"Gymnast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... irresistible desire to see the performers, especially the singer. With this impulse he climbed the little hedge bordering the road, placed himself on the top, and found himself several feet above the level of the lighted window. He did not hesitate to use his skill as a gymnast to raise himself to one of the branches of an old oak stretching across the lawn; but during the ascent he could not disguise from himself that his was scarcely a dignified position for the future deputy of the district. He almost laughed aloud at the idea of being surprised ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... into action, and you would find that he could hit straight from the shoulder, and "split himself well," as the French phrase it, when he gave point, or went back in guard. He was, in fact, a crack boxer, fencer, and gymnast. Pugilism was the fashion with the young bloods of Gotham at that time, especially such of them as had any tendency to politics: and among these boys of nineteen, there were not a few who would have tackled a fancy ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... appearance of the lieutenant was as follows: middle height, slightly built, all nerves and muscles, strong limbs as agile as those of a gymnast, the true sailor's "look," but of very unusual far-sightedness and surprising penetration, sunburnt face, hair thick and short, beardless cheeks and chin, regular features, the whole expression denoting energy, courage, and physical strength at ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... his brother in everything, and jump backward he did with an agility that would have done credit to a gymnast. Before he could ask a question Frank's revolver cracked and a little spit of dust shot up almost at his ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of a sandbag. His brain still reeled. What had happened was incomprehensible. He knew his business. He could conceive no other. He had been trained to it since infancy. There was not a phase of clown's work with which he was not familiar. He was a passable gymnast, an expert juggler, a trick musician, an accomplished conjurer. All that the Merveilleux troupe act required from him he had been doing successfully for years. Why then the failure? He blamed the check suit, the ill-will of the company, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... shew that many of the most detestable human vices are not radical, but are mere reactions of our institutions on our very virtues. The Anarchist, the Fabian, the Salvationist, the Vegetarian, the doctor, the lawyer, the parson, the professor of ethics, the gymnast, the soldier, the sportsman, the inventor, the political program-maker, all have some prescription for bettering us; and almost all their remedies are physically possible and aimed at admitted evils. To them the limit of progress is, at worst, the completion of all the suggested reforms and the ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... Jones[7] of Dulwich? He shot no fewer than fifteen Boches in a scrap in the craters on the Vimy Ridge before himself being killed. I remember him more than well—a short, sturdy fellow, a very good shot, and an excellent diver and gymnast. He did not go in much for cricket or for football. Poor chap! Yet such a death, I think, is far more to be coveted than an ignoble life far from danger and risk. I often think of those lines of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... discovered, of course, that the longest pole knocked the persimmon. This was his first intellectual stride towards the future Edison. From the simplest sort of Grahamitic philosopher he passed into the robust, beef-eating Englishman. But this was not all. As an arboreal gymnast, he was manifestly on his way to more masterly feats of agility than ever,—those dependent, not on muscular function, but on the nervous action of the brain and spinal marrow. Necessity became with him the "mother of invention," and how admirably he improved under this ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... first emotion is one of surprise and incredulity. That so many and such various notes should proceed from one throat is a marvel, and we regard the performance with feelings akin to those we experience on witnessing the astounding feats of the athlete or gymnast,—and this, notwithstanding many of the notes imitated have all the freshness and sweetness of the originals. The emotions excited by the songs of these thrushes belong to a higher order, springing as they do from our deepest sense of the beauty and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs |
