|
|
|
More "Verve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... a rousing tale of adventure and love told with verve and humor. Many will pronounce it the best story yet written by the author ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... never low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently, and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an adventure, nay three adventures, and when she snuggled herself up at midnight ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... evenings spent at the theaters and ended at Tortoni's with this truest of "boulevardiers," who knew every one and everything, and whose inexhaustible fund of anecdote was enlivened by a spontaneous easy wit and verve that ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... Chu piloted a landing craft with the same verve that she seemed to be able to handle any other responsibility. As he sat in the seat next to her, Ronny Bronston took in her practiced flicking of the controls from the side of his eyes. He wondered vaguely at the efficiency ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... il n'est pas cruel: au contraire! je sais meme qu'il avait demande une amnistie generale; mais l'idee de decouvrir un chef de conspirateurs va le mettre en verve![43] il deploiera contre vous les ressources de son esprit ... votre signalement sera partout ... je le sais ... le premier soldat pourrait ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement, Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well from experience what ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... to give any idea of the verve and brightness with which the story is told. Mr. Boothby may be congratulated on having produced about the most original novel of ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... d'affaires," where he says of one of the characters that "he is endowed with the same talent for imitating people which Chopin, the pianist, possesses in so high a degree; he represents a personage instantly and with astounding truth." Liszt remarks that Chopin displayed in pantomime an inexhaustible verve drolatique, and often amused himself with reproducing in comical improvisations the musical formulas and peculiar ways of certain virtuosos, whose faces and gestures he at the same time imitated in the most striking manner. These statements are corroborated by the accounts ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... firmly amid the turmoil of Jabez's environment—and that was his idealistic and almost fanatical admiration of the exploits of Buffalo Bill as depicted on the screen and retailed in small paper-bound books. Indeed so struck was he by the verve and virility of this astounding man that he took to attiring his lower limbs—which seldom showed above the counter—in the breeches, leggings, belt and pistol so well known to all lovers of the limitless prairie. The infinite pathos of ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... original poems was La Saisiaz and the Two Poets of Croisic. The Croisic Poets are agreeable studies, written with verve and lucidity, of two fantastic events which lifted these commonplace poets suddenly into fame. They do well to amuse an idle hour. The end of both is interesting. That of the first, which begins with stanza lix., discusses the question: "Who cares, how such a mediocrity as Rene lived after the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... secret when in the army. "But I told it to the ground," she added; "I dug a hole that would hold a gallon and whispered it there." Phebe kept her faculties to the last, and to the last sold her apples to the Quality by the sea, returned repartees with extraordinary verve and contempt for false delicacy, and knew as much of the quality of Brighton liquor as if she were a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... indeed a subtle affinity between the two men. My mother, who was greatly attached to Francis Balfour, said once to Sir M. Foster, "He has not got the dash and verve, but otherwise he reminds me curiously of what my husband was in his 'Rattlesnake' days." "How strange," replied Sir Michael, "when he first came to the front, Lankester wrote asking me, 'Who is this man Balfour you are always talking about?' and I answered, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of the Gymnase was constantly being renewed. Scribe, whose verve was inexhaustible, wrote for this theatre alone nearly one hundred and fifty pieces. It is true that he had collaborators,—Germain Delavigne, Dupin, Melesville, Brazier, Varner, Carmouche, Bayard, ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Glinka; and Ivan, whose piano practice had always been kept up, went quietly to the big Erard which stood lonesomely upon the platform at the end of the hall, opened it, seated himself, and dashed into the brilliant overture to "Russlan and Ludmilla": playing with such verve and spirit that, ere he finished, every man in the room had gone to augment the group around the instrument, and Ivan had his audience worked up ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... point out that it was later and in the finest period of Latin literature that they ceased to exist. Plautus conceived the plan of transporting to Rome Grecian comedies of the time of the new comedy and of adapting them more or less to Latin morals. He possessed a strong and brutal verve which did not lack power, and more than once Moliere did him the honour of taking inspiration from him. Terence, after him, the friend of Scipio the second Africanus, and perhaps in collaboration ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... originality; invention; fancy; inspiration; verve. warm imagination, heated imagination, excited imagination, sanguine imagination, ardent imagination, fiery imagination, boiling imagination, wild imagination, bold imagination, daring imagination, playful imagination, lively imagination, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Bells of St Clements,' and so on—their bones seemed to—well, sort of rattle, if you know what I mean. But still perhaps it was only my fancy. Mitchell has such very high spirits, you see, and is determined to make everything go. He won't have conventional parties, and insists on plenty of verve; so, of course, one's forced to have it.' He sighed. 'They haven't any children, and they make a kind of hobby of ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... of early Bible times, told with a verve and vigour that keeps the interest sustained to the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... approached, nor has the opera, so far as my information goes, ever been given with the same Gilbertian verve and swing. The subsequent performance of "The Mikado" by the authorized company, seen throughout the United States, seemed by ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... as in verve, but labial, rather than labio-dental; like the German w (not like the English w). Make English v as nearly as may be done without touch-* the lower lip to the ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... responded, "it's delightful! And everybody's so energetic! You move with a spring and verve; and I don't hear any grumbling, though there seems to be so much ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... lengths on them Before their ship began to swerve. The rabid screw was frothing at her stern; But I could feel the verve Of our blithe timbers tremble; every nerve Of our good race-horse ship For open water ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... Jones" is in its episodes, its crowded canvas, the unfailing verve and variety of its action: in the fine open-air atmosphere of the scenes, the sense of the stir of life they convey: most of all, in an indescribable manliness or humanness which bespeaks the true comic force—something of that same comic view that one detects in Shakspere and ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... of dancing on paper." Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. "The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime." Art, that is, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... selected. The rows of chairs along the two sides of the room were left unoccupied by the time the music was well under way, for the pianist, a tall colored woman with long fingers and a muscular wrist, played with a verve and a swing that set the feet of the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... be all right, Mr. Hadley. I have talked to my extra actors, and they promise to put more verve and spirit ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... on that morning with much verve and vigor. It was a pleasant morning: the windows were open; the schoolrooms were all well ventilated; the teachers, the best of their kind, were stimulating in their lectures and in their conversation. ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... he who was dreaming now, or was the event of the night a mere farce of his own imagining? Mr. Brotherson was whistling in his room, gaily and with ever increasing verve, and the tune which filled the whole floor with music was the same grand finale from William Tell which had seemed to work such magic in the night. As Sweetwater caught the mellow but indifferent notes sounding from those lips of ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... pieuse," drawled by a sleepy pupil, some tragedy made grand by grand reading, ardent by fiery action—some drama, whereof, for my part, I rarely studied the intrinsic merit; for M. Emanuel made it a vessel for an outpouring, and filled it with his native verve and passion like a cup with a vital brewage. Or else he would flash through our conventual darkness a reflex of a brighter world, show us a glimpse of the current literature of the day, read us passages from some enchanting ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... not died out; every day it expected to be regaled with news of his escape; and, it is true, he had gained a considerable amount of public sympathy by reason of his verve, his gayety, his diversity, his inventive genius and the mystery of his life. Arsene Lupin must escape. It was his inevitable fate. The public expected it, and was surprised that the event had ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... impression upon the musical public and laid the foundation for a splendid reputation. She toured in England, Germany, Austria and America with great success. In the Grove Dictionary, her playing is described in the following manner: "It is marked by an amount of verve and animation that are most rare with the younger English pianists. She has a great command of tone gradation, admirable technical finish, genuine musical taste and considerable individuality of style." In 1903 Miss Goodson married Mr. Arthur Hinton, one of the most brilliant of ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... this I had nothing but letters from Sylvia. She proved to be an excellent letter-writer, full of verve and colour. I would not say that she poured out her soul to me, but she gave me glimpses of her states of mind, and the progress of her ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... above the shining bands of fair hair, were in sharp contrast to the soiled finery and draggled plumes of the other girls. But it was not entirely her appearance that attracted attention. It was a certain independent verve, a high-headed indifference, that made her reject even the attentions of the rink-master, a superior person boasting a pompadour and ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... am not pleased with RUFUS; plainly a RIFACCIMENTO of some inferior work; but there are some damned fine lines. As for the purely satiric ill-minded ABELARD AND HELOISE, another TROILUS, QUOI! it is not pleasant, truly, but what strength, what verve, what knowledge of life, and the Canon! What a finished, humorous, rich picture is the Canon! Ah, there was nobody like Shakespeare. But what I like is the David and Absalom business. Absalom is so well felt - you love him as David did; David's speech is one roll ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dark, with hair of that blue—black sheen so rarely observed, with violet eyes and a poise and grace that made her much observed, Viola Carwell was at the height of her beauty. In a sense she had the gentle grace of her mother and with that the verve and sprightliness of her father mingled perfectly. It was no wonder that Captain Poland and Harry Bartlett and many others, for that matter, were rivals for ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... by a few explanatory words. He said he was going to play the "Ride of the Valkyries," and explained what Wagner meant to convey by that wild, stormy music. Then seating himself at the instrument, he proceeded to play the "Ride" from memory. His execution had a verve whose charm was irresistible. It was a lovely summer night. Through the open windows of the concert-room one caught glimpses of the moonlight quivering on the waters of the swift-flowing Rhine. Nothing could be heard save the river's melodious roar softened ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... he, on the contrary, presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of what ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... would-be singer, a song written by a would-be poet, and set by a would-be musician. Verve was there none in the whole ephemeral embodiment. When it died a natural death, if that be possible where never had been any life, Vavasor said, "Thank you, Raymount." But Hester, who had been standing with her teeth clenched under the fiery rain of discords, wrong ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... dances and two Spanish albums full of music of most varying mood, yet every mood characteristic of Spain and its people, now gay, now languorous, now dashing, now subdued, now softly whispering, now full of verve and passion, like the "Bolero," the fifth of the "Spanish Dances," Op. 12, with its sharply accentuated rhythm and dashing melody, which toward the end fairly ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, whilst 80 guns and about two hundred baggage waggons fell as spoils to the French. In this brilliant victory Decaen's skill and valour, rapidity and verve, had been of inestimable value, as Moreau was prompt ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... a pirate!" sobbed JACK, "And your colours are black!" But he heard—as he struggled to speak— The conductor observe, With remarkable verve, That he didn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... were a wild lot ... something like European peasants in their smacking of the soil and the country to which they belonged, but with a verve and dash of their own ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... but he went straight over that very evening to the Merrimans' house; and although he could not go inside for fear of infection, he had a conversation with the Professor in the garden. There he spoke with such verve and enthusiasm with regard to Rosamund, and the marvelous change she had already wrought in the naughtiest girl in the entire district, that he induced that gentleman ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... not, have originated. In this light he may be said to bring to his subject not one mind, but several; he becomes not one poet, but many; for each actor in his drama has a share, and an important share, in the lyrical estro to which he gives birth. This it is which has imparted any verve, variety, or dramatic character they possess, to the ballads contained in this production. Turpin I look upon as the real songster of "Black Bess;" to Jerry Juniper I am unquestionably indebted for a flash melody which, without ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... affairs.—You are as great as a poet as you are handsome as a man, my boy," pronounced Dauriat. "Upon my word and honor (I don't tell you that as a publisher, mind), your sonnets are magnificent; no sign of effort about them, as is natural when a man writes with inspiration and verve. You know your craft, in fact, one of the good points of the new school. Your volume of Marguerites is a fine book, but there is no business in it, and it is not worth my while to meddle with anything but a very big affair. In conscience, I won't take your ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... little verve into this thing!' he roars; an' pullin' his guns he begins shakin' the loads out of ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... book is professedly a biography of Branwell, and is, indeed, a valuable storehouse of facts. It might have had more success had it been written with greater brightness and verve. As it stands, it is a dull book, readable only by the Bronte enthusiast. Mr. Leyland has no literary perception, and in his eagerness to show that Branwell was a genius, prints numerous letters and poems which sufficiently demonstrate that he ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... which more soft and sweet—and so dispose them as his present occasions require; all which, and a thousand secrets of versification beside, he may learn from Virgil, if he will take him for his guide. If he be above Virgil, and is resolved to follow his own verve (as the French call it), the proverb will fall heavily upon him: "Who teaches himself has ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... their understandings and be extasies, when beautiful eyes sparkle in its defence and glisten in its praise, and ruby lips pronounce it divine, delicious; "quelle sublimite dans les descriptions, quelle force dans les caracteres! quelle ame! feu! chaleur! verve! originalite! ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... slightly oppressed even by a persuasion—of which she could not rid herself—that it held matters of no common moment closely affecting her father, she went out of the house, down the sheltered drive, and through the entrance gates. Here, as she turned inland, the verve of the clear autumn morning rushed on her, along with a wild flurry of falling leaves dancing to the breath of the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... joyeuse et folle, Que ta verve railleuse animait Corilla, Et que tu nous lanais avec la Rosina La roulade amoureuse et l'oeillade espagnole ? Ces pleurs sur tes bras nus, quand tu chantais le Saule, N'tait-ce pas hier, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Sarah, flew to Michael Daragh with her joyful tidings and lunched with him and Emma Ellis at Hope House. The Irishman, who had read the little play and knew its clean verve and charm, was radiant for her, and the superintendent managed grudging congratulations. They were in the sitting room after the meal, and something seemed to smite Jane, swiftly, with regard to Emma Ellis; ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... and that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous comedy, "Bartholomew Fair," less clear cut, less definite, and less structurally worthy of praise than its three predecessors, but full of the keenest and cleverest ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... charming evenings spent at the theaters and ended at Tortoni's with this truest of "boulevardiers," who knew every one and everything, and whose inexhaustible fund of anecdote was enlivened by a spontaneous easy wit and verve that made ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement, Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... true verve Gauloise in dealing with a trying situation, smoked cigarettes, chatted with the people of the house, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Sheriff of Northumberland in the days of Henry VIII.—that Mr. Surtees, the antiquary, wrote the well-known ballad, which, when Surtees gave it him, deceived even Sir Walter Scott into thinking it genuinely ancient. The first verse of the ballad shows with what a verve and swing ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... enthusiasm. Suddenly, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Holland had gained political independence, Dutch art struck off by itself, became original, became famous. It pictured native life with verve, skill, keenness of insight, and fine pictorial view. Limited it was; it never soared like Italian art, never became universal or world-embracing. It was distinct, individual, national, something that spoke for ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... them—very different from the pale-faced Meeus—this was a man they felt who would lead them to more unspeakable butchery than Meeus had ever done. Therefore they shouted, piled their arms in the office and returned to the rebuilding of their huts with verve. ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... always in such sedate gowns, never low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently, and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an adventure, nay three adventures, and when she ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... at an all-time fever pitch. Our exclamations were endless. Ned identified the fish, Conseil classified them, and as for me, I was in ecstasy over the verve of their movements and the beauty of their forms. Never before had I been given the chance to glimpse these animals alive and at large ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... him a strange fascination. The cold, manly beauty and strength of a northern blonde meet with the heat and lithe grace of the more supple southerner to produce this paragon. There is a combination of half-indolent elegance and sensuous langour, with a fire, a verve, a nobility, that puts him at the very head of masculine beauty. Add to the charms of his physique, the jauntiest, most bewitching of uniforms, the clinking spurs, the shining buttons, the jacket following every line of his figure, and no wonder maidens' hearts seek ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... Scot, a Highlander of the Isles, sat upon a barrel-head sawing at a fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. Tone he did not aspire to, but he played with Caledonian verve and swing, and kept the snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that sets the blood tingling and the feet to move in rhythm, though the exhilarating effect of it was rather spoiled by the efforts of the little French ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... hand-hold outside a ring of their partners, lifted locked arms over their partners' heads, and thus interwoven, the circle balanced before breaking up. Other times, other dances—ours is now the day of the trot and the tango. But they lack the life, the verve of the old dances, the old tunes. To this day when I hear them, my feet patter in spite of me. You could not dance to them steadily, with soft airs blowing all about, leaves flittering in sunshine, and water rippling near, without getting ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... a world wide publicity for his young singer. Leonora's beauty and her artistic verve conquered every public. She had contracts with the leading theatres of Europe, and though critics found defects in her singing, her beauty helped them to forget these, and one and all they contributed loyally to the deification of the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... against doing so. He was very much in earnest, in rather a tiresome way, and his phrases were conventional and pietistic. I used to feel that he jarred a good deal on Father Payne, but much was forgiven him because of his musical talents, which were really remarkable. His organ-playing, with its verve, its delicacy, and its quiet mastery, was delicious to hear, he was engaged in writing music mainly, and had a piano all to himself in a little remote room beyond the dining-room, which looked out to the ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The verve with which this girl-woman thus vaunted her skill in the use of those charms that dominate the opposite sex thrilled and fascinated the lover, pierced the reserve that possession had overcast on ardor. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... His ground strokes were very faulty. By his personal popularity M'Loughlin dwarfed the importance of ground strokes, and unduly emphasized the importance of service. M'Loughlin gave us speed, dash, and verve in our tennis. It remained for R. N. Williams and W. M. Johnston to restore the balance of the modern game by solving the riddle of the Californian's service. Brookes and Wilding led the way by first meeting the ball as it came ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... specifications of the cubby-hole his mind had built for Indian women. The daughters even of the boisbrules had much of the heaviness and stolidity of their native mothers. Jessie McRae was graceful as a fawn. Every turn of the dark head, every lift of the hand, expressed spirit and verve. She must, he thought, have inherited almost wholly from her father, though in her lissom youth he could find little of McRae's heavy solidity of mind ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... and many Voices yelled out, "Thief! Assassin! Murderer!" Another muttered in taunting undertones, "Let him be, fine fellow that he is! Suffer him to pass on, for he and he only shall get the cage and the Speaking-Bird." The Prince feared naught but advanced hot foot with his wonted verve and spirit; presently, however, when the Voices kept approaching nearer and nearer to him and increased in number on every side, he was sore perplexed. His legs began to tremble, he staggered and in fine overcome by fear he clean forgot the warning of the Darwaysh and looked back, whereat he was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... then a tall, well-made fellow of thirty or thereabouts with an expressive taking face, lit up with a pair of deep blue laughing eyes. He had any amount of physical vivacity, and told a good story with immense verve, without for a moment getting above the commonplace: to him the Corinthian journalism of The Daily Telegraph was literature. Still he had the surface good nature and good humour of healthy youth and was generally ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... sometimes deigns to commiserate the gaiety of Folly. Suddenly he disappeared from beside me, and the next that I saw or heard of him—he was hard at work pirouetting on the deck below with a red-tailed demon, and exhibiting in his steps a "verve" and a graceful audacity which at Paris would have certainly obtained for him the honours of expulsion at the hands of the municipal authorities. The entertainment of the day concluded with a discourse delivered out of a wind-sail by the chaplain ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Frenchman is the superior draughtsman, but he is no more vital in his interpretation of his ballet girls, washerwomen, and grisettes than is Zuloaga in his delineations of peasants, dwarfs, dogs, courtesans, scamps, zealots, pilgrims, beggars, drunkards, and working girls. What verve, what grip, what bowels of humanity has this Spaniard! A man, not a professor of academic methods. He has no school, and he is a school in himself. That the more serene, poetic aspects and readings of life have escaped ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... a landing craft with the same verve that she seemed to be able to handle any other responsibility. As he sat in the seat next to her, Ronny Bronston took in her practiced flicking of the controls from the side of his eyes. He wondered vaguely at the efficiency of such Section G officials as Metaxa and Jakes that ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... street boys followed in groups at their heels making the air ring with shrill "Vive's." There were not many of them, only three companies. The men looked trim and clean-cut. They were tall and husky-looking and the snap with which they walked was good to the eyes of old Paris that loves verve. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... passage (1762), are one of the most easy, flowing, and delightful of his fragments; there is such appreciation of Terence's suavity and tact, of his just and fine judgment, of his discrimination and character. He admits that Terence had no verve; for that he commends the young poet to Moliere or Aristophanes, but as verve was exactly the quality most wanting to Diderot himself, he easily forgave its absence in Terence, and thought it amply replaced by his moderation, his truth, and his fine taste. Colman ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... his tempo immediately, and almost without a pause of transition she began that provocative measure—the dance of desire. Thrilling with the joy of expressing her love, her beautiful new love for Seagreave, through her art, she danced with a verve, an abandon, a more spontaneous impulse than she had ever shown before. The Tango! She made it a thing of alluring advances, of stinging repulses, of sudden, fascinating withdrawals ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... she answered, with her old verve, "get out o' the house, man, and leave me to my work while ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... story-teller, and you will never obtain the popularity of the Mysteries of Udolpho and the Shagreen Skin, the Arabian Nights, and Monsieur de Balzac. I have somewhere read that God created Adam, the nomenclator, saying to him: You are the story-teller. And what a story-teller! What verve and wit! What indefatigable perseverance in painting everything, daring everything, branding everything! How the world is dissected by this man! What an annalist! What passion ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Sir Roland, brightly. "She seems to understand her duties and to be quite competent for them. I fancy you will like her Beatrice, darling; after all, it will be some thing to have some one to amuse us. How well she tells a story! with what brilliancy and verve!" ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Chapatin—the general outlines of the character were already visible in all their distinctness from the beginning, as all those who have read the introductory chapters will readily admit. And the same lines were to be followed with an undeviating fixity of artistic purpose and with unfailing verve and spirit to the last. 'The Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,' 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I know of no other example in modern French literature of so long and so well sustained a joke. How is it then that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... metaphysics, law, political economy, music, fencing, and amateur theatricals. Thirty years later his fellow—students recalled with delight the fits of laughter into which they had been sent by Prince Albert's mimicry. The verve with which his Serene Highness reproduced the tones and gestures of one of the professors who used to point to a picture of a row of houses in Venice with the remark, "That is the Ponte-Realte," and of another who fell down in a race ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... but my opinion is shared by every one. I may be rash in praising a young man whose wings may melt in the sun; but when, as is the case with M. Leys, the artist possesses exact knowledge of the times and manners, when he has verve, dash, and deep feeling, he needs only to moderate ardor by reflection, and to ripen inspiration by study, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... judged by the standard of a century which had seen such military geniuses as Turenne, as the great Conde, as Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy. Villars was essentially a wily tactician, and his exploits were useful, but he lacked the dash, the verve which characterise the great commanders of that epoch. It was his system to overrun an invaded country, skilfully avoiding actual combat with the defending army, which pursued him impotently along ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... poetry of too much verve without incision, too much "gesturing", which is an easy thing for many talented people, and there is also missing for me the real grip of amazement. You will not find anything in the letters that could not have been done by ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... are fully set forth. His principles are to be found almost entirely in Turgot. But they have a new significance for Condorcet. He has given them wings. He has emphasised, and made deductions. Turgot wrote in the calm spirit of an inquirer. Condorcet spoke with the verve of a prophet. He was prophesying under the shadow of death. It is amazing that the optimistic Sketch of a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind should have been composed when he was hiding from Robespierre ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... and Songs" (Digte og Sange), which, it is no exaggeration to say, marks a new era in the Norwegian lyric. Among Bjoernson's predecessors there are but two lyrists of the first order, viz., Wergeland and Welhaven. The former was magnificently profuse and chaotic, abounding in verve and daring imagery, but withal high-sounding, declamatory, and, at his worst, bombastic. There is a reminiscence in him of Klopstock's inflated rhetoric; and a certain dithyrambic ecstasy—a strained, high-keyed aria-style which sometimes breaks into falsetto. His great rival, Welhaven, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... moment. Capital fun this. When the fiancee in her turn proved wholly different from the photograph I permitted myself to hope that we were in for a double masquerade—but this was to expect too much. Still, Mr. JEPSON has handled his wildly-preposterous plot with great verve; and even if the central situation is one that has been often encountered before, this only proves again that HOPE springs eternal.... But I wish he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... enjoy the whole thing like schoolboys do their games. They take their killing much more kindly than the others, and appear to be much more familiarised with the idea that it is part of the game. Indeed, there is a zest and a verve and go about them when in action that I have never seen in any other troops. There were numerous instances in the siege of Tientsin of disregard of death. And outside the gates of Pekin ten men who were killed ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... unmothered Childhood wanly waits For such as you to cherish it to Youth: Raw social soils untilled need Love's own verve That Peace a-flower may oust their weedy hates: And where Distress would faint from wolfish sleuth The perfect lovers' symbol is ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... to behold pure sunshine; to hear her voice was to listen to the very essence of laughter and happiness. She had a marvelous power of telling stories, and when she was happy she told them with such verve that all people within earshot hung on her words. Then she could improvise, and dance, and take off almost any character; in short, she was the life of every party who admitted ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... appropriate prologue and epilogue. They purport to have been collected in the abbeys of Touraine, and set forth by the Sieur de Balzac for the delight of Pantagruelists and none others. Not merely the spirit but the very language of Rabelais is caught with remarkable verve and fidelity, so that from the point of view of style Balzac has never done better work. A book which holds by Rabelais on the one hand and by the Queen of Navarre on the other is not likely, however, to appeal to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... then turn on "The Day of Retribution," Shades of avengers in the world below Prodding my man with verve and resolution, And broiling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... piece was a march used with Meyerbeerian effectiveness to bring down the curtain. The stout verve of this "El Capitan" march gave it a large vogue outside the opera. Hopper next produced "The Charlatan," a work bordering upon opera comique in its first version. Both of these works scored even larger success in London ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... suspicions on the part of the ladies raised this handsome golden-haired Adonis to a higher pinnacle of favour than ever. It seemed to Tom that so long as a crime was carried out with dash, and verve, and success, it only brought a man fame and honour. He shivered sometimes when he thought of his mother and sister, and what they would think if they suspected that he had been led into an open act of law breaking and robbery. But he felt a little flattered ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... paroles, mais c'etait pour mieux jouir du charme d'une causerie intime. Il possedait et parlait avec une egale perfection quatre langues: le francais, l'anglais, l'allemand, l'italien et passablement l'espagnol. Quand il causait, la verve du vieillard brodait sur le canevas un peu lourd de l'allemand ses brilliantes arabesques latines, grecques, francaises, anglaises, italiennes. C'etait un entrain, une precision et des sailles, une richesse de citations, une ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... razor-edge as petulant instead of peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of waiting in a running commentary upon the idiosyncrasies and oddities of the people and refreshments of the past hours, with a verve which she fondly believed to be a combination of sarcasm and cynicism, but which, in reality, was the kernel of the nut of spitefulness, hanging from the withering bough of the tree of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter." We know how many sketches of possible tragedies Recine would make before he could adopt one as the appropriate theme, on which he could work with that thorough enjoyment of the labour, which is necessary to give life and verve to any creation, whether of the ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... "The Heartless Father," which, acting upon the advice of M. Parvissimus, he had been at great pains to prepare. The company had few doubts as to the real authorship before he began to read; none at all when he had read. There was a verve, a grip about this story; and, what was more, those of them who knew their Moliere realized that far from approaching the original more closely, this canevas had drawn farther away from it. Moliere's original part—the title ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely take one's imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in the Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old tombstone for years. He's enormously vivid—quite beyond my feebleness to describe, with a kind of French verve and rapture. Unluckily we can't get nearer than two years to his death. I shouldn't mind guessing some last devastating dream swept over him, held him the breath of an instant too long beneath the wave, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... makeweights and in case he should want to send for plans or books. On these occasions he is usually in the dark blue uniform of a Prussian infantry general, with an order or two blazing on his breast. He sits very upright, and starts and keeps going the conversation with such skill and verve that soon every one, even the shyest, is drawn into it. There is plenty of argument and divergence of view. If the Emperor is convinced that he is right, he will, as has more than once occurred, jestingly offer to back his opinion ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... (I) is undoubtedly the best known of Aphra Behn's comedies. It long remained a popular favourite in the theatre, its verve, bustle and wit, utterly defiant of the modest Josephs and qualmy prudes who censured these lively scenes. Steele has mention of this in an archly humorous paper, No. 51, Spectator, Saturday, 28 April, 1711. He pictures a young ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... flickering up; strange catchwords evoked unexpected laughter. The woman of all work waited spasmodically upon the table; she proved to be Lugene, none other than the girl Hen and Cally had found on Dunbar Street, that day long ago.... Old times; so, too, when the Major told with accustomed verve how papa, a little shaver then, had brought the note from Aunt Molly down to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... again heard with that sympathy and thoroughly admiring esteem which her talent commands. As for Litolff, I confess that he made a great impression on me. His Fourth Symphonic Concerto (in manuscript) is a very remarkable composition, and he played it in such a masterly manner, with so much verve, such boldness and certainty, that it gave me very great pleasure. If there is something of the quadruped in Dreyschock's marvelous execution (and this comparison should by no means vex him: is not a lion as much a quadruped as a poodle?), there is certainly something winged in Litolff's execution, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... sought to unite in its service every description and variety of intellect. He should return to France, and then—why, then, the ladder was on the walls of Fortune and the foot planted on the step! As he spoke, confidently and sanguinely, with the verve and assurance of an able man who sees clear the path to his goal, as he sketched with rapid precision the nature of his prospects and his hopes, all that subtle wisdom which had before often seemed but vague and general, took practical shape and interest, thus applied to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... local habitation to David's aunt, is associated with The Tale of Two Cities, since it was here that Mr. Lorry made the startling revelation to Miss Manette that her father had been "Recalled to Life". The vignette of eighteenth-century Dover is executed with true Dickensian verve: ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
