"Effortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with which he compelled them to gather speed after the turn, these were astonishing, enough; but far more astonishing were his grace of pose, his perfect form in every motion, the ease of all his manoeuvres, the sense of his effortless control of his vehicle, of reserve strength greatly in excess of the strength he exerted; these were nothing short of dazzling. His pride in his artistry, for it amounted to that, and his enjoyment of every detail of what he did and of the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and earth. If He who lives above all limitations of time, the Source of life, who has the fulness of life in Himself, He who has revealed Himself to Israel and bound Himself to fulfil His covenant with all who plead it, He whose sovereign effortless power willed and spake into being the azure deeps of heaven with all its stars, and the solid earth with its tribes—if He, with such infinite resources to bestow on us as we need, if He blesses us, it will be with no vain wishes nor with the invoking of the goodwill of a higher ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... at me. Secretly, perhaps, neither of us wanted to give the other a chance by stooping for a heavy girl; I knew I was not going to do it. But Paulette must have feared I was. She sprang past me and lifted Marcia with smooth, effortless strength, as if she ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... a worker—would it do me harm to disport myself in the flowery mead with the butterflies? Should I feel a distaste for the bread earned by labour and pain after the honey placed, effortless, on ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the lash of some sort of excitement; and as a consequence to our obtaining a sense of real well-being only from the spare energy which accumulates during idleness. Moreover, under our present conditions (as under those of slave-labour) "work" is rarely such as calls forth the effortless, the willing, the pleased attention. Either in kind or length or intensity, work makes a greater demand than can be met by the spontaneous, happy activity of most of us, and thereby diminishes the future chances of such spontaneous activity ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... unaware of anything unusual in her demeanour. He talked throughout dinner in his calm, effortless drawl, and gradually under its soothing influence she ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... up on his feet. It was an impressively effortless motion. There was a thick wide torso on short thick legs under the golden fur. The structure was gorilla-like. Pilli might weigh ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... flight and drops upon the ground, as if seeking insects or frogs or snakes. I have never yet seen her swoop or strike after the manner of other hawks. It is a pleasure to watch her through the glass and see her make these circuits of the fields on effortless wing, day after day, and strike no bird or other living thing, as if in quest of something she never finds. I never see the male. She has perhaps assigned him other territory to hunt over. He is smaller, with more ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... his kitchen apron. In another moment he was beside the rider of the stallion, and the man was whistling one of those melodies which defied repetition. It simply ran on and on, smoothly, sweeping through transition after transition, soaring and falling in the most effortless manner. Now it paused, now it began again. It was never loud, but it carried like the music of a bird on wing, blown by the wind. There was about it, also, something which escaped from the personal. He began to forget that it was a man who whistled, and such ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... him aboard his raft with all his earthly possessions bestowed about him, awaiting the rains and freshets that were to waft him effortless into a newer country where he should have a white man's chance. At last the rains came, and he cast off from the bank at that unsalubrious spot where his father had elected to build his cabin on a strip of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... express it in the most favorable way. Beauty is again connected with the functioning of our organs of perception (Auffassungorgane). "We wish to be put into a fresh, lively, energetic and yet at the same time effortless activity.... The pleasure in form is a pleasure in this, that the conformation of the object makes possible or rather compels a natural purposeful functioning of our apprehending organs." But purposeful for what? For visual form, evidently ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... economy. Habitual acts do not have to be actively directed by consciousness. While they are being performed, consciousness may be otherwise engaged. "The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work." While you are brushing your hair or tying your shoes, your mind may be engaged in memorizing poetry or calculating arithmetical problems. Habit ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... his uncoffin'd limbs The flocking flesh-birds scream'd! Then, while thy heart 10 Groans, and thine eye a fiercer sorrow dims, Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind) What Nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal! O abject! if, to sickly dreams resign'd, All effortless thou leave Life's commonweal 15 A prey to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... me a lot," Cal said to the two E's, following the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless human existence than Earth." ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... himself as seen by another Men were judged in this world rather by what they were Nobody can spoil a life, my dear One does not precisely choose with whom one will fall in love Only sort of life that doesn't hurt anybody; except art Parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of a life Private possession underlay everything worth having Purpose of marriage was children, not mere sinful happiness Question so moot that it was not mooted Quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... hoarse hooting and frenzied action. He drew near to watch. The ball, misdirected, sailed suddenly toward him. He ran backward at its swift approach, leaped high, caught it, and with a long curving swing, so easy as to appear almost effortless, sent it hurtling back. The lad on the pitcher's mound made as if to catch it, changed his mind, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... maintained for a short time and with effort; while the body which the individualized spirit, or ego, builds for itself is produced by a perfectly natural process and does not require any effort to sustain it, since it is kept in touch with the whole system of the planet by the continuous and effortless action of the ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... the mind, the heart and the soul; peace physical, intellectual and moral. In looking at the Hermes they saw, or seemed to themselves to see, the goal, what struggling humanity is meant for—the perfect poise, all faculties under effortless control, and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... an effortless knack of commanding attention and inspiring courtesy. Calvin Gray was one of these. Before many moments, he was in the manager's office, explaining, suavely, "Now that I have introduced myself, I wish to thank you for taking care of me upon ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... spread that would likely have been the end of us. I had unslung my rifle and held it in full view resting on my thigh, being minded to look as murderous as possible, but she stole all my thunder by suddenly snatching the rifle away and drawing back its bolt to cock the spring with that almost effortless adroitness ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... the broad square, he began to sing softly, wondering that he should have any voice left after what he had suffered; but great singers are not like other men, at least as to their throats, and after a few trials the rich notes floated out deliciously, as effortless and as true, as soft and as strong as ever, in those marvellous love-songs of his own that thrilled all Italy while he lived, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... future, golden with the light of such a love, and he saw a vision of perfect happiness, of joy beyond all expression, of deep, calm content, surpassing anything which he had known. Hand in hand he saw two figures, himself and her, gliding through the years with a sort of effortless energy, tasting together of everything in life that was sweet, and pure, and beautiful; scattering all trouble and worldly vexation to the winds, by the touchstone of their undying love. There was intoxication—ethereal intoxication in such a vision. The winds blew against him, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that it does not exist; and that pretence is the end of art and beauty in all things made by man. There is a close connexion between the idea of life expressed in Aristotle's ideal man and the later Greek sculpture. The aim of that sculpture, as of his ideal man, was proud and effortless perfection. Both dread the confession of failure above all things—and both are dull. In Aristotle's age art had started upon a long decline, which ended only when the pretence of perfection was killed, both in art and in life, by Christianity. Then the real beauty of art, the beauty of value ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... sensations are disposed of in the right way before we obtain any knowledge of the eye. And most wisely has nature seconded her own scheme by obscuring all the sources from which that knowledge might be derived. The light eyelids—the effortless muscular apparatus performing its ministrations so gently as to be almost unfelt—the tactual sensations so imperceptible when the eye is left to its own motions, so keen when it is invaded by an exploring finger, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... slightest motion of them, while the bird stands upon the ground, suffices to lift its feet clear. Their movements when in the air are very majestic and beautiful to the eye, being in every respect identical with those of our common hen or red-tailed hawk. They sail along in the same calm, effortless, interminable manner, and sweep around in the same ample spiral. The shape of their wings and tail, indeed their entire effect against the sky, except in size and color, is very nearly the same as that of the hawk mentioned. A dozen at a time may ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... part of the armour of his little world fell away from him. He leaned forward, and looked into the eyes of the woman he loved, and it seemed to him that she sang back to him with a sudden note of something like passion breaking here and there through the gay mocking words which flowed with such effortless and seductive music ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in an effortless platitude, "liking is the great mystery—whether you take its coming ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... in serious poetry with his tragedy of Medea. For ten or twelve years afterwards he continued to throw off elegiac poems, some light, others serious, but all alike in their easy polish, and written from the very first with complete and effortless mastery of the metre. To this period belong the Heroides, the later pieces in the Amores, the elaborate poem on the feminine toilet called De Medicamine Faciei, and other poems now lost. Finally, in 2 or 1 B.C., he published what is perhaps on ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... early, plastic, formative years to acquiring the HABIT of effortless enjoyment, and when the time for making an effort came, the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... yards isn't the easiest thing in the world, even if a man is in good physical condition. There was less weight to contend with, but the mass that had to be pushed along remained the same. The notion that running on Luna was an effortless breeze was one that ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... desire and passion of their lives can ever begin to hope to reach it. If, therefore, it has seemed up to this point as if all depended on passivity, let me now assert, with conviction more intense, that all depends on activity. A religion of effortless adoration may be a religion for an angel, but never for a man. No in the contemplative, but in the active, lies true hope; not in rapture, but in reality, lies true life; not in the realm of ideals, but among tangible things, is man's sanctification wrought. Resolution, ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... entirely lacks the feeling of reaction, or of mental effort. In this case there is no distinct reference to the needs of the self, and a lack of that focusing of attention necessary to give the consciousness a meaning and purpose in the life of the individual. All such passive, or effortless, states of consciousness, which make up those portions of mental existence in which no definite presentation seems to hold the attention, although falling within the sphere of the scientific psychologist, may nevertheless be left out of consideration in a study of educational psychology. Learning ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... deal of what I humbly venture to call one-sidedness talked about the way by which Christian character is to be developed and perfected. And one set of the New Testament metaphors upon that subject has been pressed to the exclusion of the others, and the effortless growth of the plant has been presented as if it were the complete example of Christian progress. I know that Jesus Christ has said: 'First the blade, then the ear; after that the full corn in the ear.' But I know that He has also ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... street. It was an almost imperceptible nod, but it was enough for Biff, and he dashed out of that door. Half a block ahead of him he saw Ripley hurrying, and took after him with that light, cat-like run which is the height of effortless and noiseless speed. Ripley, looking back hastily, hurried into a saloon, and he had scarcely closed the door when Biff entered after him, in time to see his man standing at the telephone, receiver in hand. It was the work of but an ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... to hold it at arm's length, quivering in the rays of light which came athwart the room from the high-up narrow window. Then falling into position, his whole body seemed to glide forward following the blade, as he made a thrust in the most effortless way, the point of his weapon passing into the hole made a few minutes earlier by the young esquire; and he was in the act of drawing it forth to thrust again, when the arras to his right was plucked aside and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... her breath was gone utterly, that her feet were leaden weights and her muscles limply effortless. But after him she plunged, panting and scrambling up the rocks, and then, very suddenly, they found themselves to be on only a plateau and the real mountain head ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... impression uses words, words, words, makes daub, daub, daub, without any definite purpose, and certainly without any real, or artistic, or definite effect. To describe, one must first of all see, and if we see anything the description of it will, as far as it is in us, come as effortless and natural as the leaves on trees, or as 'the tender greening of April meadows.' I, therefore, more than suspect that the brilliancy which the average reader laughs at is not brilliancy. A pot of flaming red paint thrown at a canvas does not make ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the tenderness of its accomplished beauty. And Verona possesses, in the last place, the loveliest Renaissance architecture of Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiled by luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment of domestic service, serenity of effortless grace, and modesty of home seclusion; its richest work given to the windows that open on the narrowest streets and most silent gardens. All this she possesses, in the midst of natural scenery such as assuredly ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... from among them all, lived longest within the memory of young Harold,—the porpoises playing fearlessly around her canoe as the princess, with graceful, effortless strokes, paddled around one after another of the pointed tongues of rock; the flying fish, skimming the surface of the ocean until, by virtue of their speed alone, they rose like gleaming bows of silver from the foam. Intent to ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... or heavier subsidies to the pretence of teaching what very few people are able to teach. We all know how atrociously English is taught, but proclaiming that will not mend matters a bit, it will only render matters worse by making schoolmasters and schoolmistresses shameless and effortless, unless we also show how well English may be taught. The sane course is to begin by establishing the proper way to do the thing, to develop a proper method and demonstrate what can be done by that method in a few selected schools, to prepare and render acceptable the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine pursuing power. Once more, as in the ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... which they lay, effectually protected them from a July sun, which threw its scorching brilliancy over the whole landscape before them. They seemed to enjoy to the full that delightful retired openness which an English park affords, and that easy effortless communion which only old companionship can give. They were, in fact, fellow collegians. The one, Reginald Darcy by name, was a ward of Mr Sherwood, the wealthy proprietor of Lipscombe Park; the other, his friend, Charles Griffith, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... of racing, but I love the aspect of sleek, slim horses, and I could applaud a skill in which I had no share. I can keep my seat on most four-legged beasts, but my horsemanship is a clumsy, rough-and-ready affair, very different from the effortless grace of your true cavalier. Mr. Grey's prowess, especially, filled me with awe. He would leap an ugly fence without moving an inch in his saddle, and both in skill and the quality of his mounts he was an easy victor. The sight of such ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of him the second night as his uncle the governor of Vaucouleurs; the third night he was his father. He did not seem to know that he was making these extraordinary changes; they dropped from his lips in a quite natural and effortless way. By his first night's account the governor merely attached him to the Maid's military escort in a general and unofficial way; the second night his uncle the governor sent him with the Maid as ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... back to her guests, and with the effortless ease of long training, she became once more the gracious and tactful hostess. But in her heart, the fear had grown a little stronger, and a specter walked by her side. Once during the evening, her husband looked at her questioningly, and she ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... habits that should become instinctive and effortless for every worker? What acts can we make our lower nerve centers—our subconscious selves—do for us or remind us to do? The following constitutes a daily routine that should be as involuntary as the process ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... an indifference to either the happiness or the sorrow of others. In his life he had never before believed that the command to love one's neighbour had in it anything more significant than the beauty of an immortal theory. He believed it now because, in her, he had seen it in effortless practice. He was even beginning to understand how it might be possible for him to follow where she led—as she, unconsciously, was a follower of a precept given to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Mr. Osmond talked of many things; Madame Merle had said he could be agreeable when he chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not only to have chosen but to have determined. Madame Merle and the Countess Gemini sat a little apart, conversing in the effortless manner of persons who knew each other well enough to take their ease; but every now and then Isabel heard the Countess, at something said by her companion, plunge into the latter's lucidity as a poodle ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... browns made little of them. They had come into the township the evening before, and had done nothing since but eat the hotel oats and wish to be out of a close stable and back in their own free paddocks. They took the hills at a swift, effortless trot, and on the down slopes broke into a hand-gallop; light-hearted, but conscious all the time of the hand on the reins, that was as steel, yet light as a feather upon a tender mouth. They danced merrily to one side when they met a motor or a hawker's van with flapping cover; when the buggy rattled ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... wistfully, though he feigned not to notice her presence. He was young and vigorous, and the sledge hammer was his toy; and as Drusilla, when she was practicing, gloried in the range of her voice and her effortless bravuras and trills, so Denver, swinging his sledge, felt like Thor of old when he broke the rocks with his blows. Drusilla gazed at him and sighed and walked pensively past him, then returned and came back up ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... week at Muktiarbad was a season of mild amusement and effortless good-fellowship. A few guests arrived to assist in making merry, and there was no discordant note to jar the harmony of ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... hot tropical sun has been shining on him for three or four hours, he is apt to do justice to a meal, especially if his appetite is healthy. I think I astonished the governor by the dexterous way in which I managed to consume eleven cups of his aromatic concoction of an Assam herb, and the easy effortless style with which I demolished his high tower of "slap jacks," that but a minute or so smoked ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... them like a ghost. They heard him creeping down the stairs and his hurrying, unequal footsteps on the empty street. Cosgrave and Connie Edwards nodded to one another and took hands and were gone. Francey, too, slipped to her feet. She gathered up her hat and coat, her silence effortless. She did not so much as glance at Robert, but at the head of the steep, ladder-like stairs he ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... the upper stratum of society, an ideal of effort and efficiency, which is far better than a patrician dilettantism, but has in turn its dangers.We need to recall the line of AEschylus, "All the gods' work is effortless and calm." Or Matthew Arnold's sonnet ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... most of the other diners, a fraction of the changing two or three hundred thousand people from the South and West who choose New York as the best of all summer resorts, gazed upon this handsome couple with their intricate steps which were timed with such effortless and enviable accuracy, and excitedly believed that they were beholding two distinguished specimens of what their home papers persisted in calling ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... as blade met blade, his sword, in the most effortless way, being edge outward exactly where Roy struck. "Why, do you know, sir, if I'd been in arnest with you, that you would have been spitted like a cockchafer on a pin before you got your ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... for rhyme and rhythm both, when repeated to him a few times with scanning emphasis, took root in that fertile brain which piled his compact forehead so powerfully above his piercing, deep-set eyes, and fell from his infant lips in silvery melody as effortless and spontaneous as the trickling of water or the singing ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... mouthpieces on top of their masks, and swam parallel to the beach. By using snorkels they avoided the effort of lifting their faces out of water to breathe and conserved the air in the tanks. With effective but effortless leg strokes ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... wheel, with their sinewy hands upon the spokes, now drawing them gently toward them a few inches only to push them as far away again a minute or two later. It looked ridiculously easy; yet there was grandeur in the thought that, by these simple, effortless movements, the destiny of the ship and all within her was to a large extent controlled. There was something almost sublime, to her imagination, in the ability to "guide the furrowing keel on its way along the trackless deep," as ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the valve of his jet unit and blindly jerked himself around again to drift feet first toward the ship. Strong watched this approach closely, silently admiring the effortless way the cadet handled himself in weightless space. When Tom was fifty feet away from the ship, and still traveling quite fast, Strong gave the second order to break his speed. Tom opened the valve again ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... easily outdistanced all opposition before on those improvised tracks, he was now meeting a far more equal race. The gray colt's stride was effortless, he was pounding out with power—more than Drew had ever known him to exert. Yet those golden legs matched his pace, reach for ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... courteously, gently, pleasantly, with a confidence which is yet modest, and with a rightness that has nothing rigid or unamiable about it. To see a thing so done, whatever it may be, leaves us with an envious desire that we might do the thing in the same way. It seems easy and effortless, and the one thing worth doing; and this is where the moral appeal of beauty lies, in the contagious sort of example that it sets. But when we clumsily translate the word by "grace," we lose the root idea of the word, which has a certain joyfulness ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stretch one's cramped wings to the sun, to ruffle and spread them, as a released bird will, but it was startling to find already little stiff habits arisen, little creaks and hindrances never suspected, that made flight in the high air not quite effortless and serene. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work; how placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays up its vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry, 'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!' until it become as monotonous as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lost their divine innocence and joy in the shambles, and whose spiritual bodies were scarred, for all the muscular strength gained during their fights, by hunger and frustration and agony. Pain had even marred their song. For what should have been innocence and effortless movement and godlike joy, Mozartean coordination and harmony, was full of terrible cries, and convulsive, rending motions, and shrouding sorrow. And Nietzsche had dreamt of music of another sort. He had dreamt of a music that should be a bridge to the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... calm tacking, in his effortless play, in his superb mastery of the furious gale, one realized that here was one of Nature's masterpieces. He arrested the gaze with his serenity, and in his majesty of flight marked himself as a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... left little Edy sitting down below while we climbed up into the clerestory to look at some beautiful piece of architecture. The choir were practicing, and suddenly there rose a boy's voice, pure, effortless, and clear.... For years that moment stayed with me. When we came down to fetch Edy, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... very adept, quick, and does the grafting so that it actually seems effortless. His technique is so fast, there is very little chance of the scion drying out before it ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... English with a certain care in the selection of the words, but with ease and an absence of effort, as though languages were instinctive to him—as though he could speak any language. And he impressed one with this same effortless facility in ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... whole matter is simple enough. If either a race or an individual prefers the pleasure of more effortless ease, of self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid and ignoble. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the swinging stride was practised only by Mr. Bross; P. Sybarite, instinctively aware that any such mode of locomotion would ill become one of his inches, contented himself with keeping up—his gait an apparently effortless, tireless, and comfortable amble, congruent with bowed shoulders, bended head, introspective eyes, and his aspect in general of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... him, loses his courage at other times, and lays down a system of rules for his guidance that is quite as strict as any which puritans could formulate. Wordsworth's Ode to Duty does not altogether embody the aesthetic conception of effortless right living. One may, perhaps, explain this poem on the grounds that Wordsworth is laying down principles of conduct, not for poets, but for the world at large, which is blind to aesthetic principles. Not thus, however, may one account for the self-tortures of Arthur Clough, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... tragedy of a few hours ago seemed to have passed already from her mind. She was all charm and irresponsibility. The gaunt, bare room, which for years had mocked all our efforts at decoration, seemed suddenly a beautiful place. Easily, and with the effortless grace of her fifteen years, she laughed her ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ranked fours swing off, turn out into the road, and go tramping down between the poplars. There has been no flurry, no hustle, no confusion. The whole thing has moved with the smoothness and precision and effortless ease of a properly adjusted, well-oiled machine—which, after all, is just what the regiment is. The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, but it eats up the miles amazingly, and it can be kept up with the shortest of ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... promised Eileen to do what he could. What merit lay in performing an easy obligation? What courage was required to keep a promise easily kept? If he cared anything for her—if he really cared for Gerald, he owed them more than effortless fulfilment. And here there could be no fulfilment without effort, without the discarding from self of the last rags of pride. And even then, what hope was there—after the sacrifice of self and the disregard of almost ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of those men who could not understand effortless faith; he was crushed by his own lack of success, and bowed down by his own failure. Since he could not rout the enemy single-handed, he believed that the battle was against the Hosts of the Lord. He knew no leisure ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... how effortless and free O'er samite black-though green by day—thou movest! And to the whirring music that thou lovest Thy foot advances imperceptibly. Thus hour by hour thy step doth measure— In tranced self-forgetful pleasure Thou'rt rapt; creation's soul is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... examination for aesthetic purposes. But, as I watch these vessels drifting down through the golden afternoon, or cheerily beating up against the tide on a breezy morning, the man at the wheel is a very model of unconscious grace and almost effortless ascendency; and his shipmates, grouped about him like floating lotos-eaters, have ever a touch of the fine old Ulyssean vagrancy. Now and then there stands out before the breeze and the sunlight a great canvassed ship, like some living thing fluttering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the clock-maker's shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out at their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they walked back in the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters' basement. As Miss Mellins and Mr. Ramy turned to go their various ways Evelina mustered a last display of smiles; but Ann Eliza crossed the threshold in silence, feeling the stillness of the little shop reach ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... it was a book of the primitive kind, written on the bark of trees by some shy dryad, unconcious translator into speech of the rustlings and whisperings of the woodland. It is, as the editor observes, an "effortless narrative," with "no attempt at fine or sensational writing, ... at that modern artifice which they call word-painting," but recording with "vivid exactness" what was seen and felt by the writer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... discharged all their precious liquid, the cauldron into which the metal has been poured is swung in mid-air by that unseen, effortless power which we know as hydraulic pressure, through the arc of a wide circle, until it reaches the point where the great ingot-moulds stand ready to receive the molten steel. Then the cauldron is tapped, and once more the stream of turquoise flows forth, ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... peculiar and uncostly decoration of our Tuscan villas: the central turret, round which the kite perpetually circles in search of pigeons or smaller prey, borne onward, like the Flemish skater, by effortless will in motionless progression. The view of Fiesole must be lovely from that window; but I fancy to myself it loses the cascade under the single ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... me. I could hardly believe it, but it was forced upon me, and the blows which I seemed to deliver at the right time in the most effortless of ways, had a terrible effect, my antagonist going down three ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... and the machine glided down towards the valley, falling all the while with the effortless grace a parachute. The shed from which his machine had issued was midway down a slope, with a short length of rails which ran, apparently, through it. The machine seemed to hover for several moments above the building, then descended slowly ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a loin cloth, the man was naked, his smooth skin tanned to a deep brown by the action of sun and wind. He moved with the graceful ease of a jungle cat and when he lifted heavy weights, the action seemed as effortless as ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of a doubt, for though it was the first time he had been able to watch the stallion at close hand he recognized the long and effortless swing of that gallop. Next he remembered those stories of the charmed life and the tales he had mocked at before now became possible truths. He caught up his gun to make sure, but when his left hand slipped under the barrel to the balance ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... influence and magic were not good. Even in May, when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn with shadows, steeped the air with scent; when soft leaves lipped each other consolingly; when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way from the green height to the green depth, and sang again—still, something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is its own, and that which is most stained with old ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... down easy grades in the powerful car. "No more Teals for me," he cried, in the ecstasy of handling an engine that slowed to a demure whisper, then, at a touch of the accelerator, floated up a rise, effortless, joyous, humming the booming song of the joy in speed. He suddenly hated the bucking tediousness of the Teal. The Gomez-Dep symbolized ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... lectures. He was often nervous and worried beforehand. "As a lecture," wrote the Yorkshire Weekly Post after a performance in this year (1911), "it was a fiasco, but as an exhibition of Chesterton it was pleasing." Although his writing appeared almost effortless he did in fact take far more pains about it than he did in preparing for a lecture. He seemed quite incapable of remembering the time or place of appointment, or of getting there on time, if at all. Stories are told of his non-appearance ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... long, well-balanced steps, swiftly, but without haste, as the Arab walks barefooted in the sand, not even suspecting that weariness can ever come upon him; erect, proud, without self-consciousness, elastic; collected and ever ready, in his easy and effortless movement, for sudden and violent action. He was not pale, as dark Italians are, but his skin had the colour and look of fresh light bronze, just chiselled, and able to reflect the sun, while having a light of its own from the strong blood beneath. That was the reason why the Neapolitans who did ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... elegance! Nothing more clearly proves the various talents of both the Roman and the American statesman than that they should no more have excelled in their forensic achievements on grand occasions than in those common and trivial affairs of every-day life, so unaffected and so effortless as the writing of letters to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... There are three most significant and instructive symbols by which the unity of believers in Christ Jesus is set forth in the New Testament. Our Lord Himself gives us the one of the vine and its branches, and that symbol suggests the silent, effortless process by which the life-giving sap rises and finds its way from the deep root to the furthest tendril and the far-extended growth. The same symbol loses indeed in one respect its value if we transfer it to growths more congenial to our northern climate, and instead of the vine with its rich ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... building, that day, the forward partition of the new cabin, fitting his boards meticulously, and driving home each nail with hammer strokes that seemed smooth and effortless, yet sank the nail to the head in an instant. He looked up over his shoulder ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... repose, society and solitude, music and silence. Sleep comes to them not as it does to us, with a darkening of the vision and a folding of the wings of the spirit, but with an opening of the eyes to deeper and fuller light, and with an effortless outgoing of the soul upon broader currents of life, as the sun-loving bird poises and circles upward, without a wing-beat, on ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... these things properly, face to face; they always kept just out of the line of vision, like shadows that follow a lonely walker in a wood and vanish the moment he turns to look at them over his shoulder. But ever by his side, with a steady, effortless motion, he knew they kept up with him—strange inhabitants of the airless heights, immense and misty-winged, with veiled, flaming eyes and silent feathers. He was not afraid of them; for they were neither friendly nor hostile; they were simply ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... only by the spontaneous development of the implanted life, but by conscious and continuous efforts which sometimes involve vigorous repression of the old self that progress is realised. The two metaphors of our text have to be united in our experience. Neither the effortless growth of the tree nor the toilsome work of the builder suffice to represent the whole truth. The two sides of deep and still communion, and of strenuous effort based on that communion, must be found in the experience of every ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... made a great show of studying the card and succeeded in pocketing the bill with the same effortless sleight-of-hand that the other had used ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable. Any description in words, or even any inert picture, requires an effort of memory before a picture exists in the mind. But on the screen the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and then imagining, has been accomplished for you. Without more trouble than ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... anything out?" said Sir John, coming up to where Jack was resting his elbows on the rail and sweeping the island in a peculiarly effortless way, which only necessitated his keeping the glass steadily to his eye and holding himself rigid, the result being that the object glass had three separate motions given to it by the yacht, namely, its gliding straight on, its fore and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... rather as the great fighter, the slayer of demons. Such a portrayal is what we might perhaps expect from a Mughal edition. None the less the paintings are remarkable interpretations, investing Krishna with an air of effortless composure, and exalting his princely grace. The style is notable for its use of smoothly flowing outlines and gentle shading, and although there is no direct connection, it is these characteristics which were later to be embodied in the Hindu art of ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... going in, tight, with a magnificent dip at the waist; all impressions were merged in a sense of ease, of suavity, of full-blown harmony. Here was no pomp of anatomical lore, of cunning handicraft, but the life seemed to circulate strong and gentle in this exquisite effortless body. And the creature was not merely alive with a life more harmonious than that of living men or carved marbles, but beautiful, equally in simple outline if you chose that, and in subtle detail when that came under your notice, with a beauty that ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... as to the accents of her German, in a high breathy effortless soprano, a little song about a child and a bouquet ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... "for herself' was the way she liked best to sing. But if he wished it So without more ado the song came. Not one of her gay little carols this time, but a wild Border lament; inimitably sweet, tender, and true. As effortless in the giving, as forgetful of auditors, as if she had been a veritable bird among the branches; for Wych Hazel always lost ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the genuine relief and satisfaction of the men there stirred vaguely the thought of the mysteriousness of women, of the entire female sex. Mrs. Haim, charwoman, was just as mysterious as any other woman. As for George, despite the exhilaration which he could feel rising in him effortless and unsought, he was preoccupied by more than women's mysteriousness; the conception of destiny lingered and faintly troubled him. It was as though he had been walking on a clear path through a vast and empty and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... hat rim down over his eyes, and looked away over the plain. It was the second year of Boom-town's existence, and Seagraves had not yet grown restless under its monotony. Around him the gophers played saucily. Teams were moving here and there across the sod, with a peculiar noiseless, effortless motion that made them seem as calm, lazy, and unsubstantial as the mist through which they made their way; even the sound of passing wagons was a sort of low, well-fed, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the lawn before he could stop her, her head thrown back, carrying herself proudly and well, moving as it seemed to him with a sort of effortless dignity wholly in keeping with the vigour of her words. He obeyed her literally. There was nothing else for him to do. His slight effort to join her in the cab she firmly repulsed, holding out her ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or ill, he was committed now to Cliff Lowell's project. Even though he was committed for only a week, qualms of doubt assailed him at intervals during their roaring progress to the city. Cliff drove with an effortless skill which filled Johnny with envy. Some day—well, a car like this wouldn't be so bad. And if the job held out long enough— Why, good golly, think of it! And Mary V thought he couldn't make any money with his airplane. Wanted ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... society had been of farcical ease. Not her prospective millions nor her conquering loveliness, either of which might eventually have gained the entree for her, would have sufficed to set her on the throne. Shrewd social critics ascribed her effortless success to what Lord Guenn called ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... war. But he Recked of the Amazon naught, but turned him thence To rush upon the Trojan host, and left Penthesileia unto Peleus' son Alone, for well he knew his heart within That she, for all her prowess, none the less Would cost Achilles battle-toil as light, As effortless, as ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... grim necessity of grind. There have been in modern fiction a few masters, and but a few, who were natural improvisatori: conspicuous among them are Dumas the elder and Walter Scott. Such writers pour forth from a very spring of effortless power invention after invention, born of the impulse of a rich imagination, a mind stored with bountiful material for such shaping, and a nature soaked with the humanities. They are great lovers of life, great personalities, gifted, resourceful, unstinted in their giving, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... generous to what he feels to be strong and good in what he has nevertheless abandoned, so fearless about letting his whole case come out, so careless about putting himself in the right in detail; which is so calm, and kindly, and measured, with such a quiet effortless freedom from the stings of old conflicts, which bears so few traces of that bitterness and antipathy which generally—and we need hardly wonder at it—follows the decisive breaking with that on which ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... comes to be tragic and dreadful at last, as we sit helpless, and see the shore rush past and hear the roar of the falls in our ears, like some poor wretch caught in the glassy smoothness above Niagara, who has flung down the oars, and, clutching the gunwale with idle hands, sits effortless and breathless till the plunge comes. Many a despairing voice has prayed as the sands ran out, and joys fled, 'Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon,' but in vain. Once the wish was answered; but, for all other fighters, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... store. Sunny's eyes followed him, but he displayed no other interest. With ears and brain alert, however, he waited. He knew that all he required to know would reach him through a channel that was quite effortless to himself. Again he stretched himself out on the bench, and his ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... quietly stopped the dogs. To the rear, from around the last bend and plainly into view, on the very trail they had just covered, trotted a furry, slinking form. Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted with a peculiar, sliding, effortless gait. When they halted, it halted, throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with nostrils that twitched as it caught and studied the ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... kick intended to send the golden chalice-like fungi flying scattered in the air. But George Vane Lee was as quick in defence as the other was in attack, and his parry was made in the easiest and most effortless way. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... we might grapple with and run down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library, gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, by personal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club, expecting somehow to take the information by effortless contiguity with it. A book which we could master and possess in an evening we can have read to us in a month in the club, without the least intellectual effort. Is there nothing, then, in the exchange of ideas? Oh yes, when there are ideas to exchange. Is there nothing stimulating in the conflict ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... surely releases him as a hostage. Let him not grow up in the court of the stranger, in the land of our foes. Let his feet, in his youth, climb the green holts of England;—let his eyes, resin dims them, drink the blue of her skies! When this shall reach thee, thou in thy calm, effortless strength, wilt be more great than Godwin our father. Power came to him with travail and through toil, the geld of craft and of force. Power is born to thee as strength to the strong man; it gathers around thee as thou movest; it is not thine aim, it is thy nature, to be great. Shield ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and effortless thou glidest on, As doth the swan upon the yielding water, And with a cheek like alabaster cold! But as thou didst divide the amorous air Just opposite the Astor, and didst lift That vail of languid lashes to look in At Leary's tempting window—lady! then My heart sprang in beneath ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... full, unwrinkled, firm in physical as in moral character; calm in the unresisted power of intellect and will over the passions, serene in a dignity too absolute and self-contained for pride, but expressing a consciousness of command over others as evident as the unconscious, effortless command of self to which it owed its supreme and sublime quietude. The lips were not set as with a habit of reserve or self-restraint, but close and even as in the repose to which restraint had never been necessary. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... question made me suddenly stoop down and lay my fingers on the dead man's open palm. I was conscious as I did so of the extraordinary, appealing helplessness of his hands—instead of being clenched in a death agony as I should have expected they were stretched wide; they looked nerveless, limp, effortless. But when my fingers came to the nearest one—the right hand—I found that it was stiff, rigid, stone-cold. I knew then that Salter Quick had been dead for several hours; had probably been lying there, murdered, all through the darkness ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... told to Conwell by an old Arab as the two journeyed together toward Nineveh, and, as you listen, you hear the actual voices and you see the sands of the desert and the waving palms. The lecturer's voice is so easy, so effortless, it seems so ordinary and matter-of-fact—yet the entire scene is instantly vital and alive! Instantly the man has his audience under a sort of spell, eager to listen, ready to be merry or grave. He has the faculty of control, the vital quality ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... of such a state must lie deeper than any bond established by obedience to a single political authority, or by the acceptance of common precedents and ideas. It must be based in some measure upon an instinctive familiarity of association, upon a quick communicability of sympathy, upon the easy and effortless sense of companionship. Such familiar intercourse is impossible, not only in a society with aristocratic institutions, but it can with difficulty be attained in a society that has once had aristocratic institutions. A century more or ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... leaped from the top of the knoll. But they did not fall into the lake. They did not touch its surface. They flew. Flew—and yet it was not flight. It was half-flight. It was scarcely flight at all. Compared with the magnificent, calm, effortless sweep of their girlhood days, it was almost a grotesque performance. Their wing-stumps beat back and forth violently, beat in a very agony of effort. Indeed these stunted fans could never have held them up. They supplemented their efforts ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... he really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose was, doubtless a quite sincere one, a necessary reaction of feeling. Well, in his writing he displays to us his vanity; whilst in his Painting we discern only his reverence. In his writing, too, he displays his harshness—swoops hither and thither a butterfly equipped with ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... then went on. He saw the big pale face of the moon in the east. Above the ever-silent Thing these giant symbols once interpreted, she rose, grand, effortless, half-terrible as themselves. And, with her, she lifted up this tide of the Desert that drew his feet across the sand to Wadi Hof. A moment later he dipped below the ridge that buried Helouan and Nile and Pyramids from sight. He entered the ancient waters. Time ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... our hopes, with its fountains, its pictures, its many mystical figures in repose. Ever could we rove over those sunny distances, breathing that modulated wind, eyeing those so well-blended, imaginative, yet thoughtful surfaces, and above us wide—wide a horizon effortless and ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller |
