"Playful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been traveling for days and years, over plains, through the rifts of high mountains, across rivers and through great lonely silences, with just a dog for a companion. A white dog with small black spots, very playful and enduring, and though not large, he was very brave to contend with all that was fearful. At night he curled up close to her and licked her hand, and in the morning before the weary hours, he played about and made ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... a veritable sprite for her love of the open air, by night as well as day, in winter cold as well as summer heat. "The night bird" was one of her father's playful names for her, and if ever she was able to slip away on a fine night, nothing delighted her more than to wander about in the park and the woods, listening to the cries of the owls and night jars, watching the erratic flight of the bats, and admiring the grand beauty of the sleeping ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... something very interesting associated with a well-arranged and elegant album, embodying passages of delicate taste and superior talent, and containing the diversified, playful, pointed, eloquent, and original papers, of a number of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... hour afterwards with a dank and silent mist skirting up far-away hills, and a gentle east wind faintly breathing as our tea-cup smoked fragrant on deck. The young breeze was only playful yet, so we anchored, waiting for it to rise in earnest or the tide to slacken, as both of them were now contrary; and meantime we rested some hours preparing for a long spell of unknown work; but I ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... match his serious mood. She ran a playful hand through his hair. "A woman has a right to change her ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... spoken for us, not in frightful black letters nor in dull sentences, but in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality. ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... was his knowledge of Push methods that sealed his tongue. No one would risk his skin by giving evidence. If the police had brought the offenders to book, the magistrates, who seemed to regard these outrages as the playful excesses of wanton blood, would have let them off with a light punishment, and the streets would never have been safe for him again. So he held his tongue, thankful to have escaped ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... hadn't Mary Virginia's sensitiveness to all beauty, nor her playful fancy and vivid imagination, he was clear-brained and clean-thinking, with that large perspective and that practical optimism which seem to me so essentially American. He saw without confusion both the thing as it was and as it could become. With only enough humor to save him, he had a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... she was merry and playful, while others describe her as solemn and morose. The reproduction on page 170 is from an old print discovered by some ardent antiquaries hanging upside down in a ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... very formal and, in some respects, a rather punctilious affair. When a young Bushman falls in love, he sends his sister to ask permission to pay his addresses; with becoming modesty the girl holds off in a playful, yet not scornful or repulsive manner if she likes him. The young man next sends his sister with a spear, or some other trifling article, which she leaves at the door of the girl's home. If this be not returned within the three ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... 'Douglas, why don't you come to see me?' He was in a playful mood. 'What do you want? A new automobile?' I answered, 'I haven't any automobile, new or old, and you know it. What I want is you. I always loved you—surely I proved that to you.' 'What you proved to me was that you were a sort of wild-cat. I'm afraid of you. And anyway, I'm tired of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... flocks; all bask at noon Together, or all gambol in the shade Of the same grove, and drink one common stream. Antipathies are none. No foe to man Lurks in the serpent now: the mother sees, And smiles to see, her infant's playful hand Stretch'd forth to dally with the crested worm, To stroke his azure neck, or to receive The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue. All creatures worship man, and all mankind One Lord, one Father. Error has no place; That creeping pestilence is driv'n away: The ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... his playful expressions of horror at a declaration so surprising to the civilized Good, shows himself sensible to the grand simplicity of heroic impulse it denotes. Were we, too, so good, as to need a medal to show us ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... mother Ida, harken ere I die. Fairest—-why fairest wife? am I not fair? My love hath told me so a thousand times; Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday, When I past by, a wild and wanton pard, 195 Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail Crouch'd fawning in the weed. Most loving is she? Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew 200 Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... observed from a distance, struck pupils and superiors alike; they fancied they had looked on at a miracle as they compared Esther with herself. She was completely changed; she was alive. She reappeared her natural self, all love, sweet, coquettish, playful, and gay; in short, it ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... hinting to her the hopes and expectations of her uncle and father. Brandon, now taking leave of his brother, mounted to the drawing-room in search of Lucy. He found her leaning over the gilt cage of one of her feathered favourites, and speaking to the little inmate in that pretty and playful language in which all thoughts, innocent yet fond, should be clothed. So beautiful did Lucy seem, as she was thus engaged in her girlish and caressing employment, and so utterly unlike one meet to be the instrument of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... England!' This wholly unexpected sally proved too much for the Duke, who burst out into a hearty laugh. 'By G——d, Shelley!' said he, 'you are right: give me your honest hand.'" The Duke then returned to Apsley House and "penned a playful letter ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... the nurses a little when urged. Her face was often stolid, again she looked about. At times (even nearly to the end) she drooled and soiled. She said little. At no time was she resistive. On other occasions she smiled or laughed, not always on provocation, or she showed little playful tendencies, such as throwing a pillow about the room, tearing leaves from the plants, taking the doctor's arm and walking down the hall, asking him to kiss her. At such times she often looked quite bright, keen, alert and amused. Towards the end she would give ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... her glee arising chiefly from a sense of the chance he was giving her to work up one of those playful mock quarrels which amused her and so ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... book in her handkerchief. Pendennyss noticing an unwillingness, though an extremely playful one, to let him into the secret, examined the case, and perceiving her motive, smiled, as he took down another volume ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Frederic next made his appearance, with questionable marks upon his fingers and countenance. Had been tampering with something brown and sticky. His elder brother grew playful, and caught him by the baggy reverse of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... there in great numbers, and were more active and playful than their elders. It was really wonderful how they could scramble around on the land, and Trot laughed more than once ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... the young people seemed much more familiar with each other than we should ever allow them to be; just like playful brothers and sisters, not a bit loverish, but almost as if it could develop into what they call "rough-housing" in a minute, although it never did ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... patient love and care which she had bestowed on him in those early morning hours, the stern gray eyes grew tender, the haughty lines about the mouth relaxed, and with a sudden caressing movement of his hand among the brown curls, he said in a half moved, half playful tone: ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... you will never please to do so. You see how I leave you your own free will, as friends usually do, with a proviso, a hope at least, that you are never to use it on any account—like the child's half guinea pocket-money, never to be changed." Her playful tone relieved, as she intended it should, Helen's too keen emotion; and this too was felt with the quickness with which every touch of kindness ever was felt by her. Helen pressed her friend's hand, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... by the glamour of the romance in which they live night after night that they imitate in private life the chivalrous behaviour of the warriors they see fighting in the little theatres, and thus what may begin as a playful reminiscence of something in last night's performance occasionally leads to a too accurate imitation of one of last night's combats and perhaps ends in a fatal wound. This being like the accounts in English ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... at your word then," she said, recovering her playful air. "You will not blame me, if I lead you ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... the spectators, "c'est fini!" "Not yet," cried Baptiste, as he sprang with a scream to his feet again, and began his dance with redoubled energy, just as if all that had gone before was a mere sketch—a sort of playful rehearsal, as it were, of what was now to follow. At this moment Hugh stumbled over a canoe- paddle, and fell headlong into Baptiste's arms, as he was in the very act of making one of his violent descents. This unlooked-for occurrence brought them both to a sudden ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... realise that his mistake had been merely playful. 'In that case, may I have dinner without growing grey?' He asked it of Madge, and her smile came back, so readily did she forget what she had ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the mind of a man like this, of years which should have left him yet in full attunement with the morning of life and with the dawn of a country? Why should he pay so little heed to the playful advances of Arcturus, inviting him for a run ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... full of hairpins, and she mumbled something he did not understand. He kept his arms about her insistently, and rubbed his chin on her smooth shoulder with a little laugh. She struggled to free herself, but he held her teasingly, and finally accepting the playful tussle as an apology, though she knew it was not an adequate one, she gave up. She was resolved not to split hairs with her husband over small matters; ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... wit, or sense, or beauty. Many years later, when we were in London, his scholarly yet modest exposition of a certain subject eliciting the praise of a group in a Pall Mall tavern, and he being asked "What university he was of," he answered, with a playful smile, "My father's bookshop." It was, indeed, his main school of book-learning. But, as I afterward told him, he had studied in the university of life also. However, I am now writing of his boyhood in Philadelphia; and of that there is only ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... their tasks throughout the long apartment, telling them to wait for the show till it should pass by the shop, and not think to imitate their master in all his ways—saying these things in a half earnest and half playful manner—we crossed the street, and soon reached the level roof, well protected by a marble breastwork, of the ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... lovely lines of the female face; contemplate that fairest type of the animated creation; observe the soft emotions of her gentle soul, now shooting forth rays of tender light from between her long enclasping eyelashes, now arching her rosy lips into the playful lineaments of Cupid's mortal bow; or gaze upon the subdued and affectionate contentment of the maternal countenance—remember, while you were yet young, your mother's look of love, that look which was all-powerful to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... bad and wicked what I had done was, and what pain it caused her, kneeled down, clasped me to her bosom, and prayed for me. Her tears, falling upon my head, seemed to penetrate to my very heart. This was my first religious impression, and was never effaced. Though thoughtless, and full of playful mischief, I never afterwards knowingly grieved my Mother, or gave her other ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... school, we saw that every one else was cheerful also. All walked in a line, stamping loudly with their feet, and humming, as though on the eve of a four days' vacation; the schoolmistresses were playful; the one with the red feather tripped along behind the children like a schoolgirl; the parents of the boys were chatting together and smiling, and Crossi's mother, the vegetable-vender, had so many bunches of ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... back and fairly wallowed at my feet; jumped up and sprang upon me, rolling me upon the ground by his great weight; then wriggling and squirming around me like a playful puppy presenting its back for the petting it craves. I could not resist the ludicrousness of the spectacle, and holding my sides I rocked back and forth in the first laughter which had passed my lips in many days; the first, in fact, since the morning Powell had left camp when his horse, ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a wife had I reduced to distress! I never saw her, even in the first months of our marriage, so cheerful and so tender as at this period. She seemed to have no existence but in me and in our little boy, of whom she was dotingly fond. He was at this time just able to run about and talk; his playful caresses, his thoughtless gaiety, and at times a certain tone of compassion for poor papa, were very touching. Alas! he little foresaw.... But let me go on with my history, if ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... and art in a beautiful young woman. She lives with him, and is about twenty years old. She is very handsome, and of a beautiful figure. What the greatest artists have aimed at is shown in perfection, in movement, in ravishing variety. Standing, kneeling, sitting, lying down, grave or sad, playful, exulting, repentant, wanton, menacing, anxious, all mental states follow rapidly one after another. With wonderful taste she suits the folding of her veil to each expression, and with the same handkerchief makes every kind of head-dress. The Old Knight holds the Light for her, and enters into ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... same regal hue on his head, encircled with gold, and having a red feather stuck in it. The hobby-horse had a plume of nodding feathers on his head, and careered from side to side, now rearing in front, now kicking behind, now prancing, now gently ambling, and in short indulging in playful fancies and vagaries, such as horse never indulged in before, to the imminent danger, it seemed, of his rider, and to the huge delight of the beholders. Nor must it be omitted, as it was matter of great wonderment to the lookers-on, that by some legerdemain contrivance the rider of the hobby-horse ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... universal, virtuous, decent, domestic, and, above all, social prostitution.—There had just appeared a book on the question, full of talent, which apparently said all there was to be said: through four hundred pages of playful pedantry, "strictly in accordance with the rules of the Baconian method," it dealt with the "best method of controlling the relations of the sexes." It was a lecture on free love, full of talk about manners, propriety, good taste, nobility, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... back in the grass and stare far into the wide blue sky above. It seemed so soft, so caressing, so far away, and yet so near. Then, perhaps, a tiny woolly cloud would drift across its face, meet another of its kind, then another and another, until the massed up curtain hid the playful blue, and amid grayness and chill, where all had been so bright, I would hurry under shelter to avoid the storm. That, outside of fairy books, an earthbound being could actually be in a cloud, was beyond my imagination. Indeed, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... and a touch of liver, due, he was convinced, to the unlawful cellar work of the landlord of the Queen's Head, had induced in him a vein of profound depression. A discarded boot stood by his side, and his gray-stockinged foot protruded over the edge of the jetty until a passing waterman gave it a playful rap with his oar. A subsequent inquiry as to the price of pigs' trotters fell on ears rendered deaf ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... kissing her with that playful tenderness which so well became her, "that I won't, naughty mamma. Because, do you know, you say the most unjust thing in the world when you call me romantic. Why, only ask papa, ask Edgar, ask Mrs. Danvers, ask any body, if ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... carpet in her dressing-room disarranged, and had inquired into the mystery of the secret passage. She chid Miss Alicia in a playful, laughing way, for her boldness in introducing two great men into my ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... his cousin reproached him in a playful manner for being too formal, said gayly to the viscount, who was white with rage, "I shall not insist, sir, since my cousin forbids. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... me not without having administered a playful tap to my cheek and vanishes in the dark ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... beautiful colour (with hair of a golden yellow), come from the banks of the Cassiquiare. Those that are taken on the shores of the Guaviare are large and difficult to tame. No other monkey has so much the physiognomy of a child as the titi; there is the same expression of innocence, the same playful smile, the same rapidity in the transition from joy to sorrow. Its large eyes are instantly filled with tears, when it is seized with fear. It is extremely fond of insects, particularly of spiders. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of the cliff he saw four boys mixed up in what seemed to be a desperate struggle. It was from this group that the wild growls were coming. Now and then a word of greeting or a joyful laugh came from the storm-center, but the playful struggle went on. ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... sense. He was not witty. He had no talent for repartee, and the most industrious collector of anecdotes will find few good things attributed to him. But he possessed a kindly humour which found vent in playful expressions of endearment, or in practical jokes of the most innocent description; and if these outbursts of high spirits were confined to the precincts of his own home, they proved at least that neither by temperament nor principle was he inclined to look upon the darker ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... remark of Captain Delano, a man of such native simplicity as to be incapable of satire or irony, had been dropped in playful allusion to the Spaniard's singularly evidenced lordship over the black; yet the hypochondriac seemed some way to have taken it as a malicious reflection upon his confessed inability thus far to break down, at least, on a verbal ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... reporter, with a playful hiccough, 'that you have run against a high-toned town. Most all the first-class boarding houses here are run by ladies of the old Southern families, the very ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... contracted slightly, but his habitual self-control concealed completely the inclination to strangle his bright-eyed, over-dressed inquisitor. He was the last man to shirk the vicissitudes of playful speech, and he preferred this mood of Selma's to her solemn style, although his ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... It flattered him. He was also rather glad of it, because if the unconscious part of him was perfectly certain of its action, he, himself, did not know what to do with those bruised and battered beings a playful fate had ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... touch so much as her scarf-fringe or the white hem of her dress—affected her like a spell. Had she been obliged to speak to him only, it would have quelled, but, at liberty to address another, it excited her. Her discourse flowed freely; it was gay, playful, eloquent. The indulgent look and placid manner of her auditor encouraged her to ease; the sober pleasure expressed by his smile drew out all that was brilliant in her nature. She felt that this evening she appeared to advantage, and as Robert was a spectator, the consciousness contented her. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... threw himself on the couch, when the voice of Altdorff came like a winged harmony upon his spirit. The page was seated in the narrow cloisters,—the lute, his untiring companion, enticing a few chords from his touch, playful and gentle as the feelings that awaked them; some old and quaint chant, scarce worth the telling, but cherished in the heart's inmost shrine, from the hallowed nature of its associations. A deep slumber crept ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... confine it and keep it from weaving a golden net in which to entangle the hearts of men. When she smiles you feel like rushing forward; when she frowns you question yourself humbly what you have done to merit a look so out of keeping with the playful cast of her countenance and the arch bearing of her spirited young form. She was dressed, as she always is, simply, but there was infinite coquetry in the tie of the blue ribbon on her shoulder, and if a close cap of dainty lace could make a face look more entrancing, ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... country, a country inhabited almost exclusively by the sweetest little child-figures that have ever been invented, in the quaintest and prettiest costumes, always happy, always gravely playful,—and nearly always playing; always set in the most attractive framework of flower-knots, or blossoming orchards, or red-roofed cottages with dormer windows. Everywhere there are green fields, and daisies, and daffodils, and pearly skies of spring, in which a kite is often flying. No children ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... that I did not come into her company often enough; was it a playful invitation to do so oftener; or was it the woman's primal instinct, old as Eve in the Garden of Eden, just to tease the man? I scarcely asked myself those questions. They ran through my mind with ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... yard had had quite enough of that night in the hospital. It would fall on him in one of those half-playful, half-vicious attacks that are the humor of the street, and sometimes it was rather a battered Joey who returned to Clayton's handsome office, to assist him ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... so sound and so safe that I have often relied upon it in situations of some perplexity.... Though serious as well as gentle in her deportment, she possessed a good deal of chaste, delicate, and playful wit, and if she permitted herself to indulge this talent, told her little story with grace, and could mimic very successfully the peculiarities of the person who was its subject. She had a fine taste for belle-lettre ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... dining salon of the Chateau de Canaples I found the two daughters of my host awaiting us—those same two ladies of the coach in Place Vendome and of the hostelry at Choisy, the dark and stately icicle, Yvonne, and the fair, playful ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... she echoed incredulously. "My dear!" The dimple dipped again, and she slipped her hand through Mademoiselle's arm and shook her in playful remonstrance. "Don't you make fun of your hostess, or she'll starve you for your pains. The very idea of clever, accomplished You wanting to be like ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... is in the feeling of the poet Pope's couplet is very charming, but it is merely gallantry, a neatly turned compliment, playful, only half sincere, a spice of mockery lurking under the sugared words; while in Cowper's lines the humble domestic implement is made sacred by the emotions of pity, sorrow, gratitude, and affection ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Fletcher's plays are the best dramatic expression of the romantic spirit of Elizabethan England. Their luxurious, playful fancy delighted in the highly colored, spicy tales of the Southern imagination which the Renaissance was then bringing into England. They drew especially upon Spanish material, and their plays are rightly interpreted only when studied in reference ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I played a couple of games recently with a wide-faced young man who grew very playful and threw the parlor furniture at me because I trumpeted his ace. I fancy I must have did wrong. The fifth time I trumpeted his ace the young man arose, put on his gum shoes, and skeedaddled out of the house. Is it not considered a breach of etiquette to put on gum ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way of "YOUR D'Orsay." The manners and morals of the time were decidedly irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... done up by playful children into balls, which they call tisty tosty, or simply a tosty. For this purpose the umbels of blossoms fully blown are strung closely together, and tied into a ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... saying, in order to encourage Dante, that the labour of climbing will diminish as they get higher, when a bantering voice interrupts with the assurance that he will need plenty of sitting yet. The poet recognises in the speaker a Florentine friend. Another playful sarcasm on his thirst for information makes Dante address the shade and inquire as to his state. He, like Manfred, is debarred from entering Purgatory, but on the ground that he had led an easy life, and taken no thought of serious matters till his end drew near. In ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... more serious in her playful rebuff, but in the serenity of his perfect security he did not feel ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... More playful than the Chilarti when it smiles,[12] and more luscious than the juice of the Tootmanyoso's fruit[13] is the ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... that," Nina said in the manner which is called playful; "we are just going to see Mr. Ward, who is perfectly charming; ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... so gently, he seemed so very clever. He had quite won Miss Morley's heart by running back to the schoolroom to fetch her parasol for her when she found she had left it behind; Caroline admired him for being so merry and playful without rudeness, and Clara chimed in with them both. All expressed wonder at not finding him a spoiled child; and this, though the praises gratified Marian greatly, rather offended her in her secret soul; and she wondered too that Caroline ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Hermione in return. "It's no such thing!"—"Then it's an apple." "No, nor an apple."—"Then it's a peach, and your new frock will be spoilt." "No it isn't a peach either, and it's a secret." The young lady loved fun, and a playful struggle ensued between her and Hermione; in the course of which the large grey worsted ball and its long ravelled tail were drawn ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... friend of Jamestown,' I shall call to the sun that it beat not too fiercely upon it. 'Pocahontas loves Jamestown,' I shall whisper to the river that it eat not too deep into the island's banks, and"—here the half-playful tone changed into one of real earnestness—"I who sit close to Powhatan's heart shall whisper every day in his ear: 'Harm not ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... once said in his playful, authoritative way; "I cannot escape it." And remembering his not very far away Latin, he added: "Hodie mihi, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Phoebe of the fascinating playful ways, whose ringlets were once as pretty as yours, ma'am. I have visited her in her home several times this week—you were always out—I thank you for that! I was alone with her, and with ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... nor drinkin'," returned Simkin, with indignation, as he suddenly delivered a blow at our hero's face. Miles stopped it, however, gave him a playful punch in the chest, and ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... Keep off, I tell you! I won't be chewed to ribbons!" he protested, dodging the attacks of the playful but all too sharp teeth, and catching the little dog by the piece of tarred rope that formed its collar. "Here, you'll get throttled in a minute if you don't ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... West. He landed some soldiers to rifle the fruits of the royal gardens, and pointed with silver, or most probably with fire, the arrows which he discharged against the palace of the Caesars. [111] This playful outrage of the pirates of Sicily, who had surprised an unguarded moment, Manuel affected to despise, while his martial spirit, and the forces of the empire, were awakened to revenge. The Archipelago and Ionian Sea were covered with his squadrons ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the cub's courage, and though the woodpecker he next encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him, he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... repellant, to counteract the attractions of her gentleness and candor. In short, one cast unexpectedly in her society would not have been slow to infer, and he would have decided correctly, that Adelheid de Willading was a girl of warm and tender affections, of a playful but regulated fancy, of a firm and lofty sense of all her duties, whether natural or merely the result of social obligations, of melting pity, and yet of a habit and quality to think and act for herself, in all those cases ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... crowded hall; Alas, how vain to hope the smiles of all! I know my audience. All the gay and young Love the light antics of a playful tongue; And these, remembering some expansive line My lips let loose among the nuts and wine, Are all impatience till the opening pun Proclaims the witty shamfight is begun. Two fifths at least, if not the total half, Have come ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Smiler, or worse. No doubt Benjamin let on to Smiler, and thought as Smiler was too many for him. I daresay there was a few words between him and Smiler. I wouldn't wonder if Smiler didn't threaten to punch Benjamin's head,—which well he could do it,—and if there wasn't a few playful remarks between 'em about penal servitude for life. You see, Mr. Bunfit, it couldn't have been ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... than all previous writers who had dealt with them, as we have seen, in satires and dramas, from Kantemir to Katherine II. The characters, as Von Vizin depicted them, were no longer abstract monsters, agglomerations of evil qualities, but near relations to everybody. Moreover, the drama was gay, playful—not even the moral was gloomy—with not ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... to notice," said the Chinaman, his voice still sunk in that sibilant whisper, "my partiality for dumb allies. You have met my scorpions, my death-adders, my baboon-man. The uses of such a playful little animal as a marmoset have never been fully appreciated before, I think, but to an indiscretion of this last-named pet of mine I seem to remember that you owed something in ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... fall, the game was taken up again. The sheep moved higher whenever I came too near them. Sometimes I dropped to all fours and gave an imitation of a playful pup; stopping to sniff loudly at a chipmunk's hole or to dig furiously with both hands. The sheep crowded forward appreciatively. Evidently they had a weakness for vaudeville. No acrobat, no contortionist, ever had a more flatteringly attentive audience. I laughed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... Neither angry, nor playful, nor smiling, it enveloped our distant ship growing bigger as she neared us, our boats with the rescued men and the dismantled hull of the brig we were leaving behind, in the large and placid embrace of its quietness, half lost in the fair haze, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Rutherford welcomed her approach, but she would not yet trust herself to hold any protracted conversation with him, and giving him only a bright little smile of recognition, she seated herself beside Ned, and began a playful badinage, as they had been accustomed to banter each other on his former visit. Morton Rutherford watched them curiously, listening to the war of words with a half smile, and evidently absorbed in his own thoughts, as, for a while, Miss Gladden and ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... the pedlar repeated with playful modesty. "There is a young girl here," he went on in a high falsetto, "who, owing to the great strictness ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Howard, "I am sorry to acknowledge that the ladies have sufficient cause to charge you with desertion of your colours; but the end may not justify the means." "Ah, papa, your inference is indirect—you will not surely justify Mr. Trevelyan." "In the present state of affairs," exclaimed Sir Howard, in playful military tone, "the enemy is preparing for action. The only chance of success is thus—retreat under cover of fire, or fall back on the strength of defence." "Your Excellency has a stronghold in the enemy's quarter," joined in Lady Rosamond, who had been seated at the side of Captain ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued, 'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm, like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... foot in the stirrup and interrupted him with a playful gesture; then as the horse stirred, he mounted and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... past Winifred Rexford had been spending part of each morning learning housewifery of Mrs. Martha. That day, because of the rain, Trenholme insisted upon keeping her to dinner with him. He brought her into his dining-room with playful force, and set her at the head of his table. It was a great pleasure to him to have the child. He twitted her with her improvement in the culinary art, demanding all sorts of impossible dishes in the near future for his brother's entertainment. He was surprised at the sedateness ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... warm milk from a nursing-bottle, like any other motherless child. The pig loved its foster-mothers, and squealed for them most of the time when it was not eating or sleeping; fortunately, a pig can do much of both. It grew playful and intelligent, and took on strange little human ways which made one wonder if Darwin were right in his conclusion that we are all ascended from the ape. I have seen features and traits of character so distinctly piggish as to rouse ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... squares after dark. But Rosie was not too reckless. There was a considerable amount of cunning in that small brain of hers, which prevented her from falling over the brink of the precipice on the perilous edge of which she danced like a playful kid so airily. It was very nice and not too naughty to be cuddled and kissed by a handsome gentleman, with a big moustache, fine eyes, and baritone voice! but she was not prepared to go further than that—just ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... or vulgar inmates of the boxes, the sender of the mysterious billet; and the contrast between the elegant gentleman in embroidered coat and gold-hilted sword, and the sleepy bewildered little boy of the midnight feast at Chivasso, had seized her with such comic effect that she could not resist a playful allusion to their former meeting. All this was set forth with so sprightly an air of mock-contrition that, had Odo felt the least resentment, it must instantly have vanished. He was, however, in the humour to be pleased by whatever took his mind off his own affairs, and none could be ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a laughing nymph she springs to light, And tripping along in the world of flowers, Brushes the dew, in the morning bright, And weaves a joy for each heart of ours! With frolic hands, the daisy meek, From her lap of green she playful throws; Whilst the loveliest flowers spring round her feet, And fragrance bursts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Bishopric of Albania, religious feuds are common. The Christian Albanian belongs literally to the "Church Militant," and emphasises his feelings occasionally by throwing a dead pig into a mosque. On other occasions playful Albanians have been known to tie white cloths round a fez, thereby imitating the headgear of a Mahometan priest, and so parade through the town. Very naturally the Mahometans object to it, and trouble ensues. About a year ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... our golden-mouthed orator, but I've been waiting in vain for 'Finally'. Let's have an innings. What I object to is that they're such a horrid lot. Cocky to a degree—simply think no end of themselves—and lose their hair altogether at the first little playful joke. I think the beastly way in which they took that bread game spoke for itself. I should like to have hammered ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... wife Holds him; now he sees his boys, Smiles at all their playful strife, All their childish mirth and noise; Softly now she strokes his hair.— Ah, their world ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... different with Alice Dunscombe, This lady gazed with a steady eye and reproving countenance on the fantastical turban, until Katherine threw herself by her side, and endeavored to lead her attention to other subjects, by her playful motions and whispered questions. ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... have often observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion, and has nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in complexion, with her mother's blue eyes, and her mother's long dark wavy hair. She was generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than any of the others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she knew instinctively when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her playfulness there seemed ever ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... some of them members of the Club, who dined together occasionally here. At these dinners he was generally the last to arrive. On one occasion, when he was later than usual, a whim seized the company to write epitaphs on him as "the late Dr. Goldsmith", and several were thrown off in a playful vein. The only one extant was written by Garrick, and has been preserved, very ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the impression of having escaped from a man inspired by a grimly playful ebullition of high spirits. It must have been most distasteful to him; and his solemnity got damaged somehow in the process, I perceived. There were holes in it through which I could see a new, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... don't we?" he said to the child, with a playful appeal to that passion for the joint possession of a mystery which ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... to be rid of this kitten," said Jan. "It's wee happy and Playful—too much like Glory Goldie herself. It's best to have ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... of the playful child, And tired it out in the sunny noon; All nature at my approach hath smiled, And I've made ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... them, and derived from the intimacy most of the comfort of his later years. He treated Mrs. Thrale with a kind of paternal gallantry, her age at the time of their acquaintance being about twenty-four, and his fifty-five. He generally called her by the playful name of "my mistress," addressed little poems to her, gave her solid advice, and gradually came to confide to her his miseries and ailments with rather surprising frankness. She flattered and amused him, and soothed his sufferings and did ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... him," Bim interrupted. "For he did claw at himself, and leap about over the ice like a playful puppy, save from the way he growled and squealed it was plain it was not play but pain. Never did I see such ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... call "Zosia"—that was her aunt's voice! She sprinkled out all at once to the birds the remnant of the dainties, and twirling the sieve as a dancer a tambourine and beating it rhythmically, the playful maiden began to skip over the peacocks, the doves, and the hens. The birds, disturbed, fluttered up in a throng. Zosia, hardly touching the ground with her feet, seemed to tower high above them; before her the white doves, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... are distinguished for their eccentric antics, conspicuous among which is the gift of walking about on their hind legs in a singularly human fashion. Those in the London Zoological Gardens invariably attract a crowd. They struggle together in a playful way, standing on their hind legs to wrestle. They fall and roll, and bite and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... sincerity The brainless in Art and in Statecraft The way is clear: we have only to take the step The worst of omens is delay Time and strength run to waste in retarding the inevitable Time is due to us, and the minutes are our gold slipping away To have no sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a mind Two wishes make a will Venerated by his followers, well hated by his enemies Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? Win you—temperately, let us hope; by storm, if need be World voluntarily opens a path to those ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... nearer creeps, with cat-like tread, The watchful Sioux. Above his lowered head The plumy grasses rear a swaying crest; His sinuous motion ripples the broad breast Of this ripe prairie, like a playful wind That leaves its ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... lecture—and most brilliant, eloquent, and logically consecutive it was. The time moved on so swiftly that Mr. Gillman found, on looking at his watch, that an hour and a half had passed away, and, therefore, he continues "waiting only a desirable moment—to use his own playful words—I prepared myself to punctuate his oration. As previously agreed, I pressed his ancle, and thus gave him the hint he had requested; when, bowing graciously, and with a benevolent and smiling countenance, he presently descended. ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... you." It is quite essential that any man, whose conversation consists mainly of observations not at all to the advantage of some absent acquaintance, should carefully feel his way before giving full scope to his malice and his invention, in the presence of any general company. And before making any playful reference to halters, you should be clear that you are not talking to a man whose grandfather was hanged. Nor should you venture any depreciatory remarks upon men who have risen from the ranks, unless you are tolerably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various |
