"Disport" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the night when unlicked cubs do disport themselves in our precincts. A mistaken sense of philanthropy has led my mother to make this house the fortnightly salon bleu of St. Thomas's. But there's a pipe at your service ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... denied them; for Professor Seeley, that stern custodian, has his answer ready for all such seekers. 'If you want recreation, you must find it in Poetry, particularly Lyrical Poetry. Try Shelley. We can no longer allow you to disport yourselves in the Fields of History as if they were a ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... these books remind one of "a merry disport," which formerly took place in the hall of the Inner Temple. "At the conclusion of the ceremony, a huntsman came into the hall bearing a fox, a pursenet, and a cat, both bound at the end of a staff, attended by nine or ten couples of hounds with the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... nor his skin steel plate: he was flesh and tender; he was a vulnerable, breathing boy, with highly developed capacities for pain which were now being taxed to their utmost. Once he had loved to run, to leap, to disport himself in the sun, to drink deep of the free air; he had loved life and one or two of his fellowmen. He had borne himself buoyantly, with jaunty self-confidence, even with some intolerance toward the weaknesses of others, not ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... now—of the men who, as he reminds them, laughed in their sleeve at the young priest's escapade, and at the transparent excuses with which he had taxed their credulity,—of the men who, in consideration for his youth, merely sent him to disport himself elsewhere, leaving the woman he had striven to protect, to the husband who was to ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and wind so eagerly? If, like guilty spirits, they repair to some dread conference with powers like themselves, in what wild regions do the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible disport? ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... father with absolute consternation. He was transformed; he had become a new person; he was forgetting himself in a ridiculous manner; letting down his dignity to an alarming extent. Dr. Rylance, the fashionable physician, the man whose nice touch adjusted the nerves of the aristocracy, to disport himself with unkempt, bare-handed young Wendovers! It was an upheaval of things which struck horror to Urania's soul. Easy, after beholding such a moral convulsion, to believe that the Wight had once been part of the mainland; or even that Ireland had originally ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... large-headed, and with long slender bodies, to all appearance covered with a coat of dark brown wool, crawling and floundering about among the kelp, in constantly increasing numbers. Each new ledge of reef, as it rises to the surface, becomes crowded with them, while hundreds of others disport themselves ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... somewhat different aspect. He experienced something of that temporary relief from personal responsibility that moments of religious sentiment often give to minds that are unaccustomed to religion. He had been free for the time to disport himself in something infinitely larger and wider than his little world, and he took up his duty at the point at which he had left it with something of this sense ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... am so happy," said Irene, who had been helping some of the little girls to climb up and tumble down cocks of hay, and otherwise disport themselves. "I didn't know other children could be so nice; but I find poor children are much nicer than rich ones. They have no manners, which I detest, and just say what they think. They have been telling me some home-truths, and I have been laughing like anything. I didn't know ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... Mansfield's full state wig, which had again come into the possession of the perruquier after the death of his lordship. The wig had been graciously lent by the barber to one Lawrence, belonging to the legal profession, but also an amateur actor. In this wig, we are told, he proposed to disport himself in the character of Shylock. The plaintiff could not get it back again, and brought the action for its recovery. The wig had been accidentally burnt, and the judge awarded the plaintiff the sum of L2 as a compensation for ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... home, he was left to his own self and felt very lonely. Neither would he go and disport himself with others; but with the daily return of dusk, he was wont to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... previous night, while Jimmie and Sir Lucius were dining at Morley's, Victor Nevill emerged from his rooms in Jermyn street, and walked briskly to Piccadilly Circus. He looked quite unlike the spruce young man of fashion who was wont to disport himself in the West End at this hour, for he wore tweeds, a soft hat, and a rather shabby overcoat. He took a cab in Coventry street, and gave the driver a northern address. As he rode through the Soho ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Lady Eveline's person. Without this military attendance they could not in safety move even so far as the mills, where honest Wilkln Flammock, his warlike deeds forgotten, was occupied with his mechanical labours. But if a farther disport was intended, and the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse proposed to hunt or hawk for a few hours, her safety was not confided to a guard so feeble as the garrison of the castle might afford. It was necessary that Raoul should announce her purpose to Damian by a special messenger despatched ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... pictures are quite as truly part of the Human Comedy: because they represent man giving play to his soul—exercising his highest faculties. Nor does the realistic novelist in such efforts have the air of one who has left his true business in order to disport himself for once in an alien element. On the contrary, he seems absolutely at home: for the time, this is his only affair, his ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... spread out amid the hills. This offers a perfect surface for skating, and attracts not only the boys and girls of the village, but a large number of their elders. The lake grows lively with the gracefully gliding promenade of skaters, with here and there a group playing at hockey, while others disport themselves at "crack the whip." The friction of so many gliding feet imparts to the frozen surface a low and weirdly humming sound, and the droning note is echoed by the hills, until the valley resounds with monotonous music. There ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... life, A woman, female, nothing but her sex, And she avenges on this prodigy The folly of too staid, ascetic youth. A noble woman's half, yes all, a man— It is their faults that make them woman-kind. And that resistance, which the oft deceived Gains through experience, the King has not; A light disport he takes for bitter earn'st. But this shall not endure, I warrant thee! The foe is at the borders, and the King Shall hie him where long since he ought to be; Myself shall lead him hence. And so ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to the mid-Lent entertainment as a matter of course. Aurora had shown small knowledge of him when she thought he would consent to see her disport herself before the public as a negress. On the day after, when he learned that she had been the star of the evening as a negro, his frenzied disgust itself warned him of the injustice, the impropriety, of ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... artist, which, in fact, they resemble. They are unfelt, that is the explanation—unfelt aesthetically. They have not been through the oven. They are artistically insincere. Sentimentality makes strange bedfellows. Rousseau has slipped into the very hole wherein Mr. Frank Dixie and Sir Luke Fildes disport themselves; only, by betraying his vice in a picture that is, for the most part, so exquisitely sure in its simple, delicate expression of a frank and charming vision he gives us an impressive example of the danger, even to a good ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... he saw Cliges riding with three other striplings who were taking their pleasure, carrying lances and shields in order to tilt and to disport themselves. Now is the duke's nephew bent on attacking and injuring them if ever he can. With five comrades he sets out; and the six have posted themselves secretly beside the wood in a valley, so that the Greeks never saw them till they issued from the ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... lungworts. Then spring invades the earth, and cellar and stream with honey and pollen, while each day beholds the birth of thousands of bees. The overgrown males now all sally forth from their cells, and disport themselves on the combs; and so crowded does the too prosperous city become that hundreds of belated workers, coming back from the flowers towards evening, will vainly seek shelter within, and will be forced ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... delicacy of dainty dames, and wanton women's wills, instruments of folly to play and dally withal, in trifling away the treasure of time, to withdraw their minds from more commendable exercises, and to content their corrupt concupiscences with vain disport—a silly poor shift to shun their irksome idleness. The Sybaritical puppies the smaller they be (and thereto if they have a hole in the fore parts of their heads) the better they are accepted, the more pleasure also they provoke, as meet playfellows for mincing ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar beasts of disport; he also kept for amusement fifteen or sixteen albinos; and so greedy was he of novelty, that even a cock of peculiar form or colour would have been forwarded by its owner to feed ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... space of clear water between the river bank and the margin of the tule, in which the brute seemed to disport a few moments; and then the rustling of the reeds indicated that it was about to advance. With heavy footfalls it came toward me; as it approached my nervousness increased; I could not mistake that significant tread; undoubtedly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... That such strains should exist is an ultimate datum; justification cannot be required of them, but must be offered to each of them in turn by all that enters its particular orbit. There is no will but might find a world to disport itself in and to call good, and thereupon boast to have created that in which it found itself expressed. But such satisfaction has been denied to the majority; the equilibrium of things has at least postponed their day. Yet they are not altogether extinguished, since ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... were plenty of purchasers, for the buccaneers were willing to buy everything which could be brought from Europe. They were fond of good wine, good groceries, good firearms, and ammunition, fine cutlasses, and very often good clothes, in which they could disport themselves when on shore. But they had peculiar customs and manners, and although they were willing to buy as much as the French traders had to sell, they could not be prevailed upon to pay their bills. A pirate is not the sort of a man who generally cares to pay his ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... but Catherine did not much like to think about them. Their household teaching under Mrs. Elsmere and her old servant Martha—as great an original as herself—was so irregular, their religious training so extraordinary, the clothes in which they were allowed to disport themselves so scandalous to the sober taste of the rector's wife, that Catherine involuntarily regarded the little cottage on the hill as a spot of misrule in the general order of the parish. She would go in, say, at eleven o'clock in the morning, find her mother-in-law ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Leander Yerby hearkened to this criticism intimated a persuasion that there were many obedient people in this world, but few who could so disport themselves in the intricacies of the English language; and Sudley, as he plodded homeward with his rifle on his shoulder, his dog running on in advance, and Leander pattering along behind, was often moved to add the weight of his ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... off the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that is growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on the baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek for new pastures—perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?—perhaps ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... of thy brothers in his entirety. There is great sin in quarrelling with friends. They that are thy grandsires are theirs also. Give away in charity on occasions of sacrifices, gratify every dear object of thy desire, disport in the company of women freely, and enjoy ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... handling on the part of Dickens too often affects some of us. The sin and the punishment of the Doctor, the thoroughly human figures of Genestas and the rest, save the situation from this and other drawbacks. We are not in the Cockaigne of perfectibility, where Marmontel and Godwin disport themselves; we are in a very practical place, where time-bargains in barley are made, and you pay the respectable, if not lavish board of ten francs per day for entertainment to man ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... saw less of Captain Ephraim, but he had compensation, for the good captain now diverted into his modest grounds a no-account little brook which was going begging, and dug a snug little basin at the foot of the garden for the Pup to disport himself therein. All through the summer he continued to grow and was happy, playing with Toby, offending the yellow cat, amusing Miss Libby, and affording food for speculation to Mrs. Barnes over her knitting. In the winter Captain Ephraim ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... triumphs. She was growing old then, her days were over, and Herve's day was over. Vainly did he pile parody upon parody; vainly did he seize the conductor's baton; the days of their glory had gone. Now Asnieres itself is forgotten; the modern youth has chosen another suburb to disport himself in; the ballroom has been pulled down, and never again will an orchestra play a note of these poor scores; even their names are unknown. A few bars of a chorus of pages came back to me, remembered only by me, all are gone, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... lost in a crowd of yet greater blisses! But this was a disorder too violent in nature to last long: the vessels, so stirred and intensely heated, soon boiled over, and for that time put out the fire; meanwhile all this dalliance and disport had so far consumed the morning, that it became a kind of necessity to lay ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... a long low building, with a red-tiled roof extending over a porch or whitewashed veranda, in which drunken vaqueros had been known to occasionally disport their mustangs, did not offer a very reputable appearance to the eye of young Guest as he approached it in the gathering shadows. One or two half-broken horses were securely fastened to the stout cross-beams ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... The zephyrs disport with a light-bosomed song, And the joy-laden songsters flit over the lea— Yet the hours of the spring as they hurry along Bring nothing but sadness and ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... fruit vendors linger hopelessly in the kennel, in vain endeavouring to attract customers; and the ragged boys who usually disport themselves about the streets, stand crouched in little knots in some projecting doorway, or under the canvas blind of a cheesemonger's, where great flaring gas-lights, unshaded by any glass, display huge piles of blight red and pale ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... during the nesting season. Their nests are built among the branches of the fir trees, and there they disport themselves gaily, climbing nimbly, and assisting their movements, as parrots do, with their beaks. They will hang downward for minutes clinging to a twig or cone, seeming to enjoy this apparently uncomfortable position. They fly rapidly, but never to a great distance. "The pleasure they experience ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... understands that what I write for you must pass at a considerable height over its simple romantic head. It will take my books as read and my genius for granted, trusting me to put forth work of such quality as shall bear out its verdict. So we may disport ourselves on our own plane to the top of our bent; and if any gentleman points out that neither this epistle dedicatory nor the dream of Don Juan in the third act of the ensuing comedy is suitable for immediate production at a popular theatre we need not contradict him. Napoleon provided ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... abound, till 50 Proserpina's field, To the foison thy lap overflowing its laurel of Sicily yield. Call, assemble the nymphs—hamadryad and dryad— the echoes who court From the rock, who the rushes inhabit, in ripples who swim and disport. "I admonish you maids—I, his mother, who suckled the scamp ere he flew— An ye trust to the Boy flying naked, some pestilent 55 prank ye shall rue." Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... my own love, that in each element exists a race of beings, whose form scarcely differs from yours, but who very seldom appear to mortal sight. In the flames, the wondrous Salamanders glitter and disport themselves; in the depths of earth dwell the dry, spiteful race of Gnomes; the forests are peopled by Wood-nymphs, who are also spirits of air; and the seas, the rivers and brooks contain the numberless tribes of Water-sprites. Their echoing halls of crystal, where the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... longest to disport thyself on a long bridge and art prepared for the dance, but that fearest the trembling legs of the bridgelet builded on re-used shavings, lest supine it may lie stretched in the hollow swamp; may a good bridge take its place designed ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... immediate entertaining the revel now began—no lesser word describes it. If, before the departure of his dinner guests, Brown had experienced a slight feeling of fatigue, it disappeared with the pleasure of seeing his present company disport themselves. They were not in the least afraid of him—how should they be, when he had spent months in the winning of their confidence and affection by every clever wile known to the genuine boy lover? That they respected him was plainly shown by the ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... my disport) Often in the summer season, To a Village to resort Famous for the rathe ripe peason, Where beneath a Plumb-tree shade Many pleasant ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... it, make up the bed for 'im," volunteers the military officer, towards eleven o'clock; and, as there isn't much going on, we say, "All right—we'll have it now;" and we disport ourselves in the corridor, while he works a sort of transformation in our Gladstone Bag compartment, which seems greatly to diminish its "containing" capacity. Indeed, if it were not for the floor, the ceiling, and the walls, one would hardly know where to stow one's packages. Le train de Luxe ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... gain great profit on them; till, Allah willing, I will make my capital an hundred thousand dirhams. Then I will purchase a fine house with white slaves and eunuchs and horses; and I will eat and drink and disport myself; nor will I leave a singing man or a singing woman in the city, but I will summon them to my palace and make them perform before me." All this he counted over in his mind, while the tray of glass ware,: worth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... rough sleds, on went the round hoods, old hats, red cloaks, and moccasins, and away trudged the four younger Bassetts, to disport themselves in the snow, and try the ice down by the old mill, where the great wheel turned and splashed ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... power of his fellow-spirits shall stand at his behest. Then, too, in a Lily-bush, shall he find the green Snake again, and the fruit of his marriage with her shall be three daughters, which, to men, shall appear in the form of their mother. In the spring season these shall disport them in the dark Elder-bush, and sound with their lovely crystal voices. And then if, in that needy and mean age of inward obduracy, there shall be found a youth who understands their song; nay, if one of the little Snakes look at him with her kind eyes; if the look ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... varied he, and of his tortuous train Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, To lure her eye; she, busied, heard the sound Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used To such disport before her through the field, From every beast; more duteous at her call, Than at Circean call the herd disguised. He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood, But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come among you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die among you all, to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood even in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of care-free children. The forest was filled with oaks, beeches, walnuts and sugar-maple trees, growing close together and free from underbrush. Now and then there was an open glade called a prairie or "lick," where the wild animals came to drink and disport themselves. Game was plentiful—deer, bears, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks and birds of all kinds. This, with Tom Lincoln's passion for hunting, promised good things for the family to eat, as well as bearskin rugs for the bare earth floor, and deerskin curtains for the still open door ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... here realized in all its perfection; not in the pattern of such faded insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of those which hover across the meads of paradise for child-angels and the spirits of departed infants to disport themselves with. The rich down was visible upon its wings; the lustre of its eyes seemed instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered around this wonder—the candles gleamed upon it; but it glistened apparently by its own radiance, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... When he presented himself to be sworn in, it was one of the jokes of the day that Sir Walter Barttelot expected he would approach the Table making "a cart-wheel" down the floor, as ragged little boys disport themselves along the pavement when a drag or omnibus passes. Sir Walter was genuinely surprised to find in the fearsome Birmingham Radical a quietly-dressed, well-mannered, almost boyish-looking man, who spoke in a clear, admirably pitched voice, and opposed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... distance of many miles. The palms skirting the lake reflect their graceful forms far over the water, whose surface, undisturbed by the slightest breath of air, shows smooth and shining as a mirror; broken, however, here and there, where water-fowl disport themselves upon it. Among these may be observed the great musk duck, misnamed "Muscovy," and the black-necked swan; both indigenous to the Chaco; while in the shallower places along shore, and by the edges of the islets, appear various species of long-legged waders, standing ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... ridge intervenes between the Phutra plain where the city lies, and the inland sea where the Mahars were wont to disport themselves in the cool waters. Not until we had topped this ridge did we get a view ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fancy are to be seen on the shrine, although treated outwardly with Renaissance feeling. A realistic life-sized mouse may be seen in one place, just as if it had run out to inspect the work; and the numbers of little tipsy "putti" who disport themselves in all attitudes, in perilous positions on narrow ledges, are ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the Irishman continued to flourish his heels and disport himself in such a lively style, that his spirit became contagious, and the four, who were yet upon the ground, now came to their feet, and after some plunging and rearing, made a rush down the slope, and were ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... scarcely a casualty except the death of General Green, an irreparable one. No Confederate went aboard the fleet and no Federal came ashore; so there was a fine field of slaughter in which the imagination of both sides could disport itself. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... patches of moss. At the foot of one hill a stream wends its way through the drooping boughs of the stunted shrubs that grow on its edges, and loses itself in a quiet pond where long-legged insects disport themselves on the leaves of the water-lilies. The sun beat down on us. The gnats rubbed their wings together and bent the slender ends of the reeds with the weight of their tiny bodies. We were alone in ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... this fine Saturday, had come down from London for the week-end to disport themselves on the Ulland links, half a mile beyond the park. After a couple of raw days, the afternoon had turned out quite unseasonably warm, and though the golfers had come back earlier than usual, not because of the heat but because one of their number had a train ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, to return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again—twice within these last void and idle six months—I have ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Latin well this morning, cousin?" queried Francis. "Doth not my lady mother instruct me in the tent and cross-stitch each day? Besides doth not even the Queen's Majesty disport herself with the bow? 'Tis the fashion, good ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... a worker—would it do me harm to disport myself in the flowery mead with the butterflies? Should I feel a distaste for the bread earned by labour and pain after the honey placed, effortless, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... kind of toad-stool (Bran) in order to counteract the power of the Trolls and other evil spirits, who are believed to be abroad that night; for at that mystic season the mountains open and from their cavernous depths the uncanny crew pours forth to dance and disport themselves for a time. The peasants believe that should any of the Trolls be in the vicinity they will show themselves; and if an animal, for example a he or she goat, happens to be seen near the blazing, crackling pile, the peasants are firmly persuaded that it is no other ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... grasshoppers.' No doubt they were gigantic, but fear performed the miracle of adding a cubit to their stature. When the coward hears that 'there is a lion without,'—that is, in the open country,—he immediately concludes, 'I shall be slain in the streets,' where it is not usual for lions to disport themselves. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... seems to rise, Embellished by the lavish hand of spring; Thin gilded clouds float lightly through the skies, And laughing loves disport ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... a very serious trouble to Helen that she was not to buy and disport herself in pretty frocks and hats. The desire to dress prettily and tastefully is born in most girls—just as surely as is the desire to breathe. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... down at Pavilionstone, every tide. And, if you want to live a life of luggage, or to see it lived, or to breathe sweet air which will send you to sleep at a moment's notice at any period of the day or night, or to disport yourself upon or in the sea, or to scamper about Kent, or to come out of town for the enjoyment of all or any of these pleasures, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Where are we fallen? Save that it is more vulgar, it might be Nice, or the Riviera, or Interkalken, or any other of those towns of carnival whither the bad taste of the whole world comes to disport itself in the so-called fashionable seasons. But in these quarters, on the other hand, which belong to the foreigners and to the Egyptians rallied to the civilisation of the West, all is clean and dry, well cared for and well kept. There are no ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... battells, and also to besiege a town at thy best advantage, Philopomenes Prince of the Achayans, among other praises Writers give him, they say, that in time of peace, he thought not upon any thing so much as the practise of warre; and whensoever he was abroad in the field to disport himselfe with his friends, would often stand still, and discourse with them, in case the enemies were upon the top of that hill, and we here with our army, whether of us two should have the advantage, and how ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... in the year 1377, was made by the citizens for disport of the young prince, Richard, son of the Black Prince, in the feast of Christmas, in this manner: On the Sunday before Candlemas, in the night, one hundred and thirty citizens, disguised, and well horsed, in a mummery, with sound of trumpets, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... previous arrangement with the management, make its debut upon the public stage. Ambitious non-professionals, mostly self-instructed, display their skill and powers of entertainment along the broadest lines. They may sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort, recite, or disport themselves along any of the ragged boundary lines of Art. From the ranks of these anxious tyros are chosen the professionals that adorn or otherwise make conspicuous the full-blown stage. Press-agents ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... whole brood, two old and four young, used to disport themselves on the quilt of an old bedridden woman on Otterbourne Hill. It is the popular belief that robins kill their fathers in October, and the widow of a woodman declared that her husband had seen deadly battles, also that he ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... propos! I expect to be a member of the Yacht Club this summer. Let me recommend to you a new field of action. They will disport themselves on the green water, and we on the green cloth! By the way, I forgot to speak of it—I bought a boat the other day, a mere rowboat. It is on the Fontauka Canal, at the Simeonovski bridge. We must come for a ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Presbytery to satisfy itself as to the soundness in the faith of the candidates before them. On this score, however, few indulged serious anxiety. Once the Hebraic shoals and snags were safely passed, both examiner and examined could disport themselves with a jaunty self-confidence born of a thorough acquaintance with the Shorter Catechism received during the plastic ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... not your own. To such people there is something almost indecent in the thought that any one should deliberately wish to shed his own nationality and clothe himself in another. They form the unintelligent background against which the wild and lurid nationalists of every tribe disport themselves in frenzied movements of hate and antagonism. An irate old colonel (very gouty) said to me the other day: "A man who forgets his duties to his own country and settles in another is a damnable cur. So much for these dirty foreigners ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... maidens, Friends and companions, Disport yourselves, maidens, Arouse yourselves, fair ones. Come sing we in chorus The secrets of maidens. Allure the young gallant With dance and with song. As we lure the young gallant, Espy him approaching, Disperse yourselves, darlings, And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... assume the gay insouciance of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt raillery,—the "chaff,"—with which Britons disport themselves; if to China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a camel's-hair pencil, but all Oriental bizarrerie fails to thoroughly amuse him. Wherever he may go, he settles at once and easily into the outward life of the people among whom he is,—while he always reserves within ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... And in these vivaries be so many wild geese and ganders and wild ducks and swans and herons that it is without number. And all about these ditches and vivaries is the great garden full of wild beasts. So that when the great Chan will have any disport on that, to take any of the wild beasts or of the fowls, he will let chase them and take them at the windows without going out ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... others of what man may be that is content to be merely man, with no higher thought in him than the gratification of his instincts and his impulses. I have heard tell in travellers' tales of strange lands, beneath fiercer suns than ours, where naked savages disport themselves with the lawless assurance of wild beasts, and it seemed to me—being always given to speculation—that Messer Simone, if he found himself in such a company, would never be at a loss, but would straightway be admitted to their ruffian ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one term as justice of the peace, while by assiduous bootlicking we may, like Rienzi Miltiades Johnsing, obtain a lieutenant-colonelcy—or even a gigadier-brindleship—on the gilded staff of some 2 x 4 governor, and disport in all the glorious pomp and circumstance of war at inaugural balls or on mimic battlefields; hence ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the road along the Admiralty canal are now the citizens' chief places of disport. Before the year 1869 the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, that skirts the sea on the south side of the old town, was their sole promenade. And even this street was built only a short time ago. Vainly one conjectures where the medieval Tarentines took the air. It must have ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... I should shoot, and fish, and ride, and disport myself gaily over my brother's inheritance—that my own hand deprived him of!" cried Brian, with angry bitterness. "It is so likely! Is it you who have no feeling, or do you ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... convulse with laughter; set the table in a roar, be the death of one. recreate, solace, cheer, rejoice; please &c. 829; interest; treat, regale. amuse oneself, game; play a game, play pranks, play tricks; sport, disport, toy, wanton, revel, junket, feast, carouse, banquet, make merry, drown care; drive dull care away; frolic, gambol, frisk, romp; caper; dance &c. (leap) 309; keep up the ball; run a rig, sow one's wild oats, have one's fling, take one's pleasure; paint the town ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Is to mine ear a lusty food. And eke mine ear hath, over this, A dainty feaste when so is That I may hear herselve speak; For then anon my fast I break On suche wordes as she saith, That full of truth and full of faith They be, and of so good disport, That to mine eare great comfort They do, as they that be delices For all the meats, and all the spices, That any Lombard couthe[3] make, Nor be so lusty for to take, Nor so far forth restoratif, (I say as for mine owne life,) As be the wordes of her mouth For as the windes of the south Be ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... for disport we fawn and flatter both, To pass the time when nothing else can please, And train them to our lure with subtle oath, Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease; And then we say when we their fancy try, To play with fools, O what a ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... sunny morning of spring, that Ralph sat alone on the toft by the rock-house, for Ursula had gone down the meadow to disport her and to bathe in the river. Ralph was fitting the blade of a dagger to a long ashen shaft, to make him a strong spear; for with the waxing spring the bears were often in the meadows again; and the day before they had come across a family of the beasts ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... shot fired from the window of Urrard House, in which a party of Mackay's men had lodged themselves. He was watering his horse at the time at a pond called the Goose-Dub, where the Laird of Urrard's geese were wont to disport themselves. This story is evidently part of the old nurse's prophecy mentioned on page 3. For these and many other anecdotes of the battle, see the "History of the Rebellions in Scotland." I have taken my account ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... to the Bois de Boulogne and the Champs Elysees, or to the gardens of Beaujon, and Tivoli—or to the yet more attractive magnificence of the palace and fountains of Versailles—where, in one or the other of these places, they carouse, or disport themselves—in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... from cold and wet, and his mother is coddled by the most nourishing foods, that she may not fail in her duty to him. During childhood he is provided with a warm house, a clean bed, and a yard in which to disport himself, and is fed for growth and bone on skim-milk, oatmeal, and sweet alfalfa. During his youth, corn meal is liberally added to his diet, also other dainties which he enjoys and makes much of; and ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... glory of the poetry; since one of the noblest functions of its art is to describe the deeds and the subjects of stories, and adorned and delectable places with transparent waters in which the green recesses of their course can be seen as the waves disport themselves over meadows and fine pebbles, and the plants which are mingled with them, and the gliding fishes, and similar descriptions, which might just as well be made to a stone as to a man born blind, since he has never seen that which composes the beauty of the world, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... good roof is taken as meaning that your roof is tight, that it keeps out the water, that it excels in those qualities in which it excelled equally three thousand years ago. What you ought to mean is that you have a roof that is flat and has things on it that make it livable, where you can walk, disport yourself, or sleep; a house-top view of your neighbors' affairs; an airy pleasance with a full sweep of stars; a place to listen of nights to the drone of the city; a place of observation, and if you are so inclined, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... acquaintanceship. The squirrels that inhabited the trees in the front-yard were won in time by her blandishments to come and perch on her window-sills, and thence, by trains of nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining cherry tea-table that stood between the windows; and we youngsters used to sit entranced with delight as they gambolled and waved their feathery tails in frolicsome security, eating rations of gingerbread ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and the wild beasts; but he paid no heed to his warning voice. And it so chanced that once upon a time he said to his attendants "Take ye ten days food and forage;" and, when they obeyed his bidding, he set out with his suite for sport and disport. They rode on into the desert and ceased not riding four days, till they came to a place where the ground was green, and they saw in it wild beasts grazing and trees with ripe fruit growing and springs ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... wind had smitten it. He was born to handle roses without thorns; I think that with a pretty boudoir, on whose table every morning a pretty maid should arrange a pretty nosegay, and with a pretty canary to sing songs in a gilded cage, and pretty gold-fish to disport in a crystal vase, and basted partridges for dinner, his love for the country would have been satisfied. He loved Nature as a sentimental boy loves a fine woman of twice his years,—sighing himself away in pretty phrases that flatter, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... fortunate, perhaps, that minuets have gone out of fashion, if they involved such a test of endurance as that in which Claude Duval and his fair captive now disport themselves with an amount of bodily exertion it seems real cruelty to encore. His concluding caper shakes the mask from his partner's face, and the young lady falls, with a shriek, into his arms, leaving the audience in that happy ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... slopes.[*] At the foot of their wide semicircle is a circular space of ground, beaten hard, and ringed by a low stone barrier. It is some ninety feet in diameter. This is the "orchestra," the "dancing place," wherein the chorus may disport itself and execute its elaborate figures. Behind the orchestra stretches a kind of tent or booth, the "skene." Within this the actors may retire to change their costumes, and the side nearest to the audience is provided with ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... part of life, a congruous addition, a parallel life, as it were, to the vulgar one. I see no reason, in the analogies of the natural world, for supposing that the circumstances of human life are the only circumstances in which the spirit of life can disport itself. Even on this planet, there are sea-animals and air-animals, ephemeral beings and self-centred beings, as well as persons who can grow as old as Matthew Arnold, and be as fond as he was of classifying other people. And ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... combines with his delight in emblematic allegory happily enough, in most of these pieces except Mother Hubbard's Tale. This is almost an open satire, and shows that if Spenser's genius had not found a less mongrel style to disport itself in, not merely would Donne, and Lodge, and Hall, and Marston have had to abandon their dispute for the post of first English satirist, but the attainment of really great satire in English might ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... farce!" he was saying, smiting himself on the breast with his fist. "I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport of the sated mob! I have put out my torch, have hid my talent in the earth, like the slothful servant! But fo-ormerly!" he began to bray tragically, "Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in Novocherkassk, ask in Tvier, in Ustejne, in Zvenigorodok, in Krijopole.[10] What a Zhadov ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of place in the dining-hall than Kit Hatton's hounds, was the mule fairly mounted on which the Prince Pallaphilos made his appearance at the High Table after supper, when he notified to his subjects in what manner they were to disport themselves till bedtime. Thus also when the Prince of Purpoole kept his court at Gray's Inn, A.D. 1594, the prince's champion rode into the dining-hall upon the back of a fiery charger which, like the rider, was clothed in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... soul, that often required to emerge from its deep reflections, unbend itself, and alternately disport or repose in utter self-abandonment. It dismissed thought, as it were, in order to become a child again; to deliver itself over to all the caprices of those myriad changeful fugitive impressions that course through the brain at ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... cargoes waft of modulated Sound From viewless Hybla brought, when Melodies Like Birds of Paradise on wings, that aye Disport in wild variety of hues, Murmur around the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the maiden, "and I wish that I could thus disport myself." "I can do yet greater things," said Merlin, "and no one can devise anything which I cannot do, and I can also make it to endure forever." "Indeed," said the girl, "I would always love you if you could show me some such wonders." "For your love," he answered, "I will ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Rhone, in a huge flat-bottomed barge, called a coche d'eau, a sort of ark, with cabins, where travellers could be fairly comfortable, space where the berlin could be stowed away in the rear, and a deck with an awning where the passengers could disport themselves. From the days of Sully to those of the Revolution, this was by far the most convenient and secure mode of transport, especially in the south of France. It was very convenient to the Bourke party; who were soon ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she was of great disport, And ful plesant, and amiable of port, And peined hire to contrefeten chere Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, And to ben holden digne of reverence. But for to speken of hire conscience, She was so charitable ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... fagged. Wretched state of things, isn't it? I'm a vile bad host but I can't help it. At the present moment for example I'm undergoing grinding torments and it doesn't amuse me to make conversation, so you two can cut along and disport yourselves in any way you like. Give Lawrence a drink, will you, my love? . . . . Oh no, thanks, you've done a lot but you can't do any more, no one can, I just have to grin and bear it. Laura, would you ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... crystal stream flows through this valley between two hills covered with giant redwood trees, and rare orchids of the most curious shape and colour toss wantonly in the breeze on the tree and hilltops. Birds and fishes and reptiles disport themselves in the sunshine, and giant butterflies of the most marvellous colours flutter so bravely among the ferns and flowers. There are no tents here in our camp, but we are covered with the fragrant ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... influence upon them, since they so multiply in his society. The birds of California, it is said, were mostly silent till after its settlement, and I doubt if the Indians heard the wood thrush as we hear him. Where did the bobolink disport himself before there were meadows in the North and rice fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And the sparrow, the lark, and the goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous to the open fields and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... with noble deeds. For souls Obedient to divine impulse, who urge Their force in steadfastness until the rocks Be hewn of their obstruction, till the swamp's Insatiability be choked and bound A hardened road for traffic and disport, Tall giant arches stride across the flood, Till tortured earth release its mysteries Which straight become slaves pliant unto man, Till labours at the desk at length result In law: who pondering on the ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... elements. The RATIONAL myths are those which represent the gods as beautiful and wise beings. The Artemis of the Odyssey "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs disport them, and high over them all she rears her brow, and is easily to be known where all are fair,"(1) is a perfectly RATIONAL mythic representation of a divine being. We feel, even now, that the conception of a "queen and goddess, chaste and fair," the abbess, as Paul de Saint-Victor ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... me not with flattery! Walk with me to the Battery, And see in glassy tanks the seals, The sturgeons, flounders, smelt and eels Disport themselves in ichthyic curves— And when it gets upon our nerves Then, while our wabbling taxi honks I'll tell you all about the Bronx, Where captive wild things mope and stare Through grills of steel that bar each lair Doomed to imprisonment for ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... bits of wood, waterfalls, and mountains in North Wales, but seldom in September such unbroken sunshine to make a pic-nic exactly what it should be. It was warm enough for July, and young and old could disport themselves on the ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... brook, though a very delightful place for fish to disport in, was shallow, and by no means adapted for the recreation of so large a being as myself; it was, moreover, exposed, though I saw nobody at hand, nor heard a single human voice or sound. Following the winding of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Haarlem church disappointing, had it not been for the two or three redeeming features left in the cold, bare structure; the beautiful screen of open brass-work, with its base of dark wood, on which brightly-painted, mystic beasts disport themselves among the coats-of-arms of divers ancient towns; and the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... grotesque, which now casts into the Christian hell the frightful faces which the severe genius of Dante and Milton will evoke, and again peoples it with those laughter-moving figures amid which Callot, the burlesque Michelangelo, will disport himself. If it passes from the world of imagination to the real world, it unfolds an inexhaustible supply of parodies of mankind. Creations of its fantasy are the Scaramouches, Crispins and Harlequins, grinning silhouettes of man, types altogether ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... into his art—Browning conveys his doctrine not as such but as an enthusiasm of living; his generalized truth saturates a medium of passion and of beauty. In the Prologue to Fifine at the Fair he compares the joy of poetry to a swimmer's joy in the sea: the vigour that such disport in sun and sea communicates is the vigour of joyous play; afterwards, if we please, we can ascertain the constituents of sea-water by a chemical analysis; but the analysis will not convey to us the sensations of the sunshine and the dancing ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... are fitter to keep a castle or a fort, eating of the fat and drinking of the strong, than to live here upon pulse and water, or even upon the charity of the keeper. At least, were I as thou, I should find myself both disport and plenty out of the king's deer. There is many a goodly herd in these forests, and a buck will never be missed that goes to the use ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... I could thus disport myself," answered Vivian. "I would always love you if you could show ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... staircase the smart girl preceded Tom, shading the chamber candle with her hand, to protect it from the currents of air which in such a rambling old place might have found plenty of room to disport themselves in, without blowing the candle out, but which did blow it out nevertheless—thus affording Tom's enemies an opportunity of asserting that it was he, and not the wind, who extinguished the candle, and that while ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... forest after the pattern of the original Bois de Boulogne, hot and dusty, a much-frequented and sadly-abused promenade, one of those spots, avaricious of shade, to which the common people flock to disport themselves at the gates of great capitals—burlesque forests, filled with corks, where you find slices of melon ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... was a strange hubbub in the forest; for it was midnight, and the spirits came from their hiding-places to prowl about and to disport themselves. Barbara beheld them all in great wonder and trepidation, for she had never before seen the spirits of the forest, although she had often heard of them. ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... and I go out and lose ourselves in the woods and mountains, and sit by the waterfalls on the starry and moonlit nights," she wrote from their high perch above Lucca in 1849; but their adventures in this kind were on the whole like the noon-disport of the amphibian swimmer in Fifine,—they always admitted of an easy retreat to the terra firma ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... feminine, will think this a hard fate for the pious first wife but the idea would not occur to the Moslem mind. After bearing ten children a woman becomes "Umm al-banti w'al-bann"a mother of daughters and sons, and should hold herself unfit for love-disport. The seven ages of womankind are thus described by the Arabs and I translate the lines after a well-known ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... of him that, not wishing to ascend to Heaven too soon, he partook of only half of the pill of immortality, dividing the other half among several of his admirers, and that he had at least two selves or personalities, one of which used to disport itself in a boat on a small lake in front of his house. The other self would receive his visitors, entertaining them with food and drink and instructive conversation. On one occasion this self said to them: "You are unable to quit the world altogether as I can, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... termys short, Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers, Fra false lovers and their disport, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... about his back, and after completing the artifice by a skilful device of massing coloured inks upon our faces, he commanded me to lead him out by a chain and observe intelligently how a captive Boxer chief should disport himself. ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... by; the young lady still sits writing at the old mahogany desk, and smiling, perhaps, at her own fancies, and hiding them away with her papers at the sound of coming steps. Now, the modest papers, printed and reprinted, lie in every hand, the fancies disport themselves at their will in the wisest brains and ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... warlike garrisons as evidence of ownership. Those uncouth barbarian methods are grossly antiquated; the part once played by armed battalions is now performed by bits of paper. A wondrously convenient change has it been; the owners of the resources of nations can disport themselves thousands of miles away from the scene of their ownership; they need never bestir themselves to provide measures for the retention of their property. Government, with its array of officials, prisons, armies and navies, undertakes all of ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... obscene and smutty matters. Such things are not to be discoursed on either in jest or in earnest; they must not, as St. Paul saith, be so much as named among Christians. To meddle with them is not to disport, but to defile one's self and others. There is indeed no more certain sign of a mind utterly debauched from piety and virtue than by affecting ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... and when spring cometh, the weather groweth fair, the wood bloometh, the grass groweth, and ships may glide betwixt land and land. So on a day the king says to his folk: "I will that ye come with us for our disport out into the woods, that we may look upon the fairness ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... When she lighted the lamp and looked at him, did Psyche find Cupid out; and is that the meaning of the old allegory? The wings of love drop off at this discovery. The fancy can no more soar and disport in skyey regions, the beloved object ceases at once to be celestial, and remains plodding on earth, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... take up anything you like. You are in the deeper water with your classics than I ever got into, and if you are rather sick of that swimming, Cambridge is the place where you can go into mathematics with a will, and disport yourself on the dry sand as much as you like. I floundered along ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... be afraid, Bunny," she answered. "I'm not going to use your charms as a bait to lure this culinary Phyllis into the Arcadia in which you with your Strephonlike form disport yourself." ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... the programme, was interrupted by the formidable sound of the governed proletariat beyond the walls of the Town Hall. And Edwin's memory, making him feel very old, leapt suddenly back into another generation of male glee-singers that did not disport humorously and that would not have permitted themselves to be interrupted by the shouting of populations; and he recalled 'Loud Ocean's Roar,' and the figure of Florence Simcox flitted in front of him. The proletariat was cheering somebody. The cheers ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of life disport themselves round my bed of death, and dance about me like fair women; but if I beckon to them, I must die. Death always confronts me. You must be the barrier between the world ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... ranger's experience had taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb disport ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... hawk-eyed, not so fair to look on as masterful and proud. She led a great grey ass betwixt two panniers, wherein she laded her marketings. But now she had done her chaffer, and was looking about her as if to note the folk for her disport; but when she came across a child, whether it were borne in arms or led by its kinswomen, or were going alone, as were some, she seemed more heedful of it, and eyed it ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... presumed that these matters, with her household and secretarial work, filled up her days; he knew too well that whist accounted for her evenings. He did not know if there was any margin, any dim intellectual region, out of time, out of space, where Miss Tancred's soul was permitted to disport itself in freedom; she seemed to exist merely in order to supply certain deficiencies in the Colonel's nature. Mrs. Fazakerly had once remarked that Frida was "her father's right hand." It would have been truer to have said that she was right hand and left hand, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... "You're a great philosopher, my dear; I wish I were as wise as you. You're so scornful, so dignified, so divinely egoistic. But you don't mind being worshipped, do you, Gioconda? Because you know it's your right, of course. There—she's actually condescending to purr! Now we'll come and disport ourselves under the trees, and you shall watch the birds from a safe distance. I know your wicked ways, and I must teach you how to treat your inferiors with ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... and I would not affright them too sorely by the sight of mountains of water. Have no care for us save to bid some one supply us with food to take along. I know the way down to a smooth beach where we can disport ourselves." ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... warenne within our seid Honnor is gretly diminnisshed by excessive huntyng within the same and likely to be destroied, without restreynt in the same be had in that behalf, we desire the Replenisshyng of our seid game, not only for our singler pleasure but also for the disport of other our servantes and subgettes of Wirshipp in theis parties. And therfor we wol and straitly charge you all & every of you that from hensforth ye suffre no manner of personne or personnes of what estate degree or condicion soever he or they be, to have shot sute ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home |
