"Swift-footed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... devouring than any other, and are said to be among the few surviving species of the world's dreadest inhabitants before the Ana were created. The appetite of a Krek is insatiable—it feeds alike upon vegetable and animal life; but for the swift-footed creatures of the elk species it is too slow in its movements. Its favourite dainty is an An when it can catch him unawares; and hence the Ana destroy it relentlessly whenever it enters their dominion. I have heard that when our forefathers first cleared ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... anon on his back, or with countenance downward, Prone in his anguish he sank: then suddenly starting, he wander'd, Desolate, forth by the shore; till he noted the burst of the morning As on the waters it gleam'd, and the surf-beaten length of the sand-beach. Instantly then did he harness his swift-footed horses, and corded Hector in rear of the car, to be dragg'd at the wheels in dishonour. Thrice at the speed he encircled the tomb of the son of Menoetius, Ere he repos'd him again in his tent, and abandon'd the body, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... saw the frigate, and instantly bore up in chase. Had they all been line-of-battle ships, the swift-footed little Ruby might easily have escaped from them; but two looked very like frigates, and many of that class in those days were superior in speed to the fleetest ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... do to fit himself into and be a part of the village life and fill up his time, did not satisfy him. Happiness for Jack was out on the moor—its lonely wet thorny places, pregnant with fascinating scents, not of flowers and odorous herbs, but of alert, warm-blooded, and swift-footed creatures. And I was going there—would I, could I, be so heartless as ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... a large bird, but he is a very silly one, and, when he is tired of running, he will hide his head in the sand, thinking that because he can see no one he can't be seen himself. Then the swift-footed Arab horses can overtake him, and the men can get his beautiful feathers, which you must have often seen, for ladies wear them in ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... The swift-footed Sand-Crabs (Ocypoda) are exclusively terrestrial animals, and can scarcely live for a single day in water; in a much shorter period a state of complete relaxation occurs and all voluntary movements cease.* (* As this was not observed in the sea, but in glass vessels containing sea-water, it ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... travel far abroad! The bride, thrice beautiful; the groom, a wizard; And I ride swiftly to the wedding feast. The land is far, and I must travel on; An endless path before me leads away, But till I reach the end, I check the ardor Of my swift-footed stallion silver-shod, And wisely shorten my way's weary length With sounds that, like sweet longings, wake in me, Old sounds familiar, low-whispering Of women's beauties and of home-born shadows. Then flowers pour ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... fled, he felt he was no match for the swift-footed pursuers behind him, and the cry of murder, and the sound of clubs upon the banquette, and the sharp, quick watchman's rattle, fell on his ear more startlingly clear every moment. Suddenly he thought to dart down the first dark street, and at the next block ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... possibly go on. Harriet Delaney will have to take her place. Mignon isn't even dressed for her part. Where do you suppose——" The senior did not finish her sentence. Something in the familiar details of the gown Mignon wore aroused an unpleasant suspicion in her active brain. A swift-footed messenger had already sped away to find the young composer, who, with the departure of Ronald Atwell had taken the arduous duties of stage manager upon ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... its movements with a feeling of perfect security. The only one of the party that was in dangerous proximity to that dreaded proboscis was Fritz; but Fritz had already been well warned of the wicked designs of the great brute, and was sufficiently swift-footed and sage enough to give the animal ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... was in advance of all the rest of the company in the pursuit. Nanuntenoo plunged into the narrow stream to cross. His foot slipped upon a stone, and he fell, immersing his gun in the water. This calamity so disheartened him that he lost all his strength. His swift-footed pursuer, Monopoide, was immediately upon him, and grasped him almost as soon as he reached the opposite shore. The naked and unarmed chief could make no resistance, and, with stoicism characteristic of his race, submitted to ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... it is with my brothers in Mizpeh," Said Achan, the swift-footed runner of Zorah, "They look at the wood they have hewn for the altar; And think of a shadow ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... break in a line of trees he saw a small herd of duocorns race into the shelter of a wood. The presence of those two-horned creatures, so like the pictures he had seen of Terran horses, was insurance that the snake-devils did not hunt in this district, for the swift-footed duocorns were never found within a ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... in the burial-place." "Indeed it did," they argued, "for our father, just before he died, said (Gen. l. 5), 'In my grave which I have bought for myself.'" "Where are the title-deeds?" demanded Esau. "In Egypt," was the answer. And immediately the swift-footed Naphthali started for the records. ("So light of foot was he," says the Book of Jasher, "that he could go upon the ears of corn without crushing them.") Hushim, the son of Dan, being deaf, asked what was the cause of the commotion. On being told what it was, he snatched ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... their reputation of being swift-footed, Montague and Bloxam found three other competitors bent on testing whether they really were as fast over a quarter of a mile as rumour credited them: men of the stamp always to be found in the army, who do not believe ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... epithet "bold" is used repeatedly in this vaguely descriptive fashion with Sir Bedivere's name. Cf. lines 39, 69, 115, 151, 226. The use of "permanent epithets" in narrative poetry has been consecrated by the example of Homer, who constantly employs such expressions as "the swift-footed ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of his genealogy, but the one that is given in one of the Homeric hymns is that Hermes, the swift-footed young god, wedded Dryope, the beautiful daughter of a shepherd in Arcadia, and to them was born, under the greenwood tree, the infant, Pan. When Dryope first looked on her child, she was smitten ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... Odysseus, and again mounted, and lashed the horses, and they sped onward nothing loth. But Nestor first heard the sound, and said: "O friends, leaders and counsellors of the Argives, shall I be wrong or speak sooth? for my heart bids me speak. The sound of swift-footed horses strikes upon mine ears. Would to god that Odysseus and that strong Diomedes may even instantly be driving the whole-hooved horses from among the Trojans; but terribly I fear in mine heart lest the bravest of the Argives suffer aught through ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... sparingly and only in the immediate neighbourhood of the town for fear of exciting suspicion or meeting Zulus whom the king's word had not reached. Indeed on these occasions I was always accompanied by a guard of swift-footed and armed soldiers sent "to protect me," or more probably to kill me if I did anything that ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... allowed five minutes wherein to retire to their tents and assume their clothing; after which they were formed up four deep, and marched off in the direction from which Jack and his party had come, a young, swift-footed negro having been dispatched on ahead with a note from Singleton for Carlos, informing the latter of the capture of the camp and its occupants, and suggesting that he should bring his prisoners down to ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... who had gone about two miles from the camp to examine their traps, encountered a band of Blackfeet Indians, who fired upon them. The trappers immediately retreated with the greatest rapidity. Though closely pursued by their swift-footed foes they reached the camp in safety. It so happened, that near their camp there was quite an extensive thicket of tall trees and dense underbrush. Kit Carson, not knowing how numerous the Indians might be who were coming upon him, directed the men as quickly as possible ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... Glittering, swift-footed heralds of Immensity, these comets with golden wings glide lightly through Space, shedding a momentary illumination by their presence. Whence come they? ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... messenger, the swift-footed Mercury, and said, "Go quickly, and do not return until you have found ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... his master was on the way, and she had seen him swell with the cloud of anger that shrouded his black heart. And she knew that he feared that swift-footed man Macdonald, who had outgeneraled him and crippled him before he had struck a blow. Well, let him have his brutal way until morning; then she would prevail on Mrs. Chadron to rescind his order ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... the fore and main sheets, and a slight touch of the weather topsail and top-gallant braces, with a check on the bow-lines, made the swift-footed Endymion spring forward, like a greyhound slipped from the leash. In a short time we made out that the object we were in chase of was, in fact, a boat. On approaching a little nearer, some heads of people became visible, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... aspect the hippopotamus, lived along the water courses of the plains east of the Rockies, and its bones are now found by the thousands in the Miocene of Kansas. Another developed along a line parallel to that of the horse, and herds of these light-limbed and swift-footed running rhinoceroses ranged the Great Plains from the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... be confined to the restless, feverish couch of pain, thought flies untrammelled through the circuit of the globe, far—far to the frigid regions of the north, where almost eternal winter reigns, and we view the hardy inhabitant of that sterile clime, wrapped in his furs, drawn by the swift-footed reindeer, across the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... reserve; he tried to imagine her such as she had been described to him since; tall, handsome, ascetic; then he fancied her suddenly casting her vail to the winds, like one of the fantastic nuns in "Robert le Diable," and returning swift-footed into the world; of all these various impressions he composed, in spite of himself, a figure of Chimera and Sphinx, which he found very difficult to connect with the idea of ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... of so many things That once were mine. Swift-footed, eager youth That ran to meet the years; bold brigand health, That broke all laws of reason unafraid, And ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... The swift-footed boys pursued, yelling in delight, and promising that he should feel the weight of a scout's staff, when a long shrill call on a whistle checked them. Mr. Elliott had come in sight of the chase, and he recalled ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... "Take my swift-footed steel for thy tiding, Ay, and stint not the lash to him, Tosti: On the desolate downs ye may wander And drive him along till he weary. I care not o'er mountain and moorland The murrey-brown weathers to follow,— Far liefer, ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... be passed concerning all the gifts of fortune which fall so plentifully to all the most wicked. This ought also to be considered here, I think: No one doubts a man to be brave in whom he has observed a brave spirit residing. It is plain that one who is endowed with speed is swift-footed. So also music makes men musical, the healing art physicians, rhetoric public speakers. For each of these has naturally its own proper working; there is no confusion with the effects of contrary things—nay, even of itself it rejects ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius |
