"Swifter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... getting a free ride at the expense of 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
... understand it. If they appear not to grasp an explanation or a demonstration, he will begin it all over again, analyze it, paraphrase it ten times in succession, with the patience of a mother. And so their progress has been incomparably swifter and more astounding than that of old Hans. Within a fortnight of the first lesson Mohammed did simple little addition and subtraction sums quite correctly. He had learnt to distinguish the tens from the units, striking the latter with his right foot and the former with his ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and flew near. They felt the breeze from his powerful wings, and swifter went their own. The eagle, frightened, turned and mounted toward the sun. Icarus forgot his father's warning and followed. Daedalus flew on and on, thinking his boy was beside him. Up, up went Icarus swifter than the eagle and swept proudly past him toward the sun. The ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... she could level it the Golden Girl had released that hidden left arm and thrown over her face a fold of the metallic swathings. Swifter than Yolara, she raised the arm that held the vine—and now I knew this was ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... 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 west, was never ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... her station, Her message all shall hear, When, equal-eyed, the nation Bids all her sons draw near, And freedom be more than tradition or faction, And thought be no swifter to serve her than action, And justice alone be above her, That love may be prouder to love her, And time on the crest of her story Inscribe, as remembrance engraves, The sign that subdues with its ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... A swifter or a weaker descent I never witnessed. My pity changed to contempt. "This fellow, with his great reputation," thought I, "is a fool and a knave, and a weak one ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... enemy of haste; it takes count of passing days, of men who pass away, of a fine art matured slowly in the course of years and doomed in a short time to pass away too, and be no more. Love and regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting of the clouds reflected in ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the bluff, lay a long, slender boat, shaped like a canoe, but much larger, stouter, stronger, and far swifter, when the wind filled its sails and carried it like a bird skimming over ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... 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, 560 Time nor toil shall make him humble; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... longer held fast under the tyranny of custom and ignorance; now that criticism has pierced the veil of tradition and the past no longer overpowers the present,—the progress of civilization may be expected to be far greater and swifter than heretofore. Even at our present rate of speed the point at which we may arrive in two or three generations is beyond the power of imagination to foresee. There are forces in the world which work, not in an arithmetical, but in a geometrical ratio of increase. Education, to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... swept slowly across the heavens. They gathered at our backs, and the sky there grew dark, while in front of us it still showed clear, except for a few fleecy cloudlets, racing merrily across the open. But the gathering clouds grew darker and swifter. In the distance could be heard the rattle of thunder, and its angry rumbling came every moment nearer. Large drops of rain fell, pattering on the grass, with a sound like the clang of metal. There was no place where we could ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... 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 narrow ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the music; the dance has begun. 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 De Laine. Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined For the vigor and ease that her movements combined; E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe. ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... of their flight. Sometimes, however, the bull runs straight at the man, disregarding the flag, and if the distance is great to the barrier the danger is imminent; for swift as these men are, the bulls are swifter. Once I saw the bull strike the torero at the instant he vaulted over the barrier. He fell sprawling some distance the other side, safe, but terribly bruised and stunned. As soon as he could collect himself he sprang into the arena again, looking very seedy; and the crowd roared, "Saved by miracle." ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... days 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 ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... dark along an 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 to furnish economy ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... hear the word that April saith To change the cold heart of the weary time, To stir and soften all the time to tears, Tears joyfuller than mirth; As even to May's clear height the young days climb With feet not swifter than those fair first years Whose flowers revive not with ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Thus suited to the madness of the times; And Absalom, to make his hopes succeed, Of flattering charms no longer stands in need; 20 While fond of change, though ne'er so dearly bought, Our tribes outstrip the youth's ambitious thought; His swiftest hopes with swifter homage meet, And crowd their servile necks beneath his feet. Thus to his aid while pressing tides repair, He mounts and spreads his streamers in the air. The charms of empire might his youth mislead, But what can our ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and the west. He brought her strange gifts from strange lands. She said: 'Go and slay my enemies.' Tarhe went forth in his war paint and killed the braves who named her Smiling Moon. He came again to her and she said: 'Run swifter than the deer, be more cunning than the beaver, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... circular motion; summer succeeds the spring, autumn the summer, winter the autumn, and then spring again. So time proceeds in this perpetual round; only the life of man is ever hastening to its end, swifter than time itself, without hopes to be renewed, unless in the next, that is unlimited and infinite. For even by the light of nature and without that of faith, many have discovered the swiftness and instability of this present being, and the duration of the eternal life ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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 ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... his horse 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
... men cheered; it was gallantly returned by the enemy, and havoc was now commenced by the musketry on both sides. The French captain, who appeared as brave a fellow as ever stepped, stood for some minutes on the hammocks; I was also holding on by the swifter of the main rigging, when he took off his hat and politely saluted me. I returned the compliment; but the fire became too hot, and I wished to get under the shelter of the bulwark. Still I would not go down ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... manner that one should go first and the other 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
... Cupid grievously wounded Apollo, who fleeing to the 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, and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... roof beams of the sky had been burst in. You can just hear, through the crash, the shriek of a third and fourth shell as they come tearing down the vault of heaven—crash—crash. Clouds of dust are floating over you. A swifter shriek and something breaks like a glass bottle in front of the parapet, sending its fragments slithering low overhead. It bursts like a rainstorm, sheet upon sheet, smash, smash, smash, with one or two more of the heavier shells punctuating ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... Bazalgette, here, and he is promoted to the Vulture frigate, and sails to-day. I have told him all our misfortunes, and he has promised to overhaul that merchant ship if he comes up with her: but I can see by the way his eye shuns mine he has no real hopes. His ship is the swifter, but he may pass her in the night. And then he is bound for New Zealand, not India. I told Reginald my poor husband's expression of face is altered by his affliction, and that he takes himself for a common sailor, and has his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... ourselves about the sufferings and tortures to be endured from hunger when death stared us in the face under so many other swifter and ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... come back into her face—swifter, more swiftly: the vast blank window with its amber curtains stared at her; she lifted her tragic gaze and saw the sheet of glass above swimming in crystal light. Through it clouds were dissolving in the bluest of skies; against it ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... had already, about nine o'clock that morning, been descried on the port bow making all speed towards her destined anchorage. Here both vessels arrived in the course of the afternoon; the Alabama, which was a far swifter sailer than her merchant tender, being the first to drop anchor, and the Agrippina following ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... proceeded, these whistles were answered from many different directions, and soon a score of dark figures were tagging at the heels of Fred and Charley, who, in turn, were straining every muscle to keep the swifter-footed Joe in sight. ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... 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 of the engineering professions ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... keenly developed by his country life, apprised him of every step the man took. He heard him pause whilst a couple of women passed on the other side of the way. Afterwards his approach became swifter and more stealthy. Barely in time to avoid, he scarcely knew what, ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fine elegant rascal, that can rise, And stoop, almost together, like an arrow; Shoot through the air as nimbly as a star; Turn short as doth a swallow; and be here, And there, and here, and yonder, all at once; Present to any humour, all occasion; And change a visor, swifter than a thought! This is the creature had the art born with him; Toils not to learn it, but doth practise it Out of most excellent nature: and such sparks Are the true parasites, others but ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... Olaf Tryggvason, and he bade him proclaim Christianity to Greenland, that the king gave him two Gaels; the man's name was Haki, and the woman's Haekia. The king advised Leif to have recourse to these people, if he should stand in need of fleetness, for they were swifter than deer. Eric and Leif had tendered Karlsefni the services of this couple. Now when they had sailed past Wonder-strands, they put the Gaels ashore, and directed them to run to the southward, and investigate the nature of the country, and return again before the end of the third half-day. They ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... must be added the Paco, or Alpaca, and the Taruga, who are larger, and even swifter than the Vicunas, and wander about singly, among steep and rocky places. M. Frederic Cuvier thinks there are but three species; the Guanaco, which, in a domestic state, is the Llama; the Paco, or Alpaca; ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... studded with lengths of surreptitious puddles, for the ground was clayey, and the rain was unabsorbed. As Bressant entered upon it, he felt the cold moisture of the air meet his warm face refreshingly; he was breathing deep and regularly, and now let himself out to a yet swifter pace than before. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... to all these inevitable confusions and misreckonings of time, shape, and distance, charges at every angle of squadrons through and across other squadrons; sudden shifts of the centres of the fights, and even swifter restorations; wheelings, sweepings, and regroupments such as accompany the passage across space of colliding universes. Then blanket the whole inferno with the darkness of night at full speed, and—see what you ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 sent them to their homes. Henry ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... waits on woman's folly has been swifter of foot than common. I have no wife, Angela; and you have no sister that you will ever care to own. My Lady Fareham has crossed the narrow sea with her lover, Henri de Malfort—her paramour always—though I once thought him yours, and tried to kill ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... tell us, reaches out into daily life when the normal intelligence is in abeyance—as in sleep or profound relaxation. This subliminal (below the threshold) mind is swifter than the conscious mind and over-reaches it in a flash. It is practically unerring. It is controlled by laws not yet grasped to any great extent. It is hidden ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... should not serve them half so well. The service of love is swifter than the service of fear; the Turks, who treat their Camels more as you do the Ass in England, find them neither so willing nor so tractable, though all Camels are by nature patient, and strong to endure. Here in Arabia a young Camel is fondled as if it were ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... possible 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 infused ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... blood 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 known ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... which had been incurred for his Majesty in opposing them, but all to no purpose. For either the Spaniards did not try to look for them, or did not find them, or indeed, when they met them, the enemy took to their heels; for on the one hand their boats are swifter, and on the other they come more as soldiers than our men, who seem to have inherited the carelessness and phlegm of the country. And truly, I think injustice has been done to the Joloans, and injustice ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... "Swifter than a whirlwind, flies the leaden death."—Hervey. "'Be all the dead forgot,' said Foldath's bursting wrath. 'Did not I fail ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... degrees it is silently loosening the bands of the snow, and after a while a goat's step, as it passes along a rocky ledge, or a breath of wind will move a tiny particle, and in an instant its motion spreads over a mile of mountain side, and the avalanche is rushing swifter and mightier at every foot down to the valley below, where it will all turn into sweet water, and ripple glancing in the sunshine. Such is our work. It may seem very hopeless, and be mostly unobservable in surface ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... work is such a leaving of God's ends behind. It is a following back of his footsteps, too often without appreciation of the result for which the feet took those steps. To rise from the perfected work is the swifter and loftier ascent. If the man could find out why God worked so, then he would be discovering God; but even then he would not be discovering the best and the deepest of God; for his means cannot be so great as his ends. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... a rock in his path, out jumped what Robinson took to be a rabbit. He ran after him to catch him, but the rabbit was much the swifter. So Robinson hastened home, but before he reached it the stars were shining with their lustrous light. Tired Robinson stretched his limbs on his bed of grass ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... Every creature loves its like. Anger, envy, and like passions, are sinful. Charity, like the sun, brightens every object around it. Thought flies swifter than light. He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man. Hail often proves destructive to vegetation. I was happy to hail him as my friend. Hail! beauteous stranger of the wood. The more I examine the work, the better I like it. Johnson is a better writer than ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... 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 time was needful. If the Indian should get the manipulation ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... enemy's side was widening. Was she sheering off? Yes—and rising too, growing bodily higher every moment, as if by magic. Amyas looked up in astonishment and saw what it was. The Spaniard was heeling fast over to leeward away from him. Her masts were all sloping forward, swifter and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... undiminished speed, when 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 ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... furnish the music; he came forward with a bashful hauteur, bridling stiffly like a girl, and struck into the laborious and monotonous jig which is, perhaps, our national dance. He was exquisitely shaped, and as he danced he suppled more and more, while the whistler warbled a wilder and swifter strain, and kept time with his hands. There was something that stirred the blood in the fury of the strain and dance. When it was done, Mrs. Macallister caught off her cap and ran round among the spectators to ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 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 forward ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... 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 ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... lattice; she had seen the isolated trees of the domain—broad, strong, spreading oaks, and high-towering heroic beeches—wrestling with the gale. Her ear had caught the full roar of the forest lower down; the swift rushing of clouds, the moon, to the eye, hasting swifter still, had crossed her vision. She turned from sight and sound—touched, if not rapt; wakened, if ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... behind him: "Three-legs, come out!" and, looking round, he saw a monster pursuing him. Finding this creature unable to come up with him, he heard many voices calling: "Two-legs, come out!" But his horse was swifter than Two-legs. Then One-leg was summoned, as in the story already cited from Mecklenburg, and came after him with gigantic springs, and would have caught him, but the door of his own house luckily stood open. He had scarcely entered, and slammed it to, when One-leg stood outside, banging ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Judah?" (2 Sam. ii. 1). He will do nothing in this crisis of his fortunes, when all which had been so long a hope seemed to be rapidly becoming a fact, until his Shepherd shall lead him. Rapid and impetuous as he was by nature, schooled to swift decisions, followed by still swifter action, knowing that a blow struck at once, while all was chaos and despair at home, might set him on the throne, he holds nature and policy and the impatience of his people in check to hear what God will say. So fully did he fulfil the vow of his early psalm, "My strength! ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... spoken of the wonderful stimulus and encouragement he could give to the young student. But he was no flatterer. No one could strike harder or swifter than ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and strong is the stroke, as they race from Putney to Mortlake, Shying the Crab Tree bight, shooting through Hammersmith Bridge; Onward elastic they strain to the deep low moan of the rowlock; Louder the cheer from the bank, swifter the ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the oarsmen to "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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... men intend well) will put them farther from that 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 challenge, nor will endure to be challenged as ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... pursueing the ennemy. They did shoot, but to no effect, which made our two men come back in all hast. We seeing ourselves but merchandmen, so we would not long follow a man of warre, because he runned swifter then ours. ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... position of the sister planet to recur only as often as she overtakes her in her career. Thus the hour and minute hands of a watch, moving at different rates of speed after meeting on the dial plate at twelve o'clock, will not again come together until five minutes past one, when the swifter paced of the two will have completed a revolution and a twelfth. But were we to retard the motion of the latter, reducing it to only twice that of its companion, they would always meet at the figure twelve, as it would exactly ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... so on. But now reverse the hypothesis and suppose a being to get only one 1,000th part of the sensations that we get in a given time, and consequently to live 1,000 times as long. Winters and summers will be to him like quarters of an hour. Mushrooms and the swifter-growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear instantaneous creations; annual shrubs will rise and fall from the earth like restlessly boiling water springs; the motions of animals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and cannonballs; the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... leaped 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 her, from ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the point, and I was the acknowledged leader of the school. Athletics, indeed, were my strong point, for I may say, almost without egotism, that I had so cultivated my muscles to the sad neglect of my proper studies, that I could swim like a fish, dive like an Indian pearl hunter, run swifter than anybody else, and play cricket and football with the best; but, as far as my real school duties were concerned, I'm afraid I was a sad dunce, as I was always at the bottom ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fancy that the cricketers would win; for the difficulty of hitting our bowling with a club would be greater than of hitting their pitching with a bat. But their wonderful fielding and far more accurate and swifter throwing than ours might just save them. Such throwing we see only very rarely, for good throwing is no longer insisted upon in cricket, much to the game's detriment. That old players should lose their shoulders is natural—and, of course, our players remain in first- ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... fulsome thistle in the prime: Young trees bend lightly, but grow strong in time. Were I the worthiest to advise your honour, You should pursue him with your spredding bandes Swifter in march then is the lightning flame, And take him tardy whilst his plots are tame. Now to charge on his army, questionlesse Would drive them all into a great distresse, If not confound them; having tane your Sonne, You may ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... 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 ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Mississippi and the Mountains of the Setting Sun, the Missouri, and the Lake of the Woods. All had heard of his great deeds; and many had seen and felt his prowess. He was stronger than the bear, he was swifter than the deer, he was nimbler than the mountain-cat or the panther. Who was so expert at stealing horses(1) as Wasabajinga?—by his cabin-door stood the best in all the land; and they had belonged to the Konzas, the Pawnees, the Omawhaws, the Puncas, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the current now become, so complete its isolation from the deep sea bed it traverses, that by the time it issues again into the Atlantic, its hitherto diffused and loitering waters are suddenly concentrated into what Lieutenant Maury has happily called—"a river in the ocean," swifter and of greater volume than either the Mississippi or the Amazon. Surging forth between the interstices of the Bahamas, that stretch like a weir across its mouth, it cleaves asunder the Atlantic. So distinct is its individuality, that one side of a vessel ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... he will be ever dear, will ever Remain more dear than my own life; altho' My pulse no longer flutters at his name, My heart no longer, when I think about him, Beats stronger, swifter. What have I been prating? Come, Daya, let us once more to the ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... despise 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 manner of ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... ran swifter, now, and Maria and Francisco worked their level best to make way against the heavy, muddy current. The sun was almost touching the high green ridge to the west, when Mr. Grigsby, who had sharp eyes, said, with a nod ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... 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, by the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... late!" Hawkeye exclaimed, dropping the useless piece in bitter disappointment; "the miscreant has struck the rapid; and had we powder, it could hardly send the lead swifter than ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue Nor swifter greyhound follow, Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew, Nor ear heard ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... bow and arrow and thirty pairs of moccasins." He starts out and "shoots the arrow ahead, and runs after it. In a short time he is able to outrun the arrow and reach the spot where it is to fall before it strikes the ground. He then takes it up and shoots again, and flies on swifter than the arrow. Thus he travels straight ahead, and by night he has gone a long distance from home." His brother starts in pursuit, but, after a hundred days, returns home discouraged. Meanwhile, the boy travels on and meets ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... all before the naked eye, beautiful with village spires, mansion houses, and white shining farms; the Galloway hills, gloomy and far-tumbling, bounded the forward view, while to the left rose Criffel, cloud-capped and majestic; then the white sands of Solway, with tides swifter than horsemen; and finally the eye rested joyfully upon the hills of Cumberland, and noticed with glee the blue curling smoke from its villages ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... upon the ground. When it dropped, the slave was anchored; and at night his arm was tied to the end of the pole which he carried, so that a whole file was hobbled during sleep. If any one became too enfeebled to preserve his place, the brutal keepers transferred him to the swifter voracity of the hyena, who scented the wake of the caravan across the waste to the sea's margin, where the shark ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... 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 but a very little berg, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... for life. Instantly he turned half around, crouched for a spring, and, seemingly by one single leap, went nearly past the rock-pile, so that it partly covered his retreat. Quick as his movements were, they were not swifter than those of the men whose duty was to prevent ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... sixty-two life has begun; At seventy-three begins once more; Fly swifter as thou near'st the sun, And brighter shine at eighty-four. At ninety-five, Should thou arrive, Still wait on God, and ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... like the sea Toward my pale star, Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free I sail afar. With front outspread and swelling breasts, On swifter sail I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests Under night's veil. Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash A bark in distress: By the blast I am lulled—by the tempest's wild crash On ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had been swifter, Less trouble a sabre thrust, But his Fate decided fever, And each man dies ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... nothing save my marvellous ill luck. This tale points a moral, Baron Ned. If one belongs to the devil, one should stand by one's master. Hell is swifter in revenge ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... resembles the family and the village in 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 ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... 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 strongest minds ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... though it was his first, and he was no colt, like the black. Then they circled round and round the meadow, sometimes neck and neck, sometimes one far in advance. Generally it was Peggy, for the black was far the swifter animal of the two; but now and then she pulled him in, like the good-natured girl she was, and let her cousin gallop ahead. Margaret watched them with delight, not a pang of envy disturbing her enjoyment. What a perfect thing it was! ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... true; France the wife, and England the handmaid; yet over the realm Their eyes were in every place, their hands gripp'd firm on the helm. Villein and earl, the cowl and the plume, they were bridled alike; One law for all, but arm'd law,—not swifter to aid than to strike. Lo, in the twilight transept, the holy places of God, Not with sunset the steps of the altar are dyed, but with scarlet of blood! Clang of iron-shod feet, and sheep for their shepherd ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... flow, Boose sittan ba kaum uzo; Swifter and sweeter the strings did go, Mutrib i khoosh nuwa bejo; Never such singing was heard, I trow; Taza ba ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... win, Thjalfi, you must run faster, though I must own no man has ever come here who was swifter of foot." ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... hair,— Bewilderingly volleyed o'er eyes and o'er lips,— To the lambent swell of her limbs, her breasts and her hips, She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glare Of the tempest that bears her away,— That bears me away! Away, over forest and foam, over tree and spray, Far swifter than thought, far swifter than sound or than flame. Over ocean and pine, In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine ... Though Sylvan and Nymph do not Exist, and only what Of terror and beauty I feel and I name As parts of the storm, the awe and the rapture divine That here in the tempest are mine,— ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... from death. He was going to fall. He knew that he was. Nothing could save him—nothing, and in imagination he saw himself lose his hold of the branch, slip sidewise, and go down headlong as the bears had fallen, to strike against the rocks, glance off, and then plunge down, down, swifter and swifter ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... fleetness, 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 ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... Sleipner, the eight-footed steed of Odin, which was swifter than the wind and never ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... to gather knowledge of the land? Fool, I knew it from the first, and by Huitzel! were you not vowed to Tezcat, your heart should smoke to-morrow on the altar of Huitzel. Be warned, and give me no more false counsels lest your end prove swifter than you think. Learn that I have asked these questions of you to a purpose, and by the command of the gods, as it was written on the hearts of those sacrificed this day. This was the purpose and this ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... some of the Indians prisoners, but they being swifter than the pirates, every one escaped, leaving eight pirates dead, and ten wounded: yea, had the Indians been more dextrous in military affairs, they might have defended that passage, and not let one man pass. A little while after they came ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... perception of Power and Love in the absolute, and of Beauty and Good in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet's station between both, swifter, subtler, and more numerous films for the connexion of each with each, than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge . . . I would rather consider Shelley's poetry as a sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Alfred made some improvements in his ships. "They were full-nigh twice as long as the others; some had sixty oars, some more; they were both swifter and steadier and eke higher than the others; they were neither on the Frisian shape nor on the Danish, but as himself thought that they useful might be." These new ships seem to have done good service, though one time they got aground, seemingly because they were so large, and the Danes ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... scientific logic of the insurance tables and the sad conviction of the psalmist, one sees it go with a passionate prescience of never seeing its like again such as the younger witness cannot know. Each new summer of the few left must be shorter and swifter than the last: its Junes will be thirty days long, and its Julys and Augusts thirty-one, in compliance with the almanac; but the days will be of so small a compass that fourteen of them will rattle round in a week of the old size like ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... heart was sore with what he saw, For he met none to wish him once "God speed;" So he spurr'd onward swifter to the place Where lurk'd the monster that thus spoil'd the land; And long the road seem'd to him in his wrath. At last he came unto the fearful spot, Mark'd with the blanching bones of man and beast; A thicket planted by a lonely heath, O'ergrown with brambles and unwholesome ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... hurtles o'er the fence; The double crack of every lifted gun, The dinting thud of birds whose course is done— These sounds, delightful to his listening ear, He heeds no longer, for he cannot hear. None stauncher, till the drive was done, defied Temptation, rooted to his master's side; None swifter, when his master gave the word, Leapt on his course to track the running bird, And bore it back—ah, many a time and oft— His nose as faultless as his mouth was soft. How consciously, how proudly unconcerned, Straight to his master's side ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... now the Thunderer meditates his flight From Ida's summits to the Olympian height. Swifter than thought, the wheels instinctive fly, Flame through the vast of air, and reach the sky. 'Twas Neptune's charge his coursers to unbrace, And fix the car on its immortal base; There stood the chariot, beaming forth its rays, Till with a snowy veil he screen'd the blaze. He, whose all-conscious ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... fire rested there, 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 ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... What could he do for her? All he had done had been swept away by the wrong-doing of this fine gentleman, for whom she was willing to lay down her life. He looked at her with wistful eyes, longing to hold closer, swifter communication with her than could be held by their slow finger-speech. How could he ever make her know all the love and pride pent up in his voiceless heart? Phebe, in her girlish, blind preoccupation, saw nothing ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... 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, in the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... landmarks to unexplored regions of truth, which philosophy has yet to lay down on its atlas. The philosopher gets his track by observation; the poet trusts to his inner sense, and makes the straighter and swifter line. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... dog, 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 individual, instead of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... 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 ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... 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 ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton |
