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More "Nimbleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appeared but to goad them to greater fury, and to stimulate them to redoubled effort. The truly amazing activity displayed by these ponderous and unwieldy creatures was perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole affair. They wheeled and doubled about each other with the nimbleness of fighting dogs, the rhinoceros leaping in to deliver his stroke, and then springing aside to avoid the thrust of the elephant's tusks with a rapidity that rendered it difficult to follow his movements, while the elephant countered with a quick alertness ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... newspaper. Those lighter flights of fancy, those delicate innuendoes and allusions of implied experience or culture—all the give-and-take of happily contending minds—all, indeed, that makes true conversation—is a science utterly unknown to him. A certain superficial nimbleness of mind he does sometimes possess, but for all that he is a dull creature, made dull by the limitations ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... snake has the typical dread of the family of man, which dread expresses itself in frenzied efforts to get out of the way when suddenly molested. For the most part it lives in a neat hole, oubliette-shaped, and in its eagerness to locate and reach its retreat it darts about with a nimbleness which almost eludes perception. These frantic quarterings, I believe, led to the opinion that the snake is specially savage, whereas it is merely exceptionally nervous and eager for the security of its home. Twice ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... under her flipper, wheeled again in time to intercept the attack, and again received the dreadful thrust in her own flank. So swift was the swordfish (he was a kind of giant mackerel, with all the mackerel's grace and fire and nimbleness) that he seemed to be everywhere at once. The whale was kept spinning around in a dizzy circle of foam, like a whirlpool, with the bewildered calf on the inside. The mighty twisting thrusts of her tail, with its flukes twenty feet wide, set the whole ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ship so doth a galley fight, When the still winds stir not the unstable main; Where this in nimbleness as that in might Excels; that stands, this goes and comes again, And shifts from prow to poop with turnings light; Meanwhile the other doth unmoved remain, And on her nimble foe approaching nigh, Her weighty engines ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... such as to render his meaning rather obscure; not obscure, perhaps, to his contemporaries, whose apprehension was less fettered by grammatical rules; but so to us, because our wits are more tied up from nimbleness with notions of literal correctness, and with habits of mind contracted from long intercourse with parsing writers. I mean that Shakespeare often sorts and places his words in what seems to us an arbitrary manner, throwing them out, so to speak, almost at random. Here is a small instance: "At our ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... on her, wou'd the Nimbleness of her Ladyship's Tongue were in her Heels, she wou'd make more haste away: oh, I long ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... highest position in the State, borne upwards by the simple nobility of his character, by the stainless purity of his actions, and the splendid motive of all his endeavours. His speeches and writings derive their power and distinction from no tricks of oratory, felicity of diction, or nimbleness of mind. They are the vocal results of the beatings of his ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... gave a terrified shriek and ran for the nearest cover—the half-open door of the back kitchen behind her. She banged it violently as she dashed through. There was no lock on the door, so she could not stay there—but the window stood open, and Mary went through it with all the nimbleness of fear. She came out into the yard where the way lay clear to the house; and across the space went Mary, cometwise, a vision of terror and flying cap strings, each moment expecting to hear pursuing feet. Puck, the Irish terrier, sleeping peacefully on the front verandah, leapt to ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... nimbleness in nature, you women have, to be first inconstant; but if you had not made the more haste, the wind was veering too upon my weathercock: The best on't is, Florimel ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... an extraordinary zest and nimbleness. Always he played in the tail coat, and the knitted muffler was never relinquished; he treated the game entirely as an occasion for quick tricks and personal agility; he bounded about the field like a kitten, he pirouetted suddenly, he leapt into the air and came down in new directions; his fresh-coloured ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... he carried jauntily over his shoulder was green in color, so that he seemed to Tom to have that general hue which things assume when seen through green spectacles. He was lithe and agile, gliding through the bushes as if he were a part of them, and he came straight toward Tom, with a nimbleness which almost rivalled ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... movement with which he hurls himself on the object which nature has destined for him; but be not jealous of him, and think of the advantages of the human species; in love they compensate for all those that nature has given to the animals—strength, beauty, nimbleness, speed. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... the pillars of the broad verandah, which extended to the full length of the house front, clematis and honeysuckle twined in thick clusters, filling the air with delicate perfume. The Royal party murmured their admiration of this picturesque abode, while Ronsard, with a nimbleness remarkable for a man of his age, set chairs on the verandah and lawn for his distinguished guests. Sir Walter Langton and the Marquis Montala strolled about the garden with some of the ladies, commenting on the simple yet exquisite taste displayed in its planting ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... confusion of ships' devices as would be enough for the building of a sea tale. It may be fancied that here is Treasure Island itself, shuffled and laid apart in bits like a puzzle-picture. (For genius, maybe, is but a nimbleness of collocation of such hitherto unconsidered trifles.) Then you will go aloft where sails are made, with sailormen squatting about, bronzed fellows, rheumatic, all with pipes. And through all this shop is the smell of hemp ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... that in addition to the development of physique, moral and the spirit of association, there was to be seen, under the influence of the Y.M.A., a development of good manners and mental nimbleness. A special result of early rising and discipline in one area had been that "the habit of spending evening hours idly has died away, immorality has diminished, singing loudly and foolishly and boasting oneself have disappeared, while punctuality ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... something to tell thy friends when thou art in thine own hand, we shall show thee the games in which we are most skilful. For we Phaeacians are not perfect boxers or wrestlers, but we excel all in running and in dancing and in pulling with the oar. Lo, now, ye dancers! Come forward and show your nimbleness, so that the stranger may tell his friends, when he is amongst them, how far we surpass all men in dancing as well as in seamanship and ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... fairly good. To her it seemed as though this spirit of strife so electrically pervading the Votaress might yet be tranquilized through a war of wits exclusively and she was using her own with the tactical nimbleness of the feminine mind. She knew the twins were down on the boiler deck again, one faint, yet both pursuing, egged on by him of the stallion's eye and him of the eagle's, and all the more socially and dangerously active ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... leaped through and through, as on the wings of zephyrs; a hundred couples bounding at once on the green sward; the old folks chiming in the chorus of universal laughter, and snapping their fingers to the dances in which they had no longer the strength and nimbleness to join; the youngsters getting up mimic reels in sly corners; and the music seeming to stir into delight the branches of the great elms which festooned this ball-room of nature. But was there not something awanting to complete the unity of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... (with his head very much on one side and his spectacles on) danced backward from the canvas incessantly with great nimbleness, and returned, and made little digs at it with his pencil, with a horrible grin on his countenance, I augur that he pleased himself ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... unlettered man, and a sinner. He hath brawled and blasphemed with the worst of them in his day. He hath given blow for blow, and I trow the other man's cheek smarted sorer than old Giles's. Now he be a man of the covenant, but he be still stiff with his old ways, and hath no nimbleness to shunt a blow. Old Giles Corey hath no fine wisdom to save his life, and no grace of tongue, but he hath power to die as he will, and no man ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... coin,—for Father Baby was his own banker,—were buried out of sight. His crop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought the example an exhilarating one, when a grown-up child could dance ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... tastefully expended, the general background of her home and associates, she seemed to him unchanged. Yet when he reflected, he was not so sure of this. Sophie was gracious, friendly, frankly interested when he talked of himself. When their talk ran upon impersonal things the old nimbleness of mind functioned. But under these superficialities he could only guess, after all, what the essential woman of her was now. He could not say if she were still the queer, self-disciplined mixture of cold logic and primitive passion the Sophie Carr of Lone Moose had revealed ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... intervals as the face of a card is exposed, making a point for or against him in the game. Calling this out in calm voice and long-drawn monotone, he waits for the croupier to square accounts; which the latter does by drawing in, or pushing out, the coins and cheques, with the nimbleness of a presti-digitateur. Old bets are rearranged, new ones made, and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the Empress herself reconnoitered the place, using due caution and quickness, and so got for herself a full plan of its requirements without being obliged to trust the measuring of another eye. With extraordinary nimbleness she must have planned an engine such as was necessary to suit her purposes, and given orders for its making; for even with the vast force and resources at her disposal, the speed with which ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... silk-handkerchief, falling up against the wall, and scrambling into corners, and going through all the mysteries of blind-man's buff, with the utmost relish of the game, until at last he caught one of the poor relations; and then had to evade the blind-man himself, which he did with a nimbleness and agility that elicited the admiration and applause of all beholders. The poor relations caught just the people whom they thought would like it; and when the game flagged, got caught themselves. When they were all tired of blind-man's buff, there was a great game at snapdragon, and ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... beach, where the water takes the tint of the chrysolite and creatures of fairy lightness come into view. Often on still days small sea-spiders sport under the lea of the boat, each of the eight legs supported by a bubble. With astonishing nimbleness, the spider slips and glides over the surface as a man in laborious snow-shoes over the snow. Having basked in the sun and frolicked with its kind, the spider abandons its pads, takes to its hairy bosom ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and their course lie downhill, over smooth ground, Reynard must put his best foot forward, and then sometimes suffer the ignominy of being run over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite unable to pick him up, owing to the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter the woods, the superior nimbleness and agility of the fox tell at once, and he easily leaves the dog far in his rear. For a cur less than his own size he manifests little fear, especially if the two meet alone, remote from the house. In such cases, I have seen first one turn tail, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... ceremony of Dinner: this time with the complication that some of my patients were allowed wine, beer, or spirits, and some were not. "Burgundy, Sir?" "Whiskey-and-soda, Sir?" I ran round the table of the sitting-up patients, displaying (I was pleased to think) the complete aplomb and nimbleness of a thoroughbred Swiss garcon, pouring out drinks—with concealed envy—placing and removing plates, handing salt, bread, serviettes.... After which, back to Mrs. Mappin and her renewed ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... dozen things at once. No sooner have you been let go than you are seized by another and another. The women were seated in the doors of their shops and dwellings, plying busily their needle. One fine Jewish matron I marked, with seven buxom daughters round her, all working away with amazing nimbleness, and casting only a momentary glance at the stranger as he passed. How inextinguishable the qualities of this extraordinary people! Here, in this desolate land, and surrounded by the overwhelming torpor and laziness of Rome, the Jews are as industrious and as intent on ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... house; some of whom, thinking to be facetious, would occasionally begin to tease Miss Nan, she being the youngest admitted to lunch or afternoon tea. But this shy, freckled young person, whose eyes could laugh up so quickly, had a nimbleness of wit and dexterity of fence that usually left her antagonist exceedingly sorry. One can imagine a gay young swallow darting about in the evening, having quite satisfied himself as to food, and thinking only in his frolicsome way of chevying ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... with astonishing nimbleness on three legs, had charged roaring into the group of old men. In a twinkling he had three or four spears sticking into him; but the arms that hurled the spears were weak, and the monster ramped on unheeding. Several fire-brands fell upon him, scorching his ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and the horse-thief fell full length upon the floor, his pistol discharging as he went down. In the clamor of the echoes, and the smoke and the flare, Persimmon Sneed disappeared, hearing as he went a wild protest, and a nimbleness of argument second hardly to his own, as Nick Peters cried out that he was robbed, his hard earnings were wrested from him, the money was his, paid him as a price, and Con Hite had let Mr. Persimmon Sneed run off with it, allowing ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... when the villagers saw him stumble painfully out of his vehicle at the post-office and drag himself to the veranda, even the person outraged by his latest flight of fancy forgave and pitied him. Everyone felt that the nimbleness of his tongue was perhaps only some slight compensation for the ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... to pick it up. If you wish the birds to breed and thrive in your orchard and groves, kill every red squirrel that infests the place; kill every weasel also. The weasel is a subtle and arch enemy of the birds. It climbs trees and explores them with great ease and nimbleness. I have seen it do so on several occasions. One day my attention was arrested by the angry notes of a pair of brown-thrashers that were flitting from bush to bush along an old stone row in a remote field. Presently I saw what ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... box, or driving a Robin from a cherry-tree that stands near his habitation. The next instant we observe him running along on a stone wall, and diving down and in and out, from one side to the other, through the openings between the stories, with all the nimbleness of a squirrel. He is on the ridge of the barn-roof, he is peeping into the dove-cote, he is in the garden under the currant-bushes, or chasing a spider or a moth under a cabbage-leaf; again he is on the roof of the shed, warbling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... is the soil has not yet been much disturbed. I went in search of it up a very steep, stony hill, and there had the good fortune to meet an old woman who was coming down over the rocks with surprising nimbleness. She knew at once what I wanted. Although she spoke French with great difficulty, three words out of every five being patois, she made me understand that her house was just in front of the cave, and that it was not to be visited without her consent and guidance. She therefore ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... saucy variations on a theme which Rabelais, Boccaccio, George Moore, and Moliere in collaboration would have found difficult to handle. It is as successful an experiment in bravado and bravura as Mr. Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw." And he has accomplished this feat with nimbleness, variety, authority, even (granting the subject) delicacy. Seeing it for the first time you will be so submerged in gales of uncontrollable laughter that you will perhaps not recognize at once how ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... of attention, too, upon her piano. The knack of a girlish nimbleness of touch had returned to her after a few weeks, and she made music which Theron supposed was very good—for her. It pleased him, at all events, when he sat and listened to it; but he had a far greater pleasure, as he listened, in dwelling upon ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... and place, and divers times since, I have observed with my Microscope, another little Insect, which, though I have not annexed the picture of, may be worth noting, for its exceeding nimbleness as well as smalness; it was as small as a Mite, with a body deep and ridged, almost like a Flea; it had eight blood-red legs, not very long, but slender; and two horns or feelers before. Its motion was so exceeding quick, that I have often lost ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the blind man; and at the words he suddenly left hold of me, and, with incredible accuracy and nimbleness, skipped out of the parlour and into the road, where, as I still stood motionless, I could hear his stick ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his best foot forward, and then sometimes suffer the ignominy of being run over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite unable to pick him up, owing to the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter the woods, the superior nimbleness and agility of the fox tell at once, and he easily leaves the dog far in his rear. For a cur less than his own size he manifests little fear, especially if the two meet alone, remote from the house. In such cases, I have seen first one ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the immigration of "the oppressed of all nations" that has made this country one of the worst on the face of the earth. The change from good to bad took place within a generation—so quickly that few of us have had the nimbleness of apprehension to "get it through our heads." We go on screaming our eagle in the self-same note of triumph that we were taught at our fathers' knees before the eagle became a buzzard. America is still "an asylum for the oppressed;" and still, as ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... his wailing. Little John brought him his horse. Robin gave him leave to depart. He sprang with singular nimbleness into the saddle, and vanished without saying, God give you ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... bear "rose like the steam of rich distilled perfume" from the earth in front of them, and made a mouth at him. Juniper did not run, as might have been expected; he stood for a moment peering into the brute's cavernous jaws, and then flew! He absented himself with such extraordinary nimbleness that after he was a mile distant his image appeared to be standing there yet; and looking back he saw it himself. Baffled of his dwarf, the bear thought he would make a shift to get on, for the present, with an orphan. So he picked up Jalap by ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... let go two terrific swings, first with his left and then with his right hand, but his smaller opponent side-stepped with the nimbleness of a cat, and Pelle rushed by two or three steps before ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... tall ship so doth a galley fight, When the still winds stir not the unstable main; Where this in nimbleness as that in might Excels; that stands, this goes and comes again, And shifts from prow to poop with turnings light; Meanwhile the other doth unmoved remain, And on her nimble foe approaching nigh, Her weighty engines ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully-painted window shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground. Indefatigably, audaciously,—endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural strength and nimbleness, these furious iconoclasts clambered up the dizzy heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they tore off in triumph the slowly-matured fruit of centuries. In a space of time wonderfully brief, they ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their heads to look, and one soft-stepping old hound got up with the nimbleness of expectation, and, with a prescient gratitude astir in his tail, went and sniffed at it. His aspect drooped suddenly, and he looked around in reproach at Stephen Quimbey, as if suspecting a practical joke. But there was no merriment in the young mountaineer's face. He ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... dismayed the English; for the stranger was what was called a race ship, and was nearly twice as long as the Adventure; Marshall therefore confidently reckoned that, should the two vessels come to blows, the superior nimbleness of his own ship would more than counterbalance the advantage conferred upon the other by her greater weight of metal. The stranger, when she cleared the land, was close-hauled on the larboard tack, heading about south-south-east, and it was judged, from her position ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... for the nearest cover—the half-open door of the back kitchen behind her. She banged it violently as she dashed through. There was no lock on the door, so she could not stay there—but the window stood open, and Mary went through it with all the nimbleness of fear. She came out into the yard where the way lay clear to the house; and across the space went Mary, cometwise, a vision of terror and flying cap strings, each moment expecting to hear pursuing feet. Puck, the Irish terrier, sleeping peacefully ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the purloiner of my property, I suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer upon terra-firma; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in the game. Calling this out in calm voice and long-drawn monotone, he waits for the croupier to square accounts; which the latter does by drawing in, or pushing out, the coins and cheques, with the nimbleness of a presti-digitateur. Old bets are rearranged, new ones made, and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... shy, but as soon as you begin to know him. I mean to ask him to come down as soon as he can get a holiday. His captain told me, when he served in the Diomede, that there was not a man in the ship to come near him for nimbleness and quiet fearlessness." ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... type-writing machine at work before, and admired the nimbleness with which his fingers struck the letters, and the dexterity with which he passed fresh sheets of paper under the roller. When he had finished and was gathering the sheets ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... impression upon the coats of plate and of mail in which the white men were incased, while their own bodies were without protection against the superior weapons of their foes. On the other hand, it was very difficult for the colonists to strike the savages, because of the "advantages of the wood and the nimbleness of their heels".[188] Even though they "chased them to and fro", following them to their villages and burning their huts, they found it very difficult to do ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... factory he was not thrown into competition with other boys. He was the skip, the drudge, the carrier and fetcher, the cleaner and polisher for a work-bench of men devoid of sentiment and blind to his princely qualities. He tried, indeed, by nimbleness of hand and intelligence, to impress them with his superiority to his predecessors, but they were not impressed. At the most he escaped curses. His mind began to work in the logic of the real. Entrance ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... uncle as Teddy directly I saw him; there was something in his personal appearance that in the light of that memory phrased itself at once as Teddiness—a certain Teddidity. To describe it in and other terms is more difficult. It is nimbleness without grace, and alertness without intelligence. He whisked out of his shop upon the pavement, a short figure in grey and wearing grey carpet slippers; one had a sense of a young fattish face behind gilt glasses, wiry hair that stuck up and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... purchase, hence to number, things being sold by the quantity—or MANEL, to pass, to exceed. Tekel, weighed, would correspond to TEC, light. To-day it is used in the sense of lightness in motion, brevity, nimbleness: and Upharsin, dividing, seem allied to the words PPA, to divide two things united; or uppah, to break, making a sharp sound; or paah, to break edifices; or, again, PAALTAL, to break, to scatter the inhabitants of ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... festivals at the churches, brawls at the taverns, and carnival buffooneries. Men and women pale and meagre for want of air, and light, and movement; undeveloped, untrained bodies, warped by constant work at the loom or at the desk, at best with the lumpish freedom of the soldier and the vulgar nimbleness of the 'prentice. And these men and women dressed in the dress of the Middle Ages, gorgeous perhaps in colour, but heavy, miserable, grotesque, nay, sometimes ludicrous in form; citizens in lumpish robes and long-tailed caps; ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... saw Dunn, he exclaimed, "Ah! you vagabond!" and springing with the nimbleness of a cat, struck the Dutchman a blow that sent him measuring his length, into a corner among a lot of empty boxes; then seizing Dunn by the collar, he shook him like a puppy, and brought him a slap with his open hand that double-dyed his red face, and brought a stream of ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... he not been hanged on the spot. The quick, agile, unpremeditated turns of wit in this poem, as in some of the others, are admirably easy, and happily expressed. Indeed, in these later poems of character and event, ingenuity or nimbleness of intellect is the chief element, and it is accompanied by a facile power which is sometimes rude, often careless, always inventive, fully fantastical, and rarely imaginative in the highest sense of the word. Moreover, as was not the case of old, they have, beyond the story, a direct teaching ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... by aid of this cord and was over the parapet before any could hinder his ascent. The Maid of the Schloss, her brows drawn down in anger, stood with sword ready to strike, but whether it was the unwieldiness of the clumsy weapon, or whether it was the great celerity with which the young man put his nimbleness to the test, or whether it was that she recognised him as perhaps her one friend on earth, who can tell; be that as it may, she did not strike in time, and a moment, later the Count dropped on one knee and before she knew it raised ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... diligent, and methodical in his teaching; not leading them rather in a circle than forward. He minces his precepts for children to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his scholars ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... always moved when he worked. His fingers, strong and clean-jointed and almost womanishly smooth—the only part of the man not pitifully seared with age—flew with a bewildering nimbleness one moment, only to dwell the next with a lingering caress upon the shaping features before him; and for each caress of his finger tips there was an accompanying, vacantly gentle smile or an uncertainly emphatic nod of the silvered ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... confusion. Mr. J. Dwight, Jr., who has made a special study of maritime birds, says of it: "It runs about among the reeds and grasses with the celerity of a mouse, and it is not apt to take wing unless closely pressed." (Wilson credited it with the nimbleness of a sandpiper.) "It builds its nest in the tussocks on the bank of a ditch, or in the drift left by the tide, rather than in the grassier sites chosen by its neighbors, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of his knees, in going down, just enough to interfere with his nimbleness of pursuit during the rest of the round. Time-keep Jennison ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... is something which not even the French, who approach it most nearly, can thoroughly understand, for with all its blinding nimbleness and kaleidoscopic changes there is a substratum of Puritan morality which holds some things sacred—too sacred even to argue in public—and one who transgresses turns off the colored lights, and lo! your conversation is all in grays ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... her hand upon the knob. To enter meant to step back into the life which she hated. There had been a time when she had almost loved the life to which John Mark introduced her; there had been a time when she had rejoiced in the nimbleness of her fingers which had enabled her to become an adept as a thief. And, by so doing, she had kept the life of her brother from danger, she verily believed. She was still saving him, and, so long as she worked for John Mark, she knew ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... for centuries they have been valued for their sympathy and appreciation rather than for their judgment, that they are so perilously prone to enthusiasm. It has come to all of us of late to hear much feminine eloquence, and to marvel at the nimbleness of woman's wit, at the speed with which she thinks, and the facility with which she expresses her thoughts. A woman who, until five years ago, never addressed a larger audience than that afforded by a reading-club or a dinner-party, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the nimbleness of mind to take the chance word or the accidental subject and play upon it, and make it pass from guest to guest at dinner or in the drawing-room. It is the discussion of any topic whatever, from religion to the fashions, ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... wallowing with astonishing nimbleness on three legs, had charged roaring into the group of old men. In a twinkling he had three or four spears sticking into him; but the arms that hurled the spears were weak, and the monster ramped ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... an emporium of intelligence, and soon found he was likely to hear all he desired to know, and much more, while his head was subjected to the art of a nimble tonsor, the glibness of whose tongue kept pace with the nimbleness of his fingers while he ran on, without stint or stop, in the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of equal strength, skill, and nimbleness in all points, were to run a long Race, and one of them must carry such a weight in his hand, as is more tiresome to him than the motion of his Legs, and oft-times, must ease the Burthen with his foot: May not the other, who hath all ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... great deal depends on the intelligence of the horse. Thunderbolt sprang aside with the nimbleness of a monkey, and Avon received just enough warning to hold his place in the saddle. The steer attempted to keep up his pursuit, turning with remarkable quickness for such a large animal, but the dexterity of Thunderbolt was still greater, and ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... dyes which make up the ever-changing "landscape with figures" amidst which we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... her desires, rose up quickly without noticing the pain of her fall. Nimbleness only could serve her now that Ferragut was escaping after mechanically picking up ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of climbing up iron ladders can be achieved by an active man in a ship's engine-room, but I remember moments when even to my supple limbs and pride of nimbleness the sailing- ship's machinery seemed to reach ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... name was Nicholas but his familiars called him Nickie the Kid. The title did not imply that Nicholas possessed the artless gaiety, the nimbleness, or any of the simple virtues of the young of the common goat. Kid was short for "kidder," a term that as gone out recently in favour of "smoodger," and which implies a quality of suave and ingratiating ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... that the Empress herself reconnoitered the place, using due caution and quickness, and so got for herself a full plan of its requirements without being obliged to trust the measuring of another eye. With extraordinary nimbleness she must have planned an engine such as was necessary to suit her purposes, and given orders for its making; for even with the vast force and resources at her disposal, the speed with which ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... myrmidons to stand back, while he alone advanced towards the young man. A turn in his strong wrist would, he imagined, suffice to accomplish his purpose. But he found out his error the moment he engaged with his opponent. In dexterity and force the latter was fully his match, while in nimbleness of body Jocelyn surpassed him. The deadly glances thrown at him by the young man showed that the animosity of the latter would only be satisfied with blood. Changing his purpose, therefore, Sir Giles, in place of attempting to cross his ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... watches below and the hunters turned out for what promised sport. Mugridge seemed to be in rabid fear of the water, and he exhibited a nimbleness and speed we did not dream he possessed. Cornered in the right-angle of the poop and galley, he sprang like a cat to the top of the cabin and ran aft. But his pursuers forestalling him, he doubled back across the cabin, passed over the galley, and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... very greatest military value were appearing in Mr. Polly even as he ran; if Uncle Jim had strength and brute courage and the rich toughening experience a Reformatory Home affords, Mr. Polly was nevertheless sober, more mobile and with a mind now stimulated to an almost incredible nimbleness. So that he not only gained on Uncle Jim, but thought what use he might make of this advantage. The word "strategious" flamed red across the tumult of his mind. As he came round the house for the third time, he darted ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... expresses itself in frenzied efforts to get out of the way when suddenly molested. For the most part it lives in a neat hole, oubliette-shaped, and in its eagerness to locate and reach its retreat it darts about with a nimbleness which almost eludes perception. These frantic quarterings, I believe, led to the opinion that the snake is specially savage, whereas it is merely exceptionally nervous and eager for the security of its home. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... up a little lame, but this defect seemed only to add to his nimbleness. He could climb a telegraph pole sideways like a parrot walking up a stick. Once on top he would swing his good leg around the cross beam and wave his hat—and from below a flight of flapping ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... placed where it is the soil has not yet been much disturbed. I went in search of it up a very steep, stony hill, and there had the good fortune to meet an old woman who was coming down over the rocks with surprising nimbleness. She knew at once what I wanted. Although she spoke French with great difficulty, three words out of every five being patois, she made me understand that her house was just in front of the cave, and that it was not to be visited without ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... from a cherry-tree that stands near his habitation. The next instant we observe him running along on a stone wall, and diving down and in and out, from one side to the other, through the openings between the stories, with all the nimbleness of a squirrel. He is on the ridge of the barn-roof, he is peeping into the dove-cote, he is in the garden under the currant-bushes, or chasing a spider or a moth under a cabbage-leaf; again he is on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... in addition to the development of physique, moral and the spirit of association, there was to be seen, under the influence of the Y.M.A., a development of good manners and mental nimbleness. A special result of early rising and discipline in one area had been that "the habit of spending evening hours idly has died away, immorality has diminished, singing loudly and foolishly and boasting oneself have disappeared, while punctuality and respect ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... nobility of his character, by the stainless purity of his actions, and the splendid motive of all his endeavours. His speeches and writings derive their power and distinction from no tricks of oratory, felicity of diction, or nimbleness of mind. They are the vocal results of the beatings ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... out.' His looks and words revived our spirits in so wonderful a manner that we all instantly set about to assist him. A ladder was presently brought, on which, as I saw in my dream, he ran up with the nimbleness of a squirrel and the servants supplied him with water, which he threw on the fire from an American gourd. But that growing weaker, the flame appeared to gain ground, breaking forth and roaring most dreadfully, which so frightened the servants that many of them, like ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... address has felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidity, and limitations, and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and upright man who must find or cut a straight road to everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him to go in honor ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... a dive for their luckless companion, but he was up and off before they could reach him, with a nimbleness that would not have ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... That to the ground came horse and man; The blood out of their helmets span, So sharp were their encounters; And though they to the earth were thrown, Yet quickly they regained their own, Such nimbleness was never shown, They were two ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... they might not, have heard. It runs: "Why is Charing Cross? Because the Strand runs into it." I mean to say, this is comic providing one enters wholly into the spirit of it, as there is required a certain nimbleness of mind to get the point, as one might say. In the present instance some needed element was lacking, for they actually drew aloof from me and conversed in low tones among themselves, pointedly ignoring me. I repeated the thing to make sure they should see it, whereat ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... its gambols. A sudden change in my attitude at length made it cease. The use had returned to my limbs; my muscles were quivering, and before it could stop me I had fled! The wildest of chases then ensued. I ran with a speed that would have shamed a record-beater on earth. With extraordinary nimbleness I vaulted over titanic boulders of rocks; jumped across dykes of infinite depth, scurried like lightning over tracts of rough, lacerating ground, and never for ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the wings of zephyrs; a hundred couples bounding at once on the green sward; the old folks chiming in the chorus of universal laughter, and snapping their fingers to the dances in which they had no longer the strength and nimbleness to join; the youngsters getting up mimic reels in sly corners; and the music seeming to stir into delight the branches of the great elms which festooned this ball-room of nature. But was there not something awanting to complete the unity of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... distance before them some Indians, on the top of a mountain, near the way by which they were to pass: they sent fifty men, the nimblest they had, to try to catch any of them, and force them to discover their companions: but all in vain; for they escaped by their nimbleness, and presently showed themselves in another place, hallooing to the English, and crying, "A la savana, a la savana, perros Ingleses!" that is, "To the plain, to the plain, ye English dogs!" Meanwhile the ten pirates that were wounded were dressed, ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... over his shoulder was green in color, so that he seemed to Tom to have that general hue which things assume when seen through green spectacles. He was lithe and agile, gliding through the bushes as if he were a part of them, and he came straight toward Tom, with a nimbleness which almost rivalled that ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... redoubled effort. The truly amazing activity displayed by these ponderous and unwieldy creatures was perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole affair. They wheeled and doubled about each other with the nimbleness of fighting dogs, the rhinoceros leaping in to deliver his stroke, and then springing aside to avoid the thrust of the elephant's tusks with a rapidity that rendered it difficult to follow his movements, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... at old Soot-and-Cinders gittin' hisself ready for glory!" He approached the negro and aimed at him a kick which Cookie, arising with unexpected nimbleness, contrived to dodge. "Looky here, darky, git busy dishin' up the grub, will you? I could stand one good feed after the forecastle ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... buried out of sight. His crop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought the example an ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... demonstrated. Now let us witness your agility. Two keepers will hold this wooden bar about half a yard from the ground. Although your feet are in chains, you will jump over the bar several times. Nothing will better prove the strength and nimbleness of your muscles." ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... of Nature. She has placed it least in size of the order of birds, maxime miranda in minimis. Her masterpiece is the little humming-bird, and upon it she has heaped all the gifts which the other birds may only share. Lightness, rapidity, nimbleness, grace, and rich apparel all belong to this little favorite. The emerald, the ruby, and the topaz gleam upon its dress. It never soils them with the dust of earth, and in its aerial life scarcely touches the turf an instant. Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... he doubled this way and that, with a nimbleness that his huge pursuer could not hope to match. It took the shark but a few seconds to realize that this was a vain chase. An easier quarry caught his eye. He darted straight shoreward, where the deep water ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... nerves, tendons, and little bones closely knit, that this part may, at once, be either more supple or more firm, according to various occasions. Even the toes, with their articles and nails, serve to feel the ground a man walks on, to lean and stand with more dexterity and nimbleness, the better to preserve the equilibrium of the body, to rise, or to stoop. The two feet stretch forward, to keep the body from falling that way, when it stoops or bends. The two pillars are jointed together at the top, to bear up the rest of the body, but are still divided there in such ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... With Sally's nimbleness and Toby's muscle they obtained seats upon the top of the bus, and, seated together, resumed their conversation in low, grumbling tones. She first repeated her question with new aggressiveness, not at all deterred from the possibility of a row ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... There were so many ins and outs to this financial life. It was an endless network of underground holes, along which all sorts of influences were moving. A little wit, a little nimbleness, a little luck-time and opportunity—these sometimes availed. Here he was, through his ambition to get on, and nothing else, coming into contact with the State treasurer and the governor. They were going to consider ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... their ways, and John Derringham was entranced and felt quite aggrieved when she said it was getting late and she must go back to the house for her early dinner. He swung himself down from the tree by the high branch with ease and stood ready to catch her, but with a nimbleness he did not expect, she crept round to the lower side and was landed upon the soft turf before ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... "trouble in Mexico City" and the "remaining task" refer, of course, to Sir Lionel Carden. "As I make Carden out," he wrote about this time, "he's a slow-minded, unimaginative, commercial Briton, with as much nimbleness as an elephant. British commerce is his deity, British advantage his duty and mission; and he goes about his work with blunt dullness and ineptitude. That's his mental calibre as I read him—a ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... little one tight under her flipper, wheeled again in time to intercept the attack, and again received the dreadful thrust in her own flank. So swift was the swordfish (he was a kind of giant mackerel, with all the mackerel's grace and fire and nimbleness) that he seemed to be everywhere at once. The whale was kept spinning around in a dizzy circle of foam, like a whirlpool, with the bewildered calf on the inside. The mighty twisting thrusts of her tail, with its flukes twenty feet ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... stern-eyed purity of a Sir Galahad (though he be the king of men) to the quick-witted gayety of a debonair Lothario (though he be but the shadow of a man)? Out upon thee, pale-faced student! Thy tongue hath not the trick, nor thy mind the nimbleness for the winning of a fair and lovely lady. Thou'rt well enough in want of a better, but, when Lothario comes, must she not run to meet him with ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... reader finds no pleasure here, either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant to ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... arts in that country. He might have been a first-rate watchmaker or jeweller, have known Hebrew or Greek, or been a good draughtsman, or kept accounts in excellent style, or dressed to perfection, and been able to leap with the most perfect grace and nimbleness over counters, and yet have starved. Rough backwoodsmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen have from the first been able to secure good wages in Australia. Other men have succeeded by turning their hands to do whatever might offer; but for such men as I have ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... until the breath of the infuriated beast was hot upon his cheek, let his angry lash curl for an instant across the bear's flank, and then, for all his halting foot, leap back into safety with a smiling pride in his own nimbleness. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... speech, but with a nimbleness surprising in one of his bulk, gave Dacey, who chanced to be the nearer of the two, a shove that sent the fellow staggering half-way across the room ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... fallen horse, he took to his heels and ran down a sloping ground as fast as he could. The hunter drew his tomahawk from his belt, and gave chase after him. As he was more of an equestrian than a pedestrian, the nimbleness of the hunter soon shortened the distance between them, and the last of the robbers fell. Thus perished this dangerous gang of six, by the single hand of this brave hunter, and, as the "commercianto" informed me, he ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... could not remember what Marius had said to her on the subject of this absence which was to last only one day, and what explanation of it he had given her. Every one has noticed with what nimbleness a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls away and hides, and with what art it renders itself undiscoverable. There are thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner of our brain; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in the case of these gentlemen, all reason and feeling are generally lost in the nimbleness of ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... young man of pale complexion, with his black hair flowing over his shoulders, and with a sort of pea-coloured swaddling-cloth thrown round him. In his hand he held a long military musket, and he dashed along on the tips of his slippers with the air of a somnambulist and with the nimbleness of a tiger. At intervals ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... strength, dare-devil spirit, and nimbleness of body made him invaluable at this dangerous work. Orde, too, often took a hand in some of the more ticklish situations. In old days, before he had attained the position of responsibility that raised the value of his time beyond manual work, he had been ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... extraordinary zest and nimbleness. Always he played in the tail coat, and the knitted muffler was never relinquished; he treated the game entirely as an occasion for quick tricks and personal agility; he bounded about the field like a kitten, he pirouetted ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... inanimate things has escaped, and burst forth all of a sudden; it appears to lose patience, and to take a strange mysterious revenge; nothing more relentless than this wrath of the inanimate. This enraged lump leaps like a panther, it has the clumsiness of an elephant, the nimbleness of a mouse, the obstinacy of an ox, the uncertainty of the billows, the zigzag of the lightning, the deafness of the grave. It weighs ten thousand pounds, and it rebounds like a child's ball. It spins and then abruptly darts off at ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... ox-carts. Too ill to be lifted out, they had to be examined and treated in the carts. Dr. Boyle acquired a special nimbleness in jumping in and out of these contrivances armed with stethescope, spoons, bowls, and dressings. We accumulated a congregation of "regulars," who came to be dressed every day—gathered feet, suppurating glands, ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... liveliness, is covered with a greenish-grey moss on the north side, and has long been given over to decay on all sides. The cat-squirrels that occasionally scamper across the crumbling shingles have as much as they can do, with all their nimbleness, to find a secure foot-hold. The huge wooden columns that support the double veranda display jagged edges at top and bottom, and no longer make even a pretence of hiding their grim hollowness. The well, hospitably placed within arm's reach ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... progress during the morning. The Professor's accident robbed him of a lot of the nimbleness which had been noticeable during the two preceding days, and the other members of the expedition had to move at a pace that would ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... was known to them as a gladiator victorious in the games. Gathering up his strength, the knave came on with an oath, and, whirling his heavy staff on high, struck me in such a fashion that, had I not avoided the blow by nimbleness, I had surely been slain. But, as it chanced, the staff hit upon the ground, and so heavily that it flew in fragments. Thereon the multitude shouted again, and the great man, blind with fury, rushed ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... to the door; an omnibus was at the moment passing the corner of the lane, which Mr. Pickwick hailed and ran after with extraordinary nimbleness. When he had got about half-way, he turned his head, and seeing that I was still looking after him and that I waved my hand, stopped, evidently irresolute whether to come back and shake hands again, or to go on. The ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... Indeed, thou confoundest the wits with the goodliness of thy verses and the elegance of thy speech." All this while Shefikeh abode gazing upon her, and when she beheld El Abbas his slave-girls and considered the goodliness of their apparel and the nimbleness of their wits and the elegance of their speech, her reason was confounded. Then she sought leave of El Abbas and returning to her mistress Mariyeh, without letter or answer, acquainted her with his case and that wherein he was of puissance and delight and majesty and venerance ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... shall show thee the games in which we are most skilful. For we Phaeacians are not perfect boxers or wrestlers, but we excel all in running and in dancing and in pulling with the oar. Lo, now, ye dancers! Come forward and show your nimbleness, so that the stranger may tell his friends, when he is amongst them, how far we surpass all men in dancing as well as in seamanship and speed ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... prisoners a safer way of advance; and Alf ordered his men to try the frozen surface of the sea in their brogues, after they had taken off their slippery shoes, so that they could run over the level ice more steadily. The Blacmen supposed that they were taking to flight with all the nimbleness of their heels, and began to fight them, but their steps tottered exceedingly and they gave back, the slippery surface under their soles making their footing uncertain. But the Danes crossed the frozen sea with safer steps, and foiled ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the flying squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and nimbleness cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his footing and fall, he is sure to catch on the next branch; if the connection be broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures his hold, even if it be by the aid ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... one had taken a very prominent part in the attack upon the inn if attack it could be called; but now the man whom chance, or his own nimbleness, made the first of the throng, assumed to himself a sort of control over his companions and, turning ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Never had we possessed so much as a shingle or a spoonful of earth. But the nest-building enthusiasm had us at last. Our hands met in compact. As we strolled reluctantly homeward to a ten-o'clock dinner we talked of road-making, swamps, pneumatic water-systems, the nimbleness of dollars, and mountains of other difficulties. And we agreed that the only kind of faith which can easily remove mountains is the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only not deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. Unless by any chance I, who as a soldier in the ranks, as military tribune, as legate, and as consul have been employed in various kinds of war, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Betty," said Hannibal as before, and he returned to his consideration of the judge. He sensed something of that intellectual nimbleness which his patron's physical make-up in nowise suggested, since his face was a mask that usually left one in doubt as to just how much of what he heard succeeded in making its impression on him; but the boy knew that Slocum Price's blind ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... his favorite food, the mimosa, grows upon the plain, but in Ceylon it is directly the contrary. In this country the elephant delights in the most rugged localities; he rambles about rocky hills and mountains with a nimbleness that no one can understand without personal experience. So partial are elephants to rocky and uneven ground that should the ruins of a mountain exist in rugged fragments along a plain of low, thorny jungle, five chances to one would be in favor of tracking the herd ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... being furnished with a fine loose skin between its fore and hind legs, which it contracts or expands at pleasure, and which buoys it up, and enables it to spring from branch to branch at considerable distances, with amazing nimbleness. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... thee, clod!" he shouted; and he showed such strength and fury that I scarce could look at the farmer, dreading to see his great head fly away. But just as the horse rushed at him, he leaped aside with most wonderful nimbleness, and the rider's sword was dashed out of his grasp, and down he went, over the back of the saddle, and his long legs spun up in the air, as a juggler tosses ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... down as she swam along the Body of the Church. I, with several others of the Inhabitants, follow'd her out, and saw her hold up her Fan to an Hackney-Coach at a Distance, who immediately came up to her, and she whipp'd into it with great Nimbleness, pull'd the Door with a bowing Mein, as if she had been used to a better Glass. She said aloud, You know where to go, and drove off. By this time the best of the Congregation was at the Church-Door, and I could hear some say, A very fine Lady; others, I'll warrant ye, she's no better than she ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... He won't even let me try. Look!" The child climbed over the fence and made a quick grab at the animal, which gave an alarmed, startled grunt, wheeled with astonishing nimbleness, and darted away ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... is plain enough that his mind was wholly changed. In his discourse on epic poetry he is as decided, but more temperate. He says that the French heroic verse "runs with more activity than strength.[57] Their language is not strung with sinews like our English; it has the nimbleness of a greyhound, but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. Our men and our verses overbear them by their weight, and pondere, non numero, is the British motto. The French have set up purity for the standard of their language, and a masculine vigor is that ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... now lay before them was smooth and grassy, flowing before them far, a gentle slope that was soon to lend speed to Rodriguez' feet, adding nimbleness even to youth. Soon, too, it was to lift onward the dull weight of Morano as he followed his master towards unknown wars, youth going before him like a spirit and the good slope helping behind. But before they gave themselves to that waiting ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... Henry Nevill, that the King should throw himself frankly on the loyalty and good-will of Parliament. And thus he came to be on easy terms with James, who was quite capable of understanding Bacon's resource and nimbleness of wit. In the autumn of 1613 the Chief-Justiceship of the King's Bench became vacant. Bacon at once gave the King reasons for sending Coke from the Common Pleas—where he was a check on the prerogative—to the King's Bench, where he could do ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the gates were opened, and we stopped between two magnificent flights of steps, leading on each side to the cloisters. Several young monks, excited by the noise of the carriage, came trooping towards the top of the stairs, looking down upon us, and retreating, with the nimbleness and apparent timidity of deer. Their white streamers, or long lappets, suspended from the back of the black gown, (the designation of the Augustine order) had ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... with all manner of fish jumping and plunging about to the music, and every moment more and more would tumble in out of the water, charmed by the wonderful tune. Crabs of monstrous size spun round and round on one claw with the nimbleness of a dancing master, and twirled and tossed their other claws about like limbs that did not belong to them. It was a sight surprising to behold. But perhaps you may have heard of Father Florence Conry, as pleasant a man as one would wish ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... it ceases to be Methodism, to learn to want it—will only endure it when it cannot help itself, or when, for other reasons, it has great reverence and affection for the man who weakly offers it; or again, when the preacher is old and has outlived his intellectual nimbleness, in which case sympathy may so plead his cause as to secure him a reluctant hearing. Methodism grew to greatness under the preaching of men who spoke, and that method is traditional to her pulpit; some day she will crystallise her tradition into a law that the speaker alone shall ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... love them. At the time, this fact did not add to my happiness, for, what with her womanliness and her childishness, she presented a problem that puzzled and dazzled me, for my mind was wofully lacking in the nimbleness necessary to follow the swift ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... same colour, and attired, despite the intense heat, in a heavy pilot cloth jacket and trousers, a blue worsted jersey, a fur cap, and sea-boots reaching above his knees—uncoiling his long limbs, rose in the boat, and, with a nimbleness strangely at variance with his ungainly appearance, climbed the side, swung himself in over our low rail, and flung a quick, enquiring glance round ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... were fairly good. To her it seemed as though this spirit of strife so electrically pervading the Votaress might yet be tranquilized through a war of wits exclusively and she was using her own with the tactical nimbleness of the feminine mind. She knew the twins were down on the boiler deck again, one faint, yet both pursuing, egged on by him of the stallion's eye and him of the eagle's, and all the more socially and dangerously active because, by strict orders ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the market and in common trade likewise, this practice is in full swing and force to the greatest extent, where one openly defrauds another with bad merchandise, false measures, weights, coins, and by nimbleness and queer finances or dexterous tricks takes advantage of him; likewise, when one overcharges a person in a trade and wantonly drives a hard bargain, skins and distresses him. And who can recount ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... sternly to follow, and Russell obeyed. He was not at all disinclined to move in this direction, since it led him to the friendly protection of the castle. It was with uncommon vigor and nimbleness that he followed his tormentor down the steep side, and across the brook at the bottom, and up the other side. Rita noticed this, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... amongst others, came about the house; some of whom, thinking to be facetious, would occasionally begin to tease Miss Nan, she being the youngest admitted to lunch or afternoon tea. But this shy, freckled young person, whose eyes could laugh up so quickly, had a nimbleness of wit and dexterity of fence that usually left her antagonist exceedingly sorry. One can imagine a gay young swallow darting about in the evening, having quite satisfied himself as to food, and thinking only in his frolicsome ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... need for the three to climb a tree, so two stood on the ground while Deerfoot made his way among the limbs with the nimbleness of ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... certain nimbleness in nature, you women have, to be first inconstant; but if you had not made the more haste, the wind was veering too upon my weathercock: The best on't is, Florimel ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... observed Lochiel pursuing, and seeing him unaccompanied with any, he leapt out and thought him his prey. They met one another with equal fury. The combat was long and doubtful: the English gentleman had by far the advantage in strength and size; but Lochiel, exceeding him in nimbleness and agility, in the end tript the sword out of his hand; they closed and wrestled, till both fell to the ground in each other's arms. The English officer got above Lochiel, and pressed him hard, but stretching forth his neck, by attempting to disengage himself, Lochiel, who by this time had ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... was his in abundance. Her oneness was a magnet for his gregariousness and concentrated it upon herself. That positive quality in him overwhelmed and intoxicated her; and in intellect he was far more brilliant and far less profound than herself. His wit and mental nimbleness stung and pricked the serene layers which she had carefully superimposed in her own mind to such activities as mingled playfully with his lighter moods or stimulated him in more intellectual hours. While the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... fled and were seen no more; but their abrupt retreat, as described by Chonita, continued to be an exciting topic of discussion. There were few of us who did not openly or secretly approve of Estenega's Jesuitism and admire the nimbleness of his mind. The clergy did not ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... birds at last before they had quite taken all, for the torn arms still hung in the iron fetters; an old man, blind of one eye, the black patch torn off the hideous hole that had replaced the socket. He capered with the nimbleness of youth before the ghastly remains of humanity still fastened to that rock. He shouted and screamed, and laughed and sang. The sight had been too horrible even for him. He was mad, crazy; his mind was gone. He had his revenge, and ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... elusive element in writing and the inability of instructors to impart it that make many journalists say news writing cannot be taught. Delicacy of expression is not effeminacy. It is originality; it is cleverness; it is nimbleness of wit and beauty of phrase; it is grace; it is simplicity; it is restraint; it is tact. It is all these, and more. It is that intuition in a star man which forbids his beginning the same kind of story day after day with a fixed, hackneyed type of sentence, which makes him avoid triteness ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... enemy than the subtle Greek's, death from the suspended air-current. Speed, nimbleness, strength and activity were worthless: with tedious fingers he must follow the life-line, find its entanglements and slowly loosen them, carefully taking up the slack, and so follow the straightened cord to the door. Then the chest: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... unwilling to sacrifice it, had waited till we were some paces distant, and then pulling it to him most forcibly, while all the while he took good care to keep quickly moving away, when thanks to Providence, or to his own nimbleness, he was not crushed to atoms by the fragment of the rock, which, being no longer buttressed up by the column that had been shaken, had fallen to the ground, completely stopping up the issue through which we had passed one after the other: so ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... a "happy one." He is ubiquitous; Egypt, The Riviera, Switzerland, and Italy, see him by turns; in each he has a white waistcoat, of which Mr. CHAMBERLAIN might be proud, infinite occupation, and infinite diversion; his nimbleness, his light-heartedness, his languages, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... Pictures by hand, if they will, nay rather, let them be encouraged, that they may be willing: first, thus to quicken the attention also towards the things; and to observe the proportion of the parts one towards another; and lastly to practise the nimbleness of the hand, which is good ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... pressing affairs of his own out-of-doors. Elliott pinched the pods as scientifically as she knew how and wondered whether, if she should shell peas all her life, her slender fingers would ever acquire the lightning nimbleness of the Gordons' fat ones. How long Harriet ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... striding along with his short legs and heavy boots, jumping ditches and banks with a nimbleness of which I declare I should not have thought him capable. It is curious to note the agility the report of a rifle volley lends to the legs of a dismounted trooper. Lemaitre came in to the shelter in the valley as soon as I did; and almost at the same time ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... If judgment were to be given on the quarto version of The Merry Wives, that reasoning would commend itself as at least plausible; but it is foolish as applied to the version in the folio, where the piece is found to be remarkable for nimbleness of invention, strength and variety of natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably repeated a piece of idle gossip that ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... activity; briskness, liveliness &c adj.; animation, life, vivacity, spirit, dash, energy; snap, vim. nimbleness, agility; smartness, quickness &c adj.; velocity, &c 274; alacrity, promptitude; despatch, dispatch; expedition; haste &c 684; punctuality &c (early) 132. eagerness, zeal, ardor, perfervidum aingenium [Lat.], empressement [Fr.], earnestness, intentness; abandon; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... she still faltered, uncertain, shaken, the occupant of the lemon-tinted limousine came swiftly to her. He was a great hulk of a man, yet light on his feet with that nimbleness which seems ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... which he hurls himself on the object which nature has destined for him; but be not jealous of him, and think of the advantages of the human species; in love they compensate for all those that nature has given to the animals—strength, beauty, nimbleness, speed. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... your orchard and groves, kill every red squirrel that infests the place; kill every weasel also. The weasel is a subtle and arch enemy of the birds. It climbs trees and explores them with great ease and nimbleness. I have seen it do so on several occasions. One day my attention was arrested by the angry notes of a pair of brown-thrashers that were flitting from bush to bush along an old stone row in a remote field. Presently I saw what it was that excited them—three ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... he soon subsided, first into a dog-trot, then into a brisk walk, which he maintained for the rest of the way with long and guilty strides. When he was come to the fence which divided the woods from the field, with squirrel-like nimbleness he climbed up and perched himself on the rider, or topmost rail, just where his black chum and old Cornwallis should be coming out at the end ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school and learn his verb and noun And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man's messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat (Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent; Or was it for mankind a generous shame, As of a luck ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
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