"Liveliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flags; the tops of the buses are almost empty. That brisk April air seems somehow in key with the mood of the Avenue—hard, plangent, glittering, intensely material. It is a proud, exultant, exhilarating street; it fills the mind with strange liveliness. A magnificent pomp of humanity—what a flux of lacquered motors, what a twinkling of spats along the pavements! On what other of the world's great highways would one find churches named for the material of which they are built?—the Brick Church, the Marble Church! ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the transept, the Chapel of Filippo Strozzi, who is buried behind the altar, Filippino Lippi, the son of Fra Lippo, the pupil of Botticelli, has painted certain frescoes,—a little bewildering in their crowded beauty, it is true, but how good after all in their liveliness, their light and shadow, the pleasant, eager faces of the women—where St. John raises Drusiana from the grave, or St. Philip drives out the Dragon of Hierapolis; while above St. John is martyred, and St. Philip too. But it is in the choir behind the high altar, where for so long the scaffolding ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... than the situation of Lyons. Situated on the confluence of two of the most lovely rivers in the world, the Rhone and the Saone, and distributed, as it were, on hills and dales, with lawn, corn-fields, woods and vineyards interposed, and gardens, trees, &c. intermixed with the houses, it has a liveliness, an animation, an air of cleanness, and rurality, which seldom belong to a populous city. The distant Alps, moreover, rising in the back ground, add magnificence to beauty. Beyond all possibility of doubt, Lyons is unrivalled in the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... not backward in returning the compliment. He has one gun in particular which never tires in its efforts to rouse us from ennui. It must be a long way off, for we can only just hear the report. Moreover, its contribution to our liveliness, when it does arrive, falls at an extremely steep angle—so steep, indeed, that it only just clears the embankment under which we live, and falls upon the very doorsteps of the dug-outs with ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... advanced; and while she went through the pass called the Narrows, Eve expressed her delight. Mademoiselle Viefville was in ecstasies, not so much with the beauties of the place as with the change from the monotony of the ocean to the movement and liveliness of the shore. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... silence, if not the actual example, of the inferior officers. These shameful breaches of discipline, on the maintenance of which he had hitherto justly prided himself, severely pained the king; and the vehemence with which he reproached the German officers for their negligence, bespoke the liveliness of his emotion. "It is you yourselves, Germans," said he, "that rob your native country, and ruin your own confederates in the faith. As God is my judge, I abhor you, I loathe you; my heart sinks within me whenever ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wasting than a vegetable; because it excites by its stimulating qualities a fever after every meal, by which the springs of life are urged into constant and weakening exertions: on the contrary, a vegetable diet tends to preserve a delicacy of feeling, a liveliness of imagination, and an acuteness of judgment, seldom enjoyed by those who live principally on meat." Thus we might go on multiplying authorities on this subject, but we shall content ourselves with referring briefly to one or two authors ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... speaking, this day, like all others, is of great quietude and repose in these noble halls, where bewhiskered functionaries amble slowly through the routine in which blue paper documents with bright orange coloured stamps form the only note of liveliness in the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... say how the family grouped themselves in the new house. Since the arrival of Henrik and Jacobi, the liveliness of the family had visibly increased, Henrik zealously followed up his purpose of making his sisters take more active exercise, and Jacobi assisted him with his whole heart. Long walks were arranged, but, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... thus but little interest, we interrupt it constantly with pleasant conversation, and even with discussions on matters foreign to the game itself, in all which Pepita displays such clearness of understanding, such liveliness of imagination, and a grace of expression so ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... episodes of telegraphic desperation, and saw, with a regret equal to his own, that the gentleman on the sidewalk saw nothing, and turned the corner as calmly as a corner could be turned; but the old gentleman, not willing to lose him in that manner, jumped out of the 'bus and ran after, with a liveliness better becoming his eagerness than his age. In a moment more, the young lady, admonished by the driver's rap on the roof, would have paid her fare, but her portmonnaie was missing. I know not whether the bank-president was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... rare facility not only of execution but of invention, with a spontaneity, a freshness, a liveliness in telling a story that wake the child in us, and the lover of the fairy tale. Later in life, his more precious gifts deserted him, but who wants to resist the fascination of his early works, painted, as they seem, by a Fra Angelico who had forgotten heaven and become enamoured ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... hand at the waist, elbow out and waist pressed in. He is well built, his face much better looking than his photographs show, nose rather long and eyes very keen and observing. Possessed of a great youthfulness of manner and a boyish liveliness and interest in life, his traits are somewhat American rather than German. He is a good sportsman and excels at many sports, is proud of his trophies but not afraid to meet other men ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... great deal of dedication in your Ode; it would amaze you to see how D—— keeps up this see-saw, which you'll remark has prodigious wit in it. He says there is a great deal of coat in your waistcoat, and a great deal of waistcoat in your coat; that there is a great deal of liveliness in your stupidity, and a great deal of stupidity in your liveliness; but to write you all he says, would require rather more fire in my grate, than there is at present; and my fingers would undoubtedly be numbed, for there is a great deal of snow in this frost, and a great deal of frost in this snow: ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... performing it with great precision of step, and but little concussion to the rider:—many ladies regarding it,—however discountenanced by the majority, perhaps,—as preferable, from its vigour, liveliness, and dash, ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions: and under this name I comprehend ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... followed, and by all it was agreed that the family was a decided acquisition; a pity perhaps that there was not a Mrs Dawson and a few more young people to fill the roomy old house and add liveliness to the various parties and social gatherings among the gentry. A younger man than the colonel would undoubtedly have been more to the general taste, especially as it was soon found that the family at Park House neither accepted nor gave dinner invitations, ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... the rest of the group both in population and in vehemence of character, while Zante came first of all in the industry and liveliness of its people.[376] These two islands were the main scene and source of difficulty. In Cephalonia nine years before the date with which we are now dealing, an agrarian rising had occurred more like a bad whiteboy outrage than a national rebellion, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... amusing epistles that the language contains. Indeed, there are very few letter-writers in any language who can be compared with Mrs. Carlyle. Inferior to her husband in humourous description, as in depth of thought, she surpassed him in liveliness of wit, in pungency of satire, and in terseness of expression. Her narrative is inimitable, and sometimes, as in the account of her solitary visit to her old home at Haddington twenty-three years after her marriage, her dramatic power is overwhelming. Carlyle himself had been familiar ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... and nationally the Flemings were strugglers against adverse circumstances from the beginning. A realistic race with practical ideas, a people rather warm of impulse and free in habits, they combined some German sentiment with French liveliness and gayety. The solidarity of the nation was not accomplished until after 1385, when the Dukes of Burgundy began to extend their power over the Low Countries. Then the Flemish people became strong enough to defy both Germany and France, and wealthy enough, through ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... who sat at Isabelle's right asked her if she could play or sing, and when she said no, he asked her if she could skee. Those were the only personal remarks of the meal. Margaret, who was very much at home, entered into the talk with unwonted liveliness. It was a workshop of busy men and women who had finished the day's labor with enough vitality left to react. The food, Isabelle noticed, was plentiful and more than good. At the end of the meal the young men lighted cigarettes, and one of the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... pavement; the sky is richly blue against the parapets overhead; there are houses on one side, but on the other open space and sea, and dim clouds in the extreme distance. The atmosphere is full of light, and gives a sense of liveliness! every atom of it is in motion. How delicate are the fore legs of these thoroughbred horses passing! Small and slender, the hoof, as the limb rises, seems to hang by a thread, yet there is strength and speed in those sinews. Strength is often ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which says, of sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or idealized rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human liveliness do more than approach the living and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has led him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. Having, I say, felt ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with ever-patient mamma as to what was to be done with it. I say Marianne and Jennie, for, though the case undoubtedly is Marianne's, yet, like everything else in our domestic proceedings, it seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jennie's hands, through the intensity and liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jennie is so bright and wide-awake, and with so many active plans and fancies touching anything in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest sister, and second party in this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... plants perfumed the air. Then he came to a clump of bushes, into which darted one of the goats that had by this time become almost wild. The goat's rush disturbed a huge sow with a litter of quite new pigs, the gruntings and squeakings of which gave liveliness to an ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... arrived one day at the Hotel de la Plage, accompanied by her granddaughter, whom she had taken away from the convent before the beginning of the holidays. Since she had fully arranged the marriage with M. de Talbrun, it seemed important that Giselle should acquire some liveliness, and recruit her health, before the fatal wedding-day arrived. M. de Talbrun liked ladies to be always well and always lively, and it was her duty to see that Giselle accommodated herself to his taste; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... vigilance, are thoroughly prosaic. They seem to suggest a state of society in which feud and violence were systematised into routine. There is no relief to the savage austerity of their forbidding aspect; no signs of wealth or household comfort; no trace of art, no liveliness and gracefulness of architecture. Perched upon their coigns of vantage, these villages seem always menacing, as if Saracen pirates, or Genoese marauders, or bandits bent on vengeance, were still for ever on the watch. Forests of immensely old chestnut-trees surround Bocognano ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the person of Mr. Spruce, at the expense of a dramatic scene (I, ii, 31-125); and he ended the sub-plot with the fourth act instead of bringing its persons into the final scene, with some loss of liveliness and a concomitant gain in unity of effect. He modernized his dialogue entirely, bringing up to date the usage and allusions of his original, and restraining the richness of its metaphor by removing the figures altogether or by substituting ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of the disturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer. The direct news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopeful prospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfaction in the fire. When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher, there was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it; some were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, and others were against it, "because it does not taste good" ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were witty, and had a fund of interesting stories besides, they were sure of a welcome and a hearing in the courtroom, or in the social gatherings that roused the various little towns during "court-week" into a liveliness quite put of the common. The tavern would be crowded to its utmost—the judge having the best room, and the lawyers being put in what was left, late comers being lucky to find even a sleeping-place on the floor. When not occupied in court, or preparing cases ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... waving plumage intermixed with glistening helmets and tall lances, to the extremities of 20 which were, in many cases, attached small pennons of about a span's breadth, which, fluttering in the air as the breeze caught them, joined with the restless motion of the feathers to add liveliness ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Bacon was carried. The Earl was absent; but the servants who were in charge of the place showed great respect and attention to the illustrious guest. Here, after an illness of about a week, he expired early on the morning of Easter-day, 1626. His mind appears to have retained its strength and liveliness to the end. He did not forget the fowl which had caused his death. In the last letter that he ever wrote, with fingers which, as he said, could not steadily hold a pen, he did not omit to mention that the experiment of the snow had succeeded ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Carrick stopped laughing, and walked away toward his desk. Mr. Newman, standing by the big arm-chair from which he had just risen, looked after him with a sudden liveliness growing in his face. The experience through which he had just come, abiding with him as so secure a memory, precluded the doubts he might otherwise have felt; Carrick's words and his excitement, so ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... through her jeweled lorgnette and running her eyes over the crowd, Antonia now saw him. Recognition lighted her face to unexpected liveliness. She fluttered her ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... might at first convey the idea of intolerance; the fact remains, however, that he was the most tolerant of men; he was almost deferential to the opinions of others, even the shallow and the inexperienced; and nothing delighted him more than an animated discussion. His liveliness of spirits, his mental and physical vitality, the constant sparkle of his talk, the sharp edge of his humour, naturally drew the younger men to his side. The result was the organization of the Wautauga Club, a gathering which held monthly meetings for the discussion of ways and ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... in a brown study. Like all the rest, he has been charmed with the liveliness and grace of Adele; over and over he has said to his boy, "How fares it, Phil? Why, at your age, my boy, I should have had her in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... talking, with somewhat forced liveliness, about a cargo of grain, a certain Furst in Riga, a raise in customs duties somewhere. Suddenly he ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of foreseeing death, ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... from the jagged depths of the mountains, full of light and liveliness. It had scarcely run six miles from its source before it touched our mill-wheel; but in that space and time it had gathered strong and copious volume. The lovely blue of the water (like the inner tint of a glacier) was partly due to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... by William Cowper in the year 1782, when Lady Austin was lodging in the Vicarage at Olney, and spent every evening with Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, cheering Cowper greatly by her liveliness. One evening she told the story of John Gilpin's ride in a way that tickled the poet's fancy, set him laughing when he woke up in the night, and obliged him to turn it next day into ballad rhyme. Mrs. Unwin's son sent it to the Public ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... gone, there set in a reaction from the excited liveliness of his visit. Doe looked sadly through the broken ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right cheek. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's "Triumph of Galatea." It came to me in an ancient shagreen case,—how old it is I do not know,—but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... poet of the Bay Fight and the River Fight, in which he quotes a passage from an old book, "A Heroine, Adventures of Cherubina," which might well have suggested my own lines, if I had ever seen it. I have not the slightest recollection of the book or the passage. I think its liveliness and "local color" will make it please the reader, as it pleases me, more than my ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... parents beyond all my brothers and sisters, because they saw that my mind was far superior to my sickly frame, and feared they should never raise me to manhood; contrary, however, to their expectations, I surmounted all these untoward appearances, and attracted much notice from my liveliness, quickness of repartee, and impudence: qualities which have been of much use ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 8 we find an example of the other kind of style, that of the short sentences containing that affected liveliness which so excited certain readers that they cannot mention Strauss any more without coupling his name with Lessing's. "I am well aware that what I propose to delineate in the following pages is known to multitudes as well as to myself, to ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to walk up, and invited Mr. Smith and his wife, and Mrs. Lovick also, to breakfast with her. I was better pleased with her liveliness than with her looks. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... an exhilaration in the crisp air. He felt an unwonted liveliness and a desire to be active which would have surprised some of his teachers at the school he had just left. The depression of spirits of which he had been conscious the previous night had disappeared along with his premonitions of unpleasantness. He felt optimistic this morning. After giving ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... perceptible, that earthly passions had died way, and that he was enjoying sweet foretastes of that rest into which he was so soon to enter. He would often say to me, 'My meditations are very sweet, though my mind seems as much weakened as my body. I have not had that liveliness of feeling, which I have sometimes enjoyed, owing to my great weakness, but I shall soon be released from shackles, and be where I can praise God continually, without weariness. My thoughts delight to dwell on these words, There ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... been sharpened by their morning exercise, did honor to Madame Sejournant's cooking; they took their wine without water, and began gradually to thaw under the influence of their host's good Burgundy; evincing their increased liveliness by the exchange of heavy country witticisms, or relating noisy and interminable stories of their hunting adventures. Their conversation was very trying to Julien's nerves. Nevertheless, he endeavored to fulfil his duties as master ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the cat is always the same; but what a number of mental conditions it expresses! I had a kitten whose gambols and liveliness entertained me greatly. I understood well, when it came up to me mewing, what the sound meant; sometimes the kitten wanted to come up and sleep in my lap; at other times it was asking me to play with it. When, at my meals, it jumped on my knees, turned round, looked at me, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Professor Whitney's Second Lecture? He objects, like myself, to comparing the growth of language and the growth of a tree, and like myself, he admits of an excuse, viz., when the metaphor is employed for the sake of brevity or liveliness ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the virtues of his ancestors. His face was as sober as ever, but his look was one of contentment; and I could but note the suggestion of merriment—the merriment of a happy memory—in his eye. How happy it is for an offspring to be able to recall the character of his forefathers with such liveliness of mind! ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... hand single and double—which were not derived either from the Hellenes or the Phoenicians, but were common to the Romans, Sabellians, and Etruscans. They were the first steps towards the formation of a national Italian writing, and at the same time evidences of the liveliness of that earlier inland intercourse among the Italians which preceded their transmarine commerce.(3) Which of the Italian stocks invented, and which of them borrowed, these signs, can of course no longer be ascertained. Other traces of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... tea-room, where all degrees and ages dance jovially together till morning. Whilst one party wheel briskly away in the valz, another amuse themselves in a corner with cold meat and rhenish. That despatched, out they whisk amongst the dancers, with an impetuosity and liveliness I little expected to have found in Bavaria. After turning round and round, with a rapidity that is quite inconceivable to an English dancer, the music changes to a slower movement, and then follows a succession of zig-zag minuets, performed by old and young, straight ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... me to her house. She was the wife of a Professor Maretti, and her name was Santa. The professor himself was a little half-famished looking man, full of learning, by the show of which he was in the habit of boring everybody who came near him. Santa made up for this by her liveliness and her warm interest in my affairs. Amid music and laughter I spent many happy hours in her house, made friends, and was encouraged to make my debut as an improvisatore. I had written to Eccellenza ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... he diligently improved their minds by a species of Socratic inquiry. But Hugh never thought of quarrelling with the books provided; he seized upon any trace of humanity or amusement that they afforded, any symptoms of character and liveliness, and simply evaded the improving portion, which blew like a dry wind over his spirit. When his father talked over the books with the child, he listened tolerantly to the boy's amusement at how the cake had rolled down the hill, or how the little pig had got into ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the individual, and the latter too low to survey the whole. But the disadvantage of this direction of mind was not confined to knowledge and mental production; it extended to action and feeling. We know that the sensibility of the mind depends, as to degree, on the liveliness, and for extent on the richness of the imagination. Now the predominance of the faculty of analysis must necessarily deprive the imagination of its warmth and energy, and a restricted sphere of objects must diminish its wealth. It is ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... a strange contest we are here considering. Which of us would for a moment doubt our ability to decide in a dispute as to the liveliness or sadness of any given melody?—yet here we see the greatest poets, the favoured children of nature, utterly at variance on a point concerning which we should have expected to find even the most ordinary minds able ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of a certain number of feet ... is not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him to believe," continued the reviewer, "that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain at least one thought...." It was this attack that brought forth Byron's "English Bards and ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... at this time that Flossy took it into her head to call on her—one of her first Lenten duties, as she hastened to assure Selma, with glib liveliness, as soon as she entered. Flossy was in too exalted a frame of mind, too bubbling over with the desire to recite her triumphs, to have in mind either her doubts concerning Selma or the need of being more than mildly apologetic for her lack of devotion. She felt friendly, for she was ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... and destroy in our Minds the Seeds of Fortitude and Virtue, which should support us in Hours of Anguish. The constant Pursuit of Pleasure has in it something insolent and improper for our Being. There is a pretty sober Liveliness in the Ode of Horace to Delius, where he tells him, loud Mirth, or immoderate Sorrow, Inequality of Behaviour either in Prosperity or Adversity, are alike ungraceful in Man that is born to die. Moderation in both Circumstances is peculiar to generous Minds: Men of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... summer of 1781, when his first volume was being printed, Cowper met Lady Austen and her sister in the street at Olney, and persuaded Mrs. Unwin to invite them to tea. Their coming was the beginning of a cordial friendship. Lady Austen, without being less earnest, had a liveliness that satisfied Cowper's sense of fun to an extent that stirred at last some jealousy in Mrs. Unwin. "She had lived much in France," Cowper said, "was very sensible, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Wakefield.—In 1829 a small book was published in London which attracted a great deal of attention, not only by reason of its charming style and the liveliness of its manner, but also on account of the complete originality of the ideas it contained. It purported to be a letter written from Sydney, and described the annoyances to be endured by a man of taste ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... is finely built, and presents an aspect of industry and liveliness unsurpassed by any place in the world. Lying in full sight of the ocean, with its magnificent bay to the southward, and the East and Hudson Rivers washing its shores, the city of New York possesses a climate which renders it the most delightful residence in America. In ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... this a unique parsonage family. Their liveliness, their gaiety, their love of fun, seemed a little inapropos in the setting of ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... measurement, by tracing their policy to petty purposes entirely Plutarchian. But he was a Greekling in a degenerate age of Grecians. As to the French Memoirs, which are often so exceedingly amusing, they purchase their liveliness by one eternal sacrifice of plain truth. Their repartees, felicitous propos, and pointed anecdotes are but one rolling fire of falsehoods. And, generally, it may be laid down as a rule, that all collectors ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... because of the predominance of the thin vowels. The third stanza calls for a pitch lower than the first and a slowness and solemnity of movement quite in contrast to the moderate rate of the first and the liveliness and gaiety of the second. It will be seen in these readings that there is an overlying melody in the stanzas, quite distinct from the rhythm that depends upon the meter, and that in the reading the meter naturally falls subservient to the melody of the phrases. In fact, in a poem of this kind ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... followers. He willingly assented, and bade them to the feast. They ate and drank merrily, and the gayest of the company was the lovely Isole. Her spirits seemed somewhat too wild even to Blackburn, but he did not check her, though surprised at the excessive liveliness and freedom of her sallies. Her eyes flashed like fire, and there was not a man present but was madly in love with her, and ready to dispute for ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... from whom the chief details of the Sitkan Koluch are taken, especially states that, with few exceptions, their manners and customs are those of these same Konaegi; one of the minor points of difference being the greater liveliness of the Sitkans, and one of the more important ones, their treatment of the dead. They burn the bodies (as do the Takulli Athabaskans) and deposit the ashes in wooden boxes placed upon pillars, painted or ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... one of the rapids of the High Street. At one point the Kyle is little more than a quarter of a mile in breadth; and here, in the powerful eddy which ran along the shore, we saw a group of small fishing-boats pursuing a shoal of sillocks in a style that blent all the liveliness of the chase with the specific interest of the angle. The shoal, restless as the tides among which it disported, now rose in the boilings of one eddy, now beat the water into foam amid the stiller dimplings of another. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... conceits. In striving to say things finely, the author frequently failed to say them well. This fault, however, largely disappears in the translation; and whatever may be the literary defects of the novel, it offers rich compensation in the liveliness, humor, and variety ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... viewed as being the happiest of his life. But when, linked with these, came back to his mind the thrilling events of yesterday, suddenly and to the surprise of all present, excepting his young master, the huge creature, with that liveliness of feeling peculiar to his race, burst into a blubbering explosion of tender, pitying, grateful feeling, and cried ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... bank ten per cent., and every luxury thirty per cent. Kitty was a dear, as was Mrs. Fenelby, but they were as different as cousins could well be, for while Mrs. Fenelby was the man's ideal of a gentle domestic person, Kitty was the man's ideal of a forceful, jolly girl, and as full of liveliness as a well behaved young lady could be. She was properly interested in Bobberts and admired him loudly, but in her heart she was not sorry that Mr. Fenelby's brother Will was to be a visitor at the ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... I a bright band, in liveliness Surpassing, who themselves did make the crown, And us their centre: yet more sweet in voice, Than in their visage beaming. Cinctur'd thus, Sometime Latona's daughter we behold, When the impregnate air retains ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... her amiability, nor yet to her liveliness and prettiness; but it had just the opposite effect. While she stood pulling his jacket, he heard the voices on the high-road ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... therefore, and taking advantage of the roll of the ship, we launched our 9-pounders overboard, one after the other, until all six of them had vanished in the ocean depths; and the increased liveliness of the little vessel at once demonstrated her relief at the loss of so much ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... fortune. When, several years afterwards, I again saw him in Zurich, I observed that his appearance had unfortunately changed in a manner quite disconcerting: he looked really extraordinarily common and dirty; his former refreshing liveliness had turned into the usual Jewish restlessness, and it was easy to see that all he said was uttered as if he regretted that his words could not be turned to better account ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of the body the disease possesseth; for if it chance to be the upper part that is afflicted, as the head or stomach, then it will not so then appear by the members, which are unconnected with such grievances; but the lower part of the body exactly sympathising with them, their liveliness, on the contrary, makes it apparent; for nature's force, and the spirits that have their intercourse, first manifest themselves therein; which occasions midwives to feel the genitals of children, to know in what part the gulf is residing, and whether life or death be ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... relics of mortality with which the old man had heaped his fireplace, began by degrees to send forth a thick unctuous vapour, which at length leaped to light, and blazing up the aperture, gave a degree of liveliness to the gloomy scene. The blazonry of the huge escutcheon met and returned the rays with as brilliant a reflection as that lugubrious object was capable of, and the whole apartment looked with a fantastic gaiety, strangely mingled with the gloomy ideas which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Duchess been more associated than of aught other. Her supremacy among these companions was not in the manner of the French Salon leaders,—while wit, knowledge, and tact were hers, she lived not by learning, but by her liveliness and jollity. She was not the scholar in politics, but the politician among scholars ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... trying to fly, will never do anything very magnificent in the way of flying. The man who in his early days writes in a very inflated and bombastic style will gradually sober down into good sense and accurate taste, still retaining something of liveliness and eloquence. But expect little of the man who as a boy was always sensible, and never bombastic. He will grow awfully dry. He is sure to fall into the unpardonable sin of tiresomeness. The rule has exceptions; but the earliest productions of a man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... delighted with the Empress, of whom she repeatedly wrote with admiration and liking. "She is full courage and spirit," the Queen described her visitor, "yet so gentle, with such innocence and enjouement, that the ensemble is most charming. With all her great liveliness, she has the prettiest and most modest manner." There were morning walks during the visitors' stay, and long conversations about the war. A deputation from the Corporation of London came down to Windsor, and presented the Emperor ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... You who know those generous sentiments which distinguish the true warrior! whose hearts have always vibrated with those of your companions in arms! consult them to-day to know what they experience; recollect at the same time, that if magnanimous souls with liveliness resent an affront, they also know how to forget one. Let your government return to itself, and you will still find in Frenchmen ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... incapable of sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized society. Though it is esteemed a beauty in the East, to be fat seemed to her a misfortune for a woman; but in a man it was a crime. These paradoxical views were amusing, thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The Count felt nevertheless that by-and-by his daughter's affections, of which the absurdity would be evident to some women who were not less clear-sighted than merciless, would inevitably become a subject of constant ridicule. He feared lest ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... the prospect brightens, and we are led to expect some liveliness of imagery, some warmth of poetical colouring;—but here is no such thing.—There is no task more difficult to a Poet, than that of Rejection. Ovid, among the ancients, and Dryden, among the moderns, ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... This deep and penetrating subjective melancholy had no possession of Byron. His character was essentially objective, stimulated by outward circumstance, moving to outward harmonies, seeking colour and image and purpose from without. Hence there is inevitably a certain liveliness and animation, even when he is in the depths. We feel that we are watching clouds sweep majestically across the sky, and, even when they are darkest, blue interspaces are not far off. Contrast the moodiest parts of Childe Harold or of Cain with Novalis's Night Hymns. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... active as cats, and at Bampton Fair, where many hundreds are driven in for the last Thursday in October, and the narrow streets are packed with them from end to end, there are scenes of great liveliness and disorder. Dulverton, which is the centre of Exmoor, used also to have a fair, which consisted mainly of Exmoor ponies and sheep; but it has passed out of existence by reason of railways and shops, and the greater facility for commercial exchange of our era, and the charming ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... grapes, onions, and sunshine; the signboards, bottled-porter stores, the statues of saints and little chapels which jostle the stranger's eyes as he goes up the famous stairs from the Water-gate, make a scene of such pleasant confusion and liveliness as I have never witnessed before. And the effect of the groups of multitudinous actors in this busy cheerful drama is heightened, as it were, by the decorations of the stage. The sky is delightfully brilliant; all the houses and ornaments are stately; castle ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... overwhelmed with the rapidity and liveliness of Gary's utterances, which he rattled forth as lightly as if they had been ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Nisida in that vale, and though many bitter reflections, deep regrets, and vague apprehensions crowded upon her soul; yet the liveliness of the scene appeared to diminish the intenseness of the feelings of utter solitude, and its soft influence partially lulled the waves of her emotions. For never had mortal eyes beheld finer fruit upon the trees, nor lovelier flowers upon the soil; all life was rejoicing, from the grasshopper at ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... republished Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange, by JOHN FRANCIS, a work describing the progress of financial speculation in England, with great liveliness of delineation, and illustrated with a variety of personal incidents and scenes of the richest character. The volume is intended to give a popular narrative of the money power of England, in a manner at once interesting and suggestive, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... exalts and purifies; but this leaves only an evil result: it darkens all the world, and all our views of it. Let us try to make every little child happy. The most selfish parent might try to please a little child, if it were only to see the fresh expression of unblunted feeling, and a liveliness of pleasurable emotion which in after-years we shall never know, I do not believe a great English barrister is so happy when he has the Great Seal committed to him as two little and rather ragged urchins whom I saw this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... of his letters ho dates the introduction previous to his trip to Cheltenham, but it seems not to have ripened into intimacy till a later period. Byron, who had, in the autumn of 1802, visited his mother at Bath, joined in a masquerade there and attracted attention by the liveliness of his manners. In the following year Mrs. Byron again settled at Nottingham, and in the course of a second and longer visit to her he frequently passed the night at the Abbey, of which Lord Grey de Ruthyn was then a temporary tenant. This was the occasion ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... well-being of a school. She remained with her brother at Holdgate, till the time of his second marriage, when change was again her allotment. After a short absence from York she finally settled there. Her declining health rendered repose needful, although the liveliness of her spirits enabled her greatly to enjoy frequent intercourse with her friends;—and the school, the scene of her former labours, was an object of continued ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... generation, young man. Gae wa' wi' ye, man; mind ye, I'll no' say a word in yer favour, but raither the ither way—whilk," smiled Mistress Skirving in the deep still way that she sometimes had in the midst of her liveliness, "whilk will maybe do ye mair guid. But I'm speakin' for my guid-man when I say that ye hae oor best guid-wull. We think that ye are a true man, as yer faither was, though sorely he was ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... him forward in a manner it was desirable to avoid. There was a good deal of merry talk between Jean and the hosts, enemies though she regarded them. The Duke of York was evidently much struck with her beauty and liveliness, and he asked Sir Patrick in private whether there were any betrothal or contract in consequence of which he was ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... telling of great physical strength; he had delicate and chiselled features, a brilliant complexion, and light hair, abundant and glossy, which, through his grandmother Isabel, he inherited from the family of the Counts of Hainault. He displayed liveliness and elegance in his tastes; he was fond of amusements, games, hunting, hounds and hawking-birds, fine clothes, magnificent furniture. A holy man, they say, even reproached the queen his mother with having winked at certain inclinations ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... desk, give the same dictations, set the same tasks, hear the same pieces read, repeat the same things, had to reprove the boy, something like a gentle sadness was mingled with the reproof, which softened it: yes, that was delight in existence, health, liveliness, ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... worm. It was buried: but I had, long afterwards, strange misgivings, that my poor feathered favourite was only choked by his food, or in a fit of some kind—his apparent death was so extremely unexpected from his health and liveliness at the time. I assure you that I regretted my loss much, my bird being in full plumage and a very handsome creature. He was quite tame, for in autumn I used to set him on a branch of a tree in the garden, while ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... kind, the eager friend and adviser of every family in the place. Now she is old and to a great extent invalided. But she is vigorous, upright, dignified, imperative, affectionate, with a stately carriage and a sanguine complexion. She is always full to the brim of interest and liveliness. She carries on a dozen small enterprises; she is at daggers drawn with some of her relations, and the keen partisan of others. Everything is "astonishing" and "wonderful" and "extraordinary" that happens to her; and it is an unceasing delight to hear her ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a bachelor a chance. "Old Roscoe" was the younger, but he had always been the steady wheel-horse of the family. Jim was "steady" enough, but was considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for Jim's liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were "capable, hard-working young business men," and the principal difference between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of hair, fresh-colored ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Morrell himself he had never had any trust. Now he remembered what had never really struck him before: that Morrell, even in this fast and loose society, had never been more than tolerated, and that, apparently, only because of the liveliness of his wife. He had the indefinable air of a bad 'un. And Keith's knowledge of women was broad enough to tell him that Mrs. Morrell would ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... work at Catua; indeed there was rather more play than work going on. The people make a kind of holiday of these occasions. Every fine night parties of the younger people assembled on the sands, and dancing and games were carried on for hours together. But the requisite liveliness for these sports was never got up without a good deal of preliminary rum-drinking. The girls were so coy that the young men could not get sufficient partners for the dances without first subscribing for a few flagons of the needful cashaca. The coldness of the shy Indian and Mameluco maidens ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... in a style of great liveliness and beauty. As a writer for the young, the author is surpassed by very few, if any writers in this ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... commendation, that, although the intrigue is licentious, according to the invariable licence of the age, the language is, in general, free from the extreme and disgusting coarseness, which our author too frequently mistook for wit, or was contented to substitute in its stead. The liveliness and even brilliancy of the dialogue, shows that Dryden, from the stores of his imagination, could, when he pleased, command that essential requisite of comedy; and that, if he has seldom succeeded, it was only because he mistook the road, or felt difficulty ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... with wine. Numberless and not particularly refined were the jests exchanged between the occupants of the various boats. Sometimes the watermen struck in and masters of slang and coarse wit as they were, and possessed of infinite impudence, the journey was marked by plenty of liveliness. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... continues the account of the Sicilian expedition, and ends with the disaster at Syracuse. "In the describing and reporting whereof," Plutarch writes, "Thucydides hath gone beyond himself, both for variety and liveliness of narration, as also in choice and excellent words." "There is no prose composition in the world," wrote Macaulay, "which I place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides.... I was delighted to find in Gray's letters, the other day, this query to Wharton: 'The retreat ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... the main body of the house extend two wings, thus forming three sides of a square, the interior of which is the court-yard. Here the business of the establishment is conducted. It is the liveliest spot on the premises; though it is liveliness of a very indolent sort. The veranda built around these sides is twenty feet in breadth, paved with tiles that have been worn into hollows by innumerable lazy footsteps, mostly shoeless, for this side of the house is frequented chiefly by the servants of the place, who are ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... between my arms the woman I had so long sighed for I renewed again and again the pledges of my ardent love. In the fulness of my bliss I thought her not awaiting me in her bed an admirable idea, as the noise of our kisses and the liveliness of our motions might have awakened the troublesome husband. Her tender ecstasies equalled mine, and increased my bliss by making me believe (oh, fatal error!) that of all my conquests this was the one of which I had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... without their knowing it, receive many rude blows, from the very fact of their marriage. (See Meditations entitled The Predestined and Of the Honeymoon.) Most of the means of defence instinctively employed by husbands are nothing but traps set for the liveliness of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... eagerly in politics, purchased dependents, paid her instruments well, gave the gayest of all possible entertainments—a resistless source of superiority in France—had a purse for many, and a smile for more; by her liveliness kept up the spirits of the old king, who was now vibrating between vice and superstition; fed, feted, and flattered the noblesse, by whom she was libelled, and worshipped; and with all the remaining decencies of France exclaiming against her, but with all its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... which the sensation of self is always in an inverse proportion. And yet, should he perchance have occasion to repel some false charge, or to rectify some erroneous censure, nothing is more common than for the many to mistake the general liveliness of his manner and language, whatever is the subject, for the effects of peculiar irritation from its accidental relation ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the midst of his thousand avocations he found time to write a series of novels portraying the manners and superstitions of India, and depicting the various epochs of its history, with a fidelity and liveliness that have gained for these works a wide popularity. Yet perhaps the strongest impression made by this record of his life comes from the evidence it affords of his humane and conciliatory spirit in his dealings with the native Indians of every class, his unselfish devotion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... pleased to find her manners much improved; a change from the society of Adeline Taylor, and her lively young friends, to that of older and better-bred people, had been of great advantage. Jane's labours of liveliness had annoyed Miss Agnes not a little; and more than once she had ventured a remark on the subject; but her young relative had been too well advised, by Adeline and her school-companions, to believe that Miss Wyllys could possibly know, as well as themselves, what were the fashionable airs ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... they arrived was through their own defect or not. Much was to be laid to the difference of race, religion, and education; but something, they feared, to the personal vapidity of acquaintances whose meridional liveliness made them yawn, and in whose society they did not always find compensation for the sacrifices ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... of guests, 'a certain liveliness' pervaded the tranquil atmosphere of Roselawn. The tennis-court was rolled and marked; fishing-tackle was inspected and repaired; in view of the possibility of dancing, the piano was tuned; bridge deficiencies were made good at the local stationer's; and gardeners ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... was keenly on the alert to catch a glimpse of the various magnates whose arrival was expected. At the Queen's Head stood a large array of carriages, and the streets were thronged with gay groups of pedestrians, and full of bustle and liveliness. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... from the unreal to the real, the wo which besieges the brain and the life-springs at the heart rushes in afresh amongst the other crowd of realities, and has at the moment of restoration literally the force and liveliness of a new birth—the very same pang, and no whit feebler, as that which belonged to it when it was first made known. From the total hush of oblivion which had buried it and sealed it up, as it were, during the sleeping hours, it starts into sudden life on our first awaking, and is ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... let's make it merry," she had rejoined; and nothing had been spared that could give liveliness to their stately old interiors, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... It was this liveliness and frivolity that had fascinated the hairdresser in days that had gone by; but if he had felt any self-distrust now in venturing within their influence, such apprehensions vanished with the first sight of the charms which had been counteracted ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... lamentations during his illness, and, though but imperfectly known, it added largely to the expectations connected with the unlooked-for return of the schooner. In short, it would not have been easy to devise a circumstance that should serve to increase the liveliness of feeling that, just then, prevailed on the subject of Deacon Pratt and his assets, than the arrival of the Sea ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... to this frank comment on her liveliness, and after a short pause, Miss Clegg sighed heavily ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... with great readiness, and without once stumbling, very long passages from German or Latin poems, especially from the AEneid, whilst the very words that had been uttered but a moment before dropped away from his remembrance. The past came forward with the distinctness and liveliness of an immediate existence, whilst the present faded away into the obscurity of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Guercino da Cinto, approached the school of the Caracci. In his art he resembled Guido Reni, with the same sweetness, greater liveliness, and fine chiaroscuro. 'Dido's Last Moments' and 'St Peter raising Tabitha' in Rome and in the Pitti Palace are fine examples of Guercino's work. His later pictures, like Guido's, are fascinating in softness, delicate colouring and tender sentiment, degenerating, however, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... just in time to give him a scolding," he said, with an affectation of liveliness. "He is not a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Pushkin was enabled to gratify this natural curiosity; and the result of his visit to the scene of the rebellion enabled him to communicate to his already plain, vigorous, and concise narration, a tone of reality, a warmth of colouring, and a liveliness of language, which renders it impossible to leave the book unfinished when once opened, and which no elaborateness of research, and no minuteness of detail, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... I don't think it's a nunnery," he said. By and by he let his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small. The main street was dotted with groups of men and women; and isolated figures, to which perhaps the distance lent a kind of uncanny aspect, were to be seen hurrying hither ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... beating heart, for I looked upon our interview as the critical moment of my destiny. I was received with civilities which my academick rudeness made me unable to repay; but when I had recovered from my confusion, I prosecuted the conversation with such liveliness and propriety, that I confirmed my new friend in his esteem of my abilities, and was dismissed with the utmost ardour of profession, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... The liveliness of it is vastly increased by hundreds of water-fowl, which disport themselves on the surface of the lake, as if coquetting with their own reflections, or whistle round its margin while ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... devotion to his wife was not diminished even after he had been compelled to divorce her because of his supposed heretical proclivities. "When the subject [of his divorce] came up in conversation, it was easy," says his biographer,[26] "to read in his face the deep sorrow he felt: his liveliness then faded away sensibly. By and by he would become perfectly silent, was incapable of further entertainment, and went home earlier than usual." Of his Russo-Polish brethren he speaks in the highest terms. He cannot bestow ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... picture of Mary, the village beauty, taking her share in the work, and how the labourers in their unwonted liveliness and new-found wit ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... laugh with him at their own foibles. If in the art of constructing a story, in the depiction of character, in deepening the interest by the alternation of happiness and misfortune, he was to go far beyond his initial triumph,—still with many Dickensians, who love him chiefly for his liveliness of observation and broad humour, Pickwick ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... this was a Monday morning conversation, high above the average of the girls' talk in intelligence and liveliness. Their minds had been stimulated by the Sunday rest from the dreary and degenerating ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... frequently to see us when she was in England. She was one of my most intimate friends, warm-hearted and kind, a charming companion, with all the liveliness and originality of an Irishwoman. For seventeen years I was in constant correspondence with her. The cleverness and animation as well as affection of her letters I cannot express; certainly women are superior ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... Wife is pale and flickering, when compared with the gorgeous blaze which dazzles us almost to blindness in Love for Love and the Way of the World. Like Congreve, and, indeed, even more than Congreve, Wycherley is ready to sacrifice dramatic propriety to the liveliness of his dialogue. The poet speaks out of the mouths of all his dunces and coxcombs, and makes them describe themselves with a good sense and acuteness which puts them on a level with the wits and heroes. We will give two instances, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great sympathy for anarchist comrades," went on Andrews, feeling a certain liveliness of amusement go through him and ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Sabbath-day. Golden sky. Full church, and more liveliness than sometimes. Shall I call the liveliness of this day a gale of the Spirit, or was all natural? I know that all was not of grace; the self-admiration, the vanity, the desire of honor, the bitterness—these were all breaths of earth or hell. But was there no grace? Lord, Thou knowest. I dare not ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... not stiff and formal like Egyptian decorative art, but executed by Greek artists with such liveliness and truth that they seemed about to speak; and Melissa could have fancied many times that they were moving toward her from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a cul-de-sac of nocturnal emptiness. Scarcely does a human footstep come to rouse the petroleum-sluggish echoes. A padding pussy makes a note of cheery liveliness in the lukewarm monotony ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... which these evolved in the people. He must ascertain whether they increased or diminished the joy of living, or stimulated the thirst for knowledge and the love of the true and the beautiful. He must cultivate the liveliness of imagination which will enable him to transport himself into the epoch and surroundings he is studying, and feel on himself, as it were, their peculiar influences. More than all, chief of all, he must have a broad, many-sided, tender sympathy with all things human, enabling him ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... hands with me. He was of the middle height, about five feet eight or nine. My first impression of him was of a dark, grave face, with a great deal in it, changing from the liveliness of conversation to a gravity of scrutiny. After we had shaken hands, I passed to the other end of the room to greet other friends. We did not speak to ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... his Exile an Education, and liv'd, among some of the greatest Droles and Wits that any Age ever produc'd; who could not but form him in that way, who was so well fitted by Temper for it. The Duke of Buckingham was his constant Companion. And he had a [90] great Liveliness of Wit, and a peculiar Faculty of turning all things into ridicule. He was Author of the Rehearsal; which, as a most noble Author says, is [91] a justly admir'd Piece of comick Wit, and has furnish'd our best Wits in all their Controversies, even in Religion and Politicks, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... answered the boy. "We're short-handed here, I can tell you! Takes me and Mr. P. all our time to get the paper out. Why, last week, Mr. P. he didn't have time to write his Editorial! We had to shove an old one in. But lor' bless you, I don't believe anybody reads 'em! Liveliness, and something about turnips—that's what our folks likes. However, they'll have some good stuff this week. We'd a real first-class murder in this town last night. The ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... of strong fleshy build, with a small blonde mustache on his upper lip. Under his eyes little pouches had already begun to form; his mouth was full and sensual; but he still retained an air of liveliness, of carelessness and agility, that might at first sight seem the spontaneity of youth. He wore a brown suit, a gray flannel shirt and Stetson hat—the common apparel of ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... a handsome nation. Personal beauty in either sex is rare: there is a want of simplicity, of repose, of dignity, and even of harmonious expression, what they themselves call finesse, in their countenances, and yet the liveliness of the eyes and the joyous character of their looks render them agreeable. You are not to understand from this that great personal beauty does not exist in France, however, for there are so many exceptions to the rule, that they have occasionally made me hesitate ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Gringoire's interrupted mystery, the arrival of the Flemish ambassadors, and the election of the Pope of Unreason. The vision of Esmeralda lightens the darkness and quickens the movement, and this brightness and liveliness continue till she saves her unlucky dramatist from the murderous diversions of the Cour des Miracles. But the means by which she does this—the old privilege of matrimony—leads to nothing but a single scene, which might ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the city, and by many which may be even described as magnificent. Some of these are private residences; others are shops, cafes, public hotels, and theatres. The crowds by whom so many parts of these Boulevards are frequented chiefly give to the scene its singular liveliness and brilliancy. The southern Boulevards, though equally beautiful, are far from being so much the habitual resort of the citizens; but the walks on this very account, have a charm for some moods of mind which the others want. Another road, planted in a similar manner, has more recently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... Since the latter date, my poetic powers have been, till very lately, in a state of suspended animation. But as, in my very first conception of the tale, I had the whole present to my mind, with the wholeness, no less than the liveliness of a vision; I trust that I shall be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come, in the course of the present year. It is probable, &c. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... subject is less entertaining, shows no decrease of liveliness. Carpaccio's humour underlies every touch of colour. The dog's averted face is one of the funniest things in art—a dog with sceptical views as to baptism!—and the band is hard at it, even though the ceremony, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... pleasure, and not an encumbrance to her, the Earl had been assured that his wife's slanders had been forgotten. He was secure of his sovereign's favour, and permitted to see the term of his weary jailorship, and thus there was an unusual liveliness and cheerfulness about the whole sojourn at Buxton, where, indeed, there was always more or less of a ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intention and the contents of the mind do not influence the world, if the form of expression does not cooperate. In Erasmus the quality of his talent is a very important factor. His perfect clearness and ease of expression, his liveliness, wit, imagination, gusto and humour have lent a charm to all he wrote which to his contemporaries was irresistible and captivates even us, as soon as we read him. In all that constitutes his talent, Erasmus is perfectly and ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... short work, though exceedingly simple and inartificial, is not without its merits. It has the directness, the perspicuity, and the liveliness of Caesar's Commentaries or of the Duke of Wellington's Despatches. Montesquieu[1317] says of it:—"Hanno's Voyage was written by the very man who performed it. His recital is not mingled with ostentation. Great commanders ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson |
