That dark interior, dimly lighted by fitful bursts of flame, seemed more the abode of the damned than a place of human habitation, nor was there anything to remind us of mercy in that savage company gloating over our desperate plight.
It was not above three feet in width until we had traversed fully fifty paces, when it suddenly broadened, and the fitful glare of the torch, which I held over my head, flashed back rays of light from two horribly gleaming green eyes.
In no direction could I distinguish any twinkling of lights except a single fitful flash from off the altar, where black-robed priests guarded the sacred fire or worshipped before the Puritan.
And in vain may nature plead her wrongs and the tempest of the passions to excuse the indiscretion of her fitful moments.
The next moment Scroop speaks of cares, and forthwith fitful Richard is in the dumps once more.
From the beginning to the end of the play, Duke Vincentio is weakly-kind in act and swayed by fitful impulses; his assumed austerity of conduct is the thin varnish of vanity that will not take on such soft material.
In deep Hamlet melancholy, Macbeth now begins to contrast his state with Duncan's: "After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
She had been represented at the Swedish court as a model of gentleness, amiability, and grace; he found her rude and contradictory, fitful and childish.
The situation was indeed very critical, for the enemy had advanced in full strength, while the fitful light had helped them.
Then the fitful rays played upon the splashes as the negro breasted the water and swam upstream.
It was like one of those fitful gleams of intelligence which now and then dart across the vacuity of dulled intellects, and, like such, it was only a meteor-flash, and left no trace of light behind it.
We returned to the Bel Alp, fitful triumphs of the sun causing us to hope that we might still have fair play upon the Aletschhorn.
The morning threatened, and fitfulgleams of sunlight wandered over the ice.
At times we were sheltered by it, but not always; for the wind was as fitful as a maniac, and eddying round the corners sometimes shook us forcibly, chilled us to the marrow, and spit frozen dust in our faces.
Still it is good to know that "After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.
Edwin's pyramid of fire shot fitful gleams above the roof and beyond the black shadow of the shanty wall.
In another moment that stranger hand was clasping Edwin's in the darkness that was following fast upon those fitful flames.
But he had gone away again as suddenly as he had come, and for six weeks now she had lived partly in anticipation of the courier with messages from him, and partly on the fitful joy engendered by these messages.
Therefore he was conscious of an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief patches of fitful sleep, and through the numbness that invaded his whole body while the hours dragged wearily and slowly along.
His reign was thus a series of more or less undefined and fitful struggles to put the crooked straight.
Perhaps there was a fitful fire in the dark eyes that awaited the husband’s coming, or a slight twitching of the impatient lips.
A single swinging lamp shed a fitful light on the scene—the whimpering prisoner, the others all amazed, the orator’s face, tense and white.
There was one person in Ballybay at least who envied the woman that lay forever free from life's fitful fever.
And then, like some enchanted palace set between earth and sky, that pile upon the ridge sending long beams of light and fitful snatches of dance-music across the ravines came into view; so familiar, yet so strange.
But it seemed pivoted askew in its new place and whirled in fitful ovals.
Stricken with sudden stupor, he gazed at the fitful gleams within.
Once shut off from the devouring sun rays, the hot breeze then springing into fitful existence cooled their blistered but perspiring skin and made life somewhat tolerable.
Her beautiful serenity of temper, cheerful, yet never fitful or unquiet, gladdened him with its insensible contagion.
At times Owindia fell into a fitful sleep, only to awake with a cry, from which she wandered off into other worlds, babbling of them in an unconnected manner.
A fitful breeze rippled the river's surface, and stirred the tops of the pointed trees.
When toward morning she did sink into a fitful slumber she was beset by cruel Chilcats, who were leering upon her with merciless eyes.
They slept, but in fitful starts, and the first gray siftings of light through the desolate darkness found them all gazing drearily at it, for what might a new day signify to them but new dangers, fresh sorrows, and quickened fears.
And ever from out the brake and the scattered copse, which at frequent intervals beset the road, the merry birds sent a fitful and glad music to mingle with the sweets and freshness of the air.
I then perceived by the aid of a few fitful rays of suppressed light, which at intervals struggled successfully through a black bank of clouds, the yawning mouth of a big cavern, from the roof of which hung innumerable stalactites.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "fitful" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
