"Curvet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great is the artist's power of realization, that we momentarily expect to see the horrible thing close with a snap! A skeleton, whose fleshless skull is masked with a pleasant female countenance, officiates as barmaid, and behind her yawns a pit, on the further side of which a circle of evil spirits curvet around a huge still. Just such a weird scene as would strike a sympathetic chord in the artist's fancy was found for him in Scott's novel of "Red Gauntlet." The episode selected for illustration ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... said the young man, "or you will be thrown off—" for the irritated animal began to curvet around in all directions, manifesting a strong determination to go back to his stable, instead ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... jump, hop, spring, bound, vault, saltation^. ance, caper; curvet, caracole; gambade^, gambado^; capriole, demivolt^; buck, buck jump; hop skip and jump; falcade^. kangaroo, jerboa; chamois, goat, frog, grasshopper, flea; buckjumper^; wallaby. V. leap; jump up, jump over the moon; hop, spring, bound, vault, ramp, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the empire. To ride with stirrups or none, to mount from the near-side or off-side (Which still is required in the trooper who rides in the Austrian army), To ride with bridle or none, on a saddle Turkish or English, To force your horse to curvet, pirouette, dance on his haunches, And whilst dancing to lash with his feet, and suggest an effectual hinting 60 To the enemy's musqueteers to clear the road for the hinter: Or again, if you want a guide by night, in a dangerous highway Beset with the enemies' marksmen and swarming with ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... round, and Rena was lifted into the buggy. Wain seized the reins, and under his skillful touch the pretty mare began to prance and curvet with restrained impatience. Wain could not resist the opportunity to show off before the party, which included Mary B.'s entire family and several other neighbors, who had gathered to ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to the camp of Atahualpa, which was at the distance of a league from Caxamarca, with orders to announce his arrival. On coming towards the presence of Atahualpa, Soto pushed his horse into a full career, making him prance and curvet to the great terror of many of the Peruvians, who ran away in a prodigious fright. Atahualpa was so much displeased at his subjects for their cowardice, that he ordered all who had run away from the horse to be immediately put ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... gently raised them, till standing upon the ground with their hinder feet, they just touched it with the very ends of their fore feet. In this posture the grooms plied them with whips and shouts, provoking them to curvet and kick out with their hind legs, struggling and stamping at the same time to find support for their fore feet, and thus their whole body was exercised, till they were all in a foam and sweat; excellent exercise, whether for strength or speed; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of a fortnight, what with my own cleverness, and the diligence of him I had chosen for my patron, I learned to jump for the king of France, and not to jump for the good-for-nothing landlady; he taught me to curvet like a Neapolitan courser, to move in a ring like a mill horse, and other things which might have made one suspect that they were performed by a demon in the shape of a dog. The drummer gave me the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... all grades in society, and all of them mounted— of course, each in the best way he can. There they go, prancing over the ground, causing their gaily caparisoned steeds to caper and curvet, especially in front of the tiers of seated senoritas. There are miners among them, and young hacendados, and rancheros, and vaqueros, and ciboleros, and young merchants who ride well. Every one rides well in Mexico—even the dwellers ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... she answered it and said, 'What matter, so I help him back to life?' Then far away with good Sir Torre for guide Rode o'er the long backs of the bushless downs To Camelot, and before the city-gates Came on her brother with a happy face Making a roan horse caper and curvet For pleasure all about a field of flowers: Whom when she saw, 'Lavaine,' she cried, 'Lavaine, How fares my lord Sir Lancelot?' He amazed, 'Torre and Elaine! why here? Sir Lancelot! How know ye my lord's name ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... the martial train, Full many a fair-tressed beauty vain, On palfrey and jennet— That proudly toss the tasselled rein, And daintily curvet; And war-steeds prance, And rich plumes glance On helm and burgonet; And lances crash, And falchions flash Of knights in ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... "love" with "dove," "sweet" with "fleet," "rosy" with "posy," and "heart" with "part," and cudgelled his brains for images and conceits that would express in some scant measure the charms of pretty Mistress Dorothy Dawe. But his lines would not prance and curvet as he wished them to do; they laboured along in a heavy, cart-horse fashion, so that Johnnie at length reluctantly recalled his wandering wits to the consideration of the practical things of life. And, immediately upon doing ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... never feels so proud or so sanguine as when he is bounding on the back of a fine horse. Cares fly with the first curvet, and the very sight of a spur is enough to prevent one ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... engrossed by these unpleasant thoughts, that it was in vain officious Tom several times rode up close upon him, making his own horse curvet and caper, hoping to attract his master's attention, and remind him that he was loitering on the road long after his dinner hour. L'Isle went on at a foot-pace up the hill of Elvas, until, from a neighboring hedge, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... consolations I draw from these studies, is the ever-strengthening conviction of the beneficent wisdom that framed our Mardi. For did men possess thighs in proportion to fleas, verily, the wicked would grievously leap about, and curvet ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a couple of miles, when they again heard a noise, as of some powerful body in haste; and in a little while, a horse without a rider came rushing towards them, in golden trappings. It was Rinaldo's horse, Bayardo.[6] The Circassian, dismounting, thought to seize it, but was welcomed with a curvet, which made him beware how he hazarded something worse. The horse then went straight to Angelica in a way as caressing as a dog; for he remembered how she fed him in Albracca at the time when she was in love with his ungracious master: and the beauty recollected Bayardo with equal pleasure, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... two cross-roads before they reached the Lymington Ford, and at each of then Sir Nigel pulled up his horse, and waited with many a curvet and gambade, craning his neck this way and that to see if fortune would send him a venture. Crossroads had, as he explained, been rare places for knightly spear-runnings, and in his youth it was no uncommon thing for a cavalier to abide for ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... performed about three miles, when the sound of wheels behind made him turn his head, and he perceived a chaise driven very fast, while out of the windows thereof dangled strangely a pair of human legs. The pad began to curvet as the post horses rattled behind, and the Parson had only an indistinct vision of a human face supplanting these human legs. The traveller peered out at him as he whirled by—saw Mr. Dale tossed up and down on the saddle, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... just below the Convent, and from sheer wantonness I was making my Waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it with the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... be all his lifetime a good rider, they made to him a fair great horse of wood, which he did make leap, curvet, jerk out behind, and skip forward, all at a time: to pace, trot, rack, gallop, amble, to play the hobby, the hackney-gelding: go the gait of the camel, and of the wild ass. He made him also change his colour of hair, as the monks ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... covered with flowers, which look like huge bouquets; the young men, mounted on mustangs, bend from their high Mexican saddles and peer under the hats of the young girls; the half-wild horses, frightened by the noise and confusion, look here and there with their bloodshot eyes, curvet, rear, and try to unseat their riders, but the cool riders seem to ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the stair and gaining the street, caught sight of a horseman, riding uncertainly about, and making his horse curvet, to attract attention. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade |
