"Buoyancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what we call capacity or genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);[432] here it is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.[433] Like sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... itself. Suppose, now, the vessel to be listed over to various angles of heel—say 20 deg., 40 deg., 60 deg., and 80 deg.—the water lines will then be A C, D E, F K, and H J respectively, and the centers of buoyancy, which must be found by calculation, will be B1, B2, B3, and B4. If lines are drawn from these points at right angles to the water levels at the respective heels, the righting power of the vessel in each position is found by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... could here convey the tone of buoyancy with which he said these words. There was a largeness and confidence in them that carried me away. He told me that he was now "working with the experts"—those were his words—and that he would soon begin building a house that would astonish ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... spokesman of the Fifth Ward. When I stood up to speak I realized that I had to "play up" to the spirit of generosity which is always latent in a crowd such as I was addressing. I believe I won, although my candidate, unfortunately, lost. My Irish buoyancy and good nature brought me over the line. I felt that the audience in the gallery and the delegates on the floor were with me, but unfortunately for my cause, the boss, who was always the dominating influence of the Convention, was against ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... very pleasantly, "I am none the less glad to find that you retain your old independence of spirit, as well as your buoyancy." ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the rocks out of the light of the moon. The night was waning, and a slight chill began to creep into the air. A little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling its surface, died away, then softly came again. As he moved into the darkness Maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received a slight check. The night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of the strangeness of being out in the ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... creeks were forgotten in the great event of skating on the river, and for miles the smooth surface was a speedway over which the skaters made merry excursions. In front of Skarrow the ice was firm, and with that buoyancy so dear to the lovers of this sport. In the afternoons the young people from the town of Skarrow and Vincent on the opposite side, all met on the river. All classes were there—the darkey with his big ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... and reeling. The aching misery lay heavy on his heart, and yet one faint spark of hope lingered amid the black despair, the natural buoyancy of his nature that refused even to submit to ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... intensely strong affection for my father's eldest sister Mary, who accompanied us, and whose dear handwriting I recognize in a few corrections in the journal. Besides, that year 1842 is absolutely the last year of my life in which I could live in happy ignorance of evil and retain all the buoyancy of early boyhood. A terrible experience was in reserve for me that soon aged me rapidly, and made a really merry boyish life impossible for me ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... water and the shells fall thickest and the general discomfort and pettiness are at their maximum. It is misleading and not in strict accord with known realities, to paint the portrait of a Saint in rose color and sunlight, diffusing an iridescent atmosphere of cheerful gayety and buoyancy. ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... influences of God's love, and loves and gives back again, that spirit is buoyant, lifted, raised above the low, flat levels where selfishness feeds fat and then rots. The spirit is raised by any great and unselfish emotion. There is buoyancy and glad consciousness of elevation in all the self-sacrifice of love, which dilates and lifts the spirit as the light gas smoothes out the limp folds of silk in a balloon, and sends it heavenwards, a full sphere. Only service or surrender, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Like the downpour of a summer shower that suddenly clears the atmosphere to welcome the bright shining sun that follows, so this sudden outburst of grief cleared away the despondency, to be replaced by an exalted, exhilarating feeling of buoyancy and hopefulness. The tears were not dried till mirth took possession—a real hysterical manifestation of the whole party, ending all depression for the rest ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., making a dive for his beloved banjo, as he awakened to the startling fact that for some time he had been intensely serious. "This will never, never do. I must maintain my blithesome buoyancy to the end, and entertain old Bannister with my musical ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... All his buoyancy left him, and he felt like a retreating army which, after almost making good its escape, suddenly finds itself brought to a stop by a steep mountain. Weber was there—that is to say, the chief leader of the enemies, the man who would be sure to plan the attack and ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... summer is of the purest, loaded always with the freshness and the pleasant odors of the forest. It gives strength to the system, weakened by labor or reduced by the corrupted and debilitating atmosphere of the cities. It gives elasticity and buoyancy to the mind depressed by continued toil, or the cares and anxieties of business, and makes the blood course through the veins with renewed vigor and ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... "Fanny believes that this is the night of crisis," he said slowly. All the buoyancy had left his voice. "But—but Elwyn, I hope you won't mind—the fact is she's set her heart on your seeing him. I told her what you told me about yourself, I mean your illness as a child, and it's cheered ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... than this would have failed to disturb the immense buoyancy of Browning's temperament. He was twenty-three, and in the first flush of conscious power. His exuberant animal spirits flowed out in whimsical talk; he wrote letters of the gayest undergraduate insouciance to Fox, and articles full of extravagant jesting ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... theorists to be unsafe. The long wells combined with a low freeboard lacerated their imaginations. They could not speak of it without exhibiting strong emotion. "Suppose," said they, "a sea were to break into the fore well and fill it, the vessel would obviously become overburdened. Her buoyancy would be nil, and she would succumb ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... the slight, dry cough, the daily brightening cheek; nor could the lustre of the eye, and the airy buoyancy born of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... smiled and whose heart lay up in the little graveyard on the ridge. The gay, larksome light fled from his eyes, his face grew stern and sometimes forbidding. She had taken with her the one great thing she had brought into his life: ineffable buoyancy. He no longer played, for there was no one with whom he would play; he no longer sang, for the music had gone out of his soul; he no longer whistled the merry tunes, for his lips were stiff and unyielding. Only ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... possibility of it, for that would be only to make winged men. The painters of the sixteenth century, on the other hand, from a nervous dread lest wings should prove insufficient, establish a sure basis of clouds for their angels, with more and more emphasis of buoyancy and extent, until at last, no longer trusting their own statement, they settle the question by showing them from below, already risen, and so choke off the doubt whether they can rise. But Orcagna's angels float without assistance or effort, by their own inherent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... from the fact. The Gillespies rose to the occasion with the same dauntless buoyancy that they had shown in ever attempting the undertaking, and then blithely defying public opinion with a servant and a cow. The sense of their unfitness which had made the young men uneasy now gave way to secret wonder as the doctor pitched the tent like a backwoodsman, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Cadiere, all unused to shame, and very modest—for what she had hitherto suffered took place unknown to herself in her sleep—would feel so cruelly tortured, so fatally crushed by this unseemly chastisement, as utterly to lose what little buoyancy she had. She was pretty sure too, if we must speak out, to be yet more cruelly mortified than other women, in respect of the pang endured by her woman's vanity. With so much suffering, and so many fasts, followed by her ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... uncharted signs of a continent indicated that the St. Peter was hopelessly lost. Sixteen years of nagging care, harder to face than a line of cannon, had sucked Bering's capacity of resistance like a vampire. That buoyancy, which lifts man above Anxious Fright, had been sapped. The shadowy elemental powers—physical weakness, disease, despair—were closing round the explorer like the waves of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... not help wondering whether the rest of the prophecy would be fulfilled, and he became moody. He was joyful when he gained a victory, but there came also disasters, and he was plunged into despondency. The reverses affected the buoyancy of his troops, disease decimated their ranks, and desertions further depleted their numbers. Slowly but surely his mighty army dwindled away to a mere handful of dissatisfied ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... her first, nearly twenty-five years ago. It is a long time to look back on; but I well remember the bright, winning face, and cordial manners of the little lady, when she would come to the parsonage and enliven our tranquil hearts by her gay, spontaneous glee. She was full of life and buoyancy; there was even then a sort of sparkling rapture about her existence, a keen susceptibility of enjoyment, and an intense sympathy with those she loved, which bespoke her, from the first, no ordinary being. Ah, me! I have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... far from cheerful or happy was the state of mind in which he returned. In truth, even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast, there was quite enough in the discomforts that now awaited him in England, to sadden its hopes, and check its buoyancy. "To be happy at home," says Johnson, "is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends." But Lord Byron had no home,—at least none that deserved this endearing name. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... straw. These we secured to four of the stoutest canes we could find, passing them through the bands crosswise, and after a good deal of difficulty, and at the risk of undoing our work, we managed to thrust it off the bank into the river, where, to my great delight, upon trying it, the buoyancy far exceeded my expectations. In fact, though we could not have stood upon it, lying down it supported us well, and without any hesitation, after cutting a couple of light poles for steering or directing, we thrust off from the side, and began ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... intimate lures. Whether you approach in the early morning, when gulls arc wheeling above the palette of tones of the Bay, or at night, when illuminated ferryboats glide by like the yellow-bannered halls of fable, the buoyancy of ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... have been the source of the feeling, it soon passed away, and when the dead had been sewed up in their hammocks and laid to their last rest in the deep—a ceremony we performed the day after our escape—Richard was himself again, and the old careless buoyancy swelled up ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... was an exception. His skin was almost fair, his features almost Caucasian in their regularity; his dark eye lighted up with a peculiar brightness, and there was a remarkable buoyancy and glow about him every way. He was about twenty years old. How long he had been in California I know not. When he came into my office to see me the first time, he rushed forward and impulsively grasped ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... had adopted the literate man's notion of what is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned off up ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... mass of modern landscape all around, and even compared with other followers of the Barbizon school, seems somewhat somber, as compared with the vital buoyancy of Redfield and others of Redfield's type. His range of idealistic landscape subjects is intimate, but not characterized by the stirring suggestion of outdoors which Inness, Wyant, and others of his school possess. Keith's ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... a steadying hand on the human heart and brain. It gives an autumn tinge to life. Among the folk of warmer lands eternal spring holds sway. National life and temperament have the buoyancy and thoughtlessness of childhood, its charm and its weakness. These distinctions and contrasts meet us everywhere. The southern Chinese, and especially the Cantonese, is more irresponsible and hot-blooded than the Celestial of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... in the canoe's stern, and drank in the influence of the scene, his heart rose within him, and he could scarcely refrain from shouting. His wife, also, seemed to partake of this buoyancy, for her eyes fairly sparkled as he glanced from side to side. All at once Teddy ceased paddling and pointed to the left shore. Following the direction of his finger, Richter saw, standing upon the bank in full view, the tall, spare figure ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... had gradually become more composed, and the consciousness of having made a felicitous escape from a danger of her own creation restored her countenance and buoyancy. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... they had been varnished. In every spot, indeed, where her pure arterial blood, full of animation and heat, could make its way to the skin and shine through the surface, it proclaimed her high health and the vivid life and joyous buoyancy of her glorious youth. Her eyes were very large, and of a velvet softness. Now they glanced, sparkling and shining with comic humor or intelligence and wit; and now they widened and extended themselves, languishing ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... is far from that, and the very opposite from commonplace, for some of the magic of the coral seas has tinctured his blood. His career as a pearl-shell diver has been illuminated by the discovery of pearls—big and precious. In his youth and buoyancy he gambled them away. Now that his heart is subdued and slow he still looks for pearls, and tempts coy Fortune with dramatic sincerity and most untempting things. He wants one pearl more, that he may acquire the means of travelling to his ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... gale, the ship was hove to with head to wind, wallowing in mountainous seas. Such a storm, witnessed from a large vessel, would be an inspiring sight, but was doubly so in a small craft, especially where the natural buoyancy had been largely impaired by overloading. With an unprecedented quantity of deck cargo, amongst which were six thousand gallons of benzine, kerosene and spirit, in tins which were none too strong, we might well have been excused ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... incomprehensible, but conclusive; and Lance, who minded enough to have lost sleep and gained a headache, marvelled over young men's lightness and buoyancy. He had seen Dr. Brownlow, and arranged that there should be a call, as a friend, in due time after the communication, in case it should hurt Clement, and when Geraldine observed merrily that now they were quit of all the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ruined temple of the Oracle; and had fulfilled their promise with a munificence outrunning the letter of their professions, particularly with regard to the quality of marble used in facing or "veneering" the front elevation. Now, these sententious and rather witty expressions gave wings and buoyancy to the public suspicions, so as to make them fly from one end of Greece to the other; and they continued in lively remembrance for centuries. Our answer we reserve until we have illustrated ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... she said nothing. Tavernake, with a sudden impulse which had in it nothing of passion—very little, indeed, of affection—lifted her fingers to his lips and passed out of the room. He descended the stairs, filled with a wonderful sense of elation, a buoyancy of spirit which he could not understand. As he walked blithely to his hotel, however, he began to realize how much he had dreaded this interview. He was a free man, after all. The spell was broken. He could think of her now as she deserved to be thought of, as a consummate woman of the ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... companion for her, for his buoyancy turned the whole thing into fun. She could not take it too seriously in his company. They called at the Hotspur office and asked to see Mr. Wingfield. He was engaged, but Mr. Waters, the secretary, a very fat, pompous man, came ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... something of her buoyancy, forget her determination to begin the liberalizing of Gopher Prairie by the easy and agreeable propaganda of teaching Kennicott to enjoy reading poetry in the lamplight. The campaign was delayed. Twice he suggested ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... de Rosier, accompanied by M. Romain, determined on crossing the Channel from the French side; and, thinking to add to their buoyancy and avoid the risk of falling in the sea, hit on the extraordinary idea of using a fire balloon beneath another filled with hydrogen gas! With this deadly compound machine they actually ascended from ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... birch and scarlet mountain ash, and as the sun gradually dried our water-soaked clothes, and brought a pleasant glow of returning circulation to our chilled limbs, we forgot the rain and dreary desolation of the mountain-top and recovered our usual buoyancy of spirit. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... as in most animals, strictly connected with the flesh, but is attached by separate elastic fibres; and, like the frigate-bird, it can force in under the skin, and into various cellular passages in the body, air which is rarefied by its animal heat, and contributes greatly to its buoyancy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... these facts that the Jews were a robust race, but no one who has come much in contact with them will share this delusion. Nothing is more conspicuous among them than their unhealthy colouring, their frail, bent, and feeble bodies. They develop early, but they have very little of the spring and buoyancy of youth and they have everywhere a low average of physical strength. Malformations and deformities are common among them; their nervous organisation is extremely sensitive, and though they are as a race distinguished for their sound, clear, and practical judgment, they are very liable ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... now with my surroundings, and was carried on a vast stream where I felt the buoyancy of His hand who made all the worlds. I realized the mathematical truth of their motions, so well known that astronomers compile tables of their positions through the years and the days, and the minutes of a day, with such precision that one ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... he, "was a Dutch vessel, bound from Batavia to Callao, that had probably gone on her beam ends, for she was full of water. Her crew had abandoned her; I think they underrated the buoyancy of the ship and cargo. They left the poor dog on board. Her helm was lashed a-weather a couple of turns, but why that was done I cannot tell for the life of me. I boarded her; unshipped my mast, and moored the boat to the ship; fed the poor dog; rummaged in ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... their meadows, leaving a track of trampled grass behind his feet, and presently sat down by the side of one of their ways. He felt something of the buoyancy that comes to all men in the beginning of a fight, but more perplexity. He began to realise that you cannot even fight happily with creatures who stand upon a different mental basis to yourself. Far away he saw a number of men carrying spades and sticks come ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... current, which we are acquainted with as gravity. When it is exactly neutralized, the projectile weighs nothing, and the pressure of the air is enough to make it rise more rapidly than a balloon. When I have created a negative current, the projectile acquires a buoyancy equal to its previous weight. That is, it will now fall up as rapidly as it would previously have fallen down. It will not do to put on the full negative current at once, for we should acquire a velocity that would simply burn us up by friction with the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... his companions, and devoted to his profession, he soon became a thorough seaman; while the buoyancy of youth, and his playful, fearless spirit, prompted him continually to feats of extraordinary daring. In the spring of 1775, General Burgoyne took his passage to America in the Blonde, and when he came alongside, the yards were manned to receive him. Looking up, he was surprised ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... rising early too; and if they are sleepy at night, they feel delightfully fresh in the morning. A brisk walk over the common sends the human barometer spinning upwards; they feel ready for any fun that comes in their way. And, alas! did not this same buoyancy of spirit not many years ago involve certain respectable oarsmen in a difference with the executive? Tacenda, indeed! Yet if a rabbit springs up out of the gorse, and the dogs are off in full cry, can nature in such a mood ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the size of pumpkins (CITROUILLES), which had not quite melted two hours after the storm ceased. This singular phenomenon has made a very great impression. Scientific people say, the air had not buoyancy enough to support these solid masses when congealed to ice; that the small hailstones in these clouds getting so lashed about in the impetuosity of the winds, had united the more the farther they fell, and had not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and in his calmer moments he thought of them with alarm. He had tried to regain his nervous control, but without success, and his wife's anxiety only chafed him further. Gradually he lost his mental buoyancy, and for the first time in his life he really yielded to pessimism. He found he could no longer attack a problem with his accustomed certainty of conquering it, but was haunted by a foreboding of inevitable failure. All in all, when he reached the States on his critical ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... into which too much work and too much responsibility were bringing Helen Darley, when the new master came and lifted so much of the burden that was crushing her as must be removed before she could have a chance to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. So subtile is the line which separates the true and almost angelic sensibility ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he said, with a kind of bright buoyancy. "It's a complicated question, but we shall straighten it out one ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... are no hardships connected with rational living. It means to live moderately and somewhat more simply than is customary. Simplicity reduces the amount of work and friction and adds to the enjoyment of life. The cheerfulness, the buoyancy and the tingling with the joy of life that come to those who have perfect health more than compensate for the pet bad habits which ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... an open-walled country church, standing up to recite the most familiar of Christian prayers, had just reached the petition for daily sustenance, when a sub-flight of the loaves, either forced down by a vagrant wind or lacking the natural buoyancy of the rest, came coasting silently as the sunbeams between the graceful pillars at the altar end of ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... much natural buoyancy as Cecil: he got far less fun out of making these attacks. Still less had he the recklessness that made Cecil indifferent even to the charge of inaccuracy. That charge was in fact the only one that Gilbert feared. Writing to a contributor whose article he had held ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... shop very much the worse for wear, with an impaired digestion and a cuticle that showed unmistakable evidence of scurvy. For the first he was put upon short rations; for the second, sand baths on shore were prescribed. Under this treatment poor "Jeff" lost all his buoyancy of spirits and his habitual friskiness, and became sad and dejected, but bore his troubles with patience. He took to the sand baths at once, and gave forth many disgruntled grunts when lifted out ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... suppose the impression his statues must have made on the youth, whose spirit was so much akin to his own in exuberant energy, and who had the same uncompromising love of realism. The two artists had much in common in their confident self-reliance, and almost arrogant buoyancy of nature, which was the true Renaissance expression, and the outward sign of its immense strength. Signorelli caught and revived the very essence of Donatello's spirit—the love of bodily life ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the Dunciad, his anger got the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out of harmony with the character he is ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... lowest principles of chivalry (except when the unfortunate victim was of too low a rank to be removed by any other means), that when they recalled the gallantry, the frankness of speech and deed, the careless buoyancy, the quickly subdued passion, and easily accorded forgiveness of injury, which had ever before characterized young Stanley, they could not believe his guilt: but then came the recollection of the startling proofs against him, and such belief was almost involuntarily suspended. There ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... days before Hugh regained his old vigor and buoyancy; then it came to life like an Antaeus flung down to mother earth. His hour of doubt, of self-distrust, of compunction, was whirled away like an uprooted tree on the flood of his happiness. He flung reason and caution to the ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... buoyancy had hitherto borne up, appeared cowed and broken. For the first mile or two he seemed vexed at something and "out of sorts", stopping every now and again, and examining his rifle in ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... is making friends in Ashfield and in the parsonage. The irrepressible buoyancy of her character cannot be kept under even by the severity of conduct which belongs to the home of the Doctor. If she yields rigid obedience to all the laws of the household, as she is taught to do, her vivacity sparkles all the more in those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... temperament with a predisposition to envy, or an anaemic or lymphatic temperament with a saintly life, and there are well-attested cases in which an acute illness has fundamentally altered characters, sometimes replacing an habitual gloom by buoyancy and light.[3] That invaluable gift which enables some men to cast aside trouble and turn their thoughts and energies swiftly and decisively into new channels can be largely strengthened by the action of the will, but according to some physiologists ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... and was born in the imaginative brain of the Spanish writers. Had Prescott ever seen them, he would doubtless have come to the same conclusion. "Hanging" gardens do not necessarily depend from anything, "floating" islands need not necessarily float. They really have the appearance of buoyancy to-day, and hence the figure of speech which has been universally applied to them. "I have not seen any floating gardens," says R. A. Wilson, author of "Mexico and its Religion," "nor, on diligent ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... his unwonted buoyancy softened into a quietness of manner more befitting that word "happiness." Strange word! hardly in my vocabulary. Yet, when he uttered it, I seemed to understand it and ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... was, in truth, much more than his share—in increasing the yield of the soil. All this, with a host of miscellaneous duties which he voluntarily shouldered, had put an undue strain upon his strength. Yet, with his usual buoyancy, he had seemed to stand it all without flagging; and even when warned by the army medical authorities that his heart showed some weakness, he had paid little heed to the warning, had certainly in no way allowed it either to interfere with ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... divulged my secret. But that hope did not remain with me long. I waited one, two, three weeks, nervously examining my mail every day, looking for some word from her. All of the letters received by me seemed so insignificant, so worthless, because there was none from her. The slight buoyancy of spirit which I had felt gradually dissolved into gloomy heart-sickness. I became preoccupied; I lost appetite, lost sleep, and lost ambition. Several of my friends intimated to me that perhaps I was working ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... his hands, which he laid on her paternally. His straggly, wiry moustache brushed her forehead in a good-night kiss. She closed the door, and went away from it to the middle of the room before she allowed herself a tired-out sort of laugh, without buoyancy. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... home, according to her wishes, for it was a perfect night, and she a robust young creature who loved to give her energy a fling. She walked with a peculiar effect of hope and buoyancy, in spite of her habit of sombre sayings, and Rokeby found a pleasure in noting her. She looked what she was, a woman who ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... or Thetis—launched out from Olympus' top into the sea—"[Greek: ex aitheros empese ponto]," and words fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant simulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy and freedom which she showed me. You may sometimes see boys at their maddest tip of expectation stand waiting as she now stood, quivering on the extreme edge of adventure; yet even in their case there is a consciousness of well being, a kind of rolling of anticipation upon the ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... and boys I learnt that my son's influence was specially marked in his last two years at the College. It was an influence that was always thrown on the side of what was lovely, pure and of good report. Frank, free-spirited, open-hearted, his buoyancy and his rich capacity for laughter diffused an atmosphere of cheerfulness; his unflagging enthusiasm stimulated interest in athletics; his love of learning and passion for work were contagious; his high ideals of conduct helped to set the tone in morals and manners. The ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... music is illustrated not only in the character of many of its melodies, but also in the use of motivi in what may be called the dramatic portions—the fleet flood upon which the dialogue dances with a light buoyancy that is delightfully refreshing. These motivi are not used in the Wagnerian manner, but as every change of situation or emotion is characterized in Mozart's marvellous ensembles by the introduction of a new musical idea, so they are in his modern disciple's. All of them ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... He saw him in the youthful zeal and freshness of the night when he brought the well-laden haversack into his dreary cell, and which kind act was repaid by a night of suffering in the guard-house. There was too much of life and buoyancy in the picture his imagination called up, to reconcile the belief that any thing serious had befallen him; and yet the man spoke in a manner that aroused the intensity of his feelings. It was a whisper full of fearful ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... promenade Etienne was conscious of that bodily buoyancy which all men have felt at the moment when a first love transports their vital principle into another being. He offered to teach Gabrielle to sing. The poor lad was so glad to show himself to this young girl invested with ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... Eveline's fancy, than perhaps his uncle, had he known it, would altogether have approved of. In such reflections, however, she never indulged long, ere a sense of the singular destiny which had hitherto attended her, led her back into the more melancholy contemplations from which the buoyancy of her youthful fancy had for a short time ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... friends. She was the only and much beloved child of her bereaved parents;—naturally of a most amiable disposition, and of that lively temperament which gives a peculiar zest to life and all its passing enjoyments, she diffused around her somewhat of the buoyancy and sunshine which seemed ever to attend her own steps. Thus attractive and admired, and drinking largely of the cup of present pleasures, the thoughts of the future appear to have had but little place in her mind. ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... there," he said in a low voice. And, in his tone there was a buoyancy, a hint of something new to her—something almost decisive, something of protection which began vaguely to thrill her, as though that guard which she had so long mounted over herself might be relieved—the strain relaxed—-the duty ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... midst of the austere and thoughtful life he led, Andras preserved, nevertheless, a sort of youthful buoyancy. Many men of thirty were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and childlike ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of all rigs; she has a bounding buoyancy denied to the square-rigged craft, to which she stands in the same relationship as a young girl to a dowager; and the Raratonga was not only a schooner, but the queen, acknowledged of all ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... came down the stairs with the peculiar buoyancy of active stout people. "I've just sent your box. Whatever are you ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... a perfect picture of repose in motion. It strikes the eye as more surprising than the flight of a pigeon, and swallow even, in that the effort put forth is so uniform and delicate as to escape observation, giving to the movement an air of buoyancy and perpetuity, the effluence of power rather than the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... stream, and the frail bark which was to carry us down to the plains was constructed and afloat. A little before sunset, l'Encuerado, provided with a long pole for a boat-hook, pushed it out on the water to ascertain its powers of buoyancy; and the trial having been judged satisfactory, the raft was moored, and we all lay down in front of our "Villa" ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... dinner-table that night a buoyancy of spirit which surprised her companions. Mrs. Adair had to admit that seldom had her eyes shone so starrily, or the colour so freshly graced her cheeks. She was more than ever certain that Captain Willoughby had brought stirring news; she was more than ever ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... this weariness—this overwhelming melancholy that seized her in all her solitary moments? Her nature had lost its buoyancy, its old ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... provincial mayors was so little to Haydon's taste that by the close of this year we find him in deep depression of spirits, unrelieved by even a spark of his old sanguine buoyancy. 'I candidly confess,' he writes, 'I find my glorious art a bore. I cannot with pleasure paint any individual head for the mere purpose of domestic gratification. I must have a great subject to excite public feeling.... Alas! I have no object ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... turning amused, tender glances at his wife as she stood in the uncarpeted space in the window, with the sunshine pouring in on her eager face. Mrs Asplin had been married for twenty years, and was the mother of three big children; but such was the buoyancy of her Irish nature and the irrepressible cheeriness of her heart, that she was in good truth the youngest person in the house, so that her own daughters were sometimes quite shocked at her levity of behaviour, and treated her with gentle, motherly ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... invalid chair. There, propped up in cushions, lay a fat travesty of the old Saradokis. This was a Sara whose tawny hair was turning gray with suffering; whose mouth, once so full and boyish, was now heavy and sinister, whose buoyancy had changed to the bitter irritability of the ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... me with mournful awe. At one part of the cave there was a large hole or well, surrounded by a wooden railing, which our guide informed us was fathomless. A party passing through the cavern, in the full buoyancy of youth, after having expressed their surprise and admiration at the wonders of the place, were preparing to retire, when this spot was mentioned to them. Anxious to see all the curiosities, they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... He found himself now in a country and an atmosphere where "playing safe" was somewhat to a man's discredit—where the successful man was the man who dared to throw discretion to the winds and take the chance. And because money, not earned in the country, was pouring in from outside, and by its own buoyancy raising the price of land and labour, the chance, even the foolish chance, was likely to turn out to advantage and justify the daring of the speculator rather than the discretion of the careful buyer. Harris had, all his life, lived in an atmosphere of conservatism, where saving a ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... the room, reminding me, by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books: the rest gathered ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... both physically and intellectually. I experienced a buoyancy of spirits and a vigour of body I had never known before. I felt a pleasure in action. My blood seemed to rush warmer and swifter through my veins, and I fancied that my eyes reached to a more distant vision. I could look boldly upon the sun without ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... I may permit myself to indulge in language verging almost upon the indelicate, when employed with reference to the other or gentler sex, she has about her a certain air of hoydenish and robustious buoyancy which, I fear me, will but ill conform to the traditions of dear Fernbridge and the soothed and refining spirit ever maintained by the instructor body ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... compact, short coupled dog, well knit in frame. He should exhibit great intelligence in his expression, and activity and buoyancy in his deportment. HEAD AND NOSE—Should be foxy in outline or wedge-shaped, the skull being slightly flat, large in proportion to the muzzle, which should finish rather fine and free from lippiness. The teeth should be level, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... privacy with unhallowed strains of cold-blooded mockery, was brutally, fiendishly, inexpiably mean. For impurities there might be some possibility of pardon, were they supposed to spring only from the reckless buoyancy of young blood and fiery passions; for impiety there might at least be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious soul equalled its darkness: but for offences such as this, which cannot ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... from Alfred, who had been tossed from his hold and nearly cast overboard, but he caught the backstay as our yet unconquered boat rose from the blow like some brave but wounded animal. The water was several inches deep about our feet, and the good Youth had lost half its buoyancy. ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... Christine. The mother's heart cried out in the opening pages. David, at least, could read between the lines. There were the tenderest protestations of love and the most confident of prophecies, uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that convinced and delighted the girl, who had been so hungry for reassuring words. A new radiance enveloped her. But he saw beyond the wistful, carefully considered sentences. He saw the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... old, who, as specimens of physical manhood and womanhood, are far from perfect. He will see many who are young in years but who are old in looks and physical bearing. They creep or shuffle along as if bowed down with the weight of years, lacking the graces of buoyancy and abounding youth. They are bent, gnarled, shriveled, faded, weak, and wizened. Their faces reveal the absence of the looks that betoken hope, courage, aspiration, and high purpose. Their lineaments and their gait show forth a ghastly ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... the speed of his engine and Ned, who was at the wheel, gave it a little twist. Then, with a suddenness that was startling, the blazing canvas airship began to settle swiftly toward the water. It had lost much of its buoyancy. ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... off to the raft, picks out a log and tries its buoyancy with care. A long pine stem, with the bark off, and ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... his genius and his fanaticism, and uneasy by the expectations of the crowd,—he threw himself headlong into the gulf of the rushing Time, and surrendered his lofty spirit to no other guidance than a conviction of its natural buoyancy and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the bird of night. She wandered by herself in the dark and gloomy woods, as the bird flits when deprived of its mate, or the deer which carries its death-wound from the shaft of the hunter. Each day her eye lost a portion of its light, and her step of its buoyancy. She laughed no more, nor joined the dance of maidens, nor went with them to gather wild flowers; but her amusements, if amusements they could be called, were to weep and sigh, to wander alone with listless step, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... much delighted with his qualifications and prospects as he felt himself. There are two kinds of self-sufficiency; one is amusing, and the other is provoking. His was the amusing kind. It seemed, in truth, to be only the buoyancy and overflow of a vivacious mind, delighted with every thing delightful, in himself or others. He was always ready to magnify his own praise, but quite as ready to exalt his neighbor, if the channel of discourse ran that way: his own perfections being more completely ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... writing, being small, ran considerable risk of being capsized by the heavy seas. In fact, almost the only difference between lifeboats and ordinary boats, at this time, was the incapacity of the former to sink when filled with water, owing to the buoyancy of the air-chambers fitted round their sides. If filled by a sea, much valuable time had to be lost in baling out the water before the oars could be effectively resumed, and if overturned it was a ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... stones above the water line for driftwood; and succeeded in picking up a stick here and a branch there. Four of the stouter pieces he tied in a square with the rope that bound his pack; and upon this frame he piled a crib of sticks, of sufficient buoyancy to float his clothes, his pack and his gun. He stripped to the skin and waded cautiously into the water. It was of an icy coldness that bit like a great burn, and forced the breath out of his lungs like a squeezed ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... once." Iris turned towards the door, and Anstice noted with a pang at his heart that she was certainly thinner and moved with less buoyancy than of old. "You—you won't be too severe with her, Dr. Anstice? After all, she is only a young girl, and she has gone through quite a ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... rose and sank several times in the surges of the pool. His face on these occasions exhibited a mingled expression of terror and mischievous wildness; for although he could not swim a stroke, the very buoyancy of his mercurial temperament seemed partially to support him, and a feeling of desperate determination induced him to retain a death-like gripe of the rod, at the end of which the salmon still struggled. But his ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... board, curling over the bow and falling with a heavy thud on the deck, but for the most part the Seabird breasted the waves easily; the bowsprit had been reefed in to its fullest, thereby adding to the lightness and buoyancy of the boat. Tom Virtue did not go below when his friend came up to relieve him at the change of watch, but sat smoking and doing much talking in the short intervals ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... facility. When it is remembered that one of these little egg-shells—little as vessels, though of good size as boats—is often dragged through troubled waters at the rate of ten or twelve knots, and frequently at even a swifter movement, one can easily understand how much depends on its form, buoyancy and strength. Among seamen, it is commonly thought that a whale-boat is the safest craft of the sort in which men can trust ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... whereby he was brought about to a proper modesty, so that he really craved no more than for the mistress of this house to breathe the liberal air of a public acknowledgment of her rightful position. Things constituted by their buoyancy to float are remarkable for lively bobbings when they are cast upon the waters; and such was the case with Weyburn, until the agitation produced by Mrs. Pagnell left him free to sail away in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expression he gradually conformed, till it became positively irksome to himself to keep the company of his equals. Whether, however, it was that age had breached the stronghold of his good spirits, or that conscience rebuked him for having derogated from his station, certain it is that all his buoyancy failed him when away from society, and that in the quietness of his home he was depressed and dispirited to a degree; and to that genial temper, which once he could count on against every reverse that befell him, there now succeeded an irritable, peevish spirit, that led him ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever |
