"Sportive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Customs at the dock gates, was spinning townwards in one of the innumerable hansoms. Sizing up the South African metropolis, it gave him the idea of a mud city, just dumped down wet and left to dry in the sun. Its general aspect suggested the vagaries of some sportive Titan, who, from the summit of the lofty rock wall behind it, had amused himself, out of office hours, by chucking down chunks of clay of all sorts and sizes, trying how near he could "lob" them into the position of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... when riding bouyantly upon the waves and weaving a sportive dance, is employed by the poets as an emblem of purity, or as an accessory to the horrors of a storm, by his shrieks and wild piercing cries. In his habits he is the vulture of the ocean, while in grace of motion and beauty of plumage he is one of the most attractive of the splendid ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... more species—the Pithecia hirsute and the Pithecia albicans. They are especially capable of attachment to those who treat them kindly. Being somewhat dull and cheerless, they seldom indulge in the usual sportive movements of their race. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... must acknowledge that Walpole's chief excellence is in his letters. His sportive spleen, his polished sarcasm, and his keen insight into the ways of men, place him at the head of all epistolary authorship. He has had but two competitors for this fame,—it is remarkable that they were both women,—De Sevigne in France, and Lady Wortley Montague ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... time flew; and Lily was for sitting down and playing a minuet and a country dance, and making them rehearse their steps, and calling in old Sally to witness the spectacle before they went; and so she and Aunt Becky had another little sportive battle—they never met, and seldom parted, without one. How was it that when gay little Lily provoked these little mimic skirmishes Aunt Becky would look for a second or two an inexpressibly soft and loving look upon her, and become ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... whose harmless play Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout; Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly, Held out to lure ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... any trespass against any one of them; 9, that they would never fight in companies against one, and that they would eschew all tricks and artifices; 10, that they would wear but one sword, unless they had to fight against two or more; 11, that in tourney or other sportive contest they would never use the point of their swords; 12, that being taken prisoner in a tourney, they would be bound, on their faith and honor, to perform in every point the conditions of capture, besides being bound to give up to the victors their arms and horses, if it seemed good ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... will find me Italian in faithfulness and memory. While writing the name of "Eugenie," my thoughts have often led me back to that cool stuccoed salon and little garden in the Vicolo dei Cappucini, which echoed to the laughter of that dear child, to our sportive quarrels and our chatter. But you have left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, and I know not how you are placed there; consequently, I am forced to think of you, not among the charming things with which no doubt you ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed countenance of the count, could only bow her head to Sophia's sportive observation. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... gayety and good-humor; we conversed with the utmost freedom, and sang duets; I was perfectly at my ease, had sallies of wit and merriment; Father Cato was charming, Madam de Warrens adorable, and the Abbe Palais, with his rough voice, was the butt of the company. Pleasing moments of sportive youth, how long ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... sportive mood To Syracusan strains, nor blushed within The woods to house her. When I sought to tell Of battles and of kings, the Cynthian god Plucked at mine ear and warned me: "Tityrus, Beseems a shepherd-wight ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of Milton ungirds itself without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... his finger in the font-stone and offered holy-water to his lady, who accepted it, as usual, by touching his finger with her own. But then, as if to confute the calumnies of the malevolent lady of Steinfeldt, with an air of sportive familiarity which was rather unwarranted by the time and place, he flirted on her beautiful forehead a drop or two of the moisture which remained on his own hand. The opal, on which one of these drops had lighted, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... of sun and a dance of leafy shadows on the wall of the cave, the which shadows held my attention so that I had no will to look otherwhere; for these were merry shadows that leapt in sportive gambols, that danced and swayed, pleasing me mightily. And as I watched these antic shadows I could hear the pleasant murmur of the little rill without the cave, that bubbled with sweet, soft noises like small, babbling voices and brake ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... who wears her potent spell With sparkling eye, and gaily dimpled cheek That sportive ease and conscious pow'r bespeak, Nor dreads that time her cherish'd pride ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... waves, our swift boat glided on. It was not propelled by the breeze; it was ruled by our own sportive hearts. Whithersoever we wished, thither did it move, obediently, as though it were gifted ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... vow, together with a sense that to gaze on the festival of this Bona Dea was, though so innocent and pretty a sight, hardly fair or gentlemanly, would have compelled him to withdraw his eyes, had not the sportive fascination of her appearance glued them there in spite of all. And as if to complete the picture of Grace personified and add the one thing wanting to the charm which bound him, the clouds, till that time thick in the sky, broke away from the upper heaven, and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the mystery which Wordsworth felt and endeavoured to explore; and he thinks that Wordsworth is deeper than Milton, though he attributes this, justly, more to 'the general and gregarious advance of intellect, than individual greatness of mind.' So far as spontaneity and the free unguarded play of sportive and serious ideas, taken as they came uppermost, are tests and conditions of excellence in this kind of writing, Keats's letters must rank high. Nevertheless there is still room for doubt whether these juvenile productions would have left any ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... gentle sir, if they desire to war, Why should we hinder such a sportive game? They own those isles, and why should we debar Them pastimes, for "they know just ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... past were ever coloring the present, and that over a period of seventeen years, it must be regarded as a singular instance of enduring friendship, as it has shown itself in a very singular literary form. There is nothing like it that we remember, except the sonnets of Petrarch; for books of sportive and ludicrous conceits are not to be ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... and during three out of the four acts the movement of the piece was fluent, continuous, and cumulative. In this respect both the drama and the performance were instructive. Henry Arthur Jones has diversified his serious scenes with passages of sportive humour and he has freighted the piece with conventional didacticism as to the well-worn question of capital and labour. The humour is good: the political economy need not detain attention. The value of the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... debonnaire, bright, free and easy, airy; janty[obs3], jaunty, canty[obs3]; hedonic[obs3]; riant[obs3]; sprightly, sprightful[obs3]; spry; spirited, spiritful[obs3]; lively, animated, vivacious; brisk as a bee; sparkling, sportive; full of play, full of spirit; all alive. sunny, palmy; hopeful &c. 858. merry as a cricket, merry as a grig[obs3], merry as a marriage bell; joyful, joyous, jocund, jovial; jolly as a thrush, jolly as a sandboy[obs3]; blithesome; gleeful, gleesome[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... seemed as if you had assembled all the eyes of the beautiful girls in the kingdom, and combined them, like a peacock's plumage, into the form of a comet—that is, a globe, and a bearded tail to it, diminishing gradually to a point. This beautiful constellation seemed very sportive and delightful. It was much in the form of a tadpole! and, without ceasing, went, full of playful giddiness, up and down, all over the heaven on the concave surface of the nutshell. One time it would be at that part of the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... dressing, and learning to be looked at when dressed, "avec un front impassible," it reminded me of —— and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive naivete a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up, Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10 , , that's crept to keep him company! Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... land; the land; And heaven o'ershadowing: here cerulean gods Sport in the waves, grim Triton with his shell; Proteus shape-changing; and AEgeon huge,— His mighty arms upon the large broad backs Of whales hard pressing: Doris and her nymphs: Some sportive swimming; on a rocky seat Some their green tresses drying; others borne By fish swift-gliding: nor the same all seem'd, Yet sister-like a close resembling look Each face pervaded. Earth her natives bore, Mankind;—and woods, and cities, there were seen; Wild ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... warmth, seems almost never to have shown any hastiness or anger. To all men he was humane and sympathising; among his friends, open-hearted, generous, helpful; in the circle of his family, kind, tender, sportive. And what gave an especial charm to all this was, the unobtrusiveness with which it was attended: there was no parade, no display, no particle of affectation; rating and conducting himself simply as an honest man and citizen, he became greater by ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... for a full year, with soul and senses under perfect control, acquires very great merit, which, in fact, is equal to what is acquired by the celestial Rishis. Possessed of every article of enjoyment, and endued with great energy, he blazes with the effulgence of the midday sun. Sportive damsels of the most delicate features and endued with splendour of complexion, having deep bosoms, tapering thighs and full and round hips, decked with celestial ornaments, gladden him with their company while he rides on a delightful and excellent car possessed of the effulgence of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... upon a divan near Madame, with all the complacency of a man whose own foresight has saved him a serious trouble, and said after mature deliberation, gazing thoughtfully at the sportive cherubs ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... dashing young blade who for thirty years had been the Beau Brummel of George Brotherton's establishment; but a rather weazened little man whose mind illumined a face that still clung to sportive youth, while premature ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... decoy people into my company." On the other hand, Cowper did not write John Gilpin which is certainly his masterpiece, in the mood of a man using wit as a decoy. He wrote it because it irresistibly demanded to be written. "I wonder," he once wrote to Newton, "that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in state." Harlequin, luckily for us, took hold of his pen ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... was this, when Martin finally and completely realized that the even course of his life had been rudely and permanently changed, that he had been plucked out of his humdrum niche and cast willy-nilly into this violent drama by sportive circumstance. The tumultuous incidents of the previous night arrayed themselves in his mind with something of their ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... and dogs grew dull; His kitten, late a sportive elf; The woods and lakes, so beautiful, 740 Of dim stupidity were full. All ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... wistful in his small face. His temper gave abundant promise of being imperious in after life; and he had as hopeful an apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience of all other things and persons to it as heart could wish. He was childish and sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition; but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times of sitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair. At no time did he fall into it so surely as when after dinner he sat ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the jetty, the rapid motion landward of the wavetips producing upon his eye an apparent progress of the pier out to sea. This pier-head was a spot which Christopher enjoyed visiting on such moaning and sighing nights as the present, when the sportive and variegated throng that haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer there, and he seemed alone with weather and the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... thing realised, and it will be humming with this business. Every university in the world will be urgently working for priority in this aspect of the problem or that. Reports of experiments, as full and as prompt as the telegraphic reports of cricket in our more sportive atmosphere, will go about the world. All this will be passing, as it were, behind the act drop of our first experience, behind this first picture of the urbanised Urseren valley. The literature of the subject will be growing and developing with the easy swiftness of an eagle's swoop as we come down ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... muddy street; then springing up again like a flash, he resumed his place on the gate, and looked as innocent as a lamb. But the man picked himself up slowly, and turning round, poured a torrent of angry words on the sportive youth. ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... less AEneas with his threat defies, "Stand off," he shouts, "who ventures to draw nigh, His town shall perish, and himself shall die." Onward, though maimed, he presses to his prey. Twice five times circling round the field they fly; For no mean stake or sportive prize they play, Lo, Turnus' life and blood are wagered ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... imagination, a discerning intellect, a sound judgment, an indefatigable capacity, and vigorous energy of application, vivified with an ease and rapidity of elocution, copious without redundance, and select without affectation; if all these, united with a sportive vein of humor, an inoffensive temper, and an angelic purity of heart;—if all these, in their combination, are the qualities suitable for an Attorney-General of the United States, in him they were all ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... unreasoning) to the daughters of her father's friends who belonged in her own sphere of existence. And if one's character may be judged by that of one's friends, Hermia was of infinite variety. Perhaps the sportive were most often in her company, and it was against these that Mrs. Westfield ineffectually railed, but there was a warmth in her affection for Gertrude Brotherton, who liked quiet people as a rule (and made Hermia the exception to prove it), and an intellectual flavor in her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... even beautiful, as we are taught by the beauty of numerous Fauns preserved from antiquity; yea, it can, parodying itself like the merry spirit of Nature, reverse its own Ideal, and, for instance, in the extravagance of the Silenic figures, by light and sportive treatment appear freed again ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... honoured, imprisoned in no "mattress-grave." Without Rabelais, without Voltaire, without Heine, you would find, methinks, even the joys of your Happy Islands lacking in zest; and, unless Plato came by your way, none of the ancients could meet you in the lists of sportive dialogue. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... but which he prepared to give deadly effect to at the proper time. But, whilst it laughed, Klosterheim also trembled. Some persons, indeed, were of opinion that the answer of The Masque was a mere sportive effusion of malice or pleasantry from the students, who had suffered so much by his annoyances. But the majority, amongst whom was Adorni himself, thought otherwise. Apart even from the reply, or the insult ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... reproach to the clergy of that day. Charles V., however pious that emperor affected to be, had a missal painted for his mistress by the great Albert Durer, the borders of which are crowded with extravagant grotesques, consisting of apes, who were sometimes elegantly sportive, giving clysters to one another, and in more offensive attitudes, not adapted to heighten the piety of the Royal Mistress. This missal has two French verses written by the Emperor himself, who does not seem to have been ashamed of his present. The Italians carried this taste to excess. The manners ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... happiness would it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pride in apartness from men, his self-contentment, his sloth, the presence in him of barren imagination, the absence from it of the spiritual, nothing in him which as yet desires, through the sorrow and strife of life, God's infinitude, or man's love; a natural life indeed, forgiveable, gay, sportive, dowered with happy self-love, good to pass through and enjoy, but better to leave behind. But Sordello will not become the actual artist till he lose his self-involvement and find his soul, not only in love of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... title from one of the characters of the novel, an escaped negro slave, who has received from his sportive master the name of "Peculiar Institution." The great dramatic fact of the story lies in the kidnapping of the infant child of wealthy Northern parents who have been killed in a steamboat-explosion on the Mississippi. The child, a girl, is saved from the water, but saved by two "mean whites," creatures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... on the following day they made their appearance, being heated and weary with their marches, they all stripped and went into the Lake to bathe previous to embarking for Mackinaw. Unsuspicious of danger they played with the sportive waves as they dashed upon the shore, and were swimming and diving in all directions, when the terrific yell of armed warriors broke upon their ears. It was but the work of a moment and one hundred defenseless Indians perished in the waters. When the sad intelligence came to the remainder ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... Our Lady" with his "Kynd Kittok," in which God has his eye on the soul of an intemperate ale-wife who has crept into Paradise. "God lukit, and saw her lattin in, and leugh His heart sair." Examples of this kind of sportive irreverence are common enough; their root is in human nature: and they could not be absent in the mythology of savage or of ancient peoples. To Zeus the myths of this kind would come to be attached ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... Duryodhana with an Akshauhini of troops. And the body of his troops composed of those mighty soldiers, who wore on their persons garlands of many-coloured flowers, looked as graceful as a number of sportive elephants that have passed through a wood. And others led by Jayadratha, the dwellers of the land of Sindhusauvira, came in such force that the hills seemed to tremble under their tread. And their force, counting an Akshauhini, looked like a mass of clouds moved by the wind. And Sudakshina, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... does the latter hypothesis become when we take into consideration the frequent tricks played by sportive denizens of the other world, against which the untrained person is usually absolutely defenceless. It must also be remembered that the regular inhabitant of the astral plane, whether he be human or elemental, is under ordinary circumstances conscious only of the objects of that plane, physical ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... things. Imagination, the terrible madwoman, who was the mistress of the house, has become the servant. Look around you, Senor Penitentiary, and you will see the admirable aggregation of truths which has taken the place of fable. The sky is not a vault; the stars are not little lamps; the moon is not a sportive huntress, but an opaque mass of stone; the sun is not a gayly adorned and vagabond charioteer but a fixed fire; Scylla and Charybdis are not nymphs but sunken rocks; the sirens are seals; and in the order of personages, Mercury is Manzanedo; Mars is a clean-shaven old man, the Count von ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... a sportive cavalier starts up a nimble rabbit and chases the frightened little creature through the camp, crying at the top of his voice, "stop him! stop him! catch that rabbit," etc. Poor pussy comes flying ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... help!—torches, torches! The household is roused, dull lanterns glance among the shrubberies; pine-lights, ill-shielded from wind and rain by cap or cloak, are seen dotting the park in every direction, and dance about through the darkness, like sportive wild-fires: Sir Clement in moody calmness looks prepared for any thing the worst, like a man who anticipates evil long-deserved; the broken-hearted mother is on her knees at the cold door-steps, striving to pierce the gloom with her eyes, and ejaculating distracted prayers: and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... from the deep-voiced valley, The snow-white mists are slowly upward wreathing: Now floating wide, now hovering close, to dally With sportive winds, around them lightly breathing, Till, in the quickening Spring-shine through them creeping, Their gloomy power dissolves in warmth and gladness; While swift, new tides through Nature's heart-pulse sweeping. ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... delighted at abandoning such an inhospitable region as that of "The Widespreading-sand Island," where they had to starve in the midst of plenty; so likewise was I, the only thing which I had to thank our sojourn off the province of Shan-tung for being the nickname Larkyns gave me in his sportive fancy on my return on board ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and ballads which were called forth by passing events were usually amorous, sportive, gay, and often gross, yet suited to a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... Where seal, 'mid icebergs, sportive play, Far westward wander'd nature's child, And wigwam built, near ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, or Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form, or lovelier face! What though the sun, with ardent frown, Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown, The sportive toil, which, short and light Had dyed her glowing hue so bright, Served too in hastier swell to show Short glimpses of a breast of snow; What though no rule of courtly grace To measured mood had train'd her ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... had a majordomo of a very facetious and sportive turn, and he it was that played the part of Merlin, made all the arrangements for the late adventure, composed the verses, and got a page to represent Dulcinea; and now, with the assistance of his master and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... was most easy and agreeable; his step firm and graceful; his air neither grave nor familiar. He was as cheerful as he was spirited, frank and communicative in the society of friends, fond of the fox-chase and the dance, often sportive in his letters, and liked a hearty laugh. "His smile," writes Chastellux, "was always the smile of benevolence." This joyousness of disposition remained to the last, though the vastness of his responsibilities was soon to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as that of a reposing infant. I think it was simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp short whinny,—by no means intending to put their heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous, and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He had a loud voice, and a slow deliberate utterance, which no doubt gave some ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... hip to shoulder seemed incredibly straight and long. The cold wind that was blowing gustily and which was the ostensible cause of her preparations, pressed her thin dress to her form and showed with sportive candour the fine modelling of bosom and limbs. Chiefly, however, I was attracted by the superb disdain in the poise of the head. It was a dark head, coiled heavily with black hair and set back in the hollow of the shoulders. Her face may be called ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... peeved and sarcastic. "To be sure," he says, "I feel honored that the young man should make my house his headquarters whenever his fancy leads him to indulge his sportive instincts. Youth must be served, you know. But Mrs. Hollister has such a charmingly unreasonable way of holding me responsible for her son's conduct! And since she happens just now to be our guest—well, you get ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... His style was always pure and easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and beggars, street-walkers and merry andrews, in those squalid dens which are the reproach ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his own small round intent, Like sportive kitten with its tail; While no sick-headache they bewail, And while their host will credit give, Joyous and free ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since him—the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the players in Hamlet—the sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of Richard—disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his torpors—but they were the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy—politic savings, and fetches of the breath—husbandry of the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist—rather, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... In this sportive way she ran on, saying all kinds of lively nothings; while we drank our coffee out of Saxon porcelain which would have shone on the table of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... too," retorted Tomah, with a miffed air, which showed he did not so readily appreciate the half-serious, half-sportive manner of the trapper as the other stranger had done. "May be, when you out with me catching beaver, one, two month, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... eyes were presented with scenes of desolation sufficient to damp all hearts, and to inspire the deepest sense of the horrors of war. Robbed of all animal and vegetable life, the neighboring plantations seemed but as dreary deserts, compared with what they once were, when, covered with sportive flocks and herds, and rice and corn, they smiled with plenteousness and joy. In the fields, the eyes beheld no sign of cheerful crops, nor in the woods any shape of living beast or bird, except a few mournful ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... scrubber (forty summers, Stout but sportive) treads a measure, Grinning, in herself a ballet, Fixed as fate upon ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... resting; but I was often compelled to carry my little Matilda on my shoulders. Both were delighted with the shade of the woods, and were so amused with the delightful birds that inhabited them, and a pretty little sportive green monkey, that they became as playful as ever. They sang and prattled; but often asked me if papa and Alfred would not soon return to see these pretty creatures, and if we were going to seek them. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... met with condign punishment, and resulted in the closing of the place for good. After it had stood unoccupied for some time Dr. Johnson passed it in the company of Beauclerk, Langton, and Lady Sydney Beauclerk, and made a sportive suggestion that he and Beauclerk and Langton should take it. "We amused ourselves," he said, "with scheming how we should all do our parts. Lady Sydney grew angry and said, 'An old man should not put such things in young people's heads.' ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form or lovelier face! What though the sun, with ardent frown, Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,— The sportive toil, which, short and light Had dyed her glowing hue so bright, Served too in hastier swell to show Short glimpses of a breast of snow: What though no rule of courtly grace To measured mood had trained her pace,— A foot more light, a step more true, Ne'er ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... their froth upon its surface. On one side, the water-eagle sits in majesty, undisturbed, on his well-known rock, in sight of his nest, on the face of Ben Venue; the heron stalks among the reeds in search of his prey; and the sportive ducks gambol on the waters or dive below. On the other, the wild goats climb, where they have scarce ground for the soles of their feet; and the wild fowl, perched on the trees, or on the pinnacle of a rock, look down ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... the rolling seas, Or sank on Nature's flowery lap to rest, Or raised my light wings on the sportive breeze, The conscious earth with joy her god confess'd. While Mirth and Gladness round my footsteps play'd, And bright-haired Hope led on the laughing Hours. As man and beast in holy union stray'd To share the lucid streams and ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... opened on a quiet piazza, shaded by fruit-trees in blossom, and overlooking a small artificial lake stocked with pretty, sportive fish. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... place annoy, And spoil the promise of our future joy. Oh then approach, ye favour'd of the loves! Come and dwell here ye gentle turtle doves! On yonder spreading branches, perch'd on high, With coos repeated greet the lover's sigh! Then sportive sparrows round the roses play, And sing, delighted, from the bending spray! Ye butterflies, arrayed in coats of gold, On beds of roses fluttering revels hold! Here rest, upon the lily's waving stalk, And ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... was but a sportive play (not dreaming that Ganymede was his very Rosalind), yet the opportunity it gave him of saying all the fond things he had in his heart, pleased his fancy almost as well as it did Ganymede's, who enjoyed the secret jest in ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... to the early numbers of that journal. He seldom did justice to his own talents, for he wrote too often in haste, always at the last moment, and too rarely with good taste. He was by profession a barrister. The world at large, who admired the sportive fancy, classical eloquence, and kind yet firm criticism of poor Morgan Rattler, in his later years, will regret the early decease ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the battle-ground, the great champions were already stripped and prepared for the "mill." Both were in splendid condition, and displayed a redundancy of muscle about the breast and arms which was delightful to the eye of the sportive connoisseur. They were well matched. Adepts said that Stanford's "heft" and tall stature were fairly offset by Low's superior litheness and activity. From their heads to the Union colors around their waists, their ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... into which he has fallen causes me a great deal of uneasiness. He is the last man in the world who ought to break his leg. You know how impetuous our friend is ordinarily, what a soul of restlessness and energy, never content unless he is rushing at some object, like a sportive bull at a red shawl; but amiable withal. He is no longer amiable. His temper has become something frightful. Miss Fanny Flemming came up from Newport, where the family are staying for the summer, to nurse him; but he ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Augustus William entered; his countenance was gay and careless, he had come to see the queen-mother, and had been directed to this saloon. Already sportive and jesting words were on his lips, when he perceived this strange scene; Laura on her knees, pale and trembling, before the proud queen, who left her disdainfully in her humble position. It was a sight that the proud lover could not endure. The hot blood of the Hohenzollerns was raging. Forgetful ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... astounded. He was not offering me a light honor: The Author's name meant a great deal. Who, then, was I, a woman named Smith, to say nay to this miraculous possibility? Was it not rather for me to accept, meekly, the high gift that the gods in a sportive moment chose to toss to me? Yea, verily. And yet— My hand stole to the half of a thin old foreign coin hidden ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... waters plays the sportive monster to-day? Did he return to the coast of Norway, where, according to the naturalists of the country, such as he live at the bottom of the sea, rising sometimes to the surface in summer, but plunging again as soon as the wind raises the least wave? Or did the bullet ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... Toby?" asked Sally, eagerly. He had never said anything before about her clothes. She was suddenly sportive with pride in ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... triple art of oratory consisted; who has seen a great deal of the world, and has that adaptability of intellect which knowledge of the world lends to one who is so thoroughly in earnest as to his end that he agrees to be sportive as to his means. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which had attracted the child took every day a stronger hold of the youth. Frederick was not always in that sportive humour in which we have seen him repeatedly. At times he would wander about silent and solitary, wrapped in his musical meditations. He would sit up late, busy with his beloved music, and often, after lying down, rise from his bed in the middle of the night in order, to strike a few chords or try ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Summer in robes of green. And the King of day smiled down upon her And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen. Fruit of their union and true love's pledges, Beautiful roses bloomed day by day, And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges Like royal children in sportive play. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... waters are usually as still as those of a lake. For days and weeks together, they reflect each separate tree-top of the pine-forests which clothe the mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some sportive fish, or the oars of the boatman as he goes to inspect the sea-fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or his rod to catch the sea-trout or char, or cod, or herrings, which abound, in their seasons, on the coast ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... Of course, therefore, she knew nothing whatever about it when Mr. Upjohn toward the end of the evening, actually allowed himself to be decoyed into the gay whirl by one of the youngest and most daring of the girls, and galloped clumsily around like a sportive and giddy elephant set free for the first time in its native jungle, and finding it very much to its liking. His daughter Maria, faithfully at her mother's side, sat with one ear grudgingly lent ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... if I need abbreviate this blissful moment, I saw the enraged animal disappearing in the side-door of the barn; and it was a nice, comfortable Durham cow, that somewhat rare but possible thing—a sportive cow. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pious and charitable, his assiduity almost incredible; and, that since his death, the integrity of his character has been fully vindicated. Being himself a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of the sons of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive triumph, 'Sir, we are a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... would have laughed at it—patted Pope on the head—and enjoined him for the future to be more discreet. Roscoe, like a wise man, regards it without horror—remarking of it, and the boyish imitation of Spenser, that "why these sportive and characteristic sketches should be brought to so severe an ordeal, and pointed out to the reprehension of the reader as gross and disagreeable, dull and disgusting, it is not easy to perceive." Old Joe maunders when he says, "he that was unacquainted with Spenser, and was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... are always judging one another before they are finished. A raw boy, with only the undeveloped elements of manhood in him, is denounced as a dunce. A light-hearted, sportive girl, with an incontinent overflow of spirits, is condemned as a hoiden. Neither boy nor girl is half made. There is only the frame-work of the man and woman up, and it does not appear what they are to become. A young man is wild, and judged accordingly. It ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... gentler manners reign, I turn; and France displays her bright domain. Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleased with thyself, whom all the world can please, How often have I led thy sportive choir, With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire, Where shading elms along the margin grew, And freshened from the wave the zephyr flew! And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still, But mocked all tune and marred the dancer's skill, Yet would ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... matter how called off, their interest and curiosity remained with the diver. They would return, pushing their noses about him, caressingly in appearance if not intent, and bob into the treasures of worm and shellfish his labor exposed. He became convinced that they were sportive, indulging in dash and play for the fun of it, rather than for any grosser object to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... treatment will raise the smile or excite the interest which is anticipated. The "grotesque" is a vehicle for grim and often terrible ideas, lightly veiled by a cloak of humorous exaggeration; a sort of Viking horse-play—it is, in fact, a language which expresses the mixed feelings of sportive contempt and real fear in about equal proportions. When these feelings are not behind the expression, it becomes a language which ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... in accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We frolic ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... innumerable crevices in the rock—crevices which the sharpest eye in the country had never seen before. Curiosity led them towards the turret, when they were charmed by the most exquisite sounds ever emitted by a fiddle-string, which, joined to the sportive mirth and glee accompanying it, reconciled them in a great measure to the scene, although they knew well enough the inhabitants of the nook were fairies. Nay, overpowered by the enchanting jigs played by the fiddler, one of the brothers had even the hardihood to ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... and sportive speech, And mirthful tales of earlier years, Though deep within the soul of each Lay thoughts too ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ease himself that I was tempted to think absurdly enough, that he was not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of the occasion. But I soon perceived that his calmness was the repose of conscious power. He was not only at ease, but sportive and full of anecdote; and as he told the Senate playfully the next day he slept soundly that night on the formidable assault of his gallant and accomplished adversary. So the great Cond slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... thou hadst liv'd, till every thing that chears In thee had yielded to the weight of years; Extreme old age had wasted thee away, And left thee but a glimmering of the day; Thy ears were deaf; and feeble were thy knees,— saw thee stagger in the summer breeze, 20 Too weak to stand against its sportive breath, And ready for the gentlest stroke of death. It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed; Both Man and Woman wept when Thou wert dead; Not only for a thousand thoughts that were, Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share; But for some ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... very weel, sir, I thank ye," said the poor prisoner, in a tone how different from the sportive vivacity of those of the Lily of St. Leonard's!—"it's a' very gude—ower ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... advanced in years, but still full of vigour and vivacity, accompanied me. I saw several others, of different ages, who were walking there. But what surprised me was to see a great many of them amusing themselves by various agreeable and sportive games with young girls elegantly dressed, listening to their songs, and joining in their dances. The monk, who accompanied me, listened with great civility and kindness to the questions I put to him concerning his order. The following is the sum of his answers to my numerous ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... letter, proposing relief in kind. He had got into a little trouble by leaving parcels of mud done up in brown paper, at people's houses, on pretence of being a Railway- Porter, in which character he received carriage money. This sportive fancy he expiated in the House of Correction. Not long after his release, and on a Sunday morning, he called with a letter (having first dusted himself all over), in which he gave me to understand that, being ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... near to the village and passing round the wood. At its corner, the sudden shape of a woman arose against the sportive sunbeams that outlined her with light. Alertly erect she stood, before the faintly violet background of the wood's marge and the crosshatched trees. She was slender, her head all afire with fair hair, and in her pale face we could see the night-dark ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... hills so closely bind, Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil, Till all his eddying currents boil, - Her long descended lord is gone, And left us by the stream alone. And much I miss those sportive boys, Companions of my mountain joys, Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth. Close to my side, with what delight They pressed to hear of Wallace wight, When, pointing to his airy mound, I called his ramparts holy ground! ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... this element of mediaval life, this feature of mediaval literature, a terrible belief lay under the gay raillery. Here is betrayed, on a wide scale, that natural reaction of the faculties from excessive oppression to sportive wit, from deep repugnance to superficial jesting, which has often been pointed out by philosophical observers as a striking fact in ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... between the two islands. The greatest caution is requisite in getting to this position; the passage being extremely narrow, and the water shallow: the latter was so beautifully transparent, that each pebble on the yellow sand appeared distinctly visible, and myriads of sportive fish were seen darting in every direction from the clamorous hissing monster that invaded their ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... side, one of them struck its beak several times against the beak of the other, as if in play. I wished them joy of their expected progeny, and was the more ready to believe they would have it for this little display of sportive sentimentality. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... friendliest interest in Bella's making a good match. Mrs Lammle said, in a sportive way, she really must show her beautiful Bella what kind of wealthy creatures she and Alfred had on hand, who would as one man fall at her feet enslaved. Fitting occasion made, Mrs Lammle accordingly produced the most passable of those feverish, boastful, and indefinably ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... well. Eugene was an inattentive, indifferent student, making poor progress in the studies of the course—a genial, sportive, song-singing, fun-making companion. Nevertheless he was bright, sparkling, entertaining and a leader among "the boys." In truth he was in intellect above his fellows and a genius along his favorite lines. He was prolific ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... completely familiar with all the interlocutors, and understand thoroughly all their minutest relations, and points of common knowledge and common feeling with each other. He who does not, must be perpetually in danger of misinterpreting sportive allusion into serious statement; and the man who was only recalling, by some jocular phrase or half-phrase, to an old companion, some trivial reminiscence of their boyhood or youth, may be represented as expressing, upon some person or incident casually tabled, an opinion which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to speculate how the thing first came about, whether the sportive anthropoid ape took to riding on a wild goat before he emerged as a man keeping flocks, or whether some great pioneer, destined to be worshipped in after ages as a demigod, showed his fellows how the wild calves, if taken ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... reader. Our hero was not in a hurry. He reasoned thus: "The world was not made in a day; the race is not always for the swift." He trundled along his barrow, enjoying the comforts of his pipe, the object of wonder to many, and the subject of much sportive remark to those who were hurried along by their fresh and spirited teams on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... considered, it will soon be apparent what a remarkable feat soaring really is. The hawk does not always ascend in a spiral, but every now and then revolves in a circle—a flat circle—and suddenly shoots up with renewed rapidity. Whether this be merely sportive wantonness or whether it is a necessity, is impossible to determine; but to me it does not appear as if the hawk did it from necessity. It has more the appearance of variation: just as you or I might walk fast at one moment and slowly at another, now this side ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... yesterday's paper, to annul all apologies he coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... gentleman with the weak eyes, who came evening after evening, and must have seen the present piece a hundred times or so, gave her half a crown, weeping copiously from nervousness as he touched her hand. He looked about seventeen, and Polly, who always greeted him with a smile of sportive condescension, wondered how his parents or guardians could allow him to live ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... when first he drew his breath, Destined by fate to an untimely death; And when I sent him to defend the Greeks, War was his business, not your sportive freaks. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... obtained an introduction to the earl within the last half-hour, and had not concealed his admiration for the earl's daughter. He had entreated the honor of a formal introduction to the exquisite creature with whom he had conversed on sportive terms last night at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... tearful tangents into complicated segments of family history from which it was possible to extricate only the most ridiculous of facts, chief among them the reiterated assurance that her own father had been, in the bosom of his family, of a delightfully sportive nature, but nothing like the Westfalls—dear no!—that he had a genteel figure, my dear, for all he had developed a somewhat corpulent tendency in later years; that the corn-beef which mother procured was highly superior to those portions of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... pressed, And a slumber, soft and warm, Fold us on a dove-like breast,— Not to love, but love's bestowing Gentle care and kiss are owing:— Is the passion changed or cloyed, Doth the giver's light grow less? Banished from the sweet recess, Sportive pressure, fond caress, See our mimic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... the four brothers and thrust them at one push into the water. His ball bounded back to the surface, and, picking it up, he ran off, tossing it before him in his own sportive way. Outstripping it in speed he soon reached home, and remained within till the ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... ones. Even Annie and the clergyman were stone-blind: so that Klaus, speaking unintelligibly at every turn, had to bear the jokes of all; for young and old, woman and man, chimed readily in with the tone of sportive raillery, as soon as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... hydras, and chimeras dire." His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated person of the present day said that he regarded him rather as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive gaiety are infinite. In the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM alone, we should imagine, there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will produce ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... wonderful changes which have been wrought there, in such brief space of time, by industry and enterprise. Where then stood mighty and unbroken forests, through which the savage passed on his mission of blood; or stalked the majestic buffaloe, gamboled the sportive deer, or trotted the shaggy bear, are now to [291] be seen productive farms, covered with lowing herds and bleating flocks, and teeming with all the comforts of life.—And where then stood the town of Losantiville with its three or four little cabins and their twenty inmates, is now to be ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... us is most to blame? I who am fool enough to speak seriously of such things in a law-court? or you who are slanderous enough to include such charges in your indictment? For sportive effusions in verse are valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have you not read Catullus, who replies thus to those who wish ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... me leave, with the sportive sea-porpoises, preludiately a little to play before the storm of my tears, to make my prayer before I proceed to my sacrifice. Lo, for an oblation to the rich burnished shrine of your virtue, a handful of Jerusalem's mummianized earth, in a few sheets of waste paper enwrapped, I here, humiliate, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... probable that the pretty woman who is singing sportive French songs to the accompaniment of the instrument she strikes with her left hand is one of the Court ladies of the Czarina, who, as a rule, throws half-roubles out of her carriage to the street-musicians! Perhaps she is a Princess? possibly the wife of the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... I opened the morning paper—the Morning Post, as it happened—and ran hastily up and down the columns, active exercise having been recommended to me. What cared I for politics, foreign news, or even the sportive intelligence? All I sought for was a paragraph headed 'Horrible Disclosures,' or, 'Awful Death of a Baronet.' I ran up and ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... the Fiery Furnace; they look as if they were presenting a vaudeville turn, being spirited in action, and very dramatic. Below all, is a masterly panel of Jonah and the whale,—an old favourite, frequently appearing in mediaeval art. The whale, positively smiling and sportive, eagerly awaits his prey at the right. Jonah is making a graceful dive from the ship, apparently with an effort to land in the very jaws of the whale. At the opposite side, the whale, having coughed up his victim, looks disappointed, while Jonah, in an ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... together in glowing August weather, The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right; And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... they either furnish valuable skins or wholesome food. Moreover, here the wolf awakes the reverberating echoes of the forest with its dismal howl; the raccoon, opossum, and squirrel pass their lives in sportive gambols; the wild and the ocellated turkeys strut about, pompous in manner, as if conscious of their handsome plumage, while the timid deer and shaggy-coated bison roam over prairies or through woodland glades, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... see, that wave was started when you stepped into the river for your little sportive paddle. It kept growing bigger all the time as it rolled down the stream, till it nigh swamped the old fisherman. I'm almost afraid to hear what calamity may have happened to some of the lower parishes," ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... was brightening with its first beams an absolutely tranquil sea when the sleepers opened their eyes, and beheld what seemed to them a great universe of liquid light. Their ears at the same time drank in the soft sound of murmuring ripples far below, and the occasional cry of sportive sea-birds. ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... impressed, and annoyed too. He thought too much sentiment was being squandered on a very practical and sportive thing. He disliked functions; speech-making was to him a matter for prayer and fasting. The Indian's address was therefore more or less gratuitous, and he hastened to remark: "Thank you, Shangi; that's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... persuasion that Providence is eminently watchful over the helpless, and extends an especial care to those who are not capable of caring for themselves. So used, it breathes the same feeling as "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"—or the more sportive adage, that "the fairies take care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion itself, in addition to the general religious feeling of mankind, and the scarcely less general love of the marvelous, may be accounted for from our tendency to exaggerate ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various |
