"Elan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speech of fascinating bonhomie—delivered, the guest executed a sort of shuffle with a half-boot of patent leather studded with buttons of mother-of-pearl, and followed that up by (in spite of his pronounced rotundity of figure) stepping backwards with all the elan ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Austrian court, especially the Hungarian women, are notably beautiful and fascinating as well. It is the Magyar elan, that abandon which prompts a woman to toss her jewelled bangle to a Gypsy leader of the orchestra, when his violin moans and ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... if we're not back to prayers by five, we'll be missed," said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with an aquiline nose, and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader, as she rose from her seat. "Have you got the books, Addy?" Addy displayed three dissipated-looking novels under her waterproof. "And the provisions, Carry?" Carry showed a suspicious parcel filling the pocket of her sack. "All right, then. Come girls, trudge.—Charge ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... guns, and having used the white arm against their crews the guns were turned on to the retreating Turks and decimated their ranks. This charge was witnessed by General Shea, and I know it is his opinion that it was executed with the greatest gallantry and elan, and was worthy of the best traditions of British cavalry. The yeomanry lost about twenty-five per cent. of their number in casualties, but their action was worth the price, for they completely broke up the enemy resistance and ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... virtuosos announce themselves as such in the first bars; he emphasised but little, like one conversing in a company of clever people, not with that rhetorical aplomb which is considered by virtuosos as indispensable. He plays very quietly, without the daring elan which generally at once distinguishes the artist from the amateur. Nevertheless, our fine-feeling and acute-judging public recognised at once in this youth, who is a stranger and as yet unknown to fame, a true artist; and this evening afforded the unprejudiced observer ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the fight with the true cavalry elan. Dismounting his whole brigade, he opened a rapid fire on the advancing enemy; and this obstinate resistance evidently produced a marked effect upon their imaginations. They had been advancing—they now paused. They had ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... last, Gird thee to combat. For my mind-of-man Now seeks the nature of the vast Beyond There on the other side, that boundless sum Which lies without the ramparts of the world, Toward which the spirit longs to peer afar, Toward which indeed the swift elan of ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... a wild garment that still carries nobly the name of a wild Highland clan: a elan come from those hills where rain is not so much an incident as an atmosphere. Surely every man of imagination must feel a tempestuous flame of Celtic romance spring up within him whenever he puts on a mackintosh. I could never reconcile myself to carrying all umbrella; it is a pompous Eastern business, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... fires looked at one another in silence, or would not look at all. Elan, morale, esprit de ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the strain is terrific. My first idea was 'codfish,' but I suppose that's wrong. It's either 'silkworm' or 'wardrobe.' Thomas suggests 'mangel-wurzel.' He says he never saw anybody who had so much the whole air of a wurzel as Archie. The indefinable elan ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... Mr. Hamlin?" said the man, who, like all his class, admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... advanced with great gallantry and elan. They retook for the fourth time that deadly redoubt they call 'Le Haricot,' but unfortunately the Turks developed heavy counter-attacks through prepared communication trenches, and under cover of an accurate shell fire were able ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... all, this love may be no more than an adventure of the boulevard and the attic in the manner of Beranger's gay Bohemianism. The distance is wide between such elan of youthful passion and the fidelity which is inevitable, and on which age has set its seal, in that poem of perfect attainment, By the Fireside. This is the love which completes the individual life and at the same time incorporates ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... justly attributed to the German temperament? Are not the Germans constitutionally incapable of accomplishing a revolution? They lack the red corpuscles in their veins. They have no phosphorus or mercury in their composition. They have no elan, no resilience or vitality. They are strong, but only when they act gregariously, not when they act as free and irresponsible individuals. They can fight, but only when they are driven, and only in a quarrel which is not ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... formed exclusively of the "Forty Thieves," had exhibited an activity and elan for which this gallant little corps was eminently distinguished; and had they been European troops, their conduct upon this occasion, against such overwhelming odds, would have ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... classification. The dog, lion, and wolf are placed in one category; the ox, sheep, and goat in another; the dog family itself is divided into various races, as the domestic dog, the coursing dog, the small dog, the dog of Elan, etc. Similar attempts at classification of birds are found. Thus, birds of rapid flight, sea-birds, and marsh-birds are differentiated. Insects are classified according to habit; those that attack plants, animals, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... sort: holding his hand up to the sun, with a loud voice crieth "Ylyaoute," and striketh his breast, with like signs being promised safety, he giveth credit. These people are much given to bleed, and therefore stop their noses with deer hair or the hair of an elan. They are idolaters, and have images great store, which they wear about them, and in their boats, which we suppose they worship. They are witches, and have many kinds of enchantments, which they often used, but to small purpose, thanks be ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... life of every creature a steady stream of energy. Scientists have not been able to decide on a descriptive term for this all-important life-force. It has been variously called "libido," "vital impulse" or "elan vital," "the spirit of life," "horme," and "creative energy." The chief business of this life-force seems to be the preservation and development of the individual and the preservation and development of the race. In the service of these two needs have grown up these habit-reactions which ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... charming young lady of perfect respectability, and enjoyed a dance with her at a public dancing saloon. And where else are women trained to box and knock out the teeth of policemen as a protest against injustice and violence? [Rising, with immense elan] Your daughter, madam, is superb. Your country is a model to the rest of Europe. If you were a Frenchman, stifled with prudery, hypocrisy and the tyranny of the family and the home, you would understand how an enlightened Frenchman admires and envies your freedom, your broadmindedness, and the ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... would issue a ukase, chaining you to the steepest rock on the crest of the Ural, till you learned the courtesy due to lady disputants. Upon my word, St. Elmo, you assault Miss Estelle with as much elan as if you were carrying a redoubt. One would suppose that you had been in good society long enough to discover that the fortiter in re style is not allowable ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... in names between us, Le Renard," said Duncan, hoping to provoke a discussion. "Daim is the French for deer, and cerf for stag; elan is the true term, when one would ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... elan been seen on the sides of the Pike; and with it the young dog combined a strange sobriety, an admirable patience, that justified, indeed, the epithet. "Owd." Silent he worked, and resolute; and even in those days had that famous trick of coaxing ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... somewhat less definite than Syndicalist methods. The intellectuals who endeavor to interpret them—not always very faithfully— represent them as a party of movement and change, following a Bergsonian elan vital, without needing any very clear prevision of the goal to which it is to take them. Nevertheless, the negative part, at any rate, of their objects ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... attacked the eastern and more vulnerable end first, and with such amazing elan did they fight—and it was all the more remarkable in that these troops were dismounted Yeomanry—that by the early afternoon they had swept the Turks out of their trenches in this part of Kauwukah, and were firmly established in what remained of the position. At the other end of the ridge two more ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... stamped with the impress of Bergson's thought have passed into international currency. In this connexion, has it been remarked that while an Englishman gave to the French the term "struggle for life," a Frenchman has given to us the term elan vital? It is worthy of passing notice and gives rise to reflections on the respective national temperaments, fanciful perhaps, but interesting. It is not, however, under the figure of the etcher's art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson's resources ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... attack upon us enters naturally at this point; because, while the average mind is willing enough to grant some sort of vague omnipresent "will to evolve" to the primordial "nebula" and even prepared to allow it such obscure consciousness as is implied in the phrase "life-force" or "elan vital," it is startled and shocked to a supreme degree when we assert that such "nebula," if it existed, was the outward body or form of a living "soul-monad" possessed, even as human beings are, of every attribute ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... breakfasts. An hour spent in the card room of the "Hurrah" convinced its proprietor that they had wasted their talents for the past six weeks in digging for gold. The proof of this permitted the departure of the outfits with their customary elan. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... architecture, also producing religious ecstacy by physical expedients, such as fasts and vigils, in which case he is denounced as a Ritualist. Or he may be either a Unitarian Deist like Voltaire or Tom Paine, or the more modern sort of Anglican Theosophist to whom the Holy Ghost is the Elan Vital of Bergson, and the Father and Son are an expression of the fact that our functions and aspects are manifold, and that we are all sons and all either potential or actual parents, in which case he is strongly suspected by the straiter Salvationists of being ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... inspects food or equipment, makes a useful comment or two, drops a phrase that is worth repeating, and leaves behind him enthusiasm and respect. The Paris Figaro says that he has the gift of setting souls afire, of arousing that elan in the French fighter which made that fighter perform military miracles when the "sun of Austerlitz" was high. It has been declared by a French writer that Foch knows the human element in the French Army better than ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... The elan, deer, and elk were treated by the American Indians with the same punctilious respect, and for the same reason. Their bones might not be given to the dogs nor thrown into the fire, nor might their fat be dropped upon the fire, because the souls of the dead animals were believed to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... bond of affection between these two—first and last of a family of six—was enhanced by their very unlikeness. Lance had the elan of a torrent; Paul the stillness and depth of a mountain lake. Lance was a rapier; Paul a claymore—slow to smite, formidable when roused. Both were natural leaders of men; both, it need hardly be added, 'Piffers'[3] in the grain. They had only returned ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spent some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one flying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too much preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... seemed as if the persons were too big for the circumstances."[1758] If a tribe ever was a peace group amongst the Arabs, we have no proof of it. Islam was an attempt to unite the whole nation into a peace group by religion. The attempt succeeded, and the nation, in the elan of its new unity and energy, set out to conquer its neighbors. It had no state organization. The caliph was theological as well as civil head. The Arabs had no political experience. The leaders in the kin groups were the only chiefs they ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Verman were anxious to beat. They set up the loudest uproar of which they were capable. "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" they bellowed, flailing the branches with their spears and stamping heavily upon the floor. Sam, carried away by the elan of the performance, was unable to resist joining them. "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" he shouted. "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" And as the dust rose from the floor to their stamping, the three of them produced such a din and hoo-hooing as could be made by ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... the strong instinct so apt to accompany this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward aspiration,—the elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,—a lift to them, as if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the Gods. I hear her singing sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is there a wild sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... push, pulsion[obs3], thrust, shove, jog, jolt, brunt, booming, boost [U.S.], throw; explosion &c. (violence) 173; propulsion &c. 284. percussion, concussion, collision, occursion|, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole[obs3], appulse[obs3], shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c. (attack) 716; beating &c. (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, knock, tap, rap, slap, smack, pat, dab; fillip; slam, bang; hit, whack, thwack; cuff &c. 972; squash, dowse, swap, whap[obs3], punch, thump, pelt, kick, punce|, calcitration[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the 22nd both Diggins and Lowther got M.C.'s. If it was the former's elan which carried our wave into the enemy's guns, the latter's judgement played a great part in extricating us without disaster. Hasted, the alert and watchful, had already been gazetted after the fall of Baghdad as D.S.O. He left us shortly after, returning to his own regiment, the ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... of the "will to live", which was, in his view, as unconscious as it was fundamental, and only secondarily gave rise to the conscious life of sensations and ideas. Bergson's "elan vital" has much the same meaning. In a sense, the will to live is the fountain of all our wishes; in another sense, it is the sum total of them all; and in another sense, it is an abstraction, the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth |
