"Mettlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down a few times before the spectators. They appeared in perfect training, neither too fat nor too fine, mettlesome as colts, steady as draught-horses, deep-breathed as oxen, disciplined to work together as symmetrically as a single sculler pulls his pair of oars. The fisherman offered to make his quarter fifty cents. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... touch on the raw, touch a raw nerve. Adj. sensible, sensitive; impressible, impressionable; susceptive, susceptible; alive to, impassionable^, gushing; warm hearted, tender hearted, soft hearted; tender as a chicken; soft, sentimental, romantic; enthusiastic, highflying^, spirited, mettlesome, vivacious, lively, expressive, mobile, tremblingly alive; excitable &c 825; oversensitive, without skin, thin-skinned; fastidious &c 868. Adv. sensibly &c adj.; to the quick, to the inmost core. Phr. mens aequa in arduis [Lat.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... now and then shake it in that manner peculiar to the equine race. Angel and I followed closely with occasional caracoles, and cavortings, and scornful blowings through the nostrils. All three shied at a lamp-post. It needed no second glance to perceive that we were mettlesome steeds out for exercise, and feeling ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... glorious and dear this brightly-colored, mettlesome and tiny woman had seemed to him in the second display of temper he witnessed in Patricia. It was a revelation of an additional and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the cumbersome thing all over Russia and played it in recitals with amazing success. In 1903, when Mr. Koussevitzky was twenty-nine (he's sixty-eight now but looks a mettlesome fifty), the Czar decorated him—the only instance in history of a ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... heavy brass candlestick and the next instant had aimed a murderous blow at Jack's head. Armitage caught the flash of the descending weapon in time to duck his head, taking the force upon the lower muscles of his neck. The wave of pain was as the lash to a mettlesome horse. Before the Prince could swing the candlestick again Armitage had him by the throat and bore him to the floor, half stifling his ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... lightly into the saddle, and soon she was flying over the old familiar road, down across the creek bridge, past the old grist-mill, around the fort and then out on the river bluff. The Indian pony was fiery and mettlesome. He pranced and side-stepped, galloped and trotted by turns. He seemed as glad to get out again into the warm sunshine as was Betty herself. He tore down the road a mile at his best speed. Coming back Betty pulled him into ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... my birds. Rein in that mettlesome steed of yours! That green cock was just going ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... objectivity which we have to expect from this book. Not the soft, flabby, indifferent, contradictory objectivity of the scientific dilettante, of the arch-eunuch: but a mettlesome objectivity which is appropriate in this fighting age, the objectivity of one who honestly attempts to see everything and to know everything; but who, having done so, endeavours to organise his data in accordance ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... capital, she is said to have had an encounter with the arm of the law. The story is that, mounted on a blood horse, she attended a review held in honour of the King and the Czar; and her steed, being somewhat mettlesome, carried her at full tilt across the parade ground and into the midst of the royal party assembled ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... anxious to try the speed of his horse, proposed to Richard a gallop towards a clump of trees about a mile off, and the young man assenting, away they started. Master Potts started too, for Flint did not like to be left behind, but the mettlesome pony was soon distanced. For some time the two horses kept so closely together, that it was difficult to say which would arrive at the goal first; but, by-and-by, Robin got a-head. Though at first indifferent to the issue of the race, the spirit of emulation soon ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... had not forsaken her. He bounded along over the rugged ground on the mettlesome steed, striking fire from the flinty rocks, leaping creeks and rivulets, bursting through bush and brake, mile after mile, until he gained the open prairie, while the black coat of his charger was speckled with foam. Here he drew rein, and trotted ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ayr with a gathering host overflowed, She marked with a look of delight A white-bearded horseman who gallantly rode On a mettlesome steed black as night, And cried, forcing wildly her way through the throng, "Oh! master, thy pupil hath ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... and "To the rear open order" were instantly followed by a stentorian "Action front" down at the left, the instant leap and rush of some thirty nimble cannoneers, shouts of "Drive on!" the cracking of whips, the thunder and rumble of wheels, the thud of plunging hoofs. Forty-eight mettlesome horses in teams of two abreast went dancing briskly away to the rear, at sight of which Minor dropped his jaw and the point of his sword and sat gazing blankly after them, over the bowed head of his placid ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Cranbery. He didn't know how to manage her. His bridle hand warn't good, I tell you. A spry, mettlesome hoss, and a dull critter with no action, don't mate well in harness, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... marrow. Jim will have his hands full, Unless she's used to menfolk and their ways, And past the minding. She'd the quietness That's a kind of pride, and yet, not haughty—held Her head like a young blood-mare, that's mettlesome Without a touch of vice. She'll gan her gait Through this world, and the next. The bit in her teeth, There'll be no holding her, though Jim may tug The snaffle, till he's tewed. I've kenned that look In women's eyes, and mares', though, with a difference. And Jim—yet she ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... answer to his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Nancy speak so interestedly as she did to a tall, good-looking young fellow with peculiarly frank eyes and a particularly winning smile, who cantered up to the side door on a mettlesome thoroughbred at ten o'clock that Thursday morning. At the same time, to no one did she talk with so much evident embarrassment, so far as the manner of address was concerned; for her tongue stumbled and blundered out a "Master Jimmy—er—Mr. Bean—I ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... fellow—the poet's friend—is never long absent when the time is ripe—at least, not in places where we gather together. Well, one is a buckler against the other: I don't say with lovely Amy May,—with an honourable woman. But Aminta can smell powder and grow more mettlesome. Who can look at you and be blind to passion sleeping! The sight of you makes me dream of it—me, a woman, cool as a wine-cellar or a well. So there's to help you to know yourself and be on your guard. I know I'm not deceived, because I've fallen in love with you, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... however, admits that the beauty of the male probably aids in exciting the female; and her acquiescence is necessary. Mr. Hewitt is convinced that the union is by no means left to mere chance, for the female almost invariably prefers the most vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome male; hence it is almost useless, as he remarks, "to attempt true breeding if a game- cock in good health and condition runs the locality, for almost every hen on leaving the roosting-place will resort to the game-cock, even though that bird may not actually drive ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Where is the peril he fears to adventure? See how the puppets speed on to the race,} Each his own fortune pursues in the chase; } How many the rivals, how narrow the space! } But, hurry and scurry, O mettlesome game! The cars roll in thunder, the wheels rush in flame. How the brave dart onward, and pant and glow! How the craven behind them come creeping slow— Ha! ha! see how Pride gets a terrible fall! See how Prudence, or Cunning, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... phenomenon is simple. Yet it is not direct, as in Topinard's suggestion that it is a matter of race or that a change of environment operates to stimulate growth. Rather does it appear that it is the growth which suggests the change. The tall men are in the main those vigorous, mettlesome, presumably healthy individuals who have themselves, or in the person of their fathers, come to the city in search of the prizes which urban life has to offer to the successful. On the other hand, the degenerate, the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of the few necessaries for the trip. He bought without haggling over prices, but insisted on the best. So it was four in the afternoon when he finally struck into the trail leading northward. This proved at first a broad, plainly marked path, across the alkali plain. He rode a mettlesome, half-broken bronco, a wicked-eyed brute, which required to be conquered twice within the first hour of travel; a second and more quiet animal trailed behind at the end of a lariat, bearing the necessary equipment. Hampton forced the two into a rapid lope, striving to make the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... rain, in pelting hail-storm and darkness, and never once until late in the autumn could they again come within striking distance. By that time the jaunty riders of the early spring-tide were worn to skeletons; the mettlesome horses—those that were left—barely able to stagger through weakness, exhaustion, and starvation. Then like prairie wolves the warriors closed once more about the jaded flanks, waiting, watching every chance of picking off the stragglers. Just one day did Differs's troop get under fire,—a ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the enclosure a span of handsome bay horses with a low phaeton in which were seated two ladies; and directly after them, at full gallop, came two riders on spirited, mettlesome sorrels. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... animated aspect. Equestrians and wheelmen were also out in full force, and the presence of so many people set Nan's blood tingling with excitement. She tossed her head back, as the governess uttered her decision, with the impatience of a mettlesome horse. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... that I have said, thou dost not gather, worthy reader, that Peter Stuyvesant was a tough, sturdy, valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor, either I have written to but little purpose, or thou art very dull ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... proper breeding: while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... boy, and a mettlesome spirit! You struck him swift and hard. 'Twould please me better if you had killed ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... they were to spend at home. Peaceful thoughts filled the hearts of most of them, but B.J. dreamed chiefly of the furious conflicts that awaited him on the lake, which had been the scene of many an adventure in his mettlesome ice-boat. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... it was hissed. Some young men, who gave the word to hiss, had said to some others, who inquired from them their reasons for doing so, that the trifle had too much luck, and then Andersen would be getting too mettlesome. ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen |
