"Sprightliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and know the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions, and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondency of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... rapidly scanned the mother's face and figure. Ragged, crumpled, his hair disheveled, he seemed just to have come from a fight, in which he had vanquished his opponent, and still to be flushed with the joy of victory. He pleased the mother with his sprightliness and his simple talk, which at once went straight to the point. She gave him a kind look as she answered his question. He once more shook her ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... As time rolled on this Good Queen Bess Elizabeth Lost somewhat of her sprightliness; (continued) She got into a nervous state Was mopish and disconsolate. Now, as everyone will own, Had 'Iron Jelloids' been but known In Bess's time; why, it's conceded 'Twas just the Tonic that ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... fine, well-accoutred, brave, clean-limbed, stout fellows indeed. Here I saw the cardinal; there was an air of church gravity in his habit, but all the vigour of a general, and the sprightliness of a vast genius in his face. He affected a little stiffness in his behaviour, but managed all his affairs with such clearness, such steadiness, and such application, that it was no wonder he had such success in ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... intelligence, charmed with her sprightliness and wit, the man was for a time lost in the lover, and enough of fondness and affection were manifested to satisfy the confiding Mary, who had invested her earthly idol with every attribute of perfection. But as months passed on, and he again ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... of a gentleman of fortune; she was tall and well-shaped, with a sprightliness in her countenance which often attracts beyond more regular features joined with an insipid air: nor is this kind of beauty less apt to deceive than allure; the good humour which it indicates being often mistaken for good nature, and ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... with dull, snowy, fishy thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated a few inches from his race; dumb, erect, and made to be enveloped in clouds and snows, like the pines on shore. In these wild scenes, men stand about in the scenery, or move deliberately and heavily, having sacrificed the sprightliness and vivacity of towns to the dumb sobriety of nature. He does not make the scenery less wild, more than the jays and musk-rats, but stands there as a part of it, as the natives are represented in the voyages of early navigators, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... they talked together with ceaseless animation. The Cantankerous Old Lady was capital company. She had a tang in her tongue, and in the course of ninety minutes she had flayed alive the greater part of London society, with keen wit and sprightliness. I laughed against my will at her ill-tempered sallies; they were too funny not to amuse, in spite of their vitriol. As for the Count, he was charmed. He talked well himself, too, and between them I almost forgot the time till ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... simple dancing of well-covered matrons, laying aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy, remembering but not affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young maidens by their side—that holiday sprightliness of portly husbands paying little compliments to their wives, as if their courting days were come again—those lads and lasses a little confused and awkward with their partners, having nothing to say—it would be a pleasant variety to see all that sometimes, instead of low dresses and large skirts, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... took that instant to consult the office clock. "By ginger!" he exclaimed, with some sprightliness. "I got to be movin' along. I'm follerin' up a clue ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... in heroic efforts, in journeyings oft, in tact that never failed in many a trying hour, in success most marvellous, in a vivacity and sprightliness that never succumbed to discouragement, in a faith that never faltered, and in a solicitude for the spread of our blessed Christianity that never grew less, James Evans stands among us ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... on a closer inspection turn out an opaque substance. This is a charge that none of his friends will bring against Mr. Leigh Hunt. He improves upon acquaintance. The author translates admirably into the man. Indeed the very faults of his style are virtues in the individual. His natural gaiety and sprightliness of manner, his high animal spirits, and the vinous quality of his mind, produce an immediate fascination and intoxication in those who come in contact with him, and carry off in society whatever in his writings may to some seem flat and ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... acknowledged that the letters of Grotius, are written in the finest latinity, and contain much valuable information; but the point, the sprightliness, the genius, the vivid descriptions of men and things, which are so profusely scattered over the letters of Erasmus, are seldom discoverable in those of Grotius. A man of learning would have been gratified beyond measure, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... Maud Barrington glanced at them, and Dane, who could not remember having heard his leader talk in that fashion before, and could guess his anxieties, was a little touched as he noticed his attempt at sprightliness. As it happened, one of the lads at the piano commenced a song of dogs and horses that had little to recommend it but ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... sort of Egeria to certain men of genius, who came to read to her their writings, to consult her in their arguments, and to discuss with her the literature and politics of the day,—through all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet with a sprightliness and vivacity peculiarly feminine. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... told, that Haydn, when he went to London, called on Sir Joshua Reynolds at his studio, found him painting Mrs. Billington as "Saint Cecilia listening to the angels," and protested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angels listening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately a fervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. The skeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn reached London, but it is a shame to spoil ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... into the mirror. Can one describe that face—the lovely brown eyebrows; the eyes, like a spring sky, just as the light, fleecy clouds are leaving it after a shower; the perfect roses, dipped in milk, of the skin; the lips where good-nature, sprightliness, and love, lay mingled in ambush; the dewy teeth never quite concealed? It is, indeed, useless to attempt it. And, what is very remarkable, Bella knew it. 'There, Percy,' said she, 'your indiscretion is cleared away, and now upon my word I don't know ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... two Haymans—Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very well dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers. Then old Jolyon alone. Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in his face, and a carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement of his head and body. One of his sons followed him, meek and subdued. Swithin Forsyte, and Bosinney arrived at the same moment,—and stood—bowing precedence to each other,—but on the door opening they tried to enter together; they renewed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... correspondents is curiously alike in one feature. There is an almost sprightliness in their conviction that what they can write in these circumstances would exactly suit any paper, daily or weekly, morning or evening. All they have to do is to give up their odd savings of time to the work; all you—their hapless ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... by the hour, or at least so it seemed, and increasing in sprightliness each day. He even insisted on following her to the entrance of the cavity when she departed and met her there when she returned. The fear that he might some day disobey her injunction and sally forth alone ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... conventional and hackneyed devices of most novelists, devices that the experienced reader sees through at once. No more sprightly novel than "Theo" could be desired, and a sweeter or more beautiful romance than "Kathleen" does not exist in print, while "Pretty Polly Pemberton" possesses besides its sprightliness a special interest peculiar to itself, and "Miss Crespigny" would do honor to the pen of any novelist, no matter how celebrated. "Lindsay's Luck," "A Quiet Life," "The Tide on the Moaning Bar" and "Jarl's Daughter" are all worthy members of the same collection of Mrs. Burnett's earlier, ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and kissed his hand several times. 'This is an old room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking round when he got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have not observed it. But it's a genuine ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... came to the ship. His joy at seeing me again was very great; but he regretted much that his friend Timaro, with whom he had exchanged names, was not of our company. The spirits of Labugar had lost during eight years none of their sprightliness; but his face looked much older, and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... "old acquaintance" that he did not care how soon he was master of such another clean-going frigate as herself. The whole company partook of this favourable change that evidently appeared in our lover's recollection, and enlivened his conversation with such an uncommon flow of sprightliness and good humour, as even made an impression on the iron countenance of Pipes himself, who actually smiled with satisfaction as he walked ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the spring of 1823 from Diabelli, composer and head of a large publishing house in Vienna, for six variations on a waltz by him (Diabelli). The dance was always a favorite musical form with Beethoven in his lighter moments, and the variation form,—capable of a degree of sprightliness, vivacity and originality in the right hands which give it an entrancing effect, to which we come again and again with pleasure, was something peculiarly his own at every stage of his artistic career. His ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... ladies habited sadly in keeping with the season. All were connected either by blood or at least as friends or neighbours and fair and of good understanding were they all, as also of noble birth, gentle manners, and a modest sprightliness. In age none exceeded twenty-eight, or fell short of eighteen years. Their names I would set down in due form, had I not good reason to with hold them, being solicitous lest the matters which here ensue, as told and heard by them, should in after time be occasion of reproach ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... his style is partly due to the declining taste of the period, partly to an idea of his own that he could write in the manner of Sallust. It alternates between a sort of laboured sprightliness and a careless, conversational manner full of endless parentheses. Yet Velleius has two real merits: the eye of a trained soldier for character, and an unaffected, if not a very ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... many another indulged in pretty gear, and grays that went near to lavender and peachy tints. There were pearl-colored brocades and satins, and dainty caps of sheerest material that allowed the well-dressed hair to show quite distinctly. There was also a certain gayety and sprightliness in entertaining, since there were no matinees or shows to visit. Both hostess and guest were expected ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... hastened through the streets with the sprightliness of youth. He noticed neither the respectful salutations and knee-bendings of those he passed, nor their visible shuddering and alarm when under the cardinal's hat they recognized the fierce and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... least flawlessly consistent: there is scarce a trait in his character that is not reflected somewhere in his music, and hardly a characteristic of his music that one does not find quaintly echoed in some recorded saying or doing of the man. His placid and even vivacity, his sprightliness, his broad jocularity, his economy and shrewd business perception of what could be done with the material to hand, his fertility of device, even his commonplaceness, may all be seen in the symphonies. At rare moments he moves you strongly, very often he is trivial, but he generally ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of Mr. Seth D. Whitney. Her literary career began about 1856, since which time she has written several novels and poems; a number of them first appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly." Her writings are marked by grace and sprightliness. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and thereby opened up to me a new world of interest and amusement. When Butler entertained boys at breakfast or dinner, he was a most delightful host, and threw off all magisterial awfulness as easily as his gown. His conversation was full of fun and sprightliness, and he could talk "Cricket-shop," ancient and modern, like Lillywhite or R. H. Lyttelton. In time of illness or failure or conscience-stricken remorse, he showed an Arthur-like simplicity of religion which no one could ignore ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... most effectual way of awaking a sentimental interest in the persons who were imagining that they were to be her guests. Katie was one of those people who illustrate the use of the velvet glove, for in spite of her sprightliness, she was considered the gentlest little creature in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Chancellor Hatton, also an Elizabethan judge who aimed at sprightliness on the Bench, a clever mot is attributed. The case before him was one concerning the limits of certain land. The counsel having remarked with emphasis, 'We lie on this side, my lord,' and the opposing counsel with equal vehemence having interposed, 'And we lie on this side, my ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... strong enough with which to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quicker to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover of butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; I love sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the moment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy of feeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slang and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... mass. Of course there are many individuals in this, as in other countries, remarkable for natural grace and genteel bearing; but the class which is pre-eminent in these respects, is very small and ill-defined. The great national defect is a want of sprightliness and vivacity, and an impartial insouciance in their intercourse with all classes and conditions of men. For if inequality has its evils, it has also its charms; as the prospect of swelling mountains and lowly vales is more pleasing to the eye than that of the monotonous, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... advantages of an elevated stature. None of the resources of the toilet were neglected by her, and for a long time the most elegant women in Paris took the ton for dress from Mademoiselle CONTAT. Besides, she always had a delicacy of discrimination in her delivery, and a varied sprightliness in the minutiae of her acting. Her voice, though sometimes rather shrill, is not deficient in agreeableness, but is easily modulated, except when it is necessary for her to express feeling. The inferiority of Mademoiselle ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Wharton, where is that fund of sense and sentiment which once animated your engaging form? Where that strength of mind, that independence of soul, that alacrity and sprightliness of deportment, which formerly raised you superior to every adverse occurrence? Why have you resigned these valuable endowments, and suffered yourself to become ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... I have come to a part of my story that I would much rather not write. Always my inclination if left alone is to sit in the sun and sing of things like crocuses, of nothing less fresh and clean than crocuses. The engaging sprightliness of crocuses; their dear little smell, not to be smelled except by the privileged few; their luminous transparency—I am thinking of the white and the purple; their kind way of not keeping hearts sick for Spring waiting ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return seldomer upon us! And thus these pleasant, as well as proper, gifts of Nature maintain the strength and the sprightliness of our bodies. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... before the Queen; but as he danced with great sprightliness, she could not bear the odour which his violent motions diffused around her room the ladies likewise began to pray for relief; for he had almost entirely got the better of all the perfumes and essences with which they were fortified: Poussatin, nevertheless, retired ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... us in anxious doubt concerning Clarissa's Fate, altho' the scattered Observations have generally the Recommendation of Novelty to amuse the Curious, Depth to engage the Attention of the Considerate, and Sprightliness to entertain the Lively; and Story is considered by the Author, as he says in his Preface, but as the Vehicle to convey the more necessary Instruction. And Clarissa ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... days ago," said D'Artagnan, and he portrayed with Gascon wit and sprightliness the magnificence of Porthos in his Chateau of Pierrefonds; nor did he neglect to launch a few arrows of wit at the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of its paddles, and keeping others in play, the beroe can change its course at pleasure, and so wander 'at its own sweet will,' through the trackless waste. Beauty waits upon the course of this little crystal globe. The grace and sprightliness of its movements must strike the commonest observer. As the sunlight falls upon its cilia, they are 'tinted with the most lovely iridescent colours;' and at night they flash forth phosphoric light, as though the little creature were giving a saucy ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Creole, and having matured early, her physical charms were already fading. Her spirit, too, had reached and passed its zenith; for in her letters of that time she describes herself as listless. Nevertheless, in those very letters there is some sprightliness, and considerable ability of a certain kind. A few weeks after her liberation, having apprenticed Eugene and Hortense to an upholsterer and a dressmaker respectively,[59] she was on terms of intimacy with Barras so close as to be considered ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... have obtained general approbation, being written with great familiarity and great sprightliness; the language is easy, but seldom gross, and the numbers smooth, without appearance of care. Of these tales there are only four: "The Ladle," which is introduced by a preface, neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. "Paulo Purganti," which has likewise ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... as if inquiring what strange creatures were about to invade their home. Probably they had never seen any human beings before. The sailors said they were "boobies;" and they certainly appeared very unsophisticated, and quite devoid of the wit and sprightliness of ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... journey to England, he gave up law to devote himself exclusively to the pursuit of letters. In 1827, he brought out his "Buch der Lieder," and followed this up with the first part of his famous "Reisebilder." Heine's lyrics, by their unwonted grace and sprightliness, captivated German readers. Some of his songs, like that of the "Lorelei" or "Thou Art Like a Flower," soon became German folksongs. More characteristic, perhaps, of Heine's light muse are lines ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... on his face, pounded his abdomen, pulled his hair out in handfuls, and otherwise treated him exactly as if the thing were happening in Russia. This spectacle was too much for the tobacconist's sense of honour. With unwonted sprightliness he vaulted over the writhing cluster and summoned a municipal policeman. The officer was on the spot in a twinkling, sword and trumpet in hand. And there, in all conscience, the matter ought to have rested—with the identification and bestowal in ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that was at once serious and royal, bearing herself haughtily, yet with a certain grace and sprightliness that became her very well. She was quite tall and well made, and her quickly changing face was long and fair, though wrinkled and no longer young. Her complexion was clear and of an olive hue; her nose was a little hooked; her firm ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... after all is to be found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d'un notaire (1862); Le roi des montagnes (1856); L'homme a l'oreille cassee (1862); Trente et quarante (1858); Le cas de M. Guerin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play. "You will never be more than a little Voltaire,'' said one of his masters when he was a lad at school. It was a true prophecy. (F. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... stay. Having let Miss Havens go on alone to the place she was bound for, he had moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake in the nature of his own destination. Suppose, after all, he should find himself castaway in some oasis of determined sprightliness with Wally Whitaker in whose pocket pretenses of tips and margins he began to discern a poorer sort of substitute for the House. He was as much bored by the permanently young shoe-salesman after this discovery as before ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... so. You see, Hilda, I have taken a fancy to try my hand at it," said Zillah, laughingly, full of delight at the ease with which she had gained her desire. "You see," she went on, with unusual sprightliness of manner, "I got hold of a 'Complete Letter-Writer' this morning; and the beauty, elegance, and even eloquence of those amazing compositions have so excited me that I want to emulate them. Now it happens that Guy is the only correspondent ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... airless, their tasks fatiguing. The pavement beneath their feet was hot; both were glad to breathe what tiny breeze was astir; both were tired. They walked side by side in that best of all companionships which demands no effort at sprightliness, nor the utterance of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... there, skilfully piloted beneath swinging signs and low balconies, evading awning posts and high hats as best they might. There were as many people out as usual, but they were hurrying to their destinations, even the languid creole beauty, all lace and alabaster, moved with the sprightliness of a ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... usually to the ground, which is intimated by the Host's words; his whole face full of liveliness, a calm, easy sweetness, and a studious Venerable aspect. . . . As to his temper, he had a mixture of the gay, the modest, and the grave. The sprightliness of his humour was more distinguished by his writings than by his appearance; which gave occasion to Margaret Countess of Pembroke often to rally him upon his silent modesty in company, telling him, that his absence was more ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of nature, the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in which they dwell, the air they breathe, the food ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and was amused by the scene of gaiety it presented. How unlike, and how superior to, our Vauxhall! People of all stations, of all ages, and of both sexes, threading the mazy dance with a sprightliness that evinced the pleasure ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Pitt Crawley the honour to meet him at Mrs. Becky's house and had been most gracious to the new Baronet and member. Pitt was struck too by the deference with which the great Peer treated his sister-in-law, by her ease and sprightliness in the conversation, and by the delight with which the other men of the party listened to her talk. Lord Steyne made no doubt but that the Baronet had only commenced his career in public life, and expected rather anxiously to hear him as an orator; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cordial acceptance. In the interests of serious art, the borrowing of a title from one of the works of a writer so addicted to levity as EDWARD LEAR may perhaps be deprecated, but there can be no doubt of the ingenuity and sprightliness with which Mr. Walbrook has addressed himself to, and accomplished, his task. If we cannot discover in his composition the manifestation of any pronounced individuality or high artistic uplift, it none the less commands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... that the verses in question form part of a collection of nursery songs and rhymes by Charles Lamb, published many years ago, but now quite out of print. This, however, is a mere surmise on my part, and has no better foundation than the vein of humour, sprightliness, and originality, obvious enough in the above extract, which we find running through and adorning all he wrote. "Nihil quod ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... some confidential servant? Why, again, should I write in such faulty words, such barbarous language, I whom my accusers admit to be quite at home in Greek? And why should I seek to seduce her by flattery so absurd and coarse? They themselves admit that I write amatory verse with sufficient sprightliness and skill. The explanation is obvious to every one; it is this. He who could not read the letter which Pudentilla wrote in Greek altogether too refined for his comprehension, found it easier ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Champion," in which Fox and Lord North, in female attire, and the Duchess in her large picture hat, but decollettee, and with bare arms, are busy singing a dirge on the defeated opponent. Georgina, a figure of delicious sprightliness and beauty, points to the tombstone marked "Here lies poor Cecil Ray," while the spectacled profile of Burke peeps into the door. And here I may remark again how astonishingly to my own experience a study of these prints makes ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... And, in all these countries, men of talent write from talent. It is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste propitiated,—so many columns so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... me to resolve upon yielding at once, and without useless opposition, to what appeared almost to be my fate. The appointed time was come, and my now accepted suitor arrived; he was in high spirits, and, if possible, more entertaining than ever. I was not, however, quite in the mood to enjoy his sprightliness; but whatever I wanted in gaiety was amply made up in the triumphant and gracious good humour of my mother, whose smiles of benevolence and exultation were showered around as bountifully as the summer sunshine. I will not weary you with unnecessary prolixity. Let ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... general. Miss Moncrieffe was, at this time, in her fourteenth year. She had travelled, and, for one of her age, had mingled much in the world. She was accomplished, and was considered handsome. Major Burr was attracted by her sprightliness and vivacity, and she, according to her own confessions, penned nearly twenty years afterward, had not only become violently in love with, but had acknowledged the fact to him. Whether the foundation of her future misfortunes was now laid, it is not necessary ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... results of the project, his original disinclination to it diminished, until he finally determined on running the risk; and he felt fully rewarded for this concession to his wife's wishes when he saw her recover all her wonted serenity and sprightliness. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... must be a place—in which that condition can exist." She had always been fond of discussions of this kind, and felt encouraged to find that they were still practicable. "It cannot be the—Inferno; that is clear, at least," she added, with the sprightliness which was one of her characteristics; "perhaps—Purgatory? since you infer I have something ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... these sober fellows cannot have a decent sprightliness, a modest assurance with them! Something debonnaire; which need not be separated from that awe and reverence, when they address a woman, which should shew the ardour of their passion, rather than the sheepishness of their nature; for who knows not that love delights in taming the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... croquet ground. He tied his horse to the fence outside, much to the disappointment of the rollicking negro boys, and walked up. Nina held in her lap a tray of coins which she was engaged in brightening. She assumed a sprightliness not quite natural, and evidently designed to obviate the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... many; to me she is fair, tall, and shapely. Each of these qualities I grant. But that all these make loveliness I deny: for nothing of beauty nor scintilla of sprightliness is in her body so massive. Lesbia is lovely, for whilst the whole of her is most beautiful, she has stolen for herself every ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... pantomime, took a step towards her; but she raised her hand pleadingly, restrainingly, and he paused. With his eyes he asked her mutely why. She did not answer, but, all at once transformed into a thing of abundant sprightliness, ran down the hillside, tossing up her arms gaily. Yet her face was not all brilliance. Tears hung at her eyes. But Hilton did not see these. He did not run, but walked quickly, following her; and his face had a determined look. Immediately, a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the truth was that Harry began to rise rapidly in her good opinion. His sprightliness was gentlemanly and agreeable, and he contrived, besides, to assume the look and air of a man who only indulged in it in compliment to her uncle, and, of course, indirectly to herself, with whom, it was but natural, he should hope to make him an advocate. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... treated as sheer encumbrances and hindrances to the rise of a new literature. That which led to a remarkable revulsion of my feelings with regard to those German composers who hitherto had been admired and respected, was partly the influence of these critical skirmishes, and the luring sprightliness of their tone; but mainly the impression made by a fresh visit of Schroder- Devrient to Leipzig, when her rendering of Borneo in Bellini's Romeo and Juliet carried every one by storm. The effect of it was not to be compared with anything that had been witnessed theretofore. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... went on to the verandah, and looked down upon the lights of the prison, and listened to the sea lapping the shore. The Reverend Mr. North, in this cool atmosphere, seemed to recover himself, and conversation progressed with some sprightliness. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... my feelings what they may, I have learnt in a fearful school to endure and to suppress them. I have been taught to abase a proud spirit to the claps and hisses of the vulgar;—to smile on suitors who united the insults of a despicable pride to the endearments of a loathsome fondness;—to affect sprightliness with an aching head, and eyes from which tears were ready to gush;—to feign love with curses on my lips, and madness in my brain. Who feels for me any esteem,—any tenderness? Who will shed a tear over the nameless grave which will soon shelter from cruelty and scorn the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... discharged its penetrating spark—"Oh! how that little god has alarmed me!" said the recoiling fair one, whose youthful countenance surprise had imbued with new beauties; "but yet," said she, recovering herself, "he does not hurt." This little sally may be considered as a specimen of that playful sprightliness which is so much the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... an instant; but, to avoid too great a contrast of manner, he retained a semblance of sprightliness, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... pieces bearing the general character which we have described, the French are certainly better fitted than any other people,—their native gaiety and sprightliness of disposition,—the polish which their manners so readily acquire,—their irrepressible confidence and self-conceit,—their love of shewing off, and attracting attention, give really a stage effect to many of their serious actions, and to almost all their trifling conversation and amusements. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... morning was passed with Alice and the children. He was pleased with her prettiness and sprightliness, and his gentle manner and disposition pleased her. She asked him to let me spend another year in Rosville; but he said that I must return to Surrey, and that he never would allow me ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... loko. Spot (stain) makulo. Spotless senmakula. Spouse edzo—ino. Spout sxpruci. Sprain elartikigi. Sprawl sterni. Spray (sprinkle) surversxi, sxprucigi sur. Spread (news) disvastigi. Spread (extend) etendi. Sprig vergeto, brancxeto. Sprightly sprita, viva. Sprightliness viveco. Spring salti. Spring (season) printempo. Spring (of watch, etc.) risorto. Springy elasta. Sprinkle sxprucigi sur. Sprinkler sxprucigilo. Sprite feino, koboldo. Sprout (bud) elkreski. Spue vomi. Spume sxauxmo. Spur sprono. Spurious falsa. Spurn ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... some of your own sweet adjectives were returned on you before a gaping audience? Enthusiasm about art is become a function of the average female being, which she performs with precision and a sort of haunting sprightliness, like an ingenious and well- regulated machine. Sometimes, alas! the calmest man is carried away in the torrent, bandies adjectives with the best, and out-Herods Herod for some shameful moments. When you remember that, you will be tempted to put things strongly, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have taken little or no trouble to unearth his association with the plays and players of his time—the mid-period of the nineteenth century. Yet they all agree that, as illustration of "parlour comedy," his "Love in '76" is a satisfactory example of sprightliness and fresh inventiveness. For this reason, the small comedietta is included in the present collection. It challenges comparison with Royall Tyler's "The Contrast" for manner, and its volatile spirit involved in the acting the good services of such estimable players ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... Albinia's husband was the most silent and shy man in existence, began to doubt her sister's veracity. And Albinia, instead of dealing out a shower of fireworks, to hide what, if not gloom, was at least twilight, was now 'temperately bright,' talking naturally of what most concerned her with the sprightliness of her happy temper, but without effort; and gratifying Winifred by a great deal more notice of the new niece and namesake than she had ever bestowed on either of her predecessors in their infant days. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they met. And gravely walked and talked. He read her no more verses, and he stayed Only until their conversation, balked Of every natural channel, fled dismayed. Again the next day she would meet him, trying To give her tone some healthy sprightliness, But his uneager dignity soon chilled Her well-prepared address. Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying Of wild geese startled Eunice, and their flying Whirred overhead for days ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... but he thought a good deal, for he had noted the beauty and sprightliness of Maraquita, and the admiration with which Harold had first beheld her; and it seemed to him that this rather powerful method of attempting to gratify the Portuguese girl was proof positive that Harold had lost ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Count de la Galissoniere was not a dull affair of mere eating and drinking. The conversation and sprightliness of the host fed the minds of his guests as generously as his bread strengthened their hearts, or his wine, in the Psalmist's words, made their faces to shine. Men were they, every one of them possessed of a sound mind in a sound body; and both ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... than in the other species; the fruit, also, in its native condition, averages much larger, stands erect instead of hanging, ripens late, is rose-colored, firm and sweet in flesh, and does not require as much heat to develop its saccharine constituents; but it lacks the peculiar sprightliness and aroma of the Virginia strawberry. It has become, however, the favorite stock of the European gardeners, and seems better adapted to transatlantic climate and soil than to ours. The first mention of the Fragaria Chilensis, or South American strawberry, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... of Mrs. Judson at this time, were, according to the testimony of some who well recollect her, engaging and attractive in no common degree. Her sweet and ready smile, her dark expressive eye, the animation and sprightliness of her conversation, and her refined taste and manners, made her a favorite in all circles. Her dress, for which she was indebted to the liberality of British friends, was more rich and showy than she ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... body. Next he made him walk and run with the longest strides he could take; and, after repeating this process, brought him a cup of boiling coffee. Having been revived and strengthened in this way, the lad quite recovered his sprightliness, and soon asked when we were going ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... mantle of the Goulds' hereditary position in Sulaco had descended amply upon her little person; but she would not allow the peculiarities of the strange garment to weigh down the vivacity of her character, which was the sign of no mere mechanical sprightliness, but of an eager intelligence. It must not be supposed that Mrs. Gould's mind was masculine. A woman with a masculine mind is not a being of superior efficiency; she is simply a phenomenon of imperfect differentiation—interestingly barren and without importance. Dona Emilia's intelligence ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... was of no great duration, and she shortly recovered her senses, but not her sprightliness. Her excuse was that the long discussion of her husband's murder, and the too precise details related to her by Link before Denzil's arrival, had so wrought on her nerves as to occasion ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Brissot de Warville took exception, and supplied his own picture by writing in 1791, "You have often heard me blame M. Chastellux for putting too much sprightliness in the character he has drawn of this general. To give pretensions to the portrait of a man who has none is truly absurd. The General's goodness appears in his looks. They have nothing of that brilliancy which his officers ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... of our's, Delarise, was my sister Mary's playfellow at Paris. His sprightliness engages my sisters extremely. Doubtless they tell much of him to you in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... upon Nietzsche and Cervantes, recount the adventures, somersaults and end of a legendary rascal, portray a hero of our time. He made all these intellectual concepts plastic in a music of a brilliance and a sprightliness and mordancy that not overmany classic symphonies can rival. Other and former composers, no doubt, had dreamt of making the orchestra more concretely expressive, more precisely narrative and descriptive. The "Pastoral" symphony is by no means the first piece ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the evening he thus gave his opinion upon the merits of some of the principal performers whom he remembered to have seen upon the stage. "Mrs. Porter,[751] in the vehemence of rage, and Mrs. Clive in the sprightliness of humour, I have never seen equalled. What Clive did best, she did better than Garrick; but could not do half so many things well; she was a better romp than any I ever saw in nature[752]. Pritchard[753], in common life, was a vulgar ideot; she would talk of her gownd: but, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... weight of state affairs, and necessary regal accompaniments, can form a correct judgment of the unaffected goodness of his heart; the easy affability, and pliant condescension, with which he can divest 298every one around him of any feeling of restraint—the uncommon sprightliness and vivacity he displays in conversation—the life and soul of all that is elegant and classical, and the willing participator and promoter of a good joke. Suffice it to say, the reception was flattering in the extreme, the entertainment conversational and highly intellectual. The moments ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... mots, too, were in every mouth; and the Parisians, who at every epoch have been so addicted to wit, were so much the more enraptured with the impromptu good things which fell from Joseph's lips, that the Bourbons were entirely deficient in sprightliness. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the young lady. From the first moment it was a plain case. Very soon every one in the pension was highly amused to notice how fluent his French was becoming; his choice of words at times was even elegant! The girl taught him it without a trace of grammar, by charm, sprightliness, a little nonsense; a pair of confiding eyes and a youthful voice were sufficient. It was from her that he got, by stealth, one novel after another. By stealth it had to be; by stealth Lucie had procured them; by ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... world can bestow. May your days be clear sunshine; and may a gentle rain give balm to your nights, that the flowers and birch-trees may salute you in the morning with all their fragrance! May the kids frisk and play tricks before you with unusual sprightliness; and may the song of birds, the hum of bees, and the distant waterfall, with now and then the shepherd's horn resounding from the mountains, entertain you with a full chorus of Highland music! My imagination had parcelled out the lovely little glen into a thousand little ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... early remarked for her sense and sprightliness, and for her skill in school exercises. Now she had added wide reading, and of the books most grateful to her. She had read the Italian poets by herself, and from sympathy. I said, that, by the leading part she naturally took, she had identified ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... animated as usual. They displayed all that sprightliness and good-humour which my praises had led Mountford to expect; subjects, too, of sentiment occurred, and their speeches, particularly those of our friend the son of Count Respino, glowed with the warmth of honour, and softened into the tenderness of feeling. ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... au Tigre de la France" betrays a writer well versed in classical oratory. Some of the best of modern French critics accord to it the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works. Without copying in a servile fashion the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the "Tigre" breathes their spirit and lacks none of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she had been helped to was too delicate to be given up even for the greater rarity. But the word "shell-oysters" had been overheard; and there was a perceptible crowding movement towards their ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... journeying. Master and servant are represented in this book as traveling through southern Germany, apair as closely related in head and heart as Yorick and La Fleur, or Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim. The style is of rather forced buoyancy and sprightliness, with intentional inconsequence and confusion, an attempt at humor of narration, which is choked by characteristic national desire to convey information, and a fatal propensity to description of places,[43] even when some satirical purpose underlies the account, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... and London's workers, scurrying to and from their hives, seemed also to have benefited by some attribute of the downpour that tinted cheeks, sparkled eyes, and, rejuvenating limbs, gave to them a new sprightliness of movement. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... began gaily to describe some of his humorous adventures, and continued in this vein till they arrived once more at the chateau. Sometimes the countess laughed, but he could see that her sprightliness was gone. When they came under the porte cochere he sprang from his horse and assisted her to dismount; and he did not relinquish her hand till he had given it a friendly pressure. She stood motionless on the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... that succession of amusements by which the thoughts of most young men are dissipated, and had not long glittered in the splendour of an ample patrimomy [Transcriber's note: sic] before I wished for the calm of domestick happiness. Youth is naturally delighted with sprightliness and ardour, and therefore I breathed out the sighs of my first affection at the feet of the gay, the sparkling, the vivacious Ferocula. I fancied to myself a perpetual source of happiness in wit never exhausted, and spirit never depressed; looked with veneration ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the wilderness had saluted me with a meticulously pure English accent, and welcomed me in a quotation from Homer in the original Greek. Who, in the devil's name, was this odd character who, I saw, as I looked closer at him, was, as he had hinted, quite an old man, though his unusual erectness and sprightliness of manner, lent him an illusive air of youth? Who on earth was he?—and how did he happen in the middle ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... disguise the fact, that the flounced and gorgeous garniture of our dresses was in shocking contrast to the amiable simplicity of hers and the fair Arabella, her daughter, a charming girl, who, notwithstanding the fashionable splendour in which she has been educated, displays a delightful sprightliness of manner, that, I have some notion, has not been altogether lost on the heart of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... anchor, was observed to be surrounded with boats. In about an hour she weighed and stood to sea. Captain Maxwell had received another visit from the old Chief, whose appearance was described as being quite altered; his sprightliness and curiosity all gone, and his easy unceremonious manner exchanged for cold and stately civility: he looked embarrassed and unhappy, as it appeared, from an apprehension of having offended Captain Maxwell. When this was discovered, no pains were spared to convince him that, in this respect, there ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for her walk. The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor thought she never beheld so ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... has collected a series of essays on bird life which for sprightliness and charm are equal to anything written since that classic 'The Tribes ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar |
