"Buoyancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I learnt that my son's influence was specially marked in his last two years at the College. It was an influence that was always thrown on the side of what was lovely, pure and of good report. Frank, free-spirited, open-hearted, his buoyancy and his rich capacity for laughter diffused an atmosphere of cheerfulness; his unflagging enthusiasm stimulated interest in athletics; his love of learning and passion for work were contagious; his high ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... (like a few) retain in body and soul the health and buoyancy of twenty-one on to the very verge of forty, and, seeming to grow younger-hearted as they grow older-headed, can cast off care and work at a moment's warning, laugh and frolic now as they did twenty years ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... been bronzed over; a few lightly traced, but expressive lines were chronicles of mental struggles, and told that he had thought and suffered. There was more contemplation and less gayety in the brilliant brown eyes; more reflective composure and less impulsive buoyancy in his demeanor. Heretofore his bearing, language, whole aspect had ever communicated the impression of possible power; now it bespoke power confirmed and concentrated, and brought into ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... hall-mark of unworthiness. Yet he knew that he was disappointed; disappointment was, perhaps, a mild word. He had walked through the streets with Ellison, after that meeting with her at the theatre, conscious of an unwonted buoyancy of spirits, feeling that he had drawn into his life a new experience which promised to be a ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a corrupt community drawn by Curran in his description of the public pests of his day—"remaining at the bottom like drowned bodies while soundness remained in them, but rising only as they rotted, and floating only from the buoyancy of corruption"—seems, unhappily, destined to find its parallel here, unless public virtue and public indignation should awake to condemn and chastise the corruption which is tainting and poisoning ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... heard, necessarily possesses a character of its own; but the peculiar form of the government, and the long training of the people in habits of caution, weighed on the spirits of the gay. There were times and places, it is true, when the buoyancy of youthful blood, and the levity of the thoughtless, found occasion for their display—nor were they rare; but when men found themselves removed from the temptation, and perhaps from the support of society, they appeared to imbibe ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... story-teller or minstrel; and the store of tales, songs, and fancies that she had accumulated were not only her own chief resource but that of her sisters, in the many long and dreary hours that they had to pass, unbrightened save by the inextinguishable buoyancy of young creatures together. When their mother was dying, Hepburn could not help for very shame admitting a priest to her bedside, and allowing the clergy to perform her obsequies in full form. This had led to a more complete perception of the condition of the poor Princesses, just at the time ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that "he wanted better bread than can be made with wheat:" Lamb, that from childhood he had "hungered for eternity." Yet the faintness, the continuous dissolution, whatever its cause, which soon supplanted the buoyancy of his first wonderful years, had its own consumptive refinements, and even brought, as to the "Beautiful Soul" in Wilhelm Meister, a faint religious ecstasy—that "singing in the sails" which is not of the breeze. Here again is one of ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... braids, but there were always little wisps that curled about the ears and forehead. These wisps were at once the woman's despair and the child's freely expressed delight. However, through all the rigid discipline the little girl retained her natural buoyancy of childhood, the spontaneous interestedness, the cheerfulness and animation, which were a part ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... exhibited, with some pride, a large double canoe, which consisted in the first place of a canoe a hundred feet in length, and half a dozen or more in width; the second canoe was composed of a tree hollowed out for the sake of buoyancy like the canoe, but was, in reality, merely an outrigger. The large canoe was formed of planks lashed together with cocoanut plait; beams were then laid between the two, on which was erected a house for the stowage of provisions; above this rose a platform surrounded by a railing, forming ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... old world it was like a new world that had been lying asleep for centuries. It had such a fresh odor of earth and clover and wild flowers. The clear pure air caused a peculiar buoyancy of spirits. The sky was perfectly blue, and the earth freshly green. The sunrises had the pomp of Persian mornings, the nights the soft bright glory of the Texan moon. They rode for days over a prairie studded with islands of fine trees, the grass smooth as a park, and beautiful ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... region in the summer is of the purest, loaded always with the freshness and the pleasant odors of the forest. It gives strength to the system, weakened by labor or reduced by the corrupted and debilitating atmosphere of the cities. It gives elasticity and buoyancy to the mind depressed by continued toil, or the cares and anxieties of business, and makes the blood course through the veins with renewed vigor ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of the buoyancy of liquids and of air; simple tests to demonstrate that air fills space and exerts pressure; the application of air pressure in the barometer, the common pump, the bicycle tire, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... started for the fort, travelling slowly and making frequent halts. Ned scarcely mentioned his wound; and, during the four days consumed on the trip, we were all delighted to see that Juanita was daily recovering her bloom, and buoyancy of spirits. ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... changed the whole weather of her soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her, whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly—in short, something of the 'clothed animal on end', like the ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... Stephen. It had been timed to come on that day by special arrangement between them. In it he named the earliest morning on which he could meet her at Plymouth. Her father had been on a journey to Stratleigh, and returned in unusual buoyancy of spirit. It was a good opportunity; and since the dismissal of Stephen her father had been generally in a mood to make small concessions, that he might steer clear of large ones connected with that outcast ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... her for whom it was appointed (a sad but honoured lot) to be the companion of his later days, over which it has pleased God to cast the "shadow before" of that "night in which no man can work." But twelve short months ago he was cheerfully anticipating (in the bright buoyancy of his happy nature) a far other companionship for the short remainder of our earthly sojourn; never forgetting, however, that ours must be short at the longest, and that "in the midst of life we are in death." ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... whereby he was brought about to a proper modesty, so that he really craved no more than for the mistress of this house to breathe the liberal air of a public acknowledgment of her rightful position. Things constituted by their buoyancy to float are remarkable for lively bobbings when they are cast upon the waters; and such was the case with Weyburn, until the agitation produced by Mrs. Pagnell left him free to sail away in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... communications of James's favour. But Dryden, always ready to supply with hope the deficiency of present possession, went on his literary course rejoicing. A lively epistle to his friend Etherege, then envoy for James at Ratisbon, shows the lightness and buoyancy of his spirits ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... under the trees. He seemed not at all angry; there was a kind of breezy assurance in his stride and manner. As he reached the messboards where some of the scouts were already seated on the long benches, several noticed this buoyancy in ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a joy for ever" to everyone who has an eye for admirable art and adorable drollery. And good as is the fun of these drawings, the graphic force, and breadth, and delicacy, and freshness, and buoyancy, and breeziness, and masterly ease, and miraculous open-airiness, and general delightfulness of them, are yet more marked and marvellous. Time would fail to tell a tithe of their merits. An essay might be penned on any one of them—but fate forbid it should be, unless a sort of artistic ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... probably explains the general buoyancy of his bearing. He did not consider the present settlement as final; and doubtless it was his boundless fund of hope that enabled him to triumph over the discomforts of the present, which left his companions morose and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... supposed friendship between myself and the Pontifexes continued to exist, though it was now little more than rudimentary. My godson pleased me more than either of the other children, but he had not much of the buoyancy of childhood, and was more like a puny, sallow little old man than I liked. The young people, however, were very ready to ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... combined with a low freeboard lacerated their imaginations. They could not speak of it without exhibiting strong emotion. "Suppose," said they, "a sea were to break into the fore well and fill it, the vessel would obviously become overburdened. Her buoyancy would be nil, and she would succumb to ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... of the meal the balsa came to be tried, it was found to possess buoyancy enough to carry two men safely and comfortably; the return march along the bank to the spot where the remainder of the fleet was to be built was therefore immediately commenced, the builder and his load of impedimenta ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... little that night, yet on the morrow he went to his work with a buoyancy of spirit such as he had not known since that evening when he ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... watchers attended them during the day, while they took their chance by night. When a large fish took the bait, his first rush unhitched the ambatch-float from the point of the bamboo, which, revolving upon the water, paid out line as required. When entirely run out, the great size and buoyancy of the float served to check and to exhaust the fish. There are several varieties of fish that ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the boy was light as he strode at a rapid pace across the clearing. He felt no inconvenience from the bruises received the day before, during the passage of the rapids, and his natural buoyancy caused him to look upon the tramp through the woods as a school boy views his long expected vacation. There was no fear of any peril in the stretch of unbroken forest that opened before him. It was fortunate indeed for ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... which too much work and too much responsibility were bringing Helen Darley, when the new master came and lifted so much of the burden that was crushing her as must be removed before she could have a chance to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. So ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... something had happened, something which had caused him to change his mind, or which had made it physically impossible for him to return. Now, after the first warmth and delight of the meeting had passed, a certain pre-occupation restrained the buoyancy so ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... but heretofore he had always been on the obstructing side. He worried a great deal. At length, by superhuman efforts, he broke through the thicket of technicalities and brought the matter to an issue. The day was set. He returned home so relieved in spirit that Nan could not but remark on his buoyancy. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... gave them a mental and physical tonic, and bracing their weak bodies they started in the direction allotted to each. Robert forgot, for a little while, the terrible hunger that seemed to be preying upon his very fiber, and, as he started away, showed an elasticity and buoyancy of which he could not have dreamed himself ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... company, became that long pause which arises from an unutterable embarrassment. Brigit felt by instinct some change in Robert's mood, but as she could not account for it then, her sympathy failed. The keen salt air filled her with its own free buoyancy; her delicate skin flushed in the wind; she forgot the nervous strain of the morning, the awfulness of the grey chapel, the new state of things, griefs that were past, responsibilities that were to come. She turned to Orange as a child would turn to its inseparable comrade, and clapped her hands ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... gradually dried our water-soaked clothes, and brought a pleasant glow of returning circulation to our chilled limbs, we forgot the rain and dreary desolation of the mountain-top and recovered our usual buoyancy of spirit. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Nothing could be farther from the truth. In his behaviour during his accusation there was little trace of that high spirit and fortitude shown by far inferior men under like disasters. But the moment the tremendous strain of his misfortunes was taken off, the vigour of his mind recovered itself. The buoyancy of his hopefulness, the elasticity of his energy, are as remarkable as his profound depression. When the end was approaching, his thoughts turned at once to other work to be done, ready in plan, ready to be taken up and finished. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... She turned half away but she said nothing. Tavernake, with a sudden impulse which had in it nothing of passion—very little, indeed, of affection—lifted her fingers to his lips and passed out of the room. He descended the stairs, filled with a wonderful sense of elation, a buoyancy of spirit which he could not understand. As he walked blithely to his hotel, however, he began to realize how much he had dreaded this interview. He was a free man, after all. The spell was broken. He could think of her ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... morning. In fact, the word 'fresh' hardly describes the feeling of buoyancy they gave proof of. For a time it was as difficult to mount one as it would be for a fly to alight on a top at full spin. We took them to the paddock, where the grass and moss were soft. Donald, Dugald, and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... with a certain reserve, a curious veiled timidity which we had not known in him. Big and good-humoured as he was, with kindly eyes beneath the shaggy eyebrows, he seemed strangely subdued now; the boyish buoyancy had gone out of him. He spoke rather lower than was his natural key, and welcomed us warmly, though less effusively than of old. An irreproachable housemaid, in a spotless cap, ushered us into the transfigured drawing-room. Mrs. Le Geyt, in a pretty ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... an excellent companion for her, for his buoyancy turned the whole thing into fun. She could not take it too seriously in his company. They called at the Hotspur office and asked to see Mr. Wingfield. He was engaged, but Mr. Waters, the secretary, a very fat, pompous ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... sent him with a bound to his feet. Had he been struck upon the head or stabbed to the heart? No; he was sound and alive. The pale stranger still sat there staring at nothing and immovable; but Kimberlin was no longer afraid of him. On the contrary, an extraordinary buoyancy of spirit and elasticity of body made him feel reckless and daring. His former timidity and scruples vanished, and he felt equal to any adventure. Without hesitation he gathered up the money and bestowed ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... have been; and we fancy, changed as we are, all we love can no longer regard us as formerly. Such are among the trials of woman, unknown, frequently unsuspected, by her nearest and dearest relations; and bitter indeed is it when such trials befall us in early youth, when liveliness and buoyancy are expected, and any departure therefrom is imagined to proceed from causes very opposite to the truth. Such at present were the trials of the orphan; but they were softened by the kindness and sympathy of her aunt, who possessed the happy art of ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance and pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free from, the sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to speak professionally. But he always made an impression of goodness and sincerity. On this last Sunday evening he preached again the first sermon he had ever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... equivalent to what we call capacity or genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);[432] here it is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.[433] Like sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is conceived of as having physical form and may be transmitted from its possessor ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... playfellows, these fancies would have left him as he grew into life. But the affections of his parents were settled on his more promising brother; and his manners daily increasing in their repulsive traits, drove his companions to the society of others, more agreeable to their own buoyancy and joy. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... seem perfectly genuine. When Daudet said, "My heart is old," no one believed it, and he did not believe it himself, for he entitled the piece 'Fanfaronnade'; and in fact it was nothing more than a fanfaronnade. The book was full of the freshness, buoyancy, and frolicsome petulance of youth. Here and there a few reminiscences might be traced to the earliest poets of the sixteenth century, more particularly to Clement Marot. A tinge of the expiring romanticism lingered in 'Les Amoureuses' with a much more substantial ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... now gave his attention to his injured craft. A close examination revealed the fact that one of the buoyancy tanks had been punctured, but the engine ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mass of modern landscape all around, and even compared with other followers of the Barbizon school, seems somewhat somber, as compared with the vital buoyancy of Redfield and others of Redfield's type. His range of idealistic landscape subjects is intimate, but not characterized by the stirring suggestion of outdoors which Inness, Wyant, and others of his school possess. Keith's marvelous dexterity of brushwork really constitutes his chief claim ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... seen only for a moment, yet whose impression outlasts iron. Everything in nature had converged to make her momentous. His long stay among the ugly, dusky women of the desert, his exultant joy in the mountain sunset, and his abounding health (which filled his heart with the buoyancy of a boy)—all these causes combined to revive emotions which his absorption in scientific investigation had set in the background—emotions which concern the common man, but which the deeply ambitious chemist, eager to discover the chemical molecular ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... nothing. She saw that Lesbia was not happy, not as she had been in the time before the coming of John Hammond. She had never been particularly gay or light-hearted, never gifted with the wild spirits and buoyancy which make girlhood so lovely a season to some natures, a time of dance and song and joyousness, a morning of life steeped in the beauty and gladness of the universe. She had never been gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... appearance of chalk or marble cliffs and mountains upon the deep. They have been seen with an elevation of two hundred feet—a circumference of two miles: and it has been shown by experiments on the buoyancy of ice floating in sea water, that the proportion above the surface is only about one-seventh of the thickness of the whole mass. During the first expedition of Ross, he found an ice berg in Baffin's ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... such plate-glass as Nick the militant would have loved to shatter. Certainly there was nothing like this street in the Quarter. The Quarter could equal it neither in shops, nor in cafes, nor in vehicles, nor in crowds. It was an exultant thoroughfare, and Audrey caught its buoyancy, which could be distinctly seen in the feather on her hat. At the end of it she passed into the cool shade of a music-shop with the name "Durand" on its facade. She had found the address, and another one, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... attention to the splendid qualities of the life-boat: such as its power to right itself if upset; the capability of immediate self-discharge when filled with water; its strength; resistance to overturning; speed against a heavy sea; buoyancy; and facility in launching and taking ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... orders and the liquid iron fell in streams from wide-open ports, forming a vast, red pool in the bottom of the dock. In a short time the great vessel was in equilibrium with the water she displaced, and as soon as she had attained a slight buoyancy the ports snapped shut and Nerado threw on ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... they make up for it by rising early too; and if they are sleepy at night, they feel delightfully fresh in the morning. A brisk walk over the common sends the human barometer spinning upwards; they feel ready for any fun that comes in their way. And, alas! did not this same buoyancy of spirit not many years ago involve certain respectable oarsmen in a difference with the executive? Tacenda, indeed! Yet if a rabbit springs up out of the gorse, and the dogs are off in full cry, can nature in such a mood ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... me that ascending the shaft by virtue of our repulsive rays alone would give our enemies their best chance to overtake us, since our propellers would be idle and in rising we would be outclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft are seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the added bulk of them tends to reduce a ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was a spirit thoroughly invigorated by the "joy of right understanding" it is that of the author of these pieces. Even the reader catches something of his intellectual buoyancy, and is thus carried almost lightly through discussions which would be hard and dry in the hands of a less animated writer.... No less confident and serene than his acceptance of the utmost logical results of recent scientific discovery is Mr. Fiske's ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... a silent, brooding man who rarely smiled and whose heart lay up in the little graveyard on the ridge. The gay, larksome light fled from his eyes, his face grew stern and sometimes forbidding. She had taken with her the one great thing she had brought into his life: ineffable buoyancy. He no longer played, for there was no one with whom he would play; he no longer sang, for the music had gone out of his soul; he no longer whistled the merry tunes, for his lips were stiff and unyielding. Only when he looked upon his little daughter ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... the United States of America prominently at the head of civilized nations, unless their people throw away their advantages by their own mistakes—the only real danger they have to apprehend: and the mind clings to this hope with a buoyancy and fondness that are becoming profoundly national. We have a thousand weaknesses, and make many blunders, beyond a doubt, as a people; but where shall we turn to find a parallel to our progress, our energy, and increasing power? That which it has required ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... lines to which they attach bladders or skin bags filled with air. A great many boats surround a whale and stick him with as many harpoons as possible. If successful, they will so encumber him that his strength is not equal to the buoyancy of the bladders, and in this condition he is finished with a lance. A great feast is sure to follow his capture, and every interested native indulges in ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... condition. With the buoyancy of youth, and the inexperience, Dolly expected that Mrs. Copley would soon get well. Her trouble was about her father; and the worst thing about her mother's state of nervous weakness was, that she could ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... some moments he stood, clinging upon the poop, awaiting the end. But the end came slowly. The Solon was a stoutly timbered ship. Much of her lading had been cast overboard, but more remained and gave buoyancy to the wreckage. And as the Athenian awaited, almost impatiently, the final disaster, something called his eye away from the heaving sky-line. Human life was still about him. Wedged in a refuge, betwixt two capstans, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Diruf and lanky Zittel did everything they could to keep her interested, and if, despite their efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a short time her wonted buoyancy had returned. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... had reached their rooms. Barker, apparently dismissing the subject from his mind with characteristic buoyancy, turned into the bedroom and walked smilingly towards a small crib which stood in the corner. "Why, he's gone!" ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... through three times without a smile. The feeling that he had prompted the missive—that it was partly his—stood between him and a tumult of gladness. And yet when he closed his eyes he could see Mary, all buoyancy and laughter, spurning his claim to each and every stroke of the pen. It was all ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... happened. A month later he had a similar seizure, with the same result, but this time his sleep lasted nearly thirty hours. On the doctor's advice I then took him to the seaside for several weeks' stay, and there he soon regained his usual buoyancy of spirits. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... after the conversation just had with his companion, Edward Sommers; the buoyancy of his hopes was shaken, and between the fitful, restless slumbers, dark dreaming and frowning visitants came to him in all the forbidding presence ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... was further from the fact. The Gillespies rose to the occasion with the same dauntless buoyancy that they had shown in ever attempting the undertaking, and then blithely defying public opinion with a servant and a cow. The sense of their unfitness which had made the young men uneasy now gave way to secret wonder as ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the wild waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... was not naturally inclined to hypochondria. In his earlier letters, especially to his intimate friends, there is often more than cheerfulness, sometimes a decided buoyancy if not exuberance of spirits. A typical instance we find in a letter to Moser (1824): "Ich hoffe Dich wohl naechstes Fruehjahr wiederzusehen und zu umarmen und zu necken und vergnuegt zu sein."[190] Only here and there, but very rarely, ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... nation. This characteristic disposition, and the physical activity necessarily connected with it, have been by some ascribed to the influence of our climate, to our moist and heavy atmosphere, and clouded skies, to counteract the influence of which, and to preserve a counterbalancing buoyancy of mind and body, an active habit of life is requisite. But this hypothesis is untenable; for Flanders, with a similar climate, and flourishing likewise by means of its native industry, affords ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... ship brought the chill water up about her feet. She shivered and winced. Stooping he caught her under the knees, and lifted her to his arms. Feeling the easy buoyancy of his strength beneath her, she lapsed against his shoulder, wholly trustful, wholly content. Through the passage he splashed, around the turn, and up the broad companionway. Not until he had found a chair in the near corner of the lower ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... every giant wave as it surged down upon the wreck and buried her in a blinding smother of seething, milk-white foam. But, beaten down, inert, and waterlogged as was the brig, her cargo was evidently of such a character as to impart a considerable measure of buoyancy to her; for though every sea that broke over her completely buried her for the moment, she invariably reappeared on the hinder slope of the baffled comber, apparently little or none the worse for her momentary submergence. Her triumphant survival, indeed, of these continuous and overwhelming ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... However, our natural buoyancy rose again with the fire, and we made a very light meal off the food that we had with us. It was not more than a few mouthfuls apiece, but nothing could be got here. Then we solemnly stood round the fire and dried ourselves, the steam rising like pillars of cloud, and hiding our figures from ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... queen of all rigs; she has a bounding buoyancy denied to the square-rigged craft, to which she stands in the same relationship as a young girl to a dowager; and the Raratonga was not only a schooner, but the queen, acknowledged of all the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... pretty dancing wavelets just where they ran, lipped with jewelled spray, on the shore, and then only had I a chance to scrutinise their material. I patted that one we were upon inside and out. I noted with a seaman's admiration its lightness, elasticity, and supreme sleekness, its marvellous buoyancy and fairy-like "lines," and after some minutes' consideration it suddenly flashed across me that it was all of gourd rind. And as if to supply confirmation, the flat land we were approaching on the opposite side of the bay was covered by the characteristic verdure of these plants with ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... was a little too much for you that time!" laughed Archie, as the children, panting from their run, waited for the restoration of their plaything. He measured the buoyancy of the balloon against the ballast, and let go of it with a little toss that seemed to free it, then he sprang up and caught it amid ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... fact—his chief feeling, as he sat there by the car window looking out at the familiar landscape, was a great relief, a consciousness of escape from what might have been a miserable, crushing mistake for him and for her. And with this a growing sense of freedom, of buoyancy. It seemed wicked to feel like that. Then it came to him, the thought that Madeline, doubtless, was experiencing the same feeling. And he did not mind a bit; he ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... These we secured to four of the stoutest canes we could find, passing them through the bands crosswise, and after a good deal of difficulty, and at the risk of undoing our work, we managed to thrust it off the bank into the river, where, to my great delight, upon trying it, the buoyancy far exceeded my expectations. In fact, though we could not have stood upon it, lying down it supported us well, and without any hesitation, after cutting a couple of light poles for steering or directing, we thrust off from the side, and began gliding ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... savage, was more susceptible than another to these strange refinements; and he had to exert all his strength to refrain from inaugurating with a joyful hurrah an unseasonable out-pouring of words and gestures, from giving way to the impulse of physical buoyancy which stirred his whole being; like the great mountain dogs which are thrown into convulsions of epileptic frenzy by inhaling a single drop of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... raft, picks out a log and tries its buoyancy with care. A long pine stem, with the bark off, and floating deep in ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... There was no use hurrying to the ranch with such a charming companion aboard. The fresh June breeze had loosened a strand or two of her brown hair. The bright, strong sunshine merely emphasized the youthful perfection of her complexion. She had walked with a certain buoyancy of carriage which Lowell ascribed to athletics. Her eyes were brown, and rather serious of expression, but her smile was quick and natural—the sort of a smile that brings one in return, so Lowell concluded in his fragmentary process of cataloguing. Her youth was the splendid thing about her ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... with himself. For several months now, he had been leading, under Gertrude's inspiration, a strictly decent and sober life. So long as he was at comparative peace with Gertrude and with himself, such a life was more than easy; it was delightful. It produced a moral buoyancy infinitely more delicate and more constant than the gross exhilaration of his old habits. There was a kind of fascination in adding hour to hour, and day to day, in this record of his new-born austerity. Having abjured excesses, he practised temperance after the fashion of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... his co-conspirator passed meagerly; but Pellams' heart lost little of its wonted buoyancy. This was about the last class of any kind he attended in the week between nomination and election. From the Row to the Hall and from the Hall to Palo Alto he moved with an energy rare to his rotund body. It was a new sensation, politics with a josh behind. He ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... this work I have spoken of the misfortunes that befel Poland and culminated in the first partition. But the buoyancy of the Polish character helped the nation to recover sooner from this severe blow than could have been expected. Before long patriots began to hope that the national disaster might be turned into ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... she had to remove her nurse's uniform. And at the same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... greater. The upper-classmen were quiet and businesslike, but most of the freshmen were frankly terrified. A few of them packed their trunks and slunk away, and a few more openly scorned the examinations and their frightened classmates; but they were the exceptions. All the buoyancy seemed gone out of the college; nothing was left but an intense strain. The dormitories were strangely quiet at night. There was no playing of golf in the hallways, no rolling of bats down the stairs, no shouting, no laughter; a man who made any noise was in danger of a ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... young lady's health is another interest affected much by her entrance into society. The little girl is a picture of bloom and buoyancy. And why? Because fashion permits her to sport in the freedom of nature. The laws of God are allowed, in her case, to be so regarded as to secure her health. But for our young lady, it were rude and disreputable in her to indulge ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... lived. His sunny temper, his quick sympathy, his inexhaustible fun, were natural gifts. But something more than nature must have gone to make his constant unselfishness, his manly endurance of adverse fate, his noble cheerfulness under discouraging circumstances, his buoyancy in breasting difficulties, his unremitting solicitude for the welfare and enjoyment of those who stood nearest to his heart. The secret of his life was that he had taken pains with his own character. While he was still quite young we find him bewailing the "worldly element which enters so largely ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the room. Her hair was white as snow, and she could not have seen less than seventy-seven years; but beauty was not gone from her features—smiles were still on her lips, brightness in her clear hazel eyes, buoyancy in her tread, and alertness and dignity in her tall, slender, unbent figure. There was nothing so remarkable about her as the elasticity as well as sweetness of her whole look and bearing, as if, while she had something to love, nothing could be ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are there," he said in a low voice. And, in his tone there was a buoyancy, a hint of something new to her—something almost decisive, something of protection which began vaguely to thrill her, as though that guard which she had so long mounted over herself might be relieved—the strain ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... be held to bridge the gap between those two extremes in a felicitous way. A more purely artistic mood, instinct with the serene joy and clear warmth of Italian skies, combining a good deal of youthful buoyancy with a sort of quiet and unpretending philosophy, is here represented. And it is submitted that the little classical fancies which Mrs. Shelley never ventured to publish are quite as worthy of consideration as her more ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... and there were times when he longed for the road to Spain—Spain which by now held for him the dearest treasure in all the world. But not even the keen-eyed Brother Jacques read this beneath the poet's buoyancy and lightness of spirit. Besides, Brother Jacques had set himself to watch the Comte d'Herouville and the Vicomte d'Halluys, and this was far more important to him than the ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... says, "Very well, I thank you," to your inquiries,—merely because he has entirely forgotten what good health is. He is well, not because of any particular pleasure in physical existence, but well simply because he is not a subject for prescriptions. Yet there is no store of vitality, no buoyancy, no superabundant vigor, to resist the strain and pressure to which life puts him. A checked perspiration, a draught of air ill-timed, a crisis of perplexing business or care, and he is down with a bilious attack or an influenza, and subject to doctors' orders for an indefinite period. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... high-heeled black leather shoes, coming well over the instep, and fastened as well as ornamented with bright steel buckles. They did not walk so lightly and freely now as they did before they were shod, but their steps were still springy with the buoyancy of early youth; for neither of them was twenty, indeed I believe Sylvia was not more than seventeen ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... And if we may have peaceful days are blessed; Few hours of buoyancy will come to break The sure withdrawal from ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... various Woods.—The floating power of a raft depends on the buoyancy of the wood of which it is made. I give, in a Table (p. 90), a list of the specific gravities of a few well-known woods; and have annexed to them a column of what may be called their ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the most trying session of his life, he went down from the battle-ground at Westminster, and delivered his rectorial address[393]—not particularly pregnant, original, or pithy, but marked by incomparable buoyancy; enforcing a conception of the proper functions of a university that can never be enforced too strongly or too often; and impressing in melodious period and glowing image those ever needed commonplaces about thrift of time and thirst for fame and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... complicated as they seemed. For Kitty was nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with its commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of suffering, telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light and so wanting in buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and forgotten, amid the chaos of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... rolls in, in storms, upon shelving or rocky shores. A great many different modes have been adopted for the construction of surf-boats, each liable to its own peculiar objections. The principle on which Mr. Francis relies in his life and surf boats, is to give them an extreme lightness and buoyancy, so as to keep them always upon the top of the sea. Formerly it was expected that a boat in such a service, must necessarily take in great quantities of water, and the object of all the contrivances for securing its safety, was to expel the water after it was admitted. In the plan now adopted ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... about which we are writing, being small, ran considerable risk of being capsized by the heavy seas. In fact, almost the only difference between lifeboats and ordinary boats, at this time, was the incapacity of the former to sink when filled with water, owing to the buoyancy of the air-chambers fitted round their sides. If filled by a sea, much valuable time had to be lost in baling out the water before the oars could be effectively resumed, and if overturned it was a matter of the greatest ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... ingeniously made of any I have seen. The principal materials are bark, and boughs of trees, so nicely put together as to keep the family dry and warm. The women as well as the men appeared to be mostly employed. In this camp there are a large number of pretty children, who in all the activity and buoyancy of health, were diverting themselves according to their fancy. The vast number of deer they have killed, since coming here, which they cut up and hang round their huts inside and out to dry, together with the rations of beef, which they draw daily, give the appearance of plenty to supply the few ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... women's clubs is sometimes phenomenal and offers to live society editors a vast undeveloped field for constructive news. Too frequently the society page is filled with dull six-point routine, forbidding in style and still more forbidding in content, when it might be made alive with buoyancy and interest by added attention to new studies and interests in the women's clubs. What the women are doing in their study of the garbage question, in their campaigns against flies, in their efforts to provide comforts for unprivileged slum ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... trying to lift her atop and not hold her under water. A submarine could be sent under with a positive buoyancy so small—that is, with so little more than enough in her tanks to sink her—that an ordinary man standing on the sea bottom could catch her as she came floating down and bounce her up and off merely by the strength of his arms. Consider a submarine under water ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... remained so nearly four hours. For a long time I was almost without hope, but we persevered against every discouragement, with complete final success. I am a good deal more afraid now of the effect of the shock on Mrs. Fenwick and her husband than for anything that may happen to Miss N., whose buoyancy of constitution is most remarkable. You will guess that I had rather a rough time (the news came rather suddenly to me), and all the more (but I know you will be glad to hear this) that Miss N. and your humble servant had only just entered on an engagement to be married at some date hereafter not ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... God of Homer—Hermes or Thetis—launched out from Olympus' top into the sea—"[Greek: ex aitheros empese ponto]," and words fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant simulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy and freedom which she showed me. You may sometimes see boys at their maddest tip of expectation stand waiting as she now stood, quivering on the extreme edge of adventure; yet even in their case there ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett |
