"Zest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our official humorist. Armed with this weapon, and although absolutely ignorant of the new calling thrust upon him, delighted to secure some change to the monotonous round of toil, L—— entered upon his work with commendable zest. But he construed the duty into a form of amusement, and played sorry tricks with the heads which came into his hands. Some he shaved so clean as to present the appearance of a billiard ball, but others he evidently considered to be worthy of French poodle treatment. He took a humorous delight ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... living than I was—before you came. I loved my work, and loved my home. I intended to succeed in my profession, and the future was full of interest. I would not have changed places with any man on earth. Now!" he held out his right hand and snapped his fingers expressively, "it is over; the zest is out of it all if you are not there. If I had met you anywhere else it might have been easier, but you have come right into the middle of my life, and if I would I shall not be able to forget you. Every morning when I come down to breakfast I shall look across the table and imagine you ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were of the first importance in English politics, fashion, or sport, than George Selwyn. In one particular he was regarded as supreme and unapproachable; he was the humourist of his time. His ban mots were collected and repeated with extraordinary zest. They were enjoyed by Members of Parliament at Westminster, and by fashionable ladies in the drawing-rooms of St. James's. They were told as things not to be forgotten in the letters of harassed politicians. "You must have heard all the particulars ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... And "away with it" we ought all to say, if Socialism, while doing away with it, would not be doing away with something else of infinite value and infinite benefit to mankind, both material and spiritual; something with which is bound up the richness and zest of life, not only for what it is the fashion of radicals to call "the privileged few," but for the great mass of mankind. That something is liberty, and the individuality which is inseparably bound up with liberty. The essence of Socialism is the suppression of individuality, the exaltation of ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... by turning on the other. His shifting his point of view from time to time not merely adds variety and greater compass to his topics (so that the Political Register is an armoury and magazine for all the materials and weapons of political warfare), but it gives a greater zest and liveliness to his manner of treating them. Mr. Cobbett takes nothing for granted as what he has proved before; he does not write a book of reference. We see his ideas in their first concoction, fermenting ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... seldom. Jollity, or exhilaration, is entirely a social thing. I do not believe that even Sydney Smith could have got into one of his rollicking veins when alone. He enjoyed his own jokes, and laughed at them with extraordinary zest; but he enjoyed them because he thought others were enjoying them too. Why, you would be terrified that your friend's mind was going, if before entering his room you heard such a peal of merriment ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... ponderously anxious to abet his mother, and had, besides, a sneaking kindness for Mistress Betty; the girls were privately charmed, and saw no end to the new element of breadth, brightness, and zest, in their ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... complaint, and at most said, "Mais, cher enfant, ton pere est Anglais,—c'est tout dire." Meanwhile, as the child sprang rapidly into precocious youth, he was permitted a liberty in his hours of leisure of which he availed himself with all the zest of his earlier habits and adventurous temper. He formed acquaintances among the loose young haunters of cafes and spendthrifts of that capital,—the wits! He became an excellent swordsman and pistol-shot, adroit in all games in which skill helps fortune. He learned ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the active work of literature when thirty-nine years of age, he followed it with the zest of youth for over twenty years—until death claimed him. William Morris thought literature should be the product of the ripened mind—the mind that knows the world of men and which has grappled with earth's problems. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... always be together, for separate enjoyments and occupations sometimes lend an added zest to life for husband and wife, but do not drift apart in all your ideas and interests, as have so many ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in this they are somewhat behind their brothers, who have numerous games which test their skill and endurance. Though the bicycle is well known now in Spain, the Spanish women have not adopted it with the zest which was shown by the women of France, and it is doubtful if it will ever be popular among them. Horseback riding is a fashionable amusement among the wealthy city women, but their attainments in this branch of sport seem insignificant ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... some want of faith, Perhaps some past heart-scath, Took from his life the zest of reaching far— And so grew my regret, To see my pride forget That many watched him like ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... part of the grim tyranny of Time that it is tideless; that the stream bears remorselessly on, and on, never back to the dear old spots; always on, to lose itself in the eternal and unknown. So, to-day's Christmas lacks the zest of its predecessors." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... knock, when one of my friends, Aime Gros, took the management of the Grand-Theatre at Lyons and asked me for a work. This was a fine opportunity and we grasped it. We put together, with difficulty but with infinite zest, our historical opera, Etienne Marcel, in which Louis Gallet endeavored to respect as far as is possible in a theatrical work the facts of history. Despite illustrious examples to the contrary he did not believe that it was legitimate to attribute to a character who has actually lived acts and ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... constrained, and worn, As though the master's ways Through the long teaching days Their first terrestrial zest ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... answer to his personal, he discontinued it. Truly, she had returned to the fog out of which she had come. But it was no less difficult for him to take up the daily affairs again; everything was so terribly prosaic now; the zest was gone from work and play. Italy was the last resort; and the business of giving Merrihew a personally conducted tour would occupy his mind. Always he was asking: Who was she? What mystery veiled her? Whither had she gone? We never ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... natural, pleasing, instructive, and simple, though ingenious style and matter of the " Itinerary " than I do the overpowering sort of heroic eloquence of those more popular performances, that the zest of dear hallowed truth would have been wanting had I not expressed my choice. The "Itinerary" is, indeed, one of the most agreeable ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... conflict, he enjoyed the sight of beaten rivals. His delight was in work, in ACQUISITION. His growing surplus added new zest to his life. He pitied "the poor fool" who wasted ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... disciple. But his is a very different mind. This Italian, born at Oneglia of Genoese parents, has inherited the emotional nature of his country. He sees everything with feeling, penetrating below the surface with sympathetic insight. Italy gives him his sensuous zest in life. But from France, through his love of her vigor and grace, his cordial admiration of her literature, he has gained a refining and strengthening influence. She has taught him that direct diction, that choice simplicity, which forsakes the stilted ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... intelligent and refined. The lights, the flowers, the music, told on his senses, long numbed by the quietness and monotony of his daily life. He entered into the quiet pleasures of the evening with zest, made all around him happy, and even fascinated by the brilliancy with which he spoke, so much so that Bittra Campion said to him, as he was leaving ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... sometimes imagined what a story the old white dog who so long frequented the Lepri and the Caffe Greco, and attached himself so capriciously to the brother artists of his deceased master, could have told, if blest with memory and language. He had tasted the freedom and the zest of artist-life in Rome, and scorned to follow trader or king. He preferred the odor of canvas and oil to that of conservatories, and had more frolic and dainty morsels at an al fresco of the painters, in the Campagna, than the kitchen of an Italian prince could furnish. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... classify all the news stories that a newspaper must print. The very zest of reporting comes from the changing variety of the work; no two assignments are ever exactly alike—if they were only one would be worth printing. Newspapers themselves make no attempt to classify the ordinary run of news or to work out a systematic division of labor; a reporter may ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... the veil he thrust it into his pocket. He would find out more below, possibly; if she had actually passed this way. A feverish zest was born anew; the authorities were looking for her as well as for himself, he remembered. She, apparently, had so far cleverly evaded them; if he could but lead them to her he would not mind so much his own apprehension. Her presence in the locality at the same time the Nevski ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... funny little hunt went on, the mother watching gravely under a bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting grasshoppers, which a wolf follows ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... unparalleled in the annals of the Roman Empire or of the French Republic, Atahuallpa ordered all the females of the blood royal, his aunts, nieces, and cousins, to be put to death, and that, too, with the most refined and lingering tortures. To give greater zest to his revenge, many of the executions took place in the presence of Huascar himself, who was thus compelled to witness the butchery of his own wives and sisters, while, in the extremity of anguish, they in vain called on him ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... dangling at his belt. Almost beaming, quite triumphant in his eagerness, the bartender grasped his meaning at a glance. He began tying the ruffians' hands behind their backs, and tying them well, with a zest in his work that increased as he traveled ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... all; I don't intend to be miserable when I get accustomed to the change, Hilda. I must dismiss most of the servants, and give up the carriage and horses, and live as a poor man instead of a rich one; but I owe no man anything, my dear, and I have not the least doubt there is a certain zest in poverty which will make the new order of things agreeable enough when once I get ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... afraid; but his heart beat like a bird's, both quick and little; and there was a dimness came before his eyes which he continually rubbed away, and which continually returned. As for hope, he had none...." and so forth. Notice how much vividness is lost,—how much immediacy of emotion. The zest and tang of the experience is sacrificed, because the reader is forced to stand aloof and observe it ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... to ridicule a third, and either take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,—into a work of art,—by metre and music, is the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Sarthia was conducted back to her chamber, a Vestal of The Temple of Isis. The occult powers that had been evoked in behalf of Sarthia soon became manifest in her daily life. The zeal and zest with which she pursued her studies and the understanding of their interior meanings were sufficient evidence of her teacher's inspiring influence. She was soon placed under her brother Hermo's instruction in astronomical and astrological ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... swordfish!" he boomed. Only twice before had I heard him say that, and he was right each time. I gazed abroad over the beautiful sea, and, though I could not see any swordfish, somehow I believed him. It was difficult now, in this exciting zest of a record feat, to think of the nobler attributes of fishing. Strong, earnest, thrilling business it was indeed for ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... crushed into matchwood, or meets with some other disaster. And as the leading boat rises to the long ocean swell of the offing, the killers close in round her on either side, just keeping clear of the sweep of the oars, and 'breaching' and leaping and spouting with the anticipative zest of ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... with great vehemence. The presence of the great of the world did not intimidate him; he spoke to them as plainly and forcibly as he had done to the common people; and, as all souls were equally dear to him, he preached as willingly, and with as much zest, to a few people, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... gave him a new zest for life, and left Jean freer than she had been before. It left her, too, without the fear of him, which had robbed their relationship of all ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... Fontenoy, undaunted, began to harangue on certain minutiae of factory law with a monotonous zest of voice and gesture which seemed to Tressady nothing short ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the pursuit of happiness. If, some day, we should find all difficulties removed, no obstacles left to contend against, no evil in ourselves or others to overcome, not even our bodily wants to provide for, it seems to me life would lose its zest and become a burden hardly worth the carrying. Can you remove ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... hangman takes a serviet, or whiles a wool cloath (which I remember Cleark in his Martyrologie discovering the Spanish Inquisition also mentioned), which he thrustes doune the throat of him as far as his wery heart, keiping to himselfe a grip of one end of the cloath, then zest wt violence pules furth the cloath al ful of blood, which cannot be but accompanied wt paine. Thus does the burreau ay til he confesses. In Poictou the manner is wt bords of timber whilk they fasten as close ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... not then, that low thy lot is cast; Health gives to life or high or low it's zest; 'Tis Appetite that seasons our repast, And Weariness ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... odd. He had friends whose opinions covered every description of madness from the French legitimism of De Ripert-Monclar to the Republicanism of Landor. Intellectually he may be said to have had a zest for heresies. It is difficult to impute an attitude of mere impenetrable negation to a man who had expressed with sympathy the religion of "Caliban" and the morality of "Time's Revenges." It is true that at this time of the first popular interest in spiritualism ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... a few weeks' rest and training, in pleasant surroundings, their work and play were carried out with much life and zest. ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... has known no man of keener wit than the late William R. Travers, of New York. An impediment of speech not infrequently gave zest and vim to his words, when they finally found utterance. He was for a lifetime steeped in affairs of great concern and among his associates were prominent factors in the commercial and ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... biography of his wife—"I wish you could have shared the pleasures of our last expedition from Florence to the monasteries of Camaldoli and La Vernia. I think it was just the sort of thing you would have entered into with thorough zest." And she goes on to speak of La Vernia in a manner which seems to show that it was the latter establishment which most keenly interested and impressed her. She was in fact under the spell of the great and ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... came forward and salam'd to the Prince who presently asked his sire, "What may be the cause of thy coming to this plain?" and the ruler informed him by way of answer that after his child's departure slumber to him brought no rest nor was there in food aught of zest and with him longing overflowed for the sake of his son, so that after a while of time he and the grandees of his realm had marched forth, and he ended by saying, "O my son, our leaving home was for the sake of thee, but do thou tell me what befel thee after mounting ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... half as good as this. But for once even Fuentes' brilliant tactics were at a loss. Vivillo had brains, and used them. He used his eyes, too, before charging, which not one out of five hundred bulls can do; and if Fuentes played with him, he played also, a game whose zest came from a hint of pressing danger. Once it seemed that Vivillo would be over the barrera, in the callijon, and there was a stampede of all the onlookers there. Again he threatened to demolish the wooden barrier with his horns, and there ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... been removed from that particular window the previous day, when Peggy had discovered a break through which the flies were entering, and the window itself had been lowered till the necessary repairs could be made. Just as Graham was beginning to think that the fun was losing its zest, a heavy body launched itself against ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... here for. Our aim is to take that message to every man and woman in this country; and we believe God will give us zest and strength enough to bring it home to them—to make them feel the truth of it. Your aim, naturally, is political and patriotic. I don't think you can have any warmer sympathizers than Reynolds and myself. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... no admiration of daring design or of fertile invention; but it presents within its narrow limits a distinct and unbroken view of poetical delightfulness. His descriptions and sentiments have the pure zest of nature. He is refined without false delicacy, and correct without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual composure in his manner, which may, in some passages, be said to approach to the reserved ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... well the joy and the zest of living, his death reminds us not so much of our own mortality, but of the possibilities offered to us by life. He always looked to the future with a special American kind of confidence, of hope and enthusiasm. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... as they raced toward the bridge, that he had for one moment forgotten everything but his complete happiness. He called to Kate to stop. In her zest she spurred the harder. He knew she must not reach the bridge ahead of him. Yet he realized the difficulty he faced; she would not understand; and at every cost he must stop her. Animated by this sudden instinct of danger he crowded his horse, forged abreast the flying girl, caught her bridle, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... life seemed to have dropped from the convict, who laughed and talked as if he were a dozen years younger, and free from care. The hard, bitter look had gone from his eyes, and he entered with boyish zest into the proposals ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... matter from her, and entered into the delightful discussion with keen zest. Isabel's ideas were so entrancing. She knew exactly what she would need. Her taste also was so simple, and so unerring. Dinah had never before pictured herself as possessing such things as Isabel calmly proclaimed that ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... a state of nudity; many of them had wild flowers stuck behind their ears, and strings of beads, &c., round their loins; but want of clothing did not seem to damp their pleasure in the entertainment, for they entered with as much zest as any of their companions. Of the different coloured tobes worn by the men, none looked so well as those of a deep crimson colour on some of the horsemen; but the clear white tobes of the mahommedan priests, of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... for years,' he said enthusiastically. Helena smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily winking a golden ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... get her "clothes fit to be seen in." And as with intent little glances she kept studying "Ethel's type" in order to set off her charms, the slightly bored expression, the look of disillusionment left Amy's pretty countenance. For Ethel's freshness had given to Amy new zest and belief in her own life, in its purpose and importance. To get Ethel clothes, to show her about, to find her friends, to give her a gay winter in town and later to make a good match for her—these aims ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... shown in the last long line of the stanza? That the man enters into the spirit of the game with the same zest as the boy. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... moody friend; and should she succeed in bringing both to her feet, the fascinating commoner will have but little chance against the lordly peer. If he observes her artful by-play, it gives him no uneasiness, but rather adds new zest to his diversion by opposing a stimulating check to his ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... worst, float back to the rear. Old troops invariably deem it a special privilege to be in the front —to be at the "head of column"—because experience has taught them that it is the easiest and most comfortable place, and danger only adds zest ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Mr Emmanuel travelled out of the room, and I never saw him afterwards. I was pleased with myself for having done this act of honesty, and for the first time for a long while, I ate my dinner with some zest. After I had finished, I took a twenty pound note, and laid it in my desk, the remainder of the five hundred pounds I put in my pocket, to try my last chance. In an hour I quitted the hell penniless. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... a while we drew breath and counted our injuries. And this happened not once, nor twice, but time after time. Strange to say, it never grew monotonous. I know that I, for one, came through each brush with the undiminished zest of a man flying from sudden death. No; the pilgrim from Taiohae to Typee will never suffer from ennui ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the invested fortress would be his worst difficulty. The Adige he described as beset with a two-fold risk - the avoidance of the bridges, which courted suspicion, and the thin ice and only partially frozen river, which had to be traversed in the dark. The vigour, the zest with which the wiry veteran 'shoulder'd his crutch and show'd how fields were won' was not a thing to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... captains and I "did" Tangier conscientiously, with the zest of Bismarck over a yellow-covered novel, and the thoroughness of a Cook's tourist on his first invasion of Paris. We crawled into a stifling crib of a dark coffee-house, and sucked thick brown sediment out of liliputian cups; ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... people not at all stupid were here who spoke highly of Madame Bovary, but with less zest of Salammbo. Lina got into a white heat, not being willing that those wretches should make the slightest objection to it; Maurice had to calm her, and moreover he criticised the work very well, as an artist ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... soon as he was alone, but he was not long in finding that he was not in a fit condition to take a journey; and during the rest of his stay at Dunroe there were no more pleasure-trips, for the zest for them was in the case of ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... formal and appointed holidays, the events and days that a country community most enjoyed were not numerous; yet their infrequency and unexpectedness added a certain amount of zest to its monotonous annals. A fire, an accident, a death, a raising, an engagement, a fight, a new minister, even Miss Penniman's new style of gown from Boston were not unwelcome excitements. They furnished food for talk, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... book The Promise of American Life vividly describes the bitter, warlike character of industrial competition after 1865. Competition was battle to the knife and tomahawk. The leaders were constantly seeking bigger operations, to which the bigger risks only added zest. A company might be making unbelievable profits one year and "skirting" bankruptcy the next. Exciting as all this was, however, the desire for adventure was not as powerful as the desire for profits, and cut-throat ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... waiting." The most of her lost interests revived. She took up music again, and languages, drawing, painting, and the other long-discarded delights of her maidenhood. She was happy once more, and felt again the zest of life. As the years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was contented with it. Not altogether, but nearly that. The soft side of his heart was larger than the other side of it. It was his only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... get all I wanted to eat—a condition accountable, in this world, I am convinced, for no end of stupidity. But to be both physically and, let us say, psychologically hungry, and not to know where or how to get anything to eat, adds something to the zest of life. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... Anna Eliza, alias "Nan," Patterson, where one would have supposed that the lightest subject of conversation would be not less weighty than the constitutionality of an income tax, and finding to his astonishment that the only topic for which they showed any zest was whether ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... every day when it is fine, I think he will generally do far better for himself by abstaining altogether for a day or two before the competition. Then, when he goes out to play in it, he will experience a zest and keenness which will be very much in his favour. There is no danger that in this brief period of rest he will have forgotten anything that he knew before, but, on the other hand, he will have a greatly improved capacity for taking pains, and every stroke will be easy to ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... a girl in any way like her—one who wanted so much and would give so little in return for it, who had an eel-like way of dodging hard-and-fast facts and who had made up her mind with all the zest and thoughtlessness of youth to mold life, when finally she could prove how much alive she was, into no other shape than the one which most appealed to her. She surprised and delighted him with her quick mental turns and twists, and although she sometimes made him catch his breath at her astoundingly ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... on, day in and day out. Battles were fought over and over but never finished. They always ended with a draw and could be resumed the next morning with added zest and new incidents. One old man, Pete Barnes, who had the distinction of being the only private who frequented the porch at Rye House, always claimed to have been present at every battle mentioned—even Bunker Hill and the battle ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... and fashionable peeress, she hunts Ireland and England both with all the zest and skill of a native-born Irish woman. Her keenest American competitor, in the art of hard cross-country riding, is a young and beautiful Virginian, Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, who comes over every year to hunt, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... moment. He arrived there a month ago; but the old fox is still at Narbonne—a very cunning fox, indeed. As to the King, he is sometimes this, sometimes that [as he spoke, Houmain turned his hand outward and inward], between zist and zest; but while he is determining, I am for zist—that is to say, I'm a Cardinalist. I've been regularly doing business for my lord since the first job he gave me, three years ago. I'll tell thee about it. He wanted some men ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... against The Master and all who served him gladly. All the way down the coast Bell had been remembering things he had seen of The Master's doing. His power was solely that of fear, and the deputies of his selection had necessarily been men who would spread that terror with an unholy zest. The nature of his hold upon his subjects was such that no honorable man would ever serve him willingly, and for deputies he had need of men even of enthusiasm. His deputies, then, were men who found in the assigned authority of The Master full scope for the satisfaction of their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... speaking Members still feel an avidity; If they burn to make orations of most uncommon zest, Let them just take our precaution against intense stupidity! Let them study PUNCHINELLO and learn how to make a jest; But away with dreams chimerical and projects vain, though clever! The power of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... wants were not painfully felt by George Sand and her children, nay, they gave, for a time at least, a new zest to life. It was otherwise with Chopin. "With his feeling for details and the wants of a refined well-being, he naturally took an intense dislike to Majorca after a few days of illness." We have already seen what a bad effect the wet weather and the damp ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... languished there was over all things a brooding stillness, foreboding storm. But Ravenslee strode on, unheeding dust and heat, hastening on to that which awaited him, full of strength and life and the zest of life, glad-hearted, and with pulses that throbbed in expectation. Thus, as the sun sank in fiery splendour, he reached the little wood. Evening was falling, and already, among the trees, shadows were deepening to twilight, but in the west was a flaming glory; and, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... loomed through the mass. Then he would beat the ground with his tail and whine expectantly. As he became stronger, he ventured to stretch his wound-stiffened muscles in short pilgrimages to the camp, where the men welcomed him with hearty and profane zest. Was he not the slayer of their enemy's sheep and the killer of the timber-wolf? Eventually he was presented with a broad collar studded with brass spikes, and engraved upon it was the sanguinary and somewhat ambiguous legend: "Chance—The Killer of ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... just between ourselves, godmother, is it not this shadow of you that prevents my entering, quite, into the appropriate emotion, the spirit of the occasion, as one might say, and robs my life of the zest which other persons apparently get out of living? Come now, you know it is! Well, and for my part, godmother, I love a jest as well as any man breathing, but I do prefer ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... up a plaisance of unprecedented beauty, concerning which a poet of the time wrote that "every breeze coming thence wafted the perfume of tea." The pastimes of "listening to incense," of floral arrangement, of the dramatic mime, and of the parlour farce were all practised with a zest which provoked the astonishment ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... fun-makers waited for suitable opportunities to spring their "quips and cranks," so that no merited interest in the doing could be lost. And none of it was lost. The presence of the bold invaders seemed to add zest to the most routine of the Camp Fire performances, and when all was over everybody was agreed that there had not been a dull minute during ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill to place before you a living, thinking being; to make therein a little hole, nothing but a little hole, and to see that red liquid flow which is the blood, which is the life; and then to have before you only a heap of limp flesh, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the reason," I suggested, "why modern society is so tiresome an affair. By tabooing all difference of opinion we have eliminated all zest from our intercourse. Religion, sex, politics— any subject on which man really thinks, is scrupulously excluded from all polite gatherings. Conversation has become a chorus; or, as a writer wittily expressed it, the pursuit of ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... order. In those three days I learned one secret of her spirit. She had a natural merriment that did not seem a matter of will power nor even of wish. It was an instinctive, inborn content, that was perhaps partly physical, in that it enabled her to sleep well, and so to wake with zest and courage. By night her eyes might be dark circled and her step slow, but each morning there was interest in her looks to see what the strange day was about to bring. I had seen this nature in men many times; I had not thought that it belonged to women ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... about three thousand of them—began without zest to while away the time, nipping at the low, half-trampled grass. The sun had not yet risen, but by now all the barrows could be seen and, like a cloud in the distance, Saur's Grave with its peaked top. If one clambered up on that tomb one could see the plain from it, level and boundless as ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... cushions, the sweetmeats, the nargueils, the rose baths of the old regime were jostled by the stories of the French nurses and English governesses and the Paris fashions of the new era. She had listened breathlessly, with her eager young zest in life, to the amazing and contradictory narrations of the tourists who were every whit as ignorant as she was, and her curiosity was on fire to see for herself. She felt that a chance in a thousand had come her ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... up the river was calculated to give a good impression of the country, the zest being, however, without doubt, greatly heightened by the monotonous dreariness of a tempestuous voyage. The highlands and valleys, as we sailed up, had a verdant woody appearance, and were interspersed with rural and chateau ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... his heart's content of viands which he so thoroughly appreciated and so rarely enjoyed. What Zook himself felt, it is impossible for well-to-do folk to conceive, or an ordinary pen to describe; but, as he sat there, opposite to his big friend and champion, stowing away the good things with zest and devotion of purpose, it was easy to believe that his watery eyes were charged with the tears of gratitude, as well as with those of a chronic cold to which ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Herbert had already begun to work with a tutor for the army, and Constance was to go to the High School at Colbeam and spend her Sundays at Northmoor, where a prettily-furnished room was set apart for her. She described it with so much zest that Rose was seized with a sort of alarm. 'You will live there like all the lords and ladies that papa talks of, ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... September Macartney and his suite were present at a ceremony which took place upon the anniversary of the emperor's birthday. Upon the morrow and following days splendid fetes succeeded each other, Tchien Lung participating in them with great zest. Dancers on the tight-rope, tumblers, conjurors (of unrivalled skill), and wrestlers, performed in succession. The natives of various portions of the empire appeared in their distinctive costumes and exhibited the different productions of their ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... and only hopes for it this week. And after this week comes the British Association business, which always fills every column for a month, so that a further delay is possible enough. 'It will increase,' says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of the reader,' whereas I say (at least think) that it will help him quite to forget me. I explain all this lest you should blame me for neglect to yourself in not sending the papers. I am so pleased that you like at least the second article. That ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... The driver looked briefly over his shoulder and lifted his whip. "Don't worry, sir," he cried, entering into the spirit of the game with gratifying zest. "Shan't let 'em over'aul you, sir. Mind ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Wit at Several Weapons deserves a somewhat similar description, and so does The Fair Maid of the Inn; while Cupid's Revenge, though it shocked the editors of 1750 as a pagan kind of play, has a fine tragical zest, and is quite true to classical belief in its delineation of the ruthlessness of the offended Deity. Undoubtedly, however, the last volume of this edition supplies the most interesting material of any except the first. Here is The Two Noble Kinsmen, a play founded ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... part of the zest of the game and it is due to the very uncertainty of tennis that the public is daily becoming more enthusiastic about the game. I believe next year will see even a greater interest taken in it ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... to build a fire out of doors, and sleep under a tree or in a haystack. Civilization is tiresome and enfeebling, unless we occasionally give it the relish of a little outlawry, and approach, in imagination at least, the zest of a gypsy life. The records of pedestrian journeys, the Wanderjahre and memoirs of good-for-noth-ings, and all the delightful German forest literature,—these belong to the footpath side of our nature. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... we hated and hate things we loved. Milton is not so dull as he once was, nor perhaps Ainsworth so amusing. It is decidedly harder to climb trees, and not nearly so hard to sit still. There is no use pretending; even the thrice royal game of hide and seek has somehow lost in zest. All our attributes are modified or changed; and it will be a poor account of us if our views do not modify and change in a proportion. To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at it with renewed zest, and spent two hours vainly searching for the means those speakers employed to ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... theatrical library are taken down from the dusty shelf, and a few of the neglected pages are printed once again. As these very books seem all the better in their dingy bindings, so do the old ideas, the odd conceits, the stories that charmed dead generations, take on a keener zest when clothed in the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Ella, in whom Susan recognized the very fat young woman of the Zinkand party, was won by Susan's irrepressible merriment to abandon her attitude of bored, good-natured silence, and entered into the conversation at luncheon with sudden zest. The party was completed by Mrs. Saunders' trained nurse, Miss Baker, a placid young woman who did not seem, to Susan, to appreciate her advantages in this wonderful place, and the son of the house, Kenneth, a ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... therefrom was certainly tempting to a hungry man, and when ready they were eaten with a keen relish. The rats did not require any of Lee's and Perin's Worcester sauce to make them palatable, or to give them zest. This will give the reader some idea of the straits to which some of the Confederate officers, and nearly all the privates, in prison at Fort Delaware were reduced to by ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... surveyor's lad; nobody had voted for Adams because stately old ladies designated him as "that cobbler's son." But when Jackson came into office the people had just had almost a surfeit of regular training in their chief magistrates. There was a certain zest in the thought of a change, and the nation certainly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... a piano. He cannot be master of a craft, but only master of a fragment of the craft. He cannot have the pleasure or pride of the old-time workman, for he makes nothing. He sees no complete product of his skill growing into finished shape in his hands. What zest can there be in this bit of manhood? Steam machinery is slowly taking out of his hands even this fragment of intelligent work, and he is set at feeding and watching the great machine which has been endowed with the brains that once were in the human toiler. ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... concerned, classical influences count for little. His architectural ideas were only classical through a Renaissance medium. When a patron gave him a commission to copy antique gems, he did his task faithfully enough, but without zest and with no ultimate progress in a similar direction. When making a portrait he would decorate the sitter's helmet or breastplate with the cameo which actually adorned it. With one exception, classical art must be sought in his detail, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... avowed her own opinions upon such topics as were started—blushing a little, it is true, if you asked the reason for the opinion, for ladies are not always quite ready with the why and wherefore. But the contrast of character, the individuality displayed, gave a zest and interest to the talk; so that the hour wore late before you were aware of it. Then, if you would go, two, at least, of the three boys piloted you by the best and cleanest route, and did not wish you farewell till you were in the straight road. This ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the first moment of our acquaintance with them, all my worries and anxieties passed away like the memory of an evil dream; and upon the day following that of Svorenssen's death I turned with renewed zest to the completion of the cutter. The hull was by this time practically finished; her deck was laid, her companion and tiny self-emptying cockpit completed, and all that was now needed was to run a low bulwark ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music to ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... poets failed to win the fair Unmadini's love. To praise the beauty of a beauty is not to praise her. Extol her wit and talents, which has the zest of novelty, then you may succeed. For the same reason, read inversely, the plainer and cleverer is the bosom you would fire, the more personal you must be upon the subject of its grace and loveliness. Flattery you know, is ever the match which kindles the Flame of love. True it is ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... swallowing flattery. Instead of dismissing his fulsome nonsense with a contemptuous smile, Lady Georgina perked herself up with a conscious air of coquetry, and asked for more. 'Yes, they were delightful days in Vienna,' she said, simpering; 'I was young then, Count; I enjoyed life with a zest.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... veil of gossamer sparkling with diamonds. Sometimes she stood listening to the gurgling and dripping of unseen waters; and sometimes melodies floated from the distance, which her quick ear caught at once, and her tuneful voice repeated like a mocking-bird. The childlike zest with which she entered into everything, and made herself a part of everything, amused her quiet friend, and gave her even more pleasure than ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... of taking a chance for possible gain led the colonists to amuse themselves at games and sports, in which they invariably added a wager to lend zest to the occasion. This practice, generally prevalent in England, quite naturally was extended to the Colony, as the English established themselves with all their customs and habits in the new land. Betting was general at games and in ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... three days that he had spent in his journeying northward. These Chukches of Siberia, so like the Eskimos of Alaska that one could distinguish them only by the language they spoke, lived a romantic life. Johnny had entered into this life with all the zest of youth. True, he had found himself very awkward in many things and had been set aside with a growled, "Dezra" (that is enough), many times but he had persevered and had learned far more about the ways of these nomads of the great, white ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... sprightliness, and cheap cynicism for wit, I noticed two or three new faces: a very obsequious Pole who was on a visit in the town; a German doctor, a sturdy old fellow who kept loudly laughing with great zest at his own wit; and lastly, a very young princeling from Petersburg like an automaton figure, with the deportment of a state dignitary and a fearfully high collar. But it was evident that Yulia ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... activities he was haled before the tribunal. He returned, the spring out of his step and his zest for stories quite gone. Javert had successively branded him an "Idiot" a "Liar" ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... summer of a score that I had known him, we sat on the veranda of his cottage at York Harbor, and looked out over the moonlit sea, and he talked of the high and true things, with the inextinguishable zest for the inquiry which I always found in him, though he was then feeling the approaches of the malady which was so soon to end all groping in these shadows for him. He must have faced the fact with the same courage ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... left Germany the "Reklam Book Company" of Leipzig issued an anti-American circular which flooded the country. The request that people should enclose it in all their private letters was slavishly followed with the same zest with which the Germans had previously attached Gott strafe England stickers ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... of high rank and culture devote a good deal of time to a thorough understanding of the subject. We have a lady of the "lordly line of proud St. Clair" writing for us "Dainty Dishes," and doing it with a zest that shows she enjoys her work, although she does once in a while forget something she ought to have mentioned, and later still we have Miss Rose Coles writing the "Official Handbook ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... Larch, Audacity Larkspur, Lightness, Levity Larkspur, Double, Happiness Larkspur, Pink, Fickleness Larkspur, Purple, Haughtiness Laurel, Glory Laurel, Common, Perfidy Laurel, Ground, Perseverance Laurel, Mountain, Ambition Lavender, Distrust Leaves, Dead, Sadness Lemon, Zest Lemon Blossom, Fidelity Lettuce, Cold-heartedness Lichen, Dejection Lilac, Field, Humility Lilac, White, Innocence Lily, Day, Coquetry Lily, Imperial, Majesty Lily, White, Purity Lily, Yellow, Falsehood Linden, Conjugal Love Lint, I feel my obligations Liverwort, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... do they?" I demanded, getting excited with my idea. "Why do they? There are a dozen reasons. One is because they come as pioneers—with all the enthusiasm and eagerness of adventurers. Life is fresh and romantic to them over here. Hardships only add zest to the game. Another reason is that it is all a fine big gamble to them. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. It's the same spirit that drives young New Englanders out west to try their luck, to preempt homesteads in the Northwest, ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... the ox-whip was laid about Sam's legs, with the zest of furious indignation; a fury there was no standing against. It is true, Rufus's frame was no match for the hardened one of Mr. Doolittle, though he might be four or five years the elder of the two boys; but the spirit that was in him ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... monkeys for the rescue; and they rejoice with him in the taking of Lunka, the destruction of Rawan, and the rescue of Seeta. The story furnishes abundant material for a drama, and the people enter with the greatest zest into the different scenes. A huge figure of Rawan is made of wood and paper; it is set on fire, and the crowds, looking on, make the air resound with their shouts. During this mela two things are united which in Hindu estimation well agree—amusement ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... till he had sweated for it. He would lead the men out to hunt, or invent games for them, or if there was work to be done, he would so conduct it that they did not leave it without sweat. He believed this regimen gave them zest for their food, was good for their health, and increased their powers of toil; and the toil itself was a blessed means for making the men more gentle towards each other; just as horses that work together grow gentle, and will stand quietly side by side. Moreover the knowledge of having gone ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... ignorance, a liking for anything vulgar or trivial. That which was merely pretty, in music, painting, or poetry, was never placed on the same level in our admiration with that which was fine; and though, from nature as well as training, we enjoyed with great zest every thing that could in any sense be called good, our enthusiasm was always reserved for that which was best, an incalculable advantage in the formation of a fine taste and critical judgment. A noble ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... longer confined to the inner shrine of the back drawing-room. Her chair was placed in the large room, and she was the centre of a lively group of callers who were discussing the events of the week in Parliament, with the light and mordant zest of people well acquainted with the personalities they were talking of. She was apparently better in health, he noticed; at any rate, she was more at ease, and enjoying herself more than on the previous Wednesday. All her social characteristics ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... did not find so much luxury in the house as in her own home, there were evidences of culture, of intellectual activity and of a zest in the affairs of all the world, which greatly impressed her. Every room had its book-cases or book-shelves, and was more or less a library; upon every table was liable to be a litter of new books, fresh periodicals and daily ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... controversy received new zest and a new impetus when, in 1559, Victorin Strigel and Huegel (Hugelius), respectively professor and pastor at Jena, the stronghold of the opponents of the Wittenberg Philippists, opposed Flacius, espoused ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... about the wedding. Having decided to make the best of what he feared was a piece of romantic folly, he had acquired more zest for the grand experiment. He wished the ceremony to be in London, for greater privacy. Edith Harnham would have preferred it at Melchester; Anna was passive. His reasoning prevailed, and Mrs. Harnham threw herself ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... from Llanrwst, he disburthened his heart to his mother, and told her that shoemaking, which until now he had pursued with extraordinary zest, could no longer interest him. His mother, who was equal to the emergency, sent the boy to a teacher of the old school, who had himself worked his way from the plough. After the exercise of considerable diplomacy, an arrangement was arrived at whereby the youth was to ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... she has never before been seen in America employed, for instance, as a section hand on a railway. The gangs are few and small as yet, but there the women are big and strong specimens of foreign birth. They "trim" the ballast and wield the heavy "tamping" tool with zest. They certainly have muscles, and are tempted to use them vigorously at three dollars ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... hand, and her black woman's bed made within reach on the floor. She then went into a shell of sleep which dancing-parties in the house had not broken, and required no further attention until the birds stirred in the morning. Angelique rushed out to evening freedom with a zest which became rapture when she danced. Perhaps this fresh delight made her ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... to her persuasions. They didn't approve, they didn't sanction, but they did get enthusiastic, and a merrier houseful of masqueraders was never found than that. Even Aunt Grace allowed her qualms to be quieted and entered into her part as semi-invalid auntie with genuine zest. ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... imagination, even if he may now and then unconsciously pour it into a mould provided by another. He is no mere echo of the rhythms of this poet, or mimic of that other's attitude and outlook. The great zest of living which inspires him is far too real and intense to clothe itself in the trappings of any alien individuality. He is too straightforward to be even dramatic. It is not his instinct to put on a mask, even for purposes of artistic personation, ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... our purpose to pursue the adventures of the Church, but to indicate the meaning of the allegory and the general interpretation; it will give greater zest to the student to make the investigation for himself, with the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... asway High on an emerald spray, Why that melodious zest, Bird of the beautiful breast, Bright as the dawn of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... had laboriously prepared for the ordeal by study and practice. No doubt the primary motive was the love of adventure, which was his strongest passion; but along with the wanderer's restlessness marched the zest of exploration, and whilst wandering was in any case a necessity of his existence, he preferred to roam in untrodden ways where mere adventure might be dignified by geographical service. There was a "huge white blot" on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... popularity equal to Mrs. Meade as a Writer of stories for young girls. Her characters are living beings of flesh and blood, not lay figures of conventional type. Into the trials and crosses, and everyday experiences, the reader enters at once with zest and hearty sympathy. While Mrs. Meade always writes with a high moral purpose, her lessons of life, purity and nobility of character are rather inculcated by example than intruded ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... eagerness to accomplish it. For though to a reasonable extent and in certain circumstances, all enjoyments are harmless, they degenerate into crimes, when excessively indulged, and particularly when the imagination is overstrained to improve their zest, or to refine or exalt them beyond the limits which Nature and sobriety prescribe. But this can no more be alledged as a reason for renouncing the moderate use of the enjoyment, than the excesses of the drunkard or glutton for the rejection ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... thought. "Boot and saddle, lads!" he called to his men; "we'll run the traitorous fox to earth long before he gets to Berwick!" At a canter they were off down the drive, the contents of Halyburton's case-bottles still warming their hearts and giving extra zest to their enterprise. It was a dark night, and they were thick black woods that they rode between, but they had not ridden very many miles when they were able to make out, some way in front of them, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... on his own account, and by now he was deep in her debt. For one thing, she had set the fashion in the matter of legislative receptions—her detractors, knowing nothing whatever about it, hinted that she had been an amateur social lobbyist in Washington, playing the game for the pure zest of it—and at these functions Kent had learned many things pertinent to his purpose as watch-dog for the railroad company and legal adviser to his chief—things not named openly on the floor of the House or of the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... couple of dormitories containing a camp-bed for each member, with pegs and racks for arms and implements, formed the whole of the appointments and furniture; but the sport is first-rate; and the plain simplicity of this menage gives increased zest to the meeting, and promotes the hardihood essential both to the successful pursuit of game and to the ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... chiefly by his "Essays of Elia" he is best known and will be longest remembered; he was the friend of Wordsworth, Southey, and others of his illustrious contemporaries, and is famous for his witty remarks, to which his stammering tongue imparted a special zest; he was never married; his affection for his sister Mary, for whom he composed his "Tales from Shakespeare," is well known, and how in her weakness from insanity ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... here and there, may dazzle others, but do not deceive himse deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others. Whatever good properties he may possess are, in fact, neutralised by a 'cold rheum' running through his veins, and taking away the zest of his pretensions, the pith and marrow of his performances. What is it to me that I can write these TABLE-TALKS? It is true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a parcel of half-forgotten observations, but they do not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... ebulliently alive he was. Thoroughly rich, also; and if the truth be told, rather ebulliently conscious of his wealth. You could see at a glance that he had paid no usurious interest to Fate on his success; that his vigor and zest in life remained to him undiminished. Vitality and a high satisfaction with his environment and with himself as well placed in it, radiated from his bulky and handsome person; but it was the vitality that impressed you first: impressed ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... what was right, and do it she must. There would be an end of much that was pleasant, and a fresh glow came over her as she owned how very, very pleasant; but if it was not quite the thing,—if mamma did not approve, so it must be. True, all her doings received their zest from Guy,—her heart bounded at the very sound of his whistle, she always heard his words through all the din of a whole party,—nothing was complete without him, nothing good without his without his approval,—but ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dignified name of the thing best suggests the way in which it was looked at then—was as much a part of fashionable life in New York as in Edinburgh or London. Into this society Irving entered with zest, flirting, dancing, tippling with other young swaggerers according to the mode. He went back nominally to his legal studies, but was really very little concerned with law or gospel. Of this kind of life, "Salmagundi," the first number of which, appeared ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... and direction to his studies, one thing of course acting and reacting on another. The special note of his books, apart from his remarkable gift of conversational epigrammatic style, which gives a peculiar zest to the writing, is the quality of scientific dispassionate description of matters which were hardly thought of previously as subjects of scientific study. This is specially the case with the two books which perhaps brought him the most reputation, The English Constitution (1867) and Lombard Street ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... her that the task of guiding that heavy, swerving thing through the unbroken road was something beyond her powers of endurance. She often had driven it a hundred miles and more without resting, or without losing zest in the enterprise: then why should she fear the small matter of thirty miles, even under the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... shelter of the stone. The scene presented to view was one of the most curious and interesting which could engage the attention of an observer in any field of inquiry, and the occurrence certainly banished the idle mood of the time, and lent a zest to the subsequent hours of our holiday. Running hither and thither in wild confusion were the denizens of this underground colony; their six little legs carrying their curious globular bodies backward and forward over the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... too desirable in her mysterious new complexity. There was zest in discovering Katie after he ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... witching hour draws nearer, the "brightest eyes that ever have shone" glitter yet more gloriously, till in their nearer and dearer splendor a Chaldean would forget the stars; and the "sweetest lips that ever were kissed" sip the creaming Verzenay, or savor the delicate "olio," with a keener honesty of zest. The supper-tables are almost always adorned by some of the pretty, quaint conceits of an artist, whose fame extends far beyond Baltimore. Mr. Hermann's ice-imitations of all fruits and flowers, are marvellously vivid and natural: I have never ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... induced a series of sensations at once novel and delightful, and such as were calculated to give zest to an attachment thus left, to support itself, not from the presence of its object, but from the memory of tenderness that had already gone by. She knew Charles Osborne only as a boy—a beautiful boy it is true—and he knew ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... ended the matter. But as Fitzgerald went over to the chair just vacated by the secretary, he found that there was a double zest to life now. This would be far more exciting than dodging ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... only men present! You know—you ladies must excuse me—there is sometimes a peculiar charm in being only with men, especially on great occasions like that. Conversation becomes more pointed, more actual, more robust—and laughter more full of zest. Men seem to understand one another almost without ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... she is perhaps blest in the absence of those ideas, which, while they add a zest to the few pleasures which fall to the lot of superior natures to enjoy, doubly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... it means Aldershot," said Dermott ruefully. "However, I shan't open it till lunch-time." And he stuffed the offending epistle into his pocket, and returned to the game in hand with a zest and abandon that betrayed ulterior motives ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... feelings. She readily conformed to his habits no less than his wishes—partook of his amusements, shared his journeys—which were frequent—and still, in his absence, could listen with as keen a zest to his praises, as before their marriage. During the summer months, it was his almost yearly custom to retire to the mountains of the interior. She was always his companion. On such occasions, he was guilty ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... lot in life. What was the use of trying to educate a woman, who could see no farther than her own kitchen-stove? When you wanted to be a world-saviour, to walk tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops of heroism, she dragged you down and chained you to the commonplace, taking all the zest and fervour out of your soul! The memories of "seam-squirrels" and of thin coffee and ill-smelling and greasy soup had slipped somewhat into the background of Jimmie's mind, and he lived again the sublime hour when he ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... share is the bliss of heaven, as it is the joy of earth; And the unshared bread lacks savor, and the wine unshared, lacks zest; And the joy of the soul redeemed would be little, little worth If, content with its own security, it could ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... nuptials good; Nor did the happy pair think fit to go, But spent the month and more within the wood. The lady to the stripling seemed to grow. His step her step, his eyes her eyes pursued; Nor did her love lose any of its zest, Though she was always hanging ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... slaves he saw seemed gay and light-hearted and on Sundays played at pitching the bar with an activity and zest that indicated that they managed to keep from being overworked and found some ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Next month Jim went back to the freight service. He preferred Dick Rail to Mrs. Wagoner. He got him. Dick was worse than ever, his appetite was whetted by abstinence; he returned to his attack with renewed zest. He never tired—never flagged. He was perpetual: he was remorseless. He made Jim's life a wilderness. Jim said nothing, just slouched along silenter than ever, quieter than ever, closer than ever. He took to going on Sunday to another church than the one he had attended, a more fashionable ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... our leading philosophers, has said. I was living this truth. My work on infinite series went more smoothly and swiftly than any mathematical research I had engaged in before and my senses responded to living with greater zest than ever. ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... unreservedly into his confidence and, with the help of Inaguy as interpreter, fully laid before the pair a number of exceedingly delicate and difficult problems which were just then confronting him. And Earle, being a born diplomatist, entered into the thing with keen zest, taking the problems one by one and asking question after question until, as he put it, he had fairly "got the hang of the thing," when, by a judicious admixture of his own diplomatic instinct with Dick's shrewd common sense, it became not very difficult to find solutions of the several problems, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood |
