Flits Quotes & Sayings

And it all flew away like a dream
even my passion, and yet it really was strong and true, but ... where has it gone now? Indeed the thought occasionally flits through my head: Didn't I go out of my mind then and spend the whole time sitting in a madhouse somewhere, and maybe I'm sitting there now
so that for me it was all a seeming and only seems to this day. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Spring comes to the Australian Alps like an invisible spirit. There is not the tremendous surge of upthrust life that there is in the lowland valleys, and no wild flowers bloom in the snow mountains till the early summer, but there is an immense stirring of excitement. A bright red and blue lowrie flits through the trees; snow thaws, and the streams become full of foaming water; the grey, flattened grass grows upwards again and becomes greener; wild horses start to lose their winter coats and find new energy; wombats sit, round and fat, blinking in the evening sunshine; at night there is the cry of a dingo to its mate. — Elyne Mitchell

The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Now seen ... now gone, The butterfly flits in and out Through fence-hung flowers; But a life lived so close to them I envy ... though it's here and gone. — Saigyo

Four billion people on this earth
but my imagination is still the same.
It's bad with large numbers.
It's still taken by particularity.
It flits in the dark like a flashlight,
illuminating only random faces
while all the rest go by,
never coming to mind and never really missed. — Wislawa Szymborska

Luck is a fickle girl who doesn't like lingering in any one place; she strokes your hair back from your brow, kisses you quickly and flits away. Lady Misfortune, by contrast, presses you tightly to her loving heart; she says she's not in a hurry, sits down beside your bed and knits. — Heine

No other evil we know is faster than Rumor, thriving on speed and becoming stronger by running. Small and timid at first, then borne on a light air, she flits over ground while hiding her head on a cloud-top. — Virgil

The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that won't believe.
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbeliever's fright. — William Blake

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.
The mountain at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little,
And that 's the skies! — Emily Dickinson

But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world
a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors. — Virginia Woolf

Those kinds of memories
unpretentious, commonplace. But for me, they're all meaningful and valuable. As each of these memories flits across my mind, I'm sure I unconsciously smile, or give a slight frown. Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me. Me here and now, on the north shore of Kauai. Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on a shore. — Haruki Murakami

We are all glorified motion sensors.
Some things only become visible to us when they undergo change.
We take for granted all the constant, fixed things, and eventually stop paying any attention to them. At the same time we observe and obsess over small, fast-moving, ephemeral things of little value.
The trick to rediscovering constants is to stop and focus on the greater panorama around us. While everything else flits abut, the important things remain in place.
Their stillness appears as reverse motion to our perspective, as relativity resets our motion sensors. It reboots us, allowing us once again to perceive.
And now that we do see, suddenly we realize that those still things are not so motionless after all. They are simply gliding with slow individualistic grace against the backdrop of the immense universe.
And it takes a more sensitive motion instrument to track this. — Vera Nazarian

The dragon-fly is dancing, - Is on the water glancing, She flits about with nimble wing, The flickering, fluttering, restless thing. Besotted chafers all admire Her light-blue, gauze-like, neat attire; They laud her blue complexion, And think her shape perfection ... — Heinrich Heine

Whenever Mr. Snagsby and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as before. — Charles Dickens

For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart ... the heart's distrust is greater than the mind's blindness. It is harder for the heart to be furnished with assurance [of God's love] than for the mind to be endowed with thought. — John Calvin

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness. — Gautama Buddha

A clue is a key which unlocks a box full of keys - those peculiarly tempting arrangements of circumstance and fate are points of departure which lead to infinite realms of mystery that beckon with the taboo of hidden knowledge. I am compelled to follow where the curling finger of intrigue flits seductively among shadows whose origins lie in primeval antiquity. The Forbidden Occult is forever enshrined in the luminous cathedral of my imagination. Every philosopher's stone I look under carries my mind aloft on the fairy wings of discovery to ever higher treasures of exponentially expanding conscious awareness. — Sean Terrence Best

The dream on the pillow,
That flits with the day,
The leaf of the willow
A breath wears away;
The dust on the blossom,
The spray on the sea;
Ay,
ask thine own bosom
Are emblems of thee. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I do not want [photography] explained to me in terms of ... formulas, learned, but so hopelessly unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on a pin and put in a glass case. I want to see the sunlight on its wings as it flits from flower to flower and I don't care a rap what its Latin name may be. — Jacob August Riis

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again. — Walter Benjamin

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a by-product, something the reader himself is led to formulate after watching the story unfold. The ideas, the generalizations, ought to be implicit in the selection and arrangement of the people and places and actions. They ought to haunt a piece of fiction as a ghost flits past an attic window after dark. — Wallace Stegner

Life like an empty dream flits by. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. — Lord Byron

It's been a long time since humans were prey animals. A hundred thousand years or so. But buried deep in our genes the memory remains: the awareness of the gazelle, the instinct of the antelope. The wind whispers through the grass. A shadow flits between the trees. And up speaks the little voice that goes. Shhhh, it's close now. Close. — Rick Yancey

How daintily the butterfly
Flits to the spider's lace
Entranced by glimm'ring silver strings
Entwined with glist'ning grace.
How craftily the spider speaks
And whispers, 'All is well,'
Caresses it with poison'd feet
And sucks it to a shell — Heather Dixon

The sleep that flits on baby's eyes - does anybody know from where it comes? Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling where, in the fairy village among shadows of the forest dimly lit with glow-worms, there hang two timid buds of enchantment. From there it comes to kiss baby's eyes.
The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps - does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumour that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning - the smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps.
The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby's limbs - does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love - the sweet, soft freshness that has bloomed on baby's limbs. — Rabindranath Tagore

"Chessie?" I ask. The rest of the hamster-size creature materializes, looking just as I remember: the face of a kitten, the wings of a hummingbird, and the body of an orange and gray raccoon. He flits to the dashboard and perches there, cleaning the oil and grease splotches from his fluffy fur with his tongue, like a squirrel taking a spit bath. — A.G. Howard

Being present. The mind is like a butterfly that flits from one flower to the next. Seldom do we find ourselves nestled in the excuisite and eternal ocean of here and now. When you are, you can connect with your true self that is beyond the chattering of your mind. When you take the effort to focus your drifting consciousness to become fully awake to the present moment, you will discover the glorious light that dwells within you. — Denise Linn

When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance? — Henry David Thoreau

From my heart comes out and dances the image of my own desire. The gleaming vision flits on. I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray. I seek what I cannot get, I get what I do not seek. — Rabindranath Tagore

When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away. — Anna Pavlova

And here again we ought to observe that we are called to a knowledge of God: not that knowledge which, content with empty speculation, merely flits in the brain, but that which will be sound and fruitful if we duly perceive it, and if it takes root in the heart.29 For the Lord manifests himself by his powers, the force of which we feel within ourselves and the benefits of which we enjoy. — John Calvin