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Lightness   /lˈaɪtnəs/   Listen
Lightness

noun
1.
A feeling of joy and pride.  Synonyms: elation, high spirits.
2.
The property of being comparatively small in weight.  Synonym: weightlessness.
3.
The gracefulness of a person or animal that is quick and nimble.  Synonyms: agility, legerity, lightsomeness, nimbleness.
4.
Having a light color.
5.
The visual effect of illumination on objects or scenes as created in pictures.  Synonym: light.
6.
The trait of being lighthearted and frivolous.  Synonym: lightsomeness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lightness" Quotes from Famous Books



... he repaired to the salon; he beheld Henrietta Temple, and the cloud left his brow, and lightness came to his heart. Never had she looked so beautiful, so fresh and bright, so like a fair flower with the dew upon its leaves. Her voice penetrated his soul; her sunny smile warmed his breast. Her father greeted him too with kindness, and inquired after his slumbers, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... introduced into Egypt were, like the horses, of foreign origin, but when built by Egyptian workmen they soon became more elegant, if not stronger than their models. Lightness was the quality chiefly aimed at; and at length the weight was so reduced that it was possible for a man to carry his chariot on his shoulders without fatigue. The materials for them were on this account limited to oak or ash and leather; metal, whether gold or silver, iron or ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... raised to 10,000 but this is not without great technical difficulties, which cost five years of efforts to overcome. Thus the levers require to be extremely light; this was secured by the use of an alloy of aluminium used in the construction of Zeppelins: this combines lightness with rigidity. Another difficulty almost unsuperable arises from the friction at the bearings of the fulcrum, the best watch jewels made of ruby were employed, but the supply was cut off from Germany by the war. This proved a blessing in disguise, for it forced the lecturer to devise ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... creation, wherein the marvels of the visible universe are reproduced with immeasurable grandeur, lightness, swiftness, and extension; wherein sensation is infinite, and whither certain privileged natures, possessed of divine powers, are able to penetrate, and you will have some notion of the ecstatic joys of which Cataneo and Capraja were speaking; both poets, each ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac

... too dulcet music blared forth the fanfare of two gorgeous trumpeters in scarlet and gold lace, tie wigs, silk stockings, and huge cocked hats, who filled the street with a brassy melody that suggested Gabriel's stern and awful judgment-summons rather than gave lightness and rhythm to the feet of those who made up the procession. The procession itself had some dreadful aspects and elements as well as others incongruous and comical. The humorous fancy might see something to smile at in the two grey-wigged bent old men in long scarlet coats who ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... swan-like throat joined the graceful shoulder, gave to her dress an appearance of opulence and splendour that betokened how much the ladies of Byzantium had borrowed from the fashions of the Oriental world. Nothing could exceed the lightness of her form, rounded, it is true, but slight and girlish, and the high instep, with the slender foot, so well set off by the embroidered sandal, would have suited such dances as those in which the huntress nymphs of Delos moved around Diana. The natural expression ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... to see her; first she laid a dozen of eggs in a circle on the grass, and then she beat her tambourine to the piping of the lad and the drumming of one of the men who had remained with her, and rattled it over her head with wanton lightness till the bells in the hoop rang out, while she turned and bent her supple body in a mad, swift whirl, bowing and rising again. Her falcon eyes never gazed at the ground, but were ever fixed upwards ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... feel they must see when visiting Venice. The famous mirrors are no longer made, and the glass has deteriorated in quality, as well as in the beauty of the thousand curious forms it took. The test of the old glass, which is now imitated a great deal, is its extreme lightness. I suppose the charming notion that glass was once wrought at Murano of such fineness that it burst into fragments if poison were poured into it, must be fabulous. And yet it would have been an excellent thing in the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... Epistles are the most brilliant things of their kind in American literature, full of wit, fancy, and feeling, and in all their rapid transitions, characterized by an ethereal lightness of movement, a glancing felicity of expression, which betray a poet's plastic touch equally in the sentiment and the merriment. No American poems have been more eagerly sought after, and more provokingly concealed, than these. Three editions of Fanny have been published, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... remarkable or striking passages, with the exception of those in sixths and octaves, and I beg my sister not to devote too much time to these lest she spoil her quiet and steady hand and make it lose its natural lightness, suppleness and fluent rapidity. What, after all, is the use? She is expected to play the sixths and octaves with the greatest velocity (which no man will accomplish, not even Clementi), and if she tries she will produce a frightful ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... anxious to soothe the mysterious wanderings of his mind with her softest tenderness. But his thoughts were, indeed, far from her, ever hovering over the changed image of his so lately adored Edith—ever agonizing over the lightness of a conduct so unlike her former virgin delicacy, so unlike the clinging vows she breathed to him in their hour of boding separation!—ever execrating the perfidy of his brother, which had brought on him this distracting load of guilt ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... earnest. The years, in their passage, erased certain lines from her face and restored the curves to her figure—indeed, it came to be much more than a restoration!—but they could not restore the colour to her hair nor the lightness to her heart. She looked at mankind from a cynical altitude of worldly wisdom; her wit grew keen and swift as d'Artagnan's rapier; her bon-mots had a way of passing into proverbs, or of being stolen by more distinguished contemporaries. She took ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... would be a sign of pride and topishness in them. Also a gilded raper and a feather are not topish in their nature, neither in a captain to weare them, and yet if a minister should weare them they would be signs of great vanity topishness and lightness." I wonder that topish hat had not undone the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... he answered, with what seemed to me a forced lightness. "But I am thinking of her—thoughts which she will probably ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... in love with her. Those placid matrimonial ambitions with which he had left England had been all swept away; and as he followed her—she on pony-back, he on foot—along the mountain trails, watching the lightness of her small figure against the splendid background of peak and pine, he became a troubled, introspective person; concentrating upon himself and his disagreeable plight the attention he had hitherto given to a delightful outer world, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... by the Indians of the northern rivers and lakes, is really a work of art. It is a model of lightness, and when we consider its frailty, and then the way in which it can be managed in the most turbulent currents, our admiration is divided between the craft of the maker and the surprising skill of the man who ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... sandstone. The building is divided into five stories, with a basement; the ground floor, occupied by the store, having five hundred feet of counter-room. Without, the architectural taste displayed was unexceptionably good, the building having an appearance of lightness and elegance, whilst at the same time conveying an idea of strength and solidity. The store is fitted up in the most sumptuous manner, and is of itself an attraction to visitors, to say nothing of the rich wares ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... Subsequently he joined his father's banking and ship-owning business. From 1860 till his death, he was editor of the "Economist." He was a keen student not only of economic and political science subjects, which he handled with a rare lightness of touch, but also of letters and of life at large. It is difficult to say in which field his penetration, his humour, and his charm of style are most conspicuously displayed. The papers collected in the volume called "The English Constitution" appeared originally in the "Fortnightly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... whisky was more grateful to the captain's palate, or the company assembled in her snug parlour lightsomer, or at least less dour, than was to be found at the rival inn, where the landlord was an elder of the kirk and most stern opponent of all lightness and frivolity. Whatever the cause, however, it is certain that the captain did acquire the habit of dropping in very frequently at the widow's, where he was always a welcome guest. And it was from a merry evening ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... and outstretched muzzles; and the first glimmers of light creeping over the layers of stones that supported the embankment of the park, lit up the figure of the old woman, running in the dew, with the lightness of a girl, despite her seventy years—verifying exactly each morning all the wealth of the domain, anxious to make sure that the night had not taken away the statues and the vases, uprooted the hundred-year-old quincunx, dried up the springs which filtered ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... himself—coming to see me through the woods and down the hill with the careless ease and lightness of heart of his own purple-winged child of earth and air—tan suelta y tan festiva. Here in these four or five words one may read the whole secret of his charm—the exquisite delicacy and seeming art-lessness ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... she felt an unselfish joy, a greater lightness of heart. Surely the spring would bring back some of her lost happiness to France. There would be another great drive, another tragic contest of strength, but the British ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook

... soft wrapping of fur conceals the muscular play and effort that is so obvious in the hound that pursues him, and he comes bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind. His massive tail is carried as if it floated upon the air by its own lightness. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... of Madame du Deffand it may be useful to subjoin the able development of her character which appeared in the Quarterly Review for May 1811, in its critique on her Letters to Walpole:—"This lady seems to have united the lightness of the French character with the solidity of the English. She was easy and volatile, yet judicious and acute; sometimes profound and sometimes superficial. She had a wit playful, abundant, and well-toned; an admirable ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... speed. He plods if he walks slowly and heavily, and perhaps monotonously or spiritlessly as well. He trudges if he walks toilsomely and wearily, as though his feet were heavy. He treads if his walk is suggestive of a certain lightness and caution—if, for instance, he seems half-uncertain whether to proceed and sets one foot down carefully before the other. He strides if he takes long steps, especially in a firm, pompous, or lofty manner. He stalks if there is a certain stiffness or haughtiness ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... Alexander Gordon. Hearing the horse's feet, he leaped up, and Dalyell called upon him to surrender. But that was no word to say to a Gordon of Earlstoun. Gordon instantly drew his sword, and, though unmounted, his lightness of foot on the heather and moss more than counterbalanced the advantages of the horseman, and the king's man found himself matched at all points; for the Laird of Earlstoun was in his ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... the temple around me began to develope into the noblest proportions and the most impressive grandeur. Some hundred and fifty feet over head was suspended the stone roof; and one could not but admire the lightness and elegance of its groined vaultings, and the stately stature of the columns that supported it. Their feet planted on the marble floor, they stood, bearing up with unbowing strength, through the long centuries, the massive, stable, steadfast roof, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... lightness, almost gayety of heart, was still there. For the time she had really changed places with her husband; for, believing that the end would be good, ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... royals and top-gallant studding-sails whenever she could stagger under them. Indeed, the captain had shown, from the moment we got to sea, that he was to have no boy's play, but that the ship was to carry all she could, and that he was going to make up by "cracking on'' to her what she wanted in lightness. In this way we frequently made three degrees of latitude, besides something in longitude, in the course of twenty-four hours. Our days we spent in the usual ship's work. The rigging which had become slack from being long in port was to be set up; breast backstays ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... building. If they would only take the building away and leave us a beautiful scaffolding, it would in most cases be a gain to the loveliness of earth. If I could analyse what it is that lifts the heart about the lightness and clarity of such a white and wooden skeleton, I could explain what it is that is really charming about New York; in spite of its suffering from the curse of cosmopolitanism and even the provincial superstition of ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... we went. I was no longer alone; the world was full of new light, new interest. I felt that it was good to be alive; and when my companion began to sing in very lightness of heart, I joined in, and sang ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... in all her ways. He studied her, as he would have studied a strange, showy and originally fragrant flower, or a bird of oddly attractive plumage. While she said little to him or to anyone else in his presence, he became aware of the willfulness and joyous lightness which played on her nature's changeable surface. He wondered at her influence over Father Beret, whom she controlled apparently without effort. But in due time he began to feel a deeper character, a broader intelligence, behind her superficial sauvagerie; and he found that ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... does that twining plant the oak embrace? The oak, for courtship most of all unfit, And rough as are the winds that fight with it. How does the absent pole the needle move? How does his cold and ice beget hot love? Which are the wings of lightness to ascend? Or why does weight to the centre downwards bend? Thus creatures void of life obey thy laws, And seldom we, they never, know the cause. In thy large state, life gives the next degree, Where sense and good apparent places thee; But thy chief ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... pretending she hadn't hurt him. He would always take hurts like that, with that deadly, steely lightness. By its deadliness, its steeliness, she knew that it was all true (and much more besides) that she had heard about Rosalind and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... significance from the primary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything? And let me ask another question,—If we had no faculty of speech, how should we communicate with one another? Should we not use signs, like the deaf and dumb? The elevation of our hands would mean lightness—heaviness would be expressed by letting them drop. The running of any animal would be described by a similar movement of our own frames. The body can only express anything by imitation; and the tongue or mouth can imitate as well as the rest of the body. But this ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... nettling to find his air of reserve and displeasure met with such inconsequent lightness. She never seemed to recognize the subtle changes of temperature expressed in his manner. Only his sense of what was due to himself prevented his being very chilly indeed; but as she went on with her gay chat, in utter ignorance ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... money is as the elixir of life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with this paltry sixty dollars it was suddenly possible to draw a free breath, felt a sheer lightness of spirit that showed how terrible was the persistent weight under which he was living. The very feeling of those separate bills in his pocket ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... your last. I know you will enjoy it." She fell listless again, and Breckon imagined he had made a break. "Not," he added, with an endeavor for lightness, "that I suppose you're going for pleasure altogether. Women, nowadays, are above that, I understand. They go abroad for art's sake, and to study political ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the first man who asked her, and Patty did likewise. They danced with the ease and lightness and grace of children in whom the accomplishment is born. Nancy's clumsy efforts, and the clumsy efforts of her friends, ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... this time to move inward delight, not outward lightness, and to breed (if it might be) soft smiling, not loud laughing; knowing it to the wise to be as great pleasure to hear counsel mixed with wit, as to the foolish to have sport mingled with rudeness. They were ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... filleted. The base moulding is very deep and hollow. These piers support the Early English arches, with dog-tooth ornament large in the interior, small in the exterior. Altogether, these fine arches give a very pleasing impression of lightness and grace, and make us feel "the fascination of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley

... design; it is in some respects a departure from the man's best known patterns, good as them, however, although differing; look at the way those lines run from point to point, what ease! the tenderness with which the sound holes are drawn, the lightness and freedom! that man was a born artist if ever there was one!" Another sniff from James, who doesn't believe in born anything, but that good work comes with good tools and a reasonable prospect ahead of good remuneration for extra trouble. "Don't see, sir, ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... a general accord, and it was therefore necessary that a delay should be interposed before it would be possible for him to come. He begged Richardot to persuade Alexander, that he was not trifling with him. "It is not," said he, "from lightness, or any other passion, that I am retarding this affair. I will do all in my power to obtain leave to make a journey to the camp of his Highness, at whatever price it may cost and I hope before long to arrive at my object. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... possession of the king at the sight and at the perusal of Fouquet's letter to La Valliere by degrees subsided into a feeling of pain and extreme weariness. Youth, invigorated by health and lightness of spirits, and requiring that what it loses should be immediately restored—youth knows not those endless, sleepless nights which enable us to realize the fable of the vulture unceasingly feeding on Prometheus. In instances where the man of middle life, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... cool breeze My brow you ease, And brush the pain and care away. Your waves, the while, With sunny smile, Around my feet in snowy spray Of fleecy lightness dance and play. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... waded out beyond the rushes and cast himself forward into deep water. He swam a few strokes, ducked his head, dived, and swam on again; turned on his back and floated, staring up into the sky; breasted the strong current and swam against it, fighting it in sheer lightness of heart. Boyhood came back to him with his cleansing, and a boyish memory—of an hour between sunset and moonrise; of a Devonshire lane, where the harvest wagons had left wisps of hay dangling from the honeysuckles; of a triangular ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... cog-wheel in some vast and complicated engine. A visit to Liverpool, where he opened the Albert Dock, impressed upon his mind the immensity of modern industrial forces, though in a letter to Victoria describing his experiences, he was careful to retain his customary lightness of touch. "As I write," he playfully remarked, "you will be making your evening toilette, and not be ready in time for dinner. I must set about the same task, and not, let me hope, with the same result... The loyalty and enthusiasm of the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... however, its peculiar temptations. When overwrought, and in my depressed moods, I learned to regard the ardent spirits of the dram-shop as high luxuries: they gave lightness and energy to both body and mind, and substituted for a state of dulness and gloom, one of exhilaration and enjoyment. Usquebaugh was simply happiness doled out by the glass, and sold by the gill. The drinking usages of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... rule to the effect that a slender player should use a light club and one of powerful build a heavy one; indeed, one constantly finds the slim men employing the most ponderous drivers, as if, as it were, to make up for their own lightness, while heavy men will often prefer clubs that are like pen-holders to them. Once more I suggest the adoption of the medium as being generally the most satisfactory. I have a strong dislike to drivers that are unusually light, and I do not think that anyone can consistently get the best results ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... Lida Larrimore proves to be even more popular than the last. Her books satisfy that tender mood that wants lightness and youth and beauty; that wants to be stirred by the heartaches of love and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... hosts Number my warriors fourfold. Three long years Beyond those purple mountains in the west Hostage he lies." Lightly Eochaid spake, And turned: but shaken chin betrayed that grief Which lived beneath his lightness. ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... She looked charming with her great boa tied about her throat, and sprang into the dog-cart all lightness and joy. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... facility and lightness of touch, the queen began to play the base of the piece which had been arranged by the Count de Vaudreuil for four hands. But the longer she played, the more the laughter and the unrestrained gayety disappeared ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... talk that way. It'll be fine!" But he knew that he was not deceiving her with the lightness he tried to ...
— George Loves Gistla • James McKimmey

... this singular answer he bent over a mandoline he had been holding on his knee and made the point of the quill quiver against the upper strings with incredible lightness, so that the tinkling note seemed to come from very far away and could ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... my friends," said the President, with a good-humoured seriousness, "let me tell you that the position of either of you is no joke. It is too serious for any lightness and for any passion. I do not want to hear a word about your grievances. I see quite enough. I see a lady driven from home, deprived of her children, and tormenting herself with thoughts of revenge because she has no other object. I see a gentleman who has been cruelly put to shame in ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... venture made," whispered Mary to her daughter, who, in virtue of youth and lightness of foot, had kept close behind her. Grasping the girl's arm and smiling, she heard the young man's voice cry aloud to the echoes of the rock, "Cis!" then stoop forward and plunge face and head into the clear ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... feet bare, that their view upward, and their progress among the rocks, might be less impeded;[278] their swords were slung behind them, as well as their shields, which were Numidian, and made of leather, both for the sake of lightness, and in order that, if struck against any object, they might make less noise. The Ligurian went first, and tied to the rocks, and whatever roots of trees projected through age, a number of ropes, by which the soldiers supporting themselves might climb with the greatest ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... your kind counsels, and those of my dearest friend, (pointing to me) I should never have been the guilty wretch I am to-day." Turning to me, he said: "Many a time within the last few months have I called to mind the lightness with which I laughed away your fears for my safety, when I left home for the city. O! that I had listened to your friendly warning, and followed the path which you pointed out for me. When I first ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... circumstances ten minutes later it seemed to her that she had intended to answer him. But she was now at Charing Cross. There was a lightness, an emptiness in her head which she could not overcome, and the crowd appeared to her like a blurred, noisy dream. And then the dizziness left her, and she realised the temptation she had escaped. Here, as in Piccadilly, she could pick out the servant girls; but here their service was ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... his life which makes him always, to himself and to others, much older than his years. He is well aware that, being as he is, it is impossible that Beatrix should love him. Now and then there is a dash of lightness about him, as though he had taught himself in his philosophy that even sorrow may be borne with a smile,—as though there was something in him of the Stoic's doctrine, which made him feel that even disappointed love should not be seen to wound too deep. But still when he smiles, even ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... festoons of sea-weed; the three little boys climbed like monkeys or sailors; but Lance, agile as he was, had not had the same amount of training, and felt besides that it was requisite to be ready to give a helping hand to Miss Gertrude. She got on very well, being full of lightness and springiness, only she was a little inclined to be adventurous, and ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... right!" he cried, delighted. "Better Seneca for you than sensuality; Virgilius than venery. When you are as ripe as I, you may trifle awhile if you like with lightness." Here I, listening, sniggered, for it was blown about the city that Messer Brunetto had his passions or fancies or vagaries, call them what you will, and humored them out of school hours. "For ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... travellers could see that in the space beyond the card tables, in those back regions where the pianola reigned, there were several couples twirling about—the clumsily-dressed miners pirouetting with an astonishing lightness on their moccasined ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... soundly that night, for she was quite worn out, and when Saturday arrived she awoke without a fear and with a wonderful lightness of heart. The day of the festival and rejoining passed without a hitch. The supper was delightful. The tableaux vivants were the best the school had ever seen. The games, the fun, made the Cardews at least think that they had entered into ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... grace, and her movements were remarkably free from erotic incitation. Holding a pair of gourds in which little stones rattled not unmusically, like castanets, she gyrated in the moonlight and pirouetted on her toes with such lightness and elegance that my curiosity was roused, and the next morning I had her brought to my office and asked her to account, if she could, for the marked difference between her way of dancing and that of the rest ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... bay of Puntal at his back, his knees clasped between interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white and decorative as though fashioned in icing on ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... spark of honor. No positive evil was said of him; if he were inclined to drink he was not a drunkard; if he stirred up strife in himself he was not quarrelsome. He over-reached in a bargain, but never did anything actually dishonest. He was not credited with any lightness in his moral conduct towards any village maid. That he was frugal, keen witted, was about all the good that was said, and that could be said of him. If he had won no one's love hitherto, was it likely that there was anything lovable in ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... have been, venturing out in the awful lovely stillness of the morning before any one was awake; but she felt that to move along was a delight, and that her foot scarcely touched the grass, and her whole being was instinct with such lightness of strength and life that it did not matter to her how far she went, nor what she carried, nor if the way was easy or hard. The way she chose was one of those which led to the great gate, and many met her ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant

... by publications of the kind proposed, with matter adapted to their circumstances, to their capacities, and their various turns of fancy; matter accessible to them by its conciseness and perspicuity, attractive by its variety and lightness, and useful by its easy adaptation to the familiar intercourse of life, and its fitness to enter into the conversation of rational society. Men whose time and labour are chiefly engrossed by the common occupations of life, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... full of antitheses and epigrammatic diction. There is an airy lightness in his letters and poems, but he scarcely ever actually reaches humour. The following poem, an epistle to Sir Edmund Herbert at Juliers, will give an ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... hurrying to the help of their princess, who really was in some danger, for the wind was rising to the force of a gale. The king looked on for a little, and then returned with his attendants to the palace, reflecting all the while on the extreme lightness of his proposed bride and the absurdity of having a wife that rose in the air better than any kite. He thought on the whole that it would be wiser not to wait longer, but to depart at once, and he ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... himself out, and next moment each child felt a funny feeling, half heaviness and half lightness, on its shoulders. The Psammead put its head on one side and turned its snail's eyes from ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... the most notable features of the fox is his large and massive tail. Seen running on the snow at a distance, his tail is quite as conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... tower thou hast builded, To watch the stars from it. 'Twas on that day It first seemed possible to me, that thy And, more than that, my father's fond desire Might be ... fulfilled. For I supposed the air In this thy house must have some lightness in it, So light, so burdenless!—And in our house It was so overladen with remembrance, The airy corpse of sleepless nights went floating All through it, and on all the walls there hung The burden of ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... those dark and intuitive depths of her mind she had never found time to plumb. She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had never imagined a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... through sloth and idleness soliciting religious men to be negligent in coming to Church, careless in preaching, and loose in their lives. In the marriage bed he soweth tares, treacheries, and lightness. With worldly men he persuadeth that he is nobody that is not rich, and therefore, bee it by hooke or by crooke, by right or wrong, he would have them ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... who thinks hard soon finds it hard to live, Learning the Secret Bitterness of Things: So, leaving thought, the singer strove to give A level lightness ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... not now a great and a happy change in Flora Bannerworth! As if by magic, in a few short hours, much of the bloom of her before-fading beauty returned to her. Her step again recovered its springy lightness; again she smiled upon her mother, and suffered herself to talk of a happy future; for the dread even of the vampyre's visitations had faded into comparative insignificance against the heart's deep dejection which had ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... waste product from extracting cane sugar. Its C/N is extremely high, similar to wheat straw or sawdust, and it contains very little in the way of plant nutrients. However, its coarse, strong, fibrous structure helps build lightness into a pile and improve air flow. Most sugar mills burn bagasse as their heat source to evaporate water out of the sugary juice squeezed from the canes. At one time there was far more bagasse produced than the mills needed to ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... of climate upon health and longevity, Dr. Remondino quotes old Hufeland that "uniformity in the state of the atmosphere, particularly in regard to heat, cold, gravity, and lightness, contributes in a very considerable degree to the duration of life. Countries, therefore, where great and sudden varieties in the barometer and the thermometer are usual cannot be favorable to longevity. Such countries may be healthy, and many men may become old in them, but they will ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... half-fearing that such golden showers have some illusion about them and may prove fairy favors at last. Next to this fueling comes the thirst for more. Enlarged means bring enlarged desires and ever-extending plans. The repose and lightness of heart that were at first to be the reward of success recede farther and farther into the dim distance, until at last they are lost sight of entirely, confessed, with a sigh, to be unattainable. How can people in this State wear cheerful countenances? When ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... especially is this true of the authors. Zozaya, Morote and Dicenta have passed for many years now as terrible men, both destructive and great innovators. But how ridiculous! Zozaya, like Dicenta, has never done anything but manipulate the commonplace, failing to impart either lightness or novelty to it, as have Valera and Anatole France, succeeding only on the other hand in making it more plumbeous ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... Greenwood Tree," is a blithe, bright woodland comedy and it would have been convenient for a cut-and-dried theory of Hardy's growth from lightness to gravity, had it come first. It is, rather, a happy interlude, hardly representative of his main interest, save for its clear-cut characterizations of country life and its idyllic flavor. The novel that trod on its heels, "A Pair of Blue Eyes," maugre its innocently Delia Cruscan title,—it ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... had already been heard at Pleyel's rooms, and had there obtained a brilliant success. On this occasion it was not so well received, a fact which, no doubt, must be attributed to the instrumentation, which is lacking in lightness, and to the small volume of tone which M. Chopin draws from the piano. However, it appears to us that the music of this artist will gain in the public opinion when it becomes better known. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... some extent, the relief of having unburdened his mind of secrets that had weighed upon it for so many years produced in him a certain lightness of heart to which he had long been a stranger, yet the very charm of the impression made upon him by Juliet Byrne, during his first meeting with her that morning, led him to suspect uneasily that his hopes of her proving ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... dimensions and equal weight are compared, the paper one will be found to exceed the wooden one in stiffness and in capacity to resist torsional strains in the same proportion. Frequent boasts are made that wooden shells can be and are built much lighter than paper ones; and if the quality of lightness alone is considered, this is true; yet when the practical test of use is applied, such extremely light wooden boats have always proved, and will continue to prove, failures, as here this quality is only ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... Billy!" "Lay it down, lad!" came in a rugged chorus, and Wriggs danced on with wonderful skill and lightness, putting in all the regular pulling and hauling business right to the very end, which was achieved with the most intense solemnity ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... Mr. Royce," I said, with what lightness I could muster. "The proceedings will commence in half an hour—you'd better eat something," ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... are broad, you see," and he laughs with an unusual lightness. Somehow he feels happy this morning, as if it was to be a fortunate day. "You have been so kind to Laura, that if we ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... if I had been better furnish'd with conveniencies (wherein I afterwards found, I was not mistaken) to make (among many, that might be expected to miscarry) some, that might be preferable to this, either for capacity or lightness, or both; especially if care be taken, that they be not seal'd up, whilst they are too hot. For, though one would think, that it were {235} advantagious to rarify and drive out the Air as much as is ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... There is always, however,—so I suspect,—some preliminary warning, some audible crack or visible vibration. I had kept in mind the possibility of such changes, and at the slightest intimation should have darted away,—a movement favored by the lightness of the skiff, and the extreme ease with which, under the advantage of a beautiful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... engravings representing animals, plants, and hunting scenes. They are thicker than they are wide, and the care often taken to reduce the thickness is a proof that an attempt was made to combine elegance and lightness with solidity (Figs. 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35). Nearly all of them are pierced at one end with large holes, of which the number varies. Some of these holes were later additions. May we perhaps see in them the signs of a priesthood, in which successive ranks were attained, and in which every ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... rather premature, weren't they?" he asked her, with an assumption of lightness which suited her mood as ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... the expression of her golden eyes, that seemed at times to throw out sparks of light, in the curve of her enigmatical mouth, in the substance of her skin, at once brown and yet luminous, in the play of the angular and yet harmonious lines of her body, in the ethereal lightness of her footsteps, even in her bare arms, to which invisible wings seemed attached, and, finally, in her ardent and magnetic personality, I felt an indescribable something foreign to the nature of humanity; an indescribable something inferior ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France

... lacking the frequent visit to the town or occasional chat with strangers, and the invigorating effect of open-air work, yield all the more completely to depressing cares. They become more and more deficient in the lightness and cheerfulness and mental gayety to which in any other occupation the chief toiler of the family would look for ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring

... poised quite so airily above its whorl of leaves as the delicate, frosty-white little star-flower? It is none of the anemone kin, of course, in spite of one of its misleading folk-names; but only the wind-flower has a similar lightness and grace. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... she said stoutly. "Though, of course," she added with an attempt at lightness, "I'd prefer to cross on ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... Georges, "that my fall from the balloon knocked me senseless. When I came to, I was lying in the darkness with the ripple of lake-water breaking on my ear. What amazed me was a strange sense of lightness that made me feel I could rise up and float away if I wanted to. Thinking this was a disorder of the mind, I did not attempt to move, but watched with wondering eyes the sky above me. It was lighted by two strange moons. When the day broke, and showed around me a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... ecclesiastics took their leave. Only the friends of Gonzague remained in the room, and they stood apart, eying their master dubiously, uncertain whether he would wish them to go or to stay. Chavernay took it upon himself, with his usual lightness of heart, to play their spokesman. He advanced ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the town. The general style of building offers little to admire; the houses being for the most part flat-fronted, monotonous, and graceless, without any species of architectural decoration to relieve their inelegant uniformity. It is the position of the city, the air of lightness given to it by the water, which traverses it in every direction, and the life and movement of the port, that form its chief recommendations. In their architectural ideas the Swedes appear to be entirely utilitarian, disdainful of ornament; and if a house of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... respects resemble the hero to whom he was indebted for his name. Alexander the Great, so the school-books say, was small in stature and mighty in mind. Bilk was small in mind and lanky in stature. They called him "Lamp-post" as a pet name, and as regarded his height, his girth, and the lightness of his head, the term conveyed a very fair idea of our hero's chief characteristics. In short, Bilk had very few brains, and such as he had he occupied by no means to the best advantage. He read trashy novels, and believed every word of ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... two, the wind springing up, Captain Elliott was enabled to bring his vessel, the Niagara, into close action. I immediately went on board of her, when he anticipated my wish by volunteering to bring the schooners, which had been kept astern by the lightness of the wind, into close action. At forty-five minutes past two the signal was made for close action. The Niagara being very little injured I determined to pass through the enemy's line, bore up and passed ahead of their two ships and a brig, large schooner and sloop from the larboard side, at half ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... by appealing to their own righteous conduct towards the ass and the ox. I think the man remained reclining at the table, to enjoy the appetite of health at a good meal; if, indeed, the gladness of the relieved breath, the sense of lightness and strength, the consciousness of a restored obedience of body, not to speak of the presence of him who had cured him, did not make him too happy to care about his dinner. I come now to the last of the group, exceptional in its nature, inasmuch as it was not the curing of a disease or natural ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... returned. Taking in the situation with a rapid glance, she passed through the room and out into the buttery, whence she soon returned with the materials of a modest supper. "We must be our own domestics," she said with an attempt at lightness: but the attempt was hollow; a cloud seemed to fill the low room, and press upon the inmates. The three sate down, but neither of the young people did much justice to her hospitality. After supper she held a brief ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... liking to the tall girl who had come so far to sit under her instruction. There was a fine, free air in her bearing, a lightness in her step, a sparkle in her eye, that spoke of good blood,—whether fused by nature in its own alembic, out of material despised and spurned of men, or whether some obscure ancestral strain, the teacher could ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... thank you, you good-natured dears," she said with an attempt at lightness. Then, hearing the thin rustle of a dress, she turned sharply and cast an unfriendly glance at a mild young woman with a very pointed nose, on which a pair of eyeglasses sat astride, who came meekly forward, looking self-conscious, and smiling with one side of her mouth. The man with the ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... Peele and Greene wrote plays because play-writing was popular and advantageous, in spite of their inadequate dramaturgic equipment, and just as Johnson wrote essays because essay-writing was popular and advantageous in spite of his deficiency in the ease and lightness which the essay demands, so Brougham and Motley and Froude adventured themselves in fiction. We may even doubt whether George Eliot was a born story-teller and whether she would not have been more successful in some other epoch when some other literary form than the novel ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... judge fit, and as often Mornings and Evenings, as the Nature of your Horse shall require. In the same manner you may make him to Gallop the same Rings, though you must not enter it all at once, but by degrees, first a Quarter, then a Half-quarter; and the Lightness and Cheerfulness of your Body, not the Spur, must induce him ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... you. The truth is, that mine is the wrong time of life to begin a change of that kind: it is either too early, or too late. But I have no doubt at all of the advantage of giving up meat: I find already much good from it, in lightness and airiness of head, whereas I was always before clouded and more or less morbid after meat. The loss of strength is to be expected: I shall keep on and see if that also will turn, and change into strength. I have almost Utopian notions about vegetable diet, begging ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... the conversation immediately turned on convent-life. 'Was Madam this there? Had Madam that left?' Garden chapel, school, hall, dormitory, refectory were visited; every nun was passed in review, and, in the lightness and gaiety of the memories invoked, even these maiden ladies flushed and looked fresh again, the conversation came to a pause, and then allusion was made to the disturbed state of the country, and to a gentleman who, it was reported, was going to be married. But, as Alice ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... of fine and deep chasing, which marks with us the end of the Gothic era, and which is perpetuated to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. The little open-work rose window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a masterpiece of lightness and grace; one would have pronounced ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... clustered section, the better to receive the various arches and ribs they supported. The vaulting was in square divisions or vaulting-bays, each embracing two pier-arches which met upon an intermediate pier lighter than the others. Thus the whole aspect of the interior was revolutionized. The lightness, spaciousness, and decorative elegance of the basilicas were here exchanged for a sombre and massive dignity severe in its plainness. The Choir was sometimes raised a few feet above the nave, to allow of a crypt and confessio beneath, reached by broad flights of steps ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... ostensible purpose of defending Missouri homesteads from Mormon violence, drove the stricken multitude as with goads. She had learned from her husband what the strength of true meekness could be, the lightness of heart which commits itself to God, who judgeth righteously, the glance of love that has no reserve of hatred, the infinite force that can afford to be gentle. Such a spirit had upheld Angel Halsey, but his widow looked in vain among the leaders of this band for a ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... look after her,—there was something within that held him silent, staring at the waters of the river, now sparkling like a stream of diamonds in the risen sun, the lightness gone from him and a trembling ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... Curing-grounds of Malaga, the Isles of Riaran, the Precinct of Seville, the Little Market of Segovia, the Olivera of Valencia, the Rondilla of Granada, the Strand of San Lucar, the Colt of Cordova, the Taverns of Toledo, and divers other quarters, where he had proved the nimbleness of his feet and the lightness of his fingers, doing many wrongs, cheating many widows, ruining maids and swindling minors, and, in short, bringing himself under the notice of almost every tribunal and court of justice in Spain; until at last he ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... far stronger than Coniston. But I found him crafty, and where I was awkward in handling my lightness, he seemed more ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... the sailors no respite Amycus came on at Polydeuces. He pushed in upon him, thinking to bear him down and overwhelm him. But as the skillful steersman keeps the ship from being overwhelmed by the monstrous wave, so Polydeuces, all skill and lightness, baffled the rushes of Amycus. At last Amycus, standing on the tips of his toes and rising high above him, tried to bring down his great fist upon the head of Polydeuces. The hero swung aside and took the blow ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... canter, and with the swifter movement Domini felt more calm. There was an odd lightness in her brain, as if her thoughts were being shaken out of it like feathers out of a bag. The power of concentration was leaving her, and a sensation of carelessness—surely gipsy-like—came over her. Her body, dipped ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... came a man in khaki, accompanied by a tall, slim, and graceful dog. It was he, not the man, that caught my eye and for an instant snatched my thought from Little Boy Jim rescuing a rocking-horse at the risk of his life. He was a police dog with the dignity of a prince and the lightness of a plume. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... developed and the builders grew all the time more skillful and daring, the churches became marvels of lightness and delicacy of detail and finish, while still retaining their dignity and beauty of proportion. Sculptors enriched them with the most beautiful creations of their art. Moldings and capitals, pulpits, altars, and choir screens, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... he found Caleb alone, his face buried in his hands. Seating himself he plunged into his tale, ending it with an apology to Caleb for the lightness of ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... me, Gaultier, at the ball, Ripe lips, trim boddice, and a waist so small, With clipsome lightness, dwindling ever less, Beneath the robe of pea-y greeniness? Dost thou remember, when, with stately prance, Our heads went crosswise in the country-dance; How soft, warm fingers, tipped like buds of balm, Trembled within the squeezing of thy palm; And how a cheek grew flushed and peachy-wise ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... sure, he was inclined to slur over the importance of white wine, while champagne and its perfidious makers didn't interest him in the least; but of the red wine of Bordeaux, its lightness, bouquet, and general beneficence, and the delicate and affectionate care with which it was handled, one could have heard him talk all day. Now and then younger houses discovered things that were going ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... as when the bird is flying, measures more than the height of a man; yet even such an enormous bird as this does not sink down by its own weight, but flies mile after mile upon its strong wings, every feather of which unites strength and lightness, never resting till its airy voyage is over, and it finds its nest. It is said that when storms sweep over the sea, this "ocean eagle" mounts upward until it has reached the calm which lies above the storm, and so sails upon its ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... that Finn ran down and killed a rabbit, rather, perhaps, from lightness of heart, or by way of displaying his powers to Desdemona, than from any desire for food. And so it fell out that, having slain the bunny, the hunter and his mate proceeded to amuse themselves in the vicinity, leaving the rabbit lying ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... ourselves to believe in virtue where there is no trace of humanity. Where then the moral law commands of us an action which necessarily makes the sensuous nature suffer, there the matter is serious, and ought not to be treated as play; ease and lightness in accomplishing this act would be much more likely to revolt us than to satisfy us; and thus, in consequence, expression is no longer grace, but dignity. In general, the law which prevails here is, that man ought to accomplish with grace all the acts that he can execute in the sphere of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... sudden sensation of ecstatic lightness in all her limbs; she attempted to lift a hand, and was aware that it was impossible; it was no longer hers. She attempted to lower her eyes from that broad strip of violet sky, and perceived that that too was impossible. Then she understood that the will had already lost touch ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... favour. But Dryden, always ready to supply with hope the deficiency of present possession, went on his literary course rejoicing. A lively epistle to his friend Etherege, then envoy for James at Ratisbon, shows the lightness and buoyancy of his spirits at this supposed ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... when he awoke, it was with a new lightness of spirit and refreshed vitality. A sense of freedom exalted him, a subconscious freedom, which had been absent for some days. The glory of the desert called to him. He ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... of Bronzes: it contains, among other master-pieces, the aerial Mercury of John of Bologna, of which we see such a multiplicity of copies. There is a conceit in perching him upon the bluff cheeks of a little Eolus: but what exquisite lightness in the figure!—how it mounts, how it floats, disdaining the earth! On leaving the gallery, I sauntered about; visited some churches, and then returned home depressed and wearied: and in this melancholy humour I had ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... very handsome, and lacked nothing to recommend it to me but the want of mirth and pleasant discourse, which we could neither have with them, nor, by reason of them, with one another; the weightiness which was upon their spirits and countenances keeping down the lightness that would have been ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... I was among the most enthusiastic admirers of her great excellence in her elegant art. She was the only intellectual dancer I have ever seen. Inferior to Taglioni (that embodied genius of rhythmical motion) in lightness, grace, and sentiment; to Carlotta Grisi in the two latter qualities; and with less mere vigor and elasticity than Cerito, she excelled them all in dramatic expression; and parts of her performance ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... Mecca of his imagination, the palace Sans Souci itself. The building is only one story high, not large, reminding one somewhat of the Trianon at Versailles, though lacking the Trianon's finished lightness and elegance, yet with its semicircular colonnade distinctly French, and impressive by its elevated situation. The chief, the enduring, the magical impression, however, begins to form as our foreigner commences his pilgrimage through the rooms in which Frederick ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... Linden, "the word for a butterfly and the word for the soul were the same,—they thought the first was a good emblem of the lightness and airiness of the last. So they held, that when a man died a butterfly might be seen flitting above his head. I was thinking how well this one little thing shews the exceeding ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... the sitter continued, with an assumption of airy lightness which grated on every nerve of the hearer, "you are not in a position to turn such knowledge to advantage; but I am, and I am always inclined to help a bright fellow like you when there is a good chance. So if you should come to me and say that the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... he would [3518]"now and then play the most egregious fool in his carriage, and was so much given to jesters, players and childish sports, to make himself merry, that he that should but consider his gravity on the one part, his folly and lightness on the other, would surely say, there were two distinct persons in him." Now methinks he did well in it, though [3519] Salisburiensis be of opinion, that magistrates, senators, and grave men, should not descend to lighter sports, ne respublica ludere videatur: but as Themistocles, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... supplemented if necessary from the body of the drake. The sitting bird is then left in peace till the nest has fulfilled its purpose, when the remaining down is likewise removed. This down, which combines warmth and lightness, gives a high market value to the eider, which, throughout Scandinavian countries is strictly protected by law and even more ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... to write. I have resolved to start at my Saint- Antoine tomorrow or the day after. But to begin a protracted effort I need a certain lightness which I lack just now. I hope, however, that this extravagant work is going to get hold of me. Oh! how I would like not to think any more of my poor Moi, of my miserable carcass! It is getting on very ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert



Words linked to "Lightness" :   visual property, aura, value, agility, brightness, weight, darkness, gloriole, aureole, euphoria, halo, joy, lightsomeness, light, silliness, weightlessness, highlighting, dark, glory, legerity, sunniness, nimbus, elation, giddiness, joyousness, airiness, high spirits, highlight, euphory, joyfulness, gracefulness, heaviness, buoyancy



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