"Lithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something lithe and sinuous in the child's hands, and stiffened in every limb. Paul had a skaapstikker in his grip, the green-and-yellow death-snake that abounds in the veldt. Its head lay on his arm, its pin-point eyes maliciously agleam, and the child gripped it by the middle. Christina stood petrified, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... slight rustling among the branches of the tree above them and simultaneously a lithe, brown body dropped in their midst. Hands moved quickly to the butts of pistols; but otherwise there was no movement among the officers. First they looked wonderingly at the almost naked white man standing there with the firelight playing upon rounded muscles, took in the primitive attire and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sat I would be watching a sailor with a knife at his hip, and the lithe swing of the mountaineer in his carriage—a Skye man, I was thinking; but he stood silent against the jamb of the fireplace, and his eyes were dreamy and sad, and in myself I knew he was seeing his own place, and him outward bound. When the night was wearing on it came ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... seriously with Araminta. "A situation of unparalleled gravity has arisen," I said, "with regard to the wedding of William. It is going to be carried out at Whittlehampton in top-hats. Picture to yourself the scene. Waterloo Station full of lithe young athletes of either sex arrayed for sports on flood and field, carrying their golf-clubs, their diabolo spools and their butterfly nets, and there, in the midst of them, me with my miserable coat-tails, the June sun glaring on my burnished topper, and in my hands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... bar to civilization nearly as great as its sterility in the African deserts. A macheta is a necessary predecessor: the moment you land (and it is often difficult to get a footing on the bank), you are confronted by a wall of vegetation. Lithe lianas, starred with flowers, coil up the stately trees, and then hang down like strung jewels; they can be counted only by myriads, yet they are mere superfluities. The dense dome of green overhead is supported by crowded columns, often branchless for eighty feet. The reckless ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... adolescent genii on the right hand possess a high degree of natural grace. Yet even here what strikes one most is the charm of their attitude, the lovely interlacing of their arms and breasts, the lithe alertness of the one lad contrasted with the thoughtful leaning languor of his comrade. Only perhaps in some drawings of combined male figures made by Ingres for his picture of the Golden Age have lines of equal dignity and simple beauty been ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... strong legs to make nothing of grassy leagues on leagues. And first, this life with its free sweeping horizon, and the swallow-like curves of its gallops for the sake of galloping, or those which the long lashes of its whips trace in deploying, and which remind us of the lithe tendrils in which terminate Duerer's ornamental flourishes; this life in which the eye is trained to watch the lasso, as with well-calculated address it swirls out and drops over the frighted head of an unbroken colt;—this life is first pent up in ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... maiden slim and tall, so slender that the rather clumsy peasant dress she wore could not give breadth or awkwardness to her lithe figure. The coif had slipped a little out of place, and some tresses of waving hair had escaped from beneath it, tresses that looked dark till the sun touched them, and then glowed like burnished gold. Her face was pale, with features in no way marked, but ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in a valley it was full of stones, and there the lady's horse stumbled and threw her down, that her arm was sore bruised and near she swooned for pain. Alas! sir, said the lady, mine arm is out of lithe, wherethrough I must needs rest me. Ye shall well, said King Pellinore. And so he alighted under a fair tree where was fair grass, and he put his horse thereto, and so laid him under the tree and slept till it was nigh night. And when he awoke he would have ridden. Sir, said the lady, it is so ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... A lithe and beautiful creature, she swayed and bent, with arms extended, her feet, now slow as the pinions of a sailing hawk, now swift as the wings of a tilting sparrow. She stopped suddenly, her form proudly erect, looking at her lover. ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... progress which any vehicle would make over the blind and broken paths of that uncultivated realm. Either thus, or on foot, as was the common practice with the mountain hunters; men who, at seventy years of age, might be found as lithe and active, in clambering up the lofty summit as if in full possession of the winged vigor and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... from his belly sweat dripped steadily into the dust and the reins had chafed his neck to a lather. Marianne flashed into indignation and that, of course, made her scrutinize the rider more narrowly. He was perfect of that type of cowboy which she detested most: handsome, lithe, childishly vain in his dress. About his sombrero ran a heavy width of gold-braid; his shirt was blue silk; his bandana was red; his boots were shop-made beauties, soft and flexible; and on ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... these crowds of country people walk stately Mohammedans, Mandingoes, Akers, and Fulahs of the Arabised tribes of the Western Soudan. These are lithe, well-made men, and walk with a peculiarly fine, elastic carriage. Their graceful garb consists of a long white loose-sleeved shirt, over which they wear either a long black mohair or silk gown, or a deep bright blue affair, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... with its branching arabesques, was a strand of the gold beads that had adorned Vicky's gown that night. I visualized her, whirling her skirts about before the mirror, with that quick, lithe grace of hers, and catching the fluttering fringe in the gilt protuberance. Perhaps she exclaimed in petulance, but, more likely, I thought, she laughed at the trivial accident. That was Vicky Van, as I knew her, to laugh at a mischance, and smile ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... he talked with his friends, and made other such symposia as he has given us a taste of at the house of Callias the Athenian; here he ranged over the whole country-side with his horses and dogs: a stalwart and lithe old gentleman, without a doubt; able to mount a horse or to manage one, with the supplest of the grooms; and with a keen eye, as his book shows, for the good points in horse-flesh. A man might make a worse mistake ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... devouring flames some forest seize On the high mountains, splendid from afar 550 The blaze appears, so, moving on the plain, The steel-clad host innumerous flash'd to heaven. And as a multitude of fowls in flocks Assembled various, geese, or cranes, or swans Lithe-neck'd, long hovering o'er Cayster's banks 555 On wanton plumes, successive on the mead Alight at last, and with a clang so loud That all the hollow vale of Asius rings; In number such from ships and tents effused, They ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... played,—with lithe fingers which caressed the keys rather than struck them, I remembered. And always at the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to how unruffled the man was; and I smiled a ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... little while she awoke and uncoiling her figure, rolled softly over on her back and stretched like some drowsy feline of the jungle; then sitting up with lithe grace she looked down at the print of her head on the pillow and deftly smoothed it out. The action was characteristic: she was careful to hide the traces of her behavior, and the habit was so strong that it extended to things innocent as slumber. Letting her ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Cataract to the Mediterranean Sea, hemmed in by the Libyan and Arabian deserts, whence there came to the rest of the world so much of art, science, and philosophy. The fellah or peasant, he who tills the soil, is of a fine and industrious race, well built, broad chested, and lithe of frame. He is the same figure that his ancestors were of old, as represented on the tombs and temples of Thebes, and on the slabs one sees from Gizeh, in the museum of Cairo. He still performs his work in the nineteenth century just as he did before ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... of an active, restless disposition or he would hardly have been out so early. Lithe and idle, he sat see-sawing in the floating end of the boat, uncertain how to amuse himself. He returned Susannah's greeting with a lively ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... warbler, is not, after all, so expert a creeper as is the nuthatch, which may be called the arboreal skater par excellence. The warbler does not go scuttling straight down a vertical bole or branch as the nuthatch does, but swings his lithe body from side to side, as if he did not loosen the hold of both feet simultaneously but alternately. Besides, both in ascending and descending he must have more frequent recourse to his wings to tide him over the difficult ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... head as a car pulled into the curving driveway. The warm hum of the turboelectric engine stopped, and a man climbed out of the vehicle. He walked with easy strides across the grass to where the elderly gentleman sat. He was lithe, of indeterminate age, but with a look of great determination. There was something in his face that made the old man vaguely uneasy—not with fear but with ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in that coral cave? With wondering eyes their supple forms they bend O'er something rarely beautiful. They lend Their lithe white arms, and through the golden wave They lift it tenderly. Oh blinding sight! A naked, radiant goddess, tranced in sleep, Full-limbed, voluptuous, 'neath the mantling sweep Of auburn locks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... thinking of the mischievous, manly, sunny-hearted lad who had given it to her. M. Riel's words and the sneer were lost, so far as she was concerned. Her ears were where her heart was, out on the plain beyond the cottonwood, where she could see the tall, straight, lithe figure of young Scott, with his dog at his heels, its head now bobbing up from the grass, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... in regular cadence as, prone on his face, the young fellow kicks, struggles and puffs up the dust. Meanwhile a tall, dour man in a straw hat is rolling up a shirt-sleeve, and alternately bending and stretching a long arm, whilst a lithe, white-headed young stripling is hopping, sparrow-like, from one onlooker to another, and exclaiming ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... him around the corner as he came from school, and welted him so over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a lithe uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-boo boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... even as the struggling maid was dragged forward—even as Pertolepe, smiling, settled chin on fist to watch the lithe play of her writhing limbs, the willows behind him swayed and parted to a sudden panther-like leap, and a mail-clad arm was about Sir Pertolepe—a mighty arm that bore him from the saddle and hurled him headlong; and thereafter Sir Pertolepe, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... graduates, perhaps even of some one of the forestry schools. In this he was correct. The rest were professional out-of-door men. Bob recognized two of his own woods-crew—good men they were, too. He nodded to them. A half-dozen lithe, slender youths, handsome and browned, drew apart by themselves. He remembered having noticed one of them as a particularly daring rider after Pollock's cattle the fall before; and guessed his companions to be of the same breed. Among the remainder, two picturesque, lean, slow and ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... by my side, lithe as a young animal, evidently without giving a thought to her gleaming headdress, she had soon brought me to a cabin much like the rest, though perhaps a little poorer looking. Stopping a little short of it, she once more put her finger ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... he might easily have been the pampered son of some millionaire that he impersonated. His close-fitting silken tunic of blue, with its bright yellow roll-collar, the turban of fine yellow lace, the close-fitting trousers that showed his lithe yet powerfully molded legs, the thin-soled low boots—all proclaimed him the typical time-killing dandy of the times. His superb proportions made him look smaller, lighter than he really was, and his lean features, which under the I.F.P. skullcap would ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... and slender like his daughter, and walked with lithe, slightly feline movements. His face was oval, clear skinned, and with a pallid complexion made still paler by his dark hair and eyes and a tiny mustache, almost black and with waxed and pointed ends. He was good-looking ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... It swashes everywhere, but to deluge, not to benefit. Precipitate it, and you have the salt of the earth. Political opposition, inorganic, is but a blind, cumbrous, awkward, inefficient thing; but construct a platform, and immediately it becomes lithe, efficient, powerful. Even before they set foot on these rude shores, our forefathers made a compact, and a nation was born in that day. It is on creeds that strong men are nourished, and that which nourishes the leaders into eminence ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the staggering yacht threw her forward so that the lithe, supple body leaned against me and the breath of the dimpling ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... seem able to explain what it was, and only answered by a tearful sob. Jonas did not say a word; but, with the lithe quickness of a dog after a rat, he began to search behind and under benches, in the bushes, on the grass, here, there, ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... lithe step she continued ascending the stairs. She had remained essentially a foreigner, a Frenchwoman, too different from those among whom she lived to be influenced by her environment. On reaching the second floor she resumed: "There, on the left, are Donna ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... associations of Nazareth, as well as my kind feeling towards the hospitable monks, whose guest I had been, inclined me to set at naught the advice which I had received against employing Christians. I accordingly engaged a lithe, active young Nazarene, who was recommended to me by the monks, and who affected to be familiar with the line of country through which I intended to pass. My disregard of the popular prejudices against Christians was not ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... been made when the lithe agile form of Mozwa glided into the camp and stood before Lumley. The lad tried hard to look calm, grave, and collected, as became a young Indian brave, but the perspiration on his brow and his labouring chest told that he had been ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a fishing-wand in his hand, and I like to think that I was the boy who met him that day by Queen Margaret's burn, where the rowans are, and busked a fly for him, and stood watching, while his lithe figure rose and fell as he cast and hinted back from ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... of Company M, our battalion, resolved to make an effort to crush the Raiders. He was a printer, from Bloomington, Illinois, tall, dark, intelligent and strong-willed, and one of the bravest men I ever knew. He was ably seconded by "Limber Jim," of the Sixty-Seventh Illinois, whose lithe, sinewy form, and striking features reminded one of a young Sioux brave. He had all of Key's desperate courage, but not his brains or his talent for leadership. Though fearfully reduced in numbers, our battalion had still about one hundred well men in it, and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... leaps and bounds and at an astonishing pace, and the way he moved somehow inspired me with a fresh horror, for it did not seem the natural movement of a human being at all, but more, as I have said, like that of some lithe wild animal. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... different man, when he quitted his tribe, from what he was at the time we introduce him to our reader. Strong, wiry, upright, and lithe as a panther, he left his wigwam and his wife, and turned his face towards the rising sun; but the season was a severe one, and game was scarce; from the very beginning of his journey he had found it difficult to supply himself with a sufficiency of food. Towards the middle ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... Father Meraut ordered them to leave him. For once his children refused to obey. Somehow they got him to his feet, and he, for their sakes making a superhuman effort, succeeded in staggering between them, using their lithe young bodies as crutches. How they reached the door of the north transept they never knew, but reach it they did, before the burning flames. And there a new ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... lithe and free! Fast in my linen prison I press On impassable bars, or emptily Laugh in my great loneliness. And still in the white neat bed I strive Most impotently against that gyve; Being less now than a thought, even, To you alone with your ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... figure in buff and blue. The tall, lithe frame sat the saddle with the graceful ease of the hard-riding Virginia fox-hunter. The stern, smooth-shaven face, reddened and roughened by exposure to all weathers, lighted with an amiable curiosity ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... them pass. Unsuspicious the Askaris proceeded until their movements were hidden from their friends by the intervening scrub, then with hardly a sound the five lithe and muscular Waffs ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the Cuban, his lithe body was quivering in an ecstasy of the muscles. His face radiant with a savage joy, he fastened his glance upon Patsy, his eyes gleaming with a gloating, murderous light. A most unspeakable, animal-like rage was in ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... and she dwelt with us until we bore her to the little churchyard on the hill-side, where there is a clump of trees to break the cold sough of the winds into a lullaby. By that time another Marget, beautiful of face like the Forbeses, lithe of limb like the Gordons—we never could agree whom she most resembled!—had been given to us. She was our guerdon of the reverent gospel of home, which is the high altar of this world, the source and sanctuary of our well-being as men ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... certain boyish admiration for the tall, lithe girl who bore such a record for bravery, though not for the world would they have admitted the fact, even to each other; and they could not resist plaguing her on the sly whenever a chance presented itself. But to tease her openly was out of the question; ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the house of the baroness, where he was evidently expected, for the servant asked his name and immediately ushered him into her presence. She was one of those lithe, dark women of good race, that are to be met with all over the world, and she has broken many a heart. But she was not like a snake at all, as Nino had thought at first. She was simply a very fine lady who did exactly what she pleased, and if she did not always act ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... tall, lithe body slack, grim, serious lines in his lean face. He had thought of his conversation with Judge Graney concerning ambition—his ambition, the picture upon which his mind had dwelt many times. A little frame printing office ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... skilful strokes she brought up in shallow water. There was a quick rush of lithe feet, the sound of sweet, high laughter, then a little, good-natured gurgle of protest from the golden-haired, blue-eyed girl curled up on the sand as she found herself being dragged into the water by a ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... then that way, Trying effect of ribbon, bow or band. Then she would pick up something else, and curve Her lovely neck, with cunning, bird-like grace, And watch the mirror while she put it on, With such a sweetly grave and thoughtful face; And then to view it all would sway, and swerve Her lithe young body, like ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the engineers, and he cast off the rope sling. Then cautiously he stepped out to the end of the timber. It tottered, but the lithe figure moved on to within striking distance. He swung the twenty-four pound sledge in a circle against the butt of the timber. Every muscle in his body from the ankles up had helped to deal the blow, and the big stick bucked. The boss sprang erect, flinging ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... and by dedicating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an inch seems to be a sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen when they build mud-walls (informed at first perhaps by this lithe bird) raise but a moderate layer at a time, and then desist; lest the work should become top-heavy, and so be ruined by is own weight. By this method in about ten or twelve days is formed an hemispheric nest with a ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the steamer hurled herself up on the bulge of a sea, and then you could get a glimpse of a tall, lithe figure, straining in the small boat alongside the rearing iron hulk. That splendid, lithe young lad performed prodigies of strength and courage; the hulk and the little boat sank down,—down until the steamer's mast-head ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... could reach that bright drawing-room before the rush came! He felt that there were lithe forms stealing along behind the flower-beds. He dared not run, but dragged his heavy feet along the gravel; and then, all at once, from the rhododendron bushes rose a wild, unearthly yell. He could bear it no longer; he would make one last effort, even if they tomahawked ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the confused panorama of a dream. The horses stopped; a lithe figure leaped, unaided, to the ground; I heard that dear ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... of a harp rang through the hall, and the throng burst into loud acclamations. All eyes were fixed on Salome, who paused in her rhythmic dance, placed her feet wide apart, and without bending the knees, suddenly swayed her lithe body downward, so that her chin touched the floor; and her whole audience,—the nomads, accustomed to a life of privation and abstinence, the Roman soldiers, expert in debaucheries, the avaricious publicans, and even the crabbed, elderly ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... he speak! I shivered, hid my tingling cheek Behind thy marble face; And prayed the gods to be like him, Firm in temper, lithe of limb, Right worthy ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... pleasure, and—for they had gone back to the lighted room now—Hetty presently found herself seated face to face with the stranger. He was a tall, well-favoured man, slender, and lithe in movement, with dark eyes and hair, and a slightly sallow face that suggested that he was from the South. It also seemed fitting that he was immaculately dressed, for there was a curious gracefulness about him that still had in it a trace of insolence. No one would have mistaken him ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... of America, our young women owe their lithe, graceful bodies and their glowing good health; and our young men owe their well-knit forms and muscular strength. No appeal can be too strong in encouraging people to indulge more freely in outdoor sports—and especially ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... to bungle, With footsteps too cunning to swerve, They swing through the heights of the jungle, These stalwarts of infinite nerve; Blithe sailors who heed not the breezes Which play round their riggings and spars, Lithe gymnasts who live on ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... in Der Freischuetz, that he played; and as he played Sheila's poor little piano suffered somewhat. Never before had it been so battered about, and she wished the small chamber were a great hall, to temper the voluminous noise of this opening passage. But presently the music softened. The white, lithe fingers ran lightly over the keys, so that the notes seemed to ripple out like the prattling of a stream, and then again some stately and majestic air or some joyous burst of song would break upon this light accompaniment, and lead up to another roar and rumble of noise. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... seventeenth century, in an English country district, two lads romped on the same lea and chased the same butterflies. One was a little brown-eyed boy, with red cheeks, fine round form, and fiery temper. The other was a gentle child, tall, lithe, and blonde. The one was the son of a man of wealth and a noble lady, and carried his captive butterflies to a mansion-house, and kept them in a crystal case. The other ran from the fields to a farm-house, and thought of the lea as a grain ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... ulterior processes were to be exhibited I do not know, but the first result to be obtained was to throw Dr. Becker into a mesmeric state of somnolence, under the influence of the operator. The latter presently began his experiment, and, drawing entirely from his coat and shirt sleeve a long, lithe, black hand, the finger-tips of which were of that pale livid tinge so common in the hands of negroes, he directed it across the table towards Dr. Becker, and began slowly making passes at him. We were all profoundly ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... twenty-four or twenty-five, lithe and alert. By no means bad looking, he lacked that indefinable suggestion of animalism which distinguished the majority of the inhabitants ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... her nose rise in a flattened "A" towards the fervid black gleam of her hair; her lips are pursed in a half-smile as if she were stifling a secret. She walks round the stage slowly, one hand at her waist, the shawl tight over her elbow, her thighs lithe and restless, a panther in a cage. At the back of the stage she turns suddenly, advances; the snapping of her fingers gets loud, insistent; a thrill whirrs through the guitar like a covey of partridges scared in a field. Red ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... to the extreme of ignoring the importance of acquiring mastery of your physical movements. A muscular hand made flexible by free movement, is far more likely to be an effective instrument in gesture than a stiff, pudgy bunch of fingers. If your shoulders are lithe and carried well, while your chest does not retreat from association with your chin, the chances of using good extemporaneous gestures are so much the better. Learn to keep the back of your neck touching your collar, hold your chest high, and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... coffee. He was now sitting in European fashion beside her on the divan, and his posture made it more difficult for her to accept his strange mentality; for he looked like a tremendously robust, yet very lithe and extremely handsome and determined young man, who might belong to a race of Southern Europe. Even with the tarbush upon his head his ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... of a great cypress log. In the end of each an Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe and supple as panthers. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Wo! Wo Wo to the sons of the far-off land, Weak in heart and pale in face, Deer in battle, moose in a race, Panthers wanting claw and tooth Wo to the red man, strong of hand, Steady of purpose, lithe of limb, Calm in the toils of the foe, Knowing nor tears nor ruth Wo to them and him, If, cast by hard fate at the midnight damp, Or an hour of storm in the dismal swamp, That skirts the Lake ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... at my feet the cry arose and was drowned in Chinese chattering. But guided by it I now managed to make out that the struggle in progress waged between a burly English sailorman and two lithe Chinese. The yellow men seemed to have gained the advantage and my course ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... the neck of a claret-bottle. The mouth is closed either with wire-gauze or with a paper cover with a slight cut in it. Altogether, the apparatus measures twenty-five inches in height. No matter: the fall is not serious for the lithe backs of the young grubs; and, in a few days, the test-tube is filled with larvae, in which it is easy to recognize the Flesh-fly's family by the fringed coronet that opens and shuts at the maggot's stern like the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... close against the fence, and halfway down the lane now, paused and looked about him, straining his eyes through the blackness—then with a lithe spring he caught the top of the fence, swung himself over, and dropped to the ground on the other side. The rear of a row of low buildings now loomed up before him across a narrow yard. Window lights showed here and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the lithe swaying figure. She paused, plucked a yellow flower, looked over her shoulder. Her eyes, yellow as the flower, lucent as water-jewels, held his. Her face was utterly expressionless. She turned, tossed away the flower with a jaunty gesture, ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... down the sides of their faces, show the impress of the iron which with characteristic ferocity they apply to every male child that is born among them, drawing blood from its cheeks before it is allowed its first taste of milk. They are little in stature, but lithe and active in their motions, and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks, and always holding their heads high in their pride. To sum up, these beings under the form ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... were consuming us, the gates of the city were broken and the hand of Rome did have us in its power. With many of my fellows was I taken away and made fast to a great tree near by the tent where a Roman chieftain did collect spoil. Of the lithe of limb who were taken captive, some were to be made gladiators, but the fierce screams of others of my countrymen, mingled with Roman curses, told of a more ignominious fate than the arena. For this was I marked. Fierce was the passion of my bosom that my heritage of the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... greet him may have been twenty-seven or thirty-seven. He was tall, but lithe rather than broad. His face was the colour of mahogany, and the blue eyes turned to Lyne were unwinking and expressionless. That was the first impression ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... her breath she fought like a mad cat, with every lithe muscle of her body and with teeth and claws too. She was strong; strong and quick as a steel spring. More than once she escaped him. Once she got half-way up the bank; but here he bore her down on her face and locked her arms behind ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... neck, to make them grow faster. Then she darts off toward the east, running out for about a quarter of a mile and back. This she does each morning until after the public ceremony. By so doing she is assured of continuing strong, lithe, and active throughout womanhood. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... sometimes demeans himself by condescending to what may be considered as bordering too much upon buffoonery, for the amusement of the company. Those lines of Milton were admirably applied to him by some one—"The elephant to make them sport wreathed his proboscis lithe." The truth is, that he was out of his place in the House of Commons; he was eminently qualified to shine as a man of genius, as the instructor of mankind, as the brightest luminary of his age: but he had nothing in common with that motley crew of knights, citizens, and burgesses. He could not ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... mansion. A young lady sprang out; ran up the steps, and rang the bell impatiently. She was of the olive complexion, with a sharp profile: dark eyes with long lashes; narrow mouth with delicately sensuous lips; small head, feet, and hands, with long taper fingers; lithe and very slender figure moving with serpent-like grace. Oriental taste was displayed in the colors of her costume, which consisted of a white dress, close-fitting, and printed with an elaborate china blue ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... natives to hasten ere it grew dark, he took no further notice of the woman before him. Then, as they prepared to raise their burden by a united effort upon their naked shoulders, Tiaru sprang into the house and quickly reappeared with a heavy knife in her hand. Twisting her lithe body from the grasp of one of the beachcombers, with flaming eyes she burst in amongst the gun carriers and began slashing at the strips of green bark with which the cannon was ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the perpetual sadness that was visible there when she was not momentarily interested or amused. Had he suspected her paleness and air of secret suffering to be the result of any physical infirmity, she would not have interested him so much. But Mrs. Goddard's lithe figure and easy grace of activity belied all idea of weakness. It was undoubtedly some hidden suffering of mind which lent that sadness to her voice and features, and which so deeply roused the sympathies of the squire. At the end of six months Mr. Juxon was ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... softening &c v.. V. render soft &c adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile^, tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious^, inelastic; aluminous^; remollient^. yielding &c v.; flabby, limp, flimsy. doughy, spongy, penetrable, foamy, cushiony^. flaccid, flocculent, downy; edematous, oedematous^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... accustomed to little jokes of the sort, did not understand what his intentions were, but as soon as she did, being an extremely powerful young woman, she soon put a stop to them, shaking George away from her so sharply by a little swing of her lithe body, that, stumbling over a footstool in his rapid backward passage, he in a trice measured his length upon the floor. Seeing what she had done, Angela turned and fled after ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... was a convict." The big lithe man in overalls spoke quietly, his eyes meeting those of the Market Street man ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... family of our host, together with a few friends, were seated at the end of the room opposite the bayaderes, the signal was given, and the music commenced with a soft and indescribably languorous air. One of the bayaderes rose with a lithe and supple movement of the body not comparable to anything save the slow separating of a white scud from the main cloud which one sees on a summer's day high up in the cirrus regions. She was attired in a short jacket, a scarf, and a profusion of floating stuff that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Stow mill, when up the lane came none other than Mistress Rose Salterne herself, in all the glories of a new scarlet hood, from under which her large dark languid eyes gleamed soft lightnings through poor Eustace's heart and marrow. Up to them she tripped on delicate ankles and tiny feet, tall, lithe, and graceful, a true West-country lass; and as she passed them with a pretty blush and courtesy, even Campian looked back at the fair innocent creature, whose long dark curls, after the then country fashion, rolled ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... four, and still Captain Rothesay sent gift after gift, and message after message, to his daughter. Still he wrote to the conscience-stricken mother how many times he had kissed the "little lock of golden hue," severed from the baby-head; picturing the sweet face and lithe, active form which he had never seen. And all the while there was stealing about the old house at Stirling a pale, deformed child: small and attenuated in frame—quiet beyond its years, delicate, spiritless, with scarce one charm that would prove its lineage from the young ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... made than that by which England sent this muscular Christian to organize and administer a Church of mingled savages and pioneers. Bishop Selwyn was both physically and mentally a ruler of men. When young, his tall, lithe frame, and long, clean-cut aquiline features were those of the finest type of English gentleman. When old, the lines on his face marked honourably the unresting toil of the intellectual athlete. Hard sometimes to others, he was always hardest to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of the Regent. In his family, now resident in Glasgow, it is treasured as an heirloom. I myself have been privileged to look at all these locks of hair, and I have seen a clairvoyante take them one by one, and, pinching them between her lithe fingers, tell of the love that each symbolised. I have heard her tell of long rides by night, of a boudoir hung with grass-green satin, and of a tryst at Windsor; of one, the wife of a hussar at York, whose little lap-dog used to bark angrily ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather; he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... sat side by side on a battered old trunk in stony silence while the twins were donning their gymnasium costumes. Fortunately, it did not take long and the sight of Juliet hanging by her feet furnished the needed topic of conversation. The lithe little body seemed to be made of steel fibres. She swayed back and forth, catching Romeo as he made a flying leap from the other trapeze, as easily as another girl would have ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... a close second in the matter of efficiency. He was a big chap, not handsome, but good-looking, in a dark, dignified way, and of a lithe, sinewy strength that enabled him to endure as well as ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... because the bonds had been severed, and there she lay with a deadly weapon in either hand. The friendly stranger who had come so silently was gone as he had come, but she was not helpless now. Like many another frontier woman, she was naturally lithe and powerful, and, stirred by a great hope, all her strength had returned for ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lithe, erect and agile despite his years, opened the door for them as their steps sounded on the planking of the veranda. This was Bates, the butler, a faithful retainer who had served the father of Lucy Varr and her sister a full decade before passing with the house and ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of all her children these that cling to her the closest are uncouth in body and as leaden of gait as if their very hearts were loaded with chains. But here on this same road you might have seen amongst these heavy men a being lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straight like a pine with something striving upwards in his appearance as though the heart within him had been buoyant. Perhaps it was only the force of the contrast, but when he was passing one of these villagers here, the soles of his feet did not seem to me to touch ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... Then Kells, in lithe and savage swiftness, came between them. He swung his gun, hitting Bill full in the face. The man fell, limp and heavy, and he lay there, with a bloody gash across his brow. Kells stood over him a moment, slowly lowering the gun. Joan ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Dunbar walked the length of the veranda, and stood gazing gloomily across the tangled mass of the neglected rose garden, taking no cognizance of the garlands of bloom, seeing everywhere only that lithe elegant figure and Hyperion face of the man who reigned master of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... hair, gray, humid eyes, complexion born between the rose and dew, and straight, lithe figure, and air of dignity and truth, impressed Van ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... trappers have experienced before him. There are instances on record where this knowing creature has sprung the trap by dropping a stick upon the pan, afterwards removing the suspended bait to enjoy it at his leisure. His movements are as lithe and subtile as those of a snake, and when "cornered" there is no telling what caper that cunning instinct and subtlety of body will not lead him to perform. When pursued by hounds he has been known to lead them a long ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Imagine a woman, lithe, blonde, beautiful, intense; with features regular as the carver's hand could make them, but informed with a spirit so venomous, passionate, and perverse, that you lost sight of her beauty in your wonder at the formidable nature of the character she betrayed. Then see her dressed as no ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... malady from which one's convalescence is ever speedy, and he could enjoy it while it lasted. He found his way to the front door unguided, where he paused for a moment and looked back, as if expecting to see the lithe form of the girl peering over the banister; but no sound came from the floor above, and ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... sent him on before with Martyn. In a quarter of an hour's time his good doctor came in with Lawrence Frith, a considerable contrast to our poor Clarence, for the slim gypsy lad had developed into a strikingly handsome man, still slender and lithe, but with a fine bearing, and his bronzed complexion suiting well with his dark shining hair and beautiful eyes. They had brought some of the luggage, and the doctor insisted that his patient should go to bed directly, and rest ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on, one harsh, commanding, the other calm, even argumentative; but the attitude of the woman beside Prescott never changed. She stood like a lithe panther, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the lithe, good-looking son of the East as he salaamed. "If the mem-sahib will pardon her servant he would advise driving to Jessore and resting the night there at the dak bungalow, that is if the mem-sahib is not ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... man; so I said we would take him to her, and see—to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him, once—roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work, the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, and beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams—as he thought—and to no other. The sight of her would set his stagnant blood leaping; the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... A lithe boyish figure with wide boyish eyes and a tanned boyish face,—Canute gazed incredulously; rubbed his eyes and ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... him closely, this is what I saw: An officer superbly mounted who sat his charger as if to the manor born. Tall, lithe, active, muscular, straight as an Indian and as quick in his movements, he had the fair complexion of a school girl. He was clad in a suit of black velvet, elaborately trimmed with gold lace, which ran down the outer seams of his trousers, and almost covered the sleeves of his cavalry ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... contrary looked with all her eyes. The torches came nearer. People began to pour out from the woods. There were warriors in full panoply; lithe, naked men carrying only wands peeled fresh to the white; women hung heavily with cowries; other women with neither garment nor ornament, their bodies oiled and glistening. A deep, rolling chant arose from hundreds of throats, punctuated and carried by a sort of shrill, intermittent ululation. The ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... keeping of the manager of the hotel and did not see her again until she came down somewhat late for dinner. I met her in the vestibule. She wore a closely fitting brown dress, which in colour matched the bronze of her hair and in shape showed off her lithe and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... tall; her figure magnificently developed, though slender-waisted and lithe as a serpent. She walked as if she had been bred in a basquina, and her foot and ankle were hardly to be matched on this side of the Pyrenees; the nose slightly aquiline, with thin, transparent nostrils; and the forehead rather low—it looked more so, perhaps, from the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... click, a rapid pull-up with all Thomas's best strength, and the horses fell back on their haunches just in time for the little lithe figure to dart under their pawing hoofs and be saved! Everybody leaned out of the carriage for ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... lithe movement, wholly graceful, he slipped the ruecksack from his shoulders, let it fall among the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... leaping downstairs, as lithe and handsome as ever, and as much of a compound of the elf ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heeding me, peered down at Jones, between widespread paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones' gray hat came pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly shoulders. The quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and his lithe body crouched low on the branches. He was about to jump. His open dripping jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for some means of escape, his tufted tail, swinging against the twigs and breaking ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... bloodshed, blown Through the dense deep drift up to the emperor's throne From the under steaming sands With clamour of all-applausive throats and hands, Mingling in mirthful time With shrill blithe mockeries of the lithe-limbed mime: So from somewhence far forth of the unbeholden, Dreadfully driven from over and after and under, Fierce, blown through fifes of brazen blast and golden, With sound of chiming waves that drown the thunder Or thunder that strikes dumb the sea's own chimes, ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... cried Oliver. "That was the beast that startled me. These things go in pairs, and the one you killed there was the second one come in search of its mate. Is it dead?" he continued, giving the long lithe body of the reptile upon the deck a thrust ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Her body was passable, lithe, sinewy, with a faint hint of rib and a wonderful bust; her brain was good, intuitive in its non-educated state, and subtle from inheritance; her ambition was superb, it knew no limits, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... gray leaves are of themselves sufficient to make the shrub one of particular attraction. The Carpenteria is nearly related to the Mock Orange (Philadelphus), grows about 10 feet in height, with lithe and slender branches, and light gray leaves. The flowers, which are pure white with a bunch of yellow stamens, and sweet-scented, are produced usually in fives at the branch-tips, and contrast markedly with the long and light green foliage. It grows ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... to know the jeweller that made it, darling. This lily is lithe and supple like an iris. Oh, it is elegant, magnificent, and cruel. Have you noticed, my love, that beautiful jewels have an air of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... tall, square-shouldered, well-developed lad of seventeen, straight and lithe as an Indian, with keen, gray-blue eyes, which seemed ever alert and observant. Exposure to sun and wind had tanned his naturally fair skin a rich bronze, and his thick, dark-brown hair, with a tendency to curl up at the ends, where it fell ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... Woman's Congress and California Suffrage Association. The Woman's Journal said: "Those of us who have for years admired Mrs. Stetson's remarkably bright poems were delighted to meet her, and to find her even more interesting than her writings. She is still a young woman, tall, lithe and graceful, with fine dark eyes, and spirit and originality flashing from her at every turn like light from a diamond. She read several poems to the convention, made an address one evening and preached twice on Sunday; and the delegates ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... or coat, and with the knife clutched in his right hand! Presently he heard cries behind him, and redoubled his speed; for now he knew that the savages had discovered his escape and were in pursuit. But, although a good runner, Barney was no match for the lithe and naked Indians. They rapidly gained on him, and he was about to turn at bay and fight for his life, when he observed water gleaming through the foliage on his left. Dashing down a glade he came to the edge of a broad river with a ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne |
