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More "Sprightliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lovely to many; to me she is fair, tall, and shapely. Each of these qualities I grant. But that all these make loveliness I deny: for nothing of beauty nor scintilla of sprightliness is in her body so massive. Lesbia is lovely, for whilst the whole of her is most beautiful, she has stolen for herself every love-charm from all ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... would not, at the first sight, imagine compatible with their figure, but may contribute much to the cure, or at least to the extenuation of such bodily defects, by giving a more free circulation to the blood, a habit of sprightliness and agility to the limbs, and preventing the accumulation of gross humors, and especially of fat, which is itself not among the least diseases, where it prevails to an excess. Not that I here mean any thing so foolishly partial, as that nothing but dancing could operate all this; but only ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... him after the Indian method, vigorously shampooing the whole of his body. Next he made him walk and run with the longest strides he could take; and, after repeating this process, brought him a cup of boiling coffee. Having been revived and strengthened in this way, the lad quite recovered his sprightliness, and soon asked when we were ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... by his side, saw that splendid boy of theirs running over path and bed, glad of the flowers and the air and the freedom, full of young life and boyish sprightliness, his long hair floating behind him, the light of hope and ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... the little vicarage. Paul sat without animation until Greta set herself to bewitch him out of his moodiness. Her bright eyes, dancing in the rosy fire-light that flickered in the room; her high spirits bubbling over with delicious teasing and joyous sprightliness; her tenderness, her rippling laughter, her wit, her badinage—all were brought to the defeat and banishment of Paul's heaviness of soul. It was to no purpose. The gloom of the grave face would not be conquered. Paul smiled slightly into the gleaming eyes, and laughed faintly at the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... British throne. There were great doings and feasts there. Here Lady Mary saw George II too. "I can tell you, without flattery or partiality," she says, "that our young prince has all the accomplishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, and a something so very engaging in his behaviour that needs not the advantage of his rank to appear charming." I find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon Frederick Prince of Wales, George II's son; and upon George III, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... incident as anything that I have yet told you. The instant before the helmet was put on, there stood Perseus, a beautiful young man, with golden ringlets and rosy cheeks, the crooked sword by his side and the brightly polished shield upon his arm—a figure that seemed all made up of courage, sprightliness and glorious light. But when the helmet had descended over his white brow, there was no longer any Perseus to be seen! Nothing but empty air! Even the helmet that covered him with its ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... and I stood helpless and Watched my wife grow old. In that moment she lost the sprightliness I loved the more because I had none of it myself, and the bloom went from her ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... In spite of the sprightliness and ideal grace of the widow, in spite of the witty sallies of the buccaneer, the supper was a gloomy one for Croustillac. His habitual assurance had given place to a kind of vague inquietude. The more charming Angela seemed to him, the more she exercised ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... incessant strokes propel it swiftly through the water. By stopping some of its paddles, and keeping others in play, the beroe can change its course at pleasure, and so wander 'at its own sweet will,' through the trackless waste. Beauty waits upon the course of this little crystal globe. The grace and sprightliness of its movements must strike the commonest observer. As the sunlight falls upon its cilia, they are 'tinted with the most lovely iridescent colours;' and at night they flash forth phosphoric light, as though the little creature were giving a saucy ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Nan, pleasantly; she seemed to have recovered her sprightliness all at once. "It is very good of you to come so often; and we had Mr. Parker and his cousin ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... place—in which that condition can exist." She had always been fond of discussions of this kind, and felt encouraged to find that they were still practicable. "It cannot be the—Inferno; that is clear, at least," she added, with the sprightliness which was one of her characteristics; "perhaps—Purgatory? since you infer I ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for her walk. The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor thought she never ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... in the glare of the sun on Khamovnitchesky square every thing was melting, and the water was streaming. The river emitted a humming noise. The trees of the Neskutchny garden looked blue across the river; the reddish-brown sparrows, invisible in winter, attracted attention by their sprightliness; people also seemed desirous of being merry, but all of them had too many cares. The sound of the bells was audible, and at the foundation of these mingling sounds, the sounds of shots could be heard from the barracks, the whistle of rifle-balls ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... blithesome friar; makes religion agree with him— some people are never happy unless they are being tortured by it; has hit upon the golden mean—is neither too ascetical nor too jocund; is simply good and jolly; has ever so much vivacity, sprightliness, and poetic warmth in his constitution; can preach a lively, earnest, sermon; has a strong imitative faculty; is brisk in action; can tell a good tale; is fine company; would'nt hurt anybody; would step over a fly rather than kill it unkindly; ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... not without reason, have prescribed so just a term of life that they would not suffer men to exceed it; and yet I have some intermissions, though short and inconstant, so clean and sound as to be little inferior to the health and pleasantness of my youth. I do not speak of vigour and sprightliness; 'tis not reason they should ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... retirement, too, she was a sort of Egeria to certain men of genius, who came to read to her their writings, to consult her in their arguments, and to discuss with her the literature and politics of the day,—through all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet with a sprightliness and vivacity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Charlemont, Lyttelton, Portman, Tavistock, Mulgrave, and Barham. The Maids of Honour bore names once equally well known in the Court Circular, while the office brought with it visions of old historic Maids prominent in Court gossip, and revealed to this day possibilities of sprightliness reined in by Court etiquette, and innocent little scrapes condoned by royal graciousness and kindness. The Maids of Honour at the Queen's coronation were the Honourable Misses Margaret Dillon, Cavendish, Lister, Spring Rice, Harriet Pitt, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... at the neat gate. The house stood well back from the street, in the trimmest and primmest little garden that ever was seen. Most of the shrubs were as old as their owner, and had something of her wrinkled sprightliness; and the annuals felt their responsibilities, and tried to live up to the York and Lancaster rose and the ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... up to pass his family life in places of public resort, in constant contact and intercommunion with other families; and the social and conversational instinct has thus been daily strengthened. Hence the reunions of these people have been characterized by a sprightliness and vigor and spirit that the Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted to seize and reproduce. English and American conversazioni have very generally proved a failure, from the rooted, frozen habit of reticence and reserve which grows with our growth and strengthens with our strength. The fact is, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... not your personal advantages, and I could do nothing for her in town, except, perhaps, introduce her at Mrs. Cator's, and Lady Spilsbury's, or Lady Angelica Headingham's conversazione—Rosamond has a mixture of naivete and sprightliness that is new, and might take. If she had more courage, and would hazard more in conversation, if she had, in short, l'art de se faire valoir, one could hand her verses about, and get her forward in the bel-esprit line. But she must stay till we have brought you ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... no feelings in particular, which prevailed in town. Perhaps the one condition which could work up into a permanent feeling the passing revival of his fancy for a woman whose chief attribute he had supposed to be sprightliness was added now by the romantic ubiquity of station that attached to her. A discovery which might have grated on the senses of a man wedded to conventionality was a positive pleasure to one whose faith in society had departed with ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... in heroic efforts, in journeyings oft, in tact that never failed in many a trying hour, in success most marvellous, in a vivacity and sprightliness that never succumbed to discouragement, in a faith that never faltered, and in a solicitude for the spread of our blessed Christianity that never grew less, James Evans stands ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... plain case. Very soon every one in the pension was highly amused to notice how fluent his French was becoming; his choice of words at times was even elegant! The girl taught him it without a trace of grammar, by charm, sprightliness, a little nonsense; a pair of confiding eyes and a youthful voice were sufficient. It was from her that he got, by stealth, one novel after another. By stealth it had to be; by stealth Lucie had procured them; by stealth she gave them to him; by stealth they were read; by stealth ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... old familiar footing I was neglecting the committee and losing interest in the affairs of the library. A certain peevishness took possession of me; I was no longer myself, and I lost the gayety and sprightliness which had been ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... of the Count de la Galissoniere was not a dull affair of mere eating and drinking. The conversation and sprightliness of the host fed the minds of his guests as generously as his bread strengthened their hearts, or his wine, in the Psalmist's words, made their faces to shine. Men were they, every one of them possessed of a sound mind in a sound body; and both ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... every part, and cannot see where any improvement can be made. It is pre-eminently a United Brethren Hymn-Book, providing as it does for every phase of our characteristic church life. It combines the solidity and stateliness of the standard hymns of the ages, with the life and sprightliness of the modern gospel song. The most recent songs are here for the young people, while the older members of the Church will hail with delight the reappearance of old songs dear to the hearts of many of us, because they are precious and good, and ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... glanced at them, and Dane, who could not remember having heard his leader talk in that fashion before, and could guess his anxieties, was a little touched as he noticed his attempt at sprightliness. As it happened, one of the lads at the piano commenced a song of dogs and horses that had little to recommend it but the brave ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... inflammations of the sex illusion, comment upon Nietzsche and Cervantes, recount the adventures, somersaults and end of a legendary rascal, portray a hero of our time. He made all these intellectual concepts plastic in a music of a brilliance and a sprightliness and mordancy that not overmany classic symphonies can rival. Other and former composers, no doubt, had dreamt of making the orchestra more concretely expressive, more precisely narrative and descriptive. The ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... nature, the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in which they dwell, the air they breathe, the food they eat, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... had to decide between getting a meal for myself or a feed for the pony; but the young man, on hearing of my sore poverty, trusted me "till next time." His house, for order and neatness, and a sort of sprightliness of cleanliness—the comfort of cleanliness without its severity—is a pattern to all women, while the clear eyes and manly self-respect which the habit of total abstinence gives in this country are a ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the illustrious surgeon Desplein, in his youth. There he fraternized with: Horace Bianchon, then house-physician at Hotel-Dieu; Leon Giraud, the profound philosopher; Joseph Bridau, the painter who later achieved so much renown; Fulgence Ridal, comic poet of great sprightliness; Meyraux, the eminent physiologist who died young; lastly, Louis Lambert and Michel Chrestien, the Federalist Republican, both of whom were cut off in their prime. To these men of heart and of talent Lucien de Rubempre, the poet, sought to attach himself. He ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... to have exercised his usual penetration when he says that English humour "far from agreeable, and bitter in taste, like their own beverages, abounds in Dickens. French sprightliness, joy, and gaiety is a kind of good wine only grown in the lands of the sun. In its insular state it leaves an aftertaste of vinegar. The man who jests here is seldom kindly and never happy; he feels and censures the inequalities ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... contrast to the amiable simplicity of hers and the fair Arabella, her daughter, a charming girl, who, notwithstanding the fashionable splendour in which she has been educated, displays a delightful sprightliness of manner, that, I have some notion, has not been altogether lost on the heart of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... with which to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quicker to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover of butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; I love sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the moment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy of feeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slang and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, in the eyes ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... and intelligence, charmed with her sprightliness and wit, the man was for a time lost in the lover, and enough of fondness and affection were manifested to satisfy the confiding Mary, who had invested her earthly idol with every attribute of perfection. But as months passed on, and he again became ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... to our house would tell strange tales of this black land, and some of the stories I am inclined to think were true. One man said he saw a young bull-dog fly at a boy and pin him by the throat. The lad jumped about with much sprightliness, and tried to knock the dog away. Whereupon the boy's father rushed out of the house, hard by, and caught his son and heir roughly by the shoulder. "Keep still, thee young —-, can't 'ee!" shouted the man angrily; "let ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... was worse—she said it awkwardly, with a sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all. She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that she had succeeded. He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown, while she stood smiling, holding ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... necessarily find its way to the mind of the boy. "Pray take in hand," he writes, "some book which requires attention and study. You will, I fear, lose the habit of study, which would be a greater misfortune than to lose your head." He praised, too, the ease, good-sense, and sprightliness of her letters, and said truly that her style, at its best, was not inferior to that ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... death. I remember hearing Miss Sedgwick say that she should always think the better of Verplanck for having been the husband of Eliza Fenno. Several of her letters written to him before their marriage are preserved, which, amidst the sprightliness natural to her age, show a more than usual thoughtfulness. She rallies him on being adopted by the mob, and making harangues at ward meetings. She playfully chides him for wandering from the Apostolic Church to hear ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... decayed. Mr. Oliver Smith was his most frequent and welcome visitor. They talked together of events past and of friends long since dead. Perhaps this was a little wearisome and painful now and then to Mr. Oliver Smith, who retained his youthful sprightliness amidst more serious sentiments. He would have had his old friend contemplate the great future that was approaching, instead of ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... of Marivaux's women. "Young, alert, lively, yet compliant, already competent, reasonable, and energetic, without her reason, deliberative as it is, excluding for a moment wit, sprightliness, and charm. Give her more reserve, more dignity, more tender kindliness, and also more indulgent experience and you will have, scarcely any older, and already a widow, Araminte of les Fausses Confidences" (Henri Lion, in Histoire de la langue et de la ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... the truth, sir,' Paul returned, sitting up with a sudden sprightliness, 'my mind's not on ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and cold, and Mary's recovery was retarded by it. At the beginning of November she had not left her own rooms. But at that time her seclusion was mostly a precautionary measure. She had regained much of her old sprightliness, and was full of plans for the entertainments she intended to give as soon as she was perfectly well. "I am going to introduce you to Glasgow society at the New Year, Maggie," she said, "and I can imagine the sensation ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... regained her strength; and the bloom and the sprightliness of youth came back, and the roses began to return to her cheeks, and her wan face resumed its plumpness, and her eyes shone with the light of joyousness. Within the narrow confines of a small schooner, Claude was thrown in her way ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... sense, and all the varieties of imagination; not like a drowsy judge, only hearing, but also directing their verdict. In sum, it was vegete quick and lively; open as the day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and sprightliness of youth; it gave the soul a bright and a full ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... description, however, Brissot de Warville took exception, and supplied his own picture by writing in 1791, "You have often heard me blame M. Chastellux for putting too much sprightliness in the character he has drawn of this general. To give pretensions to the portrait of a man who has none is truly absurd. The General's goodness appears in his looks. They have nothing of that brilliancy which his officers found in them when he was at the head of his army; ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... training under Davenant, who secured her an engagement, and she was at first a failure. She was destined for tragedy and tragic actresses are not made in five minutes, but comedy demanded little more than inborn sprightliness and high spirits. Lavinia had both, and ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... the truth was that Harry began to rise rapidly in her good opinion. His sprightliness was gentlemanly and agreeable, and he contrived, besides, to assume the look and air of a man who only indulged in it in compliment to her uncle, and, of course, indirectly to herself, with whom, it was but natural, he should hope to make ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... petit Frederic," said Julie with a sickly attempt at coquettish sprightliness; "I had no eyes except for ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of feminine attire with almost as much assiduity as a mother displays when buying a daughter's trousseau, and insisted upon Maurice sharing his interest and caution. All sense of humor, all boyish sprightliness vanished from him in this important epoch of his life. The suspicion, the intensity of the bargaining contadino came to the surface. His usually bright face was quite altered. He looked elderly, subtle, and almost Jewish as he ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Lower Danube!' she ejaculated in mock scorn to excite his sprightliness, and they fell upon a duologue as good ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... swung to with a tremendous bang Sir Norman was barred in his prison to await his doom and the dwarf was skipping along the passage with sprightliness, laughing as he went. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... agreeable memories connected with Button's," says Leigh Hunt, "is that of Garth, a man whom, for the sprightliness and generosity of his nature, it is a pleasure to name. He was one of the most amiable and intelligent of a most amiable and intelligent class ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the naturalist of the last century, to whom White of Selborne addressed so many of his letters, gives a table of the comparative merit of seventeen leading song-birds of Europe, marking them under the heads of mellowness, sprightliness, plaintiveness, compass, and execution. In the aggregate, the songsters stand highest in sprightliness, next in compass and execution, and lowest in the other two qualities. A similar arrangement and comparison of our songsters, I think, would show an opposite result,—that is, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... to say that the Fogie is always an amiable and almost always a happy person. "Happiness," says the judicious Paley, "is found with the purring cat no less than with the playful kitten; in the arm-chair of dozing age, as well as in either the sprightliness of the dance, or the animation of the chase." The Fogie is generally attached in moderation to the pleasures of the table, and is a Conservative and Protectionist in his politics; though, since the introduction of Sir Robert Peel's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... favorite in his own class, but which he had hitherto been unable to use in her presence through lack of words and training. He was just beginning to orientate himself and to feel that he was not wholly an intruder. But he was very tentative, fastidiously so, letting Ruth set the pace of sprightliness and fancy, keeping up with her but never daring to ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the hour, or at least so it seemed, and increasing in sprightliness each day. He even insisted on following her to the entrance of the cavity when she departed and met her there when she returned. The fear that he might some day disobey her injunction and sally forth alone in her absence did not once occur to her. She trusted him to obey, even if he was ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... her, and kissed his hand several times. 'This is an old room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking round when he got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have not observed it. But ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... heard who the strangers were, he immediately came to the ship. His joy at seeing me again was very great; but he regretted much that his friend Timaro, with whom he had exchanged names, was not of our company. The spirits of Labugar had lost during eight years none of their sprightliness; but his face looked much older, and his hair had ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Majesty liked prompt replies, and those which showed vivacity and sprightliness. I will give two anecdotes in support of this assertion. Once, while the Emperor was holding a review on the Place du Carrousel, his horse reared, and in the efforts his Majesty made to control him, his hat fell to the ground; a lieutenant (his name, I think, was Rabusson), at whose feet the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... pasture, he suddenly had to jump aside with considerable sprightliness. A brace of horsemen came swerving through the gateway from the highroad and tore down upon him as though the Day of Judgment galloped behind. They were abreast, ten feet apart, but the oddest thing was a lariat that dangled between them, from ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... he was at least flawlessly consistent: there is scarce a trait in his character that is not reflected somewhere in his music, and hardly a characteristic of his music that one does not find quaintly echoed in some recorded saying or doing of the man. His placid and even vivacity, his sprightliness, his broad jocularity, his economy and shrewd business perception of what could be done with the material to hand, his fertility of device, even his commonplaceness, may all be seen in the symphonies. At rare moments he ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... die a thousand Deaths. When I intimated to your Highness, that the Remedy of your Sorrows was too be found only in the Conversation of Women, I meant no other than what the Laws both human and divine admit of. And that as Solitude only serves to augment your Grief, the entertaining Wit and Sprightliness of the Fair Sex, in their Conversations, was the only Antidote against your growing Affliction, in ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... Now Matt Rockwood is gone, I shall regard you both as my children," continued Mr. Gracewood, with more sprightliness than I had ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... an instant; but, to avoid too great a contrast of manner, he retained a semblance of sprightliness, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... activities being between Paris and the coast, and Tom had seen him no more. He had given the compass to Tom as a "souvenir," and Tom, whose sober nature had found much entertainment in Archer's sprightliness, had cherished it as such. It was useful sometimes, too, though he had to be careful always to remember that it ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too gross. She would play with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that an ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... clear sunshine; and may a gentle rain give balm to your nights, that the flowers and birch-trees may salute you in the morning with all their fragrance! May the kids frisk and play tricks before you with unusual sprightliness; and may the song of birds, the hum of bees, and the distant waterfall, with now and then the shepherd's horn resounding from the mountains, entertain you with a full chorus of Highland music! My imagination had parcelled out the lovely little glen into a thousand ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... word and deed, faded, vanished, and died away, and he appeared to himself but a useless servant of the world. His friends he answered immediately; and as his inward melancholy vanished, and the philanthropy, nay, the sprightliness of his soul beamed forth, when he was among men and looked in a living face, so was it also with his letters. When he bethought him of the friends to whom he was writing, he not only acquired tranquillity, that virtue for which his whole life long he strove; but his loving nature ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... was of no great duration, and she shortly recovered her senses, but not her sprightliness. Her excuse was that the long discussion of her husband's murder, and the too precise details related to her by Link before Denzil's arrival, had so wrought on her nerves as to occasion her ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... his school-fellows, which, as his manners and disposition were of a nature thoroughly appreciated by boys, is not at all to be wondered at. One of the most striking features in the character of young Chopin was his sprightliness, a sparkling effervescence that manifested itself by all sorts of fun and mischief. He was never weary of playing pranks on his sisters, his comrades, and even on older people, and indulged to the utmost his fondness for caricaturing by pictorial and personal imitations. In the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... grating sprightliness about her that drove him nearly mad. He determined to silence her ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of characters. His lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and vigour? He is at least one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his non-conformity, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... and the happiness that it should bring, the characters being drawn from bird life. Then follow verses written for the meetings of the Society, and miscellaneous compositions. Of these the description of a lady's footman's daily life, from within, has a good deal of sprightliness, and displays quite a little mastery of the mock-heroic couplet. The last poem is a long rhymed version of the story of Joseph. With this exception, for which Lamb's character-sketch does not quite prepare us, it is very natural to think of the author as Lovel. One of the pieces, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the museums; and was the first to run after every new attraction placarded at the corners. He was greatly taken with the agility of an Armenian girl, upon the wire and slack-rope, who was in truth a second Fenella in the sprightliness of her nimble exhibitions. Day Francis, the conjuror, was his admiration. He was delighted with Rannie, the old ventriloquist, and the first in America; and Potter, the late sable and celebrated professor of legerdemain, in ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... in the world, these dullards, and some of them love me even; but they are tiresome all. Even Chatellerault, when he has a fancy for a jest—as in your case perpetrates it with the grace of a bear, the sprightliness of an elephant." ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... boss's wife smokes. Many ladies who come here do—real ladies. It is the custom in Europe. Why not?" And he produced a box of cigarettes and put it on the table. Susan lit one of them and once more with supreme physical content came a cheerfulness that put color and sprightliness into the flowers of hope. And the sun had won its battle with the storm; the storm was in retreat. Sunshine was streaming in at the windows, into her heart. The waiter paused in his work now and then to enjoy himself in ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... stunned and stupefied, but, as he had said, not otherwise hurt. How this fall had come about was readily conjecturable: Fitzpiers, imagining there was only old Darling under him, had been taken unawares by the younger horse's sprightliness. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... all in my mind—I mean my lungs," she answered. Then, with a ghastly attempt at sprightliness, she added: "Now let's have a nice long talk about symptoms—it's so comforting. How are ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... these countries, men of talent write from talent. It is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste propitiated,—so many columns so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity. Here is activity ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of dust to drive before it. The very air had been washed and sweetened; and London's workers, scurrying to and from their hives, seemed also to have benefited by some attribute of the downpour that tinted cheeks, sparkled eyes, and, rejuvenating limbs, gave to them a new sprightliness of movement. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the Dunciad, his anger got the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out of harmony with the character he ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... appellation of "old acquaintance" that he did not care how soon he was master of such another clean-going frigate as herself. The whole company partook of this favourable change that evidently appeared in our lover's recollection, and enlivened his conversation with such an uncommon flow of sprightliness and good humour, as even made an impression on the iron countenance of Pipes himself, who actually smiled with satisfaction as he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... figures in the colossal group which should have been placed in the Place de la Republique, but was relegated by official stupidity to the Place des Nations, are examples of this patrician charm in carriage, in form, in feature, in expression. They have not the witchery, the touch of Bohemian sprightliness that make such figures as Carpeaux's "Flora" so enchanting, but they are at once sweeter and more distinguished. The sense for the exquisite which this betrays excludes all dross from M. Dalou's rich magnificence. Even the "Silenus" group illustrates exuberance without excess: I spoke of ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... other characteristics which point to Hellenic influences: lack of commercial morality, of veracity, of seriousness in religious matters; a persistent, light-hearted inquisitiveness; a levity (or sprightliness, if you prefer it) of mind. The people are fetichistic, amulet-loving, rather than devout. We may certainly suspect Greek or Saracen strains wherever women are held in low estimation; wherever, as the god Apollo himself said, "the mother is but the nurse." In the uplands ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... these sober fellows cannot have a decent sprightliness, a modest assurance with them! Something debonnaire; which need not be separated from that awe and reverence, when they address a woman, which should shew the ardour of their passion, rather than the sheepishness of their nature; for who knows not that love delights ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... no more, but he thought a good deal, for he had noted the beauty and sprightliness of Maraquita, and the admiration with which Harold had first beheld her; and it seemed to him that this rather powerful method of attempting to gratify the Portuguese girl was proof positive that Harold had lost his heart ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... gaze into the mirror. Can one describe that face—the lovely brown eyebrows; the eyes, like a spring sky, just as the light, fleecy clouds are leaving it after a shower; the perfect roses, dipped in milk, of the skin; the lips where good-nature, sprightliness, and love, lay mingled in ambush; the dewy teeth never quite concealed? It is, indeed, useless to attempt it. And, what is very remarkable, Bella knew it. 'There, Percy,' said she, 'your indiscretion is cleared ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... beginning of the sixteenth century. "The Aranata de los Cumaneses," says this author, "has the face of a man, the beard of a goat, and a grave demeanour (honrado gesto.)" Monkeys are more melancholy in proportion as they have more resemblance to man. Their sprightliness diminishes, as their intellectual faculties appear ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... trouble. Although the King of Egga looked more than a hundred years old, he was very gay and light-hearted. The chief people of the town met in his hut, and spent whole days in conversation. This company of greybeards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invariable practice, when any one passes by, to stop and listen outside, and they add to their noisy merriment so much good-will, that we hear nothing from the hut in which the aged group are revelling ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... amusements by which the thoughts of most young men are dissipated, and had not long glittered in the splendour of an ample patrimomy [Transcriber's note: sic] before I wished for the calm of domestick happiness. Youth is naturally delighted with sprightliness and ardour, and therefore I breathed out the sighs of my first affection at the feet of the gay, the sparkling, the vivacious Ferocula. I fancied to myself a perpetual source of happiness in wit never exhausted, and spirit never depressed; looked with veneration on her readiness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... tell me what that was all about?" she asked, with feigned sprightliness. "I think you can, the little girl with the red dress. What's ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... wrapped up the brown paper parcel. 'You will like the book better than you think for.' 'Thank you, thank you,' I cried after me, and hopped into a taxi, unsuspicious that I carried a delightful evening under my arm. A comedy novel, written with sprightliness and wit, I said, as I turned to the twentieth page, and it needs hardly any editing. A mere re-tying of a few bows that the effluxion of time has untied, or were never tied by the author, who, if I remember right, used to be less careful ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Nero. To this belongs a constellation of some of the most brilliant authors that Rome ever produced. And they are characterised by some very special traits. Instead of the depression we noticed under Tiberius we now observe a forced vivacity and sprightliness, even in dealing with the most awful or serious subjects, which is unlike anything we have hitherto met with in Roman literature. It is quite different from the natural gaiety of Catullus; equally so from the witty frivolity of Ovid. It is not in the least meant ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to consult the office clock. "By ginger!" he exclaimed, with some sprightliness. "I got to be movin' along. I'm follerin' up a clue in that ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the natural sequence of events. Matt, the cook, roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging on a piece of boiler plate hung by a wire. Long before that Stella heard her brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his sprightliness, for as she remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself responded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which slowness the crew had filed away to the day's ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... large publishing house in Vienna, for six variations on a waltz by him (Diabelli). The dance was always a favorite musical form with Beethoven in his lighter moments, and the variation form,—capable of a degree of sprightliness, vivacity and originality in the right hands which give it an entrancing effect, to which we come again and again with pleasure, was something peculiarly his own at every stage of his artistic career. His earliest essays in composition are ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... They made him stay to dinner and spend the rest of the day there, and by the evening he had recovered all his usual sprightliness. Towards sunset he and Eric went for a stroll down the bay, and talked over the term and ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... from her eyes, Sometimes she pierced the air with cries, For hours together she would fret Because their toys she could not get. Ah, then! how changed this pretty child, No longer amiable and mild. That fairy form and smiling face Lost all their sprightliness and grace. Her tender mother often sighed, And to reform her daughter tried. "Oh! Minnie, Minnie," she would say, "Quite yellow you will ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... they wax in worldly goods. After all, woman is our most marvellous native product—that sort of woman. Heigho!" Having given vent to this sigh, Littleton proceeded to recognize the hopelessness of the personal situation by murmuring with a slightly forced access of sprightliness ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... toward his mother. She was looking at her two kinsmen with such sweet sprightliness that he had trouble to make her see his uplifted cigar. She met his parting smile with a gleam of terror and distrust, but he shook his head and reddened as Hamlet ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... a whole bevy here of the famous beauties of Charles II.'s court,—full of the affected airs and languishing graces which Sir Peter Lely knew well how to paint, and rarely showing any thing in their portraits of the sprightliness which some of them at least possessed in life. The only one of Sir Peter's full-length beauties, who calls up any associations but such as belong to Grammont's Memoirs, is Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle. Who does not know her through Charles Lamb, and love her for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... common to both nations. The slender form of the Mallicolese is a character, as far as I know, peculiar to them and the New Zealanders; but that nation hath nothing in common with them in all other respects. The features of these people, though remarkably irregular and ugly, yet are full of great sprightliness, and express a quick comprehension. Their lips, and the lower part of their face, are entirely different from those of African negroes; but the upper part, especially the nose, is of very similar conformation, and the substance of the hair is the same. The climate of Mallicollo, and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... mother (Calendar of Clarendon Papers, vol. ii. p. 401.)] Anne Hyde possessed no special charm of person, and had no claim to rank amongst the beauties of the Court. But she was gifted with much sprightliness and humour, and although the scandals that assailed her virtue were triumphantly refuted she was frank enough not to hide such attraction of manner as she possessed, nor harshly to reject advances. She soon made a deep impression on the morose spirit of the Duke of York, and in ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the salutation, looked exceedingly dismayed, and said, with the water ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... can ever be quite so delightfully charming as were the 'Dotty Dimple' and the 'Little Prudy' books to our youthful imaginations, but we have no doubt the little folks of to-day will find the story of 'Flaxie Frizzle' and her young friends just as fascinating. There is a sprightliness about all of MISS CLARKE'S books that attracts the young, and their purity, their absolute cleanliness, renders them invaluable in the eyes of parents and all who are interested in the welfare of ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... lamb." Whereupon I, being of a jokish disposition, did, unexpectedly and contrary to usage, cry "Baa" loudly, causing my mother-in-law to fear that I was a dull—until that night in the Zenana she had the great happiness to overhear me outwitting all the females present by the sprightliness of my badinage. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... over-reached himself in presenting this picture of marital joys to my horizon, Captain Pharo resumed the subject with sprightliness. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... from the spring to the autumn of my days, but I am without those comforts that should succeed the sprightliness of bloom, and support ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... As time rolled on this Good Queen Bess Elizabeth Lost somewhat of her sprightliness; (continued) She got into a nervous state Was mopish and disconsolate. Now, as everyone will own, Had 'Iron Jelloids' been but known In Bess's time; why, it's conceded 'Twas just the Tonic that she needed. East India The great 'John Comp'ny' now began Company Its fine career without ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... Metropolis, and return the same way. On such occasions he always manages to take some companion or friend out with him, but was never known to come back in the same company; for so irresistibly are they allured forward by his inexhaustible fund of humour and sprightliness of conversation, that they seldom think of the distance till they find themselves too far from ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... after all is to be found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d'un notaire (1862); Le roi des montagnes (1856); L'homme a l'oreille cassee (1862); Trente et quarante (1858); Le cas de M. Guerin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play. "You will never be more than a little Voltaire,'' said one of his masters when he was a lad at school. It was a true ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... himself understood in conversation, beyond a few phrases, uttered with a deplorable accent,—not being able to carry the flavor in his mouth,—and, though free and sprightly enough in talking English, having no idea of what passes for freedom and sprightliness with the French. He knew nothing of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, or Dutch, nor indeed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of the gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... much as a falcon for singing-birds, turning her dying eyes southward where her Philip was, moaning, "On my heart, when I am dead, you will find Philip's name written!"—Mary Tudor was an echo of the pain and cry of Joanna, Philip's grandmother, a princess lacking in beauty of person and in sprightliness and culture of mind. Indeed, her intellect was weak to the verge of insanity; her love for her husband, the Archduke of Austria, doting, and its exhibition extravagant; and her jealousy, for whose exercise there was ample opportunity, insane and passionate. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... heart—gave a leap that sent the blood rushing to my face. He advanced, not with his usual imposing tread but with a sprightliness that pleased me vastly. I took the little pearl grey envelope from the salver, and carelessly glanced at the superscription. There was a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... exhausted my ammunition! You wish to imitate the sparrow? But the sparrow does not, slyly and meanly mischievous, make a cult of sprightliness is not funny with authority, is not the pedant of flippancy! You percher among low bushes, who never care to fly, you wish to imitate—[Turning to one of the exotic COCKS cackling behind him.] Silence, Cock of Japan! or I shall spoil ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... was Johnsonese all his life, and he made his meaning plain only by repetitions and many rhetorical flounderings. Like the average sixteen-year-old boy who sits himself down and takes his pen in hand, all his sprightliness of imagination vanished at sight of an ink-bottle. With a brush his feelings were fluid, and in a company grace dwelt upon his lips; but when asked to write it out he gripped the pen as though it were a crowbar ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... younger sister, Marie, whose childish plainness had now ripened to a beauty more dazzling than her own—the witchery of large and brilliant black eyes, a complexion of pure olive, luxuriant, jet-black hair, a figure of singular suppleness and grace, and a sprightliness of wit and a gaiete de coeur which the Comtesse could not hope to rival. It soon began to be rumoured in Court that Louis spent hours daily in the company of Mazarin's beautiful niece; a rumour which Hortense Mancini supports in her "Memoirs." "The presence of the King, who seldom stirred ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... became the wife of Mr. Seth D. Whitney. Her literary career began about 1856, since which time she has written several novels and poems; a number of them first appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly." Her writings are marked by grace and sprightliness. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... known as the author of The Spleen, a lively and original poem in octosyllabic verse on the subject of low spirits and the best means of prevention and cure. It has life-like descriptions, sprightliness, and lightness of touch, and was admired by Pope and Gray. The poem owes its name to the use of the term in the author's day to denote depression. G., who held an appointment in the Customs, appears to have been a quiet, inoffensive ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... us in anxious doubt concerning Clarissa's Fate, altho' the scattered Observations have generally the Recommendation of Novelty to amuse the Curious, Depth to engage the Attention of the Considerate, and Sprightliness to entertain the Lively; and Story is considered by the Author, as he says in his Preface, but as the Vehicle to convey the more necessary Instruction. And Clarissa ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... condescension, or his goodness. His bon mots, too, were in every mouth; and the Parisians, who at every epoch have been so addicted to wit, were so much the more enraptured with the impromptu good things which fell from Joseph's lips, that the Bourbons were entirely deficient in sprightliness. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a journey to England, he gave up law to devote himself exclusively to the pursuit of letters. In 1827, he brought out his "Buch der Lieder," and followed this up with the first part of his famous "Reisebilder." Heine's lyrics, by their unwonted grace and sprightliness, captivated German readers. Some of his songs, like that of the "Lorelei" or "Thou Art Like a Flower," soon became German folksongs. More characteristic, perhaps, of Heine's light ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... them here. Explanations which are given by a reader, can be given with greater rapidity and effect, than any which a writer can give to children: the expression of the countenance is advantageous, the sprightliness of conversation keeps the pupils awake, and the connection of the parts of the subject can be carried on better in speaking and reading, than it can be in written explanations. Notes are almost always too formal, or too obscure; they explain what was understood more plainly before ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... hardly rises beyond the mark of the military man who dabbles in letters. The pretentiousness of his style is partly due to the declining taste of the period, partly to an idea of his own that he could write in the manner of Sallust. It alternates between a sort of laboured sprightliness and a careless conversational manner full of endless parentheses. Yet Velleius had two real merits; the eye of the trained soldier for character, and an unaffected, if not a very intelligent, interest in literature. Where ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... with this resolve of mine. Her native sprightliness needed no undue excitement, and her placid heart reposed contented on my love, the well-being of her children, and the beauty of surrounding nature. Her pride and blameless ambition was to create smiles in all around her, and to shed repose on the fragile existence of her brother. In ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of Lord Chatham, whom she strikingly resembled in features as well as in talent. She was remarkable, even to old age, for decision of character and sprightliness of conversation. She ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... giggling and coquetting; "HAS some wit and manner, but wearies you at last: her charms, now on the decline, were never so considerable as rumor said; in the long-run she bores you with her French gayeties and sprightliness: her character for gallantry is too notorious. She quite corrupted Marwitz, in this and a subsequent visit; turned the poor girl's head into a French whirligig, and undermined any little moral principle she had. She was on the road to Berlin,"—of which anon, for it ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... change of surroundings put him about both in body and mind. Seeing which, Richard had begged his mother to take the dog with her on leaving town. Camp benefited, unquestionably, by his return to country air. His coat stared less. He carried his ears and tail with more sprightliness and conviction. Still he fretted after his absent master, and followed Katherine's footsteps very closely, his forehead more than ever wrinkled, and his unsightly mouth pensive notwithstanding its perpetual grin. He attended her now, squatting beside her when she paused, trotting slowly beside ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... old folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the sprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: "A spirit passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and dissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer has been answered, and you are here; and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the Queen; but as he danced with great sprightliness, she could not bear the odour which his violent motions diffused around her room the ladies likewise began to pray for relief; for he had almost entirely got the better of all the perfumes and essences with which they were fortified: Poussatin, nevertheless, retired with a great ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... is highly original in conception, its action graceful though rapid, and its characters speaking with that life and sprightliness that have made their author rank as ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... audience in her grasp. In spite of the smoke of the stalls, the levity of the lounge, and the general incongruity of her surroundings, Miss ROSELLE scores nightly a distinct success. Lastly, Mlle. VANONI, returning to the scene of her former triumphs, once again delights all beholders by the sprightliness of her singing and dancing. No reason to fear the disruption of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... saving for the folly of fools and the wretchedness and degradation of the depraved. There is no bitter fountain in the "Rose Garden," and the old man's heart is as fresh as when he left Shiraz, thirty years before; the sprightliness of his poetry has only been ripened and tempered to a more exquisite flavor, by the increase of wisdom and the ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... profoundly affected by its loss, and never quite recovered the level of spirits that he had recently attained. In company with the tortoise, which Colonel John presented to him on his last visit, he potters about his lawn and kitchen garden, with none of his erstwhile sprightliness; and his nephews and nieces are fairly well justified in alluding to him ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... poor Hope so that he could not speak for a moment. Then he fought for manly dignity, and said, with a lamentable mixture of sham sprightliness and real anguish, "Thank you, sir; I only trust that you will always find servants as devoted to your interest as my gratitude would have made me. Good-morning, sir." He clapped his hat on with a sprightly, ghastly ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... is followed daily, with a tub-bath weekly, you will not complain of those tired, nervous headaches, your face will lose its sallowness, and your walk will gain in sprightliness. Here let us say, for the benefit of those who are obliged to live in rented houses, or who have no facilities for a bath-room, that a folding bathtub is now offered. It folds up somewhat after the manner ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... of correspondents is curiously alike in one feature. There is an almost sprightliness in their conviction that what they can write in these circumstances would exactly suit any paper, daily or weekly, morning or evening. All they have to do is to give up their odd savings of time to the work; all you—their hapless correspondent—have to do is to fill up one of those ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... he cannot want leisure," he said. "We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom." Notwithstanding, when he did arrive, Frank Churchill carried all before him by reason of his good looks, sprightliness, and amiability. Emma and he soon became great friends. He favoured an idea of hers, that Jane's refusal to go to the Dixons' in Ireland was due either to Mr. Dixon's attachment to her, or to her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... that Haydn, when he went to London, called on Sir Joshua Reynolds at his studio, found him painting Mrs. Billington as "Saint Cecilia listening to the angels," and protested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angels listening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately a fervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. The skeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn reached London, but it is a shame to spoil a good ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... time had written Guly a schoolboy, the closest affection united the children, notwithstanding the difference in their years and disposition. Guly, as he was called, though of a cheerful disposition, never displayed that sprightliness and vivacity which characterized Arthur. Even in his merriest moments, a thoughtfulness mingled with his mirth, which rendered him ever attentive to the ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... stood Perseus, a beautiful young man, with golden ringlets and rosy cheeks, the crooked sword by his side, and the brightly polished shield upon his arm,—a figure that seemed all made up of courage, sprightliness, and glorious light. But when the helmet had descended over his white brow, there was no longer any Perseus to be seen! Nothing but empty air! Even the helmet, that covered him with its invisibility, ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the room playing the inevitable tom-tom. This Arab danseuse was as unlike our performers of the ballet as she well could be. Her clothing was a loose flowing drapery, which fell from her shoulders to her heels, while instead of agility of motion or sprightliness there was nothing but a dreamy gliding, a kind of somnambulistic movement, apparently without plan or purpose, but not without a certain grace. In another cafe two children were pulling each other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... some uneasiness. Nobby was well bred, but he had not cost six hundred pounds. Always he looked his best, and his best was extremely good. His many excellent points were set off by a most attractive air and a singular charm and sprightliness of manner. Every movement and pose was full of grace, and he had the brightest eyes that I have ever seen. But Blue Bandala was clearly a "show" animal. Could our little David beat this very Goliath among ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... and amusement. When Butler entertained boys at breakfast or dinner, he was a most delightful host, and threw off all magisterial awfulness as easily as his gown. His conversation was full of fun and sprightliness, and he could talk "Cricket-shop," ancient and modern, like Lillywhite or R. H. Lyttelton. In time of illness or failure or conscience-stricken remorse, he showed an Arthur-like simplicity of religion which no one could ignore ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... cruelly read aloud to Mary, with a sprightliness and sarcastic humour not excelled by her criticisms of 'the Prophet' in days gone by. Mary did not quite understand, but she saw in this behaviour a proof of the wonderful courage with ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... his mind to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a slight French accent; and he did not know why she should, since she had been born and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile affected, and the coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For two or three days he remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She addressed her conversation almost exclusively to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... was put at my ease at once, and from that moment onward felt the wonderful fascination of a manner so peculiarly her own; it was a frank, whole-souled, sincere manner, with a certain indescribable piquancy and sprightliness blending with the earnestness which made her very ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... gratifications of the palate; an entertainment so far removed from intellectual happiness, that scarcely the most shameless of the sensual herd have dared to defend it: yet even to this, the lowest of our delights, to this, though neither quick nor lasting, is health with all its activity and sprightliness daily sacrificed; and for this are half the miseries endured which urge ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... atmosphere for composition, he took up his residence in Florence, where he composed his suite, "May in Tuscany" (op. 21). The "Arlecchino" of this work has much sprightliness, and shows the influence of Schumann, who made the harlequin particularly his own; but there is none of Chopin's nocturnity in the "Notturno," which presents the sussurus and the moonlit, amorous company of "Boccaccio's ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... than the country round Quebec: the ladies, who seem to make pleasure their only business, and most of whom I have seen this morning driving about the town in calashes, and making what they call, the tour de la ville, attended by English officers, seem generally handsome, and have an air of sprightliness with which I am charm'd; I must be acquainted with them all, for tho' my stay is to be short, I see no reason why it should be dull. I am told they are fond of little rural balls in the country, and intend to give one as soon as I have paid ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... himself just as interesting to her as he has made himself to us," said Mrs. Stornaway, with heavy sprightliness, as he left them. "He never spares ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reader sees through at once. No more sprightly novel than "Theo" could be desired, and a sweeter or more beautiful romance than "Kathleen" does not exist in print, while "Pretty Polly Pemberton" possesses besides its sprightliness a special interest peculiar to itself, and "Miss Crespigny" would do honor to the pen of any novelist, no matter how celebrated. "Lindsay's Luck," "A Quiet Life," "The Tide on the Moaning Bar" and "Jarl's Daughter" are all worthy members of the same ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you in reading selections from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, the humor, sprightliness, and variety of the thought, or the style? What especially satisfactory pages have ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and know the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions, and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondency of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... hog that picks up cards and tells the time of day," said DeGolyer, "but what good does that do him? He has to work harder than other hogs, and is kept hungry so that he may perform with more sprightliness. But if I have a good education, my boy, I stole it, and I shouldn't be surprised at any time to meet an officer with a warrant of arrest sworn out against ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... began gaily to describe some of his humorous adventures, and continued in this vein till they arrived once more at the chateau. Sometimes the countess laughed, but he could see that her sprightliness was gone. When they came under the porte cochere he sprang from his horse and assisted her to dismount; and he did not relinquish her hand till he had given it a friendly pressure. She stood motionless on the steps, centered a look on him which he ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... her good looks and sprightliness, the position of her father in the community, and the fact that this 1st of May was one and the same with her sixteenth birthday, young Mistress Jaquelin was May Queen in Jamestown. And because her father was a worthy gentleman and a gay one, with French ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in which they dwell, the air ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Cumaneses," says this author, "has the face of a man, the beard of a goat, and a grave demeanour (honrado gesto.)" Monkeys are more melancholy in proportion as they have more resemblance to man. Their sprightliness diminishes, as their ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... cost of living is to be found in the movement of the population, from the dulness of the plough to the sprightliness of the cinematograph. This choice every freeman has a right to make for himself, but the trouble arises when the politician comes forward and pays his admission to the cinematograph entertainment, out of the public funds, in order to get his vote. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... girls with good voices and some sprightliness of manner are required. Each carries a wand, to the upper end of which is fastened an evergreen wreath surrounding a large, gilt letter. Ranged in order the letters will spell the word "Merry Christmas." The verse for each is sung to the air, "Buy a Broom." The children enter ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... manner, a constant flow of kindly feeling, seemed in her case to produce all the effect of beauty. Her manners had just dignity enough to repel impertinence without destroying the careless freedom and sprightliness in which she commonly indulged. No person had a merrier run of stories, songs, and village traditions, and all those odds and ends of character which form the materials for animated conversation. She had read, too, every thing she could find: Rollin's History, and Scott's ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... young ladies habited sadly in keeping with the season. All were connected either by blood or at least as friends or neighbours and fair and of good understanding were they all, as also of noble birth, gentle manners, and a modest sprightliness. In age none exceeded twenty-eight, or fell short of eighteen years. Their names I would set down in due form, had I not good reason to with hold them, being solicitous lest the matters which here ensue, as told and heard by them, should ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... humble walls of her little room a meeting which was destined to cause untold misery to many hundreds of thousands of people, and yet, in the wisdom of Providence, to be an instrument in carrying French arts and French ingenuity and French sprightliness among those heavier Teutonic peoples who have been the stronger and the better ever since for the leaven which they then received. For in history great evils have sometimes arisen from a virtue, and most beneficent results have often ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... row. George jumps downwards to the second tumbler in the seventh row; Chang, who can only leap short distances in consequence of chronic rheumatism, removes somewhat unwillingly to the glass just above him—the eighth in the third row; while Wilhelmina, with all the sprightliness of her youth and sex, performs the very creditable saltatory feat of leaping to the fourth tumbler in the fourth row. In their new positions, as shown in the accompanying diagram, it will be found that of the eight frogs ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... weight to this observation, she took two little jumps with a grace and sprightliness worthy ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... so. You see, Hilda, I have taken a fancy to try my hand at it," said Zillah, laughingly, full of delight at the ease with which she had gained her desire. "You see," she went on, with unusual sprightliness of manner, "I got hold of a 'Complete Letter-Writer' this morning; and the beauty, elegance, and even eloquence of those amazing compositions have so excited me that I want to emulate them. Now it happens that Guy is the only correspondent that I ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... that the letters of Grotius, are written in the finest latinity, and contain much valuable information; but the point, the sprightliness, the genius, the vivid descriptions of men and things, which are so profusely scattered over the letters of Erasmus, are seldom discoverable in those of Grotius. A man of learning would have been gratified beyond measure, by the profound conversations of Grotius and Father ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... hundred years old, he was very gay and light-hearted. The chief people of the town met in his hut, and spent whole days in conversation. This company of greybeards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invariable practice, when any one passes by, to stop and listen outside, and they add to their noisy merriment so much good-will, that we hear nothing from the hut in which the aged group are revelling during the day but loud ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in at the neat gate. The house stood well back from the street, in the trimmest and primmest little garden that ever was seen. Most of the shrubs were as old as their owner, and had something of her wrinkled sprightliness; and the annuals felt their responsibilities, and tried to live up to the York and Lancaster rose and the ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... and—what was worse—she said it awkwardly, with a sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all. She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that she had succeeded. He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown, while she stood smiling, holding ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... vicarage. Paul sat without animation until Greta set herself to bewitch him out of his moodiness. Her bright eyes, dancing in the rosy fire-light that flickered in the room; her high spirits bubbling over with delicious teasing and joyous sprightliness; her tenderness, her rippling laughter, her wit, her badinage—all were brought to the defeat and banishment of Paul's heaviness of soul. It was to no purpose. The gloom of the grave face would not be conquered. Paul smiled slightly into the gleaming eyes, and laughed faintly at ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... city. At the age of nineteen, she became the wife of Mr. Seth D. Whitney. Her literary career began about 1856, since which time she has written several novels and poems; a number of them first appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly." Her writings are marked by grace and sprightliness. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d'un notaire (1862); Le roi des montagnes (1856); L'homme a l'oreille cassee (1862); Trente et quarante (1858); Le cas de M. Guerin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play. "You will never be more than a little Voltaire,'' said one of his masters when he was a lad at school. It was a true prophecy. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... would not be a morsel of food in her cabin that night. What struck him and his fellow-traveller in a special manner was the effects of famine on the children; their faces were so wan and haggard that they looked like old men and women; their sprightliness was all gone; they sat in groups at their cabin doors, making no attempt to play. Another indication of the Famine noticed by them was, that the pigs and poultry had entirely disappeared. To numberless testimonies, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... life be, if those daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return seldomer upon us? And thus these pleasant as well as proper gifts of Nature maintain the strength and the sprightliness of our bodies. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... that, riding on the same cars day after day, one finds so many strange faces with so little variety. Whether or not that dull, jarring motion shakes inward and settles about the centres of mental life the sprightliness that should inform the visage, I do not know; but it is certain that the emptiness of the average passenger's countenance is something wonderful, considered with reference to Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... what is esteemed a striking beauty, but her appearance was pleasingly interesting. Her figure was elegant; her aspect was attempered with a pensive mildness, which in her cheerful moments would light up into sprightliness and vivacity. Though on first impression, her countenance was marked by a sweet and thoughtful serenity, yet she eminently ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... door. Listlessly he identified the voice as the property of the young gentleman from up North who was staying with his kinsfolk, the Enders family. This was a gentleman already deeply admired by Jeff at long distance for the sprightliness of his wardrobe and for his gay and gallus ways. Against his will—for he craved to be quite alone with his griefs and no distracting influences creeping in—Jeff listened. Listening, he heard language of such splendor as literally to ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... consumed by Tippy—her real name was Xantippe—in plucking out Aunt Kizzie's grey hairs, and in fixing her up to appear to the best advantage for youth and sprightliness. She was only sixty, but hard labor and severe usage had ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... on the probable beneficial results of the project, his original disinclination to it diminished, until he finally determined on running the risk; and he felt fully rewarded for this concession to his wife's wishes when he saw her recover all her wonted serenity and sprightliness. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... thought it best not to produce them here. Explanations which are given by a reader, can be given with greater rapidity and effect, than any which a writer can give to children: the expression of the countenance is advantageous, the sprightliness of conversation keeps the pupils awake, and the connection of the parts of the subject can be carried on better in speaking and reading, than it can be in written explanations. Notes are almost always too formal, or too obscure; they explain what was understood more ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... asked what was wanted; at the same time the deep voice of a man; conjecturally rising from a lower floor, called, and a lock was rattled. The woman told Luigi to enter. He sent a glance behind him; he had evidently been drained of his sprightliness in a second; he moved in with the slackness of limb of a gibbeted figure. The door shut; the woman led him downstairs. He could not have danced or sung a song now for great pay. The smell of mouldiness became so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... go on alone to the place she was bound for, he had moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake in the nature of his own destination. Suppose, after all, he should find himself castaway in some oasis of determined sprightliness with Wally Whitaker in whose pocket pretenses of tips and margins he began to discern a poorer sort of substitute for the House. He was as much bored by the permanently young shoe-salesman after this discovery as ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... out of it at the end of my pen, was for her a deep basin in which she would have blackened her gold- clocked pink stockings up to the garter, I can assure you that she was great, and imposing even in her sprightliness. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... people who first fixed the stigma of melancholy upon our bird—the Greeks, or at least the Athenians, and it is of them we speak—were perhaps the very gayest people that ever danced upon the earth—absolute Frenchmen. The very sprightliness of their temper, however, by the universally prevailing law of contrast, may have induced in them a fondness for sad and doleful legends; and we confess, for our own part, that while we from our hearts admire the poetical beauty and elegance of their various fables, we do not a little ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... his Majesty liked prompt replies, and those which showed vivacity and sprightliness. I will give two anecdotes in support of this assertion. Once, while the Emperor was holding a review on the Place du Carrousel, his horse reared, and in the efforts his Majesty made to control him, his hat fell to the ground; a lieutenant (his name, I think, was Rabusson), at whose feet the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... how young Percy delighted to assist in waiting on these visitors to "The Soldiers' Rest,"—how his sprightliness pleased and amused them. His own great embarrassment seemed to be that he had lost all his clothes at the time he was wounded, so was compelled to wear the unbleached shirts with blue cottonade collars and cuffs, which were supplied to all patients, numbered to correspond ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... roll of what is wanted to equip a veritable sure critic, we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications, which by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal allotment. The first is, joy in life, from which the pages of M. Sainte-Beuve derive, not a superficial sprightliness merely, but a mellow, radiant geniality. The other, which is of still deeper account, is the capacity of admiration; a virtue—for so it deserves to be called—born directly of the nobler sensibilities, those in whose presence only can be recognized and enjoyed ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of the east winds, the oyster unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she had been helped to was too delicate to be given up even for the greater rarity. But the word "shell-oysters" had been overheard; and there was a perceptible crowding movement towards their newly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the old folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the sprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: "A spirit passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and dissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer has been answered, and you are here; and as we used to visit you on earth before we died, now we visit ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... honour to meet him at Mrs. Becky's house and had been most gracious to the new Baronet and member. Pitt was struck too by the deference with which the great Peer treated his sister-in-law, by her ease and sprightliness in the conversation, and by the delight with which the other men of the party listened to her talk. Lord Steyne made no doubt but that the Baronet had only commenced his career in public life, and expected rather anxiously to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of "Helen Grimes." And here was "Helen" herself, with all the innocent abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... reading selections from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, the humor, sprightliness, and variety of the thought, or the style? What especially satisfactory pages have ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... whole bevy here of the famous beauties of Charles II.'s court,—full of the affected airs and languishing graces which Sir Peter Lely knew well how to paint, and rarely showing any thing in their portraits of the sprightliness which some of them at least possessed in life. The only one of Sir Peter's full-length beauties, who calls up any associations but such as belong to Grammont's Memoirs, is Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle. Who does not know her through Charles Lamb, and love her for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... on earth, next to myself. Her name is Prosperity: she has damned more than all of you together, and little would ye avail without her presence. For who in war or peril, in famine or in plague, would lay any value by tobacco, or by money or by the sprightliness of pride, or who would deign welcome licentiousness or sloth? And men in such straits are too wide-awake to be distraught by Hypocrisy, or even by Thoughtlessness; none of the infernal vermin of Distraction dare show himself in one such storm. Whereas Prosperity, with ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His Ode on the Death of Thomson is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the Dirge on Cymbeline. Everybody knows and admires ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of the sprightliness and ideal grace of the widow, in spite of the witty sallies of the buccaneer, the supper was a gloomy one for Croustillac. His habitual assurance had given place to a kind of vague inquietude. The more charming Angela seemed to him, the more she exercised ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... to us can ever be quite so delightfully charming as were the 'Dotty Dimple' and the 'Little Prudy' books to our youthful imagination, but we have no doubt the little folks of to-day will find the story of 'Flaxie Frizzle' and her young friends just as fascinating. There is a sprightliness about all of Miss CLARKE'S books that attracts the young, and their purity, their absolute cleanliness, renders them invaluable in the eyes of parents and all who are interested in ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... moments when we remembered our precipitancy in some uneasiness. Nobby was well bred, but he had not cost six hundred pounds. Always he looked his best, and his best was extremely good. His many excellent points were set off by a most attractive air and a singular charm and sprightliness of manner. Every movement and pose was full of grace, and he had the brightest eyes that I have ever seen. But Blue Bandala was clearly a "show" animal. Could our little David beat this very Goliath among dogs, and that upon the latter's own ground? Could our little amateur take on a plus-four ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... process of this blooming was interesting, curious, but hardly beautiful, and it seemed to fit in with the restless character of the poplar family—a family of trees with more vigor than dignity, more sprightliness than grace. As Professor Bailey says of the cottonwood, "It is cheerful and restive. One is not moved to lie under it as he is under a maple or an oak." Yet there are not wanting some ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... impassive, heavy of build, slow in physical movement, he would have been supposed, at first sight, a man who would take life easy, and concern himself as little as possible about public affairs. But, after all, there is a quality in the head of a great department which is quite distinct from sprightliness, and that is wisdom. This he possessed in the highest degree. The impress which he made on our fiscal system was not the product of what looked like energetic personal action, but of a careful study of the prevailing conditions of public opinion, and of the means at his disposal for ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... cutting jokes, making eyes, giggling and coquetting; "HAS some wit and manner, but wearies you at last: her charms, now on the decline, were never so considerable as rumor said; in the long-run she bores you with her French gayeties and sprightliness: her character for gallantry is too notorious. She quite corrupted Marwitz, in this and a subsequent visit; turned the poor girl's head into a French whirligig, and undermined any little moral principle she had. She was on the road to Berlin,"—of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Count de la Galissoniere was not a dull affair of mere eating and drinking. The conversation and sprightliness of the host fed the minds of his guests as generously as his bread strengthened their hearts, or his wine, in the Psalmist's words, made their faces to shine. Men were they, every one of them possessed ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... remaining print, "For the Benefit of the Champion," in which Fox and Lord North, in female attire, and the Duchess in her large picture hat, but decollettee, and with bare arms, are busy singing a dirge on the defeated opponent. Georgina, a figure of delicious sprightliness and beauty, points to the tombstone marked "Here lies poor Cecil Ray," while the spectacled profile of Burke peeps into the door. And here I may remark again how astonishingly to my own experience a study of these prints makes history real, vivid, and living. These dry bones ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... hour, or at least so it seemed, and increasing in sprightliness each day. He even insisted on following her to the entrance of the cavity when she departed and met her there when she returned. The fear that he might some day disobey her injunction and sally forth alone in her absence did not once occur to her. She trusted him ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... house would tell strange tales of this black land, and some of the stories I am inclined to think were true. One man said he saw a young bull-dog fly at a boy and pin him by the throat. The lad jumped about with much sprightliness, and tried to knock the dog away. Whereupon the boy's father rushed out of the house, hard by, and caught his son and heir roughly by the shoulder. "Keep still, thee young —-, can't 'ee!" shouted the man ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... talent write from talent. It is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste propitiated,—so many columns so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... English will hardly be spirituelle in her exotic French. It is a delightful language for the natives, and for all who have thoroughly mastered its spirit. Its genius is airy and sparkling. It is especially the language of society, because society is, theoretically, the playful encounter of sprightliness and wit. It is the worst language I know of for poetry, ethics, and the habit of the Saxon mind. It is wonderful in the hands of such masters as Balzac and George Sand, and is especially adapted to their purposes. Yet ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... was as animated as usual. They displayed all that sprightliness and good-humour which my praises had led Mountford to expect; subjects, too, of sentiment occurred, and their speeches, particularly those of our friend the son of Count Respino, glowed with the warmth of honour, and softened into the tenderness of feeling. ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... further distress, that in my attempt to return to the old familiar footing I was neglecting the committee and losing interest in the affairs of the library. A certain peevishness took possession of me; I was no longer myself, and I lost the gayety and sprightliness which had been always my ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... as he had said, not otherwise hurt. How this fall had come about was readily conjecturable: Fitzpiers, imagining there was only old Darling under him, had been taken unawares by the younger horse's sprightliness. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... style of Rubens was Johnsonese all his life, and he made his meaning plain only by repetitions and many rhetorical flounderings. Like the average sixteen-year-old boy who sits himself down and takes his pen in hand, all his sprightliness of imagination vanished at sight of an ink-bottle. With a brush his feelings were fluid, and in a company grace dwelt upon his lips; but when asked to write it out he gripped the pen as though it were a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... most celebrated beauties of that age. Mrs. Manley was paying a visit to a lady of her grace's acquaintance, when she was introduced into the favour of this royal courtezan; and as the duchess of Cleveland was a woman of parts and genius, she could not but be charmed with the sprightliness of her conversation. She was fond of new faces, and immediately contracted the greatest intimacy with our poetess, and gave her a general invitation to her table. The lady at whose house the duchess became acquainted with Mrs. Manley, soon perceived her ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... conversation of the polite world." "I don't know how the mathematics may assist the judgment, but they have a great tendency to make men dull. I who am far from being sprightly even in my gaiety, am the very reverse of it at this time." Certainly to produce sprightliness is neither the aim nor the general effect of mathematics. That while military education was carried on, general culture was not wholly neglected, is proved by the famous exclamation about Gray's Elegy, the most ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... agree with him— some people are never happy unless they are being tortured by it; has hit upon the golden mean—is neither too ascetical nor too jocund; is simply good and jolly; has ever so much vivacity, sprightliness, and poetic warmth in his constitution; can preach a lively, earnest, sermon; has a strong imitative faculty; is brisk in action; can tell a good tale; is fine company; would'nt hurt anybody; would step over a fly rather than kill it ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... for the truth was that Harry began to rise rapidly in her good opinion. His sprightliness was gentlemanly and agreeable, and he contrived, besides, to assume the look and air of a man who only indulged in it in compliment to her uncle, and, of course, indirectly to herself, with whom, it was but natural, he should hope to make him an advocate. Still the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... up his mind to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a slight French accent; and he did not know why she should, since she had been born and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile affected, and the coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For two or three days he remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She addressed her conversation almost exclusively to him, and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... from which one servant ran out into the dimly lighted stairway, and another rushed to the study and bedroom of the master of the mansion to increase quickly the light of the lamps there. Darvid went up the stairs quickly and with sprightliness; he threw into the hands of the servant his fur, which was costly and original, since it was brought from the distant North, and began at once to read at the round table, through an eyeglass, that which he had ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... deepening chest; the hair was thinner, and farther back above the forehead, and streaked with grey at the temples; the mouth lacked the rosy sensuousness of youth, and sat now in a mould, half of resolution, half submission. Yet her foot had lost little of its sprightliness, and the sympathy in her fine eyes seemed to have deepened with ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... view things! I was just thinking that I never saw her so lovely, with such a sprightliness, such a glow in her face, as ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... ingenious sort of brutes do not esteem escaping of evil their last end; but when they have taken their repast, they are disposed next by fullness to singing, and they divert themselves with swimming and flying; and their gayety and sprightliness prompt them to entertain themselves with attempting to counterfeit all sorts of voices and notes; and then they make their caresses to one another, by skipping and dancing one towards another; nature inciting them, after they have escaped evil, to look after some good, or rather to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... have not exhausted my ammunition! You wish to imitate the sparrow? But the sparrow does not, slyly and meanly mischievous, make a cult of sprightliness is not funny with authority, is not the pedant of flippancy! You percher among low bushes, who never care to fly, you wish to imitate—[Turning to one of the exotic COCKS cackling behind him.] Silence, Cock of Japan! or I shall ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... how soon he was master of such another clean-going frigate as herself. The whole company partook of this favourable change that evidently appeared in our lover's recollection, and enlivened his conversation with such an uncommon flow of sprightliness and good humour, as even made an impression on the iron countenance of Pipes himself, who actually smiled with satisfaction as he walked ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... respect to the lady. In the evening she was surrounded by a few friends. Into this number I was now admitted. Sarsefield and myself made a part of this company. Various topics were discussed with ease and sprightliness. Her societies were composed of both sexes, and seemed to have monopolized all the ingenuity and wit ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... Chatham, whom she strikingly resembled in features as well as in talent. She was remarkable, even to old age, for decision of character and sprightliness of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... We want something more of this grace, sprightliness, and harmless play of the finer life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the age of fifteen, Frederic was taught at home, in his father's school. He now entered the Warsaw Lyceum, and proved a good student, twice carrying off a prize. With this studiousness was joined a gaiety and sprightliness that manifested itself in all sorts of fun and mischief. He loved to play pranks on his sisters, comrades and others, and had a fondness for caricature, taking off the peculiarities of those about him with pose and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... problem is a rhythmical one, and again the composer demonstrates his exhaustless invention and his power of evoking a single mood, viewing all its lovely contours and letting it melt away like dream magic. Full of gentle sprightliness and lingering sweetness is this study. Chopin has the hypnotic quality more than any composer of the century, Richard Wagner excepted. After you have enjoyed playing this study read Kullak and his "triplicity in biplicity." ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... had been of slow growth, for she was worse than a nobody—a child of the Tramp House, of whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy, of Tracy Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed. But he had succumbed at last to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness, and originality, and now his love for her had become the absorbing passion of his life, and he would have made her his wife at any moment, in the face of all his mother's opposition. By some subtle intuition, he felt that Harold was his rival, though he could not fathom ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... voice faint, and his eye dim, and his heart craven, her faculties were in full perfection—her cheek still wore the blush of youth, and her step was lighter than the fawn of four moons. And, if time had abated nothing of her wondrous beauty and sprightliness, neither had it of her goodness, and kind attention to the wants of the poor Indians. Her care that they should want for nothing was as much exerted as ever—still their hunting-grounds and their rivers were the best stocked of any in all the land, and their war expeditions for forty seasons were ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... who can tell me what that was all about?" she asked, with feigned sprightliness. "I think you can, the little girl with the red dress. What's ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... think of all the grace, loveliness, and generosity of the many Southern women I have known and loved; when I recall the admirable qualities which distinguished them, the grace of manner, the social tact and address, the intellectual sprightliness, the openness and hospitality of soul, the kindliness and sympathy of heart, the Christian gentleness and charity; I can but say to my Northern sisters, These deluded women of the South would, in themselves, be worthy of your esteem and love, could the demon of secession and slavery once be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "To stifle all the sprightliness of the boy, by a gloomy restraint of his mental faculties, was the only method of securing to themselves the highest approbation of his royal parents. The whole of our prince's childhood wore a dark and gloomy aspect; mirth was banished even from his amusements. All his ideas of religion ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I says, and I expect I sighed when I mentioned it, 'when a certain domesticated little Mary's lamb I could name was some instructed himself in the line of pernicious sprightliness. I never expected, Perry, to see you reduced down from a full-grown pestilence to such a frivolous fraction of a man. Why,' says I, 'you've got a necktie on; and you speak a senseless kind of indoor drivel that reminds me of a storekeeper ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the use of idle words; of abstaining from scandal and detraction; of withholding his assent to customs when started, however fashionable, if immoral; of making himself useful by the dignity of the topic he introduces, and by the decorum with which he handles it; of never allowing his sprightliness to border upon folly, or his wit upon lewdness, but to clothe all his remarks in an ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... kissed his hand several times. 'This is an old room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking round when he got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have not observed it. But it's a genuine ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... what is great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently; but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Everything is excused by the play of images and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though, since his earlier works, more than a century has passed, they have nothing yet ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the class-rooms airless, their tasks fatiguing. The pavement beneath their feet was hot; both were glad to breathe what tiny breeze was astir; both were tired. They walked side by side in that best of all companionships which demands no effort at sprightliness, nor the utterance of one ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the conversation never settled down so comfortably as when it turned to the details of the trade which was the other side of the art we practised. When we had done discussing ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... course of the evening he thus gave his opinion upon the merits of some of the principal performers whom he remembered to have seen upon the stage. "Mrs. Porter in the vehemence of rage, and Mrs. Clive in the sprightliness of humour, I have never seen equalled. What Clive did best, she did better than Garrick; but could not do half so many things well; she was a better romp than any I ever saw in nature. Pritchard, in common life, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... turned sick at heart, O best of critics! when some of your own sweet adjectives were returned on you before a gaping audience? Enthusiasm about art is become a function of the average female being, which she performs with precision and a sort of haunting sprightliness, like an ingenious and well- regulated machine. Sometimes, alas! the calmest man is carried away in the torrent, bandies adjectives with the best, and out-Herods Herod for some shameful moments. When you remember that, you will be tempted to put things strongly, and say you will ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night, and was amused by the scene of gaiety it presented. How unlike, and how superior to, our Vauxhall! People of all stations, of all ages, and of both sexes, threading the mazy dance with a sprightliness that evinced ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... must be a place—in which that condition can exist." She had always been fond of discussions of this kind, and felt encouraged to find that they were still practicable. "It cannot be the—Inferno; that is clear, at least," she added, with the sprightliness which was one of her characteristics; "perhaps—Purgatory? since you infer ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath, this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Sedgwick say that she should always think the better of Verplanck for having been the husband of Eliza Fenno. Several of her letters written to him before their marriage are preserved, which, amidst the sprightliness natural to her age, show a more than usual thoughtfulness. She rallies him on being adopted by the mob, and making harangues at ward meetings. She playfully chides him for wandering from the Apostolic Church to hear popular preachers and clerks that sing well; which she regards as crimes against ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... moment it was a plain case. Very soon every one in the pension was highly amused to notice how fluent his French was becoming; his choice of words at times was even elegant! The girl taught him it without a trace of grammar, by charm, sprightliness, a little nonsense; a pair of confiding eyes and a youthful voice were sufficient. It was from her that he got, by stealth, one novel after another. By stealth it had to be; by stealth Lucie had procured ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... none can wear as well as woman. They are most becoming to you, my dear girls,—even brighter and richer and dearer than any jewels with which you may adorn yourselves. They consist mostly of pleasant, well-chosen words, sympathetic, hearty tones, sprightliness, and certain winsome modulations ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... although it is not lacking. But the deceiving heat of the wine takes away their taste so strongly that they are mindful of nothing. Its heat serves to give spirit and animation to their songs (which are in honor of him who makes the feast), and sprightliness to their dances. The day of the celebration [of the wedding] when the betrothed couple have to appear for the nuptial blessings, the bride, breaking the strict confinement which she keeps all that time, issues forth ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... the pasture, he suddenly had to jump aside with considerable sprightliness. A brace of horsemen came swerving through the gateway from the highroad and tore down upon him as though the Day of Judgment galloped behind. They were abreast, ten feet apart, but the oddest thing was a lariat that dangled between ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... slaves to the rules of etiquette and ceremony. It was thus that the father and mother of Lady Jane, anticipating that she might one day become a queen, watched and guarded her incessantly, subjected her to a thousand unwelcome restraints, and repressed all the spontaneous and natural gayety and sprightliness which belongs properly ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... form part of a collection of nursery songs and rhymes by Charles Lamb, published many years ago, but now quite out of print. This, however, is a mere surmise on my part, and has no better foundation than the vein of humour, sprightliness, and originality, obvious enough in the above extract, which we find running through and adorning all he wrote. "Nihil ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... in this collection, the most popular are "Tullochgorum," "John o' Badenyon," and "The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn." The whole are pervaded by sprightliness and good-humoured pleasantry. Though possessing the fault of being somewhat too lengthy, no song-compositions of any modern writer in Scottish verse have, with the exception of those of Burns, maintained a stronger hold of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... affairs, and necessary regal accompaniments, can form a correct judgment of the unaffected goodness of his heart; the easy affability, and pliant condescension, with which he can divest 298every one around him of any feeling of restraint—the uncommon sprightliness and vivacity he displays in conversation—the life and soul of all that is elegant and classical, and the willing participator and promoter of a good joke. Suffice it to say, the reception was flattering in the extreme, the entertainment ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... association with the plays and players of his time—the mid-period of the nineteenth century. Yet they all agree that, as illustration of "parlour comedy," his "Love in '76" is a satisfactory example of sprightliness and fresh inventiveness. For this reason, the small comedietta is included in the present collection. It challenges comparison with Royall Tyler's "The Contrast" for manner, and its volatile spirit involved in the acting the good services of such estimable players ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... can recommend himself by his dress, and by his address. To affectation and prudery the French women are equally strangers. Easy and unaffected in their manners, their politeness has so much the appearance of nature, that one would almost believe no part of it to be the effect of art. An air of sprightliness and gaiety sits perpetually on their countenances, and their whole deportment seems to indicate that their only business is to "strew the path of life with flowers." Persuasion hangs on their lips; and, though their volubility of tongue is indefatigable, so soft is their accent, so lively ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... beautifully. Every girl did her part wonderfully well, but Patty surpassed them all. Buoyed up by excitement, she played her part with a dash and sprightliness that surprised even the girls who had seen her at rehearsal. She was roguish, merry and tragic by turns, and she sang her solos with a dramatic effect that brought down the house. She looked unusually ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... Davenant, who secured her an engagement, and she was at first a failure. She was destined for tragedy and tragic actresses are not made in five minutes, but comedy demanded little more than inborn sprightliness and high spirits. Lavinia had ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... with stories of the life she had seen abroad. When Mr. Barton joined them she talked of Tractarianism, of her determination not to re-enter the vortex of fashionable life, and of her anxiety to see him in a sphere large enough for his talents. Milly thought her sprightliness and affectionate warmth quite charming, and was very fond of her; while the Rev. Amos had a vague consciousness that he had risen into aristocratic life, and only associated with his middle-class parishioners in a ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... in early, and cold, and Mary's recovery was retarded by it. At the beginning of November she had not left her own rooms. But at that time her seclusion was mostly a precautionary measure. She had regained much of her old sprightliness, and was full of plans for the entertainments she intended to give as soon as she was perfectly well. "I am going to introduce you to Glasgow society at the New Year, Maggie," she said, "and I can imagine the sensation you will cause—the wonder—the inquiries—the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... Indian method, vigorously shampooing the whole of his body. Next he made him walk and run with the longest strides he could take; and, after repeating this process, brought him a cup of boiling coffee. Having been revived and strengthened in this way, the lad quite recovered his sprightliness, and soon asked when we ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... conventional and hackneyed devices of most novelists, devices that the experienced reader sees through at once. No more sprightly novel than "Theo" could be desired, and a sweeter or more beautiful romance than "Kathleen" does not exist in print, while "Pretty Polly Pemberton" possesses besides its sprightliness a special interest peculiar to itself, and "Miss Crespigny" would do honor to the pen of any novelist, no matter how celebrated. "Lindsay's Luck," "A Quiet Life," "The Tide on the Moaning Bar" and "Jarl's Daughter" are all worthy members of the same collection of Mrs. Burnett's earlier, ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... seen her more radiant, carelessly light-hearted, and happy. Mavriky Nikolaevitch was there too, of course. In the crowd of young ladies and rather vulgar young men who made up Yulia Mihailovna's usual retinue, and among whom this vulgarity was taken for sprightliness, and cheap cynicism for wit, I noticed two or three new faces: a very obsequious Pole who was on a visit in the town; a German doctor, a sturdy old fellow who kept loudly laughing with great zest at his own wit; and lastly, a very young princeling from Petersburg ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... conjuring tricks. One of these "neighbours" was a young married lady, the prettiest person I had seen in America. She was a French Canadian, and added to the graces of person and manner for which they are famed a cleverness and sprightliness peculiarly her own. I was very much pleased with the friendly, agreeable society of the neighbourhood. There are a great many gentlemen residing there, with fixed incomes, who have adopted Canada as their home because of the comforts which they can enjoy in an untaxed country, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... This sprightliness of Mr. Waters amused Colville greatly. "At that time I was preoccupied with my great mistake, and I had ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... the local carrier gives a plausible machinery for the introduction of an enormous number, a truly Dickensian profusion, of subsidiary characters. Jinny indeed is above criticism, but the trouble with many, indeed with most, of the others, seemed to me to be their exaggerated sprightliness of speech, just a little too clever to be credible and not quite amusing enough to be palatable in large doses. To me the real pleasure of the book comes from the author's craftsmanlike use of words and the humour and imagination of his descriptions and asides. But if I may be humbly candid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... know, my dear, what the matter is. It is without fragrance, and without sprightliness, and generally about half as hot ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Mrs. Judson at this time, were, according to the testimony of some who well recollect her, engaging and attractive in no common degree. Her sweet and ready smile, her dark expressive eye, the animation and sprightliness of her conversation, and her refined taste and manners, made her a favorite in all circles. Her dress, for which she was indebted to the liberality of British friends, was more rich and showy than she would have chosen for herself, and as has been said, excited ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... on this Good Queen Bess Elizabeth Lost somewhat of her sprightliness; (continued) She got into a nervous state Was mopish and disconsolate. Now, as everyone will own, Had 'Iron Jelloids' been but known In Bess's time; why, it's conceded 'Twas just the Tonic that she needed. East India The great ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... misery of every condition; observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind, as they are modified by various institutions, and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... bore himself in the early days of his affliction in a jaunty debonair fashion, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as herself, then morose and irritable, and finally black ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... strokes propel it swiftly through the water. By stopping some of its paddles, and keeping others in play, the beroe can change its course at pleasure, and so wander 'at its own sweet will,' through the trackless waste. Beauty waits upon the course of this little crystal globe. The grace and sprightliness of its movements must strike the commonest observer. As the sunlight falls upon its cilia, they are 'tinted with the most lovely iridescent colours;' and at night they flash forth phosphoric light, as though the little ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Mrs. Darley, were in their glory; lounged frequent hours in the museums; and was the first to run after every new attraction placarded at the corners. He was greatly taken with the agility of an Armenian girl, upon the wire and slack-rope, who was in truth a second Fenella in the sprightliness of her nimble exhibitions. Day Francis, the conjuror, was his admiration. He was delighted with Rannie, the old ventriloquist, and the first in America; and Potter, the late sable and celebrated professor of legerdemain, in ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... or a hundred miles from the Metropolis, and return the same way. On such occasions he always manages to take some companion or friend out with him, but was never known to come back in the same company; for so irresistibly are they allured forward by his inexhaustible fund of humour and sprightliness of conversation, that they seldom think of the distance till they find themselves too far from home to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Pretty Fellow; but I have received a kind admonition in a letter, to take care that I do not omit to show also what is meant by a Very Pretty Fellow, which is to be allowed as a character by itself, and a person exalted above the other by a peculiar sprightliness, as one who, by a distinguishing vigour, outstrips his companions, and has thereby deserved and obtained a particular appellation, or nickname of familiarity. Some have this distinction from the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... he may make, and to accept the new life, much as she dreads the parting from her mother (Calendar of Clarendon Papers, vol. ii. p. 401.)] Anne Hyde possessed no special charm of person, and had no claim to rank amongst the beauties of the Court. But she was gifted with much sprightliness and humour, and although the scandals that assailed her virtue were triumphantly refuted she was frank enough not to hide such attraction of manner as she possessed, nor harshly to reject advances. She soon made a deep impression ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... resolve upon yielding at once, and without useless opposition, to what appeared almost to be my fate. The appointed time was come, and my now accepted suitor arrived; he was in high spirits, and, if possible, more entertaining than ever. I was not, however, quite in the mood to enjoy his sprightliness; but whatever I wanted in gaiety was amply made up in the triumphant and gracious good humour of my mother, whose smiles of benevolence and exultation were showered around as bountifully as the summer sunshine. I will not weary you with ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... said. "We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom." Notwithstanding, when he did arrive, Frank Churchill carried all before him by reason of his good looks, sprightliness, and amiability. Emma and he soon became great friends. He favoured an idea of hers, that Jane's refusal to go to the Dixons' in Ireland was due either to Mr. Dixon's attachment to her, or to her attachment to Mr. Dixon. When a Broadwood pianoforte ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... my taste, and Lady M—— and her amiable daughters, and your witty friend ——, are with us. In such society I am ashamed of being stupid; yet I cannot contribute to the amusement of the company, and I feel surprised at their animation and sprightliness. It seems as if I was looking on at dances, without hearing any music. Sometimes I fear that my silence should be observed, and then I begin to talk, without well knowing what I am saying. I confine myself to the most common-place subjects, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... in the transportation department, the line of his activities being between Paris and the coast, and Tom had seen him no more. He had given the compass to Tom as a "souvenir," and Tom, whose sober nature had found much entertainment in Archer's sprightliness, had cherished it as such. It was useful sometimes, too, though he had to be careful always to remember that it was ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a woman who is cold, how mad a man must appear when desire renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject, biting as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal; when he enacts with more or less sprightliness the scene where, in Venice Preserved, the genius of Orway has represented the senator Antonio, repeating a hundred times over at the feet of Aquilina: "Aquilina, Quilina, Lina, Aqui, Nacki!" without winning from her aught save the stroke of her whip, inasmuch ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... and conversation, characteristic of Spanish ladies, were fully displayed by her from the moment of our introduction. The children, especially two or three little senoritas, were very beautiful, and manifested a remarkable degree of sprightliness and intelligence. One of them presented me with a small basket wrought from a species of tough grass, and ornamented with the plumage of birds of a variety of brilliant colours. It was a beautiful ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... put in an appearance. Although he was sixty-eight, he showed as much briskness and sprightliness as any young sawbones calling in a friendly way to perform a little operation. He had brought an instrument case, some linen bands and some lint. However, he became angry on finding the injured man nervous, flushed and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Queen; but as he danced with great sprightliness, she could not bear the odour which his violent motions diffused around her room the ladies likewise began to pray for relief; for he had almost entirely got the better of all the perfumes and essences with which they were fortified: Poussatin, nevertheless, retired with a great deal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... strawberry is quicker to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover of butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; I love sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the moment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy of feeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slang and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... Still, in calmer moments he reflected, as Muzio has suggestively written: "Maria was very beautiful, as beautiful as any child of earth, most courteous and gentle, her seriousness compelled everyone to respect her, her sprightliness, to love her. She was pleasing to Heaven, whither she had gone sinless to reinforce the angelic choir, and to wear the most fragrant coronal of roses among the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; while men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ease, gayety, and sprightliness of character, and yet possess no deeper qualities calculated to inspire respect. They may have every grace of manner, and yet be heartless, frivolous, selfish. The character may be on the surface only, and without any solid ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... up law to devote himself exclusively to the pursuit of letters. In 1827, he brought out his "Buch der Lieder," and followed this up with the first part of his famous "Reisebilder." Heine's lyrics, by their unwonted grace and sprightliness, captivated German readers. Some of his songs, like that of the "Lorelei" or "Thou Art Like a Flower," soon became German folksongs. More characteristic, perhaps, of Heine's light ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... cause than real benevolence. During the time, which was near a month, that we were in France, we had not once to complain of the smallest deficiency in courtesy in any person, much less of any positive rudeness. We had also perpetual occasion to observe that cheerfulness and sprightliness for which the French have always been remarkable. But I must remind you that we crossed at the time when the whole nation was mad with joy in consequence of the Revolution. It was a most interesting period to be in France; and we had many delightful scenes, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... her audience in her grasp. In spite of the smoke of the stalls, the levity of the lounge, and the general incongruity of her surroundings, Miss ROSELLE scores nightly a distinct success. Lastly, Mlle. VANONI, returning to the scene of her former triumphs, once again delights all beholders by the sprightliness of her singing and dancing. No reason to fear the disruption of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
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