"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Brisbane are, as a mean expression, decidedly semi-tropical. The months from October to March may be classed as tropic when vegetation makes luxuriant growth, especially if the rainfall prove abundant. The rest of the year, from April to September, is marked by a dry, bracing, "continental" climate, during which the westerly wind often proves very cold, bleaching, and searching accompanied by great dryness accumulated during the passage of this current from southern-central Australia. Many settlers ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... stitched on to the sides of the material, it should now be braced with twine by means of a packing needle, passing the string over the stretchers between each stitch taken in the webbing, and, finally, drawing up the bracing until the material is strained evenly and tightly in the frame. If the fabric is one which stretches easily, the bracings should ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... you would not be my first care?" he demanded, bracing himself as the vessel plunged to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... out somewhat dizzily to take counsel with himself how he should put the matter to her. She would be sure to ask what the price of the new room would be, and he debated whether to take it and tell her some kindly lie about it, or trust to the bracing effect of the sum named in helping restore the lost balance of her nerves. He was not so rich that he could throw six hundred dollars away, but there might be worse things; and he walked up and down thinking. All at once it flashed upon him that he had better see ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the weather of the island would become more bracing and exhilarating, and this morning the air seemed filled with the spirit of spring. Emmeline felt it, and as she watched the swimmer disporting in the water, she laughed, and held the child up to watch him. She was fey. The breeze, filled with all sorts of sweet perfumes from the woods, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... and picturesque glens, which belong principally to the Cheviot range, the Humbleton, Hedgehope and Beamish-head hills. It will be seen, therefore, that the air is pure, and there is no doubt that the place would be life-giving to many who should seek convalescence there. But neither bracing atmosphere, nor picturesque scenery, had any effect upon Grace Darling; and it became evident to the anxious eyes that watched her most closely and fondly, that she continued ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... health. In spite of the 'coelum non animum mutant' of Horace, few men fail to experience how different is the range of spirits in the limbo-like atmosphere of a London winter and beneath the glories of an Italian sky or in the keen bracing atmosphere of the mountain side, and it is equally apparent how differently we judge the world when we are jaded by a long spell of excessive work or refreshed after a night of tranquil sleep. Poetry and Painting are probably not wrong in associating a certain bilious temperament with ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... desirable one," observed Oberon. "But how many recollections throng upon me, as I turn over these leaves! This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road, on a starlight October evening; in the pure and bracing air, I became all soul, and felt as if I could climb the sky, and run a race along the Milky Way. Here is another tale, in which I wrapt myself during a dark and dreary night-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of the wheels and the voices of my companions ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slowly, but he felt that it was hopeless, and would only result in drawing her off the rock; so he settled back as before. He noticed that she had given him her left hand, and saw that there was another reason besides the necessity of bracing herself with her right. Her wrist was cut ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... great, and places him even physically in the position of looking up, not down. Where the nature-power is a harsh one, a scorching sun, a tempestuous sea, the self-command and self-sacrifice called out by the worship of them may be, if not carried to extremes, a bracing discipline; but with some exceptions the nature-gods are good, and have to do with light and ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Washington is not as well known as it should be. Comparatively few people in the State, outside of Berkshire, are even aware that such a town exists. But it would be a delightful place in which to spend a quiet summer. It is cool and healthy, the air is clear and bracing, and the scenery simply superb. The view from Mount Everett fully equals, if it does not surpass, that from Greylock. In whatever direction the spectator looks a most glorious display greets his eyes. Peak rises above peak on all sides, and the blue surfaces of lakes and ponds in the vicinity ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... for when young Webster felt the power which was in him, he boldly employed it. At first, however, he was a failure as a public speaker. With all this, he went forward in the acquisition of knowledge and the bracing of his mind; and in his fifteenth year he once undertook to repeat five hundred lines of Virgil, if his teacher ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... being agreeable, and interesting widows in the vanishing shades of an attractive and consolable grief? No. Is it not rather the cold, luminous truth that the American girl found out that Bar Harbor, without her presence, was for certain reasons, such as unconventionality, a bracing air, opportunity for boating, etc., agreeable to the young man? But why do elderly people go there? This question must have been suggested by a foreigner, who is ignorant that in a republic it is the young ones who know what is best for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... an unbroken wilderness, in a state of nature, but singularly beautiful as a landscape. It was an open prairie, traversed by what was called the North Platte River, with scarcely water enough in it to be called a creek, with rolling hills on either side, and above, a clear sky, and air pure and bracing. It was the first time I had been so far out on the plains, and I enjoyed it beyond expression. I was soon able to eat my full share of the plain fare of bread and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the figures of the children, carrying it from room to room, so she knew that one of them had awakened for a drink, or with the storm, and they had missed her. Then she could see them at the front door, Adam's sturdy feet planted widely apart, bracing him, as he held up the lamp which flickered in the wind. Then she could hear his voice shouting: "Mother!" Instantly Kate answered. Then she was sorry she had, for both of them began to scream wildly. There was a second of that, then even the children ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... had not yet returned. On his way home he had wandered aside, and visited the fashionable wells of Buxton, intending a three days' sojourn, to complete his bracing up for the winter. But the Pool of Siloam did not work pleasantly in the case of the robust general, who was attacked after his second dip with a smart fit of the gout in his left great-toe, where it went on charmingly, without any flickering upward, quite stationary ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... are stiff and rigid, as well as the muscles of the jaw. This condition produces a peculiar attitude, that once seen is subsequently recognized as rather characteristic of the disease. A horse with tetanus stands with his muscles tense and his legs in a somewhat bracing position, as though he were gathered to repel a shock. The neck is stiff and hard, the head is slightly extended upon it, and the face is drawn, and the nostrils are dilated. The tail is usually held up a little, and when pressed down against the thighs it springs back to its previous position. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and station. We were just a man and a woman whose fates were linked irrevocably by love. I stooped suddenly, under the sway of an impulse, I could not resist, and kissed her upturned face, turning almost dizzy in the act. Then I broke from her clasp, and bracing myself for the task to which we ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... down, and thoroughly irrigate the greater part of this lovely island: indeed, it may well be looked on as the Paradise of the East; for though, in the low country, the climate is relaxing and enervating to European constitutions, in the higher regions the air is bracing and exhilarating ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... real, unselfconscious and wholly profitable matter. Our English airs are poisoned by past history and old social cleavage: in France, the past is forgotten, and social barriers do not exist. It is a matter of atmosphere, and there it is clear and bracing. Nobody sacrifices conviction or principle, but they love ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... the Basses-Pyrenees—2 miles from the Negresse station on the direct line to Spain, and 130 miles from Bordeaux. Living during the winter is considerably cheaper than at Pau, but the winds are much stronger and the air more bracing. Biarritz makes a valuable change from both Pau and Arcachon. It is free from epidemics, and beneficial in cases of paralysis, as well as chest and ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... rides by night, when the same sound of sleigh-bells scared the silence of sleeping forests and filled the boy's soul with pictures of midnight attacks, romantic murders, and strange devilish phantoms. In the dazzling brilliance of the snowy fields, breathing in the pure, bracing air, mere existence became unspeakable bliss. Sitting there in that dainty sleigh Frederick was inclined to look on life as ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Mr. Holladay brought his wife to Paris to secure the services of an experienced physician, perhaps; or perhaps a nurse, or linen, or all of them. That done, they proceeded to Etretat, which they may have visited before, and knew for a quiet place, with a bracing atmosphere and good climate—just such a place as they would naturally desire. Here, the daughter was born, and here, I am convinced, we shall find the key to the mystery, though I'm very far from guessing what that key is. But I have a premonition—you ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... Johnson. To him, as to most men of his time, woman was not an individual, but an institution—a toast that was drunk some time after that of Church and King. But it is far better to consider the difference rather as a special merit, in that he stood for all those clean and bracing shocks of incident which are untouched by passion or weakness, for a certain breezy bachelorhood, which is almost essential to the literature of adventure. With all his faults, and all his triumphs, he stands for the great mass of natural manliness which must be absorbed ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... brought Edward Hallett and placed him beside Emily, where, by bracing themselves against the wall of the state-room, they might prevent their being dashed about by the rolling of the vessel. Emily welcomed him with an affectionate smile, and taking his hand, which now sometimes answered the clasp of hers, told him that he must not be afraid, though there ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... representatives are unworthy. The plain and wholesome language of Emerson is on the whole more needed now than it was when spoken. His words have often been extolled for their stimulating quality; following the same analogy, they are, as in this address, in a high degree tonic, bracing, strengthening to the American, who requires to be reminded of his privileges that he may know and find ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... whips, and lashes, and splashes up the firmament, like a loitering coachman, half-an-hour behind his time. And now behold that imp of fame and prowess, the headstrong Peter, bestriding a raw-boned, switch-tailed charger, gallantly arrayed in full regimentals, and bracing on his thigh that trusty, brass-hilted sword, which had wrought such fearful deeds on ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... leaping from the ground, and assisting themselves only by one hand, and other similar things. One feat which they practiced was to climb up between two partition walls built pretty near together, by bracing their back against one wall, and working with their knees and hands against the other. Another feat was to climb up a ladder on the under side by means ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Canada is just the place for you, in this summer season. Bracing air; and steady-going doctors who leave the fools in Europe to pry into the secrets of Nature. Thousands of miles of land, if you like riding. Thousands of miles of water, if you like sailing. Pack up, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... in November, when the sun seemed making a last effort to prevail against coming winter. The wind was fresh and bracing, and nature appeared bright and cheerful, on ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... I mean Honolulu. You would get the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, would you not? for bracing. And so much less sea! And then you could actually see Vailima, which I WOULD like you to, for it's beautiful and my home and tomb that is to be; though it's a wrench not to be planted in Scotland - that I can never deny - if I could only be buried in the hills, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too heavily to accept defeat now! Bracing himself for the effort, Goujaud besought the lady's help with such a flood of blandishment during the drive that more than once she seemed at the point of yielding. Only one difficult detail had he withheld— that ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... consist in opinion, they are the happiest people in the world; for I never saw any so well satisfied with their own situation. Yet the climate appears to be very disagreeable, the weather being dry and sultry, or moist and cold; the atmosphere never having that sharp, bracing purity, which in Norway prepares you to brave its rigours. I do not hear the inhabitants of this place talk with delight of the winter, which is the constant theme of the Norwegians; on the contrary, they seem to ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and went out for a stroll, drinking copious draughts of the bracing morning air. But the tormenting presence of the intercepted letter in his pocket drew him back to the house. He encountered ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... as apart from the qualities by which it is gained. But if he works simply with the desire of making the best of himself, and if the reward is simply such a position as may enable him to be most useful to society, the competition which results will be bracing and invigorating, and will appeal to no such motives as can be called, in the bad sense, selfish. He is discharging a function which is useful, it is true, to himself; but which is also intrinsically useful to the whole society. The same principle applies, again, to intellectual ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 'Holy Scripture.' Non-established priesthoods are but little more disposed to emancipate 'mind' and oil the wheels of political progression than those kept in state pay. The air of conventicles is not of the freest or most bracing description. The Methodist preacher, who has the foolish effrontery to tell his congregation 'the flush lusteth always contrary to the spirit, and, therefore, every person born into the world deserveth God's wrath and damnation,' may be a liberal politician, one well fitted to pilot ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... of the Duomo. At length he was picked up tenderly by the good Misericordia. His terrible wounds were reverently washed and his godlike body prepared for sepulture. News of his assassination had been swiftly carried out to Careggi, and Domina Lucrezia, bracing herself for the afflicting sight, hastened to lay his fair head in her lap, a very real replica of "La Pieta"—Blessed Mary ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... allowed themselves to be hauled stiff-legged through the deep snow in their effort to keep the sleds from over-running the dogs. It was exciting work. The men throwing their utmost weight upon the lines sought every obstruction, swerving against trees, bracing against roots, grasping at branches, and floundering through bushes. Often they fell, and occasionally, when they failed to regain their footing, were mercilessly dragged downhill; the heavy sleds, gathering momentum, overtook the fleeing dogs, and their unfortunate ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the child. Her theory was that children should be put to bed early and not allowed to lie around on any one's lap. There was always a tussle of wills when you roused them. She drew herself up with a kind of severe mental bracing and awaited the result, glad Chilian ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... by perceiving any door of escape. Any vivid sensation was welcome in the irksome vacancy that pursued her in the absence of immediate excitement. Devoid of the interest of opposition, and of the bracing changes to the Holt, her intercourse with the Charterises had become a weariness and vexation of spirit. Idle foreign life deteriorated them, and her principle and delicacy suffered frequent offences; but like all living wilfully in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fall. "There is always something going on outdoors worth seeing," says Charles Dudley Warner, and of no part of the world is this more true than of these apparently desolate plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Rich is the reward of the daily stroller, not only in the inspiration of its pure, bracing air, the songs of its meadow-larks, and the glory of its grand mountain view, but in its ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... came on to blow very hard," replied Pelham, seating himself on a stool, and bracing his feet against the front of the berth ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... encouraged, amidst his many vicissitudes and disappointments, by his noble wife. If he was treated with harshness by his political enemies, his consolation was in the tender affection which filled his home with sunshine. Though his public life was bracing and stimulating, he felt, nevertheless, that it was cold and calculating, and neither filled the soul nor elevated the character. "Man longs for a happiness," he says in his 'Memoires,' "more complete and more tender than that which all the labours ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... most delightful winter climate. There has not been any rain for three months, nor will there be any for two more; the sky is cloudless, the air dry and very bracing. It is cold enough at night for fires, and autumn clothing can be worn all the day long, for though the sun is bright and warm, the shade temperature does not rise above 65 degrees, and exercise is easy and pleasant. At night, even at a considerable height, the lowest temperature is 40 ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... attached to the body proper by rigid flanges, reinforced by wires running from tip to tip of the planes, passing directly over the body, and not elevated on bracing chandelles. These wires were taut and made a part of the planes, much like reinforcing ribs. Beneath the planes three heavy wires ran from their forward tips to ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... Then, bracing his feet against one lump, he pushed against its neighbor, and under that steady pressure the enormous masses moved apart and kept on moving, grinding among their fellows. Over and around them Stevens sprang, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... off on a moose hunt, in autumn, with a practical Indian hunter. The air of the autumnal night is frosty and bracing. The moose are moving rapidly from place to place. Night is drawing on. The last fluttering of the aspens dying away, leaves that perfect repose in the air which is so necessary to the sport. The moon rises, shedding a broad and silvery light through the forest. Mysterious sounds ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the day waxed and began to wane, it was obvious even to Mr. Prohack that the domestic climate grew sunnier and more bracing. A weight seemed to have been lifted from the hearts of all Mr. Prohack's entourage. The theft of the twenty thousand pound necklace was a grave event, but it could not impair the beauty of the great fact that the church-clock had ceased to strike, and that therefore ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the rock for the reception of the ends of the six great beams of the beacon. Each beam was to be fixed to the solid rock by two strong and massive bats, or stanchions, of iron. These bats, for the fixing of the principal and diagonal beams and bracing chains, required fifty-four holes, each measuring a foot and a half deep, and two inches wide. The operation of boring such holes into the solid rock, was not an easy or a quick one, but by admirable arrangements on the part of the engineer, and steady perseverance on the part of the men, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Eustace at once as strange that he should be standing making this terrible sound. It would not have surprised the boy nearly so much to have found him lying down—indeed, that he had expected. Bracing himself to the task, Eustace ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... tone thus caused raises the blood pressure somewhat, and the great depression before breakfast is not experienced. These patients rely oil their morning coffee for bracing. If they have much indigestion at night which keeps them awake so that they do not get good comfortable rest, their largest meals should be the morning and noon meals, and the evening meal ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... rose from the river, obscuring all objects, when the bordermen rolled out of their snug bed of leaves. The air was cool and bracing, faintly fragrant with dying foliage and the damp, dewy luxuriance of the ripened season. Wetzel pulled from under the protecting ledge a bundle of bark and sticks he had put there to keep dry, and built a fire, while Jonathan fashioned a ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the running ape-man soared the huge plane. The open noose shot up to meet it, and the girl, half guessing the ape-man's intentions, reached out and caught the noose and, bracing herself, clung tightly to it with both hands. Simultaneously Tarzan was dragged from his feet and the plane lurched sideways in response to the new strain. Usanga clutched wildly at the control and the machine shot upward at a steep angle. Dangling ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... grew even more beautiful than she was when she had first come to her mountain home. The bracing air agreed with her, her health was perfect, while her simple manner of living and her regular habits were calculated to develop to the utmost every charm, and keep her strong, and ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... well-kept garden of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Orphic One was loading up with potatoes, peas, beans and one big yellow pumpkin, when he glanced around and saw the man who wrote "Self-Reliance" gazing at him seriously and steadily over the garden-wall. The father of the author of "Little Women" winced, but bracing up, gave back stare for stare, and in a voice flavored with resentment and defiance said, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... bracing. I did not wish to be braced. Bingley suited my mood. It was gray and dark, and it rained all the time, and the sea slunk about in the distance like some ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... typical North-West morning, cold, bracing and clear. The dry air stimulated one, and the winter sun shone cheerfully down upon the great white land of ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... for it but bracing up! We must cut away all this State support; we must teach them to rely on themselves. It's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the saddle, but she would not loose her hold on his arm. And then came the first furious blast of the tempest, and the greatest trees—the mightiest giants of the ancient forest—bent and crouched before it, bracing themselves for the fierce conflict with the elements in which they must gain or lose centuries of life. The rain now began to fall heavily, and William abruptly told the boy to come in the house till the storm was over. In yielding thus far, he was not ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... has fidgeted when he could not work, finds himself relaxing, against his will, into a condition of what a celebrated statesman described as "innocuous desuetude." The balminess of the air, which is at once warm and invigorating and bracing, without being severe, brings about a natural feeling of rest. The fascination which this creates soon becomes overpowering. The longer the visitor remains the more completely and hopelessly does he give away to his feelings, until at last he only ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... this ride to Aberdeen more than any thing we had seen yet, the country is so wild and singular. In the afternoon we came in sight of the German Ocean. The free, bracing air from the sea, and the thought that it actually was the German Ocean, and that over the other side was Norway, within a day's sail of us, gave it ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... their way, cantering briskly along side by side, Lucy in gay, almost wild spirits, and Elsie's depression rapidly vanishing beneath the combined influence of the bracing air and exercise, the brilliant sunshine, and her friend's ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... the haversack!" said he. He sat up, and, bracing himself against the roll of the vessel, he opened the bag and carefully examined its contents. In an inner pocket he found an old letter of Doctor Glyphic's to Thor; another from Thor to his son, dated three years back; and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... season, (2) clothing, (3) occupation, (4) age and sex. In civilized countries more food is eaten, as a rule, than is necessary to maintain health and strength. Climate and seasons influence the quantity of food eaten. A cold, bracing atmosphere stimulates the appetite, tempts one to exercise, while a hot climate has the contrary effect; hence the need for more or less food. Abundant clothing in cold weather conserves the body heat; less ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... on art, economics, and sociology, was b. in London, the s. of a wealthy wine merchant, a Scotsman. Brought up under intellectually and morally bracing Puritan influences, his education was mainly private until he went to Oxf. in 1836; he remained until 1840, when a serious illness interrupted his studies, and led to a six months' visit to Italy. On his return in ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... sufficient fragment. Round and round he went in a perfect arc, cutting deeper and deeper until he reached the sand below and the separation was complete. He traversed it to and fro, time after time, to be sure that the cut was direct and absolute; then, bracing his head against the sand foundation, he began pushing with his hind legs to move off the selected portion. I thought to help him, and carefully pushed it with a small reed until it rolled over on the sand, and he with it, innocuously hoist by his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Paul, bracing himself against the walls, looked down and saw a cluster of anxious faces all gazing up toward him. A candle which one of the girls held in her hand showed him that the distance down to the hearth was but short; so, to make an ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... too much of quantity, and too little of quality in their work. They try to do too much, and do not do it well. They do not realize that the education, the comfort, the satisfaction, the general improvement, and bracing up of the whole man that comes from doing one thing absolutely right, from putting the trade-mark of one's character on it, far outweighs the value that attaches to the doing of a thousand botched or ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... force a door—that is, an ordinary door—and at the same time make very little noise. It is done—if the door opens inward—by seizing the knob firmly with both hands, having turned it, and then by bracing the body with one knee pressed firmly against the door directly under the knob. In this position, if it is assumed by a strong man, every effort may be centred upon one sudden impulse forward, which, while there is no visible or perceptible impact, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... "just think what you are doing. We cannot cure her with powders and pills. The child has not a strong constitution, and if you keep her here, she might never get well again. If you restore her to the bracing mountain air to which she is accustomed, she probably will get perfectly ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... time for driving, riding, walking, moving through the air by any means, than a fresh, frosty morning, when hope runs cheerily through the veins with the brisk blood, and tingles in the frame from head to foot! This was the glad commencement of a bracing day in early winter, such as may put the languid summer season (speaking of it when it can't be had) to the blush, and shame the spring for being sometimes cold by halves. The sheep-bells rang as clearly in the vigorous air, as if they felt ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... to be done to overcome the difficulty. Looking up, and studying the structure of the boat's stern intently, Jack saw that by steadying themselves by the rudder chains they could both climb up and stand upon the arm of the spanner, when, by bracing their shoulders against the boat's overhanging stern, they could bring the whole of their united strength to bear, and thus possibly start the nut. By means of a diagram and a few words chalked upon the slate Macintyre was soon made ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Hill they rattled in a bracing northeast wind, the rugged country bowling back against the tumbled sky. Far to south a rusty haze had gloomed against the sun like a midday fog, mile after mile; and suddenly, as they topped the range and cleared the last low hill, they saw a city in the south spreading away ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... The work of Charlotte Bronte—produced under a fervent admiration for "the satirist of Vanity Fair," whom she deemed "the first social regenerator of his day"—is, with all its occasional morbidness of sensitive feeling, far more bracing in moral tone, more inspiring in its scorn of baseness and glorifying of goodness, than is the work of recent Positivist emulators of the achievements of George Eliot. Some romances of this school are vivid and highly finished pictures of human misery, unredeemed ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... misery came into Ginger's pleasant face. He hesitated. Then, with the air of a man bracing himself to a dreadful, but unavoidable, ordeal, he went on. He spoke gruffly, and his eyes, which had been fixed on Sally's, wandered down to the match on the carpet. It was still glowing, and mechanically he put a ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... trees were all in blossom and humming with bees, their rich, amethystine rose flung up against the gay April sky in a challenge of beauty and joy. The air was full of the promises of spring, keen, bracing, yet with an undercurrent of languorous warmth. There was a ragged fleece of bloom, sweet and alive with droning insects, over a plum thicket near the woods,—half-wild, brambly things, cousin on the one hand to the cultivated farm, and on the other to the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... took place, which, according to the usual custom of all well regulated broadsides in close conflict, cut away a certain proportion of the spars and rigging, and cut up a proportion of the ships' companies. The Windsor castle, worked by Newton, bracing round on the other tack, and the corvette rounding to on the same, the two vessels ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they had taken, and was beginning to enjoy the keen bracing air of the hills, when she happened to cast her eyes to the far-off meadows beneath. Her head grew suddenly giddy, and she could not divest herself of the idea, that one false step would send her to the plains below. Here was a most ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... indeed, after another year or two of anything but hospitality as generous as that of New York. Well-nourished and undimmed, however, it concealed for them admirably the fact that it was the hospitality they were after, and not the bracing climate or the desire to see the fascinating Americans of London and Paris at home. New York found them agreeable specimens of high-spirited young English people, and played with them indefinitely. Miss Forde, when she sat imperturbably on a cushion in the middle of the floor after dinner ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... with prodigious sonority, and overturned a chair with my foot. Then bracing myself for the ordeal, through which I looked to what scant information I possessed and my own mother wit, to bear me successfully, I strode ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... parwong not abundant, or cholera might be added to the other dangers of Arctic residence. But the days of the buttercup and the daisy, and of the butterfly and the mosquito are few. With the winter comes the all-pervading snow, and the keen, bracing north-west wind, the rosy cheek and the frozen nose; but with it also comes rugged health and a ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... taken to the seaside to be helped by the bracing air of the Norfolk coast to recover her lost appetite and forget her small tragedy, she had observed that unaccustomed things were taking place in the house. Workmen came in and out through the mews at the back and brought ladders with them ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... where they stood. The plaza was enclosed by the natives gathered in whispering groups, and depressed by fear and wonder. On one side were crowded all the Messenwah warriors, unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the Opekians. In the middle of the plaza some twenty sailors were busy rearing and bracing a tall flag-staff that they had shaped from a royal palm, and they did this as unconcernedly and as contemptuously, and with as much indifference to the strange groups on either side of them, as though they were ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... together with a good breakfast, effected as much change in his spirits as in his appearance. Refreshed in mind and body, he slowly paced the deck, his chest expanding as he sniffed the fresh air, and his soul, encouraged by the dangers he had already passed through, bracing ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... excited," interrupted Mr. Maynard, bracing up. "I'm sure you exaggerate. Tell me what ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... more brightly and the air was never more clear and bracing than when Sinclair helped his wife off the train at Pawnee Junction. The station-master's face fell as he saw the lady, but he saluted the engineer with as easy an air as he could assume, and watched for an opportunity to speak to him alone. Sinclair read ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... who had seemed to begin by bracing herself to stand against him, now seemed to have braced herself to stand with him—perhaps a more commendable wifely attitude. I mean that the discipline incident to a life of success which was not without its rigors had become to her almost a second nature. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... perhaps, attributable to some Huguenot blood, although on the maternal side I am, so far as all information goes, pure English. I can stand a good deal of heat, enjoy relaxing climates, am at once upset by "bracing" sea-air, hate the cold, and sweat profusely after exercise. To this it will suffice to add that my temperament is of a decidedly nervous ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... stage, we have already said, was from the Wolga to the Jaik; the distance about 300 miles; the time allowed seven days. For the first week, therefore, the rate of marching averaged about 43 English miles a day. The weather was cold, but bracing; and, at a more 30 moderate pace, this part of the journey might have been accomplished without much distress by a people as hardy as the Kalmucks: as it was, the cattle suffered greatly from overdriving; milk began to fail even for the children; ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... say. But how entangled is this web of our life! How almost impossible is it that good should come unmixed with evil, or evil unmixed with good! At Margate, where the bracing air did more, I doubt not, towards my restoration to health than all the medicines,—at Margate my brother drank in ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... course of July, let us give a few sideward knocks to the bracing pebbles and detach the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Walls [a mason bee] from their supports. Loosened by the shock, the dome comes off cleanly, all in one piece. Moreover—and this is a great advantage—the cells come into view wide open on the base of the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... counterblast to such a hurricane of praise as has been lately blowing will do no harm to his ultimate reputation, even though it too blow somewhat fiercely. Art, character, literature, religion, science (I have named them in alphabetical order), thrive best in a breezy, bracing air; I heartily hope I may never be what is commonly called successful in my own lifetime—and if I go on as I am doing now, I have a fair chance of ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Army, and did not want to talk about it. He told her he intended to go away for a change until he got right again—he had not made up his mind where, but he thought somewhere on the East Coast, where it was cool and bracing, would suit him best—and he would write to her as soon as he got settled anywhere. She did not see him again, and did not hear from him or know anything of his movements till she read his description in a London paper as that of ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... his horse. "Does it hurt badly, lad?" he asked in the friendliest of tones, which yet had a bracing quality. "Don't you want to let me see if ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... you just what I am going to do," said Ann firmly, bracing herself for opposition, "and it's as good as done, so you needn't say a word about it. I'm going to have a Christmas dinner, and I'm going to invite every blessed soul in this house to come. They shall be warm and full for once ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... which from his boyhood he had practised on the village green, or in the old Moot Hall, was still harder to give up. "It was a full year before I could quite leave that." But this too was at last renounced, and finally. The power of Bunyan's indomitable will was bracing itself for severe trials ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... consequently, with their characters, they made but lazy efforts to forward her own separate wish. Perhaps Cromer was, in one sense of the expression, the best for her. She needed bodily strengthening and bracing ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... very thankful and relieved if you will manage this and take Mary to some fresh scenes, a place or country that she has not visited before. There is nothing like an entirely novel environment for distracting the mind, bracing the ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... to his place. The next play was an ordinary formation with the ends back, and the ball passed to left end for a run back of quarter and through the line outside of guard. It worked like a charm, and left end sped through with Joel bracing him at the turn and the left half going ahead. Four yards were netted, Meach, the substitute left half, being tackled by Post. In the mix-up that followed Joel found himself sprawling over the runner, with Cloud sitting astride the small of his back, a very uncomfortable part ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... greasing, oiling, varnishing, painting, scraping, and scrubbing which is required in the course of a long voyage, and also remember this is all to be done in addition to watching at night, steering, reefing, furling, bracing, making and setting sail, and pulling, hauling, and climbing in every direction, one will hardly ask, "What can a sailor ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of this work was laid the preceding winter, but Hawthorne became dissatisfied with the way in which the subject developed itself and so set the manuscript aside until he could come to it again with fresh inspiration. With the more bracing weather of September he commenced on it again, and wrote during the next two months that portion which we now have. On December 1 he forwarded two chapters to Ticknor & Fields, requesting to have them set up so that ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... will tend to repress the undue appropriation of hospital stores by attendants. But the highest benefit will be the change and cheer it will introduce into the monotony of hospital life. If you are sick at home, you are glad to have your neighbor step in and bring the healthy bracing air of out-door life into the dimness and languor of your invalid existence. Much more does the sick soldier like it,—for ennui, far more than pain, is his great burden. When I was at Washington, I accepted with great satisfaction an invitation to go with a Sanitary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... stood there, listening, her heart pounding in her ears, and below she distinctly heard a key in the kitchen door. She did the only thing she could think of. She lifted the door into place, and stood against it, bracing it ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... also favours the colossal, is likewise of the rigid type, but realising the inherent dangers accruing from the employment of metal for the framework, its constructors have used wood, reinforced and strengthened where necessary by metallic angle-iron, plates, and bracing; this utilisation of metal is, however, carried out very sparingly. The first vessel of this class was a huge failure, while subsequent craft have not proved much ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... letter, Uncle Horatio," answered Corny, bracing himself up, as though he realized that he was not presenting a demeanor such as he thought the occasion ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... me bury him at present." Sewell sat down, and, bracing his elbow on his desk, rested his head ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... beautiful that they desired Cecil to see, but it was too late now to send for him, for spring was near. With the spring, came back the cough, and again the medical order was change of climate. This time, a sojourn of some months in Norway was prescribed for Mrs. Vyvyan, bracing air, and much out-door life in the pine woods. After many weeks of slow journeying, the ladies with two of their servants reached Norway, and took up their abode in an old chateau, in the midst of a pine forest so-called, but a forest really composed of many varieties of fir and spruce, as ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... this way Master my fancy while I wandered on With that revered companion. And sometimes—465 When to a convent in a meadow green, By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile, And not by reverential touch of Time Dismantled, but by violence abrupt— In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies, 470 In spite of real fervour, and of that Less genuine and wrought up within myself— I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh, And for the Matin-bell to sound no more Grieved, and the twilight taper, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... early winter, but the day came out bright and clear. Greatly the boys enjoyed the bright sunshine and the bracing air as they took their way through the woods, crossing the river at last, and following a much used trail which took them toward the Delawares' village. This was a new route to them, but it was the course the Indians traveled and they found it better than the unbroken way they had previously ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... bark is placed like shingles overlapping each other so as to shed the rain. The doorway of the tent shack is made by leaning poles against forked sticks, their butts forming a semicircle in front, or rather the arc of a circle, and by bracing them against the forked stick fore and aft they add ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... tension is so rapidly increased as in the bearing of pain. The general impression seems to be that one should brace up to a pain; and very great strength of will is often shown in the effort made and the success achieved in bearing severe pain by means of this bracing process. But alas, the reaction after the pain is over—that alone would show the very sad misuse which had been made of a strong will. Not that there need be no reaction; but it follows naturally that the more strain ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... to the side of the canoe to help her to the bank, but she took his hand only to steady herself while rising. Stepping over the bracing-strips between the gunwales, she caught a swaying branch, and swung herself lightly ashore. Back from the water the ground rose into a low hill, covered with oak and elm and ragged hickory trees. Here, for a space, there was little undergrowth, and save under the heaviest ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... respect an elegant turnout. During our drive he casually remarked that he had paid a thousand dollars for the rig, and as his pay was some two thousand dollars per annum I easily figured that his rig and diamond pin had cost him about a year's salary. It was a lovely morning, not cold, but bracing, just the day for a ride. We started for Fordham, but changed our minds and drove to the High Bridge, through Harlem lane, and well out into Westchester County. Returning, we stopped at O'Brien's Hotel for ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... bracing influence of a holy cause has been tremendously overrated, for under the laugh I felt myself pass into a status of universal shrinking until I feared that I might entirely disappear, leaving a wonder about the empty saddle. And the blush and the stammer,—will men be pleased never to write in books ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... so continual, and so many. It maketh me think on a good worshipful man who, when he divers times beheld what pain his wife took in tightly binding up her hair to make her a fair large forehead, and with tightly bracing in her body to make her middle small (both twain to her great pain) for the pride of a little foolish praise, he said unto her, "Forsooth, madam, if God give you not hell, he shall do you a great wrong. For it must ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... United States at the price, which I knew could be obtained, of a million. A third plan which I suggested was, to open up portions of the "Fertile belt" to colonization from the United States. To offer homes, in a bracing, healthy country—with fertile lands and long waterways—to the multitudes of men and women in Ohio, Kentucky, Maryland, and many other States, who desired to flee from war and conflict; whose yearning was for settled government and peace. These men and women had still resources, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin |
