"Leap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man, far away now from "bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... The sudden leap with which he sprang from his seat to welcome her, the frank laughter with which he several times interrupted her speech, the childlike loving way in which he held his arm round his little mother while he greeted her, and asked why she was going out so late, the winning, touching tone of his voice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with me, placed his hand on my shoulder, and we left the supper-room together. He came down to see me into my carriage, and as I was stepping into it he once more shook my hand and said, "You are very young. I am old enough to be your father. Always remember your English proverb: 'Look before you leap.' Good ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... time," says Lamarck, "and a greater influence of surrounding conditions, is necessary in order to modify interior organs. Nevertheless we see that Nature does pass from one system to another without any sudden leap, when circumstances require it, provided the systems are not too far apart. Her method is to proceed from the more simple to the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... by his chum; but was altogether the result of fright on the part of Domino. Why, the big and powerful black acted as though he had gone wild, jumping madly about, now fairly flying off to one side, only to whirl and dance and leap high in the air, until every one within seeing distance was staring at the strange spectacle. And this, too, in a town where bucking broncos were ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... had felt his blood leap and his spirits rise in a way that could mean only one thing, and he knew Satan was near, although it was too dark to see him. He came to us, and we walked along together, and Seppi poured out his gladness like water. It was as if he were a lover and had found his sweetheart who ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the Christmas-chimes breaks the jangling of fire-bells. The count's house is on fire! The sparks pour out thicker and faster; tongues of flame leap to the sky; the bells clang hoarsely; the Christmas procession is broken into wild disorder; the wheels of the engine roll through the streets, unheard in ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... now remaining. From the titles of their pieces, and other indications, it appears they sometimes introduced historical personages, as for instance the poetess Sappho, with Alcaeus's and Anacreon's love for her, or her own passion for Phaon; the story of her leap from the Leucadian rock owes, perhaps, its origin, solely to the invention of the comic writers. To judge from their subject-matter, these comedies must have approached to our romantic drama; and the mixture of beautiful passion with the tranquil grace of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yea ill able Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable. Iambics march from short to long;— With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng; One syllable long, with one short at each side, Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride;— First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud highbred Racer. If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise, And ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... know that this is Leap Year? Do you begin to feel the glorious flood of liberty which it lets in upon the female women of this country? As a society and as individuals, let us press forward to the mark of the prize—I ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... in which all the tails of all the peacocks God was making, lay steeped in their proper dye. Numerous were the sharp turns the donkeys made in their ascent; and at this corner and that, the sweetest life-giving wind would leap out upon the travellers, as if it had been lying there in wait to surprise them with the heavenliest the old earth, young for all her years, could give them. But they were getting too tired to enjoy anything, and were ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... with the hope of the reconstitution of their country, and assured of finding amongst them inexhaustible stores of provisions, ammunition, and soldiers. "A Pole is not a man," he was accustomed to say, "he is a sabre." He counted on all these sabres being ready to leap from their scabbards at his voice, for the service of Poland. To the disquietude of the court of Vienna on the subject of the insurrections which might be produced in Galicia, Napoleon answered in advance by the promise of Silesia. "The insurrection in Poland ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... his eyes when he thought of it. His misery assumed a certain solemnity; he was lifted up on the wings of a kind of exaltation. It was a mood in which he might have done almost anything, however foolish. He advanced towards the farther parapet; the drop was sheer there and uninterrupted. A good leap, and perhaps one might clear the narrow terrace and so crash down yet another thirty feet to the sun-baked ground below. He paused at the corner of the tower, looking now down into the shadowy gulf below, now up towards the rare ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... round and reported the answer; and then, in obedience to his order from Mistress Alice he cried out, in imitation of the sentinels, "Pass, Ramsay, and all's well!"—presented his arms, and made a flying leap off the rock, where he stood, down on the platform, that he might lower the ladder as soon as Ramsay was up, who desired everybody might be sent down to secure the boxes of specie as fast as they could, lest the cutter's people, releasing themselves, should attempt an attack. Now, there was ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... Refuge, near the boundary ridge of the high land, through which they have made a deep cut, and formed a valley of a very romantic character. A short distance above their junction, each branch takes a leap downward of about seventy feet; and when united, they do not run above a quarter of a mile northward before they descend with redoubled force a precipice of nearly one hundred and twenty feet; there are then one or two small cascades, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... involved what seemed to be the very stronghold of his situation, had to be taken without a moment's warning. He decided for or against without knowing why. Under his feet fissures opened. He must take the leap without seeing the other edge. Somehow he always landed upon his feet; somehow his great, cumbersome engine, lurching, swaying, in spite of loosened joints, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... scientific value of the work lies in its comparative anatomy, creating as it were (as we have said) the science of palaeontology at a leap; but there are in it also sundry other philosophical deductions in geology, such as the following: that in the strata called primitive there are no remains of life or organized existence;—that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... to your feet, O daughters, rise, Our mother still is young and fair. Let the world look into your eyes And see her beauty shining there. Grant of that beauty but one ray, Heroes shall leap from every hill; Today shall be as yesterday, The red blood ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... know or they do not care that the fields and woods should be full, not only of health and all that goes with it, including success, but also of the best of friends who all have their good points worthy of notice and imitation, in quick leap, cheerful voice and blithe song. What are sixty minutes in this great outdoor runway? Not a tithe of the twenty-four hours and at best only half of what the minimum should be. Exercise should be taken ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... amazing rapidity, but it is impossible to see the direction it will take. There are little insects known to our childish days as skip-jacks. Scratch them with the end of a piece of grass, and they reward you for your pains—they will jump—bound with one spasmodic leap and vanish. So is the working of a woman's mind. You can be almost certain of the jump—but of ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... strangers to that minor degree of interest which belongs, in a sailor's regard, to all objects nearer than the horizon. But Stephen was triumphantly happy. Every other thought or care was thrown into unmarked perspective by the certainty that Maggie must be his. The leap had been taken now; he had been tortured by scruples, he had fought fiercely with overmastering inclination, he had hesitated; but repentance was impossible. He murmured forth in fragmentary sentences his happiness, his adoration, his tenderness, his belief ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... me this same groning love, Troubled with stitches and the cough a'th lungs, That wept his eyes out when he was a child, And ever since hath shot at hudman-blind, Make him leap, caper, jerk, and laugh, and sing, And play me horse-tricks; Make Cupid wanton as his mother's dove: But in this sort, boy, ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... passed before Lawton could put a stop to that. Even while careening he had been alive to Slashaway's peril, and had tried to leap to his aid. But the ship's steadily increasing gyrations had hurled him away from the skipper and against a massive vaulting horse, barking the flesh from his shins and spilling him with violence onto ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... to see a flame of fire run round the breastworks, a furnace of flame leap up from the batteries, and then—victory or death—behind old Hickory! ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... although they did not have to work, pulled at the oars with the others, and more than one man noticed how the mighty muscles of Henry Ware's arm swelled and bunched as he made the boat leap forward. But they did not maintain their high rate of speed long. As the rivers ran it was a good two thousand miles to Fort Pitt, and they did not wish to exhaust themselves on the first twenty. Long Jim at last let his oar rest and patted ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... call 'murder' as hard as I could, but father, it was him did it, got a hold of me again, and told me he'd soon shut up my fly trap. I know'd he was goin' to do it, so I give an awful leap and sprung clear over his head and right out in de snow. I know'd he wouldn't go far to katch me, for he'd have enough to do to clear hisself, so I waded along till I come to de man's house ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... common account is that Remus, in derision of his brother, leaped over the newly-erected walls, and was thereupon slain by Romulus in a fit of passion, who, mocking him, added words to this effect:" So perish every one hereafter, who shall leap over my walls." Thus Romulus obtained possession of supreme power for himself alone. The city, when built, was called after the name of its founder.[5] He first proceeded to fortify the Palatine Hill, on which ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... at the same time, the other on the western ocean. We all act together. If some time our great men talk long and loud at our council fires, but shed one drop of white men's blood, our young warriors, as thick as the stars of the night, will leap on board of our great boats, which fly on the waves, and over the lakes—swift as the eagle in the air—then penetrate the woods, make the big guns thunder, and the whole heavens red with the flames ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way received. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry! and the old tree at the window with no room for its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the old Master of the old Company, on which it drips. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... a long letter from Cranch and his wife. They are now in Washington, and are enjoying the same June weather that we have here. They have a peculiar interest to me as those who are to take the leap into the ocean whence we do not know whether we shall emerge upon some fairy island or upon desolate rocks or shall sink forever deeper and deeper in the sea-caves where the mermaids are. For a residence in Italy is certainly, in ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... steed of the desert refused to recognize his master when he entered the courtyard of the Palace. In vain he pats, with his own hand, the wavy silken mane: no neigh of joy now answers his caress; he strives to leap upon him as in the morning of this eventful day, but the haughty charger rears, stands erect upon his hind legs, and refuses to be mounted. Enraged beyond control, he thrusts his long sword into the glossy flanks. The startled animal breaks ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... conscious even yet of the thrills that pricked my spine, as this monster with nineteen companions spurned the earth in a mad, rushing leap out into space and sailed away into the night to let the inhabitants of German towns know that "frightfulness" was a game ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... exercise. It filled its case, and did not rattle like a withered kernel, or sound soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular brain. The owner felt that he could trust it for an effort, as he could his lungs for a shout, his legs for a leap, or his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... or two it would be still, then the hidden varlets would be as noisy as before. Then the pig-tail would begin to twitch, and he would mutter: 'Jim, tell those people they must be still.' Again a minute of quiet, and once more the jabbering and shouting. Now with a leap he would clutch his long walking-stick and charge the crowd in the quarter, laying about him with amazing nimbleness, until all the offenders were run to their holes. Back he would come from his excursion and settle himself to sleep. I could see that his rage was merely on the surface ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... been gained? Two men there were who might leap up and fight for their lives. But they were unarmed, while the alert Mexicans had revolvers in their hands and ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... if it were caught under precisely these conditions, could have done little more than drift down the channel. The boys resigned themselves to their fate. Now and again the fog shut down. Wild cries of sea-birds were about them. Now and then the leap of a great dolphin feeding in the tide splashed alongside, to startle them yet more. Each moment, as they knew, carried them farther and farther from their friends, and deeper and deeper into dangers whose nature ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... and among the rocks; always making way, always gathering itself for one of its wild leaps which should lay an entire new province under its ravaging. Somewhere on the other side of that ring of fire were four men. They were trying to cut a lane over which the fire could not leap. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... voyage was a voyage of enchantment to me. The ship was laden with pig-iron, and she rolled and rolled and rolled. She could never roll too much for me! I have always been a splendid sailor, and I feel jolly at sea. The sudden leap from home into the wilderness of waves does not give me ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... muttered Frank, as if waking from a dream. "It must be so." To thrust on his boots, change his dressing-robe for a frock-coat, snatch at his hat, gloves, and cane, break from Spendquick, descend the stairs, a flight at a leap, gain the street, throw himself into a cabriolet,—all this was done before his astounded visitor could even recover breath enough to ask "What's ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the cayuse turned slightly, and whether he leaped deliberately or his feet slipped on the slippery stones, forcing him to leap, we could not say, but he plunged suddenly into the stream, uttering a cry that echoed up the canon and over the river like the cry of ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... their backs, and in an instant they were in the street, the engine manned, its fire ablaze, and the horses alive to the stiff job they had before them of reaching the fire in an incredibly short space of time. But hardly had they taken the first leap from one of the boulders over the cavities with which New York streets abound to another, than a whistle from the Captain stopped them. It was a false alarm given for my edification. Before they could get ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... rush from the city through the gate of Eeker. It was locked; they then turned and fled towards the Red-gate, where they were met face to face by Don Pedro Tassis, who charged upon them with his dragoons. Retreat seemed hopeless. A horseman in complete armor, with lance in rest, was seen to leap from the parapet of the outer wall into the moat below, whence, still on horseback, he escaped with life. Few were so fortunate. The confused mob of fugitives and conquerors, Spaniards, Walloons, Germans, burghers, struggling, shouting, striking, cursing, dying, swayed hither and thither like ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the March Hare leap in with his hat on his head and his towel on his arm. He did look properly mad, I can ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... own eager shout in the heat of my trance, How oft it awakes me from dreams full of glory, When I meant to have leap'd on the hero of France, And have dash'd him to earth pale ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... matter, I mean. I cannot say the style of it quite satisfies me. It is too lyrical. The auditors, to whom it is feigned to be told, do not arride me. I had rather it had been told me, the reader, at once. "Hart-leap Well" is the tale for me; in matter as good as this, in manner infinitely before it, in my poor judgment. Why did you not add "The Wagoner"? Have I thanked you, though, yet for "Peter Bell"? I would not not have it for a good ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... mutual safety. The Pawnees were not long in catching a view of these new objects, and several turned their steeds to pursue. The race continued for a mile without a murmur from the sufferer, though in addition to the agony of his body, he had the pain of seeing his enemies approach at every leap of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the town had taken some of the game out of me, for when I saw the big dark horse flatten his ears, the wicked eyes rolling, and the great fore-hoofs drumming on the road, ready to leap and batter the woman and her bairn to a bloody pulp fornent me, my stomach turned, as we say, and I felt sick and giddy. Many a morning had I stood at the loose-box door and watched the devil in the horse and the devil in the man battle for mastery, and aye the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... minutes, a pair of fiery, red eyes looked down at us from the snowbank; then another, and another pair, until there were a dozen. We sat perfectly still, and presently one great gray wolf gathered himself, and made a leap for the elk-meat on the saddle. He nearly touched it with his nose, but failed to secure the coveted prize, and fell headlong into the fire. We fired two shots into him, and he lay still until one of the Indians pulled ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... looked at his companions. They were as transparent as shrimps, but of this lovely cerulean blue. And as they leaped they barked—"Howf! Howf!"—like barking Gnus; and when they leaped Harry had to leap with them. Besides barking, they snapped and wrangled with each other; and in ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... chest and neck, seemed to clamour together in hungry fury. I leant there trying to stifle, to kill the thoughts that came and beat down the brutal rage. And as I stood there I heard Howard cough in the next room—that slight effeminate cough he gave when nervous or confused. I felt my blood leap at the sound, and it rushed in a scalding stream over my face. I raised my head and began mechanically ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... embodied, that it may be imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning coals are gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth to all that are in the house. 'God so loved the world'—not merely so much, but in such a fashion—'that'—that what? Many people would leap at once from the first to the last clause of the verse, and regard eternal life for all and sundry as the only adequate expression of the universal love of God. Not so does Christ speak. Between that universal love ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... eyes were nothing like so tired. Save for the crackle of the fire and the tick of the great clock, there was silence in the firelit room and presently Roger caught something in Doctor Ralph's thoughtful face that made his heart leap wildly. ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... grumbled some reply, and lifted his stick to give Greenfinch a blow for no reason in particular, but Greenfinch saw the movement, and with a leap over Snowflake's back she got out of the way, and the stick only hit ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... SPEAKER invites those who support application to rise in their places. Gentlemen below the Gangway, with hearts bleeding for famished fellow-creatures in far-off Ind (subject reminds them, by the way, that dinner is nearly ready), leap to their feet. Twice the forty necessary thus forthcoming; leave given, and SWIFT MACNEILL proceeds to open his budget. Then strange thing happens. The eighty Gentlemen who sprang up to secure hearing for MACNEILL, being on their legs, conclude that, as it's so near dinner-time, scarcely worth while ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... neither Lily nor you would let me. My good friend and earliest patron, the German merchant at Luscombe, who called on me yesterday, offered to cover them with guineas thrice piled over the canvas. Imagine how happy I felt when I forced him to accept them as a present. What a leap in a man's life it is when he can afford to say, "I give!" Now then, at last, at last I am in a position which justifies the utterance of the hope which has for eighteen years been my solace, my support; been ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not so cocksure, half an hour later, on an open road, when a siren whistle wailed behind him, and before the sound had died away, Eugene's car, coming from behind with what seemed fairly like one long leap, went by the runabout and dwindled almost instantaneously in perspective, with a lace handkerchief in a black-gloved hand fluttering sweet derision as it was swept onward into minuteness—a mere white ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... or other means of confining the stream at the spring. For the conveyance of the current to any distance you must build either enclosed or open aqueduct; and in the hot square of the city where you set it free, you find it good for health and pleasantness to let it leap into a fountain. On these several needs you have a school of sculpture founded; in the decoration of the walls of wells in level countries, and of the sources of springs in mountainous ones, and chiefly of all, where the women of household or market ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... was watching the horses closely, and on a sudden he took hold of the chariot and took the chariot driver out and dashed him against the nearest rock, and made a leap into his place himself, and made a cast of the Persian spear at the king, that went through his heart. And then he and his brothers scattered the people before them, and brought ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... certainly the best-bred monster in the caravan. The lion and the lioness are busy with two beef-bones. The royal tiger, the beautiful, the untamable, keeps pacing his narrow cage with a haughty step, unmindful of the spectators or recalling the fierce deeds of his former life, when he was wont to leap forth upon such inferior animals from the jungles ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... idiom? Some, I know, insensible to these virtues, and ambitious of I know not what unattainable decomposition, prefer to utter funeral praises over the grave of departed Anglo-Saxon, or, starting with convulsive shudder, are ready to leap from surrounding Latinisms into the kindred, sympathetic arms of modern German. For myself, I neither share their regret, nor their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to the shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the base ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... been resigned to Bramble, who ordered me to go forward with the boat's painter, a long coil of rope, and stand ready either to leap out with it or throw it to those on shore, as might be most advisable; the other men were sitting on the thwarts, their long oars in the rowlocks, backing out as desired, and all ready to strain every nerve when the order was given by Bramble ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... when Tyndall, climbing to the top of the Matterhorn, reads on that rock-page all the events of the ancient world, the mountain is dwarfed to an ant hill and becomes insignificant in the presence of the mountain-minded scholar. Hunters tell us that when crossing a swamp they leap from one hummock of grass to another. But Herschel and Proctor, exploring the heavenly world, step from star to star. The husbandman, squeezing a cluster of grapes in his cup, does but interpret to us the way in which the scholar squeezes planets ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of the Southwestern's dramatic upward leap to the rank of a great railway system, President Colbrith has the name and the fame. Yet here and there in the newspaper record there is mention of one Stuart Ford, "our rising young railroad magnate," ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Saint-Huruge, a man that has had losses, and has deserved them, is seen eminent, and also heard. 'Bellowing' is the character of his voice, like that of a Bull of Bashan; voice which drowns all voices, which causes frequently the hearts of men to leap. Cracked or half-cracked is this tall Marquis's head; uncracked are his lungs; the cracked and the uncracked shall ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... suffered to visit Abner in mortal form, to counsel, warn, entreat; to tell him that there yet might be mercy for him if he would but turn and repent! There was a terrific struggle in the renegade's mind. He could not at once decide on taking so bold and sudden a leap as that to which he was urged, though conscious of the peril as well as misery of his present position at the court. As the deer, driven by wolves to the precipice's brink, hesitates on making the plunge down—though it give him the only chance of escape from the ravening jaws of ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... ride did not kill the horse was no fault of Frank's; for when he was reined sharply up in the "Go Bang" yard, and his rider sprang from his back and into the house at one leap, he staggered and fell, white with foam, and with his breath coming ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... memories of feudalism, hear of a man so addressed, so flattered, and we leap at once to the conclusion that he is hereditary and absolute. Hereditary he is; born of a great family, he must always be a man of mark; but yet his office is elective and (in a weak sense) is held on good behaviour. Compare the case of a Highland chief: born one of the great ones of his clan, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the blood, dies away; the path seems drearier and the footsteps falter. Such a time came to Rebecca, and her bright spirit flagged when the letter was received saying that her position in Augusta had been filled. There was a mutinous leap of the heart then, a beating of wings against the door of the cage, a longing for the freedom of the big world outside. It was the stirring of the powers within her, though she called it by no such grand name. She felt as if the wind of destiny ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... years old, and strong as you see, and good to look at, the women have said. I can leap and run against any man, and I can break a bar of iron against my knee, and I can keep up with the fastest horse that flies, and I can root up a young oak without too much effort. I am strong enough, and my life is at the full, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... sacrifice to Baal, so that, as the ship proceeded in safety after Jonah was cast overboard, the affairs of the group about the May-Eve fire might prosper when it was purged of the one whom Baal designated by lot. Later only the symbol of offering was used, the victim being forced to leap thrice over ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... mares void vessels made there-for; and they be all open above, and hanging low to the earth. And then they send forth those mares for to pasture about those hills, and with-hold the foals with them at home. And when the pismires see those vessels, they leap in anon: and they have this kind that they let nothing be empty among them, but anon they fill it, be it what manner of thing that it be; and so they fill those vessels with gold. And when that the folk suppose that ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... weakness. They knew that my motto "Quand-meme" had not been adopted by me merely by chance, but that it was the outcome of a deliberate exercise of will power on my part. My mother had told them how I had chosen this motto at the age of nine, after a formidable leap over a ditch which no one could jump and which my young cousin had dared me to attempt. I had hurt my face, broken my wrist, and was in pain all over. Whilst I was being carried home I exclaimed furiously, "Yes, I would do it again, quand-meme, if any ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... commencement of his reputation.[26] His whole military career was in accordance with this act. He had but one passion, love of war. He would often, even in mid-winter, have one or two pailsful of cold water poured upon him, as he rose from his bed, and then, in his shirt, leap upon an unsaddled horse and scour the camp with the speed of the wind. Sometimes he would appear, in the early morning, at the door of his tent, stark naked, and crow like a cock. This was a signal for the tented host to spring to arms. Occasionally he would visit the hospital, pretending ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... sleepy eyes and stretched their thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap—the height of the grand symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels' chatter were only the first ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... turned his back on them. 'Nothing but vexation,' he muttered between his teeth, and strode with long steps homewards. Sofron followed him. The village constable opened his eyes wide, looking as if he were just about to take a tremendous leap into space. The bailiff drove a duck away from the puddle. The suppliants remained as they were a little, then looked at each other, and, without turning their heads, went on ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... was at once excited and charmed by Nature. The truest way would have been to have laid aside all books until the child himself demanded them. Often of a sunny day, when he sat in the tower opposite his teacher, he was seized with a strong desire to leap out of the window, and rush into the fresh woods after the birds that had just flown away, or in search of the squirrel of which he had caught a glimpse. What a penance it was to write his copy, while the wild roses beckoned him to come and ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to the eyes, and run for it," he said. "I'll go first, then you, Eve, and Dick behind. Make for the point and leap—the water is deep there." ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... box door, put the pistol to the President's head, and fired. Major Rathbone sprang to grapple with him, and received a savage knife wound in the arm. Then, rushing forward, Booth placed his hand on the railing of the box and vaulted to the stage. It was a high leap, but nothing to such an athlete. He would have got safely away but for his spur catching in the flag that draped the front of the box. He fell, the torn flag trailing on his spur; but, though the fall had broken his leg, he rose instantly and brandishing his knife and ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... greatly to blame if I were to omit that, as soon as Manilov had pronounced these words, the face of his guest became replete with satisfaction. Indeed, grave and prudent a man though Chichikov was, he had much ado to refrain from executing a leap that would have done credit to a goat (an animal which, as we all know, finds itself moved to such exertions only during moments of the most ecstatic joy). Nevertheless the guest did at least execute such a convulsive shuffle ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... came early, and stood about in corners, looking as if they had more arms and legs than they knew what to do with. Tom did his best to be a good host; but ceremony oppressed his spirits, and he was forced to struggle manfully with the wild desire to propose a game of leap-frog, for the long drawing-rooms, cleared for ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... gude Scots motto. It means to go slow—to be sure before you leap. It sums up a' the caution and the findness for feeling his way that's made the Scot what he is in the wide world over. But it's a saying that's spread to England, and that's come to have a special ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... the servitor a little dryly, and yet with a smile puckering his face as he put an opposing toe of a coarse unbuckled brogue under the instep of the stranger. The accent of the reply smacked of Fife; when he heard it, Count Victor at a leap was back in the port of Dysart, where it shrank beneath tall rocks, and he was hearing again for the first time with an amused wonder the native mariners crying to each ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... now about nineteen, strong, active, and could leap two-and-twenty feet on a dead level; but though thoroughly acquainted with Irish life among my own class, I was as ignorant of the world as a child. Ever since my boyhood, in consequence of the legends which I had heard from my father, about the ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Louisa in the shade; And, having seen that lovely maid, Why should I fear to say That she is ruddy, fleet and strong; And down the rocks can leap along, Like rivulets ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly to double the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that a man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where the moss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course there were—three ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rode back with the survivors to Arroyo Cantoova; and if Rosita, who had been sent with the other women to the rendezvous early in the summer, felt her heart leap when she saw her lover coming, she soon felt it sink again, for he spent but few moments in her company. Horses and gold and his large plan to sweep like fire through California—these were the only thoughts he had. Within a week he ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... she would appear, she whose nature seemed to him so varied and contradictory, and whose face was the index to these changing phases. She came in quietly, a young girl, pale, inquiring, yet saying no word; but there was a sparkle in her gaze that made the blood leap for a moment to ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... completed." And to Hugh himself she had declared that any allowance which she made him after he was called to the Bar, was only made in order to give him room for his foot, a spot of ground from whence to make his first leap. We know how he made that leap, infinitely to the disgust of his aunt, who, when he refused obedience to her in the matter of withdrawing from the Daily Record, immediately withdrew from him, not only her patronage and assistance, but even her friendship and acquaintance. This was the letter ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... his superior. In the midst of this consummate acting, however, the volcano that raged within caused his eyes to glare, and his nostrils to dilate, like those of some wild beast that is suddenly prevented from taking the fatal leap. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... poplar, at risk of breaking the tapering stem by the weight of his body; but the refuge was a very precarious one, for the fire followed him, and he required wings to rise higher than the place he had attained. Three expedients offered themselves to him; all equally unpleasant. To leap from the poplar—he would inevitably break his neck; to slide down the blazing trunk—he would reach the ground roasted; to wait till assistance reached him—would it arrive in time? If not immediate, the tree would be on fire from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... not however follow these ingenious persons to the startling extreme to which their speculations would lead us. But, without doing so, it will not misbecome us to be cautious, and to reflect what we do, before we take a leap ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Oswald give one athletic leap and had the precious things out of her feeble grasp in half a second. His fingers trembled horrible, but he had a key in the lock and turned it and threw the sides of the grand old monument wide open. He just hung there a minute in ecstasy, fondling the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... lovely hair loosely flowing and flecked with glints of gold by the light of the moon. Nearer, nearer to the very edge of the dizzy height it moved—and Angus, breathless with terror, and fearing to utter a sound lest out of sudden alarm it should leap from its footing and be lost for ever, crept closer and ever closer. Closer still,—and he heard Mary's sweet ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... it afterwards have been produced it would not have proved the payment of money, though at the time it proved several things, principally the fact that, though friendship and comradeship are fine and excellent things, there are simple primitive passions which leap up through them and transfigure them and forget them, and it is these which make man man, and woman woman, and life worth living, and the world worth winning and losing, too, and bring the kingdom ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... gold-rimmed glasses marched behind his company, and in his hand he carried a brutal whip, a veritable cat-o'-nine-tails. When a man stumbled over some hidden tree root he would hiss out "Pig!" or "Clumsy hound!" And Dennis felt his heart leap as he heard ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... Bloemfontein with his horses wholly starved and his men half-starved. The "wreck of an army," wrote a correspondent present, "lies scattered in and about Bloemfontein." Paralysing as such a condition is under any circumstances it was trebly so in a force which by a sudden rush, a leap rather than a march, had projected itself a hundred miles from any solid base of operations, and had not yet its communications secured. How much more was this true when {p.307} a great further advance ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... pursue to the end. Even though she were not worth while, even though I wholly lost hope, still I'd not give her up. I couldn't—that's my nature. But—she is worth while." And I could see her, slim and graceful, the curves in her face and figure that made my heart leap, the azure sheen upon her petal-like skin, the mystery of her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... ballerina could not eclipse the horse-whipping exploits of Mlle Lola. 'Let us have Lola Montez!' exclaimed the stalls and pit. 'We want to see if her foot is as light as her hand!' Never did they witness a more astounding entree. After her first leap, she stopped short on the tips of her toes, and, by a movement of prodigious rapidity, detached one of her garters from a lissome limb adjacent to her quivering thigh (innocent of lingerie) and flung it to the occupants of the front row of the orchestra.... Notwithstanding ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... desperate cases, is to leap from the window. When this is to be attempted, mattresses, beds, straw, or other soft substances, should be collected under the window; a piece of carpet or other strong cloth should be held up by ten or twelve stout men. The person in the window may then leap, as nearly as possible, ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... plan, his headstrong purpose—to verify or disprove a certain wild theory—which would take him where, lead to what? No matter! Above, between black shadows of tall buildings, he saw a star, bright, beautiful. Something in him seemed to leap up to it—to that light as frostily clear as her eyes! A taxi passed; ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the sunshine by basking half asleep upon the surface of the water, but they lie upon the shore beneath the shady trees, upon the river's bank; I have seen them, when disturbed by our sudden arrival during the march, take a leap from a bank about twenty feet perpendicular depth into the water below, with a splash that has created waves in the quiet pool, as though a paddle-steamer had passed by. The Arabs attach no value to the tusks; these are far more valuable than elephant ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... entered into much familiar cordiality with the Spaniards. A number of them having been invited on board the admiral's ship, a gun was discharged by way of entertaining them, but put them in such terror, that they were ready to leap over board, yet were soon reconciled by good usage and presents. The name of their island was Zulvan, of no great compass; yet considerable for its productions. They had in their barks various kinds of spices, as cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, ginger, and mace, with several ornaments ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... vision of the doctor's compressed lips and eyes full of unaccustomed fire, the damp foam on his hands as he rocked from one wall to the other, amid a dull music of growls, and fierce, low barks, came back to him now as he trimmed the sails to catch the undecided winds, or felt the tiller leap under his hold. Each moment he had expected to be bitten, but somehow they all tumbled together unhurt into Lawler's pantry, where they found that factotum standing grim and wire-strung with anticipation. Beyond the pantry were the dogs' night quarters, and they were quickly driven into ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... heart leap up and hit heavily against his chest. Was it possible? A great gratitude and pride glowed softly through him. He walked nearly up the steps and stood just below her, lifting her hand to ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... night when he came home, with a sudden leap of compassion she saw what a day he had been through. "But he is through! Something has happened!" she thought. And she treated him very tenderly—both because of the state he was in, and more perhaps because she knew how bad it would ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... never falls Away from freshness, self-upborne With such gladness, as, whenever The freshflushing springtime calls To the flooding waters cool, Young fishes, on an April morn, Up and down a rapid river, Leap the little waterfalls That sing into the pebbled pool. My happy falcon, Rosalind; Hath daring fancies of her own, Fresh as the dawn before the day, Fresh as the early seasmell blown Through vineyards from ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the stirrup on his right, swung his leg over the saddle, as only a skilful horseman can do, and, holding his gun with one hand, grasped the outstretched one of Warren and made a slight leap, which ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... who the first that springing on the strand, Leap'd like a nereid from her shell to land, With dark but brilliant skin, and dewy eye Shining with love, and hope, and constancy? Neuha—the fond, the faithful, the adored— Her heart on Torquil's like a torrent pour'd; ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... votaries;[32] but in the finest and truest English we call so the plant which {109} has come to us by chance from the same country, the type of mere senseless prolific activity, the American water-plant, choking our streams till the very fish that leap out of them cannot fall back, but die on the clogged surface; and indeed, for this unrestrainable, unconquerable insolence of uselessness, what name can be ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... felt himself nodding several times and once awoke just as he was on the point of falling from the tree. He grabbed a branch lower down, but his feet swung beneath and before he could get back safely on the limb one of the watchful band below by a mighty leap snapped at his leg and took a piece cleanly out of the calf, tearing his trousers leg almost entirely off him. The smell of the blood put the wolves into a frenzy and they tried again and again to reach him by leaping. They seemed maddened by hunger, for when one of their number fell after ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... would make a beautiful wooden puppet; one that could dance, fence, and leap like an acrobat. With this puppet I would travel about the world to earn a piece of bread and a glass of wine. What do ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... and flop and flap, And buzz around the room, I leap up to the ceiling high, And hit it with a boom! I turn a double somersault. My wings they play a tune. It's lots of fun to be a ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... inasmuch as we see as many dogs as horses, if not more. But the fact is correct and the explanation may be that we imagine a centaur because of the appropriate size, the implied power, and because it is not a wide leap from a horseman to a centaur. In short, here also we see that the imagination prefers to work where difficulties are fewer. Thus, with the ease of imagining an object there goes its definite possibility. I know an old gentleman in A and another one in B who have never ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the summer sunshine Went dancing down the dell. For whoso treads on fern-seed,— So fairy stories tell,— Becomes invisible at once, So potent is its spell. A frog mused by the brook-side: "Can you see me!" she cried; He leaped across the water, A flying leap and wide. "Oh, that's because I asked him! I must not speak," she thought, And skipping o'er the meadow The shady wood she sought. The squirrel chattered on the bough, Nor noticed her at all, The birds sang high, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... quick leap, then her senses came back to her. She needed nobody to tell her that the owner of the hand was James Merritt. Nor did she require any fine discrimination to perceive that he was up to no good. That it had something to do with the plot against Bell she felt certain. But the man was coming ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... some long, deep breaths; then, having made everything ready, I jerked myself out of that diving-suit in a very few seconds, and, standing free, I gave a great leap upward, and went straight to the surface. I am a good swimmer, and with a few strokes I caught the chains. Stealthily I clambered up, making not the least noise, and peeped over the rail. There was nobody forward. The whole ship's company seemed to be crowded aft, where ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... considerations to be weighed and examined as the question develops itself—but a beginning must be made—a resolution must be taken, an agitation must be commenced, and where the stake is "Country and Home" where is the heart that will not leap and bound ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... wherein Art envying Nature, shewed her great cunning. For they were so lively set out, that you would have thought if Summer had been come, they might have bin pulled and eaten; and while I beheld the running water, which seemed to spring and leap under the feet of the goddesse, I marked the grapes which hanged in the water, which were like in every point to the grapes of the vine, and seemed to move and stir by the violence of the streame. Moreover, amongst the branches of the stone ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... And thus it is in life, each passing moment flowing on with all its changes beside the stern, hard, enduring monument of the irrevocable past on which what is written is changelessly written. How different too are the bright sparkling fountains that leap with ever-varying beauty at the foot of the Flaminian obelisk now, from the dull, sleepy monotonous river that, like a Lethe flood, flowed past it in the old days at Heliopolis! Are they not both symbolical of the new and the old ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... postman rang her heart gave a small leap and then stood quite still. When Annie slowly mounted the stairs she was already on her feet, but it was only a card announcing: "Mrs. Sayre, Wednesday, May fifteenth, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... instant, with a leap like that of a wild beast, he reached the threshold, examined the bolt with vivid glance and searching fingers, then raised his hand to his forehead with ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... storm-wind may bluster and blow, Tearing the trees from the root-broken ground, Or the wild sea-surf may leap and may flow In solemn ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... dexterity very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the old or new world. The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing, one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it backwards and forwards several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... fragrant spring. It is then that the sunlight waves beat upon the sandy coast, and the hand-maiden beats upon the sandy carpet. The man of the house pulls tacks out of himself and thinks of days gone by, when you and I were young, Maggie. Who does not leap and sing in his heart when the dandelion blossoms in the low lands, and the tremulous tail of the lambkin ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye |
