volatile

"The mud of Paris," he said to himself--for decidedly he thought that he was sure that the gutter would prove his refuge for the night; and what can one do in a refuge, except dream?--"the mud of Paris is particularly stinking; it must contain a great deal of volatile and nitric salts.

I confess that I was so indifferent to everything, so profoundly demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I hadn't the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in order to tell them with a little gesture, "Look!

The sum of his discourse was to this effect: "That about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.

They want more fenders, more breasting- ropes; they want more springs, more shackles, more fetters; they want to make ships with volatile souls as motionless as square blocks of stone.

For once our volatile and exuberant spirits are hopelessly subdued.

'Ain't I volatile?' she added, as a commentary on this offer, and, with her finger on her nose, departed.

This last was difficult to a volatile person (I am sure that to the Fynes I was a volatile person) and the amusement in itself was not very great; but still--in the country--away from all mental stimulants!

The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about half full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether.

In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries.

It is evident that men incline to call those conditions habits which are of a more or less permanent type and difficult to displace; for those who are not retentive of knowledge, but volatile, are not said to have such and such a 'habit' as regards knowledge, yet they are disposed, we may say, either better or worse, towards knowledge.

Adolph and Rosa had arranged the chamber; volatile, fickle and childish, as they generally were, they were soft-hearted and full of feeling; and, while Miss Ophelia presided over the general details of order and neatness, it was their hands that added those soft, poetic touches to the arrangements, that took from the death-room the grim and ghastly air which too often marks a New England funeral.

"Arch, volatile, a sportive bird, By social glee inspired; Ambitious to be seen or heard, And pleased to be admired!"