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More "Sprightliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was never the fate of the four to behold. The impression left by this sight assorted well with the deep and settled murkiness that dwelt like a thick veil on all around. Even the cheery tones of Velvet-cap's voice lost their elasticity, and the sprightliness of the sister's spirits, that invariably rose with the coming on of night, failed under the depressing influence of that rain-hastened funeral and that "set-in" rainy evening. As for the sister whose spirits fell with the fall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... degrees to the frank and charming disposition of the grisette, and her neighbors were proud on Sunday to have on their arm a pretty girl who did them honor (Rigolette cared little for appearances), and who only cost the partaking of their modest pleasures, which her presence and sprightliness enhanced. Besides, the dear girl was so easily contented; in the days of penury she dined so well and so gayly on a piece of hot cake, nipped with all the force of her little white teeth; after which she amused herself so much with a walk ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... in the natural sequence of events. Matt, the cook, roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging on a piece of boiler plate hung by a wire. Long before that Stella heard her brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his sprightliness, for as she remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself responded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which slowness the crew had filed away to the day's work, her brother striding in the lead, when ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of interest and amusement. When Butler entertained boys at breakfast or dinner, he was a most delightful host, and threw off all magisterial awfulness as easily as his gown. His conversation was full of fun and sprightliness, and he could talk "Cricket-shop," ancient and modern, like Lillywhite or R. H. Lyttelton. In time of illness or failure or conscience-stricken remorse, he showed an Arthur-like simplicity of religion which no one could ignore ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... also an Elizabethan judge who aimed at sprightliness on the Bench, a clever mot is attributed. The case before him was one concerning the limits of certain land. The counsel having remarked with emphasis, 'We lie on this side, my lord,' and the opposing counsel with equal vehemence having interposed, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... condescension, or his goodness. His bon mots, too, were in every mouth; and the Parisians, who at every epoch have been so addicted to wit, were so much the more enraptured with the impromptu good things which fell from Joseph's lips, that the Bourbons were entirely deficient in sprightliness. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... says, and I expect I sighed when I mentioned it, 'when a certain domesticated little Mary's lamb I could name was some instructed himself in the line of pernicious sprightliness. I never expected, Perry, to see you reduced down from a full-grown pestilence to such a frivolous fraction of a man. Why,' says I, 'you've got a necktie on; and you speak a senseless kind of indoor drivel ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... clicked, and her eyes sparkled. There was no doubt that there was a sprightliness about ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... unyielding voice and formed opinions. And then there was the crushing sense, at the conclusion of one of these interviews, of having been put down as a tiresome and heavy young man. I fully believed in my own liveliness and sprightliness, but it seemed an impossible task to persuade my elders that these qualities were there. A good-natured, elderly friend used at times to rally me upon my shyness, and say that it all came from thinking too much about myself. It was as useless ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not Byron's audacity, sprightliness and grandeur all creative? We must beware of always looking for this quality in that which is perfectly pure and moral. All greatness is creative the moment we realise it." This should ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... boisterousness, recklessness, daring, and wild humour: that of the salmon-fishers was cheerful, picturesque, infrequently dangerous, mostly simple and quiet. The river-driver chose to spend his idle hours in crude, rough sprightliness; the salmon-fisher loved to lie upon the shore and listen to the village story-teller,—almost official when successful,—who played upon the credulity and imagination of his listeners. The river- driver loved excitement for its own sake, and behind his boisterousness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bearing the general character which we have described, the French are certainly better fitted than any other people,—their native gaiety and sprightliness of disposition,—the polish which their manners so readily acquire,—their irrepressible confidence and self-conceit,—their love of shewing off, and attracting attention, give really a stage effect to many of their serious actions, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the age of nineteen, she became the wife of Mr. Seth D. Whitney. Her literary career began about 1856, since which time she has written several novels and poems; a number of them first appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly." Her writings are marked by grace and sprightliness. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... becoming to you, my dear girls,—even brighter and richer and dearer than any jewels with which you may adorn yourselves. They consist mostly of pleasant, well-chosen words, sympathetic, hearty tones, sprightliness, and certain winsome ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... one of Mrs. Ansell's arts to bring to the breakfast-table just the right shade of sprightliness, a warmth subdued by discretion as the early sunlight is tempered by the lingering coolness of night. She was, in short, as fresh, as temperate, as the hour, yet without the concomitant chill which too often marks its human atmosphere: rather her soft effulgence dissipated the morning ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... probable beneficial results of the project, his original disinclination to it diminished, until he finally determined on running the risk; and he felt fully rewarded for this concession to his wife's wishes when he saw her recover all her wonted serenity and sprightliness. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... who aimed at sprightliness on the Bench, Hatton merits a place; but there is reason to think that the idlers, who crowded his court to admire the foppishness of his judicial costume, did not get one really good mot from his lips to every ten bright sayings that came from the clever barristers practising ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... in this collection, the most popular are "Tullochgorum," "John o' Badenyon," and "The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn." The whole are pervaded by sprightliness and good-humoured pleasantry. Though possessing the fault of being somewhat too lengthy, no song-compositions of any modern writer in Scottish verse have, with the exception of those of Burns, maintained a stronger hold of the Scottish heart, or been more commonly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... without it there would not be a morsel of food in her cabin that night. What struck him and his fellow-traveller in a special manner was the effects of famine on the children; their faces were so wan and haggard that they looked like old men and women; their sprightliness was all gone; they sat in groups at their cabin doors, making no attempt to play. Another indication of the Famine noticed by them was, that the pigs and poultry had entirely disappeared. To numberless ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... as animated as usual. They displayed all that sprightliness and good-humour which my praises had led Mountford to expect; subjects, too, of sentiment occurred, and their speeches, particularly those of our friend the son of Count Respino, glowed with the warmth of honour, and softened ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... Gazette said, in announcing his death: "His performances in pulpit evidence a vast compass of thought, a sublime imagination, a great faith and zeal. In printed composures there is a fertility of invention, correctness of sentiment, sprightliness of expression, that must delight every reader, and transmit his name to posterity in the most advantageous light. His private life was amiable and exemplary, adorned with grace and virtues. A useful member of civil society. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... work after all is to be found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d'un notaire (1862); Le roi des montagnes (1856); L'homme a l'oreille cassee (1862); Trente et quarante (1858); Le cas de M. Guerin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play. "You will never be more than a little Voltaire,'' said one of his masters when he was a lad at school. It was a true prophecy. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hour, or at least so it seemed, and increasing in sprightliness each day. He even insisted on following her to the entrance of the cavity when she departed and met her there when she returned. The fear that he might some day disobey her injunction and sally forth alone in her absence did not once occur to her. She trusted him to obey, ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... the sprightliness and ideal grace of the widow, in spite of the witty sallies of the buccaneer, the supper was a gloomy one for Croustillac. His habitual assurance had given place to a kind of vague inquietude. The more charming Angela seemed to him, the more she exercised her fascinations, the greater the luxury ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... made up of the account given by Josephine herself of the events of her life; and that part contributed by M'lle. Le Normand, completes a biography of the gifted, the fortunate and unfortunate queen of Napoleon. The Memoirs of Josephine sparkle with French sprightliness, and abound with French sentiment. Her style is eminently graceful, and the turn of thought such as we would expect from the most accomplished and fascinating woman of her times. The narrative is neither very copious nor ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Edgar, was about sixteen years of age. She was not what is esteemed a striking beauty, but her appearance was pleasingly interesting. Her figure was elegant; her aspect was attempered with a pensive mildness, which in her cheerful moments would light up into sprightliness and vivacity. Though on first impression, her countenance was marked by a sweet and thoughtful serenity, yet she eminently possessed ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... about four o'clock when Tom sighted his chum. Jack's face was gloomy, and he lacked his customary sprightliness of walk. ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Nancy cruelly read aloud to Mary, with a sprightliness and sarcastic humour not excelled by her criticisms of 'the Prophet' in days gone by. Mary did not quite understand, but she saw in this behaviour a proof of the wonderful courage with which Nancy faced ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... good looks and sprightliness, the position of her father in the community, and the fact that this 1st of May was one and the same with her sixteenth birthday, young Mistress Jaquelin was May Queen in Jamestown. And because her father ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... of nature, the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in which they dwell, the air ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... veritable sure critic, we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications, which by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal allotment. The first is, joy in life, from which the pages of M. Sainte-Beuve derive, not a superficial sprightliness merely, but a mellow, radiant geniality. The other, which is of still deeper account, is the capacity of admiration; a virtue—for so it deserves to be called—born directly of the nobler sensibilities, those in whose presence only can be recognized ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... few attempts of Shakespeare to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakespeare, that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him. Yet ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... kindly towards him. Why he enjoyed so much of this lady's favour it was not easy to understand; intellectual sympathy there could be none between them, and as for personal liking, on his side it did not go beyond that naturally excited by a good-natured, feather-brained, rather pretty woman, whose sprightliness never passed the limits of decorum, and who seemed to have better qualities than found scope in her butterfly existence. Perhaps he amused her, being so unlike the kind of man she was accustomed to see. His acquaintance with the family dated from their social palingenesis, when, after ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the day, the middle-aged people of the better sort generally sleep; they are indeed extremely indolent, and sleeping and eating is almost all that they do. Those that are older are less drowsy, and the boys and girls are kept awake by the natural activity and sprightliness of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... could have seen or heard of, and for the truth of which they bring forward no evidence; thus forcing the reader to reject, as lacking proper confirmation, what he would else, from its inherent grace or sprightliness, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... St. James's Market. Mrs. Barry had possibly had some training under Davenant, who secured her an engagement, and she was at first a failure. She was destined for tragedy and tragic actresses are not made in five minutes, but comedy demanded little more than inborn sprightliness and high spirits. Lavinia had both, and ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... young man," M. Peyron answered, with easy French sprightliness. "As for my donkey of a valet, he never by any chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent him out—the pig—to learn, if possible, your nationality and name, and what hours you preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay my respects to mademoiselle, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Magazine, as well as the New Monthly, and although a pleasing pensiveness and sombre cast of mind seem to pervade her beautifully mental pictures, she was, I may say, noted in her youth for the buoyancy and sprightliness of her conversation and manner, which made her the delight and charm of every society with which she mixed. She likewise (I think in the same year) published an animated poem upon the valour of Spain and her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... was consumed by Tippy—her real name was Xantippe—in plucking out Aunt Kizzie's grey hairs, and in fixing her up to appear to the best advantage for youth and sprightliness. She was only sixty, but hard labor and severe usage had ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... seen Elsie Melville at Mrs. Rennie's party, her face and form, and her pleasant voice with its Scotch accent, recurred more frequently in his thoughts than those of any woman he had seen. Her elegance, her gentleness, her sprightliness, had struck him at sight, and her forlorn condition was very interesting. Her poetical talents, of which he had heard from Peggy, impressed him a good deal, and the manner in which she had taken so industriously to the only means of earning a livelihood ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... incomprehensible heart—gave a leap that sent the blood rushing to my face. He advanced, not with his usual imposing tread but with a sprightliness that pleased me vastly. I took the little pearl grey envelope from the salver, and carelessly glanced at the superscription. There was a curious ringing ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... they talked together with ceaseless animation. The Cantankerous Old Lady was capital company. She had a tang in her tongue, and in the course of ninety minutes she had flayed alive the greater part of London society, with keen wit and sprightliness. I laughed against my will at her ill-tempered sallies; they were too funny not to amuse, in spite of their vitriol. As for the Count, he was charmed. He talked well himself, too, and between them I almost forgot the time till we ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... her business as the local carrier gives a plausible machinery for the introduction of an enormous number, a truly Dickensian profusion, of subsidiary characters. Jinny indeed is above criticism, but the trouble with many, indeed with most, of the others, seemed to me to be their exaggerated sprightliness of speech, just a little too clever to be credible and not quite amusing enough to be palatable in large doses. To me the real pleasure of the book comes from the author's craftsmanlike use of words and the humour and imagination of his descriptions and asides. But if I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... she dreads the parting from her mother (Calendar of Clarendon Papers, vol. ii. p. 401.)] Anne Hyde possessed no special charm of person, and had no claim to rank amongst the beauties of the Court. But she was gifted with much sprightliness and humour, and although the scandals that assailed her virtue were triumphantly refuted she was frank enough not to hide such attraction of manner as she possessed, nor harshly to reject advances. She soon made a deep impression on the morose spirit ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... mind to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a slight French accent; and he did not know why she should, since she had been born and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile affected, and the coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For two or three days he remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She addressed her conversation almost exclusively to him, and there was something ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the fruit, also, in its native condition, averages much larger, stands erect instead of hanging, ripens late, is rose-colored, firm and sweet in flesh, and does not require as much heat to develop its saccharine constituents; but it lacks the peculiar sprightliness and aroma of the Virginia strawberry. It has become, however, the favorite stock of the European gardeners, and seems better adapted to transatlantic climate and soil than to ours. The first mention of the Fragaria Chilensis, or South American strawberry, says Mr. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... is founded on the observations of the ablest physiologists, that the greatest part of this refined fluid is re-absorbed and mixed with the blood, of which it constitutes the most rarified and volatile part; and that it imparts to the body singular sprightliness, vivacity, and vigour. These beneficial effects cannot be expected if the semen be wantonly and improvidently wasted. Besides the emission of it is accompanied with a peculiar species of tension and convulsion ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... of the hand—where can we see them now? That simple dancing of well-covered matrons, laying aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy, remembering but not affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young maidens by their side—that holiday sprightliness of portly husbands paying little compliments to their wives, as if their courting days were come again—those lads and lasses a little confused and awkward with their partners, having nothing to say—it would be a pleasant variety to see all that sometimes, instead of low dresses ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... decide between getting a meal for myself or a feed for the pony; but the young man, on hearing of my sore poverty, trusted me "till next time." His house, for order and neatness, and a sort of sprightliness of cleanliness—the comfort of cleanliness without its severity—is a pattern to all women, while the clear eyes and manly self-respect which the habit of total abstinence gives in this country are a pattern to all men. He cooked me a splendid dinner, with good tea. After dinner ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... she was bound for, he had moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake in the nature of his own destination. Suppose, after all, he should find himself castaway in some oasis of determined sprightliness with Wally Whitaker in whose pocket pretenses of tips and margins he began to discern a poorer sort of substitute for the House. He was as much bored by the permanently young shoe-salesman after this discovery as ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... sprightliness of the boy, by a gloomy restraint of his mental faculties, was the only method of securing to themselves the highest approbation of his royal parents. The whole of our prince's childhood wore a dark and gloomy aspect; mirth was banished even from his amusements. All his ideas ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... language for the natives, and for all who have thoroughly mastered its spirit. Its genius is airy and sparkling. It is especially the language of society, because society is, theoretically, the playful encounter of sprightliness and wit. It is the worst language I know of for poetry, ethics, and the habit of the Saxon mind. It is wonderful in the hands of such masters as Balzac and George Sand, and is especially adapted to their purposes. Yet their books ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... (1696-1737).—Poet, is known as the author of The Spleen, a lively and original poem in octosyllabic verse on the subject of low spirits and the best means of prevention and cure. It has life-like descriptions, sprightliness, and lightness of touch, and was admired by Pope and Gray. The poem owes its name to the use of the term in the author's day to denote depression. G., who held an appointment in the Customs, appears to have been a quiet, inoffensive person, an entertaining ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... waves over the long grass; or the relief we felt at being able to gaze ahead once more and see something of the country that we were traversing. 'Twas like a sudden release from prison. Our jaded horses felt with us the exhilaration of the change, and moved with greater sprightliness than they had shown for days. As the sun began its circle downward, vast rolling hills of white and yellow sand arose upon the right of our line of march,—huge mounds, many of them, glistening in the sunshine, some jagged at the summit, others rounded as if by art, so unusual ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... crumpled, his hair disheveled, he seemed just to have come from a fight, in which he had vanquished his opponent, and still to be flushed with the joy of victory. He pleased the mother with his sprightliness and his simple talk, which at once went straight to the point. She gave him a kind look as she answered his question. He once more shook her hand vigorously, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... green silk net which actually supported her reclining figure for the moment, to be quite Olympian; save indeed that in place of haughty effrontery there sat on her countenance only the healthful sprightliness of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... of the late renascence of sentimental journeying. Master and servant are represented in this book as traveling through southern Germany, apair as closely related in head and heart as Yorick and La Fleur, or Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim. The style is of rather forced buoyancy and sprightliness, with intentional inconsequence and confusion, an attempt at humor of narration, which is choked by characteristic national desire to convey information, and a fatal propensity to description of places,[43] even when some satirical purpose ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... been sultry, the class-rooms airless, their tasks fatiguing. The pavement beneath their feet was hot; both were glad to breathe what tiny breeze was astir; both were tired. They walked side by side in that best of all companionships which demands no effort at sprightliness, nor the utterance of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... the stalls, the levity of the lounge, and the general incongruity of her surroundings, Miss ROSELLE scores nightly a distinct success. Lastly, Mlle. VANONI, returning to the scene of her former triumphs, once again delights all beholders by the sprightliness of her singing and dancing. No reason to fear the disruption ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... air with cries, For hours together she would fret Because their toys she could not get. Ah, then! how changed this pretty child, No longer amiable and mild. That fairy form and smiling face Lost all their sprightliness and grace. Her tender mother often sighed, And to reform her daughter tried. "Oh! Minnie, Minnie," she would say, "Quite yellow ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... mass. Of course there are many individuals in this, as in other countries, remarkable for natural grace and genteel bearing; but the class which is pre-eminent in these respects, is very small and ill-defined. The great national defect is a want of sprightliness and vivacity, and an impartial insouciance in their intercourse with all classes and conditions of men. For if inequality has its evils, it has also its charms; as the prospect of swelling mountains and lowly vales ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the cost of very little trouble. Although the King of Egga looked more than a hundred years old, he was very gay and light-hearted. The chief people of the town met in his hut, and spent whole days in conversation. This company of greybeards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invariable practice, when any one passes by, to stop and listen outside, and they add to their noisy merriment so much good-will, that we hear nothing from the hut in which the aged group are revelling during ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... her beauty and intelligence, charmed with her sprightliness and wit, the man was for a time lost in the lover, and enough of fondness and affection were manifested to satisfy the confiding Mary, who had invested her earthly idol with every attribute of perfection. But as months passed ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... had, any learning, any gaiety. How can he, the jaded interpreter, hold any opinion, feel any enthusiasm?—without leisure, keep his mind in cultivation?—be sprightly to order, at unearthly hours in a whir-r-ring office? To order! Yes, sprightliness is compulsory there; so are weightiness, and fervour, and erudition. He must seem to abound in these advantages, or another man will take his place. He must disguise himself at all costs. But disguises are not easy to make; they require time and care, which he ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... unearth his association with the plays and players of his time—the mid-period of the nineteenth century. Yet they all agree that, as illustration of "parlour comedy," his "Love in '76" is a satisfactory example of sprightliness and fresh inventiveness. For this reason, the small comedietta is included in the present collection. It challenges comparison with Royall Tyler's "The Contrast" for manner, and its volatile spirit involved in the acting the good services of such estimable players as Laura ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... were the 'Dotty Dimple' and the 'Little Prudy' books to our youthful imagination, but we have no doubt the little folks of to-day will find the story of 'Flaxie Frizzle' and her young friends just as fascinating. There is a sprightliness about all of Miss CLARKE'S books that attracts the young, and their purity, their absolute cleanliness, renders them invaluable in the eyes of parents and all who are interested in ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... department, the line of his activities being between Paris and the coast, and Tom had seen him no more. He had given the compass to Tom as a "souvenir," and Tom, whose sober nature had found much entertainment in Archer's sprightliness, had cherished it as such. It was useful sometimes, too, though he had to be careful always to remember that it ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... would have said. "Look at Crasweller; he would have ruined Little Christchurch had he stayed there much longer." But everything he did seemed to prosper; and it occurred to me at last that he forced himself into abnormal sprightliness, with a view of bringing disgrace upon the law of the Fixed Period. If there were any such feeling, I regard ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... view things! I was just thinking that I never saw her so lovely, with such a sprightliness, such a glow in her face, as five ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... word and deed, faded, vanished, and died away, and he appeared to himself but a useless servant of the world. His friends he answered immediately; and as his inward melancholy vanished, and the philanthropy, nay, the sprightliness of his soul beamed forth, when he was among men and looked in a living face, so was it also with his letters. When he bethought him of the friends to whom he was writing, he not only acquired tranquillity, that virtue for which his whole life long ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... intellectual happiness, that scarcely the most shameless of the sensual herd have dared to defend it: yet even to this, the lowest of our delights, to this, though neither quick nor lasting, is health with all its activity and sprightliness daily sacrificed; and for this are half the miseries endured which urge impatience to call ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... There is to us a freshness about it which proves how deeply the writer must have been stirred by that wonderful character; it shows too that, with all her intensely religious and mystic temperament, Joan of Arc had a good part of sprightliness and bonhomie in her character, which endeared her to those whose good fortune it ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... Rogrons' hardness, had a dread of being scolded; it wounded her so sharply that the tears would instantly start in her beautiful, pure eyes. She had a great struggle with herself before she could repress the enchanting sprightliness which made her so great a favorite elsewhere. After a time she displayed it only in the homes of her little friends. By the end of the first month she had learned to be passive in her cousins' house,—so much so that Rogron one day asked her ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... are more communicative, conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; whilst men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy, and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ease, gaiety, and sprightliness of character, and yet possess no deeper qualities calculated to inspire respect. They may have every grace of manner, and yet be heartless, frivolous, selfish. The character may be on the surface only, and without any ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... mastered as to acquire the facility of giving expression to his ideas, he contrived to relate to others all that he saw and heard, and felt and thought, with surprising clearness and the most charming sprightliness, combined with talent and good feeling. Above all, in his letters to his father when travelling, we meet with the most minute delineations of countries and people, of the progress of the fine arts, especially in the theatres and in music; we also see the impulses ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... experienced reader sees through at once. No more sprightly novel than "Theo" could be desired, and a sweeter or more beautiful romance than "Kathleen" does not exist in print, while "Pretty Polly Pemberton" possesses besides its sprightliness a special interest peculiar to itself, and "Miss Crespigny" would do honor to the pen of any novelist, no matter how celebrated. "Lindsay's Luck," "A Quiet Life," "The Tide on the Moaning Bar" and "Jarl's Daughter" ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is followed daily, with a tub-bath weekly, you will not complain of those tired, nervous headaches, your face will lose its sallowness, and your walk will gain in sprightliness. Here let us say, for the benefit of those who are obliged to live in rented houses, or who have no facilities for a bath-room, that a folding bathtub is now offered. It folds up somewhat after the manner of a folding bed. When closed it looks like a cabinet, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... weep longer."—She held out her hand to Roland, who flinging himself on his knees, kissed it with much emotion. He was about to render the same homage to Catherine, when the Queen, assuming an air of sprightliness, said, "Her lips, thou foolish boy! and, Catherine, coy it not—these English gentlemen should see, that, even in our cold clime, Beauty knows how ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the Pythagorean hypothesis; I wonder that there are any to embrace it. Nor can I sufficiently admire the super-eminence of those men's wits that have received and held it to be true, and with the sprightliness of their judgments have offered such violence to their senses that they have been able to prefer that which their reason asserted to that which sensible experience manifested. I cannot find any bounds for my admiration how that reason was able, in Aristarchus and Copernicus, to commit such a rape ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Sedgwick say that she should always think the better of Verplanck for having been the husband of Eliza Fenno. Several of her letters written to him before their marriage are preserved, which, amidst the sprightliness natural to her age, show a more than usual thoughtfulness. She rallies him on being adopted by the mob, and making harangues at ward meetings. She playfully chides him for wandering from the Apostolic Church to hear popular preachers and clerks that sing well; which she regards as crimes ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... type' of Marivaux's women. "Young, alert, lively, yet compliant, already competent, reasonable, and energetic, without her reason, deliberative as it is, excluding for a moment wit, sprightliness, and charm. Give her more reserve, more dignity, more tender kindliness, and also more indulgent experience and you will have, scarcely any older, and already a widow, Araminte of les Fausses Confidences" (Henri Lion, in Histoire de la langue et de la litterature francaise Petit de Julleville, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... countries, men of talent write from talent. It is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste propitiated,—so many columns so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity. Here is activity of thought; ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... how changed the old folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the sprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: "A spirit passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and dissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer has been ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... physical movement, he would have been supposed, at first sight, a man who would take life easy, and concern himself as little as possible about public affairs. But, after all, there is a quality in the head of a great department which is quite distinct from sprightliness, and that is wisdom. This he possessed in the highest degree. The impress which he made on our fiscal system was not the product of what looked like energetic personal action, but of a careful study of the prevailing conditions of public opinion, and of the means at his disposal for keeping ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Diabelli, composer and head of a large publishing house in Vienna, for six variations on a waltz by him (Diabelli). The dance was always a favorite musical form with Beethoven in his lighter moments, and the variation form,—capable of a degree of sprightliness, vivacity and originality in the right hands which give it an entrancing effect, to which we come again and again with pleasure, was something peculiarly his own at every stage of his artistic career. His earliest essays in ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Smith was his most frequent and welcome visitor. They talked together of events past and of friends long since dead. Perhaps this was a little wearisome and painful now and then to Mr. Oliver Smith, who retained his youthful sprightliness amidst more serious sentiments. He would have had his old friend contemplate the great future that was approaching, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... dance the Serbian Kolo, which is performed by an indefinite number of people who have to be hand-in-hand, irrespective of sex, forming in this way a straight line or a circle or a serpent-like series of curves. They go through certain simple evolutions, into which more or less energy and sprightliness are introduced. The stationmaster looked on approvingly and then decided to join us, and after a little time he was followed by the porter. Our violinist was in excellent form, so that we continued dancing until some of us were as crimson as the sun, and presently, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... of correspondents is curiously alike in one feature. There is an almost sprightliness in their conviction that what they can write in these circumstances would exactly suit any paper, daily or weekly, morning or evening. All they have to do is to give up their odd savings of time to the work; all you—their hapless correspondent—have to ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... As time rolled on this Good Queen Bess Elizabeth Lost somewhat of her sprightliness; (continued) She got into a nervous state Was mopish and disconsolate. Now, as everyone will own, Had 'Iron Jelloids' been but known In Bess's time; why, it's conceded 'Twas just the Tonic that she needed. East India The great 'John Comp'ny' now began Company Its fine career without ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... love of ridicule could not withstand such a temptation, and they freely criticised each other to common friends, who, as is usually the case, agreed with both. Still, however, there was a whim and sprightliness even about their mischief, which made it seem rather an exercise of ingenuity than an indulgence of ill nature; and if they had not carried on this intellectual warfare, neither would have liked ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... home his gleanings to a well-furnished hive. The principal fault of this bee (if I must keep up the simile) is that he was not sufficiently choice in the flowers which he visited; and, of course, did not always extract the purest honey. Nearly allied to Clement in sprightliness, and an equally gossipping bibliographer, was PROSPER MARCHAND;[142] whose works present us with some things no where else to be found, and who had examined many curious and rare volumes; as well as made himself thoroughly acquainted with the state of bibliography ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... archly disdainful. "La! Sir Rowland, your modesty will be the death of you." Archness became this lady of the sunny hair, tip-tilted nose, and complexion that outvied the apple-blossoms. She was shorter by a half-head than her darker cousin, and made up in sprightliness what she lacked of Ruth's gentle dignity. The pair were foils, each setting off the graces ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... on to the verandah, and looked down upon the lights of the prison, and listened to the sea lapping the shore. The Reverend Mr. North, in this cool atmosphere, seemed to recover himself, and conversation progressed with some sprightliness. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... said. "We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom." Notwithstanding, when he did arrive, Frank Churchill carried all before him by reason of his good looks, sprightliness, and amiability. Emma and he soon became great friends. He favoured an idea of hers, that Jane's refusal to go to the Dixons' in Ireland was due either to Mr. Dixon's attachment to her, or to her attachment to Mr. Dixon. When a Broadwood pianoforte arrived for Jane—which was generally taken ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... first moment it was a plain case. Very soon every one in the pension was highly amused to notice how fluent his French was becoming; his choice of words at times was even elegant! The girl taught him it without a trace of grammar, by charm, sprightliness, a little nonsense; a pair of confiding eyes and a youthful voice were sufficient. It was from her that he got, by stealth, one novel after another. By stealth it had to be; by stealth Lucie had procured them; by stealth she gave them to him; by stealth they were ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... paces from me, a tall man in white flannels, liberally decorated with brambles and clinging shreds of underbrush. A streamer of vine had caught about his shoulders; there were leaves on his bare head, and this, together with the youthful sprightliness of his light figure and the naive activity of his approach, gave me a very faunlike first impression ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... were in their glory; lounged frequent hours in the museums; and was the first to run after every new attraction placarded at the corners. He was greatly taken with the agility of an Armenian girl, upon the wire and slack-rope, who was in truth a second Fenella in the sprightliness of her nimble exhibitions. Day Francis, the conjuror, was his admiration. He was delighted with Rannie, the old ventriloquist, and the first in America; and Potter, the late sable and celebrated professor ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath, this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Although Greek was the fountain from which he drew his stores, his wit, thought, and language were entirely Roman, and his style was Latin of the purest and most elegant kind—not, indeed, controlled by much deference to the laws of metrical harmony, but full of pith and sprightliness, bearing the stamp of colloquial vivacity, and suitable to the general briskness of his scenes. Yet in the tone of his dialogue we miss all symptoms of deference to the taste of the more polished classes of society. Almost all ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... a dish of coffee, gives degrees of vivacity, of mobility, of disposition to anger, sadness, or gaiety; such a meat, because it lies heavy on the stomach, engenders moroseness and melancholy; such another, because it facilitates digestion, creates sprightliness, and an inclination to oblige and to love. The use of vegetables, because they have little nourishment, enfeebles the body, and gives a disposition to repose, indolence, and ease; the use of meat, because it is full of nourishment, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... made him stay to dinner and spend the rest of the day there, and by the evening he had recovered all his usual sprightliness. Towards sunset he and Eric went for a stroll down the bay, and talked over the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... age of fifteen, Frederic was taught at home, in his father's school. He now entered the Warsaw Lyceum, and proved a good student, twice carrying off a prize. With this studiousness was joined a gaiety and sprightliness that manifested itself in all sorts of fun and mischief. He loved to play pranks on his sisters, comrades and others, and had a fondness for caricature, taking off the peculiarities of those about him with pose and pen. Indeed it was the opinion of a clever member of the profession, that the lad ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... soon he was master of such another clean-going frigate as herself. The whole company partook of this favourable change that evidently appeared in our lover's recollection, and enlivened his conversation with such an uncommon flow of sprightliness and good humour, as even made an impression on the iron countenance of Pipes himself, who actually smiled with satisfaction as he walked ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... quiet exercise of mind, depend upon a perfect circulation: is it a wonder then, when this becomes impeded the body looses of its health, and the temper of its sprightliness? to be otherwise would be the miracle; and he inhumanly insults the afflicted, who calls all this a voluntary frowardness. Its slightest state brings with it sickness, anguish and oppression; and innumerable ills follow its advancing steps, unless prevented by timely care; ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... from the nature of these subjects, and from the gravity and decorum with which it is always conducted. It is not to be inferred from hence, that their conversation is dull and gloomy. There is often no want of sprightliness, wit, and humour. But then this sprightliness, never borders upon folly, for all foolish jesting is to be avoided, and it is always decorous. When vivacity makes its appearance among the Quakers; it is sensible, and it is uniformly in ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of the evening he thus gave his opinion upon the merits of some of the principal performers whom he remembered to have seen upon the stage. "Mrs. Porter in the vehemence of rage, and Mrs. Clive in the sprightliness of humour, I have never seen equalled. What Clive did best, she did better than Garrick; but could not do half so many things well; she was a better romp than any I ever saw in nature. Pritchard, in common ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... her grace's acquaintance, when she was introduced into the favour of this royal courtezan; and as the duchess of Cleveland was a woman of parts and genius, she could not but be charmed with the sprightliness of her conversation. She was fond of new faces, and immediately contracted the greatest intimacy with our poetess, and gave her a general invitation to her table. The lady at whose house the duchess became acquainted with Mrs. Manley, soon perceived her indiscretion in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... along, very happy, laughing and talking together, viewed with envy, contempt or sympathy by the girls and women who read and worked round the band-stand. A thin stream of music drifted out with a sort of melancholy sprightliness to join the deep sound of waves breaking and drawing back from the gravel on the sands. In the distance Caroline looked out from her little window at Wilson's broad back and hated them both, in spite of Laura's kindness. They'd everything—everything. ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... body. Next he made him walk and run with the longest strides he could take; and, after repeating this process, brought him a cup of boiling coffee. Having been revived and strengthened in this way, the lad quite recovered his sprightliness, and soon asked when we ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... seem to have exercised his usual penetration when he says that English humour "far from agreeable, and bitter in taste, like their own beverages, abounds in Dickens. French sprightliness, joy, and gaiety is a kind of good wine only grown in the lands of the sun. In its insular state it leaves an aftertaste of vinegar. The man who jests here is seldom kindly and never happy; he feels and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... heroic efforts, in journeyings oft, in tact that never failed in many a trying hour, in success most marvellous, in a vivacity and sprightliness that never succumbed to discouragement, in a faith that never faltered, and in a solicitude for the spread of our blessed Christianity that never grew less, James Evans stands among ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... played some part in the misunderstanding, for it was undeniable that there was a sprightliness, a joyant brightness, in the flowing red scarf on Ignatius Aloysius's nautical breast, which was nowhere paralleled in Patrick's more subdued array. And the tenth commandment seemed very arbitrary to Patrick, the star of St. Mary's ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... wonder who can tell me what that was all about?" she asked, with feigned sprightliness. "I think you can, the little girl with the red dress. What's ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... toward his mother. She was looking at her two kinsmen with such sweet sprightliness that he had trouble to make her see his uplifted cigar. She met his parting smile with a gleam of terror and distrust, but he shook his head and reddened as Hamlet winked ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... impresses you in reading selections from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, the humor, sprightliness, and variety of the thought, or the style? What especially satisfactory pages have ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... not apt to be abstract. It struck the consul that in Miss Elsie's sprightliness there was the usual ulterior and personal object, and he glanced around at his fellow-passengers. The object evidently was sitting at the end of the opposite seat, an amused but well-behaved listener. For the rest, he was still young and reserved, but in face, figure, and dress utterly unlike ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the conversation never settled down so comfortably as when it turned to the details of the trade which was the other ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... peaceful possession after supper made the meal, so far as Lyveden was concerned, an Olympian banquet. The assemblage, indeed, was remarkable, and the hostess—a very Demeter—must have been the oldest present by some twenty years. The sprightliness of Hermes alone, in the guise of the man called Berry, kept a lively table in ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... beautiful to see how young Percy delighted to assist in waiting on these visitors to "The Soldiers' Rest,"—how his sprightliness pleased and amused them. His own great embarrassment seemed to be that he had lost all his clothes at the time he was wounded, so was compelled to wear the unbleached shirts with blue cottonade collars and cuffs, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... without animation until Greta set herself to bewitch him out of his moodiness. Her bright eyes, dancing in the rosy fire-light that flickered in the room; her high spirits bubbling over with delicious teasing and joyous sprightliness; her tenderness, her rippling laughter, her wit, her badinage—all were brought to the defeat and banishment of Paul's heaviness of soul. It was to no purpose. The gloom of the grave face would ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... sermons, exhortations, by processions, pictures, and newspapers, the cannon's flesh, hundreds of thousands of men, uniformly dressed, carrying divers deadly weapons, leaving their parents, wives, children, with hearts of agony, but with artificial sprightliness, go where they, risking their own lives, will commit the most dreadful act of killing men whom they do not know and who have done them no harm. And they are followed by doctors and nurses, who somehow imagine that ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... more ingenious sort of brutes do not esteem escaping of evil their last end; but when they have taken their repast, they are disposed next by fullness to singing, and they divert themselves with swimming and flying; and their gayety and sprightliness prompt them to entertain themselves with attempting to counterfeit all sorts of voices and notes; and then they make their caresses to one another, by skipping and dancing one towards another; nature inciting them, after they have ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... was worse—she said it awkwardly, with a sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all. She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that she had succeeded. He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown, while she stood smiling, holding ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... appertaining to my kingdom on earth, next to myself. Her name is Prosperity: she has damned more than all of you together, and little would ye avail without her presence. For who in war or peril, in famine or in plague, would lay any value by tobacco, or by money or by the sprightliness of pride, or who would deign welcome licentiousness or sloth? And men in such straits are too wide-awake to be distraught by Hypocrisy, or even by Thoughtlessness; none of the infernal vermin of Distraction dare show himself in one ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... sorrow on her; a foolish talking woman, always cutting jokes, making eyes, giggling and coquetting; "HAS some wit and manner, but wearies you at last: her charms, now on the decline, were never so considerable as rumor said; in the long-run she bores you with her French gayeties and sprightliness: her character for gallantry is too notorious. She quite corrupted Marwitz, in this and a subsequent visit; turned the poor girl's head into a French whirligig, and undermined any little moral principle she had. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and seven girls with good voices and some sprightliness of manner are required. Each carries a wand, to the upper end of which is fastened an evergreen wreath surrounding a large, gilt letter. Ranged in order the letters will spell the word "Merry Christmas." The verse for each is sung to the air, "Buy a Broom." ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... from the enchanting pantomime, took a step towards her; but she raised her hand pleadingly, restrainingly, and he paused. With his eyes he asked her mutely why. She did not answer, but, all at once transformed into a thing of abundant sprightliness, ran down the hillside, tossing up her arms gaily. Yet her face was not all brilliance. Tears hung at her eyes. But Hilton did not see these. He did not run, but walked quickly, following her; and his face had a determined look. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to be so numerous and intricate, that we thought it best not to produce them here. Explanations which are given by a reader, can be given with greater rapidity and effect, than any which a writer can give to children: the expression of the countenance is advantageous, the sprightliness of conversation keeps the pupils awake, and the connection of the parts of the subject can be carried on better in speaking and reading, than it can be in written explanations. Notes are almost always too formal, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... charge that none of his friends will bring against Mr. Leigh Hunt. He improves upon acquaintance. The author translates admirably into the man. Indeed the very faults of his style are virtues in the individual. His natural gaiety and sprightliness of manner, his high animal spirits, and the vinous quality of his mind, produce an immediate fascination and intoxication in those who come in contact with him, and carry off in society whatever in his writings ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... ladies, who seem to make pleasure their only business, and most of whom I have seen this morning driving about the town in calashes, and making what they call, the tour de la ville, attended by English officers, seem generally handsome, and have an air of sprightliness with which I am charm'd; I must be acquainted with them all, for tho' my stay is to be short, I see no reason why it should be dull. I am told they are fond of little rural balls in the country, and intend to give one as soon as I have ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... out of it at the end of my pen, was for her a deep basin in which she would have blackened her gold- clocked pink stockings up to the garter, I can assure you that she was great, and imposing even in her sprightliness. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... woman turned to go, but her father, with a sprightliness one would not have expected from his years, sprang to the door and looked at ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and know the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions, and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondency of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Mrs. Judson at this time, were, according to the testimony of some who well recollect her, engaging and attractive in no common degree. Her sweet and ready smile, her dark expressive eye, the animation and sprightliness of her conversation, and her refined taste and manners, made her a favorite in all circles. Her dress, for which she was indebted to the liberality of British friends, was more rich and showy than she would have chosen for herself, and as has been said, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... natural ease, grace, and vivacity of manners and conversation, characteristic of Spanish ladies, were fully displayed by her from the moment of our introduction. The children, especially two or three little senoritas, were very beautiful, and manifested a remarkable degree of sprightliness and intelligence. One of them presented me with a small basket wrought from a species of tough grass, and ornamented with the plumage of birds of a variety of brilliant colours. It was a beautiful specimen of ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... le petit Frederic," said Julie with a sickly attempt at coquettish sprightliness; "I had no eyes ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to our house would tell strange tales of this black land, and some of the stories I am inclined to think were true. One man said he saw a young bull-dog fly at a boy and pin him by the throat. The lad jumped about with much sprightliness, and tried to knock the dog away. Whereupon the boy's father rushed out of the house, hard by, and caught his son and heir roughly by the shoulder. "Keep still, thee young —-, can't 'ee!" shouted the man angrily; "let 'un ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... general approbation, being written with great familiarity and great sprightliness; the language is easy, but seldom gross, and the numbers smooth, without appearance of care. Of these tales there are only four: "The Ladle," which is introduced by a preface, neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. "Paulo Purganti," which has likewise a preface, but ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... sensibility was the antipodes of the Rogrons' hardness, had a dread of being scolded; it wounded her so sharply that the tears would instantly start in her beautiful, pure eyes. She had a great struggle with herself before she could repress the enchanting sprightliness which made her so great a favorite elsewhere. After a time she displayed it only in the homes of her little friends. By the end of the first month she had learned to be passive in her cousins' house,—so much so that Rogron one day asked her if she was ill. At that sudden question, she ran to the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... we thought it best not to produce them here. Explanations which are given by a reader, can be given with greater rapidity and effect, than any which a writer can give to children: the expression of the countenance is advantageous, the sprightliness of conversation keeps the pupils awake, and the connection of the parts of the subject can be carried on better in speaking and reading, than it can be in written explanations. Notes are almost always ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... from abroad, who delighted in pacing the shady walks, listening to the wit and wisdom of Sir Thomas, or conversing with the daughters, who had been highly educated, and had much of their father's humor and sprightliness. Even Henry VIII. himself, then one of the most brilliant and graceful gentlemen of his time, would sometimes arrive in his royal barge, and talk theology or astronomy with Sir Thomas; or, it might be, crack jests with him and ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Frederic," said Julie with a sickly attempt at coquettish sprightliness; "I had no eyes except ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not, at the first sight, imagine compatible with their figure, but may contribute much to the cure, or at least to the extenuation of such bodily defects, by giving a more free circulation to the blood, a habit of sprightliness and agility to the limbs, and preventing the accumulation of gross humors, and especially of fat, which is itself not among the least diseases, where it prevails to an excess. Not that I here mean any thing so foolishly partial, as that nothing but dancing could operate all this; but ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... Have you never turned sick at heart, O best of critics! when some of your own sweet adjectives were returned on you before a gaping audience? Enthusiasm about art is become a function of the average female being, which she performs with precision and a sort of haunting sprightliness, like an ingenious and well- regulated machine. Sometimes, alas! the calmest man is carried away in the torrent, bandies adjectives with the best, and out-Herods Herod for some shameful moments. When you remember that, you will be tempted to put things strongly, and say you will marry no one ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Champion," in which Fox and Lord North, in female attire, and the Duchess in her large picture hat, but decollettee, and with bare arms, are busy singing a dirge on the defeated opponent. Georgina, a figure of delicious sprightliness and beauty, points to the tombstone marked "Here lies poor Cecil Ray," while the spectacled profile of Burke peeps into the door. And here I may remark again how astonishingly to my own experience a study of ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... a whole bevy here of the famous beauties of Charles II.'s court,—full of the affected airs and languishing graces which Sir Peter Lely knew well how to paint, and rarely showing any thing in their portraits of the sprightliness which some of them at least possessed in life. The only one of Sir Peter's full-length beauties, who calls up any associations but such as belong to Grammont's Memoirs, is Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... well-known merchant of that city. At the age of nineteen, she became the wife of Mr. Seth D. Whitney. Her literary career began about 1856, since which time she has written several novels and poems; a number of them first appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly." Her writings are marked by grace and sprightliness. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... general incongruity of her surroundings, Miss ROSELLE scores nightly a distinct success. Lastly, Mlle. VANONI, returning to the scene of her former triumphs, once again delights all beholders by the sprightliness of her singing and dancing. No reason to fear the disruption of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... about sixteen years of age. She was not what is esteemed a striking beauty, but her appearance was pleasingly interesting. Her figure was elegant; her aspect was attempered with a pensive mildness, which in her cheerful moments would light up into sprightliness and vivacity. Though on first impression, her countenance was marked by a sweet and thoughtful serenity, yet she ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... from intellectual happiness, that scarcely the most shameless of the sensual herd have dared to defend it: yet even to this, the lowest of our delights, to this, though neither quick nor lasting, is health with all its activity and sprightliness daily sacrificed; and for this are half the miseries endured which urge ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... that he has so much of both that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom." Notwithstanding, when he did arrive, Frank Churchill carried all before him by reason of his good looks, sprightliness, and amiability. Emma and he soon became great friends. He favoured an idea of hers, that Jane's refusal to go to the Dixons' in Ireland was due either to Mr. Dixon's attachment to her, or to her attachment to Mr. Dixon. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... fact, that the flounced and gorgeous garniture of our dresses was in shocking contrast to the amiable simplicity of hers and the fair Arabella, her daughter, a charming girl, who, notwithstanding the fashionable splendour in which she has been educated, displays a delightful sprightliness of manner, that, I have some notion, has not been altogether lost on the heart ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... gives a plausible machinery for the introduction of an enormous number, a truly Dickensian profusion, of subsidiary characters. Jinny indeed is above criticism, but the trouble with many, indeed with most, of the others, seemed to me to be their exaggerated sprightliness of speech, just a little too clever to be credible and not quite amusing enough to be palatable in large doses. To me the real pleasure of the book comes from the author's craftsmanlike use of words and the humour and imagination ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... return to the old familiar footing I was neglecting the committee and losing interest in the affairs of the library. A certain peevishness took possession of me; I was no longer myself, and I lost the gayety and sprightliness which had been always my ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... table of the Count de la Galissoniere was not a dull affair of mere eating and drinking. The conversation and sprightliness of the host fed the minds of his guests as generously as his bread strengthened their hearts, or his wine, in the Psalmist's words, made their faces to shine. Men were they, every one of them possessed of a sound mind in a sound body; and both were ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... wear as well as woman. They are most becoming to you, my dear girls,—even brighter and richer and dearer than any jewels with which you may adorn yourselves. They consist mostly of pleasant, well-chosen words, sympathetic, hearty tones, sprightliness, and certain winsome ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... to put myself in mind and solicit myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say, so well agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at present in another state: the conditions of age but too much put me in mind, urge me to wisdom, and preach to me. From the excess of sprightliness I am fallen into that of severity, which is much more troublesome; and for that reason I now and then suffer myself purposely a little to run into disorder, and occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewith it diverts itself. I am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and too ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... hanging upon the smiles of merry, saucy, blue-eyed May Allison; while her brother Richard seemed equally enamored with the brunette beauty and sprightliness ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... that the experienced reader sees through at once. No more sprightly novel than "Theo" could be desired, and a sweeter or more beautiful romance than "Kathleen" does not exist in print, while "Pretty Polly Pemberton" possesses besides its sprightliness a special interest peculiar to itself, and "Miss Crespigny" would do honor to the pen of any novelist, no matter how celebrated. "Lindsay's Luck," "A Quiet Life," "The Tide on the Moaning Bar" and "Jarl's Daughter" are all worthy ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mother. She was looking at her two kinsmen with such sweet sprightliness that he had trouble to make her see his uplifted cigar. She met his parting smile with a gleam of terror and distrust, but he shook his head and reddened as Hamlet winked ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... the letters of Grotius, are written in the finest latinity, and contain much valuable information; but the point, the sprightliness, the genius, the vivid descriptions of men and things, which are so profusely scattered over the letters of Erasmus, are seldom discoverable in those of Grotius. A man of learning would have been ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... take in hand," he writes, "some book which requires attention and study. You will, I fear, lose the habit of study, which would be a greater misfortune than to lose your head." He praised, too, the ease, good-sense, and sprightliness of her letters, and said truly that her style, at its best, was not inferior to that ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... and coquetting; "HAS some wit and manner, but wearies you at last: her charms, now on the decline, were never so considerable as rumor said; in the long-run she bores you with her French gayeties and sprightliness: her character for gallantry is too notorious. She quite corrupted Marwitz, in this and a subsequent visit; turned the poor girl's head into a French whirligig, and undermined any little moral principle she had. She was on the road to Berlin,"—of which anon, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Ragged, crumpled, his hair disheveled, he seemed just to have come from a fight, in which he had vanquished his opponent, and still to be flushed with the joy of victory. He pleased the mother with his sprightliness and his simple talk, which at once went straight to the point. She gave him a kind look as she answered his question. He once more shook her hand vigorously, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... enough with which to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quicker to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover of butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; I love sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the moment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy of feeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slang and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, in the eyes ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... over-reached himself in presenting this picture of marital joys to my horizon, Captain Pharo resumed the subject with sprightliness. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... how young Percy delighted to assist in waiting on these visitors to "The Soldiers' Rest,"—how his sprightliness pleased and amused them. His own great embarrassment seemed to be that he had lost all his clothes at the time he was wounded, so was compelled to wear the unbleached shirts with blue cottonade collars and cuffs, which were supplied to all patients, numbered to correspond ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... the last century, to whom White of Selborne addressed so many of his letters, gives a table of the comparative merit of seventeen leading song-birds of Europe, marking them under the heads of mellowness, sprightliness, plaintiveness, compass, and execution. In the aggregate, the songsters stand highest in sprightliness, next in compass and execution, and lowest in the other two qualities. A similar arrangement and comparison of our ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... his Majesty liked prompt replies, and those which showed vivacity and sprightliness. I will give two anecdotes in support of this assertion. Once, while the Emperor was holding a review on the Place du Carrousel, his horse reared, and in the efforts his Majesty made to control him, his hat fell to the ground; a lieutenant (his name, I think, was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath, this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... fine person and his polished address, and saluted them with even more than his usual politeness as they entered the dining-room. He was the only one of the group who seemed at ease; for the two missionaries could not forget the death of Anno—and Gilbert, from some cause or other, had lost his sprightliness. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... and whilst Gonzaga—Gonzaga, the poet of burning fancy, the gay songster, the acknowledged wit, the mirror of courtliness—was silent and tongue-tied, this ruffling, upstart swashbuckler entertained them with a sprightliness that won him every heart—always excepting that ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... early, and cold, and Mary's recovery was retarded by it. At the beginning of November she had not left her own rooms. But at that time her seclusion was mostly a precautionary measure. She had regained much of her old sprightliness, and was full of plans for the entertainments she intended to give as soon as she was perfectly well. "I am going to introduce you to Glasgow society at the New Year, Maggie," she said, "and I can imagine the sensation you will cause—the wonder—the inquiries—the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... Ojibwas dwelt for a time on the Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron. While the tribes dwelt here, two distinguished Indian youths, by the name of San-ge-man and Kau-be-man, remarkable for their sprightliness, attracted the attention of their particular tribes. Both were the youngest children of their respective families. It was the custom of the Indians to send their boys, when young, to some retired place a short distance from their village, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... growing by the hour, or at least so it seemed, and increasing in sprightliness each day. He even insisted on following her to the entrance of the cavity when she departed and met her there when she returned. The fear that he might some day disobey her injunction and sally forth alone in her absence did not once occur to her. She ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... of a jokish disposition, did, unexpectedly and contrary to usage, cry "Baa" loudly, causing my mother-in-law to fear that I was a dull—until that night in the Zenana she had the great happiness to overhear me outwitting all the females present by the sprightliness of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... is partly due to the declining taste of the period, partly to an idea of his own that he could write in the manner of Sallust. It alternates between a sort of laboured sprightliness and a careless, conversational manner full of endless parentheses. Yet Velleius has two real merits: the eye of a trained soldier for character, and an unaffected, if not a very intelligent, interest ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... that Liza too was there, and I had never seen her more radiant, carelessly light-hearted, and happy. Mavriky Nikolaevitch was there too, of course. In the crowd of young ladies and rather vulgar young men who made up Yulia Mihailovna's usual retinue, and among whom this vulgarity was taken for sprightliness, and cheap cynicism for wit, I noticed two or three new faces: a very obsequious Pole who was on a visit in the town; a German doctor, a sturdy old fellow who kept loudly laughing with great zest at his own wit; and lastly, a very young princeling from Petersburg ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... must be a place—in which that condition can exist." She had always been fond of discussions of this kind, and felt encouraged to find that they were still practicable. "It cannot be the—Inferno; that is clear, at least," she added, with the sprightliness which was one of her characteristics; "perhaps—Purgatory? since you infer I have ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... hundred years old, he was very gay and light-hearted. The chief people of the town met in his hut, and spent whole days in conversation. This company of greybeards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invariable practice, when any one passes by, to stop and listen outside, and they add to their noisy merriment so much good-will, that we hear nothing from the hut in which the aged group ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of Mrs. Ansell's arts to bring to the breakfast-table just the right shade of sprightliness, a warmth subdued by discretion as the early sunlight is tempered by the lingering coolness of night. She was, in short, as fresh, as temperate, as the hour, yet without the concomitant chill which too often marks its human ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... and Jesse perfectly silent, and very well dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers. Then old Jolyon alone. Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in his face, and a carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement of his head and body. One of his sons followed him, meek and subdued. Swithin Forsyte, and Bosinney arrived at the same moment,—and stood—bowing precedence to each other,—but on the door opening they tried to enter together; they renewed their apologies in the hall, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... We want something more of this grace, sprightliness, and harmless play of the finer life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... who come here do—real ladies. It is the custom in Europe. Why not?" And he produced a box of cigarettes and put it on the table. Susan lit one of them and once more with supreme physical content came a cheerfulness that put color and sprightliness into the flowers of hope. And the sun had won its battle with the storm; the storm was in retreat. Sunshine was streaming in at the windows, into her heart. The waiter paused in his work now and then to enjoy himself in contemplating the charming ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... daily, with a tub-bath weekly, you will not complain of those tired, nervous headaches, your face will lose its sallowness, and your walk will gain in sprightliness. Here let us say, for the benefit of those who are obliged to live in rented houses, or who have no facilities for a bath-room, that a folding bathtub is now offered. It folds up somewhat after the manner of a folding ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... head of a large publishing house in Vienna, for six variations on a waltz by him (Diabelli). The dance was always a favorite musical form with Beethoven in his lighter moments, and the variation form,—capable of a degree of sprightliness, vivacity and originality in the right hands which give it an entrancing effect, to which we come again and again with pleasure, was something peculiarly his own at every stage of his artistic career. His earliest essays in composition are in this form. Variations ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... appellation of "old acquaintance" that he did not care how soon he was master of such another clean-going frigate as herself. The whole company partook of this favourable change that evidently appeared in our lover's recollection, and enlivened his conversation with such an uncommon flow of sprightliness and good humour, as even made an impression on the iron countenance of Pipes himself, who actually smiled with satisfaction ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... had taught and written, all that he had ever been to men in word and deed, faded, vanished, and died away, and he appeared to himself but a useless servant of the world. His friends he answered immediately; and as his inward melancholy vanished, and the philanthropy, nay, the sprightliness of his soul beamed forth, when he was among men and looked in a living face, so was it also with his letters. When he bethought him of the friends to whom he was writing, he not only acquired tranquillity, that virtue for which his whole life ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... intimated to your Highness, that the Remedy of your Sorrows was too be found only in the Conversation of Women, I meant no other than what the Laws both human and divine admit of. And that as Solitude only serves to augment your Grief, the entertaining Wit and Sprightliness of the Fair Sex, in their Conversations, was the only Antidote against your growing Affliction, in ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... best that has come down to our day of the heroine. There is to us a freshness about it which proves how deeply the writer must have been stirred by that wonderful character; it shows too that, with all her intensely religious and mystic temperament, Joan of Arc had a good part of sprightliness and bonhomie in her character, which endeared her to those whose good fortune ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... these tunes at his disposal he was more than content. Many a long evening he sat with his huge bulk swaying in the light of the hanging lamp as he wandered around Maxwelton's braes in search of the true Annie Laurie; or hopped with heavy sprightliness across the sandy bottoms of Dixie, while Bondsman, the patient Airedale, sat on his haunches and ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... frigate bird follows with the audacity and certainty of fate, until flustered and frightened the little fish is abandoned, to be snapped up by the air-ranger before it reaches the sea. As an exhibition of fierce and relentless purpose, combined with sprightliness and activity, the pursuit of a tern by the fearless frigate bird, and the impetuous swoop after and seizure of the falling fish, cannot be matched ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of unyielding voice and formed opinions. And then there was the crushing sense, at the conclusion of one of these interviews, of having been put down as a tiresome and heavy young man. I fully believed in my own liveliness and sprightliness, but it seemed an impossible task to persuade my elders that these qualities were there. A good-natured, elderly friend used at times to rally me upon my shyness, and say that it all came from thinking too much about myself. It was as useless as if one told a ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for men to catch themselves and others by such notable acute questions, and to be led by the sprightliness of their imagination out of the road of truth and common sense. I beg leave to tell the Gentleman a short story, and then to ask him his own question. A certain Gentleman who had been some years abroad happened in his return to England through Paris to meet his own sister there. ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... at home, to whom she was taking it, as without it there would not be a morsel of food in her cabin that night. What struck him and his fellow-traveller in a special manner was the effects of famine on the children; their faces were so wan and haggard that they looked like old men and women; their sprightliness was all gone; they sat in groups at their cabin doors, making no attempt to play. Another indication of the Famine noticed by them was, that the pigs and poultry had entirely disappeared. To numberless testimonies, as to the spirit in which the poor people bore their unexampled ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... mingling in the fray, give you up, one by one, captive to the devil. In the lighter hours of the day, the dead hopes of the Past, the beauties of other days, throng round you, and shake their dry bones; and oh, what efforts at sprightliness! what ravishing of graces! what whirling and rattling of bare bones, as they waltz round to that music of other days! And now, born of these, comes another group, with the laughing eye of young years and a full heart; and ah! the tempting lip, the heaving bosom, the light step of the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... spite of Myrtilla's efforts to make friends, the conversation sustained a distinct loss in sprightliness by Angel's arrival. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... joy at seeing me again was very great; but he regretted much that his friend Timaro, with whom he had exchanged names, was not of our company. The spirits of Labugar had lost during eight years none of their sprightliness; but his face looked much older, and his hair ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... room, as if courting applause, after a torrent of diluted truism. They talk in a circle, harping on the same dull round of argument, and returning again and again to the same remark with the same sprightliness, the same irritating appearance ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still at anchor, was observed to be surrounded with boats. In about an hour she weighed and stood to sea. Captain Maxwell had received another visit from the old Chief, whose appearance was described as being quite altered; his sprightliness and curiosity all gone, and his easy unceremonious manner exchanged for cold and stately civility: he looked embarrassed and unhappy, as it appeared, from an apprehension of having offended Captain Maxwell. When this was discovered, no pains were spared to convince him that, in this respect, there ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... written Guly a schoolboy, the closest affection united the children, notwithstanding the difference in their years and disposition. Guly, as he was called, though of a cheerful disposition, never displayed that sprightliness and vivacity which characterized Arthur. Even in his merriest moments, a thoughtfulness mingled with his mirth, which rendered him ever attentive to ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... of a collection of nursery songs and rhymes by Charles Lamb, published many years ago, but now quite out of print. This, however, is a mere surmise on my part, and has no better foundation than the vein of humour, sprightliness, and originality, obvious enough in the above extract, which we find running through and adorning all he wrote. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... were to seat themselves, ninety-nine (observes this gentleman) would shuffle their chairs to the true distance, and then throw themselves back against the nearest prop. The women exhibit a great similarity of tall, relaxed forms, with consistent dress and demeanour; and are not remarkable for sprightliness of manners. Intellectual culture has not yet made much progress among the generality of either sex; but the men, from their habit of travelling, and their consequent intercourse with strangers, have greatly the advantage, in the means of acquiring information. Mr. Birkbeck says that, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... I entered into discourse with my charmer, who was the more pleased with my conversation, as she had conceived a very indifferent opinion of my intellects from my former silence. I should have had cause to be equally satisfied with the sprightliness of her genius, could she have curbed her imagination with judgment; but she laboured under such a profusion of talk, that I dreaded her unruly tongue, and felt by anticipation the horrors of an eternal clack! However, when ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... they met. And gravely walked and talked. He read her no more verses, and he stayed Only until their conversation, balked Of every natural channel, fled dismayed. Again the next day she would meet him, trying To give her tone some healthy sprightliness, But his uneager dignity soon chilled Her well-prepared address. Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying Of wild geese startled Eunice, and their flying Whirred overhead for days ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... more adventures and new glories in the transportation department, the line of his activities being between Paris and the coast, and Tom had seen him no more. He had given the compass to Tom as a "souvenir," and Tom, whose sober nature had found much entertainment in Archer's sprightliness, had cherished it as such. It was useful sometimes, too, though he had to be careful always to remember that it was the ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the place she was bound for, he had moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake in the nature of his own destination. Suppose, after all, he should find himself castaway in some oasis of determined sprightliness with Wally Whitaker in whose pocket pretenses of tips and margins he began to discern a poorer sort of substitute for the House. He was as much bored by the permanently young shoe-salesman after this discovery ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she had been helped to was too delicate to be given up even for the greater rarity. But the word "shell-oysters" had been overheard; and there was a perceptible crowding movement ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... agreeable memories connected with Button's," says Leigh Hunt, "is that of Garth, a man whom, for the sprightliness and generosity of his nature, it is a pleasure to name. He was one of the most amiable and intelligent of a most amiable and intelligent class of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... grossness, certainly less clownishness, among the mass. Of course there are many individuals in this, as in other countries, remarkable for natural grace and genteel bearing; but the class which is pre-eminent in these respects, is very small and ill-defined. The great national defect is a want of sprightliness and vivacity, and an impartial insouciance in their intercourse with all classes and conditions of men. For if inequality has its evils, it has also its charms; as the prospect of swelling mountains and lowly vales is more pleasing to the eye than that of the monotonous, though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... whole of his body. Next he made him walk and run with the longest strides he could take; and, after repeating this process, brought him a cup of boiling coffee. Having been revived and strengthened in this way, the lad quite recovered his sprightliness, and soon asked when we ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... genuine opportunity came when Charles cast her for the part of Stella De Gex in Marshall's delightful comedy "His Excellency the Governor," which was first put on at the Empire in May, 1899. The grace and sprightliness that were later to bloom so delightfully in Miss Barrymore now found their first real expression. Both in New York and on the road ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... to be hand-in-hand, irrespective of sex, forming in this way a straight line or a circle or a serpent-like series of curves. They go through certain simple evolutions, into which more or less energy and sprightliness are introduced. The stationmaster looked on approvingly and then decided to join us, and after a little time he was followed by the porter. Our violinist was in excellent form, so that we continued dancing until some of us were as crimson as the sun, and presently, while I was resting, what ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Mr. Barton joined them she talked of Tractarianism, of her determination not to re-enter the vortex of fashionable life, and of her anxiety to see him in a sphere large enough for his talents. Milly thought her sprightliness and affectionate warmth quite charming, and was very fond of her; while the Rev. Amos had a vague consciousness that he had risen into aristocratic life, and only associated with his middle-class parishioners in a pastoral ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... conversation, beyond a few phrases, uttered with a deplorable accent,—not being able to carry the flavor in his mouth,—and, though free and sprightly enough in talking English, having no idea of what passes for freedom and sprightliness with the French. He knew nothing of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, or Dutch, nor indeed of any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... went on and asked another what his crime was, and the man answered with no less but rather much more sprightliness than ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... those daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return seldomer upon us? And thus these pleasant as well as proper gifts of Nature maintain the strength and the sprightliness ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... in a quarter of an hour. All the playfulness and sprightliness she had hitherto displayed was now changed to gravity and sedateness. She talked wisely with the matrons, her companions, about starting the larder, about domestic servants, who were considered by all to be dreadfully going down, and the price ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... world of interest and amusement. When Butler entertained boys at breakfast or dinner, he was a most delightful host, and threw off all magisterial awfulness as easily as his gown. His conversation was full of fun and sprightliness, and he could talk "Cricket-shop," ancient and modern, like Lillywhite or R. H. Lyttelton. In time of illness or failure or conscience-stricken remorse, he showed an Arthur-like simplicity of religion which no one ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the tank at all seasons of the year. The fresh- requires more than the salt-water aquarium. The amount of oxygen given off by the plants, and hence their growth and the sprightliness of the fishes, are very much increased while the sun ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... square every thing was melting, and the water was streaming. The river emitted a humming noise. The trees of the Neskutchny garden looked blue across the river; the reddish-brown sparrows, invisible in winter, attracted attention by their sprightliness; people also seemed desirous of being merry, but all of them had too many cares. The sound of the bells was audible, and at the foundation of these mingling sounds, the sounds of shots could be heard from the barracks, the whistle ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... comes the hour at last, May shake our hillsides with her bugle-blast; Not ours the task; but since the lyric dress Relieves the statelier with its sprightliness, Hear an old song, which some, perchance, have seen In stale gazette or cobwebbed magazine. There was an hour when patriots dared profane The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain; And one, who listened to the tale of shame, Whose ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rose in the antechamber from which one servant ran out into the dimly lighted stairway, and another rushed to the study and bedroom of the master of the mansion to increase quickly the light of the lamps there. Darvid went up the stairs quickly and with sprightliness; he threw into the hands of the servant his fur, which was costly and original, since it was brought from the distant North, and began at once to read at the round table, through an eyeglass, that which he had jotted down recently in his pocket notebook. The book ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... form of the Mallicolese is a character, as far as I know, peculiar to them and the New Zealanders; but that nation hath nothing in common with them in all other respects. The features of these people, though remarkably irregular and ugly, yet are full of great sprightliness, and express a quick comprehension. Their lips, and the lower part of their face, are entirely different from those of African negroes; but the upper part, especially the nose, is of very similar conformation, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... thanked her, and kissed his hand several times. 'This is an old room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking round when he got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have not observed it. But it's a genuine ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... from the spring to the autumn of my days, but I am without those comforts that should succeed the sprightliness of bloom, and support ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... perfectly noble, monsieur," said the directress, affecting to suppress a yawn; her sprightliness was now extinct, her temporary candour shut up; the little, red-coloured, piratical-looking pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... literature. That which led to a remarkable revulsion of my feelings with regard to those German composers who hitherto had been admired and respected, was partly the influence of these critical skirmishes, and the luring sprightliness of their tone; but mainly the impression made by a fresh visit of Schroder- Devrient to Leipzig, when her rendering of Borneo in Bellini's Romeo and Juliet carried every one by storm. The effect of it was not to be compared with anything that had been witnessed theretofore. To see the daring, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... cared, so far as he knew, to go with him. For he was not a lady's man, and but for his distant relationship would probably never have gone to the Treadwells'. He was looked upon by young women as slow, and he knew that Graciella had often been impatient at his lack of sprightliness. He could pay his subscription, which was really a sort of gentility tax, the failure to meet which would merely forfeit future invitations, and remain at home. He did not own a dress suit, nor had he the money to spare for one. He, or they, for he and his uncle were one in such matters, were ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... awkward, and—what was worse—she said it awkwardly, with a sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all. She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that she had succeeded. He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown, while she stood smiling, holding out a ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... that instant to consult the office clock. "By ginger!" he exclaimed, with some sprightliness. "I got to be movin' along. I'm follerin' up a clue in that ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... on earth, next to myself. Her name is Prosperity: she has damned more than all of you together, and little would ye avail without her presence. For who in war or peril, in famine or in plague, would lay any value by tobacco, or by money or by the sprightliness of pride, or who would deign welcome licentiousness or sloth? And men in such straits are too wide-awake to be distraught by Hypocrisy, or even by Thoughtlessness; none of the infernal vermin of Distraction dare show himself in one such storm. Whereas Prosperity, with its ease and comfort, is ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... return the same way. On such occasions he always manages to take some companion or friend out with him, but was never known to come back in the same company; for so irresistibly are they allured forward by his inexhaustible fund of humour and sprightliness of conversation, that they seldom think of the distance till they find themselves too far from home to return ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... himself exclusively to the pursuit of letters. In 1827, he brought out his "Buch der Lieder," and followed this up with the first part of his famous "Reisebilder." Heine's lyrics, by their unwonted grace and sprightliness, captivated German readers. Some of his songs, like that of the "Lorelei" or "Thou Art Like a Flower," soon became German folksongs. More characteristic, perhaps, of Heine's light ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... to the verandah, and looked down upon the lights of the prison, and listened to the sea lapping the shore. The Reverend Mr. North, in this cool atmosphere, seemed to recover himself, and conversation progressed with some sprightliness. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... a little less—chestnut, shall we say, Dora?" put in Rose with exasperating sprightliness, referring to a former well-known prejudice of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... was pleased to avow that "Mrs. Porter in the vehemence of rage, and Mrs. Clive in the sprightliness of humour, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... intellectual brilliancy, for its own sake. And, in all these countries, men of talent write from talent. It is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste propitiated,—so many columns so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; while men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ease, gayety, and sprightliness of character, and yet possess no deeper qualities calculated to inspire respect. They may have every grace of manner, and yet be heartless, frivolous, selfish. The character may be on the surface only, and without any ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... I was just thinking that I never saw her so lovely, with such a sprightliness, such a glow in her face, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... immediate background, just tinted by the golden pencil of autumn, while the meads of the valley were still emerald green; and the stream, now lost, now winding, glittered here and there in the sun, and gave a life and sprightliness to the landscape which exceeded even the effect of the more ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... fate of the four to behold. The impression left by this sight assorted well with the deep and settled murkiness that dwelt like a thick veil on all around. Even the cheery tones of Velvet-cap's voice lost their elasticity, and the sprightliness of the sister's spirits, that invariably rose with the coming on of night, failed under the depressing influence of that rain-hastened funeral and that "set-in" rainy evening. As for the sister whose spirits fell with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... she had intended. Her name soon appeared in a short article signed by the M. Jules of whom we have already spoken. The perusal of that article produced a very unpleasant effect on Lavretsky's mind. He detected in it, underneath the writer's usual sprightliness, a sort of tone of charitable commiseration. Next he learned that a daughter had been born to him. Two months later he was informed by his steward that Varvara Pavlovna had drawn her first quarter's allowance. After ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... from yours. You wonder that so few are believers in the Pythagorean hypothesis; I wonder that there are any to embrace it. Nor can I sufficiently admire the super-eminence of those men's wits that have received and held it to be true, and with the sprightliness of their judgments have offered such violence to their senses that they have been able to prefer that which their reason asserted to that which sensible experience manifested. I cannot find any bounds for my admiration ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... WHERE great sprightliness is the natural bent of the temper, girls should endeavour to habituate themselves to a custom of observing, thinking, and reasoning. I do not mean, that they should devote themselves to abstruse speculation, or the study of logic; but she who is accustomed to give a due arrangement to ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... leap that sent the blood rushing to my face. He advanced, not with his usual imposing tread but with a sprightliness that pleased me vastly. I took the little pearl grey envelope from the salver, and carelessly glanced at the superscription. There was a curious ringing ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... cannot see where any improvement can be made. It is pre-eminently a United Brethren Hymn-Book, providing as it does for every phase of our characteristic church life. It combines the solidity and stateliness of the standard hymns of the ages, with the life and sprightliness of the modern gospel song. The most recent songs are here for the young people, while the older members of the Church will hail with delight the reappearance of old songs dear to the hearts of many of us, because they are precious and good, and because our mothers sang them. Meeting every need ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... her eyes, Sometimes she pierced the air with cries, For hours together she would fret Because their toys she could not get. Ah, then! how changed this pretty child, No longer amiable and mild. That fairy form and smiling face Lost all their sprightliness and grace. Her tender mother often sighed, And to reform her daughter tried. "Oh! Minnie, Minnie," she would say, "Quite yellow you will turn ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... throne. There were great doings and feasts there. Here Lady Mary saw George II too. "I can tell you, without flattery or partiality," she says, "that our young prince has all the accomplishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, and a something so very engaging in his behaviour that needs not the advantage of his rank to appear charming." I find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon Frederick Prince of Wales, George II's son; and upon George III, of course, and upon ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Baumann there had long been a silent understanding, and fate now willed that he should be her neighbor at the dinner-table. When the cousin glanced back over her succession of neighbors, she came to the conclusion that they had lost in sprightliness what they had gained in moral worth. Fink was rather profane, but very amusing; Anton had a certain equipoise of goodness and pleasantness; Baumann was the best of them all, but also the most silent. Her conversation with him, though edifying enough, was never ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... for her sense and sprightliness, and for her skill in school exercises. Now she had added wide reading, and of the books most grateful to her. She had read the Italian poets by herself, and from sympathy. I said, that, by the leading part she naturally took, she had identified herself with all the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... morning was passed with Alice and the children. He was pleased with her prettiness and sprightliness, and his gentle manner and disposition pleased her. She asked him to let me spend another year in Rosville; but he said that I must return to Surrey, and that he never would allow me to leave ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... chest; the hair was thinner, and farther back above the forehead, and streaked with grey at the temples; the mouth lacked the rosy sensuousness of youth, and sat now in a mould, half of resolution, half submission. Yet her foot had lost little of its sprightliness, and the sympathy in her fine eyes seemed to have ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... a daughter of the Duke of Derwent, now came into the room, and afforded her some relief by the sprightliness of her conversation. This young lady, who was a relation of the Delviles, and of a character the most airy and unthinking, ran on during her whole visit in a vein of fashionable scandal, with a levity that the censures of Mrs ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... attend him in his route. He traveled with great rapidity, passing the distance of thirty miles in three hours. He appeared perfectly capable of enduring fatigue, and discovered the activity and sprightliness of ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... was Johnsonese all his life, and he made his meaning plain only by repetitions and many rhetorical flounderings. Like the average sixteen-year-old boy who sits himself down and takes his pen in hand, all his sprightliness of imagination vanished at sight of an ink-bottle. With a brush his feelings were fluid, and in a company grace dwelt upon his lips; but when asked to write it out he gripped the pen as though it were a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... young ladies habited sadly in keeping with the season. All were connected either by blood or at least as friends or neighbours and fair and of good understanding were they all, as also of noble birth, gentle manners, and a modest sprightliness. In age none exceeded twenty-eight, or fell short of eighteen years. Their names I would set down in due form, had I not good reason to with hold them, being solicitous lest the matters which here ensue, as told and heard by them, should in ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... more on the probable beneficial results of the project, his original disinclination to it diminished, until he finally determined on running the risk; and he felt fully rewarded for this concession to his wife's wishes when he saw her recover all her wonted serenity and sprightliness. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... as interesting to her as he has made himself to us," said Mrs. Stornaway, with heavy sprightliness, as he left them. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... an exact admixture never beheld elsewhere, and imparting to her countenance the tenderest animation; her eyes and hair were blacker than jet; her eyes, I say, of which the gaze could scarce, from their excess of lustre, be supported, which have been celebrated as a miracle of tenderness and sprightliness, which have given rise, a thousand times, to the finest compliments of the day, and have been the torment of many a rash man, must excuse me, if I do not pause longer to praise them, in a letter; ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... interest in him for some months, was less accommodating than he had expected. And so we shortly find Erasmus once more in anything but a cheerful frame of mind. 'The hardest fate,' he calls his own, which robs him of all his old sprightliness. Opportunities to study he has none. He now envies his friend William, who at Steyn in the little cell can write beautiful poetry, favoured by his 'lucky stars'. It befits him, Erasmus, only to weep and sigh; it ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the last Commencement was Much Ado about Nothing. It was selected six months before, and studied with the material in mind, the students in the literature class, available for the different parts. What is there, thought I, in Beatrice—sprightliness covering intense womanly feeling—that our vivacious, healthful Ruth Brown cannot master; and what in Benedick, her masculine counterpart, beyond the power of Moore to conceive and render? It is chiefly ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... before the Queen; but as he danced with great sprightliness, she could not bear the odour which his violent motions diffused around her room the ladies likewise began to pray for relief; for he had almost entirely got the better of all the perfumes and essences with which they were fortified: Poussatin, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... escorts, too—if one of the willing hands planted a knife in my back, there would be no sprightliness about me!" ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... or the relief we felt at being able to gaze ahead once more and see something of the country that we were traversing. 'Twas like a sudden release from prison. Our jaded horses felt with us the exhilaration of the change, and moved with greater sprightliness than they had shown for days. As the sun began its circle downward, vast rolling hills of white and yellow sand arose upon the right of our line of march,—huge mounds, many of them, glistening in the sunshine, some jagged at the summit, others rounded as if by art, so unusual in form ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... more, but he thought a good deal, for he had noted the beauty and sprightliness of Maraquita, and the admiration with which Harold had first beheld her; and it seemed to him that this rather powerful method of attempting to gratify the Portuguese girl was proof positive that Harold had lost his ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the mood to enjoy his sprightliness; but whatever I wanted in gaiety was amply made up in the triumphant and gracious good-humour of my mother, whose smiles of benevolence and exultation were showered around as bountifully as the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... saluted me with a meticulously pure English accent, and welcomed me in a quotation from Homer in the original Greek. Who, in the devil's name, was this odd character who, I saw, as I looked closer at him, was, as he had hinted, quite an old man, though his unusual erectness and sprightliness of manner, lent him an illusive air of youth? Who on earth was he?—and how did he happen in the middle of ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
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