"Racy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brain, and, gnawing the life cords there, died, crushed in the ruins of the gigantic beast. Afterwards it became a wolf, a dog, an ape, and finally a woman, where the quaint tale closes. Fielding is the author of a racy literary performance called "A Journey from this World to the Next." The Emperor Julian is depicted in it, recounting in Elysium the adventures he had passed through, living successively in the character of a slave, a Jew, a general, an heir, a carpenter, a beau, a monk, a ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Hertfordshire once being put on the spot and forced to enact the role of King Edward III saying goodbye to that girl of his, Fair Rosamund, at some sort of pageant in aid of the Distressed Daughters of the Clergy. It involved some rather warmish medieval dialogue, I recall, racy of the days when they called a spade a spade, and by the time the whistle blew, I'll bet no Daughter of the Clergy was half as distressed as I was. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... that evening, was really tempting. The absence of meat was compensated to us by the crisp and racy onions, and I craved only a little salt, which had been interdicted, as a most pernicious substance. I sat at one corner of the table, beside Perkins Brown, who took an opportunity, while the others were engaged in conversation, to jog my elbow gently. As I turned ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... greatly relieved. "I want a book of twenty pages. Write anything you like, only bring the pickles in on each page. You know the style. Twenty blood-curdling ballads, or Aesop's fables, or something the public's bound to read. Something racy, mind, and all ending in the pickle. It's a good thing, so you needn't be afraid of overdoing it. You shall have a bob a page, money down, or twenty-five bob for the lot if you let me have it this time to- morrow. Remember, nothing meek ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... written a life of Charlotte Bronte. But he holds his place in the front rank of recent essayists by the three 'Obiter Dicta' and 'Res Judicatae' volumes of manly, luminous, penetrating essays, full of racy humor and sudden wit; of a generous appreciativeness that seeks always for the vital principle which gave the writer his hold on men; still more, of a warm humanity and a sure instinct for all the higher and finer things of the spirit which never fail to strike chords ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... extraction, the price of transportation, and the expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be extravagant. Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending any previous developments of our racy Territory. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... explained to me, to return to the rational style and improving tone of Jane Austen, whose novels were sound educators as well as sources of amusement. From Miss Kingsley's natural fluency and sprightliness I expected something "racy," to quote Paul Barr, and I was disappointed to find "Moderation" dull and didactic. It was however heralded and published with a great flourish of trumpets; and Mr. Spence wrote a review of it in one of the leading newspapers under the symbol XXX (a signature of his known only to the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Cuff of's Gold and Watch was Chous'd: Whilst I therewith in Racy Wine Carous'd 'Tis fitting that such Dablers shou'd be caught And by their Losses to Repentance brought: Who will not say I serv'd him in his Kind? For he had that to which he had most mind. And since ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... those gentlemen of the old school, I came to know later, to whom it was an inherent impossibility to appear without affectation in the presence of a member of the opposite sex. A high liver, and a good fellow every inch of him, he could be natural, racy, charming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so much as the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would begin to strut and plume himself as instinctively as the cock in ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... greatly in his element at lunch. I never knew him more racy; he gave us biographies, mostly imaginary, illustrated by sketches, made in the intervals of eating, of the sitters whose portraits he has condescended to take this year. They range from a bishop and a royalty ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the rich interest of his matter alone. He wrote a racy style with a strong individual as well as Elizabethan flavor; and his personal comment upon the manners of his time serves as a piquant sauce to the solid meat of ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... the public eye. Her house, during the hours at any rate in which her boy was at school, was little else than a halting-place between two journeys. Visits to the poor, long watches by the sick; committees, in which her racy breadth of character gave her always an important place; discussions with the vicar, arguments with the curates, a chat with this person and a walk with that—these were the incidents and occupations which filled her day. Life was delightful to her; action, energy, influence, were delightful to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... England stock, being eighth in descent from Matthew Grant, who landed in 1630 and was Surveyor of Connecticut for over forty years. Grant's mother was one of the Simpsons who had been Pennsylvanians for several generations. His family was therefore as racy of the North as Lee's was of the South. His great-grandfather and great-granduncle, Noah and Solomon Grant, held British commissions during the final French-and-Indian or Seven Years' War (1756-63) when both were killed in the same campaign. ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... Move men were my tribe, and they ought to have known it by the look of me. They discussed my points of resemblance to "the Move white man," and I am ashamed to say I could not forbear from smiling, as I distinctly recognised my friends from the very racy description of their personal appearance and tricks of manner given by a lively Esoonian belle who had certainly met them. So content and happy did I become under these soothing influences, that I actually took off my boots, a thing I had quite got out of the habit of doing, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... olden spirit and feeling, that the new cannot be distinguished from the ancient; nay, he inserted lines and half lines, with such skill and nicety, that antiquarians are perplexed to settle which is genuine or which is simulated. Yet with all this he abated not of the natural mirth or the racy humour of the lyric muse of Scotland: he did not like her the less because she walked like some of the maidens of her strains, high-kilted at times, and spoke with the freedom of innocence. In these communications we observe how little his border-jaunt among ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... intellectual power of a poet goes, few men have excelled Bacon. He had a mind stored with imagery, able to produce various and vivid illustrations of whatever thought came before him; but these illustrations touched no deep feeling; they were fresh, original, racy, fanciful, picturesque, a play of the head that never touched the heart. The man was by nature cold; he had not the emotional depth or compass of an average Englishman. Perhaps his strongest feeling of an enlarged or ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... century they were almost the only readers of his published writings. They came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his great human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and indomitable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all vitalized by the spiritual force which came upon him through the encompassing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the welfare of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes him as "tall in stature, strong-boned, of a ruddy face, with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... amid which she worked; a woman named in one of General Castelnau's Orders of the Day and entitled to wear the Legion of Honour; a woman, too, who has seen horror face to face as few women, even in war, have seen it, yet still simple, racy, full of irony, and full of heart, talking as a mother might talk of her "grands blesses"! but always with humorous asides, and an utter absence of pose or pretence; flashing now into scorn and now into tenderness, as she described the conduct ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such names of fame as Nansen and the latter day dramatists of Norway, Ibsen and Björnsen.... Many of our authoress's chapters are immensely entertaining.... The pages from start to finish are really a treat; her book of travel is altogether too racy, too breezy, too observant, too new, to let us part from her with anything ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... beautiful one!—which of the world's streams canst thou envy, with thy beauty and renown? Stately is the Danube, rolling in its might through lands romantic with the wild exploits of Turk, Polak, and Magyar! Lovely is the Rhine! on its shelvy banks grows the racy grape; and strange old keeps of robber-knights of yore are reflected in its waters, from picturesque crags and airy headlands!—yet neither the stately Danube nor the beauteous Rhine, with all their fame, though abundant, needst thou envy, thou pure island stream!—and far less ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the Brethren further still. If the reader will kindly refer to the chapter on Peter, he will see that that racy pamphleteer had far more to say about good works than about the merits of saving faith; but now, after years of keen discussion, Procop of Neuhaus put to the Council of Elders the momentous question: "By what is a man justified?" ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... grave drawbacks: but the racy fun of the book almost atones for them: and the exaltation of the naval element of Roderick which one finds here in Trunnion and Hatchway and Pipes carries the balance quite to the other side. This is the case even without, but much more with, the taking into account ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... commit either a mean or a bad action. We are therefore doubly thankful to Emerson, both for what he says of England, and for what he relates of Carlyle, whose independent speech upon all subjects is one of his chief charms. He reads "Blackwood," for example, and has enjoyed many a racy, vigorous article in its pages; but it does not satisfy him, and he calls it "Sand Magazine." "Fraser's" is a little better, but not good enough to be worthy of a higher nomenclature than "Mud Magazine." Excessive praise of any one's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... opinions on all subjects, on public affairs and public men, on such questions of speculation or ethical interest as astrology and witchcraft, often strikingly expressed in language always racy and sincere, are scattered through the published volumes of his writings, all printed without note or comment. It may at least be a tribute to Fountainhall's memory to present a short view of his opinions, and for that purpose I have not scrupled to ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... purity of his French. But his style—a little archaic now, and never finished to the nail—had virtues of its own which have exercised a wholesome influence on classic French prose. It is simple, direct, manly, genuine. It is fresh and racy of the writer. It is flexible to every turn, it is sensitive to every rise or fall, of the thought. It is a steadfast rebuke to rant and fustian. It quietly laughs to scorn the folly of that style which writhes in an ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... a highly poetical nature, refined spiritual sensibilities, and a soul glowing with love to his Master. He was also a vigorous and original thinker. Some passages in his letters and journal are as racy and striking as anything in John Newton or Cecil. Mrs. Prentiss greatly enjoyed reading them to her friends. Some of them she copied and had published ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... next day, to see what his correspondent had to say about the visit. Some passages from it are too racy not to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... the speech of Elizabethan England than is the speech of modern Englishmen? Is it possible that it will be only in the common language of Englishmen that philologists will be able to find surviving the racy, good old American words and phrases of the last decades of the nineteenth century—a period which will be to American literature what the Elizabethan Age is to English. It may, of course, be absurd, but already there are certain individual Americanisms which have long been taboo in every reputable ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... "As a racy humorist and a brilliant wit using verse as an instrument of expression, he has no clear superior, probably no equal, so far at least as American readers are concerned, among writers who have employed the English language. As a satirist he has superiors, but scarcely as an inventor of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... trying on was over, and the Tony generosity was sufficiently enlarged upon, the ladies, as is the way with the best of the sex, fell into a mild gossip before separating. And while racy bits of Tenement shortcomings were being handed around, the small object of this gathering, too young, alas, to know the joys denied her because of her limited abilities to understand the nature of the conversation, slipped down from Mrs. O'Malligan's lap, and eluding Mary's absent ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... also, was entirely of the German stamp. It was boisterous, rollicking, aggressive, unsparing—of himself as little as of others—cynic, immoderate, but never without a touch of good-nature. His satire was often crushing, never venomous. His wit was racy and exuberant never equivocal. Whether he describes his vis-a-vis at a hotel table, his Excellency So-and-So, as "one of those figures which appear to one when he has the nightmare—a fat frog without legs, who opens his mouth as wide as his shoulders, like a carpet-bag, for each bit, so that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... redolent of the hearty fun and strong masculine sense of our old friend Sam Slick. The last work of Mr. Haliburton is quite equal to the first. Every page of the 'Old Judge' is alive with rapid, fresh sketches of character; droll, quaint, racy sayings; good-humoured practical jokes; and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Such effusions of German enthusiasm as "dearest, best, most unique of friends," "glorious, great man," and the italics which both Wagner and Liszt employ with a profusion of which any lady might be proud, have been scrupulously preserved. These slight touches give a racy flavour to the letters; and although they may occasionally call forth a smile, they will, no doubt, be appreciated by those who with Sterne "can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national character more in these nonsensical ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... keeps the rude And racy flavour of the wood. And you that loved the empty plain All redolent of wind and rain, Around you still the curlew sings— The freshness of the weather clings— The maiden jewels of the rain Sit in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very little care bestowed on cultivation and none to speak of on selection of the grape, the wine is rich and noble, slightly rough to a sophisticated palate, but clean in quality and powerful and racy. It deserves the enthusiasm ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... But I soon found out, first, that I was not, and had no ready means of making myself, competent for such a task; secondly, that the book did not need it. The very slight knowledge which every educated Englishman has of Transatlantic politics will be quite enough to make him enjoy the racy smack of the American soil, which is one of their great charms; and, as to the particular characters, they are most truly citizens of the world as well as Americans. If an Englishman cannot find 'Bird-o'-freedom Sawins,' 'John P. Robinson's,' 'pious editors,' and candidates "facin' south-by-north" ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... venture to inhabit, for several weeks, perhaps months. This thought made him cheerful and elated; he walked lustily on, shunning the high road. The day was clear, the sun bright, the air full of racy health. Oh, what soft raptures swelled the heart of the wanderer, as he gazed around him! The Poet and the Freeman alike stirred within his shattered heart! He paused to contemplate the berries of the icy trees, to listen to the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... America's most cruelly realistic treatment of certain city conditions. In the choice of Mr. Augustus Thomas's "In Mizzoura"—"The Witching Hour" having so often been used in dramatic collections—the Editor believes he has represented this playwright at a time when his dramas were most racy and native. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: - Introduction and Bibliography • Montrose J. Moses
... fire-place. "I'll continue the narrative as old Short told it to me, though not exactly in his own words, for those I cannot pretend to repeat—I cannot even hope to imitate his quaint expressions and racy humour. Noggin stood the attacks of his tormentors with as much heroism as could the most stoical of red warriors. We longed to rush in to his rescue, but we knew full well that the attempt would be worse ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... bright flowers about the window, to eat and drink of the best, to gossip with a neighbour for a quarter of an hour, never to wear stays or a dress except when she went to Fontainebleau shopping, to be kept in a continual supply of racy novels, and to be married to Doctor Desprez and have no ground of jealousy, filled the cup of her nature to the brim. Those who had known the Doctor in bachelor days, when he had aired quite as many theories, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surprise at this information, in very racy language, they entered the village; and, mingling with the throng of holiday-keepers, followed the stream towards ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was of the largest scale and dimensions, and marked by every species of almost enviable enthusiasm. His anecdotes, engrafted on them, were racy and sparkling; and I am not quite sure whether it was not in contemplation by him to build a small "oratoire" to the memories of Caxton and Wynkyn De Worde. He considered the folios of the latter, in the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... appeal on three special grounds to all lovers of English literature. They offer the most suggestive commentary on his poetry; they give the truest portrait of the man; they possess, at their best, in their ease, freshness, and racy vigour, a ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... I think, that Arthur's grave and humorous ways attracted her. He, when at his best, was a racy and paradoxical talker—with that natural tinge of veiled melancholy or cynicism half-suspected which is so fascinating, as seeming to imply a "past," a history. He ventured to speak to her more than once about her tendency to "drift." ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Weekly Museum, a good and popular journal that had been founded in 1790, the papers entitled "The Lay Preacher," upon which rests his literary fame. Of this magazine he became editor in 1796, and at once gathered about him a number of noble swelling spirits who contributed racy and original ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... were arranging, and in this atmosphere her womanly nature, chilled and dwarfed though it was, would often manifest itself in ways sweet and unexpected. Under no other circumstances could she have appeared so well. She as often spoke to herself in racy comment on what was before her as to Dennis, and ever and anon would make some pleasant remark to him, as she might throw a dainty morsel to her greyhound Wolf, looking wistfully at her while she dined. At the same time it must be confessed that she ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... contains a matchless series, in 154 vols., of the Works of Daniel De Foe, whom Coleridge was inclined to rank higher than Addison for his humour and as a writer of racy vigorous English. ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... a singularly racy piece of English, in which with the utmost plainness of speech the compilers give their reasons for having dealt with the old services as they have done. This reappears in the English Prayer Book of the present day under the title "Concerning the Service of ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... He was guarded enough; but on the way home I met Clinton who had been one of the guests at Mistress Katie's attempted wedding last week. He gave me details. Here they are." And these details lost nothing through Edmonson's racy recital of them. "No, Bulchester," he finished, "out of six people that I could name mixed up in this affair, on the whole, I am the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Puss, with a cautious pat To feel the pulse of the quivering Bat, That had not, under her tender paw, A limb to move, nor a breath to draw! Then she called her kit for a mother's gift, And stilled its mew with the racy lift. ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... weakly liked the better for the occasional gallicisms remaining from an inveterate habit of French. Those who know the writings of Mr. Henry James will recognize the inherited felicity of diction which is so striking in the writings of Mr. Henry James, Jr. The son's diction is not so racy as the father's; it lacks its daring, but it is as fortunate and graphic; and I cannot give it greater praise than this, though it has, when he will, a splendor and state which is ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with implements of woodland sport, rifle or shot-gun by my side, and well-broke setter or stanch hound recumbent at my feet. And one of these tales will I now venture to record, though it will sound but weak and feeble from my lips, if compared to the rich, racy, quaint and humorous thing it was, when flowing from the nature-gifted tongue of our old friend ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... looser and more varied than those of his contemporaries, are marvellously expressive, while yet they never depart from a secret and controlling sense of form. His vocabulary is very rich—stocked chiefly with old-fashioned words, racy, colloquial, smacking of the soil, and put together with the light elliptical constructions of the common people. Nicknames he is particularly fond of: the cat is Raminagrobis, or Grippeminaud, or Rodilard, or Maitre Mitis; the mice are 'la gent trotte-menu'; ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... chroniclers describe the preparations of William on his landing, with a graphic vigour, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us how Duke William's own ship was the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... device!" exclaimed the Cuban, as the two men got into the car, a small yellow runabout of racy appearance. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... act too freely, you will be a party to some racy intrigue. If they refuse to perform their work, there will be a sensation, and to your detriment. If you eat kidney-stew, some officious person will cause you disgust in some ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... his perilous journey. He went on a professional retainer. You don't catch Bedford Row in Swazieland on other terms. Being there, he kept his eyes open, saw a good deal, and describes his impressions in racy fashion. He did not like the coffee served en route, and was disappointed with the Southern Cross; but on the whole enjoyed the trip. One would naturally expect that the price of his book would be six-and-eight-pence, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... Macaronis, that they plucked their pigeon with the most graceful negligence in the world. They might live by their wits, but they knew how to wear always the jauntiest indifference of manner. Out came the feathers with a sure hand, the while they exchanged choice bon mots and racy scandal. Hazard was the game we played and I, Kenneth Montagu, was cast for the role of the pigeon. Against these old gamesters I had no chance even if the play had been fair, and my head on it more than one of them rooked me from start to finish. I was with a vast deal of good ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Biglow. It was no new thing to seek to arrest the public attention with the vernacular applied to public affairs. Major Jack Downing and Sam Slick had been notable examples, and they had many imitators; but the reader who laughed over the racy narrative of the unlettered Ezekiel, and then took up Hosea's poem and caught the gust of Yankee wrath and humor blown fresh in his face, knew that he was in at the appearance of something new in American literature. The force which Lowell displayed in these ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... grievous thing to corrupt the mind of the simple. Democracy in England has been the chief representative of veritable Englishness up to these days. It was never Latinized or Frenchified. The cottage garden refused to follow the bad example of the "carpet-bedder." The poor have always been racy of the soil. They have laughed at the absurdities of fashion and seen through the pretensions of wealth. They have believed in heartiness and cheerfulness. All their proverbs spring out of a keen sense of ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... patronage, without a cent I could call my own, I put my wares on the market. I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or did not do, to prevent it." There was a strange effectiveness in the simplicity of the man's speech. It was natural; it was racy; it was like nothing that Stephen had ever heard before. He wondered if it could be traced back to the phraseology of the circus? "Of course you think I am an extremist," concluded Gideon Vetch abruptly, "but before you are as old as I am you will ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... with a promise of Racy vintage rare as love)— With his merry, wanton air, Mirth and vanity and folly Why should he be made to bear Burden of some melancholy Song that swoons and sinks with care? Cease to call him sad or sober,— He's a ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... hook directly over the bench was a beautiful six-foot model of a racy-looking monoplane of peculiar and striking design. It was glistening in several coats of spar-varnish, and so light and delicate was its spidery frame that, as John reached out to take it in his hand, the exhalation of his breath set it ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... who were to be debutantes that season, the "crowd" or (more accurately to quote Madeleine Hollister's racy characterization) "the gang," stood before Hallam's drug store, chattering like a group of bright-colored paroquets. They had finished three or four ice-cream sodas apiece, and now, inimitably unconscious that they ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... after all, the personality back of the book was the supremely interesting thing. He abounded in anecdote, and could describe graphically the men he had met, the orators he had heard, the occasions of importance where he had been an interested spectator. His conversation was delightfully fresh and racy because of the vividness of the original impressions, the unusual force of the ideas which were the copies of these impressions, and the fine artistic sense which enabled him to determine at once what points should be omitted, and what words should be used most fittingly ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... before Merriton's arrival, Cleek did a little "altering" in face and general get-up, and when he did appear certainly no one would have recognized the aristocratic looking individual of a moment or two before, in an ordinary-appearing, stoop-shouldered, rather racy-looking tout. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... immensely proud. These people, before he has done with them, get hold of our sympathies, while the author keeps perennially fresh his enjoyment of human follies. His rustics do not talk with elaborate humor, nor are they amiable, but they are racy of the soil. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Cambrensis, Hist. Irel. c. 2, makes Roanus survive and tell the tale of Partholan to S. Patrick. He is the Caoilte mac Ronan of other tales, a survivor of the Fians, who held many racy dialogues with the Saint. Keating abuses Giraldus for equating Roanus with Finntain in his "lying history," and for calling him Roanus instead of Ronanus, a mistake in which he, "the guide bull of the herd," ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... found that the Kirkbeen folks, among whom she lived, were more impressed by the six months' experiences of two maiden ladies, who had gone to Valparaiso to join a brother who died, than with her fresh and racy descriptions of four young Australian colonies. She had seen Melbourne from 1852 to 1855—a wonderful growth and development. The only idea the ladies from Valparaiso formed about Australia was that it was hot and must ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... small-talk of ball-rooms and garden-parties, nor to be obliged to make the most, after a semi-libellous fashion, of after-dinner scandals, or gossip in the smoking-room. Not having heard them he cannot well report racy anecdotes, whereof sundry memoirs have been too full. In the happier condition of a partial anchoritism I have escaped clubs, London seasons, and country mansion gaieties; as a youth and to middle manhood a stammerer, I would not willingly court the humiliations of chattering society, and thereafter, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Puritan, And taught the kinship of the love Of man below and God above; To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks; Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, With old New England's flavor rife, Waifs from her rude idyllic life, Are racy as the legends old By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; To her who keeps, through change of place And time, her native strength and grace, Alike where warm Sorrento smiles, Or where, by birchen-shaded isles, Whose summer winds have shivered o'er The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... been considerably disappointed in Wilson's "Letters." We looked for something racy, having the full flavor of the author's best spirits. We found them plain matter-of-fact, not what we should term at all characteristic. Perhaps it was more natural that they should be of this sort. Letters are generally vent-holes for what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... was from childhood so accustomed to the sea, and the relish of salt breezes, and the racy dance of little waves that crowd on one another, and the tidal delivery of delightful rubbish, that to fail of seeing the many works and plays and constant variance of her never wearying or weary friend was more than she could long put up with. She called ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... is well that they are not more common— when by some singular harmony of body and spirit, every little sound and sight strikes on the senses with a peculiar sharpness and distinctness of quality, has a keen and racy savour, and comes as delightfully home to the mind as cool well-water to thirsty lips. Everything seems in place, in some well-designed combination or symphony of the senses; and more than that—the sound, the sight, whatever it be, sets free a whole ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... delightful delusion That to edit was racy and rare, But we suffered a sad disillusion, And we found that our castles were air; We had decked them with carvings and gildings, We had filled them with laughter and fun, But all of a sudden the buildings Came ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... and it would be so nice for him, poor dear, to have his wife near him in case he happened to get ... was "chipped" the proper technical term, or "potted"? The articles were intended to be the real thing—racy of the soil, don't you know? and full of "go" and atmosphere. Let it be said here that they achieved raciness. The London print in which they appeared came to be christened by the scoffer and the incredulous the Daily Whale—it swallowed and disgorged so many ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... American missionary, who has lived at Hamadan for thirty-three years. She has schools, etc., and she lives in the Armenian quarter, and devotes her life to her neighbours. Her language is entirely Biblical, and it sounds almost racy as she ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... the most racy and interesting book of travels we have read for a long time. Every body is of course acquainted with the general history of the expedition; its romantic projects, its speedy defeat, and the calamitous sufferings which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... of Jefferies' books. By his "Wild Life in a Southern County" he stands beside Gilbert White; by his "Story of My Heart" he stands by himself, a little apart from the poets, and by "Amaryllis at the Fair" he stands among the half-dozen country writers of the century whose work is racy of the English soil and of rural English human nature. We will name three of these writers, Barnes, Cobbett, Waugh, and our attentive readers can ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... all this. There is catkin pollen on the wind, hazel and sassafras are both in bloom now, and so are several of the earliest little flowers of the woods. You can gather enough of them combined to temper the disagreeable odour into a racy sweetness, and all the shrub blooms are good tonics, too, and some of the earthy ones. I'm going to try giving some of you empty cases next spring and analyzing the honey to learn if it isn't ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... might rather have entertained a prejudice against the Count before he knew him—though none could after—and who was prepared for something rather brilliant, but pretending, presumptuous, fantastic, and affected, quite yielded to his amiable gaiety, and his racy and thoroughly genuine and simple manner. So they walked and talked and laughed, and all agreed that it was the most fortunately fine day and the most felicitous rencontre that had ever occurred, until the dinner hour was at hand. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... du grand profit qui reviendroit a la Chretiente, s'il se faisoit inventaire de tous les corps saints et reliques," etc., 1543 (Oeuvres francoises de Calvin). A racy treatise, which well exhibits the service done by the author to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... there of a night shall be crowded by walls which rub off into a faint feather-bed of the flavor and consistency of geese used whole, and have for his feverish breakfast in the morning a version of broiled ham as racy of attic-salt as the rasher of BACON'S essays. And to him who pays his bill there, ere he straggles weakly forth to repair his shattered health by frenzied flight, shall be given in change such hoary ten-cent shreds of former postal currency as he has not hitherto ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... was full of the rich and racy characterizations, epigrams, and sarcasms which Senator Conkling was daily pouring out upon President Hayes, and especially Secretary Evarts. By all the rules of senatorial courtesy in those machine days, a member of the Cabinet from New York should have been a friend of its United States senator. ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... this work to be by far the most valuable and important Judge Haliburton has ever written. The exhaustless fund of humour—quiet, yet rich and racy, and at the same time overflowing with the milk of human kindness—which his writings display on one hand, and the wonderful knowledge of man's character, in all its countless varieties, which they exhibit on the other, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... sorrows, even committed such a breach of politeness as to inquire into each other's doings during the time of their separation. So they jogged on together, presenting the most delightful outward show of wedded harmony to the world,—and only a few were found to hazard the remark, that the "racy" novels Madame la Duchesse wrote to wile away her duller hours were singularly "bitter" in tone, for a woman whose lot in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... I have said," continued the duchess, "try, if you can, to be novel, and be a bodkin only to the victim's face, save, of course, in the case of a new bit of racy scandal. That must be used to the greatest advantage as soon as possible, for scandal, like unsalted ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... village. I shall never forget the confidence of the patriarch of the settlement, Uncle Jim, whose guest I was. The fact that we were without butter, and that "sweetness" (molasses) was low, was scarcely even noticed. I remember as if it were yesterday the stimulating tang of the frosty air and the racy problem of the open sea yet to be covered. The bag of birds which we had captured when we had driven in for shelter from the storm made our dry-diet supper sweeter than any Delmonico ten-course dinner, because we had wrested it ourselves from the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... round him spread out, moving nearer to me; and they laughed at his comical threat—which sounded all the more humorous from the Irishman's racy brogue, which became all the more prominent when Garry was at all excited. God knows, though, their merriment, untimely as it might have sounded to outside ears, betrayed no want of sympathy with their comrade. They laughed, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... tempting as our own minnows, and the trout simply lived in an atmosphere of them. Our Canadian brother anglers here, as elsewhere, are of the real good stamp, sportsmen to the core, pisciculturists, botanists, naturalists, racy conversationalists, and big-hearted to a man. Please fortune I shall shake ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... bearded, or Highland Collie, less popular still with the flock-master, a hardy-looking dog in outward style, but soft in temperament, and many of them make better cattle than sheep dogs. This dog and the Old English Sheepdog are much alike in appearance, but that the bearded is a more racy animal, with a head resembling that of the Dandie Dinmont rather than the square head of the Bobtail. The strong-limbed bearded Collie is capable of getting through a good day's work, but is not so steady nor so wise as the old-fashioned black and white, or even the smooth coated variety. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... pathetic close to these pages, so full of touches of humour, keen observation and racy anecdote. It would seem as if the hand which wielded so descriptive and ready a pen had wearied of its task; as if, at last, the sunny nature was overcast and the merry heart saddened. But surely not another word is needed to make the narrative more perfect. Those who first ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... Smooth Sam Fisher, however, his manner peeled off him like a skin, and he began to talk as himself, a racy and vigorous self vastly different from the episcopal person he thought it necessary to be ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... his friend!—as well call a Bug his bedfellow!" said the sturdy old yeoman, whose racy English I should like to borrow, to characterise the stupid incongruity between Garibaldi and his worshippers. It is not easy to conceive anything finer, simpler, more thoroughly unaffected, or more truly dignified, than the man himself. His noble ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... he cried, at last. "Come, I call that good, rich, racy! Will your sublime Excellency have the kindness to explain yourself? If my life is in your hand it's in a devilish lean and weak one. It strikes me you've got some kink in your brain—some notion or other. Out with it, and let us see what you're ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... gave a faithful account of the fight, making mention of many incidents which his friend had omitted to touch on, and dwelling particularly on the deeds of Kettle. As to that flat-nosed individual himself, when called upon to speak, he addressed the assembly with a dignity of manner and a racy utterance of language which amazed those who had only known him as a thrall, and who now for the first time met him as a freed man. He moreover introduced into his speech a few touches of humour which convulsed his audience with laughter, and commented on the condition ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... virile, racy, Saxon style, while it delighted men of taste, was also intelligible to the humblest commoner, and accounted in some measure for the tremendous popularity of his journal, the "Political Register." The government was unable to secure Cobbett's conviction and he was suffered ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... and the stove in the parlor attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint, emerald green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously for the amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and scenes in a racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to what she said. In a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with similar vulgarity, owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the reputation which our country-women bear in America by looking a ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... we like to know the lineage of great earls and swift race-horses. We like to know that the discovery of the law of gravitation was born of the fall of an apple in an English garden on a summer afternoon. Essays written after this fashion are racy of the soil in which they grow, as you taste the larva in the vines grown on the slopes of Etna, they say. There is a healthy Gascon flavour in Montaigne's Essays; and Charles Lamb's are scented with the primroses ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... with the second course. The table was no sooner cleared of the cloth, and the racy wine with double rows of glasses again placed in array, than almonds, raisins, olives, oranges, Indian conserves, and biscuits deviled, covered the board! To it again they fell, with unabating vigour! I soon found ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... received invitations, from the mayor down to the apothecary, an excessively emaciated German, with ferocious pretensions to a good Russian accent, which led him into continually and quite inappropriately employing racy colloquialisms.... Tremendous preparations were, of course, put in hand. One purveyor of cosmetics sold sixteen dark-blue jars of pomatum, which bore the inscription a la jesmin. The young ladies provided themselves with tight dresses, agonising in the waist and ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... manner of Fletcher and Ben Jonson kept up to hide, at first sight, the utter want of anything like their matter; and as one sickens at the rakish swagger and the artificial smartness of his coxcombs, one regrets the racy and unaffected blackguardism of the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... delinquencies of those who breathe the same air with us; they could not fail to be interesting to us all, were we not aware that, like the novels which are said to be "founded on fact," their most rich and racy parts are frequently fiction. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... ranging with his eyes the opposite side of the room and showing himself at last so much more completely as diverted that it fairly attracted their hostess's notice. Mrs. Lowder, however, only smiled on Milly for a sign that something racy was what she had expected, and resumed, with a splash of her screw, her cruise among the islands. "Oh, I've heard that," the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... in favour of the present undertaking what had long been a favourite project: that of a new edition of Shelton's "Don Quixote," which has now become a somewhat scarce book. There are some—and I confess myself to be one—for whom Shelton's racy old version, with all its defects, has a charm that no modern translation, however skilful or correct, could possess. Shelton had the inestimable advantage of belonging to the same generation as Cervantes; "Don Quixote" had to him a vitality ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... spectrum-shawled old ladies on door-steps and sugary, sticky candy in the grimy hands of shiny-haired children—and the late sun striking down on the sides of the tall tenements. All very rich and racy and savory, like a dish by a provident French chef that one could not help enjoying, even though one knew that the ingredients ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... duty of the Clerk of the Acts shows the importance of the office, and the statement that if the clerk is not fitted to act as a commissioner he is a blockhead and unfit for his employment is particularly racy, and not quite the form of expression one would expect to find in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... like Lincoln cannot be adequately described in the short space available in such a book as this. His externals are well appreciated, his tall figure, his powerful ugliness, his awkward strength, his racy humour, his fits of temperamental melancholy; well appreciated also his firmness, wisdom and patriotism. But if we wish to grasp the peculiar quality which makes him almost unique among great men of action, we shall perhaps find the key in the fact that ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... Mrs. Jim' is worth as many Mrs. Wiggses as could be crowded into the Cabbage Patch. The racy humor and cheerfulness and wisdom of the book make it ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... find that Mr. Heady (Uncle Juvinell) has produced a very entertaining and instructive volume. It is written in a racy, sprightly style, that cannot fail to captivate the mind. Partaking himself of the buoyancy and good humor of boyhood, the author is able to write for the boys in a manner that is at once attractive and profitable. He has written a live book of one, who, "though dead, yet speaketh." It ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... of a snaky slim cowpuncher on a racy horse intensified this impression in Pan's mind, stamped the future more vividly on his heart. It was what he had been ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... cutting the fruit in half, offered me one moiety, and threw the other away. More than once he repeated this ceremony, which somewhat excited my surprise. At length he inquired my opinion of his fruit. I enlarged, and with sincerity, on its admirable quality, the racy sweetness of its flavour, which I esteemed unequalled; but I could not refrain from expressing my surprise, that of fruit so exquisite he should studiously waste ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... at the heart of the boulevard, where its main entrance was a blaze of light, among the fashionable restaurants and select clubs,—a theatre to which small parties used to adjourn after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... especially for plays, and contains very few quartos. When he collected his works in three volumes in 1710, he apparently destroyed (at least he did not list) the earlier editions of his plays in quarto. He loved to write such ballads as the racy "Jack French-Man's Defeat," but he never recognized these by including them in his book list or in his collected works; nor did he list his youthful novel Incognita (1691), if indeed he had a copy of it. Such omissions were later made by men with much greater ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... are real living boys, with the virtues and faults which characterize the transition stage between boyhood and manhood. The Cornish fishermen are drawn from life, they are racy of the soil, salt with the sea water, and they stand out from the pages in their jerseys and sea-boots all sprinkled with silvery ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... sidewalk, Mr. Penfield Evans strode into the somnolent afternoon, turning down Huron Street. At the remote end of the block and before her large frame mansion of a thousand angles and wooden lace work, Mrs. Harvey Herrington's low car sidled to her curb-stone, racy-looking as a hound. That lady herself, large and modish, was in the act ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... an audacious idea for its central motive.... This bright idea is handled with no little skill, and the interest is kept up breathlessly until the tragic end of the experiment. The whole story has a racy ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... riders were close at hand, and that the horses did not get out on the slope of sage. He sat back and gloried in the sight. He owned bands of mustangs; near by was a field of them, fine and mettlesome and racy; yet Bostil had eyes only for the blooded favorites. Strange it was that not one of these was a mustang or a broken wild horse, for many of the riders' best mounts had been captured by them or the Indians. And it was ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Where hints of racy sap and gum Out of the old dark forest come; Where birds their beaks like hammers wield, And pith is pierced and bark is peeled; Where the green walnut's outer rind Gives precious bitterness to the wind; There ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... is steeped in Russian popular and legendary lore. His roots are deep down in the Russian soil. He is the greatest living master of racy and idiomatic Russian. He has also written prose that elbows poetry, and that was looked upon with surprise and bewilderment until people realised that it was poetry. But his importance in the history of the Russian Novel is of another kind. It is firstly in his deliberate effort to ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... it was through the writer's entourage in the world or her entree to fashionable circles, or whether on account of its own intrinsic literary worth, had an immense success in its day. The racy description it contains of Canadian scenery, and colonial life, mixed with the fashionable gossip of our Belgravians of 1766, seven years after the conquest, caused several English families to emigrate ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... were beginning their revolutionary Encyclopaedia. Rousseau was sounding the first notes of his mad eloquence,—the wild revolt of a passionate and diseased genius against a world of falsities and wrongs. The salons of Paris, cloyed with other pleasures, alive to all that was racy and new, welcomed the pungent doctrines, and played with them as children play with fire, thinking no danger; as time went on, even embraced them in a genuine spirit of hope and goodwill for humanity. The ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... out a cup of tea; gloomily he watched him drink it. Heedless of his gloom, Mr. James plunged into an account of his stay in Scotland, telling of the country, the food, and the people with an agreeable, racy vivacity. Slowly the great cloud lifted from Hilary Vance's ample face. He grew interested; he asked questions; ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... literary ferment of which in this volume I am striving to give a history as little inadequate as possible. They had in the air around them an English purged of archaisms and uncouthnesses, fully adapted to every literary purpose, and yet still racy of the soil, and free from that burden of hackneyed and outworn literary platitudes and commonplaces with which centuries of voluminous literary production have vitiated and loaded the English of our own day. They were not afraid of Latinising, but they had an ample stock of the pure vernacular ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury |
