toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

transitory
in a sentence

show 84 more with this conextual meaning
  • The whole experience is transitory and soon forgotten.†   (source)
  • For a transitory moment, I think I detect a tiny crack of light in his eyes.†   (source)
  • Greatness is a transitory experience.†   (source)
  • This is why Plato finds it necessary to separate, for example, "horseness" from "horse" and say that horseness is real and fixed and true and unmoving, while the horse is a mere, unimportant, transitory phenomenon.†   (source)
  • In the hearts of his fellow islanders, though, weather of this sort overwhelmed absolutely everything.... Ishmael, a native, could not understand how such transitory and accidental occurrences gained the upper hand in their view of things.†   (source)
  • At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased, and go where I chose.†   (source)
  • After Howard, two more, transitory and sweet, followed by one other, longer.†   (source)
  • ...their secular and transitory and violent lives.†   (source)
  • Wasn't it me who wanted everything to be transitory, anyway?†   (source)
  • The wind strummed soothingly against the cylindrical panes of his windows, and he relaxed exultantly only until they picked up speed again and then turned McWatt left and plunged him right back down, noticing with a transitory spasm of elation the mushrooming clusters of flak leaping open high above him and back over his shoulder to the right, exactly where he could have been if he had not turned left and dived.†   (source)
  • they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature.†   (source)
  • THE AVAKIANS WERE LOCKING UP their bottled-gas store, and beyond their shop the lights of the Piazza, the transitory illusion of Roma, came to an end.†   (source)
  • us transitory ones†   (source)
  • There was nothing wavering in it; no little trick to catch a transitory approbation from the discontented, or to soothe the fractious.†   (source)
  • the human body as transitory and fragile and, by contrast, the soul as enduring.†   (source)
  • He might use corrupt methods to make his harvest as large as it was transitory.†   (source)
  • To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle--with liberty the stake.†   (source)
  • Others are more… transitory.   (source)
  • Without transitoriness, without beginning or end, birth or death, there is no time, either.†   (source)
  • WHAT I BELIEVE, WHAT I VALUE MOST, is transitoriness.†   (source)
  • But is not transitoriness--the perishableness of life--something very sad?†   (source)
  • Transitoriness creates time--and "time is the essence.†   (source)
  • But man's soul is most awake in his knowledge of the inter-changeability of the terms "existence" and "transitoriness.†   (source)
  • One of the most important characteristics distinguishing man from all other forms of nature is his knowledge of transitoriness, of beginning and end, and therefore of the gift of time.†   (source)
  • …Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated…†   (source)
  • This part of my life, strange and transitory, was almost over.†   (source)
  • In man, transitory life attains its peak of animation, of soul power, so to speak.†   (source)
  • Some of the changes in this specific a priori motorcycle I'm riding are very quick and transitory, such as its relationship to the road.†   (source)
  • Everything was planned to be transitory: they boasted that they could pack up and be gone in an hour flat, already drawing a finger across the wrinkled map in the van's glove box, seeking out a new destination.†   (source)
  • In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole, group in one vision its transitoriness and its eternal youth, connect—connect without bitterness until all men are brothers.†   (source)
  • Physical beauty is passing. A transitory possession.†   (source)
  • But those deities which are free from passion, mindful and conscious, bear it patiently, saying, 'Transitory are all things.†   (source)
  • Then he addressed them: "And now, O priests, I take my leave of you; all the constituents of being are transitory; work out your salvation with diligence."†   (source)
  • …coming into being out of the timeless pool of the void, bursting into life, and like a bubble therewith vanishing: time and time again: lives by the multitude: all suffering: each bounded in the tenuous, tight circle of itself—lashing, killing, hating, and desiring peace beyond victory: these all are the children, the mad figures of the transitory yet inexhaustible, long world dream of the All-Regarding, whose essence is the essence of Emptiness: "The Lord Looking Down in Pity."†   (source)
  • The red creeper was quite a transitory growth, and few people have seen it growing.†   (source)
  • there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.†   (source)
  • But that transitory gleam of the true animalism of these monsters was enough.†   (source)
  • He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors,†   (source)
  • 'Yes, I think I see it now,' he said after some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.†   (source)
  • He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another.†   (source)
  • This, however, strikes me as an exceptional and transitory circumstance.†   (source)
  • But I never considered it as other than a transitory life.†   (source)
  • I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed the thread of my speculations.†   (source)
  • for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent ... face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.†   (source)
  • All things transitory†   (source)
  • The kitchen-maid was an abstract personality ... throughout the long series of transitory human shapes in which that personality was incarnate; for we never found the same girl there two years running.†   (source)
  • Ours is an immutable reality which should make you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the fact that your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow, according to the conditions, according to your will, your sentiments, which in turn are controlled by an intellect that shows them to you today in one manner and tomorrow… who knows how?†   (source)
  • …to him, vaguely and dimly, something wrong in a social ritual which made necessary a cancelling of well-formed schemes involving years of thought and labour, of foregoing a man's one opportunity of showing himself superior to the lower animals, and of contributing his units of work to the general progress of his generation, because of a momentary surprise by a new and transitory instinct which had nothing in it of the nature of vice, and could be only at the most called weakness.†   (source)
  • Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of some lithe, white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see (with a spasmodic revulsion) that she had slit-like pupils, or glancing down note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her.†   (source)
  • Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self.†   (source)
  • Some one had had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours, in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window.†   (source)
  • He had been startled into manhood and intellectual vigor; or, at least, into a condition that resembled them, though it might be both diseased and transitory.†   (source)
  • These feelings are transitory;†   (source)
  • It was evident that, for this energetic and enthusiastic nature, this could only be a transitory state, and that, at the first shock against the inevitable complications of destiny, Marius would awaken.†   (source)
  • Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him;†   (source)
  • I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef?†   (source)
  • Let us now imagine a community so organized by nature, or by its constitution, that it can support the transitory action of bad laws, and that it can await, without destruction, the general tendency of the legislation: we shall then be able to conceive that a democratic government, notwithstanding its defects, will be most fitted to conduce to the prosperity of this community.†   (source)
  • I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.†   (source)
  • Quite unconscious of the demonstrations of their amorous neighbour, or their effects upon the susceptible bosom of her mama, Kate Nickleby had, by this time, begun to enjoy a settled feeling of tranquillity and happiness, to which, even in occasional and transitory glimpses, she had long been a stranger.†   (source)
  • He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan—a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society; and the possibility of the favour gained being transitory had reference only to the future.†   (source)
  • Fortunately, as regarded this circumstance at least, his painful past gave to his countenance an indelible sadness, and the glimmerings of gayety seen beneath this cloud were indeed but transitory.†   (source)
  • Going out but seldom, and never on a marketday, they saw Donald Farfrae only at rarest intervals, and then mostly as a transitory object in the distance of the street.†   (source)
  • Is it the individual of whom I had formerly--hum--some--ha--slight transitory knowledge, and to whom I believe you have referred?†   (source)
  • It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part.†   (source)
  • Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of Henry soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace.†   (source)
  • The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers.†   (source)
  • Privileges of this kind are transitory; they belong to the place, and are distinct from the individual: but if public officers are not uniformly remunerated by the State, the public charges must be entrusted to men of opulence and independence, who constitute the basis of an aristocracy; and if the people still retains its right of election, that election can only be made from a certain class of citizens.†   (source)
  • And let us make the best of Becky's aristocratic pleasures likewise—for these too, like all other mortal delights, were but transitory.†   (source)
  • Her scowl,—as the world, or such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it,—her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at herself in a dim looking-glass, and perpetually encountering her own frown with its ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret the expression almost as unjustly as the world did.†   (source)
  • This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant—at once a shadow and a splendour—and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them.†   (source)
  • It was a maiden newly-won—and won by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own sermon, on the Sabbath after his vigil—to barter the transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope that was to assume brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory.†   (source)
  • The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed, I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid's transitory anger; and I WAS disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart.†   (source)
  • —Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.†   (source)
  • A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity.†   (source)
  • It was eight o'clock when we landed; we walked for a short time on the shore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn and contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured in darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines.†   (source)
  • My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive.†   (source)
  • — unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression — as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.†   (source)
  • It is not, then, to be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion of Poetry which I have attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavour to excite admiration of himself by arts, the necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed meanness of his subject.†   (source)
  • Alas, the Love that falleth like a flood, Strong— winged and transitory : Why praise ye him ?†   (source)
  • knights-errant look more to that future glory that is everlasting in the ethereal regions of heaven than to the vanity of the fame that is to be acquired in this present transitory life;†   (source)
  • Of all things transitory and vain,†   (source)
  • …enjoyed, would feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory; though the same man, probably, with a different prospect before him, might content himself with the regular perquisites of his situation, and might even be unwilling to risk the consequences of an abuse of his opportunities.†   (source)
  • my dear and tender wife was forced to submit to the irresistible power of Death, leaving this transitory life for a better.†   (source)
  • …that are attained by it; I know that the path of virtue is very narrow, and the road of vice broad and spacious; I know their ends and goals are different, for the broad and easy road of vice ends in death, and the narrow and toilsome one of virtue in life, and not transitory life, but in that which has no end; I know, as our great Castilian poet says, that— It is by rugged paths like these they go That scale the heights of immortality, Unreached by those that falter here below.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)