"Airiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Frank Forrester's Fish and Fishing in the United States, by W. H. HERBERT, correcting some errors which had crept into the principal work on that subject, and completing the memoirs of the finny tribes under the democratic institutions of America, with the jaunty airiness of description, and genuine relish of natural scenery (as well as of fried fish), which have given such a wide celebrity to the flowing and unctuous ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... venerable coquettishness,—bizarre, one might have styled it, but that the word conveys some hint of lack of dignity. One is at a loss just how to characterize its attractiveness. Against the sky its towers and minarets held one's fancy by their very lightness and airiness, the lanterns and fleches presupposing a like grace and proportion in the edifice below. The great square belfry at one side seemed to shoulder aside the structure with its beautiful Renaissance facade and portal and ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... palaces, as well as convents and churches, and galleries of all sorts, fly open at his approach: he is caressed in every capital—he is fete in every chateau. But though he appears amidst such accompaniments with all the airiness of a Juan, he has a thread of the blackest of Harold in his texture; and every now and then seems willing to draw a veil between him and the world of vanities. He is a poet, and a great one too, though we know not that he ever wrote a line of verse. His rapture amidst the sublime scenery ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that Suger's building was thoroughly restored from 1230 onward, in the pure pointed style of that best period. The upper part of the Choir, and the whole of the Nave and Transepts was then rebuilt— which accounts for the gracefulness and airiness of its architecture when contrasted with the dark and heavy vestibule of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to all the tender places. Even the weather also seemed to have taken a turn against her. No wholesome frost set in to brace the slackened joints and make her walk until she began to tingle; neither was there any snow to spread a new cast on the rocks and gift the trees with airiness; nor even what mild winters, for the most part, bring in counterpoise—soft, obedient skies, and trembling pleasure of the air and earth. But—as over her own love—over all the country hung just enough of mist and chill to shut out cheerful prospect, and ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... day on a visit to the Benares college, a handsome building in process of erection by the Indian Government. The Gothic and Oriental styles of architecture are most happily combined, and there is an airiness about the building; but this did not in any way detract from its solidity. The cost of the college and professor's house is not to exceed 13,000 pounds; the length of the large school-room is 260 feet, its breadth 35; and there ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... the hearts of men by fasts and meditations and constant argument. I count it enough to live and die as a man, loving and trusting the world, unable to look on it either as a delusion of the Creator or a snare of the Devil. It is not for me to strive to be wafted away into the airiness of an Angel. ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... entering the church is one of light and airiness, due to the size and number of the windows, of which that at the west end is the finest. The wooden groining of the tower is curious, and the base of the walls show the existence of a former building ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... charming, and the rich cadences of her cultivated voice gave Ringfield pleasure, slightly recalling Miss Clairville's accents, and he was happy in experiencing for the first time in his life that amiable naturalness, inimitable airiness, ease and adaptability, which characterize the Anglican clergy and their method of doing things. Attenuated tennis, Lilliputian Badminton, swings, a greased pole, potato and sack races, fiddling, and dancing on a platform, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... ivied tree, and floods began to roar and foam in every trough and gulley. The drifts that had been so white and fair, looked yellow, and smirched, and muddy, and lost their graceful curves, and moulded lines, and airiness. But the strangest sight of all to me was in the bed of streams, and brooks, and especially of the Lynn river. It was worth going miles to behold such a thing, for a man might never have the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... inspired. The ever gay and lively Boz, always in spirits, called up many a happy scene, and gave the pen a certain airiness and nimbleness. There is little that is official or magisterial about the volumes. Everything is pleasant and interesting, put together—though there is a crowd of details—with extraordinary art and finish. It furnishes a most truthful and accurate picture of the "inimitable," recognizable ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... sufficiently large, though part of it was partitioned off as a bedroom; the partition, for the sake of airiness, was only eight or nine feet high, and the furniture was of the plainest description; a white Indian matting covered the floor, and there were pink Madras curtains at the window. As Elizabeth pointed out, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... forward this analysis of his brother's state of mind with a gravity which was in complete contrast with the light airiness of his tea-table gossip, and Barrant felt that he ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... very well in light green chiffon, but she hadn't Patty's liking for simplicity of detail, and her heavy satin sash and profusion of jingling ornaments detracted from the airiness of her light gown. Her hat was of triangular shape, with a green cockade, and perched jauntily on her befrizzed hair, gave ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... openings were contrived through the wood for distant views or beautiful objects: the mansion-house was ancient, large and magnificent, but constructed with as little attention to convenience and comfort, as to airiness and elegance; it was dark, heavy and monastic, equally in want of repair and of improvement. The grandeur of its former inhabitants was every where visible, but the decay into which it was falling rendered such remains mere objects for meditation ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... command an extensive bird's eye view of the Comtat Grignan, surmounted by the long Alpine ridge of Mont Ventou, and an amphitheatre of other smaller mountains: and enough remained of both apartments to give a full idea of the lightness and airiness of their situation, and of their ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... her dogs, whose numbers had now been augmented by a white terrier with a black patch over its left eye, could not see the young man's face: but his voice, when he replied, told her that something was wrong. There was a false airiness in it. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... a design in which they all confess defeat, is, I suppose, the explanation of their miserable system. But they might see in the girls' school at Tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifely sisters, a different picture of efficiency, and a scene of neatness, airiness, and spirited and mirthful occupation that should shame them into cheerier methods. The sisters themselves lament their failure. They complain the annual holiday undoes the whole year's work; they complain particularly of the heartless indifference ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the attempt be made to avoid the ponderous movement and excessive sobriety of Milton, and to communicate the Horatian airiness, and there is a loss in conciseness ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... shows more vibrant emotion in the presence of the sublimities of the natural elements. His manner when dealing with the inanimate world is the manner of the Eighteenth Century touched with a certain airiness and charm that is perhaps more Hellenic than Latin. As one reads him one almost feels as though the human race detached itself from its surroundings and put between itself and Nature a certain clear and airy space, untroubled by any magnetic currents of spiritual ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... gossip you are sure to find it; and I have little doubt that when Friday learned enough English, one of the first things Crusoe did was to tell him some scandal about the goat. Thus, though I treated the "Keredec affair" with a seeming airiness to Amedee, I cunningly drew the faithful rascal out, and fed my curiosity upon his own (which, as time went on and the mystery deepened, seemed likely to burst him), until, virtually, I was receiving, every evening at dinner, a detailed report of the day's doings of Professor ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Willie did, after getting his room all to himself, was to put hinges on the windows and make them open, so satisfying his father as to the airiness of the room. Finding himself then, as it were, in a house of his own, he began to ask his friends in the village to come and see him in his new quarters. The first who did so was Mrs Wilson, and Mr Spelman ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... end, he paused for a moment, and carelessly looked down. It was about fifteen feet to the floor below—the simplest jump in the world for the mountain-bred Bones. Daintily, gingerly, lazily, and yet with a conceited airiness of manner, as if, humanly speaking, he had one leg in his pocket and were doing it on three, he cleared the distance, dropping just in front of the chancel, without a sound, turned himself around three times, and then lay ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... darker. Broadly speaking, it is Nature's own arrangement, green trees and hillsides, the sky above, and the dark earth beneath our feet. A ceiling, if lighter in tone than the walls, gives a sense of airiness to a room. Floors, whether of exposed wood, completely carpeted, or covered by rugs, must be enough darker than your sidewalls to "hold down your ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... if she could not walk such a little way as that? Anna, too, was averse to riding and she felt a kind of grim satisfaction when, after a time, the little figure, which at first had skipped along ahead with all the airiness of a bird, began to lag, and even pant for breath, as the way grew steeper and the path more stony and rough. Anna's evil spirit was in the ascendant that afternoon, steeling her heart against Lucy's doleful exclamations, as one ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... the windows, ran a row of dancing boys; and these are still most beautifully modelled, though the pallor of recent whitewash is upon them. All the boys have blonde hair. They are naked, with scrolls or ribbons wreathed round them, adding to the airiness of their continual dance. Some of the loveliest are in a room used to stow away the lumber of the church—old boards and curtains, broken lanterns, candle-ends in tin sconces, the musty apparatus of festival adornments, and in the midst of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... evidently in an impossible attitude for the sustainment of its weight, so all readers would be more or less oppressed and worried by this presentation of everything in one smart point of view, when they know it must have other, and weightier, and more solid properties. Airiness and good spirits are always delightful, and are inseparable from notes of a cheerful trip; but they should sympathise with many things as well as see them in a lively way. It is but a word or a touch that ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... fingers around that delicate white throat until the music of her death cry should set him free for ever. But when his thoughts led him hitherwards a cold fear gave him strength to break away—for with them came the singing in his ears, the lights before his eyes, the airiness of heart and laughter which go before madness. He sprang to his feet, steadied himself for a moment, and walked rapidly onwards. The momentary exhilaration died slowly away—the old depression settled down upon his ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... Adriatic, once the empire of the republic. The architecture of Venice has to my eyes, something watery and oceanic in its aspect. Under the hands of Palladio, the Grecian orders seemed to borrow the lightness and airiness of the Gothic. As you look at the numerous windows and the multitude of columns which give a striated appearance to the fronts of the palaces, you think of stalactites and icicles, such as you might imagine to ornament the abodes ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... of comfort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the huts became uninhabitable from their closeness and the vermin with which they swarmed, while a canvas tent, though far preferable in the way of airiness and cleanliness, did not ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Fields before now, if I didn't know that you will both understand how occupied I am, and how naturally, when I put my papers away for the day, I get up and fly. I have a large room here, with three fine windows, overlooking the Park,—unsurpassable for airiness ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields |
