon the rate of vibration. The swifter the rotation, the more rigid and ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... he my inbred enemy Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart, Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death! Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resounded Death! I fled; but he pursued (though more, it seems, Inflamed with lust than rage), and, swifter far, Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed, And, in embraces forcible and foul Engendering with me, of that rape begot These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry Surround me, as thou saw'st—hourly conceived And hourly born, with sorrow infinite To me; for, when they list, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... said to his Mother, "You are larger than a dog, and swifter, and more used to running, and you have your horns as a defense; why, then, O Mother! do the hounds frighten you so?" She smiled, and said: "I know full well, my son, that all you say is true. I have the advantages you mention, but when I ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... an infinitesimal fraction of a second, against the light of two flaring and guttering candles, through a blue, pungent, thin haze which made his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he had imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an enormous and distorted shadow upon the wall. Swifter than a flash of lightning followed the impression of his constrained, toppling attitude—the shoulders projecting forward, the head sunk low upon the breast. Then he distinguished the arms behind his back, and wrenched so terribly that the two clenched fists, lashed together, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... for his country dies, Since death pursues the coward as he flies! The youth in vain would fly from Fate's attack; With trembling knees, and Terror at his back; Though Fear should lend him pinions like the wind, Yet swifter Fate will seize him from behind. Virtue repulsed, yet knows not to repine; But shall with unattainted honour shine; Nor stoops to take the staff, nor lays it down, Just as the rabble please to smile or frown. Virtue, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... agreed. "It's swifter, and if we have any luck at all, it's a pretty good contraption to get away in after we have gained our information. Now about clothes. Shall we keep ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... and the old hen and her chickens still with their bills in the dough, which Elster threw out to them as we were climbing the fence. And now, Sprigg, don't you see that with these red moccasins on your feet you are as swift as a young wild goose, if not swifter? Better still, you are no more to be seen in them, even when met by your own father, face to face—no more to be seen than the thin air you stand in! Then, what can catch you? What can hurt you? Sprigg, this is fine! It is splendid! Only see how high the sun is, and we already here at the ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... these high and deep things for the ministers who are paid to understand and explain them, and attend to matters more within thy scope.' And then he went on to tell of a far better way to get rid of the burden that meddlesome men brought on themselves by reading that book too much—a far better and swifter way than attempting the wicket-gate. 'Thou wilt never be settled in thy mind till thou art rid of that burden, nor canst thou enjoy the blessings of wife and child as long as that burden lies so heavy upon thee.' That was so true that it made the pilgrim look ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... our hearts with perfect love; In us the work of faith fulfil: So not heaven's host shall swifter move, Than we on earth to do ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... she cast one deprecating glance, swifter than lightning, at him she had disinherited, and then she turned her face to marble. In vain did curious looks explore her to detect the delight such a stroke of fortune would have given to themselves. Faulty, but great of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... size of vessels and their swifter trips under steam, have had the effect of depopulating the ocean, even in established trade routes. In the old days of ocean travel the meeting of a ship at sea was an event long to be remembered. The faint speck on the horizon, discernible only through the captain's ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... digression. Saadi gives this whimsical piece of advice to a pugnacious fellow: "Be sure, either that thou art stronger than thine enemy, or that thou hast a swifter pair of heels." And he relates a droll story in illustration of the use and abuse of the phrase, "For the sake of God," which is so frequently in the mouths of Muslims: A harsh-voiced man was reading the Kuran in a loud tone. A pious ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... we felt the earth trembling behind us, and soon afterwards the distant bellowing mixed up with the roaring and sharper cries of other animals, were borne down unto our ears. The atmosphere grew oppressive and heavy, while the flames, swifter than the wind, appeared raging upon the horizon. The fleeter game of all kinds now shot past us like arrows; deer were bounding over the ground, in company with wolves and panthers; droves of elks and antelopes passed swifter than a dream; then a solitary ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... said the Antelope. 'Happy bird! to whom the air is given for an inheritance, and whose flight is swifter than the wind. At your will you alight upon the ground, at your will you sweep into the sky, and fly races with the driving clouds; while I, poor I, am bound a prisoner to this miserable earth, and wear out my pitiable life crawling to and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... that the good news might be conveyed to those worlds by angels, just as the good news is made known in our world by men. The same principle would hold. In the one case there would be a wider application of the message than in the other; that is the main difference. And when we think of the swifter and easier movements of angels, even that difference ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... not hear me: and away he went, at a tremendous speed, hatless, and his long gray-tinted hair streaming in the wind. It was absolutely necessary to follow. I therefore directed Elsworthy's horse, a much swifter and more peaceful animal than Dutton's, to be brought out; and as soon as I got into the high country road, I too dashed along at a rate much too headlong to be altogether pleasant. The evening was clear and bright, and I now and then caught a distant sight of Dutton, who was going at a frantic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... commander-in-chief would not disgrace us by yielding to his claim, and 't is for us to prove that he was right. We have shown the French artillerists that we can serve our guns quicker and more accurately; now let us see if we cannot prove ourselves the swifter and steadier at this work. Let the sergeants see to it that each man in his file has a piece of paper in his hat, and that each has removed the flint from his gun. I want you to carry the redoubt without a shot, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... semblance, in no mould Of beautiful proportion cast; his limbs Nothing exalted, but with sinews braced Of Chalybaean temper, agile, lithe, And swifter than the roe; his ample chest Was overbrowed by a gigantic head, With eyes keen, deeply sunk, and small, that gleam'd Strangely in wrath, as though some spirit unclean Within that corporal tenement installed ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... lightened and Royal went steady As a water bound seaward set free from an eddy, As a water sucked downward to leap at a weir Sucked swifter and swifter till it shoot ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... feet are fire, On his lips the name of Daphne, in his eyes a great desire; Fond, full lips of lord and lover, sad because of suit denied; Clear, grey eyes made keen by passion, panting, pained, unsatisfied. Here he turned, and there he halted, now he paused, and now he flew, Swifter than his sister's arrows, through soft dells of dreamy dew. Vext with gleams of Ladon's daughter, dashed along the son of Jove, Fast upon flower-trammelled Daphne fleeting on from grove to grove; Flights of seawind hard behind him, breaths of bleak and whistling straits; Drifts ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... With transport views the airy rule his own, And swells on an imaginary throne. 450 Fain would he cast a tedious age away, And live out all in one triumphant day. He chides the lazy progress of the sun, And bids the year with swifter motion run: With anxious hopes his craving mind is toss'd And all his joys in length ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... other floods as is the sea Vouru-kasha, so much above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and fairness is this Law, this fiend-destroying Law of Zarathustra. As much as a great stream flows swifter than a slender rivulet, so much above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and fairness is this Law, this fiend-destroying Law of Zarathustra. As high as the great tree stands above the small plants it overshadows, so high above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... whose prickly touch kills, and whose breath is sharper than swords. Then they passed through the dwellings of the horse-headed and vulture-headed giants—monsters terrible to see. Skirnir hid his face, and the horse flew along swifter than the wind. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... us a name to stir the blood With a warmer glow and a swifter flood, At the touch of a courage that conquers fear,— A name like the sound of a trumpet, clear, And silver-sweet, and iron-strong, That calls three million men to their feet, Ready to march, and steady ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... silent, still, and brooding. Strickland observed with some wonder its power of long, concentrated thinking. It sat there, not visibly tense, seemingly relaxed, yet as evidently looking into some place of inner motion, wider and swifter than that of the night world about it. Strickland tried to read. The clock hand ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... hear me, madam. By Heaven! but you carry it off easily!" cried the young cavalier, setting off at speed, as if to follow her. "But you must run swifter than a roe if you look to 'scape me;" and with the words, he attempted to rush past Raoul, of whom he affected, although he knew him well, to take ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... through more space or with, a greater number of motions in the same time. To accelerate is to increase the speed of action or of motion. A motion whose speed increases upon itself is said to be accelerated, as the motion of a falling body, which becomes swifter with every second of time. To accelerate any work is to hasten it toward a finish, commonly by quickening all its operations in orderly unity toward the result. To despatch is to do and be done with, to get a thing off one's hands. To despatch an enemy is to kill ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... from side to side. "I can't!" he groaned, with a swifter recurrence of the sob-like convulsions. "I'm dying for ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... sailing, or on the voyage, the Medusa shall be found to be a swifter sailer than the Saale, he will go on board the Medusa, and captains Philibert and Ponce will ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... body wrapped us round As twain in one: we left behind The league-long murmur of the shore And fleeted swifter than the wind. ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... "hurry," while the rest seemed equally disposed to be "late." A few fatherly words from the prince of modern coaches soon had the desired effect of placing matters on a more completely satisfactory footing. The suggestion often made in these columns that a swifter rate of striking should be introduced, was acted upon. The boat moved with perfect evenness, while the wavelets played round her like young dolphins out for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... rise at last, Craft's kingdom now is past; Brook no delay! Lombard blades long ago, Swifter than whirlwinds blow, Swept from Milan the foe: Why ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... themselves as rather English than Irish. The last fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce, and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible, have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has become more and more the habit of the richer class in Ireland to go to England for its enjoyment, and to ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... apple-tree boughs in Harold Thornton's yard, Charlie, Eddie, and little Phil sang, "We three kings of Orient are," while the others joined in the chorus. At the song's close, the superintendent, swifter of foot than the pastor, overtook them with a ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... city of my friends with eager blaze of song, swifter than high-bred steed or winged ship will send everywhere these tidings, so be it that my hand is blessed at all in labouring in the choice garden of the Graces; for they give all ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... bubbling in a lofty glee, with blue eyes answering this icy brilliance as they dazzle back from the tawny countenance, with every muscle rippling grace and vigor to meet the proud volition, lithely cutting the air, swifter than the swallow's wing in its arrowy precision, careless as the floating flake in effortless motion, skimming along the lucid sheathing that answers his ringing heel with a tune of its own, and swaying in his almost aerial medium, lightly, easily, as the swimming fish sways ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... do it. And, in fact, blazing to and fro in that excited rather than luminous condition, could not do anything; except retire into the strong posts of the background; and send express on express, swifter than the wind if you can, to a victorious King overturning the Dutch Barrier: 'Help, your Majesty, or we are lost; and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and pebbles in their beds by torrential tributaries during the floods. [Footnote: The extent of the overflow and the violence of the current in river- floods are much affected by the amount of sedimentary matter let fall in their channels by their affluents, which have usually a swifter flow than the main stream, and consequently deposit more or less of their transported material when they join its more slowly-moving waters. Such deposits constitute barriers which at first check the current and raise its level, and of course its violence at lower points is augmented, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... to greater effort and the animal responded nobly. For a moment he kept pace with Hal's swifter mount. ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... upon his horse's neck, and swifter than the wind the gallant horse swept on and on, and it was not long until he was bounding over the enchanted moor. Wherever his hoofs struck the ground, grass and flowers sprang up, and great trees with leafy ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... on the point of accepting the invitation, but a thought intervened—and thought is swifter than the lightning-flash. He knew from slight, but sufficient, experience that the spouters could send only one messenger of death at a time, and that before another could be spouted, some sort of manipulation which took ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... increased, both physically and intellectually. I experienced a buoyancy of spirits and a vigour of body I had never known before. I felt a pleasure in action. My blood seemed to rush warmer and swifter through my veins, and I fancied that my eyes reached to a more distant vision. I could look boldly upon the sun without quivering in ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... She rose quietly, and looked out towards the city. The black flag from the Alamo and the Missions hung above it. She looked at the ominous standards, and then the tears sprang to her eyes; she lifted her face and her hands to heaven, and a few words, swifter than light, sprang from her soul into the ear of the Eternal ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... do. I enjoy hangings, particularly of converts to the evangelical faiths. The crunch of a cockroach is music to my ears. But when the day comes to turn the prisoners of the zoo out of their cages, if it is only to lead them to the swifter, kinder knife of the schochet, I shall be present and rejoicing, and if any one present thinks to suggest that it would be a good plan to celebrate the day by shooting the whole zoo faculty, I shall have a revolver in my pocket and a sound eye ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... swimming. As I swam I looked over my shoulder. The two men were following me, both swimming easily. Dr. Pettit was in the lead, but Harry Underwood, with powerful strokes, was not far behind him. I concluded that Dr. Pettit had been the swifter runner, but that the other ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Then the race became straight away up the valley. Diablo was cold and Sol was hot; therein lay the only handicap and vantage. It was a fleet, beautiful, magnificent race. Gale thrilled and exulted and yelled as his horse settled into a steadily swifter run and began to gain. The dust rolled in a funnel-shaped cloud from the flying hoofs. The raider wheeled with gun puffing white, and Ladd ducked low over the neck of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... devouring each, other; forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... advance behind him hides his wings, And seems to creep decrepit with his age. Behold him when past by! What then is seen But his proud pinions, swifter ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... running from him during his pursuit, separated in different directions and fled to the bottom of the sea. But while the Dnieper was rushing along in anger, he drove his way between steep banks. Therefore is it that his flow is swifter than that of the Volga and the Dvina; therefore also is it that he has many ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... providing social relations and an interchange of ideas, but it surpasses them in the large scale of its activities. It presents many of the same social characteristics that they do, but geared in each case for higher speed. Its activities are swifter and more varied. Its associations are more numerous and kaleidoscopic. Its people are less independent than in the country; control, economic and political, is more pervasive, even though crude in method. Change ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... explained as exceedingly chalah or swift. Achalah is nasti chalo yasmat; hence chaleshu (api) achalah is swift amongst the swift, or swifter than the swiftest. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... outlying provinces. It was the one chance that part of Rajputana had to get together, and the Rajputs swarmed to the tournament—along the main trunk road that the English had reconstructed in early days for the swifter movement of their guns. (It did not follow any particular trade route, although trade had found its way afterward ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Swifter than spoken words, swift as the strokes of an electric fan, the wings beat the air. Swish-h-h! long-drawn out, crescendo, yet crescendo as, razor-keen, irresistible, those same invisible wings cut it through and through; while, answering the primitive challenge, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... when we heard the clatter of hoofs without. The firing ceased, and we saw through the smoke four squadrons of lancers dashing like a troop of lions through the midst of the Austrians. All yielded before them. The Kaiserliks fled, but the long, blue lances, with their red pennons, were swifter than they, and many a white coat was pierced from behind. The lancers were Poles—the most terrible warriors I have ever seen, and, to speak truth, our friends, and our brothers. They never turned from us in our hour of need; they gave us the ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... their labors was, accordingly, as narrow as the pathway of the faithful into the Mahometan paradise,—so slender, indeed, that Blondin should have been selected as the only candidate who could hope to keep his balance on it, with the torrent of events rushing ever swifter and louder below. It might sustain the somewhat light Unionism of Mr. Pendleton, but would General McClellan dare to trust its fragile footing, with his Report and his West Point oration, with his record, in short, under his arm? Without these documents General ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... "Swifter than a whirlwind, flies the leaden death."—Hervey. "'Be all the dead forgot,' said Foldath's bursting wrath. 'Did not I ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... The closely-draped windows wide open are flung; The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light, Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night. Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly; Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts eddy by; And swifter and lighter, but somewhat too plain, Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... own halo round its head; and where the eye is carried by the clearness of the air over the blue of the farthest horizon, without finding one wreath of mist, or one shadowy cloud, to check the distinctness of the impression; the mental emotions excited are richer, and deeper, and swifter than could be awakened by the noblest hills of the earth, unconnected with ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... thou, so swiftly flying? My name is Love, the child replied: Swifter I pass than south-winds sighing, Or streams, through summer vales that glide. And who art thou, his flight pursuing? 'Tis cold Neglect whom now you see: The little god you there are viewing, Will die, if ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... pushing Quart and Tierce, keep the Wrist in Tierce, in order to push Quart the swifter, which is a Fault; because they accustom themselves to a Situation, which, when they come to assault, is unsafe and dangerous, for want of being in the ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... glass doors MORRIS can be seen marching backwards and forwards with swifter and ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... broad lands, jewels, elephants, villages; the esteem of my people, the love of my father and of my mother, of whom I am the only son. All of which is nothing, nothing compared with my love for thee. A love as virgin as the snow upon the Everlasting Hills, swifter than Mother Ganges, deeper than the Indian Ocean, and higher than the vault of heaven. What matter custom, or law, or regulation, or colour, when such a love as mine is offered? Thou as my wife, thou, and thy children my only children. Am I not beautiful? even ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the heavy boat and drew it onward, swifter and swifter. At first Helen was not afraid. She saw the banks slipping by on either hand, and was now so far from the Gypsies, that she would have been glad to get ashore. Yet she did not think herself in ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... plain; some have faded back into the desert they lined; and more than one has been shod with steel. But along them all flit and brood the memory-ghosts of old, rich-coloured days. To the shout of teamster, the yell of savage, the creaking of tented ox-cart, and the rattle of the swifter mail-coach, there go dim shapes of those who had thrilled to that call of the West;—strong, brave men with the far look in their eyes, with those magic rude tools of the pioneer, the rifle and the axe; women, too, equally heroic, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... wave-ward, Mounting again like an arrow-shaft, Circling, swaying, wheeling, dipping, All with never a flap of wing, Keeping pace with my flying ship here, Give me a key to my wondering! Gales but serve thee for swifter flying, Foam crested waves with thy wings thou dost sweep, Wonderful dun-colored, down-covered body, Living thy life on the face of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Materials of Musick in the Tones and Measure. For the infinite Variety Composition admits of, can be nothing else, but higher or lower Tones, stronger or softer Sounds, with a slower or swifter Motion. The Artist, by an harmonious Mixture of these, makes the Musick either strong and martial, brisk and airy, grave and solemn, ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... have told you, citizens, what my duty bade me tell you in the conditions of to-day: beware of indirect and alarmist impressions, beware of those who spread them. Trust in the valour of our armies and the fidelity of their leaders. ... Let not Europe say: 'The Pole is swift to enthusiasm, swifter to discouragement.' Rather let the nations say: 'The Poles are valiant in resolution, unterrified in ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... been it was no swifter than that of the closely-hooded stranger. He was as tall as Dupont, and about him there was an ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... Dave's fist cut Henley's lip a bit. But that indignity stirred the first class man to swifter, keener efforts. He failed to score heavily on the fourth class man, however; but, just before the call time for the first round Henley's nose stopped a blow from Darrin's fist, and first ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... work went on. The men, whitened by the indoor life of the winter, were beginning to take on a bronze tan. Muscles hardened and become more springy. Running legs improved. The pitchers were sending in swifter balls, Joe included. The fungo batters were sending up better flies. The training ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... silent room where late she played, Setting a steady course toward the light, Swifter than thistledown the little shade, Reft from the nooks that she had made her own And from the love that sheltered, fared alone Forth through the gloomy spaces of the night, Until at last she lit before the gate Where all the suppliant ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... Death, playing on a ducimer. Behind him, A poor old woman, with a rosary, Follows the sound, and seems to wish her feet Were swifter to o'ertake him. Underneath, The inscription reads, "Better is Death ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... came over the Mount to swim in the river, and saw you in the distance among your sheep, there was a swifter river running through all my body. When I came every April to ask for your cherry-tree, what did it matter to me that it was not in bloom? for all my heart was wild with bloom, ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... instant a gasp rose to his lips, and died there. Scarcely a dozen paces from him stood a poised and hooded figure, a squat, fire-eyed apparition that looked more like monster than man in that first glance. Something acted within him that was swifter than reason—a sub-conscious instinct that works for self-preservation like the flash of powder in a pan. It was this sub-conscious self that received the first photographic impression—the strange poise of the hooded creature, ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... bend, where the rocks again began to come together, we were in the beginning of the next canyon of the series, two years before named Stillwater. At the suggestion of Beaman, the bend was called Bonito. On leaving our camp at this place the walls rapidly ran up, the current grew swifter, but the river remained smooth. The canyon was exceedingly "close," the rocks rising vertically from the edge of the water. There were few places where a landing could be made, but luckily no landing was necessary, except for night. The darkness ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... said. "When you see me pull, you must pull, too, and you must be very quick, for the nearer we get to the cascade the swifter runs the current. On a calm day I could save you, there wouldn't be a bit of fear; but on a rough day, in a storm like this, I mightn't be able to manage it. Now then, a strong pull, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the theatre, which had been closed since the commencement of the war, was to be opened that night only, with the tragedy of Gustavus, and close with a representation of Burgoyne's capture, and some other recent events of the American war. To "wing the hours with swifter speed," Alonzo determined to go to the theatre, and at the hour appointed ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... abstain, but he must wear The sacred ring wherewith she was endow'd, When first religious chastity she vow'd; Which made his love through Sestos to be known, And thence unto Abydos sooner blown Than he could sail; for incorporeal Fame, Whose weight consists in nothing but her name, Is swifter than the wind, whose tardy plumes Are reeking water and dull earthly fumes. Home when he came, he seem'd not to be there, But, like exiled air thrust from his sphere, Set in a foreign place; and straight from thence, Alcides-like, by mighty violence, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... until they turned into the level county road and then swifter that they might come into Hill's Corners before it was midnight. When at last the twinkling lights of Dead Man's Alley winked at them Comstock struck a match ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... parting gondola was accompanied by no other sound than the usual washing of the water. In speechless agony Don Camillo saw the boat glide, swifter and swifter at each stroke of the oars, along the canal, and then whirling round the angle of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... would be on the lines of the Red Cloud but it would be smaller and lighter and would also be capable of swifter motion. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... ill-disciplined servants, a wife in a wrapper and a bad humour, to go to a place where everything is nice, comfortable, elegant (in a land where the orange tree blossoms, where the breeze is softer and the bird swifter of wing). ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... Sage, purse thy happy flight, With swifter motion haste to purer light, Where Bacon waits with Newton and with Boyle To hail thy genius, and applaud thy toil; Where intuition breaks through time and space, And mocks experiment's successive race; Sees tardy Science toil at Nature's laws, And wonders ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... allowance. The story is current, at any rate, though I believe that strict history will not bear it out, that the only bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the limits of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and swifter, and asserts its title to be called a river. Compared with the other tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears to have been properly named Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most part, it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scattered oaks, where the cranberry is ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... ancestors. But—and this was what Peisistratos with great insight saw—Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city. The country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed aristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts and consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not inherited, wealth, tends towards democracy. Peisistratos left the Dionysia "in the fields," but he added the ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... whom hound did ne'er pursue, Nor swifter greyhound follow, Whose feet ne'er tainted morning dew, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... began in carefully chosen Spanish, "nor shall thy kingly gift remain unrequited. Listen, oh Torquam! On yonder vessel I carry steeds like those of which I told you. For a journey over the mountains of the north we have brought them. One there is, swifter of foot than all the rest. Him will I cause my men to lower into the boat and bring to you after our ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... hearts of men: Though in Nirvana or the Heavenly courts The principle of beauty shall persist, Its body of poetry, as the body of man, Is but a terrene form, a terrene use, That swifter being will not loiter with; And, when mankind is dead and the world cold, Poetry's immortality ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... at a sufficient distance [and I shall raise my voice urging her swifter flight, that you may guess at that] then open the door with your key: but you must be sure to open it very cautiously, lest we should not be far enough off. I would not have her know you have a hand in this matter, out of my great ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... early, to visit a great marabout in the neighbourhood. This will enable us to apply ourselves closely to the languages, all day long. Occupied as I am with Soudanese and Bornouese, all the days fly away swifter than arrows shot by the most expert archers. En-Noor is expected to return in the course of four or five days. We have now all the village of Tintalous with us. It is Tintalous ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... fish have a wonderful way of changing colour. Put them on light sand, and they become lightish. Put them on dark sand and pebbles, and they soon match it by becoming brown and mottled. This is a most useful dodge where so many enemies abound, all swifter in the water than the slow-swimming ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... the water like a shot—swifter and swifter. He came close to the rock. The Goat leaned over and gave him one of her hoofs to help him ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... was well: scene, Italy, Renaissance; colour, purely imaginary of course, my own unregenerate idea of what Italy then was. O, when shall I find the story of my dreams, that shall never halt nor wander nor step aside, but go ever before its face, and ever swifter and louder, until the pit receives it, roaring? The Portfolio paper will be about Scotland and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down great branches, from time to time, which choked up the current and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages, there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in an outer ring, the bearers, the palanquin being the center of the circles described by these solemn dancers, whose pace, little by little, quickened, whose gestures grew sudden, strange, frantic, as the motion became swifter and swifter, until at length the whirl became so rapid that the dancers seemed to fly by with the speed of a mill-wheel, and amid a general clapping of hands, and universal wonder, these strange performers ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the tactics of the swifter schooner, was now tacking about with the intention of bringing the gun to bear upon her once more as she attempted to slip by. But Captain Jack in his new-fanned fury had made up his mind to a desperate cast ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... to have won the victory in a fight with Chinese pirates. The pirates carried a long-barreled bronze cannon which shot better than the rough cast-iron cannons of which the Mentor had a few on board. Besides, the pirate boat was much swifter, so that our Swinemuende trader soon found itself in a bad position. But the captain was equal to the emergency. He had all his heavy cannons moved to one side of the ship, then purposely moderated his speed, in order to make it easier for his ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... About the wood, goe swifter then the winde, And Helena of Athens looke thou finde. All fancy sicke she is, and pale of cheere, With sighes of loue, that costs the fresh bloud deare. By some illusion see thou bring her heere, Ile charme his eyes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... for any man with a drop of warm blood flowing through his veins, not to feel a quicker heart-beat, a swifter pulse, at the entrancing, half-melancholy, half-mocking sweetness she ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the hill, stands the large pear-tree, a quarter of a mile from this. I shall run by the left, round past the fir-ground; thou canst try it by the right, over the fields; so we do not meet till we get up, and then we shall see which of us is the swifter." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage. A sudden sharp cry of "Surrender!" The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes—a few faltering steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan's life-blood stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic gossips ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... second, ere the swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with a young man of mean and slouching attire. For some five or six exchanges they conversed together with an animated air; then the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young lady, with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps towards Challoner. He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; her ankle, as she hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements eloquent of speed and youth; and though he still entertained some thoughts ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... English men of war: but when we came within shot of her, we tooke downe our white flagge, and spread abroad the Crosse of S. George, which when they saw, it made them to flie as fast as they might, but all their haste was in vaine, for our shippes were swifter of saile then they, which they fearing, did presently cast their ordinance and small shot with many letters, and the draft of the Straights of Magelan into the Sea, [Sidenote: Pedro Sarmiento the governour of the Straights of Magellan taken prisoner.] and thereupon immediately ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... tears soften this dull, pale woe; We must sit and face it with dry, sad eyes. If we seek to hold it, the swifter joy flies— We can only be ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... water-logged and lower in the water, the raft was beginning to go faster, for the current had suddenly become swifter. The wind blew stronger; it swept through the narrow passage-way so briskly that Toby put his hat over the candle; but he was too late; the light wavered and went out. A groan went ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... as in old times the little skiff flew over the water, in the shadow of the mountain and the sunlight of the bay, coasting the shores, making acquaintance with the evergreens and oaks that skirted them and looked over into the water's edge. Where once Elizabeth had gone, Winthrop and Winnie with swifter and surer progress went; many an hour, in the early and the late sunbeams. For those weeks that they stayed, they lived in the beauties of the land, rather than according to old Karen's wish, on the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the lonely thought Of a sage, a mountain-dweller, But swifter far was their rush Thro' the awful cold and the hush ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... our different needs, he has adopted every shape and been able infinitely to vary the faculties, the aptitudes which he places at our disposal. Is he to aid us in the pursuit of game in the plains? His legs lengthen inordinately, his muzzle tapers, his lungs widen, he becomes swifter than the deer. Does our prey hide under wood? The docile genius of the species, forestalling our desires, presents us with the basset, a sort of almost footless serpent, which steals into the closest thickets. Do we ask that he should ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ours," says an Arab author, "had to cross the Chott one day; it was composed of a thousand baggage camels. Unfortunately one of the beasts strayed from the path, and all the others followed it. Nothing in the world could be swifter than the manner in which the crust yielded and engulphed them; then it became like what it was before, as if the thousand baggage camels had never existed." Yet it is traversed in several directions, and if you strain your eyes from these ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... she murmured again, half breathlessly, as I drew her with swifter and more voluptuous motion into the vortex of the dancers. "You tried to be cold, but I knew I could make you love me—yes, love me passionately—and I was right." Then with an outburst of triumphant vanity she added, "I believe ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... cried out Death ... I fled, but he pursued, (though more, it seems, Inflamed with lust than rage), and swifter far, Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed, And in embraces forcible and foul, Ingendering with me, of that rape begot These yelling monsters, that with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... footstool. He came from the top of glory to the bottom of humiliation, and changed a circumference seraphic for a circumference diabolic. Once waited on by angels, now hissed at by brigands. From afar and high up He came down; past meteors swifter than they; by starry thrones, Himself more lustrous; past larger worlds to smaller worlds; down stairs of firmaments, and from cloud to cloud, and through tree-tops and into the earners stall, to thrust ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... more weight than his horses can draw. Our journey would be swifter, if we started with less each morning. We can not hasten God's purposes. Growth is slow; feverish action is disease. The throbbing pulse is beating away our vital forces, not adding to life, and yet how many do we behold, who, working in this unhealthy ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... ahead, and how deep down, and how high up it flashes, and there is instantaneous revelation of mountain peak and wild beasts hieing themselves to their caverns and cascades a thousand feet tall, or clinging in white terror to the precipices! But more intense, more far-reaching, more sudden, swifter and more tremendous is the headlight of an advancing Judgment Day, under which all the most hidden affairs of life shall come to discovery and arraignment. I quote an overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which I put the whole emphasis on the word "secret." ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... cheek bones the skin was drawn so tightly that it shone, and the cheeks fell away into cadaverous hollows. But the lips, beneath the shag of grey beard, were tightly compressed. No, this was not sleep. It carried, as Byrne gazed, a connotation of swifter, fiercer thinking, than if the gaunt old man had stalked the floor and poured forth a ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... bang, bang of a terrible gun, and down fell Mr. Quack just as we had seen so many fall before. It was awful. There was Mr. Quack flying in front of me on swift, strong wings, and there never was a swifter, stronger flier or a handsomer Duck than Mr. Quack, and then all in the wink of an eye he was tumbling helplessly down, down to the water below, and I was flying on alone, for the other Ducks turned off, and ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... "thrown into a brook dams it not, but swells the current only to make it run swifter. What will ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... never abler for fight" (insists Schmettau), which indeed seems to have been the fact on every small occasion;—"but fatally forbidden to try." Not so fatally perhaps, had Schmettau looked beyond his epaulettes: was not the thing, by that slow method, got done? By the swifter method, awakening a new Seven-Years business, how infinitely ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... about each other. But I wanted her blessing on my career and I could not help asking for it. Unless a man is unnaturally selfish he needs to work for some one else than himself, and I am sure I shall run a smoother and swifter course for knowing that that fine creature is waiting, at Northampton, for news of my greatness. If ever I am a dull companion and over-addicted to moping, remember in justice to me that I am in love and that my sweetheart is five ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... went to the battle, When a score of miles away, He has come to the feast and banquet, By the iron horse to-day. Its pace is not much swifter Than the pace of that famous steed Which bore him down to the contest And saved the day ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Thought travels swifter than anything else in the created world. So Madge's thoughts had reached the upper world before she followed them. She wondered if the girls would be very sadly disappointed when she returned bearing, instead of a costly pearl, nothing but ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... the monster; brush back your hair; inhale the wind largely; lucky are all men with dome-like foreheads; luckless those with pippin-heads; loud lungs are a blessing; a lion is no lion that can not roar.' Says Aldina, 'There are those looking on, who know themselves to be swifter of foot than the racers, but are confounded with the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... from the Charmer I'm confin'd, My Breast is tortur'd with impatient Fires; Fly, my Rain-Deer, fly swifter than the Wind, Thy tardy Feet wing with my ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... became fainter and fainter and died away, and again all was silence and impenetrable night, while I battled with the strong suction of the unseen current, which was growing swifter and swifter, and felt my ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... present purpose. As nearly half of his effects were in the canoe of Whiskey Centre, the task was soon performed, and lucky it was for our hero that he had bethought him of the prudence of the measure. His sole object had been to render the canoe swifter and lighter, in the event of a chase; but, as things turned out, he saved no small portion of his property by using the precaution. The Indians found nothing in the canoe, but one rifle, with a horn and pouch, a few light articles belonging to the bee-hunter's ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... succession of "current events" long since gone stale out where the world moved swifter than here in the mountains, and he felt as though he had come once more into close touch with life. All the dull months he had spent with Cash and the burros dwarfed into a pointless, irrelevant incident of his life. He felt that he ought to be out in the world, ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... help your longing, signior, let your imagination be swifter than a pair of oars: and by this, suppose Puntarvolo, Brisk, Fungoso, and the dog, arrived at the court-gate, and going up to the great chamber. Macilente and Sogliardo, we'll leave them on the water, till possibility ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... what countless woes are mine! All our host is in decline; Weaponless my spirit lies. Earth her gracious fruits denies; Women wail in barren throes; Life on life downstriken goes, Swifter than the wind bird's flight, Swifter than the Fire-God's might, To the ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... It was incredible that I had ever even fancied myself content. My brain was still in a whirl, but it seemed to me that I was already conscious of new powers. My thoughts travelled more quickly, I felt a greater alertness of brain, a swifter rush of ideas. But it seemed to me, also, that something had gone, that never again would I find my way lie through ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lions, for I fear This soul of mine they will in pieces tear. Come, then, and let us both expostulate The case betwixt us, till we animate And kindle in our hearts that burning love To Christ, to grace, to life, that we may move Swifter than eagles to this blessed prey; Then shall it be well with us in that day The trump shall sound, the dead made rise, and stand, Then to receive, for breach of God's command, Such thunder-claps as these, Depart from me Into hell-fire, you that the wicked be, Prepared for the devil, and for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... what he was doing, almost as if a will swifter than his own were at work, he had sprung upon Hunt-Goring and struck him a ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... from the stinging of the sweet wind in his face, that Nagger was being pulled along at a tremendous pace. The faithful black could never have made the wind cut so. Lower the wild stallion stretched and swifter he ran, till it seemed to Slone that death must end that ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... lions were they in the field; Like eagles they never knew fear; As dark autumn clouds were the studs of their shield, And swifter ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Progress was swifter the next day. The prosecuting attorney, apparently believing that he had made his case, dismissed many of his remaining witnesses who had nothing to testify to in fact. When he announced that the state rested, there was a murmur and rustling in the room, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... a little swifter, and though there was plenty of swampy land down by its banks, it seemed as if we were getting into a more elevated region, the margin being higher, and here and there quite precipitous, but it was always more beautiful, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... marts too small for the crowd of buyers and sellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificial rivers joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports, streets better lighted, houses better furnished, richer wares exposed to sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling along smoother roads. He had, indeed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his boyhood with the Edinburgh of his old age. His prediction remains to posterity, a memorable instance of the weakness from which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... if the weight of the wheel be equal to the pressure on the piston, its velocity must be such as it would acquire by falling through a height equal to from 2-1/2 to 6 times the stroke, according to the purpose for which the engine is intended. If a very equable motion is required, a heavier or swifter fly wheel ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... mounted on her milk-white steed, She's ta'en true Thomas up behind; And aye, whene'er her bridle rung, The steed flew swifter than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... blew landward up the firth, yet the carline's root went in the teeth of the wind, and belike it sailed swifter than might have been looked for ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... fortunes are and slow— Hopes are unsure, desires ascend and swell, Suspense, expectancy in me rebel— But swifter to depart than tigers go. Tepid and dark shall be the cold pure snow, The ocean dry, its fish on mountains dwell, The sun set in the East, by that old well Alike whence Tigris and Euphrates flow, Ere in this strife I peace or truce ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... can wade in the shallows of his own mind and not wet his shoe-tops finds a sweet melancholy and a stimulating freshness in the thought that time is short. John Lyly said, 'There is nothing more swifter than time, nothing more sweeter,'—and countless Elizabethan gentlemen and ladies underscored that sentence, or transferred it to their commonplace books,—if they had such painful aids to culture,—and ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the king!' but as he listened to the cries, a vision, swifter than lightning, flashed across his brain. He saw himself seated on a throne, spending his life trying, and never succeeding, to make poor people rich; miserable people happy; bad people good; never ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... after; and he will have as it were the shadow of the true constellation, and of the double dance, which was circling the point where I was; because it is as much beyond our wont as the motion of the heaven which outspeeds all the rest is swifter than the movement of the Chiana.[5] There was sung riot Bacchus, not Paean, but three Persons in a divine nature, and it and the human in one Person. The singing and the revolving completed each its measure, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... who drops out receives a beating. Fiercer and swifter becomes the dance until in the height of the wildest part a number of dogs spring forward on their leashes, so frightening the savages that they flee in terror. The player seems to be amused yet startled at the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... he replied, in a low, strained whisper; "don't move a muscle for your life, Mr Grenvile, until I tell you, sir. The brig's still alongside, and that unhung villain of a skipper's standin' on the rail, holdin' on to a swifter, and lookin' down on our decks as though, even now, he ain't quite satisfied that his work ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to her father, and it was this store which they were now consuming, not rapidly, indeed, but steadily, and with no immediate return in money to repair the waste. The fact kept Maxwell wakeful at night sometimes, and by day he shuddered inwardly at the shrinkage of his savings, so much swifter than their growth, though he was generously abetted by Louise in using them with frugality. She could always have had money from her father, but this was something that Maxwell would not look forward to. There could be no real anxiety for them in the situation, but for Maxwell there was ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the sparks came slowly flying, and generally, not always, effaced the roses at once, and every effort to retain the roses failed. Since an early age the flight of roses has annually grown smaller, swifter, and farther off, till by the time I was grown up my vision had become a speck, so instantaneous that I had hardly time to realise that it was there before the fading sparks showed that it was past. This is how they still come. The pleasure of them is past, and it ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton |
