"Exhilarating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have far more enjoyable weather than your autumns can boast of. If the atmosphere were no older than the date of the settlement of the colony, it could not feel more youthful, it is so light and bright, and exhilarating! The one drawback, and the only one, is the north-west wind; and the worst of it is, that it blows very often from this point. However, I am assured that I have not yet seen either a "howling nor'-wester," nor its exact antithesis, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... affections, as well as earthly desires, till my children, fancifully decked with wild flowers, call aloud to point you out, descending from the cliff, loaded with game, and accompanied by your spaniels and falcon. They rush into your embraces. You return safe, uninjured by your exhilarating sports. If, at such a moment, I can fancy that parental transport predominates over sorrow in your aspect, I lift my hands in transport to Heaven, and ask if a mighty Princess ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... happier; he ran and laughed and even sang. The fever that had troubled him all vanished. Often myself I took the place of nurse or orderly to watch him, for the man's presence more than interested me: it gave me a renewed sense of life that was exhilarating, invigorating, delightful. And in his appearance, meanwhile, something that was not size ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... adaptations to it would have already taken place and, while no essential catastrophe would need to be dreaded, no essential improvement could be hoped for in all eternity. I am not sure that a humanity such as we know, were it destined to exist for ever, would offer a more exhilarating prospect than a humanity having indefinite elasticity together with a precarious tenure of life. Mortality has its compensations: one is that all evils are transitory, another ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on foot one delightful day, and walked briskly, for the air, though balmy, was exhilarating. They followed the course of the river till they came to the lake that fed it, and was fed itself by hundreds of little natural gutters down which the hills discharged the rains. This was new to Helen, though not to Hazel. She produced the map, and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... it came about that one clear, cold, exhilarating morning in May, when the world was just waking from its dewy sleep of night, that Joanna and Alphonso, together with Gertrude and Arthyn, and young Sir Godfrey and another gentleman in attendance, drew rein laughingly, after a breathless ride across a piece of wild ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... coerced, and poenaed, and flogged through the curriculum of a public school will acknowledge that the performance is not an exhilarating one for the victim. It is preposterous to dignify this nigger-driving by the term 'education.' One might as well talk of the Chinese eagerly embracing Christianity, when, as a matter of fact, the missionaries have been ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... prowlers, outward-bound from their quest, were even now assiduously attending the little boat, and the children derived no small amusement from watching their motions in the pellucid water,—the boy occasionally almost upsetting the boat by valorous plunges at them with his stick. It was the most exhilarating and piquant entertainment he had found for many a day; and little Mara laughed in chorus at every ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... leaned on the friendly arm of the little man, walking along with him, not as he once sauntered through the promenade, a butterfly disdaining all but the brightest of sunbeams, the sweetest of flowers. Poor worm! he was half frozen in this wintry brightness, this exhilarating atmosphere, in which Summerman ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... that hang persistently about the love-making of a single woman. In the case of one or another we may find an episode or two—something dashing, something spirited or striking, something brilliant and exhilarating, or something sad. But for a woman's whole life to be spent in courtship that meant nothing and that was only a clever aid to diplomacy—this is surely an unusual and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... suffer enough. Therefore it cannot be harmful if fiction carries us into strange worlds of morality or into any mythical realm. I give you but the result of long and careful study, and I advise you to read the wildest and most exciting forms of fiction, and thereby get the healthful and exhilarating effect that comes from total mental absorption. All this will tend to the development of your nature so that you will, by contrast, better appreciate the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... moment ago held it entranced, to the contemplation of the gigantic and elemental force whose tremendous work is even now going on close to where we stand. The contrast, the range from the minute to the gigantic, is prodigious yet exhilarating, and strangely grateful. How many millions of years did it take to form those rocks (many of them are stratified, water-laid deposits) in the depths of the ocean? How many more to twist and bend them and raise them to their present height? And what ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... at this exhilarating pace, the buggy whirling around acute curves among the mighty oaks and maples, now and then dashing down a forty-five-degree descent of fifty or sixty feet, again thundering over a dilapidated bridge of resonant planks, the ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... off into various other airs quite unknown to the dancers, all swelling free and with a bold sweep of sound, as if the musician improvised as much in his music as the company certainly did in their dancing. But it was the more exhilarating for that, and never did enjoyment run higher or mirth ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... round one of the biggest trees, and through the prostrate trunk of another. To say that they were delighted is to express feebly the enthusiasm of these ladies and gentlemen, drunk with the champagny hospitality of their entertainers, the utter novelty of scene, and the dry, exhilarating air of the valley. One or two had already expressed themselves ready to live and die there; another had written a glowing account to the Eastern press, depreciating all other scenery in Europe and America; and, under these circumstances, it was ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... life on the Eighth Circuit in the mind and fancy of Mr. Lincoln yet lingered there, even in the most responsible and glorious days of his administration; over and over again has the great President stolen an hour ... from his life of anxious care to live over again those bygone exhilarating and halcyon days ... with Sweet or me."—Henry C. Whitney in his Life ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... is always something discouraging in a retreat, as there is a cheerful and exhilarating feeling attendant on an advance. Nevertheless, during their progress across Portugal, the French maintained their high reputation. Their rear-guard, commanded by Marshal Ney, made good fight when pressed by the British, but their losses were heavy before they reached the Spanish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... to our genial host and started westwardly again. We were now upon the high land of the Ridge, the backbone of the State, and though, perhaps, hardly ninety feet above the sea, the air had all the exhilarating freshness of great altitudes. All through the week which followed we felt its tonic inspiration and seemed to drink in intoxicating draughts of health and spirits, and never more than during the fifteen-mile drive between Black Creek ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... skating rink, and the particular overflow of spirits on that evening was due to the agreement that it was to be devoted to the exhilarating amusement. ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... to the anxiously expectant men, as if the guns were to be a rampart of protection to them and at the same time demolish the hostile batteries that were thundering against them from every side. And then, too, it was in itself an exhilarating spectacle to see the magnificent order they preserved as they came dashing up, each gun followed by its caisson, the drivers seated on the near horse and holding the off horse by the bridle, the cannoneers bolt upright ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... us will, too probably, become tasteless and insipid to one whose habits of excitement have destroyed the fresh and simple tastes of her mind. Stronger doses, as in the case of the opium-eater, will each day be required to produce an exhilarating effect, without which there is now no enjoyment, without which, in course of time, there will not ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... situated, and then comes a gentle declivity extending with but little interruption for several miles, winding in and out among the inequalities of an elevated table-land. The mountain-breezes blow cool and exhilarating, and just before descending into the little Charkhan Valley I pass some interesting cliffs of castellated rocks, the sight of which immediately wafts my memory back across the thousands of miles of land and water to what they are almost a counterpart of the famous castellated ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a cotton-shed on the bank of the Mississippi River.)—Thursday was a lovely day, and the sight of the broad river exhilarating. The negroes launched and reloaded the boat, and when we had paid them and spoken good-by to them we felt we were really off. Every one had said that if we kept in the current the boat would almost go of itself, but in fact the current seemed to ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... an exhilarating story about an unfortunate who was strapped to the dentist's chair, dragged nine times round the room, and finally had ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Poetry, [Greek: poiesis], or "making," creation, or re-creation, does not address itself to any single group of those faculties of our complex nature, the gratification of which brings a sense of the agreeable, the exhilarating, or the elevating. As well might we deny to didactic verse the name of poetry, as to those vers de societe in which a profound truth may be found in a comic mask, or the foibles which scolding could not reach may be reflected in the mirror held up in gayety ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... scenery, the roar of the brook in deep canyons below, whose echo he caught from afar, the exhilarating ride, the fresh morning breeze, combined with the spiritual experiences of his nature, which were daily deepening, to rouse all the poetry in Job's soul, of which he had more than the average rough country lad who rode over those eternal ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... grip is terrible; when suddenly there is a violent rupture of the crowd, it closes again, and then there are two against one, and up sparkling St. Charles street, the street of all streets for flagrant, unmolested, well-dressed crime, moves a sight so exhilarating that a score of street lads follow behind and a dozen trip along in front with frequent backward glances: two officers of justice walking in grim silence abreast, and between them a limp, torn, hatless, bloody figure, partly walking, partly lifted, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... happier, nor enjoyed myself more, than during the few minutes that the fight lasted. You know not what it feels like, for you were down in the cockpit, which was your proper place; but you may take my word for it that there is nothing in this world half so exhilarating as a good ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... out unusually early, on a fine, frosty, exhilarating morning, and we felt our minds, as well as our nerves, braced by the elasticity of the pure air. Our walk to the lake was delightful, or at least the difficulties were only such as diverted us,—a slippery ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... freshest softest lap. There they their fill of love and love's disport Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal, The solace of their sin; till dewy sleep Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play, Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit, That with exhilarating vapour bland About their spirits had played, and inmost powers Made err, was now exhaled; and grosser sleep, Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams Incumbered, now had left them; up they rose As from unrest; and, each the other viewing, Soon found ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... more than a mile from Bainbridge, is the little town of Askrigg, which supplies its neighbour with a church and a railway-station. There is a charm in its breezy situation that is ever present, for even when we are in the narrow little street that curves steeply up the hill there are quite exhilarating peeps of the dale. We can see Wether Fell, with the road we traversed yesterday plainly marked on the slopes, and down below, where the Ure takes its way through bright pastures, there is a mist of smoke ascending from Hawes. Blocking up the head of the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... "... It was exhilarating to see the vessels, how they bounded over the waves, while a sheet of foam broke out around them. I found a good deal of enjoyment, too, in the busy scene around me. It pleased me to think that I also had a part to act in ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... very dark, dingy and depressing. That night the battalion was going into the trenches again, and last evenings in billets are not generally very exhilarating. I sat and talked with those I knew, and presently the Colonel came in, and I heard what the orders were for the evening. I felt very strange and foreign to it all, as everyone except myself had had their baptism of trench life, and, consequently, ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... part of my nature that pleasure has an exhilarating effect on me; it leaves sunshine behind, and becomes a part of my inner being. The interval which parts one ecstasy from another is like the short night which marks off our long summer days. The sun which flushed the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... haste, eager to be out in the early June sunshine. There had been a shower in the night, and the air had a fine exhilarating quality, in contrast with the close sultriness of the ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... was the fickle emotion of minds without established ideas; it was with most of them, Barnet says, as it was with himself, a natural response to collective movement, and to martial sounds and colours, and the exhilarating challenge of vague dangers. And people had been so long oppressed by the threat of and preparation for war that its arrival came with an effect ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... by evaporation, and to which it is supplied by sunshine. Hence we experience a delightful freshness of the atmosphere after a summer shower, or on a frosty morning, when the moisture is not only precipitated, but condensed into frost. Frost gives off more of the exhilarating element of watery vapor than dew, because it is a step farther in condensation. Hence there is a healthful, bracing influence in cold climates, where all the moisture is firmly frozen, and a very unpleasant, depressing ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... as he spoke, and, laying hold of the rigging, descended to the deck, while the mate took his breath in short, exhilarating gasps. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... of an ice ship at Calcutta is an exhilarating scene. Clouds of dusky natives come on board to buy the apples, which are in great request, and bring from ten to thirty cents each, according to the supply. Happy is the native who has capital enough to buy ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... I have had a chance to watch the rum problem in all its phases this summer. Beginning in Maine, where the most ingenious methods of whipping the devil around the stump are adopted, then going through northern Iowa and tasting her exhilarating pop, and at last paying ten cents to see the blind pig at Minnehaha, I feel like one who has wrestled with the temperance problem in a practical way, and I have about decided that a high license is about the only way to make the sale of whisky odious. Prohibition is too abrupt ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... too—thought perhaps he was in old England again. But the British soldier hates manoeuvres and marches and drills and inspections. He would rather be left in peace in his trenches, in a 'quiet' part of the line at least, than bothered about those things. Movement, too, has an exhilarating effect on him, and so when orders come to go back into action he tramps off with remarkable goodwill. I remember one battalion of Royal Welsh Fusiliers, suddenly rushed up from rest, pulled out of the station singing a song ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... talk of the old woman. She knew that she must have lain some days in this state of unconsciousness, for the trees were greener than they had been when she had seen them last, and the sunlight was fast gaining its golden summer-like glow. There was something exhilarating in the beauty and richness of reviving nature, and even Petronella's wan cheek kindled into a flush of pleasure as she looked forth once again upon the fair world ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... present frame of mind it seemed no sufficient reason to forsake it, that after this she often met Perez there. It is a pleasant excitement, playing with lions or other formidable things. Especially when one has long been in terror of them, the newly gained sense of fearlessness is highly exhilarating. Desire enjoyed playing with her lion, calming and exciting him, making his eyes now half fill with tears, and now flash with passion. The romantic novelty of the situation, which might have terrified a more timid maiden, began to be its most attractive feature to ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... gentlemen, by way of varying the not very exhilarating study of four brick walls within microscopic distance of his eye, turned to a small square hole which admitted light and air to the hut, and looked out upon the dreary prospect before him. The wide concave of cloud, of the monotonous hue of dull pewter, formed an unbroken hood ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... her pony into a steady gallop. Royson responded to her wayward mood, and followed her lead. Though the sun was so hot that their hands would have blistered if unprotected by gloves, the clean, dry air-current created by the rapid motion was exhilarating in the extreme. They were riding through a lost continent, yet its savage ruin was sublimely beautiful. The comparatively level spot that allowed the luxury of a gallop was made up of sand and stones, with here and there a black rock thrusting its ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... it not be well for Pearl to have a lunch before she starts for her walk into the country; the air is so exhilarating, you know." ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... thousand years ago. Theophrastus, who was born nearly four hundred years before Christ, described beer as the wine of barley. It is extremely difficult to preserve beer in a hot country, still, Egypt was the land in which it was first brewed, the desire of man to quench his thirst with this exhilarating beverage overcoming all the obstacles which a hot climate threw in the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of solitude." What she said seemed at the time to be eminently right and sane; it was exhilarating to a high degree; it was lighted up by merriment, and piquancy, and salt; but it was the result of a kind of magic which needed the wand of the magician; it could not be reproduced by an imitator. It is very unfortunate, but the fact has to be faced. When we tell ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... that there had never been any thing so delightful in the world as her laugh and her unusual remarks. She seemed to him so beautiful, and so exhilarating, that he forgot all else but his admiration for her. He enjoyed himself so much this afternoon, that he was almost brilliant, and excited the sarcastic comment of Mr. Francis Barold, who was ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you cannot pass by. He fills a niche all his own and is a most promising, gifted young sculptor. His "Spring Awakening" and "Playfulness" in the Twachtman Room of the Fine Arts Palace are delightfully exhilarating little figures. ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... evidently going to pieces before the impact of a distinctly unstatic world. They were looking for "more truth and light yet to breake forth out of his holy Word" [9] because they lived in a time when new things had been happening at an exhilarating rate and when pioneering adventure and general travel in a world of open avenues were already beginning to have that liberating effect which has increased with every ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... uncertain second youth of the New England year, but of regularly recurring lucid intervals in the weather system of Virginia fall and winter, when the best our climate is capable of stand revealed,—southern days with northern blood in their veins, exhilarating, elastic, full of action, the hyperborean oxygen of the North tempered by the dazzling sun of the South, a little bitter in winter to all travelers but the pedestrian,—to him sweet and warming,—but in autumn a vintage that intoxicates all ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... weather covered the ornamental waters with ice, and gave opportunity for the healthy and exhilarating exercises proper to the season. Those who ventured before the ice was well formed ran considerable risks, and many persons were immersed; but the only disastrous accident occurred on the 20th of January, when four lads were drowned in St. James's Park. The ice everywhere was crowded with performers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... strain; a little pathetically anxious to act an indifference she could not possibly feel, concerning that rumour, and throw herself heart and soul into their compact of forgetting everything for a little while except the sunshine and the exhilarating dash ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... of the listener to Heaven ifone were not so positive that a moral fiend sang them;— here sometimes may be seen the stout chanteuse who is the glory of open-air cafes in the Champs Elysees, kneeling with difficulty on a velvet hassock and actually saying prayers. And one must own that it is an exhilarating and moving sight to behold such a woman pretending to confess her sins, with the full delight of them written on her face, and the avowed intention of committing them all over again manifesting itself in every turn of her head, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... came a severe frost and a little snow; and if one did not fall while walking, it was very well. After that we had the thaw; and Washington assumed its normal winter condition. I must say that, during the whole of this time, the atmosphere was to me exhilarating; but I was hardly out of the doctor's hands while I was there, and he did not support my theory as to the goodness of the air. "It is poisoned by the soldiers," he said, "and everybody is ill." But then my doctor was, perhaps, a little tinged ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... ascent under the exhilarating circumstances of his new and increasingly responsible position, and to have the consciousness of a great mission, which nerved him to surmount all that was dubious in his earlier career. Nor was he behind ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... a teacher with such a conception of life and of her work finds teaching school the very reverse of drudgery. Each day is an exhilarating experience of life. Her pupils are a part of life to her. She enjoys life and, hence, enjoys them. They are her confederates in the fine game of life. The bigness and exuberance of her abundant life enfolds them ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... drawing blank pervaded the mind as the eye expectantly watched the fast dwindling mail in the hands of the N.C.O. bawling out each name. The exhilarating thrill of glad delight with which you realised YOUR name and number had been called almost at the end of the file ... the sense of lonely desolation when there has been nothing for two days ... back to that torn copy of a magazine that has been read, re-read, and re-read again ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... day was glorious, and she went downstairs with the springy step of hope. She was thinking exhilarating thoughts, thinking that there were to be no ripples of misgivings and misunderstandings on the clear surface of this first morning. They would all look into each others' candid eyes at breakfast, and read a mutual consciousness of interests henceforward ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... and other observations, I deduced the following conclusion: Champagne, the first effect of which is exhilarating, in the result is stupefying, on account of the excessant carbonic ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... of the flat green meadows, the smooth waters of the thoroughfare, the sails afar at the inlet and the long side of the sea-city stretching out against the sky at the very end of the earth is refreshing and exhilarating to any one. It gave a doubly keen ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... worldly knowledge. He hinted that in time he expected to venture into even deeper literary waters—poetry, and a novel, perhaps. As he talked, he realized that for the second time that day he was looked upon with approval. Being accepted at his own estimate proved a new and exhilarating sensation. ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... to Barbara, who was unaccustomed to much walking, but the other three girls reveled in the exhilarating air and bright morning sunshine. Reaching the first cliffs, Polly explained about the volcanoes of that section of Colorado and showed the visitors many interesting formations ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills,—that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating—he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... bubbling over with ripples of mirth. Her incessant chatter and laughter awoke the long- hushed echoes of the ancient house to responsive gaiety,—and every pale lingering shadow of dullness or loneliness fled away from the exhilarating effect of her presence, which acted at once as a stimulant and charm to Maryllia, who welcomed her ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of experience, had become difficult to reach. On the day Tom was admitted to see him, he had been more than usually badgered. Just as Tom approached his door a little man opened it cautiously and slid out, with the air of one leaving within the apartment things not exhilarating on retrospect. He was an undersized country man, the cut of whose jeans wore a familiar air to Tom's eye even at a distance and before he lifted the countenance which revealed ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rose, passing in front of him down the Row. He watched their scarlet and blue figures, moving slowly towards the sun, and another couple close to the rails, crossing those receding forms. Very straight and tall, there was something exhilarating in the way this new couple swung along, holding their heads up, turning towards each other, to exchange words or smiles. Even at that distance they could be seen to be of high fashion; in their gait was the almost insolent poise of those who are above doubts and cares, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... - Still grinding at Chap. XI. I began many days ago on p. 93, and am still on p. 93, which is exhilarating, but the thing takes shape all the same and should make a pretty lively chapter for an end of it. For XII. is only a footnote ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... travelling through France, I had learnt how wine was made; and our vintage succeeded to perfection. On the winter nights, as we sat around our cheerful log-fire, Mary was accustomed to deal out to us a measure a-piece of the exhilarating drink. It was only, however, after a hard day's work or hunting, that we were allowed to draw ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to the spirits, and when he had washed as well as he could by the aid of a cream-jug full of water and a saucer, and a towel handkerchief, and without the aid of soap, he dressed, and sallied out with the intent to lose himself in Paris. There is nothing so exhilarating as the first sight of a foreign city, and Paul wandered on and on, past the Palace of Justice and over the bridge, and, turning to the left, made along the Rue de Rivoli, passed the far-stretching ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... returning to their homes, were as boisterous as their lives. In food they looked more to quantity than quality, and one of their most determined prejudices against Christianity was that it did not sanction the eating of horse flesh. An exhilarating beer, made from heath, or from the spruce tree, was their principal beverage, and the recital of their own adventures, or the national songs of the Scalds, were their most cherished amusement. Many of the Vikings were themselves Scalds, and excelled, as might ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... is as marked as the likeness. 'Candide' is not adapted for family reading, whereas 'Rasselas' might be a textbook for young ladies studying English in a convent. 'Candide' is a marvel of clearness and vivacity; whereas to read 'Rasselas' is about as exhilarating as to wade knee-deep through a sandy desert. Voltaire and Johnson, however, the great sceptic and the last of the true old Tories, coincide pretty well in their view of the world, and in the remedy which they ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... into her life before. First of all there was the drive, four whole miles with Miss Rose in her dear little pony-carriage, and actually wearing one of Miss Rose's old golf cloaks wrapped snugly round her. The sun shone and the birds sang, and the air was exhilarating with the first touch of frost; the trees glowed warmly in their autumn ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... religiously followed the doctor's mandate and did nothing whatever, except moon about the house and garden and go out for two hours a day in a Bath chair. That did break the monotony to a certain extent. There is more excitement about Bath-chairing—especially if you are not used to the exhilarating exercise—than might appear to the casual observer. A sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might not understand, is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute that the whole concern is going over, a conviction which becomes especially ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... flouted, he had gradually come to consider with large respect. The work drew him amazingly; it was applied science of a peculiarly fascinating sort. And in the six days of the Colonel's illness in May, when he had full charge of the editorial page—and again now—he had an exhilarating consciousness of personal power which lured him, oddly, more than any sensation he had ever had ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... had never attached to their smooth white slopes and sharp pinnacles. The air, although intensely cold, was clear and bracing; and as our dogs bounded at a gallop over the hard, broken road, the exhilarating motion caused the very blood ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... bear the stress of wind and storm with becoming resignation, feeling personally thankful for indemnity from fatal results. Such a voyage does not lend itself to much diversion or variety of interests, but there were the usual attempts at gayety in the line of dancing, music, and the exhilarating "Captain's dinner"; hence with congenial people the days were pleasantly whiled away. Among the fellow passengers were some former friends, but I will mention only those who in a sense ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of the hills. The blue lake, the woods in tints of pale green and pinkish brown, nestling into the fells, the copses white with wind flowers. Everywhere, softness and austerity side by side—the "cheerful silence of the fells," the high exhilarating air, dark tortured crags and ghylls—then a soft and laughing scene, gentle woods, blue water, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time I have been noticing the advanced style of writing in the two or three "Down East" agricultural papers that come under my notice. They bear evidences of "culcha" that are truly encouraging, but here is a case that is actually exhilarating, or would be were it not somewhat bewildering. It is from an article about the Jersey Lily, Mrs. Langtry: "Who ever vocalized such a word with a more complex intonation, or with a more marvellously intimate ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... too, felt warm. He had listened to every word and had made many notes. The presence of this man had an exhilarating effect upon him. It seemed as if Mr. Racine Mudge still carried about with him something of that breathless Higher-Space condition he had been describing. At any rate, Dr. Silence had himself advanced sufficiently far along ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... regained her dignity was so exhilarating that Susan was careful, during the next few weeks, to preserve it. She bowed and smiled to Peter, answered his occasional pleasantries briefly and reservedly, and attended ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... you imagine custom and formality of official life have so overcome these high-born ladies as to make them lay figures who dare not raise their eyes except by rule. There were three American guests, and only by being as nimble as grasshoppers did we hold our own in the table talk which was as exhilarating as a game of snowball ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... in New England, even at its best, is a test of physical endurance. With warm clothes and sheltering homes today, we find compensations for the cold winds and storms in the exhilarating winter sports and the good cheer ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... o'clock in the afternoon the young people have been dancing—waltzing, polkaing, dancing the csardas—mostly the csardas, the dance of the nation, of the people, the most exhilarating, most entrancing, most voluptuous dance that feet of man have ever trod. The girls and lads are indefatigable, the slow and languorous Lassu (slow movement) alternates with the mad, merry csardas, they twirl and twist, advance, retreat, separate and reunite in a mad, ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sampled. No fire seemed able to impart any cheerfulness to the gloomy den we were shown into, and the dinner finally produced by the khansamah-kitmaghar-chowkidar (for a single tawny-bearded ruffian represented all these functionaries when the morning tip fell due) was not of an exhilarating nature. Strolling out to have a look at the town of Baramula, I shivered to see a heap of snow piled up against the wall. It snowed here, heavily, three days ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... climbed the gently sloping prairie. The morning was perfect, and belied, in its beauty, even a suggestion of lurking harm. The air, crystal-clear and exhilarating, brought far things magically near to the eye. On every hand shimmered the springing grass, now, a pale emerald with the wind brushing it, again, in the still places, a darker green, and yet again—under the ravine's fringing willows, where the deer nibbled—a cool black. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the biography for some other interesting traits of Saint Joseph of Copertino, I find, in marked contrast to his heaven-soaring virtues, a humility of the profoundest kind. Even as a full-grown man he retained the exhilarating, childlike nature of the pure in heart. "La Mamma mia"—thus he would speak, in playful-saintly fashion, of the Mother of God—"la Mamma mia is capricious. When I bring Her flowers, She tells me She does not want ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... house of mine by the marsh, there comes a silence at this hour which is exhilarating. Out of these winter midnights come strange sounds, whirring flights of sea-fowl whistle over my roof, in late for a lodging on the marsh. A heavy peasant's cart goes by, groaning in agony under the brake. When the wind is from the sea, it is like a bevy of witches shrilling my doom down ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... and, softly tickling the bachelor's ear with the feathers of an arrow-shaft, whispers: "Pretty nice, isn't it, eh? Rather pleasant to have that girl sitting there, don't you think? Enjoy having her notice your butter-plate was empty? Think it exhilarating to hand her those rolls? Looks nice, doesn't she? Says 'Thank you' rather prettily? Makes your lonely breakfast seem mighty dull, doesn't it? How would you like to have her pour your coffee for you to-morrow, my boy? How would it seem to ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Laurie, as she usually did strange men, to their great detriment. Then he seemed quite inspired, though the burial customs of the ancients, to which the conversation had strayed, might not be considered an exhilarating topic. Jo quite glowed with triumph when Teddy got quenched in an argument, and thought to herself, as she watched her father's absorbed face, "How he would enjoy having such a man as my Professor to talk with every day!" Lastly, Mr. Bhaer was dressed in a new suit ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... pronounce the blessing before he touched the exhilarating beverage, in such a tone as to leave no doubt in the minds of those present that he fully appreciated ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... in Maine in the September election, 1880, had a most depressing effect upon the Republicans and an equally exhilarating one upon the Democrats. The paralyzing effect of the simple utterances in popular elections almost makes one think that every candidate should follow Matthew Quay's famous advice to his candidate for governor: "Beaver, keep your ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... degree offensive. He was something of a sportsman, too, and he called by arrangement the next morning, after his introduction to the Cap Martin household, and conducting her to a sheltered cove, containing two bathing huts, he introduced her to the exhilarating Mediterranean. ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... of healthy maturity,—to see intelligence and years and fine appearance allied to great amiability and a youthful enthusiasm for noble deeds, an enthusiasm which was ready to give blood and treasure to the cause it espoused from love. Such a reality is most exhilarating and delightful, a fact that makes us take a much more hopeful view of humanity. We value our photograph of Colonel Peard almost as highly as though the picturesque poncho and its owner had seen service in America instead of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... provided herself lay unopened in her lap. She realized that these vast snow-covered stretches might easily drive one mad with their loneliness and desolation if one had to live among them. But to rush through them as they were doing was exhilarating. It was all so strange, so contrary to any previous experience, that Nora had an uncanny feeling that they might easily have left the earth she knew and be flying through space. She whimsically thought that if at the next stop she ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... which made me think of the cruelties I had heard were practised on those shores, of the barbarous slave trade, of the fearful idolatries of its dark-skinned children, of its wild beasts, and of its deadly fevers. There was nothing exhilarating, nothing to give promise of pleasure or amusement. As our gallant brigantine glided gaily on, sending the sparkling foam from her bows through the tiny wavelets of the ocean, which glittered in the radiance of a blue and cloudless sky, and her sails filled with the fresh sea breeze, these feelings ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... into which her helpless dependence had been suddenly transformed. Every one around her watched for her looks and words, and the effect on her was simply that of having passed from a trifling imprisonment into an exhilarating air which made speech and action a delight. To her mind it was all a gift from others' goodness. But that word of Deronda's implying that there had been some lack in his life which might be compared with anything she had ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... she went out walking with her pupil they were free to go where they pleased, without restriction of time—except the time of dinner. To breathe the delicious air, to look at the glorious scenery, were enjoyments so exquisitely exhilarating that, by Sydney's own confession, she became quite light headed with pleasure. She ran races with Kitty—and nobody reproved her. She rested, out of breath, while the stronger child was ready to run on—and no merciless voice cried "None of your laziness; ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... chasm in the mountain side. Moreover, there are frequent showers, and heavy dews by night, to refresh the surface of the ground. Thunderstorms occur on the tops of the mountain and in the open sea; but very seldom within the enchanted girdle of the crater. The air is remarkably pure, sweet, and exhilarating, owing doubtless to the high percentage of oxygen it contains, and the absence of foreign matter, such as microbes, dust, and obnoxious fumes. In fact, we all felt a distinct improvement in our health and spirits, a kind ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... satire, in facility and variety of versification, in ingenious fancy, in joyousness of spirit and pure love of fun, excel the longer poems to which we have just referred. We have found the great majority of them exceedingly exhilarating reading, and, if our limits admitted an extended examination, we feel sure that the result of the analysis would be the eliciting of unexpected merits rather than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... all was ready in the supper-room. The hour was eleven. Our guests passed in to where smoking viands, rich confectionery and exhilarating draughts awaited them. We had prepared a liberal entertainment, a costly feast of all available delicacies. Almost the first sound that greeted my ears after entering the supper-room was the "pop" of a champagne cork. I looked in the direction ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... more formidable danger. Most of the guards enjoyed as enthusiastically as their lord and master the agony of a luckless wretch who was condemned to this punishment. To them it afforded amusement of the most exhilarating character. But the prisoners, now thoroughly intimidated, took every precaution to deny the guards an opportunity for which they were so much on the alert. Consequently, being deprived of the chance to have any of us strung up on legitimate grounds, they commenced to harass and exasperate ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... a cold evening in February. The mercury had run down till it had almost disappeared in the bulb and Winnipeg was having a taste of forty below. Through this exhilarating air Kalman was hurrying home as fast as his sturdy legs could take him. His fingers were numb handling the coins received from the sale of his papers, but the boy cared nothing for that. He had had a good afternoon and evening; for with the Winnipeg men ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... hundred miles in width, its farms a hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds thousands to the count—were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous nature. There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early to one of the world's richest sources of supply at a minute when it was only beginning to be tapped. Out in the Camp there was an impression of fecundity, of earth and animal alike, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... walks hither and thither through Lynn, stairs climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming, singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000 paid to Lynn shoe employees ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... and coming, giving and receiving their final instructions. The baying of the hounds, and the dashes here and there of color from pink coats, all went to make up a most charming and exhilarating picture. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Mr. Polly at the time was at once confusing and exhilarating; but it led him to eat copiously and carelessly, and long before the end, when after an hour and a quarter a movement took the party, and it pushed away its cheese plates and rose sighing and stretching from the remains of the repast, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... this faithful companion, we determined to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of fir wood rose immediately behind the huts. We were anxious to see what lay on the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating climb we learned that the mountain was but a huge overhanging shoulder, the rocky head of the giant rising up in the midst of wide sweeping moors some six miles distant. We changed, therefore, the object of our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... fierce within him which gave him a measure of freedom from his constant pain. All before spread the great bobbing herd. The wind whistled, the dust choked him, the gravel stung his face, the strong, even action of his horse was exhilarating. He lost track of Larry, but he stayed close to Slingerland. The trapper kept shooting at intervals. Neale saw the puffs of smoke, but in the thundering din he could not hear a report. It seemed impossible for him to select ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... love-making—and I suppose we should make love in a perfunctory way—We're all of us so bound by conventions. We try to feel dismal at funerals, when often the weather is radiant and the ride down to Brookwood most exhilarating. And love-making is supposed to go with marriage ... heigh-ho! What should you say if I did marry—Major Armstrong...? Did you ever hear of such a ridiculous name as Petworth? I should have to call him 'Pet' and every one would think I had gone sentimental in middle age. How can ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... rose from the table and separated. The two men who were intoxicated were carried away by some of the courtiers, and the king with marks of displeasure quitted the hall. I was again left alone with my charming princess, and inflamed with the exhilarating draught which I had taken, I threw myself at her feet, declaring my violent passion, and my wish never to quit the island, if I could be blessed with a reciprocal feeling on her part. I perceived that I had made an impression; ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... of—oh, so many smiles. The philosopher perceives just enough of the heart-beat of the world to keep the human touch, but not enough to kill the outbursts of unreasoned joy which make the picture of life so exhilarating and jolly. And yet . . . and yet . . . oh yes, happiness does lie in remembering little, perceiving less, and in pinning your love and faith in God—in human love, in human gratitude, in human unselfishness scarcely at all. Happiness, I say, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... strong that he did it as if I were a bundle of down instead of a tall girl, and I had much the same exhilarating sensation I used to have as a wee thing when I rode wildly on Mohunsleigh's foot. I was glad when we came to the fences, and that there were a good many of them. But I wasn't at all glad when Mr. Brett jumped me over into a grass meadow where there was a whole drove of ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the 15th December. Finally, there came off the sixth of these Chatham readings, on the 19th December, 1865, when the "Carol" was repeated, with the addition of the great case of "Bardell versus Pickwick." Upwards of L400 were thus, as the fruit of these exhilarating entertainments, poured into the coffers of the Chatham Institute. It can hardly be wondered at that, in the annual reports issued by the committee, emphatic expression should have been more than once given to the deep sense of gratitude entertained by them for the services rendered to the institution ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Indian costumes and implements of war, with some minerals and fossils, a portion of which he collected while on the expedition to the Rocky mountains with Lewis; and also, two sods of good black turf, from the bogs of Allen, in Ireland. A sight which was quite exhilarating, and reminded me so strongly of the fine odour which exhales from the products of illicit distillation, that guagers and potteen, like the phantoms of hallucination, were presenting themselves continually to my imagination for ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... The exhilarating balm infused into the water offered by the angel to Hagar in the desert, must have been the same cordial which flowed through Cesar's veins as he listened to these words. The wily banker retained the horrible pronunciation of the German Jews,—possibly that ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Alonzo returned to his studies; but, different from his former visits to Melissa, instead of exhilarating his spirits, this had tended to depress them. He doubted whether Melissa was not already engaged to Beauman. His hopes would persuade him that this was not the case; ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... behind; and children were digging with their little wooden spades; and there were donkey-carriages far out on the sands,—a pleasant and breezy drive. A whole city of bathing-machines was stationed near the shore, and I saw others in the seaward distance. The sea-air was refreshing and exhilarating, and if S——- needs a seaside residence, I should think this might do as well as ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pang, the Chinese general, and Llewellyn Evans, the leader of the Cardiff excursionists, seems to have been impressive to a degree. The former had spoken throughout in pure Chinese, the latter replying in rich Welsh, and the general effect, wired the correspondent, was almost painfully exhilarating. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... commanded their services, and would rely on their devotion when occasion arose to call for it. Young, well-bred, brave, and loyal, they asked no more: they were ready to prove their dutiful obedience, and prayed for a fight as the best and most exhilarating mode of ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... turning round, proceeded to walk leisurely across the Heath. The grass was soft and springy, the earth seemed to answer with agreeable elasticity to his tread, the air was exquisitely clear, keen, and exhilarating. He began to move more briskly, feeling quite boyish again. The years seemed to roll away from him as rifts of sea fog roll away ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... forth fruit and grain in such excessive abundance and variety for men or for brutes? The plentiful and exhilarating fruit of the vine and the olive-tree are entirely useless to beasts. They know not the time for sowing, tilling, or for reaping in season and gathering in the fruits of the earth, or for laying up and preserving their stores. Man alone has the care and advantage ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Madelinette. When he reached the drawing-room, surrounded by eager listeners, she was beginning to sing. Her bearing was eager and almost tremulous, for, with this crowd round her and in the flush of this gaiety and excitement, there was something of that exhilarating air that greets the singer upon the stage. Her eyes were shining with a look, half-sorrowful, half-triumphant. Within the past half-hour she had overcome herself; she had fought down the blind, wild rebellion that, for one moment as it were, had surged up in her heart. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beauty of Grecian scenery inspired many of the most striking passages of her poets; and it is thought that the exhilarating atmosphere and brilliant skies of Attica were not unrelated to the lofty ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Loch Nan. I packed some scones and marmalade into my creel, filled my flask with whiskey, my cigarette-case with cigarettes, and started on the familiar track with the happiest anticipations. The Lone Fisher was quite out of my mind; the day was exhilarating—one of those true fishing- days when you feel the presence of the sun without seeing him. Still, I looked rather cautiously over the edge of the slope above the loch, and, by Jove! there he was, fishing the near side, and wading deep among the reeds! I did not stalk him this time, but set off running ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... screening the face of a girl who lies dreaming, stretched at full-length on the glowing stones, while a few yellowish mountain-goats spring from stone to stone in search of pasture as gaily as though they found the midday heat pleasant and exhilarating. From time to time the girl seizes the herdsman's crook that lies beside her, and calls the goats with a hissing cry that is audible at a considerable distance. A young kid comes dancing up to her. Few beasts can give expression ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... trips to Belfast began. He found them much less exhilarating then he had imagined they would be. He inspected the City Hall in the company of a beadle and was informed, with great preciseness, of the cost of the building and of the price paid to each artist for the ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... I went down to the house of a settler a mile below, and engaged the good dame to make us a couple of loaves of bread, and in the evening we went down after them. How elastic and exhilarating the walk was through the cool, transparent shadows! The sun was gilding the mountains, and its yellow light seemed to be reflected through all the woods. At one point we looked through and along a ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... so exhilarating an adventure that perhaps it will not be out of place if I tell you a little about him. There are not ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... of a wonderfully active, zealous, and successful life, this book scarce has its equal; almost any reader must find it exhilarating; but to me it yielded such special sustenance as in those days I could not have found elsewhere, and lacking which I should, perhaps, have failed by the way. I am not referring to Dickens's swift triumph, to his resounding fame and high prosperity; ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing |
