"Swifter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... end Lord Hurdly prevailed, and that end was swifter in coming than Bettina would have believed to be possible. She had allowed herself a week to wait in London, and for the first day or two of that week she lived in dread lest Lord Hurdly should come to her and renew the arguments ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... put them on, and let the snow-shoes go their own way over hillside and steep cliff. He let not his own eyes guide him or his own feet carry him, and the swifter he went the denser the snowflakes and the driving sea-spray came up against him, and the blast very nearly blew ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moony sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... considerations, frightened by the same conceptions of possible future suffering, which so often make the chambers of dying men dark with terrors. Fear is fear all the same whether its dread be for the next hour or the next century. The closer the enemy, the swifter it runs. That is all the difference. Let the enemy be surely and plainly removed, and in one instance it is no more,—is as if it had never been. Every thought, word, and action based upon it ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 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 ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... bore away to the English Channel. That a month after their starting Rodgers should still have hoped to overtake them, gives a lively impression of the lumbering slowness of trade movement under convoy; but he counted also upon the far swifter joint speed of his few and well-found ships. To the effective fulfilment of his double object, defensive and offensive, however, he required more ships than his own squadron, and he held his course dependent upon Decatur ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Walter," said the other, "but there is no horse so good that there isn't a better. Blenheim, I grant you, is a splendid three year old, but my Cressy is just about twenty yards swifter in two miles. There is not another such colt in all Virginia, and it gives me great pride to ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... analysis of one short moment. Images are to words like light to sound—incomparably swifter. And all this was really one flash of light through my mind. A comforting thought succeeded it: that both doors were locked and that really there ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Swifter and still more swift, As the crowding peace Doth to joy increase In the wild blind eyes uplift Thro' the darkness and ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... kept very near to the creek and he noticed suddenly that the current was shallowing, and had grown much swifter. He inferred that rapids were ahead, but this was surely the place to cross, and he called Henry's attention to it. The bank was about six feet above the water and ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thou there?" answered Guy. "Run on, Annora, and say to the Grey Lady that I will be at her cell in less than an hour. Thy feet are swifter than mine." ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... when his head was thrown forward in this fashion, and resting closely against the soft mane of the mustang. He was certain of that, for there was nothing for the spinning coil to seize. And yet he saw distinctly the warrior who was nearest him whirling the thong in swifter and swifter circles above his head in a way that showed that he meant to fling ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... long, dear Saviour, O how long Shall this bright hour delay? Fly swifter round ye wheels of Time, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... as the wind the royal squadrons ride, But swifter yet the crystal barriers break, The waves exultantly their bounds forsake And roll ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... and the screech of the wounded lad settled the question, and those who were foremost came at him with a spring. But Adrian was swifter than they, and before a hand could be laid upon him, amidst a shower of stones and filth, he was speeding down the street. After him came the mob, and then began one of the finest man-hunts ever ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... forced to go, He'd slowly, slowly creep, Just like a snail; you might suppose That he was half asleep. And those who would despatch in haste A note, or telegram, Would chose a swifter messenger Than such a ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... 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
... other, 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 my throat. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... for the Eternal declared to him that "Out of the north evil shall break out upon all the inhabitants of the land." Already the enemy is hastening: "Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as the whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled. O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thine evil thoughts lodge within thee? For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth evil from the hills of Ephraim: make ye mention ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... noble race and a noble fight. One against a score now, for other Dusarian craft had joined in the pursuit; but Astok, Prince of Dusar, had built well when he built the Thuria. None in the navy of his sire possessed a swifter flier; no other craft so well armoured or ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... follow it till it falls," she said, "or I will lose my own life and the lives of my three sons that are the best fighting men in the whole world." "We will take the beast for you if you have a mind," said Finn. "Do not try to do that," she said, "for I myself am swifter than you are, and I cannot come up with it." "We will not let it go till we know what sort of a beast is it," said Finn. "If you yourself or your share of men go after it, I will bind you hand and foot," said she. "It is too stiff your talk is," said Finn. "And do you not ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... 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 as beautiful a ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... seek a climate worse than their own. This is one of the reasons why the development of Hokkaido has not been swifter. The island is not much farther from the mainland than Shikoku, but it is near, not the richest and warmest part of the mainland, but the poorest and the coldest. If we imagine another Scotland lying off Cape ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... 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 might ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... stream and along the ridge the track was laid. But there was no thought of following the old trail downward into the canyon. Then the spirit of the new age broke through tradition, the canyon was leaped and the mountain's heart pierced, that man might have a swifter and safer way to the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... hills, which round a limpid bay Reflected, bask in the clear wave! The javelin and its buffalo prey, The laughter and the joyous stave! The tent, the manger! these describe A hunting and a fishing tribe Free as the air—their arrows fly Swifter than lightning through the sky! By them is breathed the purest air, Where'er their wanderings may chance! Children and maidens young and fair, And warriors circling in the dance! Upon the beach, around the fire, Now quenched by wind, now burning higher, Like spirits which our dreams ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... and force, It is said that all animals yield to the Horse; While my spirit I feel, and my figure I view In the brook, I'm inclined to believe it is true; But still, mighty Jupiter, still, by your aid, In my form might some further improvements be made. To run is my duty, and swifter and stronger I surely should go, were my legs to be longer: And as man always places a seat on my back, I should have been made with a saddle or sack; It had saved him much trouble, on journies departing, And I had been constantly ready ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... then slipping 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
... are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, And have come to an end without hope;[204] Remember, I pray, that my life is wind, That mine eye shall see good ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... With a swifter pace than his half-pay leisure usually encouraged, or than his habitual dignity permitted, Captain MacTurk cleared the ground betwixt the Spring and its gay vicinity, and the ruins of the Aultoun, where reigned our friend ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... triumph over the seas in all their fury? Would ye spare the lives of those who toil for you? Let your ships he harder than the rocks, swifter than the message-bird, more buoyant than the swan, and as enduring as ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... him imagination, it must be only on the lower plane of prose; for of verse as anything more than so many metrical feet he had not the faintest notion. Of that exquisite sympathy with the movement of the mind, with every swifter or slower pulse of passion, which proves it another species from prose, the very [Greek: aphroditae kai lura] of speech, and not merely a higher one, he wanted the fineness of sense to conceive. If we compare the prose of Dante or ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 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 ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... scientific fact that that which is sharp is penetrating and moves quickly; that which is blunt is non-penetrating and of necessity moves slowly. The needle darts through the cloth more quickly than the bodkin. The greyhound is swifter than the bulldog. The stiletto does quicker work than the bludgeon. This, of course, is only a symbolism which may make vivid the truth that the convex man works more ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... civilized white has always exhibited toward the savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure, and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter, and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, it does not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature makes it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... your sharpest words, I would not in mine arrogance arise And reason with Him, but all humbly make Petition to my Judge. If there were one To shield me from His terrors, and to stand As mediator, I might dare to ask Why didst Thou give this unrequested boon Of life, to me, unhappy? My few days Are swifter than a post. As the white sail Fades in the mist, as the strong eagle's wing Leaves no receding trace, they flee away, They see no good. Hath not Thy mighty hand Fashion'd and made this curious form of clay, Fenc'd round ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... walking I started 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
... an arrow from a bow that never erred—an arrow swifter than thy swiftest flight, Mignon, whizzes with fell intent. The snake that darts upon its unconscious prey less ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... rational," rejoined the trapper, when the other had delivered his reasons; "it is very rational, for what man cannot move with his strength he must circumvent with his wits. It is reason that makes him stronger than the buffaloe, and swifter than the moose. Now stay you here, and keep yourselves close. My life and my traps are but of little value, when the welfare of so many human souls are concerned; and, moreover, I may say that I know the windings of Indian cunning. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... may sum up under the general term of civilisation. The comparatively humane neglect of the unfortunate alien peoples herded within the frontiers of earlier Sultans was improved upon by Abdul Hamid, who struck out the swifter and superior methods of maintaining the dominating strength of the Turkish element in the kingdom not by the absorption of subject peoples, but by their extermination. This in turn, this new and effective idea, served as a first sketch of an artist with regard to his ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... 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 feel itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... the already overburdened Medium. Ten is the extreme number seen, but six to eight Minims collected on a single leaf is not uncommon. Several times I have seen one of these little banner-riders shift deftly from leaf to leaf, when a swifter carrier passed by, as a circus bareback rider ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... 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 ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... 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 we tooke ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... deceptive. While the hands were walking around the capstan, four of the bars suddenly came out of the pigeon-holes at the same instant, and a dozen of the seamen were thrown, apparently with great violence, upon the deck. The bars, confined at one end by the swifter, swung round and cracked the shins of others, and a scene of confusion ensued, which set at nought all ideas ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Swifter grew the current, giving plain warning to one so well versed as this lad must be in the vagaries of these mad rivers of the Silent Land that presently it would be racing furiously down a steep incline, with razoredge rocks on every side, apparently only too eager ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... that the other, whom at the first glance he recognised as a knight, was one of Countess Cordula von Montfort's admirers. Yet he soon became unable to control his anger and impatience. Yielding to a hasty impulse, he left the chain, but as he approached the stranger the latter gave his swaying seat a swifter motion and, without vouchsafing him either greeting or introductory remark, said carelessly, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Germany, Argentina, and Japan, shows the growing recognition by civilized and enterprising countries of the benefits of foreign trade, and of the facilities for attaining it which are now given by the advent of large, swift, modern steamers; steamers which are becoming larger and swifter and safer every year, more and more adapted for ocean trade. For not only have the writings of Mahan brought about an increase in the sea power of every great country; but this increase has so aroused the attention ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... between like and like, but between like and unlike there is space wherein both curiosity and spirit may go adventuring. Extremes must meet, it is their urgent necessity; the reason for their distance, and the greater the distance between them, the swifter will be their return and the warmer their impact: they may shatter each other to fragments or they may fuse and become indissoluble and new and wonderful, but there is no other fertility. Between the sexes there is a really extraordinary freedom of intercourse. They meet each ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... 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 ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... which they intend. Si via in contrarium ducat, ipsa velocitas majoris intervalli causa est. Therefore it concerns us all most deeply to be acquainted with the true path of blessedness; for if we once mistake, the more we do, the swifter we move, the more distant we are from it indeed. And there is the more need, because there are so many by-paths that lead to destruction. What say I? By-paths! No; highways, beaten paths, that the multitude of men walk in, and never ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... VIII Swifter than thought the friendly wind forth bore The sliding boat upon the rolling wave, With curded foam and froth the billows hoar About the cable murmur roar and rave; At last they came where all his watery store The flood in one deep channel did engrave, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... flies swiftly back to gather a morsel, fresh food, for her young ones under the eaves, still swifter sped she from her soft chair, straight through the vestibule and folding-doors, wherever her feet carried her. So, sure, the old proverb says, 'the bull has ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... our steps can stay, We travel free as air. Our wings are fancies, incense-borne, That feather-light upbear. Begone! ye powers of steam and flood. Thy roads creep far too slow; We need thee not. My pipe and I Swifter than ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... little monkey swung himself and the boy to temporary safety. Nor did he hesitate even here; but raced on through the jungle night, bearing his burden to safety. For a time the bulls pursued; but presently, as the swifter outdistanced the slower and found themselves separated from their fellows they abandoned the chase, standing roaring and screaming until the jungle reverberated to their hideous noises. Then they turned and retraced ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... climbed. The British Archies had ceased fire and the fight was between machine and machine, for the squadron was now in position. Tam saw Lasky die and glimpsed the flaming wreck of the boy's machine as it fell, then he found himself attacked on two sides. But he was the swifter climber—the faster mover. He shot impartially left and right and below—there was nothing above him after the first surprise. Then something went wrong with his engines—they missed, started, ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... the blue sea flew the messengers, and near the island of Guimaras caught sight of Sinogo. He saw his pursuers and flew all the swifter, but he was no match for them in speed. Nearer and nearer they came and then, drawing their swords, rushed ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... way—and it's so simple—of making oneself good to look upon. Resolve to live hygienically. There is nothing in the world which works swifter toward a clear, glowing, fine-textured and beautiful complexion than a simple, natural diet of grains and nuts and fruits. But you women—oh! it positively pains me to think of the broiled lobsters, the deviled ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... to stir the blood With a warmer glow and a swifter flood, At the touch of a courage that knows not 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 to meet The foes who ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... the working of his brain was even swifter, and very soon, without slackening his speed, he was swerving round again towards the open. He could see the moonlight gleaming through the trees, and he made a dash for it, utterly reckless, since caution was of no avail, but alert for every danger, cunning for every advantage, keen ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... add, that the soul can the more easily escape from this air, which I have often named, and break through it, because nothing is swifter than the soul; no swiftness is comparable to the swiftness of the soul, which, should it remain uncorrupt and without alteration, must necessarily be carried on with such velocity as to penetrate and divide all this atmosphere, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... river, growing swifter as it neared the great lake, leaped and plunged into the wide surface of Winnipeg, shooting its burdens out upon the glassy breast of the lake like a ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the pursued between Petit Goufre—which he and the whole company called Petty Gulf—and Grand Gulf; places named before the days of steam for their dangerous eddies. Yet, he went on to tell Ramsey, the swifter boat, with more freight to put ashore and with a larger appetite for cord-wood, had never got clean away. Even now, in full view ahead, she was down at half speed, wooding up from a barge in tow alongside. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the leading athletes in the gymnasium of the arts; and the crowd of the circus cannot take its eyes away from them, while the Venetian walks or rests with the simplicity of a wild animal; is scarcely noticed in his occasionally swifter motion; when he springs, it is to please himself; and so calmly, that no one thinks of estimating the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... on, each twenty-four hours seeming shorter, swifter than the preceding twenty-four. Although everywhere in the Valley there was a glad confidence that the reclamation project was an assured thing, although feverish anxiety had been beaten back and driven out, there was no slightest ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... away from the ancient derelict. Suddenly a dim shadow swept across the sand at her feet, and she arrowed from the spot like a white, slim meteor. But behind her darted a black and swifter shadow—a shark! ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... she fought down those two horrible fears—of losing her child, of losing her lover; the less she feared, the better she could act, the more subtly, the swifter. She remembered that she had somewhere a little stiletto, given her a long time ago. She hunted it out, slipped off its red-leather sheath, and, stabbing the point into a tiny cork, slipped it beneath her blouse. If they could steal her baby, they were capable of anything. She ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed 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 traces of it ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Kendrick now exchanged ships, Gray, who had proved himself the swifter navigator, going on the Columbia, taking Haswell with him as mate. In return for one hundred otter skins, Gray was to carry the captured crew of the Northwest-America to China for the Spaniards. On July 30, 1789, he left Vancouver Island. Stop was made at Hawaii for ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... away and leaving the scene of an accident that he has caused. Another thing that greatly helps the English policeman in his work is that a captured criminal is not turned loose again as is often the case in this country. Justice is surer and swifter in England, and as a consequence crime averages less than in most parts of the States. The murders committed yearly in Chicago outnumber many times those of London, which is three times as large. The British ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... her lips, and was not satisfied with only seeing them. He admired her hands and arms, naked to the shoulder, and whatever was hidden from view he imagined more beautiful still. He followed her; she fled, swifter than the wind, and delayed not a moment at his entreaties. "Stay," said he, "daughter of Peneus; I am not a foe. Do not fly me as a lamb flies the wolf, or a dove the hawk. It is for love I pursue you. You make me miserable, for fear you should fall and hurt yourself on these stones, and I ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and neglect the service of so vile and frail a thing as his body? Now they who boast of the habilities of their body, upon how unsteadfast a possession do they ground themselves! For can you be bigger than elephants, or stronger than bulls? Or swifter than tigers? Look upon the space, firmness, and speedy motion of the heavens, and cease at length to have in admiration these base things. Which heavens are not more to be admired for these qualities than for ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... where armed foemen throng. But never had they faced in field so stern a charge before, 95 And never had they felt the sweep of Scotland's broad claymore. Not fiercer pours the avalanche adown the steep incline, That rises o'er the parent springs of rough and rapid Rhine,— Scarce swifter shoots the bolt from heaven than came the Scottish band Right up against the guarded trench, and o'er it sword in hand. 100 In vain their leaders forward ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... comfort dies! Th' unhappy mother sees the sanguine rill Forget to flow, and nature's wheels stand still, But see from earth his spirit far remov'd, And know no grief recals your best-belov'd: He, upon pinions swifter than the wind, Has left mortality's sad scenes behind For joys to this terrestial state unknown, And glories richer than the monarch's crown. Of virtue's steady course the prize behold! What blissful wonders to his mind unfold! But of celestial ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... burn late, we fancy that we catch a waving of his tail and hear him padding across the night. But although we lash ourselves upon the chase and strain forward in the dark, the timid beast runs on swifter ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... brow,— A swifter blush succeeds; It burns her cheek; it kindles now Beneath her ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the uplifted wrist with both hands, Applegate pounced on the other arm. Pringle leaped through the doorway. But something happened swifter than Pringle's swift rush. Foy's knee shot up to Applegate's stomach. Applegate fell, sprawling. Foy hurled himself on Creagan and bore him crashing to the floor. Foy whirled over; he rose on one hand and knee, gun drawn, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... foreign and domestic foes of the republic. We are assured, that, by his salutary rigor, crimes and factions, mischievous arts and pernicious connivance, the luxurious growth of a feeble and oppressive government, were eradicated throughout the Roman world. [87] But if we attentively reflect how much swifter is the progress of corruption than its cure, and if we remember that the years abandoned to public disorders exceeded the months allotted to the martial reign of Aurelian, we must confess that a few short intervals of peace were insufficient for the arduous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Swifter than light we travelled, I and my unseen guide, through the infinite ocean of ether, until our flight was arrested by a denser medium, which I recognised as an atmosphere like that of our earth. I had scarcely recovered from this new surprise ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... knoll now, and there seems every chance of success; but the nearer he draws to the goal the greater becomes the risk of divergence, for while the slack water at the head of the knoll becomes slacker, so that the house seems to have ceased moving, the diverging currents on either side become swifter, and their suction-power more dangerous. The anxiety of the pilot at this stage, and his consequent shooting from side to side, is far more trying than his more sustained efforts ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... And bounded swifter than the maid, Who nearly 'scap'd their wrath, For well she knew that woody glade, And every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... homes, with household cares neglected, 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
... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... a long minute with the open door in his hand. The bitter wind swept in with its icy chill, but a deadlier chill of fear came swifter, and seemed to freeze the beating of hearts. Sweyn stepped back to snatch up ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... series of channels, of variable width. On the morning of the 27th we had a fair wind, the breadth of the stream varying from about 150 to 400 yards. About midday we passed, on the western side, the mouth of the Aturiazal, through which, on account of its swifter current, vessels pass in descending from the Amazons to Para. Shortly afterwards we entered the narrow channel of the Jaburu, which lies twenty miles above the mouth of the Breves. Here commences the peculiar scenery of this remarkable region. We found ourselves in a ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the angered Pope is a compound of contrition and firmness. No words could express swifter readiness to accept rebuke or a more passionate humility: none could more vigorously maintain the unwelcome convictions which had given offence. There are various surmises as to the exact occasion of the misunderstanding to which ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... than 120 miles. He now resolved to leave the three ships and the carvel—all four grown more or less foul-bottomed and slow—in the care of Captain Rause, with just sufficient men to work them. With the three dainty pinnaces and the oared shallop that Rause had taken, he hoped to make rather swifter progress than he had been making. He took with him in the four boats fifty-three of his own company and twenty of Captain Rause's men, arranging them in order according to the military text-book: "six Targets, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... submerged in the same manner. It is quite certain, however, that this has not always been the character of the Hudson. Its great trough bears evidence of having been worn to its present dimensions by much swifter and stronger currents than those that course through it now. To this gradual subsidence in connection with the great changes wrought by the huge glacier that crept down from the north during what is called the ice period, is owing the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... he shall live. When I first saw him he was a child, a baby, but he came to me and took one finger of my hand in his small fist and looked up to me. Ah, Gabrielle, the smile of an infant goes to the heart swifter than the thrust of a knife! I looked down upon him and I knew that I was chosen to teach the child. There was a voice that spoke in me. You will smile, but even now I think I can ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... went sheering down over the keen slope. She felt as if her senses were being whetted on some fine grindstone, that was keen as flame. The snow sprinted on either side, like sparks from a blade that is being sharpened, the whiteness round about ran swifter, swifter, in pure flame the white slope flew against her, and she fused like one molten, dancing globule, rushed through a white intensity. Then there was a great swerve at the bottom, when they swung as it were in a fall to earth, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... my title holds, because the way has been long; through the orchards and by the waste lands swifter than the shadows of the dawn. But the angel who watches through the train of time ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect. Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the sheep, the ox, the camel, the horse were rapidly domesticated; some of these provided man with food independent of the chase; others gave him better, swifter means of travel and transportation. Distant peoples were thus brought into contact and commerce began. New ideas were gained from each other. Larger communities were formed, and towns and cities began. Property became ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... away, The shield of Saul, the anointed of the Lord. From the blood of the slain, From the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan turned not back And the sword of Saul returned not empty, Jonathan and Saul Were lovely and pleasant in their lives And in their deaths they were not divided; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions, Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, Who put on ornaments of gold on your apparel, How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... there being no attempt to cross Siberia at any point in a straight line. By this time the river was frozen, and the only concession Rezanov would make to his enfeebled frame was an arrangement to cover the entire journey by private sledge instead of employing the swifter course of post sledge on the long stretches and horseback on ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... is noticeably round and full, and he is as straight a man as any in a dozen. His weak voice has gone; indeed, he says he has the strongest voice of any in a choir in which he now sings. The catarrh has left, while his stomach is simply doing nobly. The fuller veins in his hands and the swifter reaction when he bathes tell that his circulation is also stronger and quicker than formerly, while he has a general health and buoyancy to which he had long been a stranger. These are surely wonderful changes in a man of his age, and in that ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... than all this, they have a creature of amazing strength and huge size, which, though larger than an elephant, is swifter than a bird. On the back of this terrible creature, which is thirty or forty feet long, and whose stomach is like a fiery furnace, two or three men will stand without fear, even when it is running at its utmost speed. Most remarkable of all, they ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... Dupont's movement had been it was no swifter than that of the closely-hooded stranger. He was as tall as Dupont, and about him there was an air of authority ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... assumed poses of languid voluptuousness and indolent grace, then, waving branches of bloom and clinking castanets, shaped like the head of Hathor, striking tambourines with their little closed hands, or making the tanned skin of drums resound under their thumbs, they gave themselves up to swifter steps and to bolder postures; they pirouetted, they whirled with ever-increasing ardour. But the Pharaoh, thoughtful and dreamy, did not condescend to bestow a glance of satisfaction upon them; his fixed gaze did not ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the effect of such a spectacle: the grim advance of rival squadrons front to front; the charge; the solemn pause as, having swept across the hippodrome, they stand once more confronting one another; and then the trumpet sounds, whereat a second and yet swifter hostile advance, how fine the effect!—and once again they are at the halt; and once again the trumpet sounds, and for the third time, at the swiftest pace of all, they make a final charge across the field, before dismissal; after which they come to ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... he stretched out in swifter stride, Kirkwood was inspired to put a spoke in his wheel; and a foot thrust suddenly out from behind the gate-post accomplished his purpose with more success than he had dared anticipate. Stumbling, the mate plunged headlong, arms ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... swifter!" The Thing turned, and with a single leering glance behind, flowed once more through ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... be shed or bones that can be broken, dare to hurl hard words at him who will be Pharaoh? Should I dare to cross the will of the sweet dove who nestles on his heart, the wise, white dove that murmurs the mysteries of heaven, whence she came, and is stronger than the vulture of Isis and swifter than the hawk of Ra; the dove that, were she angry, could rend me into more fragments than did ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... days were men, because necessity had made it a habit to them, and swifter still, as a matter of course, were impulsive boys. Their tree nest fairly made, work, they decided, must begin at once. The only point to be determined upon was regarding the location of the pit. There was a tempting spread of green herbage some hundred feet to the north and ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Egg, one every day, That simpleton's Goose used to lay; So he killed the poor thing, Swifter fortune to bring, And dined off his fortune ...
— The Baby's Own Aesop • Aesop and Walter Crane
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... crossed the room to her piano and plumped herself down hard on to the stool. Then, from under her fingers there fell a rollicking melody that seemed to fill the room with little dancing feet. Faster and faster sped Billy's fingers; swifter and swifter twinkled the little dancing feet. Then a door was jerked open, and Bertram's ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... clenched fist on the railing of the vessel. While he stood there, his mind ran back into the past. He lived over again those passionate days when he had won and betrayed a young, beautiful, impressionable girl. His heart beat with a swifter stroke as he remembered the excitement of their hurried flight from her parents, and the wild joy of their adventurous lives, and then sank again to its steady, hopeless throb as he recalled her penitence and misery after the birth of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... tones were like her face, her motions, herself. Impulse, merriment, yearning, and the shadow of melancholy dwelt in her eyes and shaped her lips to sensitive curves. She was tall, and her motions were of a spontaneous grace, swifter and ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... woods saw there the Nymph Daphne pursuing the deer; and straightway the sun-god fell in love with her beauty. Her golden locks hung down upon her neck, her eyes were like stars, her form was slender and graceful and clothed in clinging white. Swifter than the light wind she flew, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... between the war-galley and the round-ship of commerce, a type with three masts and propelled at least primarily by sails, with a length about three times its beam and thus shorter and more seaworthy than the galley, but longer, lower and swifter than the clumsy round-ship. To this new type the names galleass and galleon were bath given, but in English and later usage galleass came to be applied to war vessels combining oar and sail, and galleon to either war or trading vessels of medium size and length ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... instance of a gentlewoman, [5261]a patient of his, whom by this means he found to be much enamoured, and with whom: he named many persons, but at the last when his name came whom he suspected, [5262]"her pulse began to vary and to beat swifter, and so by often feeling her pulse, he perceived what the matter was." Apollonius Argonaut. lib. 4. poetically setting down the meeting of Jason and Medea, makes them both to blush at one another's sight, and at the first they were ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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 and natural means may land them. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... she did not 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
... seeing that it had against it the opinions of all wise folk, for it was the happiness of a loving heart with tranquillity of soul, since God was in no wise offended by it And as for the death that you call cruel, it seems to me that, since death is unavoidable, the swifter it comes the better; for we know that it is a road by which all of us must travel. I deem those fortunate who do not long linger on the outksirts of death, but who take a speedy flight from all that can be termed happiness in this world to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... into a swifter course. Then all at once she skidded clear of the track, slanted upward, breasted the air. Her searchlight blazed. All along her flanks, fire-jets spangled the night. Cries echoed from ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... necessity of their use. He openeth the windows of heaven to give light unto the earth, and spreads the cloak of the night to cover the rest of labour. He closeth the eye of Nature and waketh the spirit of reason; he travelleth through the mind, and is visible but to the eye of understanding. He is swifter than the wind, and yet is still as a stone; precious in his right use, but perilous in the contrary. He is soon found of the careful soul, and quickly missed in the want of his comfort: he is soon lost in the lack of ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... dearie. Love's not a spiritual nor a mental thing. It's purely physical. A love affair is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear. And it's a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact. They've nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and they eat heaps too much. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Some of the stiffness had gone out of his manner. "I'll be glad to get a chance to do some fighting instead of this eternal spying! And who knows? If I am lucky, I may get a little swifter promotion ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... plane passed ten feet or more above his head. It rose, and climbed steeply, and passed again above the now buzzing, agitated hangars, and climbed above the hills behind the flying field as some men went running and others moved by swifter means toward the shaken, nerve-racked Ribiera, on whose lips were ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Mr. Sclater, on the incubation of the Struthiones, 'Proc. Zool. Soc.' June 9, 1863. So it is with the Rhea darwinii: Captain Musters says ('At Home with the Patagonians,' 1871, p. 128), that the male is larger, stronger and swifter than the female, and of slightly darker colours; yet he takes sole charge of the eggs and of the young, just as does the male of the common species ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the swiftest,—swifter even than had been expected;—which, as Silesia is all ringing glass, becomes more achievable than lately. But certain regiments outdid themselves in marching; "in three marches, near upon seventy miles,"—with their baggage jingling in due proximity. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... right hand I saw new sorrow, new torments, and new scourgers, with which the first pit [1] was replete. At its bottom were the sinners naked. This side the middle they came facing us; on the farther side with us, but with swifter pace. As the Romans, because of the great host in the year of Jubilee,[2] have taken means upon the bridge for the passage of the people, who on one side all have their front toward the Castle,[3] and go to Saint Peter's, and on the other toward ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... at least in maidens' hearts, of the nature of an intermittent fever. The tide of Solway flows, but the more rapid his flow the swifter his ebb. The higher it brings the wrack up the beach, the deeper, six hours after, are laid bare the roots of the seaweed upon the shingle. Now Winsome Charteris, however her heart might conspire against her peace, was not at all the girl to be won before she was asked. Also there ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... 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 ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... their desperate strait, feeling as they did that they would starve sooner than go back to slavery, those two bent to their oars in the darkness that closed them in, and rowed on with the swift tide. The lights on the shore grew fainter, the tide swifter, and the water became rough; but they rowed on, hungry, exhausted: on and on, ignorant of the set of the tides, of the trend of the coast, and without a drop of fresh water to satisfy their thirst. A mad, mad attempt; but it was for liberty—for all that man holds dear. What wonder that ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... He was about the same age as Stan was. Only he was stronger, taller, broader, swifter. When he chanced to look at her his small bead-like eyes bored through her like gimlets. No man had ever looked at her that way. Stan's eyes were much like her own father's eyes. The Tartar's face was much darker than her own. His nose was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... way. Fear not that!—Do you attend at all to this new Laudism of ours? It spreads far and wide among our Clergy in these days; a most notable symptom, very cheering to me many ways; whether or not one of the fatalest our poor Church of England has ever exhibited, and betokening swifter ruin to it than any other, I do not inquire. Thank God, men do discover at last that there is still a God present in their affairs, and must be, or their affairs are of the Devil, naught, and worthy of being sent to the Devil! ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... from them, which is till warm weather comes, and then as he growes stronger, he gets from the dead, still water, into the sharp streames and the gravel, and there rubs off these worms or lice: and then as he grows stronger, so he gets him into swifter and swifter streams, and there lies at the watch for any flie or Minow that comes neer to him; and he especially loves the May flie, which is bred of the Cod-worm or Caddis; and these make the Trout bold and lustie, and he is usually fatter, and better meat at the end ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... Englishwoman, thin, but full of intelligence. She had a daughter of eleven, who might easily have been taken for fifteen; she, too, was marvellously intelligent, and danced, sang, and played on the piano and gave such glances that shewed that nature had been swifter than her years. She made a conquest of me, and her father congratulated me to my delight, but her mother offended her dreadfully ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that there stood near; and the giant smote after quickly, and hit him not, but he smote the tree, so that his club brake all in pieces. And Arthur quickly ran round about the tree; and so Arthur and the monster ran round it thrice about. Then was the giant exceeding heavy, and Arthur was the swifter, and overtook the giant, and up heaved his good brand, and smote from him the thigh; ...
— Brut • Layamon
... Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed Brunswick's command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon entered Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with the exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more decisive—the campaign of 1866, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... doctor; "for, though it is doubtless able to leap with great accuracy upon its prey, we saw it took some time to recharge the upper air-chamber, so that, were it not armed with poison glands, it would fall an easy victim to its more powerful and swifter contemporaries, and would soon ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... 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 ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the Cor burn to the Tyne, our way lies eastward by the side of the river, which here, after splashing and sparkling over the shallows below Corbridge, narrows again to a deeper stream of swifter current, and flows between green meadows and leafy woods, fern-clad steeps and level haughs, all the way down to Ryton, where the picturesque aspect of the river ceases, and it becomes an industrial waterway. On this reach of the river ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... Nail scattered their feather-crowned dancing girls from Ceuta to Suez. And in the Atlas it entered the hill castles of Kabyles, whose unveiled, fierce-eyed, red-haired women, drenched with half a dozen perfumes, and clattering with silver, coral, turquoise and gold, were swifter than snakes ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... circuit he ran after the doe, which paused among the trees as if to suffer herself to be caught, then bounded forward as soon as the hand of the pursuer touched her. "Courage, master!" cried Fido, as he came upon her. But with a toss of the head, the doe flung the dog in the air, and fled swifter than the wind. ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... eagles in flight, And swans be swifter than hawks of the tower, And wrens set gos-hawks by force and might, And muskets make verjuice of crabbes sour, And ships sail on dry land, silt give flower, And apes in Westminster give judgment and sentence, Then put ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... like a shadow that is cast, Swifter than eagles' wings my years fly fast, And I remember not my gladness past, Either by day or yet ...
— Hebrew Literature
... a question now of which would reach the luckless man first, the boat or the shark. The boat was nearer and the men were rowing like demons, but the shark was swifter, coming ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... lady, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... make a flight of equal length and height in the air. The corollary to all this is, that, if charged, you must keep cool and watchful, and your chance of escape is far greater than non-sportsmen would imagine. The blow of the free paw is far swifter than ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... magician having finished his work retired to some distance, when, as he had said, a monstrous roc, darting from a craggy precipice, descended with the rapidity of lightning, grasped the skin in her widely extended talons, and soaring swifter than the eagle soon alighted on the table-land of the mountain; when Mazin, feeling himself on the ground, ripped the stitches of his dangerous enclosure, and the roc being alarmed, uttered a loud ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... insiders began to sell, and soon the price began to slide downward, for the great majority of the stock was held by the people. There was a halt when the denials of the management were heard, but only for a moment. The decline continued, growing swifter as it got lower until the stock struck $2 per share. At this stage, while the stock was on the way to $2, just as I had predicted, the property was cleverly slid into a receiver's hands by the very men who had so indignantly denied ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... abysses. "A caravan of 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 heights you ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... birds the eagle is the swiftest. 2. Certain animals are swifter than the swiftest horse. 3. The Roman name was most hateful to the enemies of the commonwealth. 4. The Romans always inflicted the severest[2] punishment on faithless allies. 5. I was quite ill, and so I hastened ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... appraising him anew. He took Woods's blows when he must and felt the pain go stabbing through his body; but he stood up and struck back and forced the fight steadily, crowding his adversary relentlessly, seeming always to strike swifter and harder. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... ale-house or to the club. He withdrew himself from every one, and scarcely ever spoke a single word, but went about silent and wrapped up in his own thoughts. All the day long he toiled for his ducats, and at night he had to count them, and to plan and meditate how he might find out a still swifter kind ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be: In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours; I must go seek some dewdrops ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... lament the lack of a little crew. Even the Frenchman as he was yesterday would have served my turn, for between us we might have made shift to clamber aloft, and with hatchets break the sails free of their ice bonds, and so expose canvas enough to hold the wind, which could not have failed to impart a swifter motion to the berg. But with my single pair of hands I could only look up idly at the yards and gaffs standing hard as granite. Still, even such surface as the spars and rigging offered to the breeze helped our progress. We were ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... that I put the questions of overmastering importance to you and your families: What can we do to abate this pestilence? What books and newspapers shall we read? You see I group them together. A newspaper is only a book in a swifter and more portable shape, and the same rules which apply to book-reading will apply to newspaper-reading. What shall we read? Shall our minds be the receptacle of every thing that an author has a mind to write? Shall there be no distinction between ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... yet swifter. Did ever horses gallop so fast? Swifter and yet swifter, till the air sang past them and the ground seemed to fly away beneath. The slope was done. They were on the flat; the flat was past, they ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... came to pass," he says, "that one day I was scampering over a heath, at some distance from my present home: I was mounted upon the good horse Sidi Habismilk, and the Jew of Fez, swifter than the wind, ran by the side of the good horse Habismilk, when what should I see at a corner of the heath but the encampment of certain friends of mine; and the chief of that camp, even Mr. Petulengro, stood before the encampment, and his adopted daughter, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... now butchered by the peasantry of Saxony and Thuringia, who, armed with hatchets and scythes, flew to avenge upon the relic the wrongs they had suffered from the whole army. Many of the fugitives plunged into the forests, preferring the slow tooth of famine to the swifter stroke of steel. Others, concealing themselves until the first gust of passion was over, besought the mercy of the peasantry, who, at last moved with compassion or glutted with slaughter, received them as fellow-beings, healed their wounds, and ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... lake really was the fountain-head. Some claimed that the stream from Itasca was not itself the main stream, but flowed into the river proper some three miles below the lake. The stream to which it was tributary, though narrower, was, they claimed, deeper and swifter, bringing to the united streams more water than the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... body. The ball went right through him. He might as well have been so much water. Instead of being a shortstop he was simply a hole. After every hit Daddy saw that ball more and more as something alive. It sported with his infielders. It bounded like a huge jack-rabbit, and went swifter and higher at every bound. It was here, ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey |
