"High-stepping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of my old lectures. A man's tongue wags along quietly enough, but his pen begins prancing as soon as it touches paper. I know what you are thinking—you're thinking this is a squirt. That word has taken the nonsense out of a good many high-stepping fellows. But it did a good deal of harm too, and it was a vulgar lot that applied ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... world. I have been led into walks of life that do not accurately jibe with the pious experiences of former days. I confess my shortcomings with humiliation, and am resolved on a season of mission duties in another direction than horse-races. They are exciting, and give one a high-stepping inclination. Still, my motive ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... children and, left to ourselves, had the time of our lives. I rode my pony up the front stairs and tried to teach my father's high-stepping barouche-horses to jump—crashing their knees into the hurdles in the field—and climbed our incredibly dangerous roof, sitting on the sweep's ladder by moonlight in my nightgown. I had scrambled up every tree, walked on every wall and knew every turret ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... races, who have a genius for long distances on foot, do not march in the German fashion, which looks impressive, but lacks endurance. By the same logic, the cowboy pony's gait is better for thirty miles day in and day out than the gait of the high-stepping ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... they; and great Hector of the glancing plume shook the helmet, looking behind him; and quickly leapt forth the lot of Paris. Then the people sat them down by ranks where each man's high-stepping horses and inwrought armour lay. And upon his shoulders goodly Alexandros donned his beauteous armour, even he that was lord to Helen of the lovely hair. First upon his legs set he his greaves, beautiful, fastened with silver ankle-clasps; next upon his breast he donned the corslet ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... its high-stepping bays sought a new neighborhood, that the great singer might not be bored with repeated views of the same places. As it bowled along an old man in tattered garments approached, hat in hand, and held it toward the open window for alms. The driver cracked ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Fashion, and shading their delicate, and not always natural, complexions with airy parasols, filmy and finely-coloured as the petals of flowers, queened it over the flocking crowds of pedestrians, as they were driven past in their softly-cushioned carriages drawn by high-stepping horses;—all the boudoirs and drawing-rooms of the most exclusive houses seemed to have emptied their luxury-loving occupants into the streets,—and the whole town was, for a few hours at any rate, apparently given over to holiday. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... marriage had she been to the farm-house, and then she had driven to the door in her handsome carriage with the high-stepping bays, and had held up her rich silk dress as she passed through the kitchen into the "best room," around which she ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... wishing to know him. He quoted some of Dizzy's sayings. Dizzy called Spencer Walpole and Russell Gurney "those two whited sepulchres of the House of Commons." Walpole, consequential and lugubrious, he spoke of as "the high-stepping hearse-horse of public life." Of deaf Mr. Thomasson, who, ear-trumpet in hand, was wont to place himself near every speaker, he said that "no man had ever ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... and excellent cellar and a flock of negro servants. Honor's Carmody grandmother could remember the picturesqueness of his entourage, of James King himself, the hard-riding, hard-drinking, soft-spoken cavalier with his proud, pale wife and his slim, high-stepping horses and his grinning blacks. The general conviction was, Grandmother Carmody said, that he had come—or been sent—west to make a fresh start. There was something rather pathetically naive about that theory. There could never be a fresh start for the ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... late of her Majesty's service, saw the doctor's carriage, and criticised its horses and appointments. "Green liveries, bedad!" the general said, "and as foin a pair of high-stepping bee horses as ever a gentleman need sit behoind, let alone a docthor. There's no ind to the proide and ar'gance of them docthors nowadays—not but that is a good one, and a scoientific cyarkter, and a roight good fellow, bedad; and he's brought the poor little girl well ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the fortune-favoured in the little doctor's mind; that high-stepping gentleman having wealth, and public consideration, and the most ravishing young lady in the world for a bride. Still, though he reckoned all these advantages enjoyed by Sir Willoughby at their full value, he could imagine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... already become so few in number that "a child may count them." "The oldest inhabitant"—that universal referee with some persons on all disputed points—never set eye on a genuine Flemish coach-horse in England; and the gallant high-stepping hybrid—half thoroughbred, half hackney—which whirled along the fast coaches at the rate of twelve miles in the hour will in a few years be nowhere found. The art of 'putting to' four horses in a few seconds will become one of the 'artes deperditae;' and the science of driving ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... on the step, and called to her to follow them. So she ran along with Jack the Giant-killer in one hand, and dragging with the other her tin wagon, in which sat her favorite doll, Rosa, drawn by four high-stepping tin horses. ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... who can drive David Hautville's roan can drive this horse, and you know it," said she. She moved forward as she spoke, leading the high-stepping old white, and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... July, was still and fair. To me the Sabbath was always a happy day. High-stepping horses prancing up to the church-gates brought friends from the plantations. The organ pealed, the choir chanted, the rector read, and read well; the mural tablets told the virtues of the churchyard sleepers, and out through the windows I could gaze on the clouds and ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... own a carriage drawn by a pair of high-stepping horses, and driven by a coachman in stylish livery; and as they pass by, leaning back on comfortable cushions, they become the object of many an envious glance. Sometimes, however, the coachman has taken a drop too much, and upsets the carriage; perhaps the horses ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... imperfectly,—was crossing the road. Arthur and his friends, in loud converse, did not observe the poor passenger. He stopped abruptly, for his ear caught the sound of danger—it was too late: Mr. Marsden's horse, hard-mouthed, and high-stepping, came full against him. Mr. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... St Lawrence, and on the banks of the Delaware (where are red-haired girls who sing at dawn), and in British Columbia, and afterwards among the brown hills and colossal trees of California, but especially by that lonely golden beach in Manitoba, where the high-stepping little brown deer run down to drink, and the wild geese through the evening go flying and crying. It is an empty land. To love the country here—mountains are worshipped, not loved—is like embracing a wraith. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... rich, and upright in character. This Spring, they say, she jilted Raymond Vandyck, and people who ought to know, say that they were engaged. Why, Ray Vandyck comes of the best old Dutch stock, and his fortune is something worth while. I wonder what young Vandyck will say to this, and how that high-stepping old lady, his mother, will fancy having her son thrown over for John Burrill. I wish I knew how ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... to the hostler connected with the Wadsworth estate, and now this man brought to the front of the mansion a fine, big sleigh drawn by a pair of sleek-looking, high-stepping steeds. The sleigh was well provided with heavy robes to protect ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... spokes of the wheels glitter in the sun, the hoofs of the high-stepping pair beat the firm road in regular cadence, and smoothly the carriage rolls on till the brown beech at the corner hides it. But a sense of wealth, of social station, and refinement—strange and in strong contrast to the rustic scene—lingers behind, like a faint odour of perfume. There are ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... would keep everything in her own possession, and give each present with her own hands—a crowning delight which was impossible to Mrs. Copperhead—and how clearly she seemed to see herself drawing up, with panting horses, high-stepping and splendid, to the dull door of the poor parsonage, where scarcely anything better than a pony-carriage ever came! How the children would rush to the window, and "even papa," out of his study; and what a commotion would ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... into Eagle Butte with the cowboys. Old Heck, Ophelia, Skinny and Carolyn June went in the Clagstone "Six." Chuck led Old Pie Face for Skinny to ride in the parade and Bert took Red John, Old Heck's most showy saddle horse—a long-legged, high-stepping, proud-headed, bay gelding—for Carolyn June to use, for she, too, had declared her intention of joining in the grand promenade with which the Rodeo ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... difference between the squalid atmosphere below Fourth Street and the glowing, flashing, radiant, jewelled world up-town? Money! It meant purple and fine linen, delicacies of food and drink, pulsing machines that could make a mile a minute, high-stepping horses and high-bred dogs, music and dancing, joy and laughter, sport and adventure, the mountain and the sea, freedom from care, fear, drudgery ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... one striking example of applique work, of Rhenish or French origin, now hanging in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This realistic patchwork represents a fight between an armoured knight mounted on a high-stepping white horse and a ferocious dragon. The designs are arranged in a fashion similar to the blocks in a modern quilt, and depict several scenes showing the progress of the combat. There is also a border covered closely with figures of monks, ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... in the imaginative mind of the statuary. There is no liquid continuity, such as indicates a writer possessed by his subject and not merely possessing it. The periods are marshalled in due order of procession, bright and high-stepping; they never escape under an impulse of emotion into the full current of a brimming stream. What is curious is that though Macaulay seems ever to be brandishing a two-edged gleaming sword, and though he steeps us in ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... the fleecy flocks, the meek-nosed, the passionless faces; Ai! for the tallow-scented, the straight-tailed, the high-stepping; Ai! for the timid glance, which is that which the rustic, sagacious, Applies to him who loves but may not declare ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... drums. Twice on such a day, once the day before, thrice the next day, till by and by it was the common thing. High-stepping childhood, with laths and broom-handles at shoulder, was not fated, as in the insipid days of peace, to find, on running to the corner, its high hopes mocked by a wagon of empty barrels rumbling over the cobble-stones. No; it was the Washington Artillery, or the Crescent ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... for the carriages of the most illustrious of the families of San Antonio. The Senora, from the shaded depths of her own, watched their arrival. Nothing could be more characteristic than the approach of her daughters. Antonia and Lopez, stately and handsome, came slowly; their high-stepping horses chafing at the restraint. Luis and Isabel drove to their appointed place with a speed and clatter, accentuated by the jingling of the silver rings of the harness and the silver hanging buttons on the gay dress of the Mexican driver. But the occupants of both carriages ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... PAPERS, speaks of "the sin of tall-talking," which, he says, "is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or old people." But this is not in accord with my observation. I should say it was rather the sin of dilettanti who are ambitious of that high-stepping accomplishment which ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... sit on his handsome bay horse, and wait for the party to arrange itself, for it was rather inconvenient for him to mount and dismount the high-stepping beast oftener than was absolutely necessary. As for Jemima, she rode a long-limbed, slender-bodied horse, and sat him in grim dignity, as the dames of old occupied their high-backed chairs. Her beaver hat towered high, and the stiff tuft of feathers that rose from ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... embroidered in pale green and gold. Silver crossed cannon surmounted it, orange-colored fringe surrounded it, and crimson tassels drooped from it. It was a brilliant, unreal scene; with military bands clashing triumphant music, elegant vehicles, high-stepping horses, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... tomahawk and buries it in the head of the captain of that bass drum. The infuriated musician, supposing it to be the cornet who has mutinied, at once gets his Smith & Wesson in range. When the smoke has cleared away three shots are found to have taken effect—two of them in a span of high-stepping horses attached to the elegant turnout of old Mrs. P——. That estimable lady is spilled into the third-story window of an establishment where sits our old friend Hannah binding shoes. The shock ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... drawn by beautiful pairs of horses, high-stepping, with harness flashing in the sunlight, drove up and down. Some contained old ladies and grey-haired men; but nearly all bore a load of wounded soldiers, with ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... were in the hot and lustie season of their life, could cast a look thereon without being stirred incontinent to be striking and killing poor harmlesse folk for the sole sake of donning so rich an harnesse and bestriding such high-stepping chargers as did these good codpieces in their battle,—for that young blood doth aye take pleasure in horseflesh and the practise of arms. This had the aforesaid Philemon proven in his day. And he was used to say how ever after 'twas his wont to turn aside his eyen of ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... they file in procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement, the strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous impulses, his hard judgments and kindly actions, were characteristics that gave him a very ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to one side, and they saw emerge from the fog a high-stepping team drawing a closed carriage. The horses shied at what they saw at the side of the way, but the coachman pulled them quickly to their course and drove rapidly on. It was impossible to get even a glimpse of ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... of a mettled horse. He crossed our vision and the open archway: a high-stepping hackney going well, driven by a lady in a light trap which was half full of wild flowers. It was a quick picture, like a flash of the cinematograph, but the pose of the lady as a driver was seen to be of a commanding grace, and though she ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Arab, a bare-legged animal when walking, is a booted cavalier when mounted. The white haik, or toga, is fastened around the temples. The horse of the principal guide is a fine iron-gray, with an enormous tail of black—high-stepping, and carrying his elaborately-draped burden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Favraud, accompanied by Duganne, awaited us, seated in state in his lofty, stylish swung gig (with his tiny tiger behind), drawn tandem-wise by his high-stepping and peerless blooded bays, Castor and Pollux. Brothers, like the twins of Leda, they had been bred in the blue-grass region of Kentucky and the vicinity of Ashland, and were worthy of their ancient pedigree, their perfect training and classic names, the last bestowed when he first became ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... cantonments, and we were left disconsolately standing in the court-yard, with the probability of having to trudge home. This was not to be thought of for a moment, and we had just arrived at a pitch of desperation when a handsome carriage, with the blinds all up, and drawn by a pair of high-stepping horses, came rattling toward us. Not a moment was to be lost; we rushed frantically forward and ordered an immediate halt. In vain did the venerable coachman and determined-looking servant intimate ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... bay colt, very thin, almost gaunt, and with long, high-stepping legs. The trainer was waiting for a last word with his owner. He was cool and confident. "Never better or fitter, Sir Francis, and one of the grandest three-year-olds that ever looked through a bridle. Improved wonderful since he got over his dental troubles, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... I leaned against the lower part of the block-house and held my sides. That long-legged, awkward, high-stepping Shanghai cock was dressed like a man in a suit of clothes—all but a hat. His coat-sleeves extended over his wings, and when he flapped them to crow, and stuck his claws out of his trousers-legs, I wept tears on my handkerchief. Mrs. Gunning ...
— A British Islander - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... gyrating movement to and fro, which imparted to the disc of the umbrella the hesitation of a wave. He followed the Queen with a strange slow stride. For long seconds he would pause with one foot held aloft in the attitude of a high-stepping horse, which distorted his dwarfish body into a diabolic convulsion, like Durer's angel of horror. He seemed a familiar spirit, a mocking devil, the wicked Spielmann of the "Miracle" play, whose harsh laughter echoes through the empty room when the last cup is emptied, the last ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the church and was ascending the steps, a gorgeous landau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman drew up at ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... end of the second week a small fly no larger than a pin's head began to develop in the sunshine of their amber. It became visible to the naked eye when Max suddenly resolved to leave his drag, his tiger, his high-stepping grays, and his fair companion, and slip over to Philadelphia—for a day or two, he explained. His lawyer needed him, he said, and then again he wanted to see his sister Sue, who had run down to Walnut Hill for the day. (Sue, it might as well be stated, had not yet put in an appearance at Beach Haven, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... manageable (as for example when she speaks of "pouring oil upon the red embers of a score unpaid"), but for the most part admirably pleasing to the ear. Her antique figures are alive; and the whole tale goes forward with a various and high-stepping movement and a glow of colour that reminded me of nothing more than that splendid pageant one follows round the walls of the Riccardi Palace in Florence. Of course the journey ends in lovers' meeting and the teaching of his place to the evil-minded. The fact that this latter was called ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things—what he had had the name of almost from the first—the Recluse of Hermiston. High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him the day after the ball—he was none the wiser, he could not suppose himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself my Lord ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... form that belied it, Jasper Losely had been a saint! His apartments secured, his appearance thus revised and embellished, Jasper's next care was an equipage in keeping; he hired a smart cabriolet with a high-stepping horse, and, to go behind it, a groom whose size had been stunted in infancy by provident parents designing him to earn his bread in the stables as a light-weight, and therefore mingling his mother's milk with heavy liquors. In short, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a commotion in the crowd, an imperious voice cried, "Clear out," and the next instant David Rossi, who was standing by the step of his cab, was all but run down by a magnificent equipage with two high-stepping horses and a fat English coachman in livery ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... a coachman driving two showy, high-stepping horses along the street, or, better still, over a level country road, with his long whip curling in the air, which whip he now and then flirts so as to make a sharp, cracking noise over the horses' heads, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... what is known as sclerosis, a hardening of the gray matter in the motor centres of the spinal cord. Its special symptom is the peculiar high-stepping gait, the power of locomotion not being properly under the control of the will, and when the eyes are closed, it seems impossible for the afflicted person to walk forward without falling. Like other diseases of its class, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... thronged at this hour of the morning. She willingly let them divert her thoughts. She liked the bustle and hurry of the scene. The well-dressed men and women in their trim turnouts little guessed what pleasure their high-stepping horses and silver-mounted harnesses gave to the modest little woman threading her way among the people ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... should go again. I could not, in common humanity, refuse, and so consented. Poor Amy "put on her things," as our girls called it, and we descended to the porte-cochere, intending to engage the first passing citadine. As we stepped into the street, however, a gay carriage with high-stepping gray horses, a chasseur with knife and feathers, and a coachman in a modest livery on a hammer-cloth resplendent with yellow fringes and embroideries, drew up at our door: a pretty hand was laid upon the portiere and a voice cried, "Amy! Amy! I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid high-stepping carriage horses—all the delights of life, I say,—would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles and avoid those whom they dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charity and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough: we may abuse ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... passed and the high-stepping horses, which were indeed the exception, for the majority ambled along half somnolent from careless coachmanship, one sought in vain for some idea of what they were doing it all for. They did not seem to enjoy it. If they did not enjoy it, why ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... aliments for his spiritual sustenance than that which she was able and willing to furnish; he was a commonplace man and his desires were commonplace—easily understood and satisfied. He liked a pretty wife, a handsome house, a good dinner with fine wine and jolly company; he liked high-stepping horses, a natty turn-out, and the smile of Vanity Fair. Ethel's tastes were similar, and their lives so far had fitted into each other without a single crevice. The Cumberlands were grim and unbending, it is true, and after that one concession to fraternal feeling, made ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... late to be of any good if I could have been of any good. And then I had my first taste of English life. It was amazing. It was overwhelming. I never shall forget the polished cob that Edward, beside me, drove; the animal's action, its high-stepping, its skin that was like satin. And the peace! And the red cheeks! And the beautiful, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... rattle of a carriage with high-stepping horses was heard; it stopped very suggestively at the gate of the Conciergerie on the quay. The door was opened, and the step let down in such haste, that every one supposed that some great personage had arrived. Presently a lady waving a sheet of blue paper came forward to the outer gate ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the sound of swift wheels and high-stepping horses in the street, and the ladies pressed forward to see. "Lady Angleby's carriage," said Miss Burleigh as it whirled past and drew up at the "George." She was now in haste to be gone and join her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr |
