"Verve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... character were already visible in all their distinctness from the beginning, as all those who have read the introductory chapters will readily admit. And the same lines were to be followed with an undeviating fixity of artistic purpose and with unfailing verve and spirit to the last. 'The Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,' 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I know of no other example in modern French literature of so long and so well sustained a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... wife; but he went straight over that very evening to the Merrimans' house; and although he could not go inside for fear of infection, he had a conversation with the Professor in the garden. There he spoke with such verve and enthusiasm with regard to Rosamund, and the marvelous change she had already wrought in the naughtiest girl in the entire district, that he induced that ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recrudesced the laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to the satisfaction of the pompous mediocre ones who knew ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... go. Ha! what creatures you are—hein? But you find not anozer in fifty years, I say; and here you stop, and forty hours pass by, and not a sing in motion. What blood you have! It is water—not blood. Such a voice, a verve, a style, an eye, a devil, zat girl! and all drawn up and out before ze time by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... glance, this Mr. Brentwick was a man of tallish figure and rather slender; with a countenance thin and flushed a sensitive pink, out of which his eyes shone, keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses. His years were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and the verve of thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate, fine and fragile; and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at times trembled, almost imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... a rousing tale of adventure and love told with verve and humor. Many will pronounce it the best story yet written by the author ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... never low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently, and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an adventure, nay three adventures, and when she snuggled herself up at midnight ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... evenings spent at the theaters and ended at Tortoni's with this truest of "boulevardiers," who knew every one and everything, and whose inexhaustible fund of anecdote was enlivened by a spontaneous easy wit and verve that ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... Chu piloted a landing craft with the same verve that she seemed to be able to handle any other responsibility. As he sat in the seat next to her, Ronny Bronston took in her practiced flicking of the controls from the side of his eyes. He wondered vaguely at the efficiency ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... il n'est pas cruel: au contraire! je sais meme qu'il avait demande une amnistie generale; mais l'idee de decouvrir un chef de conspirateurs va le mettre en verve![43] il deploiera contre vous les ressources de son esprit ... votre signalement sera partout ... je le sais ... le premier soldat pourrait ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement, Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well from experience what ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... to give any idea of the verve and brightness with which the story is told. Mr. Boothby may be congratulated on having produced about the most original novel of ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade |
