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Lifetime   /lˈaɪftˌaɪm/   Listen
Lifetime

noun
1.
The period during which something is functional (as between birth and death).  Synonyms: life, life-time, lifespan.  "He lived a long and happy life"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lifetime" Quotes from Famous Books



... amid weeping she answer'd:— "Woe to me! why did I bear thee, my child, in an hour of misfortune? Would I could see thee nor harm'd by injustice nor yielding to sadness, Here by the ships, since the days of thy doom are the few and the fleeting! Woe to me! both to a death premature and a sorrowful lifetime Thee, in the darkness of Fate, did I bear in the house of thy father! Surely thy word will I carry to thunder-delighting Kronion, Up unto snowy Olympus, and prayer may prevail for persuasion. Thou meanwhile for a season lie still by the Myrmidon galleys, Hating the Danaeid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... or rise in value in a ratio exactly equivalent to the increase or diminution of the volume of money; and that if sufficiently reduced in volume, a dollar, whether stamped on gold, silver, or paper, would buy a plantation or pay a man for the labor of a lifetime. There can be no doubt as to the correctness of the quantitative theory ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... account for, if it does not excuse, the unequal space devoted to districts with equal claims to attention. But it would take years, if not a lifetime, to render the manuscript of so discursive ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... least he saw with his own eyes that there was such a thing as judgment to come, not merely thousands of years hence at the last day, but there and then in his own lifetime. He saw the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men. He saw the wicked murdering and destroying each other till the land was full of blood. He saw the Empress-mother ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... youthful Opie. "It is much to his honor," says one who wrote in Wolcott's own lifetime, "that during his residence in Cornwall, he discovered, and encouraged, the fine talents of the late Opie, the artist; a man of such modesty, simplicity of manners, and ignorance of the world, that it is probable his genius would have lain obscure ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... his father and two of his sisters died. This painful examination having been completed, Antommarchi took out the heart and placed it in a silver vase filled with spirits of wine; he then directed the valet de chambre to dress the body as he had been accustomed in the Emperor's lifetime, with the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour across the breast, in the green uniform of a colonel of the Chasseurs of the Guard, decorated with the orders of the Legion of Honour and of the Iron Crown, long boots with little spurs, finally, his three ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the special knowledge of a lifetime, would be needed to copy—even to copy—this picture. Mr. So-and-so, R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.) the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing cataract ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... largest economy in the world after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features are now eroding. Industry, the most important sector of the economy, is heavily dependent on imported raw materials and fuels. The much smaller ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... been translated into French during Descartes' lifetime, and personally revised and corrected by him, the French text is evidently deserving of the same consideration as the Latin originals, and consequently, the additions and variations of the French version have also been given—the additions being put in square ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... criminal negligence in him to have suffered her to escape from her attendants? How could such a thing have happened? Did Mr. Pennroyal consider that people might say that the death of his wife was no loss to him, but the contrary? because that fifty thousand pounds of hers, of which, during her lifetime, he could touch only the interest, became, at her decease, his absolute property, to do with as he liked. Under such circumstances, a gentleman careful of his reputation should have guarded her as the apple of his eye. It was certainly very odd that a poor frail crazy creature ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... empire and power which he had pursued through the whole course of his life with so much hazard, he did at last with much difficulty compass, but reaped no other fruits from it than the empty name and invidious glory. But the great genius which attended him through his lifetime, even after his death remained as the avenger of his murder, pursuing through every sea and land all those who were concerned in it, and suffering none to escape, but reaching all who in any sort or kind were either actually engaged in the fact, or by their ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... that fellow before?" demanded Ray, of brown-eyed Sergeant Winsor, who had spent a lifetime on the plains, but ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... laurel wreath, in which were mingled oak and olive leaves. Later, at the time of his abdication at Fontainebleau, Napoleon expressed a regret that he had permitted his statue to be made during his lifetime. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... correct in a general way, especially in regard to the Middle Ages, but is subject to important exceptions. There is no doubt, for instance, that the likenesses of SS. Peter and Paul have been carefully preserved in Rome ever since their lifetime, and that they were familiar to every one, even to school-children. These portraits have come down to us by scores. They are painted in the cubiculi of the catacombs, engraved in gold leaf in the so-called vetri cemeteriali, cast in bronze, hammered ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... Hatfield to announce her accession and to escort her to the capital. During the reign of her brother her relations with Thomas Seymour nearly led to a secret marriage and the loss of her rights to the throne, while during the lifetime of her sister the disclosures of Wyatt and his followers and the correspondence of the French ambassador brought her to the Tower on suspicion of treason. Mary was, however, averse to severe measures, more especially as Elizabeth expressed ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... He was stirred to the depths of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was merely ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... has sounded in our ears, and has left the vibrations to go on and on for our lifetime: this ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... moderate means, a man whose stock sprang from the sturdy tillers of the soil, who had himself belonged among the wage-workers, who had entered the Army as a private soldier. Wealth was not struck at when the President was assassinated, but the honest toil which is content with moderate gains after a lifetime of unremitting labor, largely in the service of the public. Still less was power struck at in the sense that power is irresponsible or centered in the hands of any one individual. The blow was not aimed at tyranny or wealth. It was aimed at one of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... bespoken, and our manager was given to understand that his expenses for this night were guaranteed. As we had so far had very indifferent houses, it may be gathered that he looked upon this as the occasion of his lifetime. We were put into vigorous rehearsal, and worked most of the day, besides playing at night. We were to give the Artaserse, a tragedy of extreme length and magniloquence, and conclude with the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... commonly taught too little of the duties of married women to their husbands. They look for a lifetime of unalloyed bliss. If they fail to realize their impossible dream, they turn their faces toward the divorce court. Many girls have had too smooth a pathway, too little of responsibility, and too little of disappointment, before undertaking ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... bishop. And as tastes differ, and "human fancy is cut into a thousand shapes" (Montaigne said that), Montaigne also has his devotees, he who, himself, was so little of one: a sect is formed round him. In his lifetime he had Mademoiselle de Gournay, his daughter of alliance, who was solemnly devoted to him; and his disciple, Charron, followed him closely, step by step, only striving to arrange his thoughts with more order and method. In our time amateurs, intelligent men, practice the religion under ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... matchless preacher! For sixty years his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, had labored there. Let us linger a moment over those scenes which, though fled like a dream, once witnessed the joys and sorrows of a lifetime. Here in this retired street stands the weather-stained parsonage, graced by a pair of saplings, planted by his own hands, to which Northampton points as 'the Edwards elms,' and which now fling giant ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... own; they follow a gleam which is visible to them if not to others; they discover, or rather they are discovered by, some truth which flashes forth in one inspired moment—the master-moment of a lifetime; they possess the sublime certainty of love, loyalty, devotion; if they err through a heroic folly and draw upon themselves ruin in things temporal, may there not be some atom of divine wisdom at the heart of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... observed similar facts. Besides such individual variations, forms sufficiently well marked to be valued and to become widely cultivated {315} sometimes suddenly appear: thus Mr. Sheriff has had the good fortune to raise in his lifetime seven new varieties, which are now extensively grown in many ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... totally ignorant beforehand of all that was being explained to her. At length she said, "I must begin to read the newspapers. I know much better what happened in the days of Queen Elizabeth than what has happened in my own lifetime;" and then Miss Burleigh left politics, and began to speak of her brother's personal ambition and personal qualities; to relate anecdotes of his signal success at Eton and at Oxford; to expatiate on her own devotion to him, and the great expectations founded by all his ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... hands started out to touch him, but she recalled them. "You must feel sorry for her," she said softly. "She's so young. I think you'll live to thank her. She'll learn that men like you don't come every day—only once in a lifetime." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... father-in-law. He, too, grew accustomed to her, and even fond of her, though he scarcely ever spoke to her, and a certain involuntary contempt was perceptible even in his signs of affection to her. Malanya Sergyevna had most to put up with from her sister-in-law. Even during her mother's lifetime, Glafira had succeeded by degrees in getting the whole household into her hands; every one from her father downwards, submitted to her rule; not a piece of sugar was given out without her sanction; she would rather have died than shared her ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... of change. In religion, politics, literature, and commerce, in the habits of daily living, in the world of ideas, his lifetime witnessed continual change and movement. When Elizabeth came to the throne, six years before he was born, England was still largely Catholic, as it had been for nine centuries; when she died England was Protestant, and by the date of Shakespeare's death it was well on the way to becoming Puritan. ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... you expect?" was Campbell's reply. "But I can tell you this—if I don't get a fair show pretty quick, I'm going to quit—and I'll not only quit playing football, but I'll say good-by for a lifetime to Ridgley School. I'm not going to be the goat much longer—you can bet your ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... nation," he said, "I would have thrown something of state into our reception; but to an old friend, who often shared my board at the Castle of Genappes [during his residence in Burgundy, in his father's lifetime, Genappes was the usual abode of Louis.... S.], I wished to show myself, as I love best to live, old Louis of Valois, as simple and plain as any of his Parisian badauds [idlers]. But I directed them ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... strive a very lifetime for that," quoth Dame Hilda. "I should think no man could rise thereto that dwelt not in anchorite's cell, and scourged him on the bare back every morrow, and ate but of black rye-bread, and drank of ditch-water. Deary me, but I would not like ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... Salisbury, New Hampshire, made during his lifetime and was paid for a million shingles. During the years he was accomplishing this colossal work he cleared three hundred acres of land, tapped for twenty years at least six hundred maple-trees, making sometimes four thousand pounds of sugar a year. He could mow six acres a day, giving nine ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... the Squire, sternly. "It was the love of a lifetime. People may doubt as they will, but I know no love has ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... suited for any position," replied Mrs. Grantly, vaingloriously. But nevertheless even the archdeacon moved about through the close at Barchester with a somewhat prouder step since the tidings of this alliance had become known there. The time had been—in the latter days of his father's lifetime—when he was the greatest man of the close. The dean had been old and infirm, and Dr. Grantly had wielded the bishop's authority. But since that things had altered. A new bishop had come there, absolutely hostile to him. A new ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... of Essie Tisdale's marriage with Dubois followed, and even the news editor's pencil could not eliminate Sylvanus Starr's distinctive style. He had made the most of a chance of a lifetime. "An old man's darling"—"Serpent he had warmed in his bosom"—"Weltering in his blood"—all the trite phrases and vulgarisms of country journalism were used to tell the sensational story which sickened ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... capital, for whatever it may be worth. In pondering the fancy, I need hardly say that I do not assess myself at any extravagant value. I but venture to think that the devotion of one human creature, however humble, throughout a lifetime, is not a despicable offering. To use me as they would, to fetch and carry with me, to draw on me for whatever force resides in me, as they would on a bank account, to the last penny, to use my brains for their plans, my heart for their love, my blood for added length of days: ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... "A lifetime that has just ended,—or one still being lived?" Benjamin Crane spoke like an avenging justice, and there was no mistaking ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... financial conquests. At first he listened with impatience to any of Pierre's guarded talk. Sir Charles' recitals were so insinuating that Pierre felt much constraint toward polite bragging. However, the secretive habit of a lifetime sealed his lips against boastful avowals. Vintage warmth elicited nothing more than a few guarded hints at possible craft in acquisition ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... her for the greater part of an hour, comforting her with a grave tenderness that Dot found infinitely soothing. It might have been half a lifetime instead of a brief seven years that stretched between them. For Anne had been a woman long before her time, and Dot for all her self-reliance was still ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... trained nurses attendant upon mother and child, the ingenuity of brilliant minds is focused upon the problem of how to make maternity easier, neither pains nor money are spared in these beneficent efforts for one whom we have never seen, but when the friend of a lifetime, the man who has served his kind well and nobly in profession, state, or church, is to leave the scene of his labors for a new field of activity, when the woman—who has labored to no less good purpose in bringing up a family to take its part in the world's ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... the Pleiades. The individual name by which the Pleiades of the sixteenth century may best be remembered is that of Ronsard the poet, associated with the romantic and pathetic memory of Mary, Queen of Scots. Never, perhaps, in the history of letters was the fame of a poet in the poet's own lifetime more universal and more splendid than was the fame of Ronsard. A high court of literary judicature formally decreed to Ronsard the title of The French Poet by eminence. This occurred in the youth of the poet. The wine of success so brilliant ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... lay all about him. The secrets of the rocks he had never suspected. Steam, electricity, the growth of trees, the fall of snow,—all these were mysteries to him. The only conquest he knew, the subjection of men's bodies, went but a little way. All the men who in his lifetime knew the name of Alexander the Great could find encampment on the Palo Alto farm. The great world of men in his day was beyond his knowledge. His world was a very small one, and of this he had seen ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... toning processes is slight. Uranium nitrate costs from forty to sixty cents per ounce, and an ounce will last a long time. Potassium ferricyanide costs about twenty cents per pound, and a pound is ample for a lifetime. Glacial acetic acid is a little more costly, but a half-pound bottle will prove a good investment. It is used also, as the reader will recall, in making acid ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant

... "that imperturbable dreamer of the heavens," as Lazareff hailed him, gathered together the fruits of a lifetime's labour, and gave it, with well-justified contempt, to a world bound hand and foot to Barald's Theory of Vertices and "compensating electric nodes." "They shall see," he wrote—in that immortal postscript to "The Heart of the Cyclone"—"the Laws ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... prove it?" the young man exclaimed excitedly. "Every one who knew anything about him says the same. There was I half starved in Cape Town, and here was he spending two thousand a year. Beast, he was! I'll find out where it came from if it takes me a lifetime." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... younger son for a portion of the patrimony even during his father's lifetime, is an instance of deliberate and unfilial desertion; the duties of family cooperation had grown distasteful to him, and the wholesome discipline of the home had become irksome. He was determined to break away from all home ties, forgetful ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... difficulty, in gaining permission. It was not every mother who could manage a last interview with a condemned son. But she had bribed the colonel. She had given him in silver the savings of a lifetime. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... distress. But your Father had, in all his doings, some purpose of his own which he did not disclose to me. So far as I can see, there is not a word of his instructions that he had not thought over fully. Whatever idea he had in his mind was the idea of a lifetime; he had studied it in every possible phase, and was prepared to guard ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... or procedure, divergent from the current traditions of religion. Nor must it be forgotten that sermons, like plays, are addressed to a mixed audience of families, and that the spiritual teachings of a lifetime may be destroyed by ten minutes of uncensored pronouncement from a pulpit, the while parents are sitting, not, as in a theatre vested with the right of protest, but dumb and excoriated to the soul, watching their children, perhaps of tender age, eagerly drinking ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a lifetime seemed to be concentrated in the months since they had left Europe. Things widely different from all past experience had filled their thoughts to overflowing, and drowned out old sympathies, till this evening vivified them afresh. Yet Robert felt, with a sort of little pain, that ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... themselves fortunate; I saw many with two or three of them. Other parts of the body are also not exempt. The ulcers generally appear with the ripening of the dates, and do not go away until the next year, when the same season returns again. This disease does not occur more than once in a lifetime; it attacks children for the most part during their infancy. No remedy is ever applied, as experience has shown that it cannot be prevented; the Europeans have tried ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... all experience the varied influences of our passions a hundred times in a lifetime, not to say in every twenty-four hours; if we are sensible of a thousand physical and moral causes, perpetually modifying our dispositions, and our words, making us differ to-day from what we were ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations to local and county charities have been frequently ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... usual health, and also her usual modes of thought and feeling. The mental and moral habits of a lifetime are not readily changed. Often and earnestly did Edith talk with her mother, but with few evidences of the result ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... less degree, billiards, a man must be a fool who deceives himself upon such a point; but in whist there is a sufficient amount of chance to enable him to preserve his self-complacency for some time—let us say, his lifetime. If he loses, he ascribes it to his 'infernal luck,' which always fills his hands with twos and threes; and if he wins, though it is by a succession of four by honours as long as the string of four-in-hands when the Coaching ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... developed not a few constitutional cowards,—men to be pitied, it is true, but with a commiseration that, in her case, would be mingled with contempt. On the other hand, if he reasoned, "I will win her if I can; I will do all and more than she can ask, but I will not risk the loss of a lifetime's enjoyment of my wealth," she would quietly say to him by her manner: "Enjoy your wealth. I can have no part in such a scheme of existence; I will not give my hand, even in friendship, to a man who would do less than I would, were ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... letters as his own handiwork. On this point he was inaccessible to temptation, if temptation was offered. If he lies as to Letter II having been dictated by Logan, he lies by way of relapse into the habit of a lifetime, and so on other points. He keeps back all mention of Letter IV, till the last ember of hope of life ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... But if we leave these aside, as well as his aristocratic enemies, Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, some valid generalizations emerge. The very persistency of the Dunces' attacks on Pope (I have located over one hundred and fifty published during Pope's lifetime) and the large number of anonymous pamphlets that we cannot definitely ascribe to anyone Pope ever mentioned suggest that the Battle of the Dunces is best seen economically and sociologically. They were, for the most part, ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... to say nothing of the danger there would be in giving him so strong an interest in his wife's death. Not but what I daresay he'll contrive to squander the greater part of the money during her lifetime. Is it ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... to negotiate, and secondly, to collect information. It would seem that for the first of these duties they are indispensable. The difficult language and peculiar characters of the tribesmen are the study of a lifetime. A knowledge of the local conditions, of the power and influence of the khans, or other rulers of the people; of the general history and traditions of the country, is a task which must be entirely specialised. Rough and ready methods are excellent while the tribes resist, but something ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... friend of a lifetime, and he was sincerely attached to the deacon, and when he turned his horse's head towards the gate this evening, he felt his heart go out in sympathy to the old man in durance vile upon his ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... been in communication with most of the European Governments before breakfast. There was a paper pinned on her door with a signed request that she might be called particularly early on the morrow. Such an opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I covered up everything except the signature with another notice, to the effect that before these words should meet the eye she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry for the trouble she was giving, ...
— Reginald • Saki

... wife always sat in the best kitchen; and it was only after his son's marriage that the entertaining rooms were furnished. Even then they were kept with closed shutters and bagged-up furniture during the lifetime of the old couple, who, nevertheless, took a pride in adding to the rich-fashioned ornaments and grand old china of the apartments. But they died, and were gathered to their fathers, and young Mr. and Mrs. Buxton (aged ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that date it was impossible, for the papers were not in his hands; moreover, the minister of war wrote in 1778 that the name of the elder Buonaparte boy had already been withdrawn. That charge was made during Napoleon's lifetime. His brother Joseph positively denied it, and asserted the fact as it is now substantially proved to be; Bourrienne, who had known his Emperor as a child of nine, was of like opinion; Napoleon himself, in an autograph paper still existing, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... tried for murder and executed. This foolish and criminal invasion was the work of a fanatic who all his lifetime had been a violent opposer of slavery, and who while in Kansas had participated more or less in the Osawatamie murders. His son was killed by the "border ruffians" near his home in Kansas, for which a fearful revenge was taken upon the murderers. Brown, having always ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... days of Moore lasted for half an ordinary lifetime after this, they saw few important events save the imbroglio over the Byron memoirs. They saw also the composition of a great deal of literature and journalism, all very well paid, notwithstanding which, Moore seems to have been always ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... believed that the heart is more than the head, and neither could force his imagination to work under unfavorable conditions. But Hawthorne's failure of imagination came at the end of a fruitful and consistent career, and his life failed with it; in Coleridge the poet died half a lifetime before the man, and left the man—the preacher and ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... marksman. And although large editions are nothing, standard editions, richly furnished and complete, are worthy of remark. Stevenson is one of the very few authors in our literary history who have been honoured during their lifetime by the appearance of such an edition; the best of his public, it would seem, do not only wish to read his works, but to possess them, and all of them, at the cost of many pounds, in library form. It would be easy to mention more voluminous and more popular ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... belonging to suitors in the former court amounted to nearly forty millions of pounds.[1] The simplest case might require a dozen years for its settlement, while difficult ones consumed a lifetime, or more, and were handed down from father to son,—a legacy of baffled hopes, of increasing expense, of mental suffering worse than that ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... the career of a man—especially of one who leads a wandering and adventurous life—when it seems as though the events of a lifetime were compressed into the period of a few months, or weeks, or even days. Such, at least, was the experience of our hero while he travelled in the equatorial regions of South America. Events succeeded each other with such rapidity, and accumulated on each other to such an extent, that when he ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... am well content being free of you, the way you were pictured to be. I declare to my goodness, the name of you put terror on me through the whole of my lifetime, and your image to be clogging and ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... interdependence of our time. Every new social relation begets a new type of wrongdoing—of sin, to use an old-fashioned word—and many years always elapse before society is able to turn this sin into crime which can be effectively punished at law. During the lifetime of the older men now alive the social relations have changed far more rapidly than in the preceding two centuries. The immense growth of corporations, of business done by associations, and the extreme strain and pressure of modern life, have produced conditions which render the public ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... that was laid upon his foe. The landlord felt so well satisfied with the world that he took another jaunty crack at the sergeant: "By richts, man, you ought to go to gaol, but I'll just fine you a shulling a month for Bobby's natural lifetime, to give the wee soldier a treat of a steak or a ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... spear, head-axe, and shield, and the small bamboo spikes known as soga. They do not make use of the bow and arrow, although they have been credited as possessing them. [184] The old men claim it has not been used in their lifetime, nor is mention made of it in the folk-tales. The only time it appears is in the crude weapons used in shooting fish in the rice-fields, and in the miniature bow and arrow, which hang above the heads of ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... his head in his hand. But, if he is not a St. Denis, he dies. That is the law. Cut the head off a lie, it does not die at all. It rather seems to enjoy the operation. You will meet it, like fifty St. Denises, on every morning walk, during your lifetime. They have a marvellous vitality. I meet lies every day that, to my certain knowledge, were put to death a hundred years ago, by master hands at the business, too. They ought, in decency at least, to look like pale ghosts 'revisiting ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... on the extraordinary successes which, under Divine Providence, have attended his Majesty's arms in this portion of his dominions; we should do injustice to the memory of our late truly illustrious president, Major-General Brock, under whose auspices the latter were during his lifetime principally achieved, did we omit to accompany them with feelings of the most ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... It is not known—it is forgotten, as she was in her lifetime. Who was she? The cloistered sister Elizabeth, daughter of the Holstein Count, and once the bride of King Hakon of Norway. Sweet creature! she proudly—but not with unbecoming pride—advanced in her bridal dress, and with her court ladies, up to her royal consort. Then came ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... longer small. His ear, however, is not so keen as mine to detect the existence of an opponent, and I am satisfied to wait and see which one of us in the long run will appear to have been right. Possibly, this may not be decided in our lifetime. That also will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... spoke English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, the Scandinavian, and many of the Oriental tongues, with equal fluency; and pretended to have traveled over the whole earth, and even to have visited the most distant starry orbs frequently, in the course of a lifetime which, with continual transmigrations, he declared to have lasted for thousands of years. His birth, he said, had been in Chaldea, in the dawn of time; and that he was the sole inheritor of the lost sciences and mysteries of his own and the Egyptian race. He spoke of his personal intimacy ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... the bounty of several bishops. The fine altar (the noblest in England by much) was done by Bishop Morley; the roof and the coat-of-arms of the Saxon and Norman kings were done by Bishop Fox; and the fine throne for the bishop in the choir was given by Bishop Mew in his lifetime; and it was well it was for if he had ordered it by will, there is reason to believe it had never been done—that reverend prelate, notwithstanding he enjoyed so rich a bishopric, scarce leaving money enough behind him to pay for ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe

... to think—for me to act; In a few hours you have been more to me Than that man in a lifetime. Nor shall I Keep my content a secret. On your brow The lustre of my high and royal favor Shall shine resplendent—I will make that man A mark for envy whom I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the Poet, the mighty Man of Genius" by Burton, appears to be in no way exaggerated. The healthful influence of his life and writings has done and is still doing good in his beloved country. But though the man who in his lifetime was neglected, and who was allowed to die in the depths of poverty and misery, is now the most honoured of his countrymen, and his rank as one of the world's great poets is universally acknowledged, his labours have been to a ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... patient, and lie still, he will presently hear the pattering of tiny feet on the leaves, and see the brown birds come running in from every direction. Once in a lifetime, perhaps, he may see them gather in a close circle—tails together, heads out, like the spokes of a wheel, and so go to sleep for the night. Their soft whistlings and chirpings at such times form the most delightful sound one ever ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... the author of the first book of Samuel, till the time of his death. The two books of Samuel cite no authors, and therefore seem to be originals. They begin with his genealogy, birth and education, and might be written partly in his lifetime by himself or his disciples the Prophets at Naioth in Ramah, 1 Sam. xix. 18, 19, 20. and partly after his death ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton

... not lead. The school and the church alike march in the wake of science, philosophy, and political ideas. We see this illustrated in every epoch of human history, and in none so conspicuously as in the changes which occurred in the philosophy and education of ancient Rome during the lifetime of the elder Cato, and in modern times during the revival of letters and the subsequent rise of the Baconian induction. It is impossible, indeed, for any great movement of thought to find acceptance without its telling to some extent on every department ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... been told that the impression is an afterthought, or an imagination, or a remembrance of the achievement of some younger child. I know better. It is an actual little fragment of my own experience, and nothing which ever befell me in my whole lifetime is more precise or definite. I do not know who held my petticoats bunched up behind to steady me for the start, nor who held out a roughened finger to entice me. But I remember the grip, and the feel ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... worked exceedingly hard all his lifetime. In his youth, though the family were then well-to-do, he was not permitted to lounge about in idleness, but had to work with the rest in the fields. He dragged his heavy nailed shoes over the furrows with the plough; he reaped and loaded in harvest time; in winter he trimmed ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... also went to visit Melrose Abbey, which is a very beautiful ruin in the south part of Scotland. While they were there they visited Abbotsford, too, which is the house that Walter Scott lived in. Walter Scott amused himself, during his lifetime, in collecting a great many objects of interest connected with Scottish history, and putting them up in his house; and now the place is a perfect museum ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott

... themselves out for regular customers, it is absurd for strangers to ask for these courtesies. I marvel when I hear these sentiments. If this popular impression regarding the courtesy of the druggist did not exist, it would be worth the expenditure of vast sums and the labor of a lifetime to create it. To deliberately undo it would be as foolish as to lock the door ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... a kind of love a man can give to woman but once in his lifetime: the love of the man in the first flush of manhood for the woman he has chosen to be his mate, untransferable and never to be forgotten: love of passion so exquisite, of devotion so pure, born of the youth of the heart and belonging ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... child,' remarked Miss Clarissa. 'If our brother Francis's wife had found it convenient in her lifetime (though she had an unquestionable right to act as she thought best) to invite the family to her dinner-table, we might have known our brother Francis's child better at the present ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... to hear folk say a self-made Great Man. It's a bitter thing to have the ambition without the genius, to smoulder in the fire that great men shine by! However, it's something to have just the saving sense to know that ye've not got it, though it's taken a wasted lifetime to convince me, and I sometimes think the deceiving serpent is more scotched than killed yet. However, ye seem to me to be likelier to lack the ambition than the genius, so we may let that bide. But there's a snare of mine, Jan, that I mean your feet to be ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the purest passion that you can well conceive. For life gave her nothing in return. It treated her worse than it treated Charlotte. She had none of the things that, after all, Charlotte had; neither praise nor fame in her lifetime; nor friendship, nor love, nor vision of love. All these things "passed her by with averted head"; and she stood in her inviolable serenity and watched them go, without putting out her hand to one of them. You cannot ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... would not necessarily interfere with solemnity, he agreed to the proposal with his accustomed look of satisfaction—which, however, he suddenly nipped in the bud. Then, setting-to with an expression that might have indicated the woes of a lifetime, ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... women—all, do you hear me, Marie?—would have been seduced in your position. How absurd we should be, we men, we who have committed a thousand follies through a score of years, if we were not willing to grant you one imprudence in a lifetime! God keep me from triumphing over you or from offering you a pity you repelled so vehemently the other day. Perhaps that unfortunate man was sincere when he wrote to you, sincere in attempting to kill himself, sincere in returning that same night to Florine. Men are worth ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... bill of fare, because the whole party had an unconquerable antipathy to them; and Larry said he had "aiten many pies in his lifetime, but he had niver aiten magpies, and he'd be shot av he ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... at everybody and everything without being stared at in return. She therefore never went out without one of these overalls, composed of several yards of fine muslin. Her dress in the house was usually of coloured sarcenet, for a small vessel came into the port one day during her father's lifetime, unloaded a great quantity of bales of goods with English marks, and, as the vessel had gone out in ballast, there was a surmise on his part by what means they came into the captain's possession. He therefore cited the captain up to the Governor, but the affair ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... civilized man. A century and a half has now elapsed since this hero of Pokanoket fell a victim to his own race, but even to this day his name is respected, and the last object supposed to have been touched by him in his lifetime is considered by every American as a valuable relic. This extraordinary man, whose real name was Metacom, succeeded his brother in the government of the Wampanoags. The wrongs and grievances suffered by this brother, added to those which ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... which they were well assured was not adulterated, because they had it out of the caliph's own dispensatory. By virtue of that admirable balsam, I was in a few days perfectly cured, and my wife and I lived together as agreeably as if I had never eaten of the garlic dish. But having been all my lifetime used to enjoy my liberty, I grew weary of being confined to the caliph's palace; yet I said nothing to my wife on the subject, for fear of displeasing her. However, she suspected my feelings; and eagerly wished for liberty herself, for it was gratitude alone ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... its head drooping. This was a bad omen. He knew what sensitive creatures flowers are, and had noticed that they thrive with some people and not with others. He remembered how sometimes, in his wife's lifetime, her rose, which always stood on her little work-table, had faded and died quite unexpectedly. And he had also noticed that this always happened when his sun was hiding behind a cloud, which after a while would dissolve in large drops ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... the line and saw them. He must be one of those conjured into existence here from the real Egypt of the past. He might have no soul, but a lifetime of being an overseer had given him habits that replaced the need for what had been a pretty slim ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde

... military service is continued on Saturday evenings for four years. The Y.M.A., in addition to the military discipline, fencing, wrestling, weight-lifting and pole-twisting of which I have spoken, exercises itself in handwriting—which many Japanese practise as an art during their whole lifetime—and in composing the conventional short poem. I was gravely informed that "the custom of spending money on sweet-stuff is decreasing." What this really means is that the young men were not frequenting the sweet-stuff shops, which are ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... Byron continued in suspence, when the fate of Lady Clementina was undetermined, when it was not yet settled, whether she was to marry Grandison, retire to a Nunnery, or continue crack-brain'd all her lifetime. After all, I am well-pleased to see Grandison and Harriet fairly buckled. And I hope soon to hear, that the ceremony is performed between the Count de Belvedere and Lady Clementina. I am afraid there ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... married, all that would be changed. But, pshaw; it is all in a lifetime! And then he would lightly promise to mend his ways—a promise that was forgotten within the hour. What do women know of a strong ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... leaders of men, and so thoroughly initiated into the politics of the principal cities, that it was commonly said that, after Machiavel, he was the greatest authority in these matters. He had returned to France in the lifetime of Henry IV, and had married the daughter of Sully, and after Henri's death had commanded the Swiss and the Grison regiments—at the siege of Juliers. This was the man whom the king was so imprudent as ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... partners together." "I believe," says the landlord, "you are out, sir, for that gentleman has no brother." "D—n your nonsense, with you and your outs!" says the beau; "as if I should not know better than you country puts; I who have lived in London all my lifetime." "I ask a thousand pardons," says the landlord; "I hope no offence, sir." "No, no," cries the other; "we gentlemen know how to make allowance for your country breeding." Then stepping to the kitchen door, with an audible voice he called the ostler, and in a very graceful accent said, "D—n ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... privacy of human interest: he is a warning against the incurable romanticism which clings about the idea of a revolution. Popular history is deceptive if it is used to furnish a picture for coming events. Like drama which compresses the tragedy of a lifetime into a unity of time, place, and action, history foreshortens an epoch into an episode. It gains in poignancy, but loses reality. Men grew from infancy to old age, their children's children had married ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... the wickedness of the thing he fights, is not discouraged nor afraid. And he would listen to no half-measures. Had not his grandfather quarrelled with Henry Clay, and so shaken the friendship of a lifetime, because of a great compromise which he could not countenance? And was his grandson to truckle and make deals with this hideous octopus that was sucking the life-blood from the city's veins? Had he not but yesterday ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... life he seemed to see things as they really were and to realize, in a measure, what a failure he had made of his fatherhood. His slumbering conscience was roused and for a few hours he had an uncomfortable struggle with himself; but though he regretted his harshness, the habits of a lifetime are not laid aside in a moment, and in the end he regarded himself as more sinned against ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... process of dynamic respiration, eternally repeated during the grand period of a solar lifetime, renews its vital energies, and supplies itself, with the full abundance of the ever-living spirit, transmitted from the shoreless ether in which it lives. It needs no other food, except the magnetic nutriment it ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... contemporary prints now first reproduced that entitled the Conjurors is of special interest, as being the only sketch of Fielding, drawn during his lifetime, known to exist. Rough as it is, the characteristic figure of the man, as described by his contemporaries and drawn from memory in Hogarth's familiar plate, is perfectly apparent. The same characteristics may be distinguished in a small figure of the novelist introduced into the still earlier ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... than a temporary thing,—a coin to be spent rapidly as soon as gained, too valueless for any interest upon it to be sought or desired. In olden times it was apparently not considered such cheap currency. Men built their homes to last not only for their own lifetime, but for the lifetime of their children and their children's children; and the idea that their children's children might possibly fail to appreciate the strenuousness and worth of their labours never ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... writing. This could only be the result of a careful comparison of their materials, and of long meditation on their relative value. I suspect that they cared little whether a set daily task was accomplished or not; for if you propose to write only one large volume or four moderate-sized volumes in a lifetime, art is not too long nor is ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... who am likewise a queer character in my way, and have come to spend a week or two with my friend of half a lifetime,—the longest space, probably, that we are ever destined to spend together; for Fate seems preparing changes for both of us. My circumstances, at least, cannot long continue as they are and have been; and B——, too, stands ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... the peristylium was the oecus, or state apartment, where Caius received distinguished guests, and where, in the lifetime of Julia, entertainments were given to the ladies of the colony. Like the triclinium, this room was also partially open at both ends, affording the guests a view of the graceful fountain on the one side and of the garden on the other. In winter wooden frames, with heavy ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... author of one hundred and sixty-eight volumes, of which "The Saints Everlasting Rest" was, and is, the most popular, was born in 1615 during the reign of James I., and died in 1691, soon after the accession of William III. His lifetime, therefore, was coincident with the troubles of the Stuart House. For fifty years Baxter was one of the best known divines in England. Throughout, his was a moderating influence in politics, the Church, and theology. His best known pastorate, one of extraordinary ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... Swiss lover did not 'insult' me, as they call it, though I naturally enough supposed that he wanted to, but didn't have enough courage. But I was wrong, as I discovered later, when I grossly insulted him! Perhaps a girl is loved only once in a lifetime in just that way, perhaps not at all, and I often think I made a mistake in being so cruel to my boy lover. I might in time have learned to love him in the right way, but I couldn't at that time, perhaps because I was so much occupied with Terry, my own lover, and with the movement, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... it is only the existence of the Commonwealth and its organized efforts to preserve and sustain the life of the individuals composing it, which have made possible the achievements of mankind in the various separate fields of effort which are claiming your attention. Lord Acton spent a lifetime collecting material for a History of Liberty. He never wrote it: but, if he had, it would have been a History of Mankind. A History of Government or of the Commonwealth would be nothing less. Such is the nature of the invitation so kindly given to me and so cheerfully ...
— Progress and History • Various

... Fisher himself had deeper interests, but nearly all of them directed at making Tim Fisher a better manager of the automobile repair business. There had been some discussion of the possibility that Tim Fisher might memorize some subject such as the names of all baseball players and their yearly and lifetime scoring, fielding, and playing averages, training for him to go as a contestant on one of the big money giveaway shows. This never came to pass; Tim Fisher did not have any spectacular qualities about him that would ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... not in good spirits at his friend's step, for he himself was about to take a wife also, and much of the apprehension which he felt on his own account found its vent in dreary soliloquies on the risk, sacrifices, responsibilities, and trouble involved by the single act of saddling oneself for a lifetime with some one woman. Reckage, for his own part, had loved one lady very well, yet not so madly that he could resign himself to loving her only, to the exclusion of all others. He walked along toward Almouth House in a mood of many vexations, cursing ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... Yankee, it seemed to be growing from Wagner as the bright shoots of the fir sprout from the dark ones grown the previous year. A whole world, for a period, came to use his idiom. His dream was recognized during his very lifetime as an integral portion of the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... thrice in his benefactor's lifetime, Esmond had been to Walcote; and now, taking but a couple of hours' rest only at the inn on the road, he was up again long before daybreak, and made such good speed that he was at Walcote by two ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thousands in gorgeous raiment, including many Eastern potentates, as well as ambassadors, generals, admirals, and others in uniform. Marlborough House, which was used by Queen Alexandra, King George's mother, during her lifetime, afterwards became the home of the Prince of Wales. Both his father and grandfather, King George and King Edward, lived here when they were Prince ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... But his most immediate and brilliant triumph was in establishing his authority over Rome and the Patrimony of St. Peter. On his accession he found his lands just throwing off the yoke of the German garrisons that had kept them in subjection during Henry VI's lifetime. He saw within the city power divided between the praefectus urbis, the delegate of the Emperor, and the summus senator, the mouthpiece ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... rifle bullets; hardly one of the many forts on the circumference of defence held weapons half so formidable as the stout hearts that served them. Thirty thousand shells! I have been in the neighbourhood of perhaps a hundred bursting shells, and every burst will be a memory for a lifetime; but thirty thousand! The heart stops at the thought. Yet here was the little ruined town; here were the men with weak bodies and cheery faces to prove that courage can raise the mind beyond fear and suffering; that, given an ideal ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young



Words linked to "Lifetime" :   age, death, period, time period, life-time, demise, time of life, dying, hereafter, life, eld, period of time, birth, afterlife



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