"Playfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forbid any more talking," said Arthur, with a mixture of authority and playfulness. "Here is the ambulance. Help me to lift him in, men," to the by-standers. "And you, cousin Zoe, get into your carriage, and drive on behind it, or ahead ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... was Uncle Jem, whom she did love, and whom she felt might have said a kind word for her; and Aunt Anastasia, who was that sort of a person that no one since she was born had ever thought of diminishing the five syllables by the use of any shorter name given in playfulness or love. No one, till that moment at least, had ever thought of calling her anything but Anastasia; but at that moment naughty Bab, with her little flattened nose and big mournful eyes, broke the spell by calling out, "Anasta-sia, indeed! Aunt ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of mankind and their affairs great and multifarious"; but it did not state truly, that, "in all his essays, verse or prose, serious or comic, he never trespassed against decorum or sound morals," or that "the keenness of his wit was combined with such playfulness of fancy, good-humor, and kindness of natural sentiment, that his merits were ungrudgingly acknowledged even by those of politics ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... seen Dunstone and his donah," he said. Clearly she was one of those rare women who cannot dress. And that was not all. A certain buoyancy, hitherto unsuspected, crept into her manner, as the corpuscles multiplied in her veins—an archness. She talked more, and threw up a spray of playfulness. And, with a growing energy, she began to revise the exquisite aesthetic balance of Dunstone's house. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... his thoughtfulness, and bade him "good-night," without a responsive gleam of playfulness. Her heart was weighed down with sick horror. The almost certainty of which he spoke with professional coolness, was to her, who had never within her recollection stood beside a death-bed, a thing too frightful to be anticipated without dread, however its terrors might be alleviated by affection ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the infant in its innocence; childhood in its playfulness; youth in its beauty; manhood in his usefulness, and old age in its decrepitude. All, all fall alike before the withering ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... seems to me to have had something in common with the man whom Carlyle least appreciated. The society of Erasmus Darwin had, to my mind, much the same charm as the writings of Charles Lamb. There was the same kind of playfulness, the same lightness of touch, the same tenderness, perhaps the same limitations. On another side of his nature, I have often been reminded of him by the quaint, delicate humour, the superficial intolerance, the deep springs of pity, the peculiar ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... around upon the company he took occasion to teach a lesson in true charity. He told his host—and there was something of playfulness in his voice—that in selecting guests one should invite not only the rich, lest he might be so unfortunate (?) as to receive an invitation in return, but also the poor, who could not return the favor. Here again, Jesus was not giving merely rules of social hospitality; he ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... "Asirvadam the Brahmin" is a prose poem that lets us into the secret of the Indian revolt. It is seldom that we meet with volumes of more real power than these, or whose force is so artistically masked under ease and playfulness. We prefer the "Old" part of the book to the "New." It seems to us to show a better style of handling. There is something of melodrama in the style of the California stories,—a flavor of blue lights and burnt cork. At the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... become near and dear to us. At that first visit, I saw Laetitia Landon in her grandmamma's modest lodging in Sloane Street,—a bright-eyed, sparkling, restless little girl, in a pink gingham frock,—grafting clever things on commonplace nothings, frolicking from subject to subject with the playfulness of a spoiled child,—her dark hair put back from her low, but sphere-like forehead, only a little above the most beautiful eyebrows that a painter could imagine, and falling in curls around her slender throat. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... favorite among his school-fellows; and, though he was pronounced by some to be a "softy," and by others honored by the equally comprehensive and euphonious titles of "spooney" and "muff," there were few who were not won by his gentle good-nature, and the uniform good temper, and even playfulness, with which he bore the immoderate quizzing that fell to his lot, as a new boarder arrived in the middle of the half-year. If there were an errand to be run among the seniors, it was, "Louis Mortimer, will you get me this or that?" if a dunce wanted helping, Louis was sure to be applied ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... cold and colourless, Will stretch before her their whole weary length Amid the sameness of obscurity. She wanted not seclusion, to unveil Her thoughts to heaven, cloister, nor midnight bell; She found it in all places, at all hours: While, to assuage my labours, she indulged A playfulness that shunned a mother's eye, Still, to avert my perils, there arose A piety that, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... are bibliomaniacs justly to appreciate the classical lore, and incessantly-active book-pursuits,[298] of this scholar and martyr! How he soared "above his compeers!" How richly, singularly, and curiously, was his mind furnished! Wit, playfulness, elevation, and force—all these are distinguishable in his writings, if we except his polemical compositions; which latter, to speak in the gentlest terms, are wholly unworthy of his name. When More's head was severed from his ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of Firmness lies Heroism, or Hardihood, next to which come Health and Oratory, then Approbativeness and Playfulness, running into Sense of Honor and Magnanimity. Approbativeness, Playfulness, Honor, Magnanimity and Self-sufficiency might as one group be almost included in the old conception of Approbativeness. Magnanimity is a faculty ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... the little Tamunus; some of which, in beauty of colours, in playfulness of disposition, and other amiable qualities, need not yield either to the Saimiris or Ouistitis. They are equally prized as pets; and among their Creole owners have equally applied to them ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... newspapers, that she had quitted Paris, as it was supposed, for Baden-Baden: her name soon made its appearance in an article written by that same M'sieu Jules. In this article, a sort of friendly condolence pierced through the customary playfulness; Feodor Ivanitch's soul was in a very ugly state when he read that article. Later on, he learned that a daughter had been born to him; at the end of a couple of months, he was informed by his peasant-steward, that Varvara ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... her, herder. Ain't 'captains' enough to go 'round," said a cowboy, with an ill-attempt at playfulness, which was instantly frowned down. For, though all assured themselves that there was no substantial cause for alarm, and that women were "nervous cattle, always scared at shadders," they had already caught something of this nervousness. Each felt that the best sight for his eyes at that moment ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... and wrote but rarely, and his letters were all but incomprehensible to Ishmael. Not in his moments of freest intercourse with Phoebe that evening had it been possible to exchange anything beyond the chatter and playfulness of children, but there was that in Ishmael to-night which, he being young, had to find outlet. For youth is the period of giving, as ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... through the incident, and received some small damage to the keel, but no other injury was done—even this, I believe, upon second thought, was unintentional—done in playfulness only! "A shark can take a joke," it is said, and crack one too, but for broad, rippling humour the whale has ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... a few weeks of eighty years of age, (which was in January, 1838,) she wrote to me in the following vein of playfulness: ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... his last illness he said: "I have seemed cold to my friends, but it was not in my heart." The friends needed no such assurance, for in private life he was not only gentle, affectionate, and tender to an unusual degree, but full of fun and playfulness, a genial host and an admirable talker. The great Lord Dufferin, a consummate judge of such matters, said: "His conversation was too delightful, full of anecdote; but then his anecdotes were not like those ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... coruscation, as the same sort of eye did in her friend Mr. Wilberforce, that something was forthcoming which in a less amiable and religiously disciplined mind might have been very pretty satire, but which glanced off innoxiously in the shape of epigrammatic playfulness." ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... commonplace enough—a chance introduction at an afternoon tea. They were friends whilst yet utter strangers to each other, for a mutual personal magnetism had acted immediately. He understood that her playfulness did but conceal fine qualities of character that would have pleased even the aphoristic moralist, whose conception of the ideal woman she mercilessly outraged. That she had really understood and ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... and cockatoos, of a dozen different binds, were suspended on bamboo perches at the doors of the houses, with metallic green or white fruit-pigeons which cooed musically at noon and eventide. Young cassowaries, strangely striped with black and brown, wandered about the houses or gambolled with the playfulness of kittens in the hot sunshine, with sometimes a pretty little kangaroo, caught in the Aru forests, but already tame and graceful as a ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... independent spirit, occasioned his appearing somewhat unfavourable to the prevalence of that noble freedom of sentiment which is the best possession of man. Nor can it be denied, that he had many prejudices; which, however, frequently suggested many of his pointed sayings, that rather shew a playfulness of fancy than any settled malignity. He was steady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of religion and morality; both from a regard for the order of society, and from a veneration for the GREAT SOURCE of all order; correct, nay stern in his taste; hard to please, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... certainly give the lad the benefit of the doubt. Cheer up, lassie! You've no need to look ashamed," for his niece was wiping her eyes in manifest disgust; "indeed," he said, with a heavy attempt at playfulness, "you ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... he refused to enter the lists. When the popular proprietor of the tin shop came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose uptilted, waving genial greetings to the various groups on the steps, Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly change to one of fatuous playfulness. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... heard him for some time splashing about and puffing with all his might; a sort of playfulness which struck me as remarkable for so grave and sedate a character; and then a most unusual floundering, attended with a gurgling of the throat, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... these artists indeed, as we have endeavoured to show, John Doyle has nothing in common, and he evidently designed that no comparison should ever be instituted between any one of them and himself. His chief merits are to be found in the facility with which he grasped an idea; the harmlessness and playfulness of his satire, which wrought a complete revolution in the style and manner of caricaturists; and above all in the excellence of his likenesses. The best and most graceful of the series was produced just after the wedding of her Majesty, and is ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... relation to each other is that cruel pinch on the upper part of the arm. That I am sure I have seen! There could be no mistake. I was in too idle a mood to imagine such a gratuitous barbarity. It may have been playfulness, yet the girl jumped up as if she had been stung by a wasp. It may have been playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor "dreamy innocence" rub gently the affected place as she filed off with the other performers down the middle aisle between the marble tables in the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... afterwards affected with febrile symptoms. At the expiration of two hours after the seizure a plaster of ung. hydrarg. fort, was applied, and its effect was very quickly perceptible, for in ten minutes he resumed his usual looks and playfulness. On examining the arm about three hours after the application of the plaster its effects in subduing the inflammation were ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... you he did so only by compulsion; he would have come gladly if Uncle Sam had not ordered him off in another direction," Violet answered, with pretty playfulness ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... Richard, with rather a subdued tone, and resting his head on his father's shoulder. There was a silence for a little space, during which he began to revive into playfulness, to stroke the Duke's short curled beard, and play with ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the milk-market of Mediaeval London. That good and wise man, Sir Thomas More, was born in this street. "The brightest man," says Fuller, with his usual quaint playfulness, "that ever shone in that via lactea." More, born in 1480, was the son of a judge of the King's Bench, and was educated at St. Anthony's School, in Threadneedle Street. He was afterwards placed in the family of Archbishop ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... passions as strong as ours, but so much interrupted by playfulness that it is impossible to measure their exact strength. Lydia's 'amour propre' was wounded in an incurable manner by that revelation of her own peculiarity. Certain incidents of her American life recurred ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... all those intellectual faculties which have so eminently distinguished his long and useful life; who, suffering little short of martyrdom, from the frequent attacks of gout, still devotes hours and days to his favourite pursuit; uniting with his studies all the playfulness and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... and going to the mantelshelf, brought a box of matches, one of which she struck, holding it to the end of his cigar. When he had lighted it, he captured her wrist with elephantine playfulness. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... old ballad, and he continued to hum this as he straightened up and set his hands on his hips, regarding the twins through wickedly narrowed eyes. He was flushed with drink and inclined, as always at such times, to swagger with a sort of savage playfulness. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... His soft hat was of a discreet dark brown, and from under it his clear eye flamed like a topaz. He stopped Anthony enthusiastically, slapping him on the arms more from a desire to keep himself warm than from playfulness, and, after his inevitable ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... letters were seldom without a dash of playfulness or humour somewhere; a thing always fresh and spontaneous, unlike the calculated or laboured playfulness sometimes to be observed in the epistolary touch of literary folk. A capital example is a note to Matthew Arnold, at whose house he had left his umbrella. Arnold, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... of you," said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton, with a sort of stone-age playfulness, "you was punching cows over ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and spared no pains to foster and educate whatever germ of this power lay within me. I succeeded with more ease and celerity than I had imagined possible. At the time I pursued these studies, Leo here was quite a young dog, full of the clumsy playfulness and untrained ignorance of a Newfoundland puppy. One day I was very busy reading an interesting Sanskrit scroll which treated of ancient medicines and remedies, and Leo was gambolling in his awkward way about the room, playing with ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... purifying atmosphere of home, with the tenderness of a mother, the grace and playfulness of sisters, the love and loyalty of the family nurse, and lastly—scarcely to be distinguished in its effects from these influences—the sweetness, the simplicity, the flower-picking, the pony-patting of happy, frolicsome younger brothers or sisters ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... not like him to lay his hoof playfully on our shoulder. Still, as we have noticed that the pointless puns and stupid jocularity of the boy may ultimately be developed into the epigrammatic brilliancy and polished playfulness of the man; as we believe that racy wit and chastened delicate humor are inevitably the results of invigorated and refined mental activity, we can also believe that Germany will, one day, yield a crop of wits ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the disposition to admit the attractions of her sister. A marriage between these two cousins had for years been his favourite project. The lively and ready temper of Ellinor, her household turn, her merry laugh, a winning playfulness that characterised even her defects, were all more after Lester's secret heart than the graver and higher nature of his elder daughter. This might mainly be, that they were traits of disposition that more reminded him of his lost wife, and were therefore more accordant with his ideal standard ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... announcement, with its sly humour and serious playfulness, is characteristic of the house of John Newbery, in the latter part of the last century; and there is no need to speak here of the fame of the books for children which he published; "the philanthropic publisher of St Paul's Churchyard," as Goldsmith calls him, conferred inestimable benefits ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... else, he would have appeared mad. But he was too simple to go mad, too simple with that manly simplicity which alone can bear men unscathed in mind and body through an encounter with the deadly playfulness of the sea or with its ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... smile of quiet amusement, which showed the playfulness of other days might yet be touched. I then went on to tell him the case was not likely to prove as serious as we had feared, and suggested he should get the nurse, when convenient, to bring the child in her ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... casket that hung upon the chain, and the miniature lay open before her, the dim light of the moon shining down upon it. She reclosed it suddenly, and undoing it from the chain, placed it with a trembling hand in his own; and with an effort of calm and quiet playfulness, reminded him of the unintended gift. He received it, but only to place it again in her hand, reuniting ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... that there was much need of a change?" said Miss Gertrude, with a playfulness assumed to hide the quick rush of feeling which the ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... spring, count them again in summer, and at the summer's end, to find how great the inexorable carnage in this unseen combat, how few its survivors. So hard here is the fight for a foothold, for daily bread, that the playfulness inborn in every healthy plant can peep out but timidly and seldom. But when strife is exchanged for peace, when a plant is once safely sheltered behind a garden fence, then the struggles of the battlefield give place to the diversions of the garrison—diversions ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... vessel was slow in getting alongside and making fast to the jetty—slow at least in the estimation of the impatient—for although she might leap and career grandly in wanton playfulness while on her native billows, in port a careless touch from her ponderous sides would have crushed part of the jetty into fragments. Miles therefore had ample time to look about him ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... things that no one else could say, and approach subjects that no one else could approach, simply by reason of the grave whimsical playfulness of his manner and the extraordinary malleableness of his evasive style. It is because his style can be as simple and clear as sunlight, and yet as airy and impalpable as the invisible wind, that he manages to achieve these results. He uses ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Popular Science Monthly an essay on Human Instincts, characterized by a vigorous common sense and close observation. When he asserts (contrary to the old metaphysics) the existence of such instincts as fear, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, play (or, properly, playfulness), curiosity, sociability, shyness, secretiveness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, coyness or personal isolation, jealousy, parental love, etc., he shows the spirit of science. But is it not self-evident, Mr. James, to a man of your fine intelligence, that all strong ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... words "Et nunc et semper." The manuscript was sent to her for criticism, and she wrote a charming letter[*] on receipt of it to Angouleme, where Balzac was staying with Madame Carraud. In this she shows the utmost tenderness and gentle playfulness; but while modestly deprecating her power to perform the task he demands from her, which she says should be entrusted to Madame Carraud, she has the noble disinterestedness to point out to him where she considers ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... scene was, that the art which did it all was no where discernible.[9] You might have supposed (so exquisitely was the wild and the cultivated united) that all had somehow happened, not been contrived. It seemed to be the art of Nature herself; as though, in a fit of playfulness, she had imitated her imitator. But the temperature of the place, if nothing else, was plainly the work of magic, for blossoms and fruit abounded at the same time. The ripe and the budding fig grew on the same bough; green apples were ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... books, each at the proper time, read Spanish with him, and make him look out the words in the dictionary when he knew them by intuition, remind him of orders to be written for his buildings, and manage him as her pupil. If she ruled, it was with perfect calmness and simplicity, and the playfulness was that of brother and sister, not even with the coquettish intimacy ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time I might moralize here, and make an eloquent tirade a la Eustace about imperial monsters and so forth,—but in fact I did think while I stood in the damp and gloomy corridor, that it was a fitting death for Commodus to die by the giddy playfulness of a child, and the machinations of an abandoned woman. It was not a favourable time or hour to contemplate the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a prayer, but a prayer that included a thousand meanings Daylight strove to feign sheepishness, but his heart was singing too wild a song for mere playfulness. All things had been in the naming of his name—reproach, refined away by gratitude, and all compounded ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... about her, for you're a good soul, with a feeling heart. Her loss was a terrible loss to me, though it was great gain to her. Before her death we were separated for a time—only a short time,—but it proved to be a blessed separation, for the letters she wrote me sparkled with love and wit and playfulness, as though they had been set with pearls and rubies and diamonds. I shall show you my treasures before going to bed. I keep them in that box on the sideboard, to be always handy. It is not large, but its contents ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... awe. Had it not been for the childlike, unconscious simplicity of her manners, the young people of her age would have shrunk away from her, as from one entirely out of their line of thought and feeling; but a certain natural and innocent playfulness and amiable self-forgetfulness made her a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... his companion in physical courage, bent forward and stroked the cruel-looking beast, who, while submitting to his caress, never for a moment ceased her smothered snarling. Presently, however, she was seized with a sudden fit of savage playfulness,—and throwing herself on the ground before him, she rolled her lithe body to and fro with brief thirsty roars of satisfaction, . . roars that echoed through the whole pavilion with terrific resonance: then rising, she shook herself vigorously and commenced a stealthy, velvet-footed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... just enough to hamper me, and not enough to do me any good. If I had simply blundered straight at my work and written just what occurred to me in my own style, I should have done much better. I have a sense of humour. I deliberately stifled it. For it I substituted a grisly kind of playfulness. My hero called my heroine "little woman," and the concluding passage where he kissed her was written in a sly, roguish vein, for which I suppose I shall have to atone in the next world. Only the editor ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... did;—didn't you now?" She shook her head, but there was something almost of playfulness in her manner of doing it. "Ah, but I know you did. And why shouldn't you speak out, now that we are to be man and wife? I like a girl to speak out. I suppose if I want to be with you, you want as much to be ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... yellow windows and the random ring of words, fattening his spirit on hundreds of books, concocting his own theory of the niceties of prose. We see that volatile humor which is native in him flickering like burning brandy round the rich plum pudding of his theme. With all his playfulness, when he sets out to achieve a certain effect he builds cunningly, with sure and skillful art. See (for instance) in his "As to People," his superbly satisfying picture (how careless it seems!) of his scrubwoman, closing with the precis of Billy Henderson's wife, which drives the nail through ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... sinner threw out fresh shoots; and she became enamoured of the attentive and admired Englishman. Horace was susceptible of ridicule: there his somewhat icy heart was easily touched. Partly in vanity, partly in playfulness, he encouraged the sentimental-exaggeration of his correspondent; but, becoming afraid of the world's laughter, ended by reproving her warmth, and by chilling, under the refrigerating influence of his cautions, all the romance ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... a touch of playfulness, "I have seldom received a stronger compliment. After this compliance I think I could venture to ask ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... walking with little Phebe (who had now attained her seventh year, and exhausted the last penny of the hundred pounds) in my own little garden—we were quite alone, when the girl all at once stopped her playfulness (for she was now a very lark), and, taking a hold of my hand, pulled me gently, nothing loath, into an adjoining little arbour: after I was seated, and Phebe had taken her wonted station betwixt my knees, reserving either knee for future ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... to guide me?—So now let me sit down and rest myself on this pretty seat—a very comfortable throne!—and that is saying much for a throne. So these are your territories?" continued she, looking round, and talking with an air of playfulness, to give Caroline ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... breeze may coax a few brighter roses," said the fond father, emphasizing his words by patting Marguerite's cheek with childlike playfulness. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... steadily back into the lovely face, where the underlying spirit of mockery was transmuted into an innocent playfulness ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... who were enjoined to conceal the nature of his sickness from him in order to keep off the priests and save her from a humiliating dismissal. The King's improvement allowed Madame du Barry to divert him by her usual playfulness and conversation. But La Martiniere, who was of the Choiseul party, and to whom they durst not refuse his right of entry, did not conceal from the King either the nature or the danger of his sickness. The King then sent for Madame du Barry, and said to her: "My love, I have got the smallpox, and ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... delicate of clover blossoms. Never before did a bull have such bright and tender eyes, and such smooth horns of ivory, as this one. And the bull ran little races, and capered sportively around the child; so that she quite forgot how big and strong he was, and, from the gentleness and playfulness of his actions, soon came to consider him as innocent a creature as a ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... there is a sly suggestion of Lowell's playfulness. Of course every one may compete in the search for the Grail, and the "time subsequent to King Arthur's reign" includes the present time. The Romance of King Arthur is the Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory. Lowell's specific indebtedness ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... for strangers to be beautiful. Aside from this advantage of mystery, the approaching vision was piquant and graceful enough to have reminded a much older boy of a spotless white kitten, for, in spite of a charmingly managed demureness, there was precisely that kind of playfulness somewhere expressed about her. Just now it was most definite in the look she bent upon the light and fluffy burden which she carried nestled in the inner curve of her right arm: a tiny dog with hair like cotton and a pink ribbon round ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... gave evidence against him. When he and a line of comrades extending across the footway—say of that solitary mountain-spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road—advance towards me 'skylarking' among themselves, my purse or shirt-pin is in predestined peril from his playfulness. Always a Ruffian, always a Thief. Always ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... counsel to his young wife presents the model of politeness and refinement. Xenophon is thoroughly the gentleman; gentle in breeding and in soul. All the men he describes are so, while the shades of manner are distinctly marked. There is the serene dignity of Socrates, with gleams of playfulness thrown across its cool, religious shades, the princely mildness of Cyrus, and the more domestic elegance of the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... is of a nature to cause some alarm, and we know that this passenger-in-spite-of-himself had not even till then risked his safety on the peaceable waters of the Bay of San Francisco; so that we can forgive his being ill on board a ship in a stiffish breeze, and his feeling terrified at the playfulness of ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... part. To the eye, moreover, she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by earlier performances of the opera or the reading of Mrime's novel, was prepared to accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that she stripped the character of the flippancy and playfulness popularly associated with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Frulein Lehmann deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that of Mme. Trebelli, which had been brought to public notice at the first Italian season at the Metropolitan Opera House. In her musical performance ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the Sisters of Pity do these things in style,' said Maguire. 'It's a pretty fancy, that of the wedding-cake, isn't it? But you're a Protestant, Conneally; you don't understand this delicate playfulness. I was present to-day at the reception of my only sister into the Institute of the Catholic Sisters of Pity, founded by Honoria Kavanagh. I've lost Birdie Maguire, that's all, the little girl that used to climb on to my knee ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... and suddenly alarmed, when anything they do not understand forcibly catches their attention, and they are then to be feared by the bad horseman, and carefully guarded against by the good. Very serious accidents have happened to the best. But, besides their general disposition to playfulness, there is a great propensity in them to become what the jockeys call vicious. High bred, hot in blood, exercised, fed and dressed so as to bring that heat to perfection, their tender skins at all times subject to a sharp curry-comb, hard brushing, and when they take sweats, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Countess Anna and Count George are two ideal perfections; I did not believe two such beings could exist. There is a nobleness of life and sentiment, a gentleness of manners, an evenness of temper, which cannot be believed unless you have lived with them. With all this, there is a playfulness, a spontaneous gaiety, which dispels weariness or monotony. Never have I been so thoroughly in ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... bewilderment had frozen on her face. Had not that something, akin to anger, which her nature had felt to be emanating from him remained so potently to oppress her, she could almost have thought the thing a joke—some freakish mood of playfulness after all the other moods he had shown. But no such thought was possible. The glitter in his eyes had been unmistakable. Then, what could ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... not," he answered, with an attempt at playfulness that showed no color of mirth. "These two hours have I been within. Cornaro was with me. Another mahona may have chanced to land, coming from Africa with some other Valentine to do Carlotta's bidding and ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... as New York. Writing of the parting he says: "A thousand affecting incidents of separation from my beloved family crowded upon my recollection. The unconscious gayety of my dear children as they frolicked in all their wonted playfulness, too young to sympathize in the pangs that agitated their distressed parents; their artless request to bring home some trifling toy; the parting kiss, not understood as meaning more than usual; the tears and sad farewells of father, mother, wife, sister, family, friends; the desolateness ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... wife; his black hair had but begun to be touched with silver; he seemed a man without an atom of care more than humanity counts reasonable; his speech was not unlike that of an Englishman, for, although born in Glasgow, he had been to Oxford. He spoke respectfully to his wife, and with a pleasant playfulness to his daughters; his manner was nowise made to order, but natural enough; his grammar was as good as conversation requires; everything was respectable about him-and yet-he was one remove at least from a gentleman. Something ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... library. The very popularity of the scraps which such a writer leaves, secures the torments of Tantalus to his numerous admirers in all after ages. His letters, in their grace, freedom, minuteness of detail, occasional playfulness, delicious asides of gossip, and easy vigour of description, are more worthy of his powers, as a whole, than his poetry. The poetic fragments he has left are rarely of such merit as to excite any ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... had a strong personal resemblance to Benjamin Franklin. Sagacity, benevolence, and playfulness were expressed in both physiognomies. Bentham, however, differed from the man whose intellect presents many points of likeness, in that he was not a man of the market-place or the office. Bentham was in many respects ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Grimm's German stories, already recommended, are the most remarkable in this quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human character, with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy; but, as drawings, they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in one place being continually opposed to trenchant white in another; and, as is almost sure to be the case with bad harmonists, the local color hardly felt anywhere. All German work ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... put this playfulness by. "What seems to me a fundamental error of that book is its constant implication of a constant fear of death. I can very well imagine, or I can easily allow, that we are badly made, and that there are all sorts of 'disharmonies,' as Metchnikoff ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... brown, fine and glossy, and although neatly arranged about the head, evidently required but little training to enable it to fall gracefully about her neck in beautiful ringlets. The general expression of her face, was a soft, bewitching playfulness, which, combined with the half timid, benevolent look, beaming from her large, mild, hazel eye, invariably won upon the beholder at the first glance, and increased upon acquaintance. Her voice we have already spoken of as possessing a silvery sweetness; and if one ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... inclines to reveries; she seeks solitude; her mother surprises her in causeless tears; her teacher discovers an unwonted inattention to her studies, a less retentive memory, a disinclination to mental labor; her father misses her accustomed playfulness; he, perhaps, is annoyed by her listlessness and inertia. What does it all mean? What is the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... contrast to conversation at Manor Cross, where no childish word was ever spoken. And though she was by no means prepared to flirt with Captain De Baron, still she found in him something of the realisation of her dreams. There was the combination of manliness, playfulness, good looks, and good humour which she had pictured to herself. To sit well-dressed in a well-lighted room and have nonsense talked to her suited her better than a petticoat conclave. And she knew of no harm in it. Her father encouraged her to be gay, and altogether ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... eluded the charge and quickly Taug's anger vanished, though it was not replaced with playfulness; yet the ape-man realized that Taug was not amused nor was he amusing. The big bull ape seemed to have lost whatever sense of humor he once may have possessed. With a grunt of disappointment, young Lord Greystoke turned to other fields of endeavor. A strand of black hair fell across one eye. He ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... will be found that there is a cyclic variation of health and conduct, more or less marked of course in each case. A cold may appear periodically at the end of each month, an increase of irritability and waywardness may be observed, or, on the contrary, a decrease of the regular restless playfulness. The ghost of sex begins to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... brought out the meaning of a line of poetry or a painting; beset by the restlessness which meant another period of travel; intense as fire itself, gripping his hands in hers in a defiance of possession; in moods when both its sadness and its playfulness said, "I don't care!" and again, fleeing from his presence ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 1836. He was a man of the highest gifts,—so truly many-sided, that it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him, except under those aspects in which he came before me. Nor have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful versatility of mind, and the patient winning considerateness in discussion, which endeared him to those to whom he opened his heart; for I am all along engaged upon matters of belief and opinion, and am introducing ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... beginning to penetrate through Hagen's sullen aspect to his joke; with heavy playfulness they help it on. "And when we have slaughtered the animals, what shall we do?" "From the hands of fair women take the drinking-horn, pleasantly brimming with wine and mead." "Horn in hand,—what then?" "Bravely carouse until drunkenness ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... is such a combination of playfulness and grace that it is a somewhat ungracious task to refer to particular numbers. In these regards it is the most Mozartean of all the composer's operas. The first act opens with a sparkling duet between Figaro and Susanna, in which she informs ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... made me; instead of that the pullets are eaten, and the best thing I can do is to forget all about them; let us say no more."[25] Rude and repellent as this may seem, and as it is, there is a rough kind of playfulness about it, when compared with the truculence which he was not slow to exhibit to men. If a friend presumed to thank him for any service, he was peremptorily rebuked for his ignorance of the true ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... into an oyster stake that went rasping aft along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having half blinded him wheeled heavenward, a narrow cornucopia of light that petered out just short of the stars. He watched the searchlight. He wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of various sizes, which were taking on the similitude of fresh forms. And among them were the young, the buds that had fallen from the parent stems, fully formed humans of perhaps five or six feet, bouncing with a horrible playfulness ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... this." Quite a large circle of friends now came in and were presented. He did not rise to receive them, but sat back in his easy chair, and conversed quietly with us all, sparkling out now and then in a little ripple of playfulness. In this room were his best beloved pictures, and it is his pleasure to ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Muguets, an extraordinarily clever study of the doting Hausfrau, much busied about the service of her lord. Mr. NORMAN MCKINNEL as Wachner easily contrived to convey the typically Teuton blend of brutishness, and domestic sentimentality, combined with the heavy playfulness which by a curious delusion, ineradicably racial, is mistaken over there for humour. "Ja, ja," he says complacently, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... At a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been evidently but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... of Herbert that he talked during the next ten minutes. It was of Mrs. Raymond and her daughter, of their life at home and at the store. It was a gay ten minutes, for the man laughed at the whimsical playfulness with which Miss Raymond set off the pitiful little tale of the daily struggle for existence. If he detected the nervousness in the telling, he did not show it. He did frown once; but that was when ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... queen-mother, and to announce to her that the preparations for the journey to Fontainebleau were complete. Seeing her laugh, his uneasiness on her account diminished, and he addressed her in a vivacious tone himself. Anne of Austria took him by the hand, and, in a voice full of playfulness, said, "Do you know, sire that I am proud of being ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thirteen years older than I, and much more able to be my sister than mamma, and I hope you will have many years of youth yet. I think I must tell you in return for this letter what Dr. John Brown said, or part of it at least. He said you had the playfulness of a lamb without its selfishness. I think that perfect as far as it goes. Of course my Susie's wise and grave gifts must be told of afterwards. There is no one I know, or have known, so well able as you are to ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... not Brian Wendover's affianced wife? How far was she to trust in him, to lean upon him, in this crucial hour of her life? There had been so much playfulness in their love-making, his tone had been for the most part so light and sportive, that now, when she stood, as it were, face to face with destiny, she hardly knew how to think of him, whether as a rock that she might lean upon, or as a reed that ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... ranges from the sleeping Babe from whose innocent face the Madonna of the Diadem softly lifts a veil, to the grave boy whom the Chair Madonna clasps in her arms. Every shade of playfulness, of affection, of dignity, and of contemplation, is mirrored in the long series of pictures in which he embodied his ever-changing ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... of the Princess exhibited no signs of playfulness. It was pale, and her whole being seemed under the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... passed over the lips, or by gently vellicating the soles of their feet, laughter is most vehemently excited; though they can stimulate these parts with their own fingers unmoved. Here the pleasureable idea of playfulness coincides with the vellication; and there is no voluntary exertion used to diminish the sensation, as there would be, if a child should endeavour to tickle himself. See Sect. XXXIV. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... busy to see much of one another, but we have our little talks over the wall. What a buoyant creature she is. It seems as if playfulness was really a sustaining power in her, helping her to get diversion out of much that others might stumble at. You know perhaps that when she arrived the work-people had got up a beautiful parasol for her, white, with a deep fringe and spray of rowan. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was given a dung-fork and set to work at a pile of manure. He writes about these details with a softening of the raw facts by elegancies of language, and much gentle fun, but from the start he shows a playfulness of disposition in regard to the whole affair, like a great boy on a vacation, as if the sense of it all being, so far as he was concerned, a surprising joke on a novel scale were in his mind and attitude all the time; and it is this humor, interlacing on the page ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... as if she had had the most brilliant education. The auspicious opening of a flower transplanted into a soil that suits it, shone through Louise's whole being. My manner towards her partakes of a tenderer playfulness, a more affectionate gallantry. After all, Richeport is better than Pont de l'Arche, for there is nothing like fighting on ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... rusted amid heaps of broken stone That mingled slowly with their native earth. There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone On the pure smiles of infant playfulness. No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of joy fingered winds and gladsome birds And merriment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... indeed, she seems to have been every way worthy of it,—lovely in person, amiable in deportment, and of a generous and noble nature. She was, especially after her great trouble, of a somewhat pensive and serious habit of mind, contrasting with the playfulness and innocent light-heartedness of her early life, as depicted in the diary of my grandmother, yet she was ever ready to forget herself in ministering to the happiness and pleasures of others. She was not, as I learn, a member of the church, having ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... bewilderment. I watched him and meanwhile debated whether or not I should take the opportunity to knock him down. That was undoubtedly the proper course. But I could not bring myself to do it. A spirit of wild mischief possessed me; a strange, unnatural buoyancy and fierce playfulness that impelled me to play insane, fantastic tricks. It was a singular phenomenon. I seemed suddenly to have made the acquaintance of a hitherto unknown moiety of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... She was not exactly of either set. The children were all so young as to look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and merriment was quite a revelation to her. She had never before seen mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did Ida's screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whimsical resentment of his droll playfulness; she laughed with him, and taking his arm, walked up and down the porch. They talked of many things—of Louise's persistent stubbornness, and of a growing change in the conduct of Tom—his abstraction and his gentleness. He had left uncut the leaves of a sporting ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... seldom exercised on the wrong side. Honorable, generous, affectionate, and pure in all his thoughts as a young girl, he was the idol of his aunts and the pride of his father and mother, the latter of whom he treated with a teasing playfulness such as he would have shown to a sister, if ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... dog, and a small blue mountain bird, or lory, of New Holland, to mess together and eat out of the same dish. His favourite playfellow was the dog, whose teasing and worrying was always borne, and returned with the utmost good humour and playfulness. As he grew up he became a very powerful animal, and in his rambles in the garden he would lay hold of the largest plantains, the stems of which he could scarcely embrace, and tear them up by the roots." The late General A. C. McMaster gives an equally amusing account ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... be boisterous, I perceived that Em'ly's mission was approaching its end. They were too heavy for her, and their increasing scope of playfulness was not in her line. Once or twice they knocked her over, upon which she arose and pecked them severely, and they retired to a safe distance, and sitting in a circle, yapped at her. I think they began to suspect that she was only a hen after all. So Em'ly resigned with ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... the cradle, and with a faint cry the baby Alice awoke and stretched her hands towards Mary who, with all a mother's care took the child upon her lap and fed her from the milk which was still standing in the broken pitcher. With a baby's playfulness Alice dipped her small fingers into the milk, and shaking them in her sister's face, laughed aloud as the white drops fell upon her hair. This was too much for poor Mary, and folding the child closer to her bosom ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... which prevented his "stepping out." As it was, all he could do was to struggle forward bravely for a few more paces, and then again fall. The men seemed to perceive that there was something more than mere playfulness in this twice-repeated performance, and solved the difficulty by clutching him one under each arm, and materially assisting his progress by ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... rid of some of the steam first, and you will get accustomed to their playfulness," he returned. "Here, Ormonde, haven't you a rug for Miss Liddell? It may come on ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the Pool properly exorcised now, Malcolm?" asked Elizabeth, with her old playfulness. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mock-heroic, we felt at the moment that here was the one ideal "Knickerbocker." Yet, much as we still admire it, does it wholly satisfy us? Is there not as much room as ever for an edition that shall express primarily not the absurdity of its subject-matter, but the delicate playfulness of Irving's humor and the lightness and grace of his exuberant style? Has there ever been a final "Don Quixote"? Certainly not in the recent monumental editions with their quagmire of footnotes. Moreover, if we had a final edition of the great ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... this might have been forgiven, but for that worst rub of all—Tom May's manners. His politeness was intense—most punctilious and condescending in form—and yet provoking beyond measure to persons who, like Henry and Averil, had not playfulness enough to detect with certainty whether they were being made game of or not, nor whether his smoothly-uttered compliments were not innuendoes. Henry was certain of being despised, and naturally chafed against the prospect of the future connection between the two medical men of the town; ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... England, and perhaps equal to any that had ever been known, Childers alone excepted. Their names were Careless and Atlas.....There was a story in circulation that Atlas, on account of his size and clumsiness, had been banished to the cart-breed; till by some accident, either of playfulness or fright, several of them started together; and his vast advantage in speed happening to be noticed, he was restored to his blood companions.....Alas for the men of Nottingham, Careless was conquered. I forget whether it was at two or three heats, but there was many an empty purse on that ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... towards the great purpose. Emily has confessed that she worked away a good deal of vague, weary depression, and sense of monotony into those Greek choruses: but to us she was always a sunbeam, with her ever ready attention, and the playfulness which resumed more of genuine mirth after the first effort and strain of spirits ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... care of her, Mistress Talbot," said Mary, "and deliver her up to you whole and sain in the morning," and there was a quivering playfulness in ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prettiest. Idyllic as Daphnis and Chloe, romantic as Romeo and Juliet, tender as Undine, remote as Cupid and Psyche, yet with perpetual touches of actual life, and words that raise pictures; and lightened all through with a dainty playfulness, as if Ariel himself had hovered near all the time of its writing, and Puck now and again shot ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... these notes in Thayer's biography. She seems to have called the composer "a tyrant," and he has much playfulness of allusion to the idea, and there is much about the wretchedness of his health. Amalie Sebald seems to have been of great solace to him, but, like all the rest, she married some one ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes |
